Catholicism and Liberal Education
Lance Simmons
of the University of Dallas. It was published in the Fall 1993
issue of THE UNIVERSITY OF DALLAS ROSTRUM. (THE ROSTRUM is a student-
founded and student-run publication.) The Fall issue was a symposium
on the topic of THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY IN THE FORMATION OF
CHARACTER.
Lance Simmons
Philosophy Department
University of Dallas
THE UNIVERSITY OF DALLAS ROSTRUM interview with President
Robert Sasseen, conducted Tuesday, September 14, 1993.
ROSTRUM:
We understand that you are concerned with the tendency
of universities to emphasize technical skills over the
traditional liberal arts. Could you describe this
phenomenon from your own perspective?
SASSEEN:
Well, first of all, every individual human being has an
eternal destiny. Secondly, all human beings need to be
educated in terms of their full potential as human
beings, and that requires conceiving of education in a
way that does that. To conceive of education as
primarily being ordered to the world of work, whether
it is career education or professional education or so
on, is to do less than what higher education needs to
do. There is no doubt that our society needs people
who are competently trained professionals and
competently trained technicians in different fields,
but human beings are more than that. Human beings are
more than the work they do.
Therefore, what you need is an education which aims to
develop the innate capacities of human beings. And
that means the formation of their minds with respect to
the capacity to understand the truth about the
fundamental human things and the fundamental human
experience. They need to understand the situation of
their own society, how they have developed and where
they stand in relation to the fundamental questions of
justice and freedom and truth and so on. No
professional education can do this, because
professional education has a focus on the object of the
profession which is narrower than the scope of human
life in human society. That's how I see the problem.
Now, the classical name of the education that is more
than training people for work or professions was
liberal education. The classical form of that was
education in the liberal arts and sciences. Or the
liberal arts, it was called, which included the hard
sciences.
ROSTRUM:
Dr. Sasseen, what, in your opinion, are the causes of
the movement away from the liberal arts?
SASSEEN:
The causes are many and fundamental. Let me put it
this way: the whole project of the Enlightenment was to
ameliorate the human condition through the progress of
science and the application of science to human
affairs. The primary applications of science would be
engineering, law and medicine, and then over the years
they've developed into all the various useful
applications of scientific knowledge. But the driving
thrust of the Enlightenment was to overcome man's
natural condition which, as the Enlightenment thinkers
saw it, was in Hobbes's terms: "solitary, nasty,
brutish and short." Man was faced with famine, he was
faced with disease, he was faced with political regimes
that kept him oppressed and so on. So the liberation
of mankind from the natural constraints on the human
being was the fundamental thrust of the Enlightenment.
That is the thrust that gave birth to the modern
university, of which contemporary universities are
exemplars. Now, one side of that thrust is the quest
for scientific truth; but it also has a very strong
practical side: you know, bettering the human condition
through progress. What was the motto of Dupont?
"Better things for better living through chemistry"
conveys it fine.
Land-grant colleges, which began after the Civil War,
are a typical example of the American situation. The
purpose of the land-grant colleges was to provide
education open to all the citizenry which would advance
scientific knowledge and train people to continue that
advancement and apply it to the affairs of the society.
Then the land-grant and other colleges became the
dominant influence shaping higher education in the
United States.
Add to it what I would call the democratic impulse,
namely that in a democratic society every individual is
recognized as possessed of rights and so on. The
purpose of society is to enable those individuals to
develop, so education becomes a key component in a
democratic society's understanding of its purpose and
its meaning. As they say nowadays, you have to have
government funds to invest in our people through
education so that society can continue to progress, and
democracy can continue to be successful.
So you have the democratic impulse and the
Enlightenment impulse as the dominant forces which
until very recently have been shaping higher education
in the United States. The practical effect of that is
a strong emphasis on research in universities and a
strong emphasis on a very practically oriented kind of
education which enables the citizens to advance and
improve their condition.
ROSTRUM:
Dr. Sasseen, you speak of the modern university as a
product of the Enlightenment. In your opinion, to what
extent would a university's Catholicism exempt it from
such a classification and perhaps affect its ability to
educate the whole person?
SASSEEN:
With respect to the kind of education I was talking
about in terms of the whole human being, in terms of
the deepest potentialities of the whole human being, it
seems to me a Catholic education is in principle more
capable of achieving that end.
As Christians we believe first of all that the
existential condition of the human being is fallen.
And so, to understand the nature of the human condition
from the perspective of revelation is to see human
beings as not their own saviors: not their own saviors
in terms of their supernatural salvation, and not their
own saviors even in terms of the problems of the world.
Because we're infected by original sin, sin infects
everything that we do. Therefore to have a utopian
belief that man can create his own salvation through
his own efforts, without divine assistance, is to
misunderstand the problem. This Christian
understanding of the human condition is essential if
you really want to accomplish the ends of education.
Secondly, as Christians, as Catholic Christians, we do
not believe there is any contradiction in principle
between what we know through faith and what we know--
are capable of knowing--through reason. We also
believe that there are some things we know by faith
that we can't know by reason. The dialogue, then, of
faith and reason, or of faith and science, is an
essential component of an education that means to be
adequate to its object. And its object is, as we have
seen, to understand truth, to understand the
fundamentals of human existence and to understand what
can be done. The commingling of faith and reason in
the quest for truth and understanding and in the quest
for a better human condition would seem to be
absolutely indispensable if the university is to be
fully adequate to its primary task.
Also, I would add that, apart from the fact that there
are truths that are capable of only being known through
their having been revealed, there is the problem of our
existential condition: we have weak wills and weak
intellects. It's a real question whether reason or
intellect left to itself can achieve even that of which
it is naturally capable. Without the correctives of
faith and grace, might we not lead ourselves into blind
alleys and false directions? This would be another
reason why the dynamism of faith and reason in the
individual soul and in the life of the university is so
essential for the university to achieve its purposes.
I'd add one other thing: the question is not whether a
university can be both Catholic and a university, but
whether a university can be fully a university without
being Catholic.
ROSTRUM:
So you would say that a university, in trying to be
everything that a university should be, would end up
being Catholic?
SASSEEN:
No, I'm not saying that, I'm not making a prediction;
I'm just asking how a secular university can be
adequate. If there are these whole dimensions of
understanding human existence which are only known to
us through the faith, and if our natural capacities,
left to themselves, are likely to go awry, then how can
the university achieve its purpose unless it has the
dialogue of faith and reason occurring within its own
proper work?
ROSTRUM:
Returning to an earlier point in our conversation, you
remarked that American higher education was shaped
until very recently by the twin impulses of democracy
and the Enlightenment. Do you see something else
replacing these influences?
SASSEEN:
I would say the problem now, or the crisis that we're
coming into, if we're not already in the middle of it,
is what they're calling Post-modernism. Post-modernism
represents a challenge to the Enlightenment itself and
a challenge to the capacity of reason to know anything.
Reason is reduced to being an instrument exclusively in
the service of blind passions. Another name for this
is "nihilism" or "moral relativism," both of which
claim that you can't know anything; all values are
simply subjective and so on. These schools of thought,
as they've penetrated the culture and the university,
have challenged even the Enlightenment project itself,
which was based on the premise that man is rational,
that he can know, that scientific knowledge is the true
knowledge and that through science life can be made
better for everyone.
Well, now we have the historicists, the relativists and
the nihilists challenging that, saying it's not
possible, that we can't know anything, that it's all
constructs, that it's all the imposition of will and
the cultural makers of society imposing their values
upon everyone else. This means the end of the
university; it also means the end of a democratic
society, although ironically many democrats, small "d"-
-I don't mean the political party but the partisans of
the democratic regime--believe that relativism is an
essential component of being democratic. In fact, it
essentially undermines the democratic regime, a regime
based on freedom and liberty as well as responsibility.
ROSTRUM:
You talked about the idea of the university being
affected by society, but what role would you assign the
university in affecting the society?
SASSEEN:
Well, when we say the "university", we are of course
talking of an abstraction. There's this university,
there's that university; there's this person, that
person. You could put it this way: in the case of any
individual in whom reason and faith are enlivened and
at work, in that individual we have conquered the
modern crisis, and that individual may have greater or
less influence on the society in which he lives. Look
what one person--Karl Marx--did in terms of shaping
culture and society. I don't know how to predict the
way in which these things would work out, or how we
would restore or renew a free and democratic society,
putting it back on solid foundations, as is our task;
but insofar as individuals through the education we
envision are opened up to and restored in their own
conviction and capacities with respect to truth and the
problems facing society, to that degree, we've created
the force for the change.
ROSTRUM:
Given all that you have said, could you now reflect on
our theme: "The Role of the University in the Formation
of Character?"
SASSEEN:
The primary work of the university is the cultivation
of the mind. Now one element important in the
formation of the character of individuals is the
opening of their minds and their awakening to the truth
of things. When that happens, those individuals are no
longer simply captives of the dominant opinions of
their time; they have the capacity to escape, to some
degree, from the cave which is formed by the opinions
of their time, opinions which up until that point they
have accepted as simply true. Now, if those opinions
in fact are false, then they act as blocks, you might
say, or as factors which prevent the full development
of the university's capacity. If people don't think
truth is possible, they're not going to spend much time
looking for it. If they believe that truth has already
been settled, then they're not going to spend time
looking for it, they're going to live their lives
according to their opinion of the settled truth.
And so, if an individual is challenged to question--
that doesn't mean reject--but to question the received
opinions, and in that challenging he develops the
capacity or the ability to see for himself, then to
that degree the individual is no longer captive.
Opinions that prevented the full development of his
powers begin to dissolve. It doesn't mean that every
individual is going to be successful.
Take any student who asks "what is justice?" or "what
is freedom?" or similar value questions, and who says:
"Well, who's to say? You've got your opinion, and I've
got mine." The problem with this line of reasoning is
that it stops all inquiry, stops it cold in its tracks.
What are we to do, flip a coin between opinions? Why
should I accept your opinions? Why should I even be
tolerant? You know, if tolerance is a value, and all
values are subjective, then why should I be bound by
your opinion of tolerance? That's how relativism
undermines the foundations of a democratic society,
instead of supporting it. To be able to see that these
opinions are in fact only opinions, and upon
examination cannot stand up, cannot hold water, at
least frees you to begin to make an inquiry instead of
saying: oh hell, you've got your opinion, I've got
mine, let's go have a beer and forget about the
subject.
I'll just borrow one more analogy, perhaps a pretty
silly one. If I'm trying to build a house, and at the
same time it is my opinion that houses can't be built,
how am I ever going to build any house at all, much
less a good house? Somehow I have to have the ability,
the understanding that a house can be built, which then
allows me to make the inquiry into how it can be well-
built and acquire the means of doing that. You know,
it's kind of a pedestrian example, but, it would work
if you thought it through.
I'd make one other point: how does this differ from
professional education? Even in a good context,
professional or technical education presupposes certain
things which are not the objects of inquiry. For
example, if somebody wanted to be a doctor, at least
until recently, the nature of health was not an issue.
It was presumed that everyone knew what health was and
that health was worth seeking. Therefore the task of
the doctor was to acquire the knowledge and techniques
which produce health. This approach is limiting
because the nature of health can itself be an object of
inquiry, and so you can see that a professional
education is limited by assuming the fundamental
questions and then seeking knowledge and technical
skill within their horizon. Now I'm not speaking
against this approach, after all it is necessary to
human society, but it is not sufficient, because to
fully educate a human being it is necessary to
understand the fundamental values, and to understand
them first of all as problematic. Everyone has
opinions about them, but our desire is to move from
mere opinion to truth and understanding.
ROSTRUM:
How well do you think that the University of Dallas
enables its students to make this move? In other
words, how well do you think that the University of
Dallas embodies your concept of a university?
SASSEEN:
Well, I think it embodies it quite well. I think the
University's mission is clear, it's focused, it's well-
defined and it means to overcome the difficulties about
which we were speaking that characterize most of
contemporary education. The problem for U.D. is to
remain faithful to that task, and in particular to be
faithful to the Catholic dimension of that task. On
the other hand, we've been talking about the highest
purpose of the university, or the highest purpose of
any individual; we also have other purposes. We are
creatures of society, and society expects us to educate
people to become good and decent citizens, not
necessarily in any specific career but simply as people
who will be able to go out and become productive adults
as a part of society. So the ends of any institution
are dictated both by its highest end, which transcends
time and the particular society in which it lives; and
also by the requirements of the culture and the society
in which we live. As a university we have to be
adequate to both purposes, with an understanding that
both purposes do not necessarily coalesce very well.
And so I would say that while the University of Dallas
may be clear with respect to the highest purposes of
the University, we must also ask ourselves: are we
clear with respect to the responsibilities we owe
society and which society rightly expects of us
concerning the education of students? I would like to
think yes, but there is always room for improvement.
--
Lance Simmons -- please direct private mail to sim...@acad.udallas.edu,
or I may not see it. Go Irish!