It is the fashionable curriculum of today that is arbitrary, not the great books of yesteryear. The "canon" was not an oppressive monolith, but a record of furious disputation, of martyrs and madmen, scientists and statesmen. You speak its language even if you haven't read it.
I'm forever grateful for the Western Civ core course at @Columbia. If people haven't read most of 'the cannon', it must be hard to feel any intellectual self-confidence. Wonder if that accounts for the apparent increase in imposter syndrome among younger graduates.
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