Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation

by Roosevelt Montás Narrated by Roosevelt Montás

Overview

A Dominican-born academic tells the story of how the Great Books transformed his life—and why they have the power to speak to people of all backgrounds

What is the value of a liberal education? Traditionally characterized by a rigorous engagement with the classics of Western thought and literature, this approach to education is all but extinct in American universities, replaced by flexible distribution requirements and ever-narrower academic specialization. Many academics attack the very idea of a Western canon as chauvinistic, while the general public increasingly doubts the value of the humanities. In Rescuing Socrates, Dominican-born American academic Roosevelt Montás tells the story of how a liberal education transformed his life, and offers an intimate account of the relevance of the Great Books today, especially to members of historically marginalized communities.

Montás emigrated from the Dominican Republic to Queens, New York, when he was twelve and encountered the Western classics as an undergraduate in Columbia University’s renowned Core Curriculum, one of America’s last remaining Great Books programs. The experience changed his life and determined his career—he went on to earn a PhD in English and comparative literature, serve as director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum, and start a Great Books program for low-income high school students who aspire to be the first in their families to attend college.

Weaving together memoir and literary reflection, Rescuing Socrates describes how four authors—Plato, Augustine, Freud, and Gandhi—had a profound impact on Montás’s life. In doing so, the book drives home what it’s like to experience a liberal education—and why it can still remake lives.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Rescuing Socrates is a warm, appealing narrative of how it feels to be ‘thrust into a conversation’ with fellow students about life’s most ‘serious and unsettling questions.’"—-Martha Bayles, Wall Street Journal

"[A] combination memoir and call to arms. . . . Despite those who claim that these are merely works by dead, possibly irrelevant white men, Montás argues that the Great Books approach has a fundamentally democratizing impulse."—-John McWhorter, New York Times

"Thanks to Montás . . . Socrates had a good 2021."—-George F. Will, Washington Post

"[An] earnest defense of the humanities, which is also a personal testament to the power of a liberal education."—-Thomas Chatterton Williams, The Atlantic

"One can only hope that Rescuing Socrates rescues others as well."—-Naomi Schaefer Riley, Commentary

"Montás undertakes his defense of the great books with simplicity and humility. . . . In the face of public conversations marked by fear, anger, and hostility, Montás chooses the path of vulnerability. In that, he shows the wisdom of a person who has navigated real conflict, away from the seminar table."—-Zena Hitz, Commonweal Magazine

"This is an important, and timely, book about why the western canon still matters and about how great books can change lives, especially impoverished black and brown ones."—-Lindsay Johns, Times Literary Supplement

"A heartbreakingly honest immigrant tale of displacement, loss, wrenching readjustment and self-discovery, this book also offers a gripping account of how participation in the great conversation over justice, ethics, citizenship and the nature of the good life can subvert hierarchies of privilege, redeem lost souls, open minds and transform lives."—-Steve Mintz, Inside Higher Ed

"Rescuing Socrates is a valuable and thoughtful book both sociologically and educationally, making a contribution to the ongoing debate over the past, present, and future of liberal-arts education in the United States."—-M. D. Aeschliman, National Review

"[Montás] weaves a compelling personal narrative together with a forceful argument that reading classic texts, even those originating in predominantly white, Eurocentric cultures, is an important opportunity for underserved students of color to transform themselves and transform the inequitable social structures within which they are embedded"—-Brian Rosenberg, Chronicle of Higher Education

"Montás returns the humanities to its revolutionary home, reminding us that we are, after all, talking about such radical and subversive thinkers as Augustine, Plato, Freud, and Gandhi. He teaches us, presumably like he teaches his Core Curriculum students, what those thinkers were after—and what reading them makes possible."—-Jonathan Tran, Christian Century ​

Library Journal

10/01/2021

In this insightful work, Montás (American studies, Columbia Univ.; former director of Columbia's Center for the Core Curriculum) explores the enduring value of a "liberal education," a term of post-secondary education that refers to the core courses that students are often required to take, outside of specialized coursework in their discipline. As an undergraduate at Columbia, Montás encountered the college's Core Curriculum, sometimes called a Great Books curriculum, which refers to foundational texts by ancient and modern authors that address big questions faced by humankind. To help readers experience liberal education for themselves, Montás focuses on St. Augustine; Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; Sigmund Freud; and Mahatma Gandhi. He describes how these authors shaped his thinking and fostered a sense of belonging and offers a critical assessment of liberal education in contemporary academe. Few colleges and universities still require study of Great Books as part of their curricula, but Montás makes a compelling case for the life-changing results of such pedagogy; he notes how, as an émigré from the Dominican Republic, he benefited from the breadth and depth of these approaches. He argues that academia does "minority students an unconscionable disservice when we steer them away from the traditional liberal arts curriculum." VERDICT This thoughtful book will appeal to anyone involved in assessing, developing, and refining general education curricula.—Elizabeth Connor, Daniel Lib., The Citadel, Military Coll. of South Carolina, Charleston

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175521352
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	11/16/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos