“Stupidity is the greatest sin” was a favorite saying of Eberhard Arnold, the German theologian and educator who, a century ago, founded the magazine I now edit. On its face, the statement sounds insufferable – how can someone’s lack of intellectual gifts be cast as a moral failure? Interpreted this way, Arnold’s one-liner comes across as a cruel dunk on the unlettered, the under-privileged, and the mentally slow.

But Arnold means something close to the opposite. Far from a slur denigrating those who lack a college degree or who score low on Raven’s matrices, stupidity in his sense is a vice of complacency that particularly afflicts the educated bourgeoisie – the very people who make up the bulk of the readership of any small magazine.

Studying the liberal arts beyond the classroom can help combat the intellectual dullness that continues to afflict our world.