Excellence for the Democratic Age: Liberal Education and the Mixed Regime

This dissertation argues for a renewed consideration of the classical idea of a mixed regime that harmonizes the elite and the people in order to address the vulnerabilities of democracy today. This requires examining the civic role of universities as moral communities that inevitably shape their graduates' character. Since meritocratic and technocratic education does so much to form the contemporary elite, the project proposes a reformed education: a humanistic and liberal pedagogy to cultivate greatness of soul in those who will exercise leadership in democracy. Via a synoptic consideration of Plato, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Irving Babbitt's diagnoses of the democratic soul, the argument synthesizes their prescriptions to re-imagine an education for excellence in the twenty-first century.