December 21, 1997

Vico and the Role of the Professor

Giambattista Vico’s somewhat romanticized ideas on the role of the professor:

To select the best authors in the canon;
To mistrust by commentary, explication, analysis;
To stimulate students to direct and shape their minds more perfectly toward wisdom;
To inspire students with a love for learning;
To encourage students to create their own knowledge;
To instill in students a recognition of the communal and civic importance of education;
To make students aware of the encyclopedic and universal nature of true knowledge;
To inspire students toward a scholarly heroism which through the cultivation of moral and intellectual virtue seeks to uncover the image and likeness of the transcendent spirit within, their better nature;
To assist students to recognize the purposes of education are transcendent and self-less, for God, his glory, and for the advancement and well-being of all mankind;
To demonstrate the collation and comparison of knowledge, how the whole hangs together, how the parts relate to the universe of knowledge.