Learning to Flourish: A Philosophical Exploration of Liberal Education

Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2012

Learning to Flourish offers a lucid, penetrating, philosophical exploration of liberal learning: a still-evolving tradition of theory and practice that has dominated and sustained intellectual life and learning in much of the globe for two millennia. This study will be of interest to anyone seeking to understand liberal arts education, as well as to educators and philosophers of education.

Daniel R. DeNicola weighs the views of both advocates and critics of the liberal arts, and interprets liberal education as a vital tradition aimed supremely at understanding and living a flourishing life. He elaborates the tradition as expressed in five competing but complementary paradigms that transcend theories of curriculum and pedagogy and are manifested in particular social contexts. He examines the transformative power of liberal education and its relation to such values as freedom, autonomy, and democracy, reflecting on the importance of intrinsic value and moral understanding. Finally, DeNicola considers age-old obstacles and current threats to liberal education, ultimately asserting its value for and urgent need in a global, pluralistic, technologically advanced society. The result is a bold, yet nuanced theory, alert to both historical and contemporary discussions, and a significant contribution to the discourse on liberal education.

Editorial Reviews:

This book is the work of not only a scholar but an insider. It's evident that Dr. DeNicola writes from experience and first-hand observation of liberal education venues. And because it is readily evident that DeNicola himself embodies the liberal education he depicts in Learning to Flourish, his philosophical exploration of the subject will engage and persuade readers attuned to the topic.

Were I a philosopher of higher education, I'd be a fitter critic of this book, for there is much to appreciate about its virtues and cogency that only a fellow philosopher might fully grasp, and I expect it will be lauded by his professional colleagues in all respects--from erudition to style, from compendiousness to urgency of import.

Conceived as a "philosophical exploration" of its subject and written by an experienced professor of philosophy, this book offers readers an adventure in lucid writing and cogent argument befitting a professional scholar in peak form, reflecting on his rich career in the profession of higher education. I cannot imagine a more scrupulous, thorough-going and clearly designed exegesis of the subject. It is a definitive treatise, and reading this book is a liberating intellectual adventure in itself.

The extensive bibliography and frequent citations reveal the wide-ranging scholarship undergirding this project, which aims at being not just a study or a book, but a definitive opus: thorough-going, closely reasoned, precisely worded and meticulously phrased--a Summa Paedogogica.

“Implied if not explicit in this book is that flourish should be considered as a transitive as well as an intransitive verb in that your own blossoming of talents and skills rightly prompts you to promote the efflorescence of others, helping to wise up the world.

“If flourishing can be reduced to one quality of human being--thinking well--DeNicola demonstrates that virtue splendidly in this durable treatise. The book is itself the harvest of vast and cultivated fields of learning. A sufficient reason to read this book is simply to savor the fruits of a mind seasoned to ripeness. Epithets such as eloquent, cogent, insightful and masterful aptly depict this fruitful exploration of the enduring importance of an ever-evolving kind of higher education, distinguished for its durability, vitality, and formative influence on those who pursue it successfully.

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“While you rightly turn to Learning to Flourish out of interest in the subject of liberal education and the hope of gaining knowledge and understanding relevant to it (and you will be well-rewarded in that pursuit), a bonus benefit is the intimate observations you'll make throughout of extraordinary skills of exposition, explication, argumentation and evaluation, by which a first-rate philosophical mind applies itself to a daunting topic. This book is more than a study; it is an exquisite performance of the art of philosophical discourse. That DeNicola is a musician and aesthetician is borne out in the eloquence of his well-phrased sentences and carefully crafted, euphonious paragraphs. The joy of reading this book follows from not only its substance but its style.

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“Much of the hard-won pleasure in reading this book derives from closely following how a mind well trained in philosophy construes and deconstructs concepts and components of a liberal education. The book as a whole presents a protracted argument for what rightly constitutes such an education and reconstitutes the learner who undertakes it into a more fully flourishing person. While the topic is thoroughly canvassed and the arguments closely reasoned, the language is precise, clear and amiable.

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“To appreciate and delight in this discourse is a measure of the reader's own mind.”

--Alan Nordstrom

A very good, articulate exploration of the history and philosophy of the liberal arts and liberal-arts education. The author is a philosopher, and his analysis reflects that, readable though it is. Articulates very carefully and clearly the different views of liberal-arts education -- an important enterprise in a time of sharp cost-inflation, demand for accountability, insistence on metrics, and careerism in higher education. Inevitably serves as a defense of liberal-arts education in a globally competitive environment in business and the business of education.

--M4REEL (Anonymous)