













































02Boettcher.indd


© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2008, Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies Street, London SW11 2JW

[Expositions 2.1 (2008) 007–012] Expositions (print) ISSN 1747-5368  
doi:10.1558/expo.v2i1.007 Expositions (online) ISSN 1747-5376 

Care of the Soul: Service-Learning and the Value of the 
Humanities

JAmES W. BoEttchEr

Department of Philosophy 
Saint Joseph’s University

contemporary debates about the proper role of the humanities in col-
lege and university education have been shaped by a multitude of exi-
gencies and trends both within and outside of the academy, from ordi-
nary budgetary constraints to changing institutional and professional 
norms, and from increasingly consumerist attitudes about education 
to the emergence of new media and communications technology. Val-
ue pluralism, recognition of the importance of cultural diversity, and 
processes of globalization have led to ongoing and sometimes quite 
heated discussion about curricular content. moreover, the remarka-
ble achievements of the natural sciences, which have yielded so many 
practical gains, only heighten the anxiety of those who would seek to 
determine just what “use” the humanities serve. While some of the 
terminology in these debates may be new—witness the pressure on  
instructors across disciplines to specify measurable “learning objectives” 
and “outcomes assessments”—the underlying questions are not so dif-
ferent from those which motivated matthew Arnold’s classic defense 
of the humanities over a century ago. The “humane letters,” Arnold 
argues, uniquely engage our emotions and exercise a valuable influence 
on our conduct and sense of beauty. Arnold’s conclusion is that the 
humanities are not “in much actual danger of being thrust out from 
their leading place in education…So long as human nature is what it 
is, their attractions will remain irresistible” (Arnold 1975, 72).

According to a new book by Anthony Kronman, the humanities 
have lost not only their leading position in post-secondary education, 
but, more important, their relevance in guiding students through a 
critical examination of what it means to live a good life as a human 
being (Kronman 2007). Kronman places much of the blame for this 

http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/expo.v2i1.007


8 Care of the Soul

© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2008

loss squarely on the shoulders of those who work in the humanities. In 
our aspiration to realize a misplaced research ideal, it is we, Kronman 
suggests, who have renounced what was once widely understood to 
be—and, indeed, what should be—the principal goal of an education 
in the humanities, namely, the disciplined pursuit of ultimate ques-
tions about the meaning of life. Stanley Fish, by contrast, is suspicious 
of the notion that members of the professoriate are especially effective 
at or well qualified to direct others in such a pursuit, and so he reaches 
a very different conclusion. Because the humanities fail to “bring about 
effects in the world,” their only justification lies in the pleasure experi-
enced by those who enjoy studying them.

By locating the potential value of the humanities in either observ-
able practicable results or the subjective experience of pleasure, Fish’s 
conclusion is based on a false dichotomy. Even if the humanities don’t 
“do” anything useful “in the world” in the way that, say, accounting 
programs perform useful social and economic functions by training 
a necessary group of professionals, the knowledge, skills, and habits 
of mind that are cultivated through a serious study of the humani-
ties still do something quite significant for students. robert Pippin’s 
conception of the aims of liberal education is instructive in this regard 
(Pippin 2000). Pippin reminds us that the humanities, along with the 
other liberal arts, contribute in an essential way to the good of human 
freedom. Freedom as liberality of mind consists in the ability to stand 
in the right relation to one’s convictions, values and identity: that is, 
to acknowledge them as one’s own by being able to give a reasoned 
account of why one believes, values, or identifies with this or that. 
having good reasons typically depends upon weighing evidence, en-
gaging in dialogue with others, responding to their criticisms, and, as 
Kronman rightly emphasizes, considering traditional claims about and 
illustrations of the true, the good, and the beautiful in history, litera-
ture, philosophy, and the arts.

At the same time, Kronman’s book is not without its shortcom-
ings. I suspect that the simplistic understandings of diversity and 
multiculturalism which he associates with the demise of the humani-
ties are not nearly as widespread or damaging as he would have us 
believe and so are something of a straw man. more germane to my 



James W. Boettcher 9

© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2008

own experiences teaching in the humanities is his treatment of reli-
gion. According to Kronman’s somewhat stylized history of Ameri-
can higher education, the humanities flourished in their proper role 
during the era of the so-called ideal of secular humanism—that is, 
from roughly the 1860s to the 1960s—when they provided the  
opportunity for exploring rival frameworks of meaning in an  
increasingly pluralistic and disenchanted world. That ideal affirms 
neither religious dogma nor radical doubt; but it is distinct from 
religious conceptions of a well-lived life. All religions, Kronman 
maintains, are “fundamentalist” in the weak sense that they reject 
the “ultimate pluralism of values” and demand acknowledgment of 
supernatural realities that are inaccessible to human reason (Kron-
man 2007, 199). Kronman regretfully admits that, given the recent 
abandonment of the secular humanist ideal, the most influential  
institutions providing instruction today in the question of life’s mean-
ing are religious institutions, and he cites as evidence of this fact lan-
guage from the mission statements of oral roberts, regent, and Lib-
erty University (Kronman 2007, 200 and 292, n. 41).

many of the religiously affiliated colleges and universities in the U.S., 
however, are quite unlike the particular examples cited by Kronman. 
Some, like my own institution, are rooted in a vibrant intellectual tra-
dition according to which there is no final inconsistency between the 
demands of faith and the claims of reason. moreover, just as in the 
case of some religious convictions, skeptical and naturalistic attitudes 
and beliefs are sometimes adopted uncritically and even dogmatically. 
to be sure, Kronman would recommend that students in the humani-
ties encounter reasoned challenges to both religious and nonreligious 
worldviews. But it’s far from obvious that this goal is best accomplished 
by following the ideal of secular humanism, whatever its other merits. 
It may turn out that this educational goal, along with the more general 
aim of critically examining rival frameworks of meaning, demands that 
questions in epistemology and the philosophy of religion be recognized 
as central to the humanities curriculum, as they are at many catholic 
institutions. Kronman is right to insist on a renewal of the humanistic 
alternative to various fundamentalisms. But it’s just as important that 
questions about God, the divine, faith and the rationality (or irration-



10 Care of the Soul

© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2008

ality) of religious belief are not dismissed altogether, as they might be 
by students who would equate all forms of religious commitment with 
“fundamentalism.”

Kronman observes that the meaning of life is perhaps a more famil-
iar and pressing matter for us when put in the form of the question, 
“What, in the end, should I care about?” (Kronman 2007, 23). my 
own view is that teachers and students must respond to this question 
intellectually, but not without also considering its affective, practi-
cal, and spiritual dimensions. What I care about is revealed in part by 
what I believe on due reflection and value as good or beautiful, and 
in part by what I do and how I respond emotionally to others and 
to the world we share. Thus one of the ways that college and univer-
sity communities can care for the whole person and facilitate student  
reflection on the question of what to care about is by organizing and 
encouraging meaningful activities outside of the classroom which com-
plement traditional forms of academic learning.

Service-learning, an academic program that combines academic 
coursework with sustained reflection on regular community serv-
ice, is one such example. my own experiences at Jesuit universi-
ties, first as a graduate student and then as a faculty member, sug-
gest that the humanities provide a natural home for this particularly  
effective method of combining intellectual inquiry, practical  
engagement, relationship building, and self-reflection. In my serv-
ice-learning sequence of introductory philosophy courses, students 
examine long standing philosophical and moral problems in light 
of their experiences working in service placements. So an examina-
tion of the problem of free will and determinism is complemented 
by the experiences of getting to know addicts and recovering addicts. 
Examination of the social nature of the person is complemented by 
discussions of solidarity through service work; the problem of evil 
by reflections on human suffering; the meaning of race by consid-
eration of the demographics of Philadelphia; end-of-life issues by 
students working at nursing homes; moral questions concerning  
impairments and disabilities by students serving wheelchair com-
munities; theories of distributive justice by stories from soup kitch-
ens and homeless outreach agencies—and so on. Service experienc-



James W. Boettcher 11

© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2008

es contribute to our academic objectives by providing illustrations, 
concrete examples, and counter-examples, as well as sources of  
insight, inspiration, and wonder. At the same time, student reflection 
on both service and the social problems to which their service sites 
respond is more informed and disciplined when it is connected to a 
careful study of philosophical texts.

In these courses, the question of what one should care about is 
always at least in the background, even when more specific philo-
sophical problems and moral controversies occupy our class read-
ings and conversation. At other times, the question is addressed  
directly through an encounter with classic works in philosophy. For in-
stance, students begin my introductory course on the “human Person” 
by making their way through Plato’s Apology and Republic, with special 
attention paid to Socrates’ investigation of how and why young people 
are attracted to various goals and projects. my second course, “moral 
Philosophy,” revisits Plato’s question of the relationship between hap-
piness and morality by turning to mill’s defense of the higher pleas-
ures, Kant’s ideal of the morally good will, and Aristotle’s treatment 
of the different models of friendship which contribute to a happy and 
virtuous life.

It is unlikely that these courses could be shown to have “saved” an-
yone, but that’s not the term I would use to characterize their pur-
pose in the first place. Indeed, one of the lessons that students learn 
through their service is just how difficult it is for one person to save 
another. But, especially among first-year students, these courses 
do, I think, often have an impact, and sometimes a transformative  
impact, on the kind of persons that students become over the next 
few years, on their academic and non-academic interests, their sense of 
responsibility, and the choices that they make about how to participate 
in campus life. my hope is that students learn to care for themselves, 
for what Socrates calls the “best possible state of [the] soul,” by pursu-
ing the sorts of questions that he asked and by serving and caring for 
others (Plato 1975, 32). There are more possibilities in heaven and 
earth than are dreamt of, apparently, in Professor Fish’s philosophy.



12 Care of the Soul

© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2008

References

Arnold, matthew

1975 Literature and Science. In The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, 
vol. 10, ed. r.h. Super, 53–73. Ann Arbor: The University of michigan 
Press.

Kronman, Anthony

2007 Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the 
Meaning of Life. New haven, ct: Yale University Press.

Pippin, robert

2000 Liberation and the Liberal Arts: The Aims of Education Address. The Univer-
sity of Chicago Record, September 19, 2–4. http://www.uchicago.edu/about/
documents/chicagorecord/pdfs/35-1.pdf

Plato

1975 Apology. In The Trial and Death of Socrates, trans. G.m.A. Grube, 21–42. 
Indianapolis, IN: hackett.

http://www.uchicago.edu/about/documents/chicagorecord/pdfs/35-1.pdf
http://www.uchicago.edu/about/documents/chicagorecord/pdfs/35-1.pdf

