Thomas Martin

Wisdom and the Well-Rounded Life: What Is a University? by Peter Milward, S. J., Fulcrum Publishing.

Peter Milward's, book rings of Aristotle, Aquinas, and G. K. Chesterton, when he reestablishes the nature of a university as a place dedicated to a course of study for a well-rounded life which culminates in wisdom. He reminds us "all men by nature desire to know" as they have been created with a mind which is made to come to a point in the romantic adventure of man's return to God. Professor Milward sees that the secular university has turned its back on God, thereby cutting itself off from its root and separating man's body from his soul -- his head from his heart -- to establish "diversity," which, having no core, is directed by government funds and the barons of corporations who serve the bodily and external goods of life as though they were the ends of life.

In the modern world, very few universities, if any, offer a liberal education dedicated to teaching the moral and intellectual virtues necessary for the moral formation of a living soul. Today's universities are all about outfitting students with the marketable skills to be clerks, technicians, or wards of the state who must learn to think globally in their information-based workplaces currently on the brink of bankruptcy. What is to be done?

Peter Milward invokes the muse of wonder in his book by asking fifteen philosophical questions, starting with "what is the point of a university?" which he answers by looking into the word university, to see:

. . . it is a place for the study of universal knowledge . . . where students at a university worthy of its name ought to study everything there is to be known under the sun.

From here, he looks into the roots of education, culture, language, literature, science, etc., culminating with the world, to uncover the ancient truths held within these words.

It is important to remember that man is the only creature who is born ignorant, who does not know himself. In fact, G. K. Chesterton notes,

[E]ach one of us is living in a separate cosmos. The theory of life held by one man never corresponds exactly to that held by another. The whole of man's opinions, morals, tastes, manners, hobbies, work back eventually to some picture of existence itself which, whether it be a paradise or a battlefield, or a school, or a chaos, is not precisely the same picture of existence which lies at the back of any other brain.

This ancient idea establishes man as a microcosm which corresponds with the universe, the macrocosm. The universe is ordered by God whom man seeks to know by using the intellect with which he is endowed as a living soul. Everyman starts out on the edge of existence looking out at the world in wonder. It is from this point that Milward departs:

I want to begin with a sense of wonder, according to the older ideal of Aristotle, who said that all philosophy springs out of just such a sense. It is a sense of wonder that opens our eyes to the world around us and elicits questions about the things we find in that world, in the spirit of a child questioning his mother. In this sense, we have to go back, like William Wordsworth and G. K. Chesterton, to the time of childhood, when all true education, truly universal education, begins.

Peter Milward understands that everyman is a philosopher and every student deserves to be asked philosophical questions to learn to think for himself in seeking his end. He moves like Socrates, in the spirit of wonder, mapping fifteen questions that the students and faculty at every university ought to be examining to quicken their minds in pointed discussions toward the pursuit of Truth that will make them free.

Given that the university is the place for the study of universal knowledge, chapter two, "What Is Education?" looks into the word to see its origins as a "drawing out of" something already within the one who receives it. This is the Socratic method of question and answer. The student is thought to possess knowledge, in a cloudy, undigested form; and it is for the teacher, in whom the knowledge is more fully developed, to draw it out of him and make it more explicit. Obviously, all knowledge cannot be drawn out of a student, but what is known by his intellectual ancestors, who have looked out at the world and into themselves, can be placed before him to assist in his search for the Truth which will bring order and direction into his life. "The object," Milward notes, "of education is the mind of the student, and thereby his character and personality."

Jumping ahead, in chapter eight, "What Is Science?" the primary object of science is to investigate the world of nature that surrounds us, of everything that is found. Milward, uncovering the word, notes natura in Latin means what a thing is born to be, from the verb nasci, "to be born"; physis in Greek comes from the verb phyein, meaning "to grow." The physical sciences investigate all livings things, including man, to understand what they were born to be. Aristotle progressed from the study of the world in Physics to the study of philosophy in Metaphysics.

At this point Milward had me digging on my own, and I found that St. Thomas Aquinas, building upon Aristotle, made the distinction between the natural light of reason, and the divine light of reason, which leads to the science of Theology. The physical sciences, which derive their certitude from the natural light of human reason, are subject to err. Aquinas notes that Theology is the science which accepts the principles revealed by the grace of God, permitting man to see creatures of His creation "only so far as they are referable to God as their beginning and end." The purpose of Theology is eternal beatitude, "to which as to an ultimate end, the ends of all the practical sciences are directed."

As you can see, Milward presents ideas that build upon themselves and offer a much-needed outline of an education that is worthy of the name university.

In closing, Milward's concern for the current state of the university mirrors that of G. K. Chesterton, who noted:

There are two things, and two things only, for the human mind, a dogma and a prejudice. The Middle Ages were a rational epoch, an age of doctrine. Our age is, at best, a poetical epoch, an age of prejudice. A doctrine is a definite point; a prejudice is a direction. . . . it is enough to say that unless we have some doctrine of a divine man, all abuses may be excused, since evolution may turn them into uses. It will be easy for the scientific plutocrats to maintain that humanity will adapt itself to any conditions which we now consider evil.

This book is a must read for students and faculty in the modern university.