The philosophical perspective that goes beyond the mere knowledge of particular facts to a general framework within which those facts may be understood and provides a connected view of things, was considered by the ancients to be the special mark of a liberal education. Liberal education rises above the accumulation of facts to a vista from which these facts may be seen in their proper relation to one another. The liberal artist ascends to the universal principles of things, for it is only within the framework of such principles that we can even begin to have that vision—the view that sees things as a whole, in which the various parts are related, and throughwhich they exist as parts. Only such a view is adequate to the thing as it is, presenting reality as it is. Failure in this vision can be of serious consequence when the object of our concern is man and the means to his good, for without the understanding of man in his totality we are unable to know what actions are more appropriate to the achievement of that good.
The end of liberal education, therefore, is to know the whole truth of things; the truth that Christ said “shall make you free.” It is through the encounter and conformity with the truth that can be said to set a man free; free to think independently of the truth he has discovered. As G.K. Chesterton observed, “the whole point of education is that it should give a man abstract and eternal standards by which he can judge material and fugitive conditions.” To know the truth that grants this freedom, and know it for its own sake, is the purpose of liberal education.
