We in the underground extend our heartfelt congratulations to Dr. Balog on the publication of the initial draft of "Vision Twenty20: Creating a Habit of Mind." This document will be utilized as a starting point for determining the direction of Aquinas College's mission and identity well into the 21st century. We think the invitation to such a discussion is long overdue and believe that it comes at a critical juncture in the College's history. While we understand the limitations and tentative nature of this document, we are encouraged and hopeful. We are especially pleased by Dr. Balog's use of John Henry Cardinal Newman's quote from The Idea of a University. Newman's definition of a liberal arts education is as solid a point of departure for considering such an important matter as anyone could hope for. Balog's choice of Newman, we believe, is advantageous to success in this endeavor. We think that "Vision's" many flaws will be rectified and that the rationale guiding the college into the future will be established on firm foundations if Newman's Idea is taken seriously as a rule for deliberation. Since we subterranean dwellers have a stake in the outcome of this discussion, we offer the following for Aquinas College's thoughtful consideration.
Balog's letter to Aquinas College begins with Newman's quote from Discourse V, 1 "Knowledge Its Own End." Here is Newman's passage providing context with the specific quote from "Vision" highlighted:
It is a great point then to enlarge the range of studies which a University professes, even for the sake of the students; and, though they cannot pursue every subject which is open to them, they will be the gainers by living among those and under those who represent the whole circle. This I conceive to be the advantage of a seat of universal learning, considered as a place of education. An assemblage of learned men, zealous for their own sciences, and rivals of each other, are brought, by familiar intercourse and for the sake of intellectual peace, to adjust together the claims and relations of their respective subjects of investigation. They learn to respect, to consult, to aid each other. Thus is created a pure and clear atmosphere of thought, which the student also breathes, though in his own case he only pursues a few sciences out of the multitude. He profits by an intellectual tradition, which is independent of particular teachers, which guides him in his choice of subjects, and duly interprets for him those which he chooses. He apprehends the great outlines of knowledge, the principles on which it rests, the scale of its parts, its lights and its shades, its great points and its little, as he otherwise cannot apprehend them. Hence it is that his education is called "Liberal." A habit of mind is formed which lasts through life, of which the attributes are, freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom; or what in a former Discourse I have ventured to call a philosophical habit. This then I would assign as the special fruit of the education furnished at a University, as contrasted with other places of teaching or modes of teaching. This is the main purpose of a University in its
treatment of its students.
We note that Balog utilizes the word "create" rather than Newman's word "form" to designate education's role in the student's intellectual life. Whether this is a distinction without a difference will be determined once we understand what Newman means by habit.
A habit is a disposition. A disposition, according to Aristotle, is a permanent quality of a thing as it exists by nature; it is the inclination of a power or faculty to act toward a goal for which it has a capacity. When Newman links the word "habit" specifically to "mind," he uses a type of philosophical shorthand unfamiliar to most of us to summarize a truth about us that has been largely forgotten; that human beings have a natural bent to know the truth and goodness of the order of things and that education is a formative force rather than a creative force since what is given by nature already has being and purpose.
"All men by nature desire to know," said Aristotle in the opening line of his Metaphysics. Newman clearly has this idea in view when speaking of the mind's habit. What distinguishes human beings from all other beings is precisely this disposition to know and will. It is this capacity that needs to be "formed" because, while these powers are bestowed by nature, they do not automatically cause one to know or choose well. Education has the goal of forming the mind's natural disposition by disciplining it to know and choose well and therefore freely, equitably, calmly, moderately and wisely; i.e., virtuously. A liberal arts education, then, endeavors to cultivate the mind's powers by inculcating the intellectual and moral virtues in students so that they might achieve their highest natural human perfection, to think well and to act well. Virtue is the perfection of a disposition. It is a trained and stable habit ordering our inclinations appropriately to their proper ends. And since no one can confer on another what one does not possess, it is presumed that those who possess these virtues already must instruct students.
Newman's concern for education was not informed solely by his love for classical Greek learning. His Catholic faith played a supreme role in shaping his vision of education. For him, the human being's desire to know is a reflection of the truth that persons are created in God's image and likeness. Human perfection is not acquired by simply knowing mundane things or living wisely towards things and neighbors. These are important to be sure, but for Newman there is the most important element; knowing well and living well in relationship to the triune God, the ne plus ultra of all human knowing and desiring. Human perfection, in other words, has a supernatural end. True wisdom is knowing and desiring mundane things in relation to that which is highest, God.
The Catholic context of education provides, for Newman, an integrative framework that makes it possible to know all things in a coherent fashion with respect to their and our ultimate end. This is extremely important given the fact that the contemporary fragmentation of disciplines into petty and warring fiefdoms reflects the state of our own contemporary condition. We suffer a loss of a unifying ground or principle by which we can make sense of the world as a whole. This is not surprising given that feelings and untutored perspectives are accepted as the source of individual "truth." If truth and reality are so malleable and susceptible to whim that we can make truth or goodness whatever we desire, it is virtually axiomatic that we can "create a habit of mind." There can be no coherent vision of the whole when the principle foundation of inquiry is based upon something so limited in scope as feeling or perspective. If there is no fundamental ground to reality, there is no measure of what is true or good. Aquinas College can endlessly justify its existence by perpetually creating habits in its students, not according to some well-known and wisely discerned end, but according to what is determined as relevant by the spirit of the age. When this occurs, education abandons its formative mission and substitutes formation with indoctrination. Why Aquinas does and should continue to seek to conform itself to such an educational program is a sad commentary about how we have become alienated from our fundamental principles and have been co-opted by the ideological narrowness and confusion of our own age.
The integrative function of the Catholic faith does not mean for Newman that everything can be reduced to the science of faith. Newman is smarter than those who think that a Catholic vision of the order of things is purblind. Catholic thought has long held the principle, borrowed from the Greeks, that a thing's nature establishes how it is known. This means that there is a legitimate autonomy of disciplines from revealed truths. Insofar as those disciplines seek to know things other than God, these sciences are free to investigate them by methods appropriate to their intended objects. Nevertheless, where Aristotle would say that "wisdom is knowledge about certain causes and principles," implying that one cannot possess wisdom without the knowledge of metaphysics which seeks such knowledge specifically, the Catholic faith goes one better and says that knowledge of God as the origin of all knowledge and the source of all good is the height of wisdom because He is the principle cause and goal of all. Since God is the source of all truth, there is no conflict between the many branches of science and truth known by revelation. Conflict arises, however, when temporal sciences claim absolute status (e.g., materialism and secular humanism) because they close down the human desire to know it all and confine the human spirit in a prison which is not natural to it. One cannot, therefore, have the intellectual and moral virtues fully without understanding all things as they are related to their source in God.
If our understanding of Newman is correct, then we can draw some conclusions about "Vision" in its present draft form. First, Aquinas cannot graduate virtuous students by downplaying its Catholic heritage and faith. Neither can it do so by emphasizing the Dominican Tradition over the Catholic faith since the Catholic faith itself gave birth to the Dominican Order. Nor can it do so by ignoring the great motto of the Dominican Order, "Veritas," which sums up in a word the all that human beings desire to know. Neither can it do so by hiring staff and faculty who are ignorant of or do not share the Catholic vision of what it means to educate men and women or whose own commitments serve to undermine its mission and identity. Nor can it do so by permitting feelings, however passionately and sincerely held, to dictate changes to the curriculum, or determine the types of events and speakers sponsored by Aquinas. Such things must be considered in light of "forming a habit of mind" that seeks nothing less than the perfection of the student's intellectual and moral virtues in relation to their highest goal.
The necessity of acquiring intellectual and moral virtue cannot be gainsaid. Intellectual corruption and moral bankruptcy are the order of the day as evidenced by recent events. One need only attend to the dire consequences of the present financial crisis spawned by the greed and dishonesty of our "most educated citizens" and the fraudulent actions of scientists who manipulated data about anthropogenic global warming for their own aggrandizement and enrichment. Aquinas College's "Vision Twenty20: Creating a Habit of Mind" marks the fact that our institution stands at a crossroad. We are not obligated to participate in the nonsense of the time in which we live. We can do something else. It is quite possible that we won't do something else and that we will sink into obscurity by ignoring what is essential by focusing on what is relevant to the contemporary zeitgeist. But if we do return to the first principles of education as remarked by Newman, it will make all the difference in the world.
