When historians look back over the state of Western thought during the closing decades of this century, they may well call it the Age of Nihilism. From religion to anthropology, the primary goal is no longer to understand the world but rather to question hostilely the nature of understanding itself. Thus, instead of building upon the foundations of rational discourse, we are confronted with claims that these foundations are illusory. The most public focus of such skepticism has been directed, of late, toward the college curriculum. Why, we are asked, should universities continue to teach the traditional canon of Western civilization? Is not our habit of granting special or, to use the term in vogue, “privileged” status to some things over others merely an attempt by certain people to achieve social superiority at the expense of others?

Obviously, this is not a mere theoretical question but rather the first assault in a Kulturkampf. Unfortunately, the popular press, even as it has rushed to cover the controversy, has largely portrayed it as one of those niggling disputes that occur with regularity in the groves of academe. “Given the probing, contentious nature of scholarly minds,” wrote Ezra Bowen in a Time magazine article on the revision of Stanford’s core curriculum, “any permanent settlement of these centuries-old issues seems unlikely.” In a similar vein, James Atlas, in his cover story last June for The New York Times Magazine, entitled “The Battle of the Books,” explained that” ‘opening up the canon,’