<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=1217303775117752&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Skip to content

Light & Truth

Reflections on Education and Culture Today

 

Episode 3 - Aristotle & the Liberal Arts

In Episode 3 of The Liberal Arts, University of Dallas President Jonathan J. Sanford, PhD, turns to Aristotle—one of history’s greatest practitioners of liberal education and a foundational figure for Western science, philosophy, and political theory.

In this episode, President Sanford reads a brief passage from Aristotle’s Parts of Animals on the difference between specialized education and general education—and why general education is essential if we want to be educated for freedom. Aristotle argues that the mark of a well-educated person is the ability to determine if an exposition is good or bad. In our age—flooded with information, opinions, and competing claims—that ability can feel like a kind of “superpower.”

He also reflects on why clear thinking and right judgment require more than quick takes or shortcuts. They depend on a comprehensive formation across the major modes of human inquiry—and on mastering the arts of logic, rhetoric, and grammar, tools that help us distinguish true from false and right from wrong.

In the next episode, President Sanford takes up an even more basic question: what motivates us to begin this journey in the first place?

 

More Reflections from UDallas

jp2-panel (1)

Pope St. John Paul II Conference Panel - AI & Catholic Social Teaching

This panel which took place on October 30, 2025, features Fr. Michael Baggot, L.C., S.T.L., Ph.D., Professor Aggregato of Bioethics at Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum

WATCH NOW

ai-agnostic

AI: From Agnostic to Anti-Gnosticism

Written for The Pillar by Daniel Lipinski,  Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and Pope Leo XIII Fellow on Social Thought, University of Dallas

READ MORE

AI-FoxNews

Here's How we can Live with Artificial Intelligence without Losing Our Humanity

Written for Fox News by Jonathan J. Sanford, PhD, President and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas

WATCH NOW

Light & Truth: Reflections on Education and Culture Today

Light & Truth is a newsletter by President Jonathan J. Sanford of the University of Dallas that reflects on the purpose of education in today’s culture. Rooted in the Catholic intellectual tradition, it explores the enduring value of a liberal arts education and classical education as pathways to human flourishing. Through reflections shaped by Christian humanism and virtue ethics, President Sanford addresses contemporary questions with clarity and hope, emphasizing the role of civil discourse, freedom of speech, and the formation of free and thoughtful persons in the pursuit of truth.

Want to share your thoughts on Light & Truth?

Email Us