Thomas Hibbs

Thomas Hibbs is currently J. Newton Rayzor Sr. Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University, where he is also dean emeritus.

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The Egalitarian Objection to Liberal Education

Far from being elitist and aristocratic, the liberal arts can free the human soul in the pursuit of human flourishing and advance the cause of equality.

“Allen’s view of the hypocrisy and moral culpability of the founders—and later generations of Americans—is certainly compatible with the scathing assessment of America found in Douglass’s famous address “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?,” delivered in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852. Douglass begins and ends on notes of hope and praises America’s defining document, the Declaration of Independence, albeit with a blunt assessment about the gap between vision and reality: “Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me.'” —Thomas Hibbs

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