J. Scott Lee. 2020. Invention. The Art of the Liberal Arts. Santa Fe: Respondeo Books.

The Netherlands does not have a strong narrative of the liberal arts. In a way, this is a pity, as a strong narrative may help to position the liberal arts and sciences in the academic landscape. Be this as it may, J. Scott Lee’s Invention. The Art of the Liberal Arts offers an interesting and original argument about the value of the liberal arts in academia. The argument is particularly pertinent to the ongoing debate about how liberal arts and sciences curricula may help to prepare students to make a difference in the world.

Before I begin, I should first say a few things about its author. J. Scott Lee was the co-founder, and executive director for more than two decades, of the Association for Core Texts and Courses (ACTC) (www.coretexts.org). ACTC is an international liberal arts organization dedicated to fostering the use of core texts in undergraduate education. The idea of ‘core texts’ should be understood in an inclusive and pluralistic way. Core texts move away from the narrower idea of a ‘great book’ as they are inclusive of artifacts such as film, drama, musical productions, and so forth. A core text need not be canonical; a core text may be too new or too little known to be a classic. Nor are core texts specifically from one specific tradition. From the start, ACTC has been a place for engagement, experimentation, and creativity with regards to undergraduate education based on core texts. It is one of the few organizations that is focused on bringing together committed teaching faculty from the liberal arts and sciences and from across the world, and it continues to do valuable work in providing faculty – who are often trained in a specific tradition – with space and support for expanding their teaching repertoire and branching out to other cultures, texts, artifacts, and traditions.

In many ways, Invention. The Art of Liberal Arts is the intellectual fruit of decades of Scott Lee’s commitment to the liberal arts ACTC. We may parse the argument of the book by looking at what the author understands by each of the terms in the title. Let us look at ‘invention’ first. According to Scott Lee, core texts invent by being original expressions of humanity. Liberal arts programs “are less a study of the truth, than of the possibilities humans have invented and made for themselves” (245). As students engage with core texts on the level of invention, that is, by being perceptive of the creative, innovative, and transformative intention of the text or artifact, they themselves learn what it means to invent and transform. In this way, students are empowered to become part of creating the future, about which more below.

What, then is the ‘art’ of the liberal arts? Importantly, in defining ‘art’ Scott Lee appeals to the Greek ‘techne’, meaning the art or technique of producing something. Art means “turning what we know or recognize into somethings possible, something new” (108). What is produced could be an artifact, including a text, a painting, a musical piece, a movie, an argument, and so forth. Rhetoric, for example, is considered to be an art or ‘techne’. By writing about the ‘art’ of liberal arts, Scott thus emphasizes the creative and productive aspect of the liberal arts. In this way, we can think of the traditions of the liberal arts as artworks that are themselves forever in development. Try to imagine the liberal arts – and also liberal arts curricula – as a sculpture that takes shape as different people and different generations add or chip away at it and look at it from different angles. It is the job of teachers to introduce students to this enterprise and, ultimately, to invite them to (co-)create.

This leaves us to think, specifically, about what is ‘liberal’ about the liberal arts. Throughout the book, Scott emphasizes the notion of versatility as the hallmarks of the liberal arts. The liberal arts, he argues, are ultimately and fundamentally about imagining the possible. This is how, according to Scott Lee, an education in the liberal arts is properly liberal: “a liberal arts curriculum [..] is in its performance the free activity of the mind” (247). This free activity means that core texts may well challenge the preconceptions of their own time and ours. It also means that an engagement with core texts puts students in a position whereby they can challenge their own culture. Core texts liberate students, as it were, and enable them to create and transform culture. And a creative or transformative act is an act of freedom. Aristotle’s treatises, for example, or Augustine’s sermons may currently be understood as authoritative in some traditions, but they fundamentally challenged the cultural preconceptions of their time. It is this contesting aspect that Scott Lee finds most relevant and important about core texts.

One observation that I found particularly pertinent here is that an ‘error’ in any art object may actually be useful. For Scott Lee, an error – let us say a viewpoint that we would now reject or find distasteful – intentionally or unintentionally serves the end of poetry, namely, as an invitation for (re-)invention. Core texts are not great because they are perfect; indeed, they may be great because of their imperfections. The point is, if I understand Scott Lee correctly, not to understand core texts as authorities, but to understand them as fertile ground for new and original ideas. By being original expressions of humanity, they challenge and inspire us to be original.

As we continue to develop a discourse about the ‘why’ of liberal arts, it will be interesting to keep Scott Lee’s artistic vision of the liberal arts in mind. He may well be right that a thoughtful and authentic communion with the past is the way towards re-envisioning a better world. It resonates with what I take to be Hannah Arendt’s understanding of education, which is worthwhile to cite extensively:

Insofar as the child is not yet acquainted with the world, he must be gradually introduced to it; insofar he is new, care must be taken that this new thing comes to fruition in relation to the world as it is. In any case, however, the educators here stand in relation to the young as representatives of a world for which they must assume responsibility although they themselves did not make it, and even though they may, secretly or openly, wish it were other than it is. This responsibility is not arbitrarily imposed upon educators; it is implicit in the fact that the young are introduced by adults into a continuously changing world. Anyone who refuses to assume joint responsibility for the world should not have children and must not be allowed to take part in educating them”.

‘The Crisis of Education,’ in Between Past and Future. New York: Viking Press, p. 189

Education is to help students feel at home in the world, not as passive subjects to culture and authority, but as agents who are enabled to take responsibility for shaping change in the world. Scott’s understanding of core texts as inherently transformative by means of which students develop an understanding of what it means to invent and transform, is timely and original. It helps students to become free agents in the world, that is, not limited to a specific approach or a specific canon, but open to the plurality of the liberal arts and their inherent innovativeness and creativity. This is how the liberal arts may lead us into the future.