04/28/2026
Indeed, if these questions about our genuine experience in any way resonate with you—if, for example, the deepest experiences of your lives have been concern for your friends or love of someone else or the heartfelt belief that one must be courageous or honest and you feel somewhere inside that these experiences are real, and not conventional—then it seems to me that we might begin to see a reason, and even a need, for a St. John’s education. For the St. John’s education begins by considering the works of the ancient and medieval philosophers and poets. And these authors began, unlike Locke, by taking our political and religious beginning point seriously. That is, they began not from a hypothetical view of where society comes from, though they surely considered such hypothetical views, but rather from the world in which we genuinely find ourselves, that is, a world in which we feel deep obligations to our country, our friends, and our family; they began by taking seriously the fact that human beings begin within a political life and may very well be political beings. And because they begin here, they are able to think deeply about the questions that arise in the midst of that life, questions that touch upon those things that I think, at any rate, matter most deeply to our minds and hearts, questions raised directly or indirectly by authors such as Plato and Aristotle and even Homer, questions such as, “what is justice?,” “what is friendship?,” “what is beauty?,” “what is courage?,” “what is a citizen?,” and so on. Furthermore, because they begin from within political life, from within political and religious communities that did have a “summum bonum,” they are also able to raise, and raise seriously, the question that, along with the others that I have just cited, Locke and his heirs, beginning from the view that human beings are fundamentally selfish and free, have made less accessible to us, namely, the question of what the best life might be.
From “Freedom, the Liberal Arts, and St. John’s College,” lecture delivered by Matthew K. Davis, August 28, 2015
