Classical Education Makes a Comeback

Great books, civic thought, and classical wisdom are reviving American education

A disturbing trend I have observed over the course of my academic career is the general decline in classical education. The slow demise of classical learning—particularly in core liberal arts fields—has hit our universities hard, damaging an entire generation’s understanding and embrace of civic thought and classical wisdom.

The 2023 decision of my home state’s flagship academic institution, West Virginia University, to join other universities around the country in jettisoning entire departments, dismantling programs, and cutting faculty in the liberal arts was distressing. Even our nation’s so-called “elite” institutions—such as Princeton University, my own academic home—have moved away from classical education. Most strikingly, Princeton’s Classics Department eliminated bedrock Latin and Greek language requirements for students majoring in classics as part of an effort to become more interdisciplinary and “inclusive.”

At the same time, signs of hope are emerging—especially in the past few years.

Around the country, academic centers committed to civic thought and the cultivation of civic virtue and classical wisdom are springing up at the university level. At the secondary-education level, too, we see newfound progress. Julia Steinberg of The Free Press described the trend in secondary education as a “new wave of classical education”—schools committed to reading the great books, delving deep into the liberal arts, inculcating virtue in their students, and forming faithful citizens. Some of these secondary schools are not religiously affiliated, while others are Catholic, Evangelical, or Jewish. What they share is an abiding commitment to the pursuit of truth—considered as something good for its own sake, and not merely as a means to other ends—and classical wisdom.

Emet Classical Academy, a pathbreaking Jewish preparatory school in the heart of Manhattan, is one of these institutions. I was honored to give the inaugural convocation speech to incoming students at Emet, and here’s the advice I gave them.

Before you is a magnificent adventure. Please allow me to impart some advice as you begin your journey—a life-long journey—as eager students of the wisdom handed down by your forefathers in the Jewish faith and the broader classical tradition.

This school, which joyfully and confidently embraces its Jewish identity, will form you to be determined truth seekers and courageous truth speakers—truth seekers and truth speakers in the great tradition of people like Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero; Moses Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas; Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Menachem Schneerson, and Elie Weisel; Winston Churchill, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Jonathan Sacks. Those of us at Princeton who continue to believe in the value of classical education try to do for our students what this school will do for you—form you as determined truth seekers and courageous truth speakers.

There are times when it is not easy to speak the truth out loud, and we live in one of those times. In such times, it takes courage. The question for each of us is, will I muster that courage?

Of course, only you yourself can form your character to be a dedicated truth-seeker and a courageous person—your parents, your teachers, your school cannot do it for you. Still, your parents, your teachers, and this school will support you in building that kind of character.

A few months before his death on July 4,1826—50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence—Thomas Jefferson, the principal draftsman of the Declaration, responded to a letter from Henry Lee asking him where he had gotten the ideas for the Declaration. Lee no doubt had in mind the stirring words of the Declaration’s second sentence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” These ideas evidently seemed to Lee entirely new—breaking with what  had gone before in political history. He must have been surprised, then, by Jefferson response, which was, in effect, “there is nothing new here.”

Jefferson said that he simply stated “common sense,” and gave voice to what he described as “the harmonizing sentiments” of the American people, as expressed, for example, “in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.”

There are times when it is not easy to speak the truth out loud, and we live in one of those times.

Jefferson cited two ancient thinkers and two great figures of the English Enlightenment. Aristotle and Cicero represent classical Athens and Rome. Locke and Sidney could be said to represent London.

However, Jefferson did not mention the Bible. I’ve often wondered why.

Of course, a standard explanation is that Jefferson was against religion, that he was a staunch secularist. Well, Jefferson was certainly skeptical of, if not indeed downright hostile to, what we now call “organized religion.” But he was not an atheist.

He frequently invoked God, as he did in the Declaration in referring to a divine “Creator” who is concerned with, and involved in, the affairs of men. He appeals to God as the real source of our fundamental rights and the duties they entail, suggesting that our basic rights as human beings, and not just as Americans, come not from kings or parliaments or presidents or congresses, not from legislators, not from judges, not from monarchs, not from executives, but from the hand of almighty God Himself. And because no merely human power gave us those rights, no merely human power can legitimately take them away. They are God-given rights, inscribed in our very nature by the God who made us.

In fact, Jefferson, in speaking of the wrongfulness of slavery, and, despite being a slaveowner himself, once said “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that his justice cannot sleep forever.” This reflects a profound religious sentiment, namely, that we are people under judgment—under divine judgment.

Still, Jefferson did not mention the Bible, or the Jewish or Christian traditions, in speaking of the ideas of the Declaration of Independence. But he could have done so, and he should have done so, because in addition to Athens and Rome what happened in Philadelphia also deeply depended on Jerusalem—on the Bible. It depended in particular and above all on that principle that we encounter in the very first chapter of the very first book of the Bible, the Book of Genesis, where we are taught that human beings, unlike the brute animals, are made in the very image and likeness of the divine Creator and Ruler of all that is. This is the idea of the imago Dei: that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God.

If this teaching is true, as Jews and Christians believe it to be, then each and every human being, no matter how weak, no matter how poor, no matter how lowly, is the bearer of profound, inherent, and equal dignity. If it is true, then there are no natural superiors and inferiors. There are no superior or inferior peoples or ethnicities or races. All of us are equal in fundamental dignity.

I have often said that I yield to no one in my appreciation and great respect for the Greek philosophers and Roman thinkers and jurists. I teach Plato and Aristotle and Cicero—and I love them. They teach us so much about the nature and importance of virtue, and they teach us so much about what it means to have a properly ordered soul, one in which we are not slaves of our passions and desires but, through the divine gift of reason, we are masters of our passions. And it is true, as Jefferson suggests, that we could not have “Philadelphia” without “Athens” and “Rome.” And yet while, again, I yield to no one in my regard for the great Greek and Roman thinkers, it was not they who gave us the idea of the imago Dei. We search in vain in their writings for some foundation for the principle of the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every member of the human family.

“Jerusalem,” too, was necessary. You do not get to “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” if you only rely on “Athens” and “Rome.”  We need Jerusalem. We need that great insight of Genesis 1.

We Jews and Christians, who regard ourselves as the heirs of that great insight, have never fully lived up to the requirements of the imago Dei. As individuals and collectively, we have always to some extent fallen short—often badly and tragically so. As I’ve noted, Jefferson wrestled with his conscience about slavery. He knew it was wrong—that it is incompatible with principle of inherent and equal dignity; yet he did not give up his own slaves, or the lifestyle that his holding them made possible. He could not bring himself to turn decisively against slavery, even while recognizing it as evil.

And because no merely human power gave us those rights, no merely human power can legitimately take them away. They are God-given rights, inscribed in our very nature by the God who made us.

Human imperfection means that we will never fully and perfectly consistently live up to the principle, and yet we must always aim for its most perfect realization. Otherwise, we will be unworthy heirs to our Nation’s great experiment in ordered liberty and republican government, and it will fail.

That great gift that came from Philadelphia is only possible, and can only be maintained, if we strive to live up to the principle of inherent and equal dignity, and that task falls to all of us. It is not just the task of rabbis or priests or preachers. It’s not just the task of professors and teachers. It’s certainly not just the task of presidents and congressmen and judges. It’s the task of every American.

Fulfilling that task means that we must be, and therefore must form ourselves to be, courageous truth speakers, who uphold the principles of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome that inform the “harmonizing sentiments” of the American people when we are at our best.

But to do that, it is indispensable, even (or perhaps especially) in this so-called secular age, that you keep the flame of Jerusalem aloft. Be cognizant and proud that the fundamental principle you are called upon to support and defend, the principle of inherent and equal dignity that is entailed by the imago Dei, originated with the Jewish people—first to hear and respond to the word of God. In guarding the flame, you keep faith with your ancestors and with God Himself. Never let it fall.