Virtue vs. Virtue-Signaling
Renatae Litterae by James Hankins
10 . 11 . 21
[Web Exclusives]
Last weekend I attended the “Higher Education Summit,” an annual gathering sponsored by the Classical Learning Test (CLT) in (mask-free!) Annapolis, Maryland. For two days I mixed with the movers and shakers of the spreading movement for classical education among American K-12 schools and colleges. I heard talks from the likes of Robert George, Cornel West, Anika Prather, Spencer Klavan, Jessica Hooten Wilson, Jennifer Frey, and Elias Moo. It struck me how different this movement is from the classical education movement of the period I study, the Renaissance.
During the Renaissance the study of the classics always had an elitist edge. When Petrarch refounded classical education in the fourteenth century, his goal was to fight the tide of ignorance, violence, selfishness, political corruption, and religious indifference he saw rising all about him. The real problems of his time could not be solved by passing more laws or strengthening institutions. Laws were worthless if made by evil men; institutions could not accomplish their goals if the men (and some women) who ran them could not be trusted to do what was right. The character of Christendom’s elites would have to change if institutions human and divine were to be restored.
Petrarch’s solution was to found the humanities, a new cycle of studies that would not simply teach students pre-professional skills, but transform them morally and intellectually, restoring some of the greatness of character and intellect that Petrarch found in the ancients. His movement was amazingly successful by any measure: By the middle of the fifteenth century, Italian elites had accepted that classical education was a necessity. Modelling yourself on the noble Greeks and Romans had become a cultural imperative. The Parallel Lives of Plutarch had turned into a kind of humanist Bible.
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/10/virtue-vs-virtue-signaling
