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I highly recommend the Robert Royal article listed to the left, and I thank whoever posted the link. The other half of the principle that the unexamined life is not worth living is that the unlived life is not worth examining. If people lived in accordance with both principles, there would be fewer ivory towers in academia and much less of the solipsism that results when intellectuals treat their often rather trite and narrow life experiences as the “summum bonum” of human nature. Socrates at least was a combat veteran, which constitutes a greater engagement in the throes of life than most of his self-proclaimed pupils have to their name. And yet those same academics often pity people who enter the military. They apparently assume that all men, had they the option, would sit through philosophy classes on the dead, quasi-fictionalized Socrates of literature rather than fight in their country’s wars as the live, actual Socrates of history did.
Then there is Our Lord. At the age of thirteen, He demonstrated in the Temple that He could have begun His public ministry at any time he chose. Instead, He *chose* to return to Nazareth and spend the next seventeen years slaving away as a carpenter. Apparently this was to His liking. And then He selected relatively uneducated fishermen to be His disciples. Were He preaching today, I am sure that the academic establishment would fault His lack of credentials.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
As so often with things I see on The Catholic Thing, I liked things about this article and also thought it was off at a few points. The most outrageous line is this:
“But they were taught by daily experience and were under no illusion that “educated” meant better in anything other than particular tasks.”
Which makes it sound as though education is all techne — training in particular practical skills. As a Great Books person, he presumably doesn’t really believe this, though he does say later that university education today is mostly techne, which is a more plausible claim though I still don’t think it’s quite right. A whole lot of what goes on in universities today cannot be properly understood as techne, though it’s true that the universities don’t really know what they’re teaching or why half the time, which may sometimes make the techne the most identifiably beneficial part of the program.
I think the real problem is that Royal seems to be shifting between different definitions of education without any clear indication of what he means in each case. The ancients declared that education was soulcraft; in a modern context it sometimes looks much more like sophistry, sometimes like practical training for careers, and sometimes like a giant hodge-podge of random tidbits thrown together with no obvious goal of any kind. In the older sense, education is closely related to the examined life, and his grandmothers would have benefitted from it, which isn’t to say that they couldn’t develop considerable virtues even without it (or without much of it.) Insofar as education just means “going to a modern university” then it is indeed fraught with perils, and in many cases of questionable value, but I would take this more as an indication of how little we understand of what education is supposed to be.
I think that it’s fairly clear that in that line “educated” means having received formal academic training in the liberal arts or a similar course of study. “Educated” there means lettered, as opposed to unlettered. A man may excel in academics and be a bad person. Rhetoric, grammar, Great Books, etc., do not make a person holy. A person educated in the Church, by preaching and the Sacraments, has indeed been educated in soulcraft even if he is illiterate and does not know who Aristotle was. An education in sanctity beats out a training in academics and the two are not necessarily related to one another. This is not to say that the liberal arts are a matter of indifference, but they aren’t necessary for supernatural virtue. One may be quite holy and quite ignorant of the liberal arts. So the paramount education is not formal or academic in nature. The liberal arts may indeed be of great benefit in the elucidation of the Faith and the enjoyment of God’s creation, but they are not necessary for every member of the Church. Each person has his own gift and ministry. Some are supposed to be Aquinases, some are supposed to be Juan Diego’s. The fact that St. Joseph and Our Lord worked as carpenters shows that one need not be an independently wealthy, land-owning “gentleman” with endless amounts of leisure and extensive training in the finest schools of philosophy and rhetoric in order to be holy.
I think that this paragraph sums up what Royal is talking about: “If you think an examined life requires reading great books, you will be partly right—and partly wrong. Great books help some, for those of us who can make use of them. I have spent a good portion of my own life with them and sent my children to places that read great books. But I’m worried, as alleged experts take over more and more or our lives—and look down on anyone without proper academic credentials—that in focusing on formal education as the path to wisdom, we’re misreading several problems and losing a living human legacy.”
I.e. education as soulcraft does not always mean the formal study of literature, and for a very great many people it never entails this.
Well, this is tricky, because for the ancients, I think formal study would be an essential ingredient of soulcraft — which is not to say that it’s the only one, or that any kind of education will do. Christianity complicates things, as in so many ways, because the weak and lowly and humble are exalted in a particular way, and certainly being lettered is not a precondition for holiness, and yet I still don’t think we can breezily cross-apply the ancient notion of soulcraft to say that devotion and reception of the Sacraments can fully fit the bill. That is not what they meant, and there is a significant sense in which the well educated (perhaps I should say the well and wisely educated, because what I have in mind is a formal education properly ordered towards wisdom and understanding, not merely a large number of years spent in institutions of higher learning) have real goods that the unlettered lack; we should not gloss over this too rapidly. A lot of this gets back to my biggest complaint with the article — the line linking education and skills. What the lettered have, and the unlettered lack, is not just particular skill sets, but something much more sublime.
Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that a Christian anthropology is simply much more complicated than what the ancient philosophers could contemplate. There are more approaches to the True, Beautiful and Good than they were able to realize. That being the case, I would ultimately endorse your point that there are different gifts and ministries, and that formal study is more necessary to some than to others, but I would strenuously resist any tendency to suggest that the reason for this is because education provides only “skills”, what perhaps we might think of as a kind of “tools”, that are needed by some but not by others. Rather, formal education (properly planned and ordered) does give one something uniquely wonderful; St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure had something very fine that the St Juan Diegos and St. Joseph Cupertinos of the world simply lacked. That is consistent, however, with supposing that these other saints in their simplicity had something else sublime and wonderful that was not available to the learned. We mere humans can’t manifest all of God’s perfections simultaneously, so various among us mirror different ones, but we shouldn’t let that fact lead us to blur the distinctions between them.
“What the lettered have, and the unlettered lack, is not just particular skill sets, but something much more sublime.”
Is that “something” holiness? No? Then in the grand scheme of things it is not all that important, is it? You’re right, we are not Aristotelian heathens. A person can indeed engages in banausia all one’s life and attain a higher place in Heaven, and hence a greater degree of contemplation of the Beatific Vision, than people who philosophize all day. Once we add supernatural grace to the equation, natural distinctions — like Greek and barbarian, lettered and unlettered — don’t matter so much anymore. Our God is quite egalitarian in the bestowal of eudaimonia; he doesn’t seem to take special note of caste, class, or profession. If the telos of man is supernatural, then I don’t see how natural goods such as the exercise of the mind can occupy such a central location as in naturalistic programs like Aristotle’s. Intellectual contemplation may be the highest natural activity, but the Holy Ghost in the bestowal of grace simply doesn’t discriminate between ditch-diggers and professional philosophers.
Yes, the Juan Diego’s did lack something — but it wasn’t the important thing, namely holiness. God reveals Himself in weakness, and if you seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, all these things shall be added unto you. I’d say that, as our goal is supernatural, even the highest natural goods, like a liberal education and philosophical contemplation, cease to become the end and become tools toward the true end. Are they tools more proper to man as an intellectual animal? Sure, but they aren’t necessary. The graces of Baptism and Confirmation are not different in the lettered and the unlettered, and the most lettered lay theologian still lacks the authority of the man who has Holy Orders.
Plus, there’s a great degree of contemplation available to people who work at menial tasks that is not available to the scholar. I may understand sublime poetry, which is ontologically higher than mechanical arts (and I admit that it is), but in studying poetry I had to forego mechanical training. So I understand the more perfect and am utterly ignorant of the less perfect. Wouldn’t the truly “educated” have to master the lower arts before mastering the higher ones? (I’m sure that Plato addresses this somewhere, but benighted poet that I am, I stick to the cave wall and shun the pure light.)
In short, God ultimately cares no more about our academic acumen than he does about our gender or race. Grace does indeed build on nature, but it also transcends it, subordinates it to itself, and supplies for its deficiencies. St. Jospeh Cupertino benefited from the erudition of St. Thomas Aquinas; I’m sure that St. Joseph enjoyed the Feast of Corpus Christi quite a bit, and without having to hammer out the ramifications of transubstantiation or fit words into verse. And St. Thomas benefited from the simple wisdom and Faith of the people he knew. Some porter had to answer the door and greet him at the door of monasteries, and porters tended not to be bright monks.
There is a very, very funny and very, very scandalous song out there by a certain comedy troupe whose name rhymes with Ponty Mython. I’ll give you part of the song and break it off before the parts that offend:
“I’m a Roman Catholic,
I’ve been one since before I was born.
And the one thing they say about Catholics is,
They’ll take you as soon as you’re warm.
You don’t have to be a six-footer,
You don’t have to have a great brain,
You don’t have to have any clothes on [i.e. as a baby],
You’re a Catholic . . .” (can’t transcribe the rest)
So the part about being Catholic before birth and hence before re-birth in Baptism is wrong, but the rest is right. We stand out in accepting all sincere applicants. And you don’t have to have a great brain, which I think was part of Royal’s point. And after the scandalous sketch about Catholics in the scandalous movie this song appears in, there’s an even funnier (I think) send-up of Protestants.
Hmm. So, what is holiness exactly? Is it a measure of how much charity a person has? How much he is in God’s image? I ask because it seems to me that the wisdom some gain through study and contemplation may well be a constitutive part of their holiness, not merely a “tool.” Again, I’m not saying that they’re a necessary prerequisite to holiness of any kind. God has many perfections to be imitated, and the unlettered clearly can reflect His image very brightly in some cases, but for each one, it seems to me that the particular perfections they mirror are likely to be constitutive parts of their holiness.
When we are inspired by the lives of the saints, we are inspired by the particular things that make them remarkable. Of course, all of these shine through most perfectly because they are bound and ordered by charity, but is holiness some separate thing over and above all these other noble qualities? It seems to me we’re risking making holiness into an excessively formal quality.
Can a liberal education be said to be “used” or “misused”?
I don’t know what that would mean. It would certainly be a curious locution to my ears. A good liberal education would be soulcraft, which can’t really be misused. The sort of learning that can obviously be used well or badly would be techne, but that is not the primary goal of a liberal education.
1.) What is the Greek or Latin word that you are translating as soulcraft? What is the goal for which soulcraft aims?
2.) According to your use of the word, can anyone in a state of mortal sin be said to have mastered the liberal arts or to have succeeded in his liberal education?
3.) There are seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. It makes perfect sense to me to speak of using or employing one’s training in these fields.
Allow me to develop my thought further. It seems to me that a person can master all seven liberal arts and still be a mortal sinner. Such a man would be a fool, but he would qualify as having received a liberal education. Oscar Wilde was, if anyone, a liberally educated man and yet he was a rake and much else. I would not reduce his accumulated knowledge to mere “skills,” yet it is clear that he often quite misused the knowledge and experience and discipline that had been imparted to him. Ovid was among the most well-educated men who ever lived, yet Quintilian, one of the fathers of classical education, said that he was too in love with his own intellect. Abelard was probably the most educated man in Europe, but he used his knowledge of the liberal arts to advance often murky theology and to feed his vanity. It seems that nothing the teacher can do can insure that the pupil actually received the “good” liberal education of which you speak. Can a philosophy professor really “love wisdom” if he divorces his wife? No. But that’s not necessarily a fault of his training and his trainer. Nothing in his training could make him good, it could only help him be good. No course of education in the liberal arts anywhere that I know of actually grades its students on whether they are virtuous or vicious, wise or foolish, except in the very limited ways that can actually be tested in the context of the course of study. Either the Great Books assist one in progressing in wisdom or they don’t. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. No amount of liberal education guarantees virtue or wisdom. If wisdom is the criterion, then there are other ways of achieving it than through the formal study of grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, etc. This is what Royal is getting at. He’s not disputing the innate good of education. He’s disputing the assumption that academic criteria (i.e. training in the performance of “particular tasks” like the analysis of grammar and rhetoric) are sufficient for evaluating one’s level of genuine education.
The Athenians blamed Socrates for raising a nest of tyrants. Either he was responsible for failing them, or else nothing he could do in the way of training could prevent tyrants from arising among his disciples. If ultimately the conclusion is that a good liberal education requires you to be Catholic and in a state of grace, then the system is entirely dependent upon the supernatural graces provided by God via the Church. In which case, the key factor is not the education but the grace, which is available to the unlettered.
“I ask because it seems to me that the wisdom some gain through study and contemplation may well be a constitutive part of their holiness, not merely a “tool.” ”
And one may attain natural wisdom through the study and contemplation of the Great Books while remaining an atheist. In such an instance, this learning was not used as a springboard toward the worship of God, the proper end. Yet I would not deny that an atheist can be said to have received an extensive education in grammar and rhetoric, which are two of the liberal arts.
A good education should aim to engender a broad understanding of how the world is, together with the ability to direct this towards the fulfillment of man’s final end. Even if the last cannot be given to the student against his will, correct application should still be part of the goal. After all, the same “can lead a horse to water but can’t make it drink” argument can be applied to liturgy, or the Sacraments, to grace itself. Nobody can be forced to accept the goods that are offered him in life.
Can one be declared a “successful” product of a liberal arts education while still being a mortal sinner? I’d venture to suggest that, for such a person, their training in the liberal arts is a bit like unformed virtue — not truly successful, but at the same time, successfully providing one of the pieces that will be part of a virtuous character should the person ever be infused with charity. What is engendered through the liberal arts education is not merely a stepping stone to charity, nor a superfluous add-on. I mean, the truth is, unless it’s ultimately integrated into a supernaturally virtuous state regulated by charity, nothing we do, and no quality or habit we develop (including those of faith and hope), is ultimately any use at all. But that doesn’t mean that other habits and goods aren’t important, constitutive parts of the virtuous state that ultimately brings the righteous back to God.
What you’re trying to do with education seems to me something like this. Suppose someone you know is writing the eulogy of a third friend, in which they explain what a good life the deceased lived by describing how well he raised his children, how faithfully he volunteered at his neighborhood soup kitchen, and how beautifully he played the violin. You object: the important thing is to live a good life. But these things can’t be what the good life consists in; plenty of priests and religious have lived excellent lives without raising children, you obviously don’t have to play the violin to live a good life, etc etc. All you absolutely need is grace, and the ultimate goal is always life with God, so if we wanted to boil it down to the bare mechanics, every holy person’s eulogy could be virtually identical, and very short: “He received abundant grace, accepted it, did not fall into mortal sin, and will receive his reward in Heaven.”
So, how right would you be? You would be right, of course, that none of the particular personal elements of this person’s life story (at least none of the ones mentioned above) are necessary ingredients for a good life, but you would also be wrong to suggest that these facts about the life of the deceased were somehow peripheral to the central question of the goodness of his life. Raising children was not a prerequisite to the good life for him, nor a preliminary step towards eventual achievement of it. It was one of the key elements of that good life. Similarly, the particular goods of the wise and learned, while not a necessary prerequisite for any holiness, might be an ineliminable part of a particular person’s manifestation of it.
Now, again, doubting the value of the actual training one might get in institutions of higher learning, and questioning the credentials we give and the standards we apply for measuring learning, is something quite different. I certainly wouldn’t dispute that there’s plenty wrong with higher education as it is, and probably there were serious imperfections (though maybe less grave) with the education of Wilde’s time or Ovid’s. But this was part of my uneasiness with Royal’s piece — he seems to vacillate between talking about the value of education as it is and as it should be. These are not at all the same, and depending on which we are talking about, different things would need to be said.
“After all, the same “can lead a horse to water but can’t make it drink” argument can be applied to liturgy, or the Sacraments, to grace itself. Nobody can be forced to accept the goods that are offered him in life.”
Right. Which is why, in Royal’s example, the common man knows that the *academic degree* of the “educated man” only means that he mastered enough of the academic curriculum to pass his exams. In other words, he displayed acumen in particular intellectual tasks (the writing of essays, etc.). The *degree* does not indicate genuine wisdom. So what Royal said holds. When he wrote “educated” he meant people who’d made it out of formal training with the academic degree. I’m sure he did not mean that the word “educated” in the sense of “genuinely wise” meant being trained in only particular tasks. But the degree and the curriculum can only really guarantee aptitude in the particular tasks (parsing the sentence, solving the problem, proving the law, etc.). It’s up to the “educated” (with scare quotes) individual to apply (above I said “use”) his knowledge wisely by referring it back to God. That’s why the common man needn’t envy the man with the diploma and the man with the diploma needn’t have contempt for the man without. Neither status implies either wisdom or folly. That, I claim, is what Royal meant, and I agree with him.
“I mean, the truth is, unless it’s ultimately integrated into a supernaturally virtuous state regulated by charity, nothing we do, and no quality or habit we develop (including those of faith and hope), is ultimately any use at all.”
True, but it seems that you ultimately reduce the liberal arts to a moral virtue, namely wisdom. In which case a liberal education is reducible to moral training, which doesn’t strike me as right. Then is liberal education a prerogative of the Church as the moral teacher of mankind? Is this ultimately what we want to say — that only saints are good grammarians? So one cannot “really” be a vicious dialectician but one can be a vicious electrician. I grant that only a saint can achieve anything of lasting good from being a grammarian, but that’s true of any profession. But you seem to privilege the liberal arts as something that cannot be done at all (really) unless done with sanctifying grace.
“Now, again, doubting the value of the actual training one might get in institutions of higher learning, and questioning the credentials we give and the standards we apply for measuring learning, is something quite different.”
And this, I maintain, is all that Royal said. No institution’s degree gives a claim of moral superiority.
As for the eulogy, Catholics don’t give eulogies so I’m off scot-free.
Okay, here goes. I’d say that this man employed his time, skills, talents, propensities, virtues, weaknesses, etc., in the service of God and neighbor and in cooperation with divine grace. Without grace, he’d still have a great many of those skills, talents, etc. Likewise, the intellectual saint employs his training in the seven liberal arts (not one of which is named “wisdom”) to further his connection to God. Might we say that philosophical contemplation of God, even without reference to revelation, is, for the soul in the state of grace, itself an act of worship? Sure. That act of contemplation wouldn’t be ordered to anything else. But it seems that the individual tasks of the liberal arts (the parsing of sentences, the projection of celestial motion, etc.) are still tools that can be divorced from wisdom.
On the whole, what concerns me is the distinction between use and enjoyment. According to St. Augustine, we are to use this life so as to enjoy the next one. To this extent it seems that every moral action must be seen as referring ultimately to the next life, not this one. So it seems that the entire liberal education enterprise is for use, maybe as a practise run so that we will be able to enjoy Heaven the more later. The be-all and end-all for the “good” liberal education is, according to you, wisdom. Yet training in the individual liberal arts cannot provide this where it is not. Likewise, supernatural wisdom is imparted in the Sacrament of Confirmation to everyone. So at best liberal education is the more intensive and direct cultivation of a virtue that can also be exercised, differently, in practical affairs. So it seems that the difference made by liberal education comes in the form of particular exercises for wisdom. The truly educated — the wise — will make good use of these exercises. If that’s for him. But if he’s a carpenter, he’ll find his exercises of wisdom in his practical craft and his dealings with others.
I tried to find “soulcraft” in the Oxford English Dictionary and was frustrated. Am I correct in thinking that it is a neologism?
Wisdom, Bonificie, is not a virtue. It is a kind of knowledge.
There is no conflict between true education and growing in holiness. The former, in fact, usually aids the latter. One cooperates with grace to grow in holiness by growing in charity or love for God and one’s neighbor. True education brings one to a greater knowledge of God, oneself, and one’s neighbor. One realizes why one should be charitable and how truly to love with this knowledge. The truly educated knows in what his ultimate happiness consists and acts out of love because of and in order to have it.
Growing in holiness ultimately is about growing in relationships; and one’s relationship with God and one’s neighbor is, like every relationship, based upon knowledge of the other party in the relationship. The greater the knowledge one has, then the better the relationship can be. One can, of course, have a very close relationship without this knowledge; but why would one want to be at a disadvantage.
I’ll get back to you soon on the origins of “soulcraft.” I need to talk to a more Greek-savvy friend. But the thing I think you’re missing is that the liberal education aims to be more than the sum of its parts. Yes, certain skills are taught, but they aren’t taught for their own sakes nor even for practical application (though there might sometimes be practical applications.) The aim is, yes, wisdom. (Which is a Gift, not a virtue, but never mind.) Admittedly this education fails to be more than the sum of its parts for lots of people, but that’s true of all sorts of things in life. Some people get taken to Mass for years and never get beyond thinking of it as boring and pointless. Some people behold gorgeous art or hear glorious music, and don’t perceive much more than a lot of brush strokes or some interweaving melody lines. You can never force someone to receive sublime things in the spirit in which they were intended, but that doesn’t mean that the sublime can’t be the goal.
I note that in pushing your line about the liberal education being “used” well or badly, you compare it to the work of the electrician. This is the same mistake I faulted in Royal — failing to distinguish between techne, which is just a professional competency that can indeed be employed variously for good or ill, and sophia, which is much more than just a skill or collection of skills. And really, would you actually want to call someone the “successful” product of a liberal education if they were a cracker-jack sentence parser and a technically proficient pianist but lived a narrow, petty life with few other interests or goals? No, the liberal education clearly aims at more than this. It aims to make a particular kind of person, not just to teach a particular set of skills.
Does this mean that only saints can be truly successful in fulfilling the liberal education’s goals? Ultimately, perhaps, but the reverse does not follow — that all saints are equally examples of the good at which the liberal education aims. And as for the claim that this would make the liberal education the prerogative of the Church… well, certainly the Church, and many of her exemplary and virtuous children, have been extensively involved in the liberal arts. That’s certainly very appropriate and good. But it also seems wrong to say that nobody except the Church can ever legitimately be involved in moral formation. Pagans and Protestants still try to teach their children how to be good people, please the gods, fulfill righteous ends, etc. Of course, to actually reach their final end they will eventually need the Church, but that’s no reason to doubt that what they’re engaging in is a kind of moral formation. Similarly for Plato in his Academy, or, perhaps, certain other worthy but not yet fully converted teachers of the liberal arts.
The point about the eulogy (okay, make it a reflection written in the family record-book for posterity then. Have a little compassion for a poor convert! I’ve never even been to a Catholic funeral!) was that you can’t take the admittedly true fact that, “raising children is not a necessary component of a good life,” and draw from it that, “raising a family was not a critical element of this man’s good life.” You seem to want to say something similar of the educated person — whatever goods they have, they can’t be very important (not a part of “holiness”) because lots of great saints didn’t have them. My example is intended to show that this is not a good inference. Bob’s good and faithful raising of his family was a vital, constitutive part of his good life, and you can’t appreciate what was good about it without appreciating that point. Others might do different good things, and those will then be constitutive parts of their good lives, but this thing is essential to Bob’s. It’s also true that, had he not been a faithful Catholic, had access to grace, etc., he presumably couldn’t have done such a good job in his parenting, but we wouldn’t therefore want to conclude that the only thing worth mentioning about his life is his regular reception of the Sacraments, because the parenting was a mere “application” of these other goods.
And finally, to link it back to Royal, I wouldn’t have any quarrels with the piece if, as you suggest, his only point was that a university degree does not in itself guarantee wisdom, or even any benefit at all. That’s perfectly true, but I think Royal was saying more than this, or at least hinting at it. He seems to be suggesting that his grandmothers didn’t miss anything by not being educated, and that the only thing education could have conveyed was competence at “particular tasks.” But there is something to miss — not something essential for salvation, but it’s not “unimportant” either. The fact that a lot of people go to university for years and still miss it doesn’t justify making blanket statements about education in general, particularly not to advocates of Great Books study, who obviously aspire to more than professional competence.
“Wisdom, Bonificie, is not a virtue. It is a kind of knowledge.”
False. One of the translations of the Greek “sophrosune” is “wisdom.” It is otherwise known as prudence (Latin “prudentia”) and it is one of the four cardinal moral virtues. Secondly, and here I’m quoting Fr. Hardon’s “Catholic Dictionary” for easy reference, the virtue prudence is defined as, “Correct knowledge about things to be done or, more broadly, the knowledge of things that ought to be done and of things that ought to be avoided. It is the intellectual virtue whereby a human being recognizes in any matter at hand what is good and what is evil. In this sense, it is the moral virtue that enables a person to devise, choose, and prepare suitable means for the attainment of any purpose or the avoidance of any evil.” So your virtue/knowledge distinction does not hold. The virtue prudence is a form of knowledge, i.e. it is a virtue of the intellect.
“There is no conflict between true education and growing in holiness. The former, in fact, usually aids the latter. One cooperates with grace to grow in holiness by growing in charity or love for God and one’s neighbor. True education brings one to a greater knowledge of God, oneself, and one’s neighbor. One realizes why one should be charitable and how truly to love with this knowledge. The truly educated knows in what his ultimate happiness consists and acts out of love because of and in order to have it.”
All of this is true. And I disputed none of this above. I merely repeated Royal’s claim — the formal curriculum of training in the liberal arts cannot guarantee that one is “truly educated.” The degree means nothing. It is a pretty simple point.
“Growing in holiness ultimately is about growing in relationships; and one’s relationship with God and one’s neighbor is, like every relationship, based upon knowledge of the other party in the relationship. The greater the knowledge one has, then the better the relationship can be. One can, of course, have a very close relationship without this knowledge; but why would one want to be at a disadvantage.”
Actually, I hold that one cannot have a close relationship with God without the knowledge you speak of. However, not everyone attains this knowledge through study of the liberal arts, nor could everyone. Just because one has not learned arithmetic or formal logic does not mean that one is ignorant of God and man. It’s a preposterous claim. I’m not sure that you’re making it. You seem not to be engaging my claims or Royal’s because you’re not sticking to the specific type of knowledge whose relative value we’re trying to evaluate.
Hmm, I think we have some translation issues here. The Greek word that becomes prudencia in Latin and “prudence” or “practical wisdom” in English is, I believe, phronesis. Sophrosune is temperance, I think. But I’ve never heard phronesis translated simply “wisdom” and it isn’t the chief end of the liberal education. Here were are discussing sophia, which is not a virtue, though it is, as I said above, one of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Yes, you’re right, it’s “phronesis” that I was thinking of. Thank you. And it is quite often translated as “practical wisdom.” I have sometimes seen the qualifier “practical” dropped.
But in any case a sharp knowledge/virtue distinction is out, for prudence is both knowledge and virtue.
“The aim is, yes, wisdom. (Which is a Gift, not a virtue, but never mind.)”
Fine, so now we’ve conceded that it’s a Gift and not a virtue. Okay.
Of electricians, etc. I am not comparing “sophia” to a practical skill. I’m comparing a liberal art (grammar) to an illiberal one. They are both “arts,” from the Latin “ars.” The original distinction was that a slave practiced illiberal arts for economic gain while a free man practiced liberal arts for the good of his mind. Are they both arts or not? I am not concerned here with what “sophia” is — only with what the seven liberal arts are. I actually think that this is indeed the proper topic of the discussion as this is what Royal was (I repeat) discussing. When he wrote the word “educated” in the sentence you disputed above (which is what started this), I believe that he meant proficiency in the liberal arts, plural. I don’t think that he meant someone who had “sophia.” Indeed, this would blow his whole point, which seemed to be that “sophia” was available to those who lacked formal training in the *arts.*
“You can never force someone to receive sublime things in the spirit in which they were intended, but that doesn’t mean that the sublime can’t be the goal.”
Fine. But you haven’t made your case against Royal. Royal. Once again, I doubt he was saying that the sublime *is not* the goal of a training in the liberal arts. Rather, he was saying that proficiency in the liberal arts, plural, do not mean (as you well point out) real wisdom. Nor does ignorance of the arts mean a lack of real wisdom. As he said, the Great Books are good for some — as means to wisdom — and not for others. You’re right, the goal is an unqualified good. But that’s not what he was discussing. He was discussing only the course of training in the particular disciplines.
“You seem to want to say something similar of the educated person — whatever goods they have, they can’t be very important (not a part of “holiness”) because lots of great saints didn’t have them.”
Let me revise what I said then. They’re great goods — as directed toward grace. Otherwise, not. Independently, they are of no great value. St. Paul said that he could have “all knowledge” but if he lacked charity he would be a ringing gong. That’s what I’ve been going by. What Royal said was that the academic’s knowledge simply does not equate to moral goodness. If we’re defining “education” as moral education, then academics are not a good criterion as a man may be quite academic and quite bad or quite ignorant and quite good. Yes, absolutely, St. Thomas’ wisdom was part of his holiness. But it was not a guarantor of his holiness. No one could infer from his breadth of knowledge that he was holy. That’s all Royal said.
“He seems to be suggesting that his grandmothers didn’t miss anything by not being educated, and that the only thing education could have conveyed was competence at “particular tasks.””
Okay, I wrote all of the above before I read this. Again, I don’t think that’s what he’s saying.
Allow me to ask, how does someone who is illiterate use/employ/enjoy the Gift of Wisdom? What good did this Gift do for Royal’s grandmothers?
As I look back, I’m not sure that I’m arguing much with you other than that you say A and B and I say B and A. If that’s so, I place the blame on my part. As you’ve said numerous times, it comes down to Royal’s ambiguous use of “educated” in that one sentence. I don’t think it’s all that unclear what he meant, but I’m also giving him the benefit of the doubt. Yes, he should have been clearer about meaning “proficient in particular academic disciplines” as oppsed to “having reached the telos of human education.” Point granted, after much resistance.
Sorry, I meant to say, before being distracted by something else, that yes, I think our disagreement was more in interpretation of Royal than in the substance of the issue itself. But I probably gave an excessively negative impression of how the article struck me… I like reading The Catholic Thing sometimes, but it seems to me like a forum for reflections more than rigorous arguments. So, I’ll often be left musing, “I mostly like that, except…” or, “kind of, but I’m not sure that quite captures it…” or, “I would have added…” That kind of thing. Much like reading a blog, actually. :)