Lewis seems to be a supporter of [the Humanities'] role in required undergraduate courses, but he has made little effort to learn what Humanists do. For example, discussing Harvard’s required area of Moral Reasoning, which typically offers a variety of courses in ethical theory and the history of ethics, Lewis makes the jejune complaint that students will try to give professors the “right answer”, so they won’t really learn anything. But this complaint shows that Lewis has made no effort at all to visit such classes and see what actually goes on there.

Anyone who teaches ethical argument to undergraduates is well aware of the danger Lewis mentions, and any decent teacher works hard to avoid presenting the students with a cooked “right answer” that can easily be identified. In any case, it is really not the answers that one is trying to convey, it is the way one might analyse a problem, and the different theoretical approaches to such problems. Moral reasoning, if well taught, is Socratic: it is about showing people how they might go about leading an “examined life”; that goal requires caring about arguments, more than about “right” conclusions.

So lacking in curiosity is Lewis about what his colleagues in the Humanities have been doing that he fails (at least in this book) to grasp a very fundamental distinction that goes across the Humanistic disciplines: between the intellectual aspect of character-building and the many other ways (personal advice, personal influence) in which young people can find their characters shaped by what they encounter in a university.

He repeatedly suggests that the main way in which universities build character is through the latter set of techniques – mentoring, advice-giving, personal example. In consequence he makes the alarming proposal that candidates for academic posts should be evaluated for their moral character: not just that part of character that is relevant to the performance of one’s job, where severe substance abuse or a penchant for sexual harassment might possibly be legitimate issues to raise in the hiring process, but their private lives as well, their treatment of their children, and so forth.

I think that Lewis simply doesn’t believe that the intellectual endeavour of the Humanities makes any contribution to building character. Because he has not spent any time with the Humanities, he cannot picture what that contribution might be. But one may learn to take apart and deeply appreciate a line of Latin verse from someone whose behaviour to his or her children is simply not known or, even, is known to be bad. One may learn how to think about the arguments of Plato and Aristotle from someone whom one might not like to have as a friend.

Learning these modes of analysis, however, does make its own contribution to citizenship, for the reason identified by Socrates: most people, having never learned to examine their beliefs, are actually somewhat half-hearted and crude in their commitment to them. If you simply don’t know how to distinguish a utilitarian from a Kantian argument, there are issues that you may easily miss – as a doctor, as a juror. You might think, for example, that respecting a patient’s choice and promoting the patient’s interest are the same thing, and you might just assume that your own judgement about the patient’s interests is the only thing that needs considering – as many doctors are all too inclined, paternalistically, to do.

Again, if you don’t know how to recognize the various forms of logical error that politicians bring your way, as they always do, you might fall for a fallacious argument and end up with a conclusion that you would not endorse if you got all the thinking right. One could say related things about the skills learned from the close reading of literature and the study of history. What Lewis really doesn’t understand is that literary, historical and philosophical skills make their own contribution to character and citizenship.

Not having a handle on this very fundamental point – which, after all, is crucial to saying why we want young people to go to college, rather than only to church – Lewis is not in a position to make any very useful recommendation about what an undergraduate liberal-arts curriculum ought to be. And he does not even try. On the question whether there is any necessary tension between the goals of a great research university and those of a fine liberal arts college, dedicated to teaching, Lewis does not get very far, simply because he assumes that academic expertise doesn’t help build citizenship.