ABSTRACT
Consider the opening lines of an op-ed piece that ran in the Wall Street Journal in the midst of the controversy that raged over Stanford University's core curriculum: "The intellectual heritage of the West goes on trial at Stanford University today. Most predict it will lose." In the ensuing public debate over whether to change the content of such core courses, one side—call them "essentialists"—argued that to dilute the core with new works for the sake of including previously unheard voices would be to forsake the values of Western civilization for the standardlessness of relativism, the tyranny of the social sciences, lightweight trendiness, and a host of related intellectual and political evils. Liberal education, an education adequate to serve the life of a free and equal citizen in any modern democracy, requires far more than the reading of great books, although great books are an indispensable aid.
