Education for life Great Books Seminars as a Way to Provide Today's University Students with a Personally Meaningful and Civically Relevant Education

There is a widespread concern that the performance culture at modern universities raises anxiety levels amongst students and generates individualistic, career-oriented graduates (Brooks, 2001; Deresiewicz, 2015; Sandel, 2021). In addition, modern democratic societies struggle with a lack of social cohesion, increasing polarization and anti-intellectual tendencies (Kakutani, 2019). Modern universities can be said to have three missions, namely, to provide professional education, scientific research and education, liberal education. The main argument of the paper is that liberal education, defined as the development of the student as a whole person, complements a professional and scientific education and deserves more attention given the concerns about both today’s students and societies. The paper provides a short history of liberal education and of great books seminars as one way of providing a liberal education. The paper then discusses practical-educational questions about text selection and the role of the teacher. In the final part, the paper offers an example of a text that could be read as part of great books seminars, namely, E. M. Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread, which provides students with the opportunity to think about the relationship between friendship, self-knowledge and purpose.