It is deeply consequential, even emblematic, that one of the greatest American defenders of the Western idea of liberal education was a former slave. The author of three (or four, depending on how one counts) autobiographies, Frederick Douglass explored not only the profound questions of self-hood and identity, but also the role of one’s public persona in a self-governing republic. In every way imaginable, his inquiry and advice offer a sharp contrast to contemporary conceptions of race, identity, human nature, and the role of education. Douglass points us to our deepest selves, to our shared humanity, and to the essential role of education in the fulfillment of our highest ideals.
Frederick Douglass was, in a phrase he used constantly on the lecture circuit, a “self-made man.” A self-made man is neither “natural” nor the product of willful caprice — neither an individualist, separate from society and history, nor a conformist, blindly following the majority. Rather, as Douglass shows, the self-made man is an achievement, the accomplishment of self-cultivation of one’s most defining human capacities.
