Thomas G. West

Biography

The purpose of Hillsdale College, as I understand it, is to provide students with a liberal education. “Liberal” comes from libertas, “freedom.” “Education” is educare, “to lead out.” Liberal education aims at leading out students to freedom.

Education at its best “leads us out” of two things: the darkness of ignorance, and the prison of our selfish passions. The “freedom” we are “led out” to therefore has two aspects: freedom of the mind to understand, and freedom of the soul and of society from the tyranny of emotions and of feelings unguided by reason.

An education to freedom in this sense is an education to civilization. My task at Hillsdale, as I see it, is to help the College to be a noble outpost of civilization in an ever-growing sea of savagery and degradation in today’s world.

Civilization has been described by Leo Strauss as “the conscious culture of humanity, of that which makes a human being a human being”—our reason. Human reason is active, above all, in two ways: practically, as guiding human conduct; and theoretically, as attempting to understand whatever human beings are able to understand. Civilization therefore requires a social and political order that enables people to provide for the basic needs of the body and soul (by protecting life, liberty, and property) while cultivating good character and encouraging science and philosophy.

What is the place of politics in liberal education? The science of politics pursues truth about civilization; it investigates what the best political order is. It also seeks knowledge of defending liberty—of how best “to reconcile order which is not oppression with freedom which is not license.” “Pursuing truth, defending liberty”—this is the Hillsdale College motto.

Politics therefore includes both theoretical and practical reasoning. Every Politics course I teach concerns itself with the theoretical study of the truth about civilization—its conditions, the competing views of justice by which it stands or falls, and human nature and education. All of my courses, from Plato and Locke to contemporary America, also include consideration of the practical question of what sustains and defends civilization—and what weakens and destroys it.

In our Politics courses on moral and political philosophy, we study the great debate about which political order is best. We examine the best ancient, medieval, and modern thinkers, always asking how the thinkers in question understand human nature, politics, and justice.

Other Politics courses focus on actual political life: American government, international relations, and comparative government. Even in these courses, we always bring students back to a consideration of what views of justice and human nature are promoted by the political order we are studying. In the case of modern America, for example, we focus on the connection between the progressive-liberal understanding of justice and the transformation of our constitutional order.

Hillsdale’s is one of the very few politics programs in America based on this approach—one that takes seriously the question of justice and human nature in all of its courses.

As for my own teaching and scholarly interests, my two most recent books are on the political theory of the American founders. They respond to such questions as: What is that theory? Why is it so often misunderstood? Why are today’s criticisms of the founding so often misdirected? What laws and policies secure the natural rights of the people? How have we departed from that earlier understanding over the past century or more?

I am currently engaged in studies of—and teaching courses on—the political and moral thought of Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Leo Strauss, and of American political thought after Lincoln, including progressivism and recent liberalism.