Haughey, J. C. (2009). Where is knowing going? The horizons of the knowing subject. Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press.
The opening to the preface — “this study is addressed to those who are educated enough to wonder if they are really educated” — seems directed to those of us struggling to familiarize ourselves with the Catholic intellectual tradition It is largely a positive book, seeing much good in the faculty already in place. The book is particularly helpful for our Praxis community as it draws heavily on the writings of Bernard Lonergan. For example, Haughey notes that an important function of education is “to bring others to horizons they would not be able to attain themselves … to be agent of the intellectual conversion of individuals and societies” (p.25).
An important theme of the book is that many university faculty are independently working to integrate knowledge and education in the (small c) catholic tradition. Haughey speaks of three vital elements, “faith, hope and love” which characterize these efforts (p. 24), whether the faculty who hold them are religious or not. This counters trends toward egotism and competition, which fragment the disciplines and work against building a learning community. Their efforts need the support of their parent institutions in order to flourish; they are often an unappreciated resource.
Haughey stresses “hospitality” – being open to embracing data, the work of colleagues and the ideas of “the other” regardless of their faith (or lack thereof). He notes three problems that work against hospitality. The first is institutional practices that reward specialized individual research and achievement, insist on a multitude of business like meetings and administrative tasks, and do not emphasize connecting the disciplines or “interest in and care for … professional colleagues (p.30). If faculty are “burrowed deep in their specializations” without interest in or connection to their colleagues, they are modeling for students a “kind of individual careerism [and a] culture of autonomy and learning for the sake of self-advancement. If we are isolated individuals, we teach students to be isolated individuals” (p.30). The second is technology, especially in regard to the internet and its lack of face-to-face communication, and the third is a lack of value placed on engagement with colleagues and students.
Haughey notes that the Catholic Church often also suffers a lack of hospitality toward others, to the detriment of attaining a unity and wholeness in knowledge, meaning and what is good. He sees Second Vatican Council and Gaudium et spes (1965) as “the collective efforts of the drive of catholicity, superseding what the Church had fractured or suppressed by its narrowness of vision in previous centuries” (p.52). In a word, “hospitality”. Yet universities continued to move toward more and more specialization. He relates an incident where a hospitalized friend was “visited daily by six different specialists”, each of which had “spent years of training becoming more and more knowledgeable about less and less .. they were attentive to her symptoms, but their knowledge of these symptoms did not help her broken self to become whole” (p.53). Sadly, I am sure many of us can relate to this experience. Haughey relates this to Lonergan’s contention that “looking at reality does not produce knowledge of reality” – in this case the “experts” saw the patient only “through the prism of their own specialties” (p. 53). This is the problem when universities and faculty are overspecialized; Haughey asks “what would it look like if faculty were inspired to work more closely together [toward the common good] without losing their depth of knowledge in diverse fields of study” (p. 53)
Haughey sees a danger in allowing Catholic doctrine alone to dictate the “praxis” of a university, noting that “doctrines are starting points … invitations to belief and contemplation” (p. 54-55), but he stresses the importance of understanding the unity of Christ, emphasizing His humanity as well as divinity. He sees a parallel here between the unity of reason and faith that is essential for a Catholic university. The section “Is there a Doctrine in the house” (p. 55-57) deserves careful reading,
Haughey stresses the importance of differentiating between the Catholic intellectual tradition (primarily a learning tradition involving all disciplines, though with theology being the most important) and the “Sacred Tradition” of the Catholic Church, the doctrinal component (p. 64). Failing to make this distinction between two related traditions leads to confusion, e.g. whether a Catholic university is “too Catholic, or not Catholic enough” (p. 64) and tension between school and church authorities, especially in regard to academic freedom. This dialectic should be “a creative tension between the [Catholic] tradition’s authoritative side and its intellectual side” (p. 67, italics mine); a Catholic university is “an enterprise in understanding that is linked to a faith tradition [a place where] where faith and understanding are seeking each other (p. 69).
The goal of “educating the whole person” (common to most universities) requires attention to “four realms of meaning: common sense, theory, interiority and transcendence” (p. 84). Interiority is not limited to “critical thinking”, it includes an understanding of our own cognitive processes and desires to understand the meaning of the good. Transcendence includes overcoming bias and developing morality. Catholic education should be open to the role of transcendence in all faith traditions, which is a challenge to “make a home for all faiths in its schools, while giving priority to its own faith contents”, but also an opportunity to respect the transcendent meanings of other faiths (p. 84).
Many writers have deplored the “commercialization” and “economic determinism” of higher education, but Haughey puts this in memorable terms:
“Probably the most immediate threat to the integrity of contemporary Catholic higher education – or any higher education for that matter – is not secularization of anti-Catholicism, but the reduction of the purpose of learning to earning” (p. 85).
Seeing education as “preparation for employment springs from the bias of common sense”, necessary in practical terms but a problem when “practicality, utility and impatience for results” dominate at the expense of “wonder or interest in the world” (p. 85). A similar “common sense bias” operates when faculty publish for the sake of self-advancement (Haughey does not address the institutional bias that requires faculty to continually publish, but this would also be a bias).
Haughey summarizes the Dimensions of the Catholic intellectual tradition, noting that a university is “nurtured by those who are committed, in both their research and teaching, to competence in their disciplines, right reasoning, objectivity and the common good” (p.88-89). Catholics and non-Catholics alike can contribute to the tradition, but Haughey emphasizes linking reason and faith, and reiterates the need for “faith, hope and love”: faith that their efforts are worthwhile, hope that they will make a positive difference, and love for their subject and students. In an extended metaphor, he likens the work of these educators to the yeast in dough that allows bread to rise. But the yeast can be “corrupted by biases” (many “isms”; laziness, self-interest etc.) A potential bias in Catholicism is to simply “parrot” doctrine rather than appropriate it after careful questioning and reasoning so that the tradition can develop and evolve, “accumulating more and more insight into truth as it learns from many sources” (p.97). Another example of expanding horizons.
The examples of Maximus the Confessor, Teilhard de Chardin and Karl Rahner are a study in themselves, and there is a great deal more that could be said about this book, including Haughey’s section on the commonality of worship (chapter 9), but in the interest of keeping these notes relatively brief I will conclude here with a quotation from the “afterword” (but also noting the valuable Appendixes, especially Appendix D, which brings home the positive orientation of the book).
“The human vocation is to know the real, and not from the stooped over, narrow perspective from which we all too often look out at the world. The vocation of the educator is the same, to free students from a narrowness and enable them to be beholders of what is worthy of their attention … A good education helps one learn to pay attention to that which is of worth” (p. 149-50).
Questions
- How can we encourage greater communication among faculty from different disciplines, regardless of their faith tradition?
- Haughey suggests inviting faculty to a symposium that asks “does the way you go about conceiving your classes, syllabi, and research connect with the Catholic intellectual tradition’s ways of linking reason to faith?” How would we answer that? How would we conceive this as an open discussion?
- He speaks a great deal about “hospitality” – to colleagues, students, other faiths and “the other” generally. For example, encouraging all to attend Mass in common worship on campus. What do we think about this?