“Liberal education is liberation from vulgarity. The Greeks had a beautiful word for “vulgarity”; they called it apeirokalia, lack of experience in things beautiful. Liberal education supplies us with experience in things beautiful.”

— Leo Strauss

“What is liberal education,” p. 8
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Liberal education is liberation from vulgarity. The Greeks had a beautiful word for “vulgarity”; they called it apeirok…" by Leo Strauss?

Leo Strauss 78

Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservati… 1899–1973

Related quotes

“I use the term "liberal" not in the political sense, as if it meant half measures, but in its original sense meaning by a liberal education the kind of education which sets the mind free from the servitude of the crowd and from vulgar self-interests.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Preface p. viii
The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926)

“Criticisms that I have mentioned come to the same thing: that liberal education is too good for the people.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

“There can be no doubt that children should be taught those useful things which are really necessary, but not all things, for occupations are divided into liberal and illiberal; and to young children should be imparted only such kinds of knowledge as will be useful to them without vulgarizing them.”

Aristotle book Politics

Book VIII 1337b.5 http://books.google.com/books?id=ZrDWAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA245&dq=%22absorb+and+degrade+the+mind%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=c6NaUbatEYWp4AOWp4CoBA&ved=0CHYQ6AEwDA#v=onepage&q=%22absorb%20and%20degrade%20the%20mind%22&f=false, 1885 edition
Politics
Context: There can be no doubt that children should be taught those useful things which are really necessary, but not all things, for occupations are divided into liberal and illiberal; and to young children should be imparted only such kinds of knowledge as will be useful to them without vulgarizing them. And any occupation, art, or science which makes the body, or soul, or mind of the freeman less fit for the practice or exercise of virtue is vulgar; wherefore we call those arts vulgar which tend to deform the body, and likewise all paid employments, for they absorb and degrade the mind. There are also some liberal arts quite proper for a freeman to acquire, but only in a certain degree, and if he attend to them too closely, in order to attain perfection in them, the same evil effects will follow.

“Any education that matters is liberal.”

Alan Simpson (1931) American politician

All the saving truths, all the healing graces that distinguish a good education from a bad one or a full education from a half-empty one are contained in that word.
Alan Simpson (b. 1912), an English born educator who became a U.S. citizen in 1954, in "The Marks of an Educated Man" in Readings for Liberal Education (1962), edited by by Louis Glenn Locke, William Merriam Gibson, and George Warren Arms, p. 47.
Misattributed

“Any education that matters is liberal. All the saving truths, all the healing graces that distinguish a good education from a bad one or a full education from a half-empty one are contained in that word.”

Alan Simpson (1931) American politician

Alan Simpson (b. 1912), an English born educator who became a U.S. citizen in 1954, in "The Marks of an Educated Man" in Readings for Liberal Education (1962), edited by by Louis Glenn Locke, William Merriam Gibson, and George Warren Arms, p. 47.
Misattributed

“Beauty is the only uncreated thing you can experience apart from God.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)
Context: Beauty is the only uncreated thing you can experience apart from God. Beauty is and always is. You are absent. Why are you absent? Again your robot mind is the problem. It will not stay still and you cannot make it stay still. It is your master and it separates you from beauty and God. So to experience beauty, love, truth and peace, or God, your mind has to be stilled.