Liberalism and the Liberal Art and the Liberal Arts

Re Analogies Across the Curriculum
Collaborative Genius & Course W/O Borders

Political Theory and the American Founding
The Tension between Logic and History
by Franklin A Kalinowski

Thanks, Frank--for sending this.

IDEAS: (intellective/affective fire) a complement
to the necessary but always insufficient house-keeping
affairs (our local eco-logic) we have with us always.

I just spent the last hour or more reading through it--
impressed by its "scholarly" integrity, readability,
information, authority...

(L. schola: school -"leisure"--a leisure time activity:
an irony I like to rub student's gnosis in, and colleagues,
too)

...and impressed also: how I struggle to work though
learned territory that reveals my ignorance and attention
deficiency, and what damage I do--scouring & selecting..

I printed-out 4 pages (double column) of notion and quotes,
ideas that spoke to me & my own biases/belief, which I want
to re-read so as to make some sense of my own as to what's
valuable here.

No matter how complex & rich an argument and view,
I still reduce it to some either/ors I can put in play--
hopefully without denying or forgetting the complexity,
but always getting lost in it anyway--the devils and the
details. Not quick but dirty & messy business

I thought I heard you say something yesterday sounding like
the "death" of liberalism--& liberal arts education, and while
your excellent chapter gives me a rich sense of what "liberalism" is---
I don't understand how to think or talk about its demise--which
I agree with, or it's reconfiguration.

Something's going on I wish I had good terms for that don't
necessarily demoralize the morals of the youth. Or demoralize
in the best sence--something like "creative destruction."

And I think you connected this "death" with the notion of a
liberal education. May not have heard you right.

For awhile I've been wondering what can be said about
something like "the liberal art" ...

(which has no more historical "origin" than a social contract)

...as opposed to the liberal arts.

The word "liberal" comes trailing a mess of positive connotations
in the popular mind. But I suspect you were introducing a negative,
or counter and properly corrective sense.

There must be a useful analogies between consideration of
"the founding" (as in "founding fathers": aka - fundamentalism)
and its confusing mix of ideology and reason (logic) and history,
and us here blathering about strategic planning & what-we-do
and what we-ought-to-do (our assess-mental studies and
leadership programs).

Call IT (the possibility of analogizing) an integration
of academics, work, & service. Or call it local food for
thought. Metis, is what Homer calls it. Local Knowing.

Or what's a political science for?

I mean to re-read what I sampled from your chapter, a rip-off and
violation to the whole: terrible injustice, I admit it;
and "get back to ya" & maybe you can improve
my terms and images and we can sustain some
conversation (I like to call it converse-action,
so it might be acknowledged as a kind of
activism and I can include it in my
Annual Report and Self
Evaluation activities)

Yrs in Pure Academics, Sam