The knowledge of the great narrative

Jeffrey Hart, Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe page X.

Goethe is often said to have been the last man to have known his civilization in its totality, that after Goethe things became too complex for anyone to achieve such grasp. Rosenstock-Huessy had a different sort of knowledge and mastery in mind. He meant that the citizen, the product of a genuine liberal arts education, should understand his civilization in the large, its shape and texture, its narrative and its major themes, its important areas of thought, its philosophical and religious controversies, its scientific development, its major works of the imagination. The citizen in this sense need not know quantum mechanics, neutron theory, non-Euclidean geometry, or the details of the twelve-tone scale, but he should know that they are there and what they mean.

This kind of knowledge is the goal of liberal education, the knowledge of the great narrative and other possible narratives, and the ability to locate new things in relation to the overall design, and the ability to locate other civilizations and other cultures in relation to it.

In a democracy such as ours the goal must be to have as many people as possible grasp their civilization this way, because they participate in the governing function either directly or indirectly and because they help to create the moral and cultural tone of the social environment we all share.