Liberal Education and the Canon: Five Great Texts Speak to Contemporary Social Issues. - book reviews

National Review, Sept 26, 1994 by Matthew Carolan

Liberal Education and the Canon: Five Great Texts Speak to Contemporary Social Issues, by Laura Christian Ford (Camden House, 292 pp., $38)

LAURA Christian Ford tries to put a different spin on five classics (Homer, Plato, the Bible, Shakespeare, and the American founding documents) by asserting their relevance to contemporary social issues, and also by finding penumbras of modern liberalism in them. In the chapters entitled "Rape" and "The Death Penalty" Miss Ford is at her best, culling provocative insights from the sources. But in other chapters--"Sexual Harassment," "Homophobia," "Abortion," and "The Right to Die"--she loses her way with weak inferences, simplistic appeals to authority, and non-sequiturs to support her anachronistic liberal conclusions. Also, the book relies on the uncritical presupposition that moral values are not a matter of knowledge at all, but rather a matter of religion. The book has received some praise from members of the humanities establishment, who have apparently forgotten the comely virtues of logical reasoning.