Prof. Roosevelt Montás Gives Talk To Perspectives Students

On Monday March 13, 2023, moral and political philosophy lecturer Professor Roosevelt Montás of Columbia University gave a talk to Boston College Perspectives Program’s students. He spoke primarily about the importance of a liberal education and of the great books of philosophy in his life.

Professor Montás immigrated to the United States from a pre-industrial area of the Dominican Republic as a teenager. Having been admitted into Columbia College, he received a liberal education. He described a liberal education as “the education appropriate for free citizens, noble, and suitable for a free person.” To him, a liberal education enables one to perform civic duties and participate fully in society.

Furthermore, Liberal education is about the self-reflection that leads to growth and charts a path from slavery to freedom, and enables one to govern him or herself. He also spoke on the importance of the Great Books as soul-enriching and decried their loss through their reading through corruptive, ideological lenses.

He also proposed the Great Books’ importance in small group discussions and said that Boston College’s Perspectives program does just this. Montás explained that a chief concern of his in today’s college educational system is the retreat away from liberal education in exchange for an increased focus in career and major focused education in order to secure students employment.

 Montás lamented the state of economic life in the form of what he referred to as “Wage-Slavery,” or being chained to an unfulfilling job that inhibits the ability for one to self-reflect. He described the situation of wage-slavery as one that befalls both rich and poor, as one can have an unfulfilling and stifling job no matter one’s economic situation. He explained that he fears for American democracy, because if people do not have the tools that a liberal education provides, they will not be able to participate in government and the ordinary citizen will lose power. Rather than simply providing people with more information, a liberal education “orients the soul in a certain way,” in such a way that one can partake in public society to the fullest extent. If students focus only on a major-focused education, they will not have the opportunity to discern what the good life is and how they should go about structuring their life around it. Professor Montás expressed the idea that there must be a Good, but left it up to the individual to determine what that Good is. Professor Montás explained that for someone with his socioeconomic status to embrace liberal education, this type of education would have to have been expanded to people who traditionally have not had access to this type of education. Furthermore, these people would need to know that they had “rights to rights,” and “once given a taste, people want liberal education for themselves.” He also mentioned that a “strict ideological commitment” affects academic freedom and liberal education by preventing one from doing the self-reflection needed for authentic liberal education.