LiberalArtsOnline Volume 4, Number 1a
January 2004
In the winter of 2003 we convened a colloquy on "Essential Content of the Liberal Arts," in partnership with the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa. The current double feature of LiberalArtsOnline presents two essays on "know thyself" that grew out of reflective pieces composed for that gathering. We look forward to presenting now and then other products of the meetings we convene on the Wabash College campus. At the same time, we invite readers to tell us about presentations at recent events elsewhere that might form the basis for pithy and provocative essays on liberal arts education. Whether the point of view conformed to your thoughts on the matter or not, if the presentation was clear and the issue was critical, let us know.
- The Editors
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Faith, Reason, and Know Thyself
by Larry D. Shinn
President
Berea College, Berea, KY.
Know thyself is a fundamental objective of a traditional liberal arts education, which Michael Oakeshott aptly calls "adventures in human self-understanding." An extension of this dictum is the imperative to know "the Other" completely and well. Whether we interpret this core dictum through the lens of classical Greek philosophers or that of contemporary disciplines, most faculty assume that liberal arts study liberates us to become more fully human.
Unfortunately, in most liberal arts colleges, knowing ourselves and others thoughtfully and fully has been reduced to a task of critical thinking or reasoning alone. With the advent of the scientific method, scholars trained in many contemporary academic disciplines (from natural sciences to social "sciences") have construed the interpretive task of reason as empirical reasoning. An unspoken assumption in the modern liberal arts academy is suspicion toward the emotional and non-rational dimensions (passions, fears, or loves) of the selves we seek to know. In most teachers and learners, it is these non-rational (not irrational) dimensions of the self that combine with formal or empirical reasoning to produce the faith that directs their learning and acting.
We would be wise to consider what we lost when twentieth-century liberal arts colleges chose reason over faith (instead of both) in their choice of text and method. We would be wise to ask ourselves, to what extent has that choice undermined the desired goal of knowing ourselves and the others we encounter?
Most nineteenth-century founders conceived of their new colleges as places where the liberal arts and religion (both theological study and Christian life and worship) could flourish together. Such was the liberal learning curriculum that the Yale College faculty adopted in 1828. Here, professors and presidents viewed faith and reason as complementary dimensions of higher learning, of knowing oneself in relationship to other persons and to the world as a whole. Today, however, the pervasive assumption in most liberal arts college curricula and classrooms is that religious faith and reason are incompatible approaches to learning.
In his book The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (1998), George M. Marsden describes how separation of church and state in politics and law has a negative parallel in the way that contemporary academics assume separation of faith and liberal learning. Thus it should be no surprise that, when asked what the content of a liberal arts education ought to be, no one among nearly twenty liberal arts educators who met at Wabash College in January 2003 put the Bible (or sacred texts of other religions) on the list of their required canon. While some participants offered "moral development" as a necessary ingredient of a liberal arts education, most of the group felt uneasy about moving beyond philosophical notions of moral development based upon reason and critical thinking.
Parker Palmer argues throughout his book The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life (1997) that unless one knows oneself by examining and integrating intellect, emotion, and faith (the spiritual dimension of self), the learning project will be compromised, even undermined. To discipline the mind is not enough in any deep search for truth or knowledge. Palmer encourages teachers and students to come together around great things, which are subjects around which the circle of seekers has always gathered. We find such subjects in the enduring texts of science, literature, and religion.
Sharon Parks tells us in The Critical Years: Young Adults and the Search for Meaning, Faith, and Commitment (1991) that all students bring the dimensions of intellect, emotion, and faith to their learning. Parks makes clear how neglecting development in any dimension of a student's learning--cognitive, personal, moral, or religious--impedes learning on the other levels of selfhood and the world beyond. For students, to engage a text of Plato, the Bible, or Darwin is never an intellectual task alone. To engage any of these texts seriously on their own terms requires the threefold engagement of intellect, emotion, and faith that Palmer and Parks both say engages the whole person.
Adventures in human self-understanding necessarily involve reflection, emotional engagement, and a search for ultimate truth. In such a journey a meaningful life unfolds. Liberal arts education as a personal journey toward self-knowledge will include all dimensions of the self--intellect, emotions, and the quest for meaning. It will ebb and flow: from reflection on the ideas of others to rational doubt; from experiences that reveal the power of one's own emotions (fear, dread, or love) to attempts to control those emotions; and from rational reflection on great things to non-rational (occasionally even irrational) faith, trust, or love that moves beyond reason alone.
Whether this journey ultimately leads to faith in an established religion or not, can we deny that liberal learning should engage as its subject matter, its content, the great things of life? Those great things range from the symbolic worlds of philosophy and theology, and from the genetic secrets of life, to human themes in history and literature, to the purpose of life, and to what lies within the spiritual quests of saints that are inaccessible to reason alone.
Reason and critical thinking have proven to be an insufficient basis for knowing the integrated self, the whole person, or for addressing the human predicament in a 21st century world. Even the most rigorous philosophers and scientists have core beliefs and emotional commitments that guide their intellectual quests. In the same way, to fully understand Asian or Arab (or American) peoples requires knowing their spiritual worldview, their devotional commitments, and their religious practices from more than the rational standpoint of a particular discipline. Pre-9/11 and post-9/11 events have made this complex truth abundantly clear.
Tremendous benefit will come to the contemporary liberal arts academy when faculty and students alike conceive of liberal learning in a way that invites reflection and exploration of the whole person, the self who thinks and feels and searches for meaning. Only then will liberal learning become truly liberating.
Direct personal responses to Larry Shinn at shinn@berea.edu.
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Click HERE for second essay.
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LiberalArtsOnline is an occasional email essay on the liberal arts, provided as a public service of the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts.
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The comments published in LiberalArtsOnline reflect the opinions of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Center of Inquiry or Wabash College. Comments may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author(s), LiberalArtsOnline, and the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College.