Powers of the Mind

It is one thing to lament the financial pressures put on universities, quite another to face up to the poverty of resources for thinking about what universities should do when they purport to offer a liberal education. In Powers of the Mind,former University of Chicago dean Donald N. Levine enriches those resources by proposing fresh ways to think about liberal learning with ideas more suited to our times. He does so by defining basic values of modernity and then considering curricular principles pertinent to them. The principles he favors are powers of the minddisciplines understood as fields of study defined not by subject matter but by their embodiment of distinct intellectual capacities. To illustrate, Levine draws on his own lifetime of teaching and educational leadership, while providing a marvelous summary of exemplary educational thinkers at the University of Chicago who continue to inspire. Out of this vital tradition, Powers of the Mindconstructs a paradigm for liberal arts today, inclusive of all perspectives and applicable to all settings in the modern world.

Donald N. Levine is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Sociology and former Dean of the College at the University of Chicago. He is the author or editor of several books, most recently, Visions of the Sociological Tradition, also published by the University of Chicago Press.