Vico and the Role of the Professor
Giambattista Vico’s somewhat romanticized ideas on the role of the professor:
- To select the best authors in the canon;
- To mistrust by commentary, explication, analysis;
- To stimulate students to direct and shape their minds more perfectly toward wisdom;
- To inspire students with a love for learning;
- To encourage students to create their own knowledge;
- To instill in students a recognition of the communal and civic importance of education;
- To make students aware of the encyclopedic and universal nature of true knowledge;
- To inspire students toward a scholarly heroism which through the cultivation of moral and intellectual virtue seeks to uncover the image and likeness of the transcendent spirit within, their better nature;
- To assist students to recognize the purposes of education are transcendent and self-less, for God, his glory, and for the advancement and well-being of all mankind;
- To demonstrate the collation and comparison of knowledge, how the whole hangs together, how the parts relate to the universe of knowledge.