Liberal Education and the Teleological Question; or Why Should a Dentist Read Chaucer?

Abstract

This essay consists of an examination of the work of three thinkers who conceive of liberal education primarily in teleological terms, and, implicitly if not explicitly, attempt to offer some answer to the question: what does it mean to be fully human? John Henry Newman, T. S. Eliot, and Josef Pieper developed their understanding of liberal education from their own intellectual and religious experience, which was informed by a specifically Christian conception of the place of education in a fully developed human life. I suggest that the strength of their understanding of liberal education derives from its connection to the various small cohesive religious communities to which they were connected. Nonetheless, this insularity was also the primary weakness because each writer ended universalising what was in fact a particular and unique cultural and religious experience instead of providing convincing proof of a single human nature with a single telos. I will contrast this teleological conception of liberal education with that of Michael Oakeshott and his student Kenneth Minogue, both of whom wrote about education in a post‐religious era in which the earlier consensus had completely broken down. They both celebrated the variety of practices which human beings have invented for themselves over the past several centuries (and past several millennia), and did not appear to suffer from the lack of any unifying single human telos. I will suggest that their understanding of practice insulated them from the need for a single unifying telos.

The importance of context and cognitive agency in developing police knowledge

“…Feyerabend (1975) challenges what he sees ‘as the “myth” of methodological monism’ (Kidd, 2013: 413) within the history of science, and his ‘epistemic pluralism’ draws upon John Stuart Mill’s conclusions in On Liberty (Mill, 1859) that human imperfection requires a modus vivendi , which needs to be recognised within the philosophy of science and philosophy of education (Kidd, 2013: 410). Feyerabend (1975) reasserts liberal ideals of knowledge, as opposed to what McIntyre (2013: 345) sees as ‘servile’ notions of knowledge. As part of this endeavour, Feyerabend (2001; 2011) continues to challenge the privileging of science over other forms of knowing, and in particular the extent to which science as an institution may frustrate and restrict the educational development and potential of individuals (Kidd, 2013: 419).…”

“…The narrowing of the cultural divide between academia and the police is also a consequence of the retreat within academia away from the 19th- and 20th-century liberal ideals that gave shape to the modern university. Indeed, as McIntyre (2013: 360) notes, the liberal university idealised by Cardinal Newman in the mid-19th century was in part a response to criticisms of academia at that time. These criticisms included both the utilitarian dismissal of the education provided by Oxford and Cambridge as irrelevant ‘to the 19th Century socio-economic world’, and the secularist calls at that time to have religion removed from the classroom.…”

“…These criticisms included both the utilitarian dismissal of the education provided by Oxford and Cambridge as irrelevant ‘to the 19th Century socio-economic world’, and the secularist calls at that time to have religion removed from the classroom. McIntyre (2013) presents this aspect of Newman’s idea of the university as evidence of an ongoing crisis in liberal education and the ideals characterised within academic culture. He notes at the same time the contemporary challenges to academia from ‘vocationalisation’ and ‘politicisation’ (McIntyre, 2013: 360).…”

“…McIntyre (2013) presents this aspect of Newman’s idea of the university as evidence of an ongoing crisis in liberal education and the ideals characterised within academic culture. He notes at the same time the contemporary challenges to academia from ‘vocationalisation’ and ‘politicisation’ (McIntyre, 2013: 360). Both vocationalisation, understood as the subordination of liberal educational values to ones that meet economic needs, and politicisation, which sees the role of education to be producing an idealised citizenry, represent a retreat away from academic values.…”

John Henry Newman y su idea de la universidad en el siglo XXI

“…Algunos autores consideran que el gran error de la educación liberal de Newman consiste en proponer un modelo articulado en un telos, una finalidad universal en el desarrollo de la naturaleza humana. La crítica de esta idea hacia Newman parte de una concepción autónoma e inmanente de la libertad personal, cuya finalidad es la que cada sujeto inventa y decide de cara a su propia realización personal (McIntyre, 2013). Frente a esta postura otros autores contemporáneos consideran, en la línea de Aristóteles y Newman, que la educación, particularmente la universitaria, tiene como meta dar plenitud a la naturaleza humana (Ibáñez, 2017).…”