Liberal Education and Political Liberty
The resurgence and growth of American conservatism over the past few decades has coincided with the growth of the “classical education movement” within the United States. This coincidence is particularly intriguing to me as one heavily invested in both classical education as well as cultural and political conservatism. My own experience prompts me to consider the following question: What is the relationship between liberal education and a free political society? In other words, what hath liberal education to do with politics? I want to explore this question, but it is admittedly one of the most complex questions and has been thoroughly debated for centuries by many scholars, philosophers, and statesmen. I will do my best to answer it as summarily and briefly as is possible in such a format as this.
First, it is necessary to clarify some terms. The tradition of classical education is perhaps better named liberal education, since “classical” merely connotes the historical origins of the method. The term “liberal” better captures our philosophy of education and the ends we pursue through learning. Liberal education is education for freedom, education that liberates the soul and renders a human being genuinely free and worthy of his natural liberty. [1] This definition, however, may be misleading unless we understand what freedom or liberty truly is. I will seek to explain the nature of true freedom as informed by the Western tradition and how liberal education shapes students for that freedom. Having understood these concepts, we can articulate a proper understanding of political liberty and its relation to liberal education which aims at moral and intellectual freedom.
True Liberty and Liberal Education
To understand the freedom or liberty of a specific kind of being, we need to know the nature of that being. Without knowing its nature or its function, we will be hard pressed to say whether or not someone or something is “free.” Aristotle follows this course in his Nicomachean Ethics as he inquires into the nature of human virtue and happiness. Unless we define human nature or humanity’s basic function – the “certain work that is a human being’s”– we will not know what it means for man to be fulfilling that function well. [2] In Aristotle’s understanding, since humans are defined by their rational soul, it is our function to live in accord with reason, and thus to fulfill our nature. Fulfilling our nature is natural excellence (the Greek arete – virtue or excellence), and this is the good end humans ought to pursue.
As Aristotle and other worthy authors in the classical and Christian traditions explain, nature is an origin and a standard for the behavior of all things. Therefore, understanding the natural orientation of man sheds light on what humans ought to do and be, and what attitudes and behaviors we ought to cultivate. Thus, it would be helpful for us to define liberty (or freedom) as the ability of something to fulfill its nature excellently rather than acting against its nature or falling short of its natural excellence. Liberty consists of freedom from restraints (both external and internal) that inhibit the pursuit of excellence, but it is not the same as radical autonomy. Liberty is freedom unto excellence. Likewise, liberal education is not aimed merely at being rid of authorities and expressing one’s opinions; such ends ultimately render any model of education meaningless. Rather, liberal education is aimed at knowing what is transcendent – namely truth, goodness, justice, and beauty. Through liberal learning, students pursue these goods through imitation, ultimately striving to be united with them. This objective – attaining unity with the ends we pursue – is partly Platonic, but Christianity teaches that these Transcendentals are ultimately attributes of God Himself. The vision of Christian liberal education is to obtain freedom for natural excellence, which ultimately culminates in union with God.
Since liberal education is not merely freedom from all authority or constraints but rather freedom within the natural order and the human telos, what then are we liberated from? The scope of this essay does not permit a lengthy explanation, but we could identify that liberal education aims to free its students from many impediments, both internal and external, which prevent us from living in accord with reason, developing virtue, and pursuing the transcendent. Liberal education seeks to free students from ignorance, from falsehood or mistaken beliefs, from apathy or inveterate skepticism, from being ruled by the whims of fortune, from pursuing lesser goods in place of the highest Good, and from enslavement to all kinds of vice.
Whether one draws upon Plato, Aristotle, the Scriptures, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, or the Protestant Reformers, they all present a similar view – namely, that developing virtue leads to true freedom because doing so requires that we act in accord with our nature and fulfill our natural telos. Doing what we are designed to do is a form of natural excellence. On the contrary, vice is slavery because it draws us toward desires that are inherently against our nature. It corrupts what we are made to be and renders us unable to fulfil our telos. The virtuous man is free because he loves the things he ought to love by nature, whereas the vicious man loves things that are contrary to nature and experiences displeasure at those things that he naturally ought to love. Augustine expounds on this in many of his writings, such as in his Enchiridion, where he says, “I ask what freedom can be enjoyed by one bound to slavery except when he takes pleasure in sin? [...] So, he will not be free to act justly unless he is freed from sin and begins to be a slave of justice. This is a true freedom because of the joy he finds in doing good, and a faithful slavery because he is doing as he has been told.” [3] True freedom is a form of “faithful slavery” to goodness, yet it is genuinely liberating, whereas pursuing evil is slavery and bondage. Boethius echoes this in his Consolation of Philosophy, wherein Lady Philosophy explains: “To be led by [God’s] reins and yield to his justice is perfect liberty.” [4]
Liberal education aims at the knowledge of truth, goodness, justice, beauty, and ultimately God himself – because our nature is oriented towards these ends. When we turn away from nature into ignorance, vice, and disordered desires, we find ourselves enslaved. Liberal education offers true liberty by aligning us properly toward God and toward ourselves and allowing us to fulfill the telos proper to our nature. By God’s grace, liberal education allows us to be what we were meant to be.
Political Liberty
In distinction from this robust notion of liberty, which comprises moral, intellectual, and spiritual aspects, we need to define a narrower, more specific kind of liberty in human societies and regimes – namely political liberty. As rational animals oriented toward certain natural goods, we possess natural rights which can be rationally derived and discerned from our nature. [5] These natural rights include rights to life, liberty, property attained by individual effort, free rational inquiry, freedom to associate and form families and communities, and so on. Political liberty is freedom from external restraints or harms which would curtail an individual’s ability to fulfill his nature and pursue rational flourishing. To enjoy political liberty, we must establish just and well-ordered governments, else our individual rights are open to violation by others because of innate human corruption. Political liberty also requires government by consent under a system of limitations that protects individuals from tyranny and abuse of power. A just government must be able to constrain its citizens from doing harm or injustice to one another, but it must also be subject to constitutional limits. Governments must not encroach upon citizens and thereby become the worst abuser of their rights and liberties (as centralized power is so wont to do). Natural law and natural rights provide the basis and normative standards for human governments. Some rights – those we would call civil rights – are not necessarily natural because they only occur in human political societies. That said, even civil rights derive from fundamental natural rights which are prior to human societies. Good regimes protect natural rights and provide a robust framework of civil rights for their citizens.
Some argue that to bring about the virtuous and spiritual liberty of the soul described in the previous section of this article, we need an all-encompassing state which mandates virtue, pious religion, and right beliefs. Indeed, in his Republic, Plato suggests that this kind of all-controlling government is necessary to fully secure virtue, justice, and the common good. Various Christians throughout history have likewise advocated (and even attempted to create) such kinds of regimes. Most Americans, however, recoil at the notion of intrusive and comprehensive political regimes. Many are rightly skeptical that such regimes could ever function well or avoid descending into corruption and tyranny.
Instead of an all-encompassing state, the American founders held that a government is a social compact instituted by consenting rational citizens. They argued that a government’s primary purpose is the preservation of natural rights and liberties and the administration of justice. The founders believed that the state should not attempt to directly coerce individuals in matters such as personal religious beliefs and in the healthy sphere of personal liberty. By the sphere of personal liberty, I mean the realm of moral choices (not immoral ones) one makes about how to live one’s life, conduct one’s affairs, pursue human relationships, and so on. Such matters should be free from government control simply by virtue of what kinds of things they are. The government should not assign your job, plow your fields, care for your wife, raise your children, pick your recreation, mandate which Christian church you attend, and so on. Political scholar Thomas West brilliantly explains the tension at work in the liberty of the American founding:
The founders, following the lead of philosophers like Locke, thought that it was better to teach people not to expect too much from politics. In their view, political life cannot deliver the kind of perfection longed for by those who are attracted by the ‘beautiful city’ of the Republic. The founders made a distinction between the purpose of politics (security of life, liberty, and property) and the purpose of human life (happiness). Property and personal freedom are not the highest things. They are not ends. They are means for the pursuit of happiness […] The higher things were expected to be found not in public but in private life […] The true home of religion and philosophy and science, of revelation and reason, of the family and domestic happiness, is in private society. [6]
Thus, in the American political tradition, there is a public-private distinction that is not present in the same way for classical and Medieval political philosophy. Overall, a government should be entrusted only with the amount of authority necessary to achieve its vital purpose of securing the natural rights of its citizens.
This view of political liberty stems not from a low perspective of the human telos or a merely negative conception of liberty, but from a realistic reckoning of human fallibility and corruption. We are wise to “not expect too much from politics”, as West says, because all human governments (no matter how well constructed) are, at best, ineffective and imperfect, and, at worst, corrupt and abusive. This is not to say the American founders left no room for the government to shape the character and virtue of its citizens. On the contrary, they wanted the government to support the Christian religion and morality through establishing just laws, punishing criminals, recognizing marriages, favoring churches, and even teaching the basic tenets of Christianity in public schools. [7] In general, however, the founders promoted a limited scope for government intervention in personal affairs and left a wide berth for freedom of conscience and private activity. To use the words of scholar Harry Jaffa: “The American Founding limited the ends of government. It did not limit the ends of man. The ends of the regime, considered as ends of government, were lowered. But the ends both of reason and revelation served by the regime, in and through the limitations on government, were understood to enhance, not diminish, the intrinsic possibility of human excellence.” [8] The American regime’s protections for liberty of conscience aimed not to undermine but to serve religion, morality, and intellectual pursuits.
The tension in the United States (and in all free societies which adopt a similar philosophy of political liberty) is that we must pursue a robust vision of moral and intellectual freedom while also pursuing robust political freedom. The state ought not be the primary or only moral teacher of its citizens, yet that does not mean people need no moral formation. Freedom of religion emphatically does not mean – contrary to modern so-called “liberals” – freedom from religion. The state ought not to directly control or restrict the thoughts and beliefs of its citizens, but that does not mean we need not pursue the truth through intellectual formation, the liberal arts, moral philosophy, and theology. Limited, representative government is not based upon philosophical relativism, the idea that we cannot control everyone’s lives because we have no knowledge of the best way to live. Rather, it is based upon the prudent understanding that temporal governments are not best suited as instruments to accomplish spiritual and transcendent aims (i.e., conversion of souls, holistic sanctification, attaining beatitude). In the terms of Protestant political theology, God has instituted a “twofold government in man” (the spiritual jurisdiction of the church and the temporal jurisdiction of civil magistrates) with distinct functions and aims, yet both instituted by God for our good. [9] The job of temporal government is not to be the church or to ensure the salvation of its citizens (which it cannot do). Instead, governments exist to protect life and property, administer justice, and provide a stable framework within which citizens can learn to love God and their neighbors. Political liberty aims at what is temporal, but it is grounded in unchanging truths about individual natural rights, and it provides the framework in which we can pursue our eternal good.
Since the government should never usurp the role of the church or the family, it is essential that families, churches, schools, and communities engage in the task of liberal education. Only knowledgeable, moral, and disciplined citizens can perpetuate the self-government necessary to maintain a limited state. As Plato puts it in Book IX of his Republic, citizens are not truly free “until we establish a regime in them as in a city, and until – having cared for the best part in them with the like in ourselves – we establish a similar guardian and ruler in them to take our place; only then, do we set them free.” [10] Or, as the 1780 Massachusetts state constitution (drafted by John Adams) put it: “A frequent recurrence to the fundamental principles of the constitution, and a constant adherence to those of piety, justice, moderation, temperance, industry, and frugality, are absolutely necessary to preserve the advantages of liberty, and to maintain a free government[…].” [11] We need moral and intellectual formation to preserve political liberty.
Conclusion
The ideals of liberal education are well suited to the system of limited government established by the American founders. The proper aim of a limited government is to provide contours of justice within which citizens can pursue education, practice piety, and develop virtue. Lasting political liberty requires knowledgeable, virtuous citizens to administer justice in a representative government and to keep the state within its proper boundaries and limits; otherwise, even representative governments that supposedly guarantee political liberty can become easily corrupted toward injustice. For many years, we have been increasingly experiencing the latter in our own country.
The present resurgence and revitalization of political conservatism aims at restoring liberties which have been swallowed up by the ever-expanding reach of government, particularly the federal government with its sprawling web of unconstitutional bureaucracies and agencies. In recent years, this tyrannical growth has also been fueled by malevolent and destructive ideologies advancing neo-Marxist beliefs regarding race, gender, and sexuality. Alongside this has grown up the contemporary resurgence of classical (more properly liberal) education, which aims at developing men and women of intellectual and moral virtue. While political liberty and liberal education are distinct pursuits, they are closely related and equally vital for a society which hopes to remain free.
Education is perhaps the noblest endeavor because it aims at forming the soul and leading it to its highest end. Yet education cannot be indifferent to questions of politics. If we seek to cultivate liberal education, it is not irrelevant what kind of regime we live in and how it governs us. Free pursuit of the truth requires liberty from government coercion and tyranny in all forms (including as those mentioned above). A nation that destroys political liberty through tyrannical government encroachments or through permitting anarchy will severely hamper the course of liberal education and the moral and spiritual liberty of its people. If we want to educate well, we must defend political liberty grounded in the natural law.
Simultaneously, if we want political liberty, we must educate well. We must raise virtuous, self-governing citizens if we wish to preserve our liberties, administer justice, and prevent evil in our government and society. A society that destroys liberal education through philosophical corruption and moral degradation will not long endure as a politically free society. Instead, it will fall into ignorance, vice, injustice, greed, corruption, perverse ideologies grounded in falsehood, and the whims of ungoverned human passions.
Promoting liberal education and defending political liberty should be ultimately part of a unified project and purpose. We ought to restore a cultural and political framework where we can develop robust intellectual and moral freedom for truth and excellence and seek our highest end in God. Our education and our politics will rise or fall with one another. There is no guarantee that we will achieve this restoration, but reason and revelation both require that we work at it for all we are worth.
Endnotes
[1] I prefer the use of liberal to describe the tradition of education begun in the classical world, transmitted through the Christian church, and revived in our own era because it captures the philosophy inherent within this education: the philosophy of liberating the soul through education. I prefer the use of classical to make historical descriptions of the classical world or the classical tradition (the tradition of philosophy and writings originating in the classical world of Ancient Greece and Rome). Also, as another historical expression, I concede to using the term classical in the way it is commonly used today – such as in speaking of the “classical school movement” or “classical Christian education.” To summarize, I use liberal education to speak of the kind of education that is unified by a certain philosophy of liberating souls through education (which is classical in origin), but I use classical to refer to historical descriptions, whether those of the ancient world or those in our own era in which the name classical is applied to the revival of liberal education.
For example, see Jeffrey Lehman, Socratic Conversation: Bringing the Dialogues of Plato and the Socratic Tradition into Today’s Classroom (Camp Hill, PA: Classical Academic Press, 2021), 218.
[2] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated by Robert Bartlett and Susan Collins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 1097b.25 – 30. The translators note that the Greek ergon can be translated “work”, “Product”, “task”, or “function” (footnote #3 on p. 1 and #40, 41 on p. 12 and also the glossary on p. 316).
[3] Augustine, The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Charity, translated by Burce Harbert, edited by Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 30.
[4] Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, edited and translated by Scott Goins and Barbara Wyman (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), I.5. See also V.2: “Human souls are necessarily more free when they continue to contemplate the Divine Mind, but they are less free when they fall down to human bodies. Their ultimate slavery comes when they are given over to vices and fall away from the possession of their reason. For when they have cast their eyes from the light of supreme truth to lower, darker things, they are soon blinded in a cloud of ignorance and disturbed by destructive passions. Assenting and yielding to these passions, they increase the servitude they’ve brought upon themselves, and in a certain way they’re made captive by their own freedom.”
[5] For those interested, I have written on this in more detail elsewhere. See Samuel Kimzey, “Right Reason on Rights,” New Guard Press, May 3, 2025, https://newguardpress.com/the-right-reason-on-rights/.
[6] Thomas G. West, Political Theory of the American Founding: Natural Rights, Public Policy, and the Moral Conditions of Freedom (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 407 (emphasis added).
[7] Thomas West has a thorough exploration of these topics in Part II (“The Moral Conditions of Freedom”) of his Political Theory of the American Founding. It is worth reading for any who are interested in these questions or who believe the common mythology that the American founders wanted to create a “values-neutral” political regime.
[8] Harry Jaffa, “The American Founding as the Best Regime: The Bonding of Civil and Religious Liberty,” Claremont Institute, 1990, https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-american-founding-as-the-best-regime/ (emphasis added).
[9] See, for example, John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.20 (“Of Civil Government”) or the Westminster Confession of Faith, ch. XX (“Of Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience”), XXIII (“Of the Civil Magistrate”), XXX (“Of Church Censures”), and XXXI (“Of Synods and Councils”). The “twofold government of man” is Calvin, Institutes, IV.20.1.
Also, I realize that Protestant political theology is quite complicated and not necessarily unanimous when it comes to issues like to what extent the temporal government and civil magistrates should take cognizance of heavenly aims (such as defending the true religion or protecting sound doctrine). The “magisterial” Reformers differed from later Protestant thinkers, and Protestant political theology certainly evolved over time, too. Those debates are far too complex to explore here. I speak in broadest, simplest terms in this article, and I am also presenting the American form of Protestantism that was widely accepted in America at the time of the American founding.
[10] Plato, Republic, 590e – 591a, translated by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968); emphasis mine.
[11] Massachusetts 1780 Constitution, Part the First: Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Art. 18 (emphasis added). https://www.nhinet.org/ma-1780-mob.htm.
