At the center of the “two cultures” debate were the goals of the formal educational curriculum, the principal vehicle through which Arnoldian culture operates. Another form of opposition saw Arnold’s culture as a perverse perpetuation of literary learning in a world where science had become the new arch from which any new order of thinking must develop. Yet, Arnold himself was plagued in his soul by the blind arrogance of the world’s reactionary powers. The first protested Arnold’s designation of “anarchy” as culture’s enemy, viewing this dichotomy simply as a struggle between a privileged power structure and radical challenges to it. Although three forms of dissent from his views have had considerable impact of their own, each one misunderstands Arnold. Arnold’s definition of culture as “the pursuit of perfection by getting to know the best which has been thought and said” helped define the Western world’s liberal arts curriculum over the next century. Matthew Arnold, through his Culture and Anarchy (1869), placed the word “culture” at the center of debates about the goals of intellectual life and humanistic society.
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