Will There Be Irish Catholics to Benefit?

Joyed to share my interview with the Irish Catholic on the grant for Widening Horizons in Philosophical Theology! @StPatsMaynooth @ArchbishopEamon @kingholeung@ChurchLifeND @NTOntologies @GenofMod @keenfriar @MichaelKellyIC @johnmilbank3 @cosmostheinlost https://t.co/NlMf3n4TVH

— philip gonzales (@philipgonzales8) September 16, 2021

University Education

Angela Knobel, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Philosophy joins former President Thomas Hibbs on a @HumanEcologyCUA panel to discuss the university and education under contemporary pressures.

Check out the video, here: https://t.co/2dAfN5ldTu

— University of Dallas (@UofDallas) March 17, 2021

The Foundation of the University

On What Foundation is the University Built? https://t.co/2sP9qnkZs1 via @CatholicThing Nice essay!

— John Cavadini (@JohnCavadini) November 9, 2020

On What Foundation is the University Built? | Randall Smith https://t.co/qXIHPjfkFI pic.twitter.com/Ig7GesEfus

— The Catholic Thing (@catholicthing) November 9, 2020

Promoting the Liberal Arts with Exaggerated Claims

.@alexsosler defends the liberal arts as intrinsic goods that order and expand our loves: “If the point of the liberal arts is the skills we develop from them, we miss the point.” https://t.co/jtUpnV6Uu3 pic.twitter.com/RFEtWFAxsz

— Front Porch Republic (@FrontPorchRepub) November 4, 2020

FPR

Let me offer a modest definition of what an education is for. An education assists in ordering and expanding our loves. This follows in the tradition of St. Augustine and Hugh St. of Victor up to present day with James K.A. Smith and David Brooks. The flourishing life is a life of ordered love, and education prepares and shapes such a life. It’s for a life fueled by affection creating a people “who the life they’ve made and they place they’ve made in it,” in the words of Wendell Berry.

Christian paideia does this. The liberal arts may train the intellect, but they do not by themselves, train the will, even if the state of learning before the liberal arts may influence the moral imagination.

Ars Vitae and Lost in Thought

Amanda Patchin considers what Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn’s ARS VITAE and @zenahitz’s LOST IN THOUGHT might teach us about living well in the midst of suffering and uncertainty: https://t.co/wbaWQBMVx3 pic.twitter.com/ZnQgjBQjfX

— Front Porch Republic (@FrontPorchRepub) October 16, 2020

UND Press: Ars Vitae by Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn

Princeton University Press: Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life by Zena Hitz

The State of the Modern University

The State of the Modern University@LKrauss1 and @JoshHochschild

The full exchange: https://t.co/6XxYBMHY0R pic.twitter.com/CX1PVHP8TT

— Pairagraph (@pairagraph) October 9, 2020

An Interview with Tom Hibbs

President Thomas Hibbs of @UofDallas joins Jeremy for the second episode of Anchored. https://t.co/mzF0ySmuu6

— CLT (@CLT_Exam) September 10, 2020

Perhaps It Is Too Late to Implement

CWR: St. Newman’s Idea of a Catholic University: An Alma Mater, not a foundry, mint, or treadmill by Tracey Rowland

As we celebrate the canonization of John Henry Newman this week and re-read his publications on this subject, the gulf between his vision of Catholic education and what we currently have is stark.

The Importance of "Natural Philosophy"

Public Discourse: A Natural Philosopher’s Lament By John G. Brungardt

The Imaginative Conservative: Great Books, Higher Education, and the Logos by Michael Jordan

Another Article on Scholasticum

CWR Blog: New institute to offer online classes in medieval theology and philosophy
7/15/2016 12:00:00 AM
By Jim Graves
The Scholasticum has a campus in Italy, but is bringing medieval scholasticism to anyone with an Internet connection.

Alasdair Macintyre - Newman's idea of a university

A Little Too Late to Save American Academia?

Post by The Cardinal Newman Society.

A Catholic Case Against MOOCs by Jonathan Malesic

The Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute (PAOI)

Two on university education

Robert John Araujo, SJ, The University as the Classroom of Life

While public service is often heralded and promoted in “service learning” that has become another feature of contemporary education, the nature and extent of what constitutes public service is often determined by the autonomous individual (usually director who has some kind of “expertise”) who has been empowered, through leading and living “an extraordinary life,” to decide what the public needs regardless of whether this is beneficial or detrimental to the common good.


What is missing from all of these shaping factors of the “good education” are crucial elements of Catholic social thought whose benefits are not restricted to Catholic thinking and institutions: (1) the inviolability of the human dignity that belongs to everyone; (2) the common good as defined by the inextricable connection of the righteous life well-lived by everyone (and I do mean everyone) in cooperation with the destiny of everyone to do the same; (3) the idea of solidarity which underscores the common good; and (4) the cultivation of the cardinal virtues of justice, fortitude or courage, prudence, and temperance or forbearance. Unfortunately, too many members of the mainstream contemporary academy respond to these elements as I have proposed them as old fashioned. The fact that these elements also undergird much of the development of western law and legal theory is oft forgotten in most law school—to say nothing of undergraduate—education of the present day.

In an oversized society, a university cannot teach about the common good and legal justice because it does not exist in a community, and Behemoth U. itself is often too large to be a community as well.

Bradley J. Birzer, A Modest Proposal: A Freshman Year of Studies

While I have immense appreciation of a Great Books approach, such as that found at St. John’s, I’ve been far more influenced by a cultural approach to the liberal arts as understood by my heroes, Christopher Dawson, Russell Kirk, and Jacques Barzun.

The cultural approach (or the poetic education of John Senior) may be a necessary part of a liberal education, but is freshman year too late? No, if the freshman are 14 year-olds. If I were in charge, I'd do more to reverse the infantilization of young adults. (Would such a cultural component of a liberal education be necessary if our young grew up in real communities with real story-telling? I don't think so.)


Shakespeare's Spirituality: A Perspective, An Interview with Dr. Martin Lings
World Wisdom profile of Dr. Lings

More from Medievalists.net on the medieval university.

The Medieval University

Medievalists.net: Why the Medieval Idea of a Community-Oriented University is Still Modern
Health Education Through the Ages

BBC: Medieval priory uncovered in Wombridge

Alasdair MacIntyre: On Having Survived Academic Moral Philosophy

Parts 2, 3, 4