Towards a Philosophy of Liberal Education: John Henry Newman on Teaching Universal Knowledge, the Cultivation of the Intellect, and the Enlargement of Mind

2020 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-182
Author(s):  
Adam Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Education ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Faith And Learning

In this essay, I develop a philosophy of liberal education based on an interpretation of Newman’s concepts of teaching universal knowledge, the cultivation of the intellect, and the enlargement of mind found in The Idea of a University. I argue that a close reading of Newman’s articulation of these three concepts reveals an understanding of the purpose of liberal education as animating truth with reason to produce knowledge that enhances faith and improves society. I also discuss how this philosophy translates into a pedagogy that directly informs my teaching, and, hopefully, contributes to the integration of faith and learning in the lives of my students.

Newman on Liberal Education and Moral Pluralism

1992 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Magill
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Liberal Education ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Career Commitment ◽  
Formal Learning ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Moral Pluralism ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Catholic University

The moral pluralism that characterises contemporary living can largely be attributed to the education that differentiates modern life from previous generations. During the industrial revolution in Britain in the nineteenth century John Henry Newman (1801–1890) was very sensitive to the importance of a more educated society, especially with regard to the development of religious faith and morals in an increasingly secular and sceptical age. Although his dedication to the advancement of knowledge remained throughout his life, his career commitment to formal learning began as an Anglican when he became a tutor at Oriel College, Oxford in 1826. In a sense his academic calling reached its zenith in 1852 as rector of the Catholic university at Dublin when he had the opportunity to express his view of liberal education by writing his university discourses.

John Henry Newman in Context

2021 ◽  
pp. 47-62
Author(s):  
James L. Heft
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Education ◽  
Student Life ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Catholic University

The chapter describes the person and contribution of John Henry Newman (1801–1890) to the idea of a Catholic university. It describes in some detail his life; the challenges he faced in writing his classic, The Idea of a University; why that book is a classic; and his contribution to understanding the significance of liberal education, mentoring students, and student life and community.

Pendidikan Islam dan Humanitas

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-355
Author(s):  
Mohammad Liwa Irrubai
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Liberal Education ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Current Issue ◽  
Alternative Solution ◽  
Educational Objectives ◽  
Basic Issue ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Education Today ◽  
Human Problem

Today, the human problem in social life concerning education is growing more complex; many new ideas emerge as the level of human intellectuality grows. This paper will reveal the current issue of education in Indonesia and discuss ideas from the concept of liberal education. The basic issue of education criticized by liberal education is that education today focuses more on the needs of society than the educational objectives themselves. Education as a tool to transfer science, values, and agents of social change is seen as one alternative solution in the framework of improving people's lives. The education in which values are embodied is one of the efforts offered by genuine liberal education, aimed at giving us the habits, ideas and techniques necessary to continue our own education. Humans have the ability to learn continuously throughout life so that we can prepare ourselves to study and again as long as we are alive.

Stolen from the Snows: John Kinsella as Poet and as Fiction Writer

CounterText ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-238
Author(s):  
Nicholas Birns
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Artistic Identity ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Fiction Writer

This piece explores the fiction of John Kinsella, describing how it both complements and differs from his poetry, and how it speaks to the various aspect of his literary and artistic identity, After delineating several characteristic traits of Kinsella's fictional oeuvre, and providing a close reading of one of Kinsella's Graphology poems to give a sense of his current lyrical praxis, the balance of the essay is devoted to a close analysis of Hotel Impossible, the Kinsella novella included in this issue of CounterText. In Hotel Impossible Kinsella examines the assets and liabilities of cosmopolitanism through the metaphor of the all-inclusive hotel that envelops humanity in its breadth but also constrains through its repressive, generalising conformity. Through the peregrinations of the anti-protagonist Pilgrim, as he works out his relationships with Sister and the Watchmaker, we see how relationships interact with contemporary institutions of power. In a style at once challenging and accessible, Kinsella presents a fractured mirror of our own reality.

‘Nothing is simply one thing’: Woolf, Deleuze and Difference

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 456-474
Author(s):  
Beatrice Monaco
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Similar Model ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
To The Lighthouse

This paper explores some key texts of Virginia Woolf in the context of Deleuzian concepts. Using a close reading style, it shows how the prose poetry in Mrs Dalloway engages a complex interplay of repetition and difference, resulting in a remarkably similar model of the three syntheses of time as Deleuze understands them. It subsequently explores Woolf's technical processes in a key passage from To the Lighthouse, showing how the prose-poetic technique systematically undoes the structures of logical fact and rationality inscribed in both language and everyday speech to an extremely precise level.

Resonance in Dhvani Aesthetics and the Deleuzian Logic of Sensation

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-44
Author(s):  
Srajana Kaikini
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Sanskrit Poetics ◽  
Comparative Framework ◽  
Time Image

This paper undertakes an intersectional reading of visual art through theories of literary interpretation in Sanskrit poetics in close reading with Deleuze's notions of sensation. The concept of Dhvani – the Indian theory of suggestion which can be translated as resonance, as explored in the Rasa – Dhvani aesthetics offers key insights into understanding the mode in which sensation as discussed by Deleuze operates throughout his reflections on Francis Bacon's and Cézanne's works. The paper constructs a comparative framework to review modern and classical art history, mainly in the medium of painting, through an understanding of the concept of Dhvani, and charts a course of reinterpreting and examining possible points of concurrence and departure with respect to the Deleuzian logic of sensation and his notions of time-image and perception. The author thereby aims to move art interpretation's paradigm towards a non-linguistic sensory paradigm of experience. The focus of the paper is to break the moulds of normative theory-making which guide ideal conditions of ‘understanding art’ and look into alternative modes of experiencing the ‘vocabulary’ of art through trans-disciplinary intersections, in this case the disciplines being those of visual art, literature and phenomenology.

On the Primacy of Matter: Neoplatonism Right-Side Up

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler Tritten
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
After Effect ◽  
The One

This chapter provides a close reading of Schelling’s early commentary on Plato’s Timaeus and then contrasts this reading with Neoplatonism’s, particularly Proclus’, understanding of this same text. While Neoplatonism views being according to a hierarchy of degradation or descent, with matter at the bottom, Schelling affirms that being potentiates itself into higher and greater degrees of order such that matter is not the last but the first. He is able to do this, however, only by rejecting the Platonic notion of participation. For Schelling, the participating acquires an independence from the participated so that an effect can be greater than its cause and, moreover, the effect exerts a retroactive after effect on the cause. The identity of a cause or antecedent is only constituted in and through its consequents. If matter is said to process from the One, then matter, in turn, is the consequent condition of the identity of the One as one rather than as many.

Transformation and Education in GDR Youth Literature: A Script Theory Approach

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-82
Author(s):  
Jean E. Conacher
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Conceptual Blending ◽  
Script Theory ◽  
Cultural Policies ◽  
Youth Literature

Youth literature within the German Democratic Republic (GDR) officially enjoyed equal status with adult literature, with authors often writing for both audiences. Such parity of esteem pre-supposed that youth literature would also adopt the cultural–political frameworks designed to nurture the establishment of socialism on German soil. In their quest to forge a legitimate national literature capable of transforming the population, politicians and writers drew repeatedly upon the cultural heritage of Weimar classicism and the Bildungsroman, Humboldtian educational traditions and Soviet-inspired models of socialist realism. Adopting a script theory approach inspired by Jean Matter Mandler, this article explores how directive cultural policies lead to the emergence of multiple scripts which inform the nature and narrative of individual works. Three broad ideological scripts within GDR youth literature are identified which underpin four distinct narrative scripts employed by individual writers to support, challenge and ultimately subvert the primacy of the Bildungsroman genre. A close reading of works by Strittmatter, Pludra, Görlich, Tetzner and Saalmann reveals further how conceptual blending with classical and fairy-tale scripts is exploited to legitimise and at times mask critique of transformation and education inside and outside the classroom and to offer young protagonists a voice often denied their readers.

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