José Ortega y Gasset, a major Spanish philosopher of the 20th century, was also an intellectual leader of the Spanish Republican government. Among his many works, he published Mission of the University in 1930. There, he sought, to center a Faculty of Culture at the core of a humane university with professors selected not only by their quality as investigators, but also on “their talent for synthesis and their gift for teaching.”

Above all, he was distressed at the production of technically competent specialists who know one thing and little else, particularly in the “learned professions” like medicine and law. My talk will focus on how I have used Ortega y Gasset’s vision and sought to broaden the curriculum to add a humanities component to students throughout a major research university. During my long career, I have had thousands of students from all fields, especially young women and men about to become lawyers and doctors. My hope is to prevent, as Ortega y Gasset writes, “the astounding spectacle of how brutal, how stupid, and yet how aggressive is the man learned in one thing and fundamentally ignorant of all else.”

My goals are micro instead of institutional; I cannot change the entire university. I will show how I use literature, film, and visual art to add a humanistic, interdisciplinary dimension to the education of future professionals. I will detail my topics and my approach, using examples from various courses, including my present course on Law and the Humanities at Masaryk University.