Author | John Erskine |
---|---|
Country | United States (New York, Duffield) |
Language | English |
Subject | Philosophy |
Published | 1915 |
Text | The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent at Wikisource |
The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent (1914), by John Erskine, is an essay first presented to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Amherst College, where Erskine taught before working as a professor of English at Columbia University. [1] [2] [3] Originally, “The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent” was published in the quarterly magazine The Hibbert Journal, in 1914, and a year later was published in the essay collection The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, and Other Essays (1915). [4] [3]
Moreover, during his twenty-eight-year tenure (1909–1937) at Columbia University, Erskine formulated the General Honors Course. In the early 1920s he taught a great books course at Columbia, which later founded the influential Great Books movement. [5]
In 1963, “The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent” was published in the Gateway to the Great Books, Volume 10: Philosophical Essays, a ten-volume book series published by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.. [6]
In the 21st century, Erskine’s essay was the titular essay of the book The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays (2000), edited by the literary critic Lionel Trilling, of the Columbia University faculty, and featured an introduction by the literary critic Leon Wieseltier. [7] Trilling had been a student of Erskine’s, and later taught the "Great Books" course; Trilling chose Erskine’s essay as the thematic basis and title for the book The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays. [8] [5]