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A Passion for Knowledge

In his book Liberal Education and Democratic Citizenship (Lexington Books, 2024), Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Michael McCarthy describes the many crises confronting American democracy, identifying their philosophical, cultural, and institutional origins to show how liberal education, properly understood, can respond to these crises effectively. The book’s second chapter, “The Nature and Purpose of a Liberal Education,” was taken from his Vassar Convocation address given in the fall of 1994. In it, he argued that, despite the denigration of liberal arts education by critics, there remains a mysterious force that drives our unbounded thirst for knowledge. He quotes the late Canadian philosopher Bernard Lonergan:
“Deep within us all, emergent when the noise of other appetites is stilled, there is a drive to know, to understand, to see why, to discover the reason, to find the cause, to explain. Just what is wanted has many names. In what precisely it consists is a matter of dispute. But the fact of inquiry is beyond all doubt. What better symbol could one find for this obscure, exigent, imperious drive, than a man naked, running, excitedly crying, “Eureka, I’ve got it”?1
In his speech, McCarthy said:

Lonergan’s quote reminds us of what should be the most passionate experience occurring at college; the periodic emergence within us of the eros of mind, of the intense human desire to understand. This shared intellectual desire is the source or root of disinterested inquiry. As the example of the naked Archimedes suggests, it is an ardent desire, a love of understanding for its own sake, apart from any practical use to which it may be put. Most of us will never make this desire the effective center of our lives, but it is crucial that we learn, during our years at college, how it can become the dominant passion of a single person or a fellowship of scientists, scholars, and artists united in the pursuit of wisdom and truth.2

Let the Eureka! of Archimedes be the symbol of this cognitive passion and of the intellectual eros that sustains it. We can learn from the example of Archimedes several important truths: That human inquiry is an essentially erotic endeavor; that acts of discovery, though rarer than we desire, are often accompanied by ecstatic delight; that both inquiry and discovery promote self-transcendence, the forgetfulness of self, though the evidence for this ecstasy is generally less dramatic than Archimedes’s naked dash through the streets of Syracuse. And finally, that the natural impulse of those who seek understanding is to freely share what they learn with others.3

In the course of our liberal education, every one of us should directly experience the eros of mind. It should haunt our lives and memories wherever we may go, and whatever else we may do. A liberal education should make us eager to continue the life of the mind on our own, and to generously support the numerous centers of learning in which it flourishes.

Michael McCarthy sitting on an outdoor bench and smiling.
Michael McCarthy taught at Vassar from 1968 to 2007, and has remained very active in “retirement,” publishing several new books. He has also been active in the AEVC, the association for Vassar’s emeriti community. He and his wife, Barbara, now live in the Baldwin Senior Living Community in Londonderry, NH, where he is working on a new book, “Turning Truth Into Poetry.”
Karl Rabe
1 Bernard Lonergan, Insight.

2 A shared respect for unrestricted inquiry and the objective knowledge to which it leads are essential to a vibrant and healthy democracy. All citizens need not be scientists, historians, or philosophers, but all should share an appreciation of what their fellow citizens do and contribute to the common world.

3 Lonergan’s Insight is one of the best accounts that we have of the conditions, occurrence, and enduring fruits of unrestricted inquiry.

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