At my Great Books college, I didn’t have a major – no one did. I didn’t take a single course in international relations (IR) or public policy. Even so, after college I went on to one of the world’s top international affairs graduate programs, and the undergraduate education I received was the best preparation I could have asked for. Although the Great Books and international affairs are not often associated together, the truth is that greater emphasis on the Great Books is essential to the revitalization of American foreign policy and international engagement.
The modern Great Books movement began in 1921 with Professor John Erskine at Columbia University. His course combined reading the classic works of Western civilization with the Socratic discussion method. The success of Erskine’s approach sparked a movement, ultimately leading to the creation of Great Books programs at places like the University of Chicago and St. John’s College and even to the founding of new institutions, such as my alma mater, Thomas Aquinas College (TAC).
The founders of the Great Books movement knew that the most influential texts of Western civilization are marked by a high degree of engagement with their predecessors. It’s this continuous sense of engagement across immense space and time, known as the “great conversation,” that gives students such a unique opportunity for intellectual and even spiritual growth. While there are various iterations of the Great Books approach, both secular and religious, they are united by the shared belief in the value of texts that have, for better or worse, shaped the contours of the Western mind.
I had expected my Great Books education to strengthen my critical thinking and moral formation, particularly as informed by TAC’s Catholic theology, but I had not anticipated just how exceedingly well it prepared me to study international affairs in graduate school. Many of the authors cited as giants of IR theory I had already read, often in their entirety, and in conversation with other influential thinkers of the Western tradition. I learned that Machiavelli, Rousseau, and Kant were not just political philosophers, but international relations theorists. Having read Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War twice without once considering its application to international relations, I was well-equipped (and delighted) to learn about his role as a founder of the realist school of IR thought as a graduate student. Mostly surprisingly, I discovered that even secular institutions consider St. Augustine’s City of God to be a classic of IR theory and Thomas Aquinas to be key figure in the development of international law and human rights. Some of my classmates struggled to accept that “civilization” is a valid concept. (“It’s racist,” I was told). And yet, I struggled to imagine how I could have made sense of international relations theory without first encountering the “great conversation” and the full history of Western civilization.
Most importantly, my strong grounding in philosophy, theology, and history fortified me to withstand the radical relativism, and even nihilism, that dominates the study of international affairs. I believe that the study of the Great Books, particularly in a religious setting, naturally leads to an encounter with truth, beauty, and goodness. This is perhaps why even secular Great Books programs can produce an abundance of Christian converts, such as in the 1970s when the University of Kansas’s Great Books school saw so many conversions it prompted an investigation and ultimately the shuttering of the program.
Unfortunately, this synergy between the Great Books and international affairs is largely untapped. One issue is that Great Books programs, though not intrinsically political, do attract more conservative students who tend to be suspicious of anything “international.” Though unfortunate, this attitude is also a natural reaction to the progressive tilt of the international affairs landscape – a problem that will only worsen as Christians and conservatives flee foreign policy. At the same time, Classical and Great Books education has been sucked into the culture wars, with the idea of spending years studying “dead, Western, white men” being anathema to the progressive mindset. Young, left-leaning Americans hoping to pursue careers in international affairs aren’t flocking to Great Books colleges or begging their professors to go through the entirety of Thucydides.
As we enter an era of global upheaval and instability, the next generation of international affairs professionals will need moral integrity, intellectual honesty, and an understanding of how contemporary IR, in theory and practice, has been shaped by the Great Books. They will need to grapple with big ideas and understand how their own views are rooted in a particular civilizational tradition and millennia of reasoned exchange. Diplomats, politicians, writers, academics, and the myriad other professionals participating in the area we call “international affairs” together shape the contours of American foreign policy and international engagement through their own, present-day “great conversation.” When this conversation becomes disconnected from the “great conversation” of Western civilization, the result is imprudent policy and a distorted vision of America’s role in the world. The broad education afforded by the Great Books is something more international affairs professionals would benefit from. I therefore propose three practical steps that can help to bridge the artificial chasm between the Great Books and international affairs.
First, Great Books institutions should encourage students to consider further education and careers in international affairs. Bringing in guest lecturers on the role of the Great Books in the development of IR theory, featuring career talks by alumni in foreign policy, or promoting summer language programs are all steps that schools can easily take. Second, whenever possible, we should encourage young people with an interest in international affairs to attend Great Books programs for their undergraduate education. Finally, existing educational programs in international affairs should adopt aspects of the Great Books approach. My favorite class in graduate school was a “Classics on International Relations” course that applied the Great Books method to IR. Beginning with Thucydides and ending with modern authors such as Kenneth Waltz and J. Ann Tickner, we applied the Socratic discussion method to the “great conversation” of IR theory. I believe that every school of international affairs should offer such a course and require all students to complete it.
Will such efforts lead to a sudden influx of Great Books graduates in top IR programs? Will the State Department of 2035 be staffed solely by Great Books alumni? Probably not, but as the Great Books teach us, sometimes a small group of people can have a great impact on history. Our world is a mess, and our cultural and political leaders are ill-equipped to fix it. We need to do more than slash bureaucracies – we need to train a new generation of truly educated, virtuous leaders. We have a method of education designed for just that. Let’s use it.
