| This dissertation proposes a hermeneutic, or interpretive, model of liberal education as a response to two interrelated problems: the crisis of identity in the university and the widespread problem of meaningless in culture at large. As such, the dissertation contributes to the fields of philosophy of higher education and philosophical hermeneutics.; The contemporary university suffers from a crisis of meaning because its purpose is currently in question and because it does not adequately address meaning in its studies. The crisis is a result of the university's shift from a modern "positivist" model to a hermeneutic one. The Enlightenment discovery that truth is not pre-given led to a method for verifying and creating knowledge and an incredulity toward worldviews. However, without a worldview to organize it, knowledge is meaningless. In its currently pre-hermeneutic state, the university encourages engagement with attempts at meaning-making, but only in order to debunk them. This "hermeneutics of suspicion" renders us unable to have a sense of meaning in our lives. The crisis of the university is implicated in the crisis of meaning in culture at large, which is characterized by feelings of meaninglessness and over-reliance on banal explanations in place of genuine interpretations of meaning. These interrelated crises can be addressed together by a new vision of liberal learning centered around questions of meaning.; The dissertation lays out an ideal of liberal education that teaches people to, in Arendt's words, 'stop and think' about---and deliberately create---meaning. A fully hermeneutic liberal education would be grounded in the ideal of "natality"; it would teach us to learn from exemplary attempts at meaning-making and to make meaning ourselves through story-telling. Such meaning would not be binding like a grand narrative but would nevertheless be a powerful force in our lives. In proposing an ideal of "learning for meaning's sake," the dissertation reclaims the idea that education is deeply related to ethical acts. Hermeneutic liberal education would complement our skillfulness in the production of knowledge with an equally strong ability to make meaning so that we may learn to live well in a complicated, pluralistic, and uncertain world. |
