Keohane highlights many of the personal and societal benefits of a liberal arts education, but there is one point of his argument that I find particularly wonderful. Drawing from The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, who states in Of Solitude, that "we must reserve a backshop, wholly our own and entirely free, wherein to settle our true liberty, our principal solitude and retreat," Keohane argues that the liberal arts outfit our minds with "intellectual furniture" where we might otherwise have an empty chamber.
I love the idea of liberal arts as intellectual furniture. A mental chair, bookshelf, couch, magazine rack. Maybe a mirror, hutch, or ottoman. In the physical world, each of these furniture pieces serves a different, but often related purpose. A chair is for sitting, a magazine rack for holding magazines, and an ottoman for resting one's feet. But, could you rest your feet on the ottoman without sitting on the chair? Would you read a magazine standing up? Though each piece of furniture is quite different in form and function, each is dependent on at least one other to be used to its full potential. Along the same lines, a room with only a chair has a place to sit, but you can't grab a book or magazine to read or put your feet up.
The same goes with your intellectual furniture. Your "intellectual" couch might be classical literature. Your intellectual coffee table might be film noir. Your intellectual table lamp might be postmodern theory on popular culture.The better you stock your brain with "intellectual furniture," the more this knowledge can do for you as you encounter new problems, topics, and schools of thought.
In other words, when we furnish our minds with ideas, theories, literature, and performances from across the disciplines, we give new concepts, current problems, and complex issues a place to get situated, turn on the light, put their feet up, and have a nice conversation. We are then better able to explore and expand upon ideas in our own minds, allowing ourselves a richer experience in our interactions with people and cultures.
Nannerl O. Keohane, "The Liberal Arts as Guideposts in the 21st Centery," Chronicle of Higher Education, January 29, 2012, http://chronicle.com/article/The-Liberal-Arts-as-Guideposts/130475/
Michel de Montaigne, "Of Solitude," Essays of Michel de Montaigne, Complete, ed. William Carew Hazlitt, trans. Charles Cotton, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#2HCH0038
