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Integral Humanism and the Integrity of Education1
Anthony A. Akinwale
President and
Professor of Theology and Thomistic Studies
Dominican Institute
Ibadan
Abstract
After an attempt to articulate an integral humanism, the paper makes use of what is articulated.
to describe what constitutes authentic development. By way of two submissions, it proposes a
notion of education of the whole human person, a holistic education that can lead to the
complete and positive transformation of the human person
I would like to state ab initio the presupposition that drives this intervention. The identification
and explication of my key concepts will facilitate the concretization of my intention.
There are three key concepts in the intervention, and these are humanism, education and
development. Humanism here is the promotion and protection of the human person, of all that
renders possible the actualization of his potentials in the fulfillment of his aspirations in every
dimension of human existence. The fact that what is sought is the fulfillment of the human being
in his whole existence in what informs the usage of “integral” to qualify the humanism being
proposed here.
The integrity of education will need to be safeguarded if this holistic fulfillment is to be
attained, that is, if the human being is to have the slightest possibility of actualizing his potentials
and fulfilling his aspirations in every dimension of human existence. The integrity of education
is the protection and promotion of all the provinces of knowledge, as opposed to a policy of
education that promotes one of its provinces, to the detriment of other provinces. The integrity
of education is respected when no sector of the universe of knowledge that a university is is
excluded from the academia.
Authentic development is development of a polity in the development of the human
beings who constitute its population. It is attained where human beings actualize their potentials
and fulfill their aspirations, that is, where integral humanism is protected and promoted, and
where the protection and promotion of integral humanism inspires an education whose integrity
is jealously guarded. In other words, respect and promote the integrity of man and the integrity
of education and what you have is authentic development.
What has just been said informs the presupposition that occupies the driver’s seat in this
journey of ideas that I hope this lecture is. The thesis guiding my intervention is that authentic
1
An earlier version of this paper was read at International Conference on Education organized by the
Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, Washington, DC and the University of Lagos, April 19-22, 2010.
2
development requires an adequate philosophy of the nature and function of education, and an
adequate philosophy of education in turn requires an adequate philosophical account of what it
means to be human. It is my submission that our attempts at development have so far ended in
futility because of an inadequate philosophy of education, and our inadequate philosophy of
education is itself rooted in the quicksand of inadequate philosophical account of the human
condition. In other words, we remain undeveloped because we have failed to understand human
nature. As the dialogue in Plato’s Republic amply demonstrates, dialogue on the state of the
human being and dialogue on the state of the society are inter-related and inseparable. The two
shed light on each other.
In the history of the human family, development has almost always been conceived
exclusively in terms of economic indices. From the point of view of economic indices,
development is the eradication, or at least substantial reduction, of material poverty. It takes
place where there is maximization of pleasure and social benefits, where such maximization of
pleasure and social benefits is itself a product of maximization of economic profit, and where
economic profit procures and is procured by the maximization of political power in military
supremacy and or diplomatic clout. Development, from the exclusively economic perspective,
has always been seen as the maximization of power for the sake of maximization of profit, and
the maximization of profit for the maximization of power. We are dealing here with a
conception of development that flows from the fact that agenda for development has almost
exclusively been left in the hands of economists, politicians and military strategists. Merchants
in search of commodities alert and enter into alliance with politicians who deploy the military
strength and strategy at their disposal to invade and conquer peoples in whose lands such
commodities are found. It is a dangerous deployment of the entire arsenal of concupiscible and
irascible appetites disconnected from the authority of well-enlightened reason.
To be deduced from this logic of development is the fact that Nigeria prominently
features on the list of undeveloped countries because, as is the case with many a country of the
two-third world, her indices of economic poverty are many and well-documented. The collapse
and or absence of infrastructure, the astronomically rising number of talented and intelligent but
unemployed citizens, ignorance and disease in a land inhabited by citizens of unactualized
potentials, to mention but these, would make Nigeria eminently qualified to be in the league of
undeveloped countries..
The gravity of poverty in our world makes it tempting for rich and poor nations, and for
many an expert on the economy to assume, often without sufficient scrutiny of the assumption,
that the economy holds the key to authentic development, and maximization of material
prosperity is the alpha and omega of human fulfillment. Development so conceived is the
availability of more money, abundance and consumption of more and more goods, invention of
machines and tools of increasing sophistication and efficiency, infrastructure of breath-taking
beauty, etc. And, since the notion of development tends to influence, if not determine,
philosophy of education, education is itself reduced to science and technology, the acquisition of
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techniques of invention of gadgets, and the skillful plotting of strategies for making profit. But
economic growth is only one aspect of human existence, one set of operations among others sets
of operations to be deployed for the attainment of the best way to live. Our personal and
collective fulfillment would be jeopardized if and when development is conceptually and
practically reduced to economic growth.
In a consumerist society, unrestrained acquisitive instinct gives rise to an insatiable desire
for material goods, and, in an attempt to satisfy this insatiable appetite, the human person
degenerates into a power addict who spends his time, talents and energy scheming for greater
personal power and perpetual maximization of profit at the expense of other human persons.
Pope Paul VI, in his landmark Encyclical Letter on the Development of Peoples, Populorum
Progressio, already counseled against this tendency when he proposed that authentic
development be seen as the orientation of the whole person to the Creator.2 “Just as the whole of
creation is ordered toward the Creator, so too the rational creature should of his own accord
direct his life to God, the first truth and the highest good” (Populorum Progressio, n. 16).
These preceding remarks inform the three moments in this intervention. Taking my cue
from the wisdom of Populorum Progressio, according to which authentic development is centred
on the human person orientated to God, I shall, in the first moment, attempt to articulate what
makes us human. In the second moment, I shall use this articulation of what makes us human to
describe what constitutes authentic development. And, in the third moment, I shall, by way of
two submissions, propose a notion of education of the whole human person, a holistic education
that can lead to the complete positive transformation of the human person.
Four Dimensions of Human Existence
Our humanity is to be recognized in four characteristics that belong to the human nature, traits
that distinguish the human person from lower creatures. Each of these characteristics represents
a fundamental orientation in the human person, that is, what the human person naturally desires
and what the human person has the potential to attain. Taking my inspiration from the Canadian
philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan, I shall identify these traits as the yearning for
truth, the yearning for good, the yearning for God, and the yearning for love.
First, to be human is to search for and to be able to know the truth. The intellective
faculty with which the Creator has endowed human beings is made for the acquisition of truth.
A sign of this is in the fact that even the one who tells lies does not like to be deceived by others.
Secondly, to be human is to yearn for and to attain the good. The Creator has given every
human being a will whose natural movement is to whatever is perceived to be good. The truth
and the good which human beings naturally desire and which human beings are able to attain are
2
Paul VI, Populorum Progressio. Encyclical Letter on the Development of Peoples (Vatican City: Libreria
Editrice Vaticana, March 26, 1967).
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beyond what is found in transient and finite realities. The restless human spirit has an infinite
desire for the infinite. No sooner is one desire satisfied than the human being desires more. The
finite, oftentimes without acknowledging it, seeks fulfillment in the infinite.
Thirdly, while theologians readily admit it and some philosophers readily deny it, there
is, in that desire for and openness to the infinite in the human person, a natural desire for God. In
other words, at the root of the human quest for the infinitely true and the infinitely good is a
more profound yearning, the yearning for Infinite Being, the yearning for God. The restlessness
of the human spirit testifies to an infinite desire for the infinite that is in man, and this infinite
desire for the infinite that animates man in turn bears testimony to a desire for God, whom
Martin Buber refers to as the Divine Thou, encountered in the human Thou. A true encounter
with the human Thou is the medium for a real encounter with the divine Thou.3 In the natural
desire for friendship, in the natural desire to love and be loved, is a desire for infinite love. The
human dissatisfaction with all his love manifests a desire for Love that transcends all loves.
This natural desire for love and friendship is the fourth fundamental characteristic of our
human nature. Therefore, upon reflection on what it is to be human, it becomes obvious that
there are, to the human person, intellectual, moral, technical and spiritual dimensions. How
these four dimensions help to shape a notion of authentic development and a corresponding
notion of education is what I shall now try to explain.
Authentic Development
Authentic development is actualization of the potentials and fulfillment of the desires of the
human person in each of the four dimensions I have identified. But I must issue a caveat here.
We have infinite desires, but we only have finite means. Thus, in the intellectual dimension, the
human person is animated by an infinite desire to know the truth and has the potential to know
the truth. But his intellective faculty is finite and limited. Nonetheless, intellectual development
is the fulfillment of the human desire to know the truth in the actualization of the human
potential to know the truth.
In the moral dimension, the human person is encountered as a being who is animated by a
desire for infinite goodness and who can be an agent—albeit limited and finite agent—of
goodness to himself and others. Here, moral development is the fulfillment of the natural desire
for goodness in the actualization of the human capacity to do good.
3
“Every particular Thou is a glimpse through to the eternal Thou; by means of every particular Thou the
primary word addresses the eternal Thou. Through the mediation of the Thou of all beings fulfillment, and nonfulfillment, of relations comes to them: the inborn Thou is realized in each relation and consummated in none. It is
consummated only in the direct relation with the Thou that by its nature cannot become It [Martin Buber, I and Thou
(New York: Collier/Macmillan, 1958) 75].
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In the technical dimension, the human person manifests himself as a being who desires
fulfillment in working and who can find fulfillment in working. Here, technical development, or
what we call today scientific and technological development is the fulfillment of the human
person in the actualization of his capacity for work. Again, while his desire is for the infinite, his
capacity if limited, his work imperfect.
And in the spiritual dimension of human existence, the human being shows himself as a
being who—some might argue against this—desires God, and who is capable of knowing God,
even though his knowledge of God is imperfect. Here, spiritual development is the fulfillment of
the natural desire for God in the actualization of the human capacity to know and love God.
Given these dimensions, it would amount to a monstrous misconception of the human
person if his fulfillment were simply to be reduced to the good of the market in the achievement
of science and technology. That is the illusion of fulfillment in economic progress. Authentic
development includes but is not limited to economic, scientific and technological development.
To avoid the abyss of science without conscience, the development of the whole person must be
seen as technical, moral, intellectual and spiritual.
Economic, scientific and technological development must be founded in the fulfillment of
the natural yearning for the truth, that is, intellectual development; in the fulfillment of the
natural yearning for the good, that is, moral development; and in the fulfillment of the natural
yearning for God, that is, in spiritual development. The good is that which everyone desires.
Authentic development is about the attainment, not just of the good of the market, but the
attainment of the good of the moral order, the good of the intellectual order, and the good of the
spiritual order. Anything short of this leads to the formation of fragmented individuals,
schizophrenic victims of arrested development. And, since the good is that which everyone
desires, it is the universal desire for the good that drives the quest for development. But the
highest good is God. Therefore, development, understood theologically, is, in the final analysis,
a desire for God. To use the economy as the ultimate index of development is to ignore or deny
the fact that human nature is capax Dei. And the God that we are capable of knowing is met in
our common life, in our inter-personal relationships when they are marked with a constant
orientation to rectitude. For as Lonergan said:
There is still a further dimension to being human, and there we emerge as persons, meet
one another in a common concern for values, seek to abolish the organization of human
living on the basis of competing egoisms and to replace it by an organization on the basis
of man’s perceptiveness and intelligence, his reasonableness, and his responsible exercise
of freedom.4
This vision of authentic development is sustained by a philosophical and theological
anthropology, an understanding of human nature inspired by divine revelation intelligently
4
Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972).
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received, or rather, an account of human nature informed by faith and reason. This theological
understanding of what it means to be human is formed by the conviction contained in the
Biblical saying that no human being lives on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the
mouth of God (Mt 4:4). Inseparable from this is the anthropological conviction that the human
person counts more than economic prosperity. In concrete terms, what makes us human is not
just the fact that we desire and can procure and possess in abundance what to eat and drink.
Authentic human existence is not just a matter of satisfaction. It is, ultimately, a matter of values.
When economic gains are prioritized over human dignity that is when the world is
ordered as if the human person existed for the economy and for the state, and not the other way
round. Communism treated the human person as if the state created the human person, as if he
were a creature made by the state for the state. For its part, heartless capitalism, driven by
market forces, operated as if the human person were nothing but a creature made by the market
for the market, with his life governed ineluctably by market forces. But the human being is
neither a tool in the hands of the businessman or woman seeking to maximize profit, nor a tool in
the hands of the politician who seeks to maximize power, nor a tool in the hands of the hedonist
who seeks to maximize pleasure. Integral humanism postulates that the dignity of the human
person has primacy over politics and the economy. Politics and the economy must be organized
by the human person and for the human person, not the other way round, to avoid what
personalist philosopher, Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II) describes as “la chosification de l’être
humain” (the reification of the human being).
The search for authentic development highlights the need for a new humanism, that is, for
a new understanding of what it is to be human that respects and promotes the dignity of the
human person by the fact that it tells the truth about the human person. And it tells the truth
about the human person because it respects, reflects and promotes the supernatural destiny of the
same human person. By virtue of this transcendental humanism, authentic development is the
human response to the call to a higher state of perfection, “a new fullness of life” which is
beyond the mere satisfaction of material wants and needs (Populorum Progressio, n. 16).
Implicit in this theological anthropology is the understanding that the human person is greater
than what he produces, purchases, possesses, and consumes. For a human being who is
described solely in terms of production, possession and consumption is nothing but a mobile
bundle of sensations, a being whose life is exclusively dominated by sensual desires and
aversions of his own and of others.
Education and Authentic Development
The role of education in a nation, of universities and degree-awarding institutions in particular,
can never be quantified. Education is the engine room of authentic development and the
incubator for national integration. That university education in Nigeria is going through
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turbulence is what Nigerians do not fail to admit. The solution includes but lies beyond the
provision of adequate infrastructure, and a curriculum that matches at the pace of national and
global realities implemented by a competent professorial corps.
Authentic development is attained when education is inspired by and leads to the respect
and promotion of the values of authentic humanism. The role of education is to assist the human
person to assume personal responsibility for authentic development by cultivating aptitudes and
abilities already present in an embryonic stage in the human person at birth. Authentic education
develops the human person along the dimensions I have outlined, bearing in mind that a society
is an aggregate of persons, and a truly developed society is an aggregate of persons of fulfilled
aspirations and actualized potentials in the four dimensions of human existence. If development
of the whole person must be seen, not just as economic growth nourished by technological
development, but also as intellectual, moral, and, even more fundamentally, spiritual, an
education that seeks a complete and positive transformation of the human person must take
these dimensions seriously.
In education so conceived, intellectual formation would be necessary but of itself
insufficient; moral or character formation would be necessary but of itself insufficient, technical
formation would be necessary but of itself insufficient, and spiritual formation would be
necessary but of itself insufficient. The type of education I have in mind stands on three legs:
intellectual formation or formation of the mind, moral formation or formation of the character,
technical formation or formation of the hands. It is a tripodal notion of education, and we must
bear in mind here that whatever is designed to stand on three legs will be tripped over if any one
of the legs is broken. Furthermore, these three legs of education must stand on the ground of
spiritual formation. In other words, without spiritual formation, education has no foundation.
Agents of formal education assist the individual to actualize potentials for self-fulfillment the
attainment of which is integral to authentic development.
Nigeria’s education policy does not hide its bias for technological education. Its
marginalization of humanities is not latent but patent. It is seen in the admission ratio of 60:40 in
favour of science and technology, in the establishment of more federal and state polytechnics
across the length and breadth of Nigeria. In the 1970s, it was presumed that Nigeria would
develop if technology advanced. But four decades later, neither technological advancement nor
authentic development can be attributed to Nigeria. The problem being highlighted here is not
the promotion of technological education but the presumption that technological education held
the key to economic growth, and that authentic development was equal to economic growth. It
has led to a marginalization of the humanities which is a violation of the integrity of education,
of university education in particular. For, as John Newman wrote, a university is a universe of
knowledge where no province of knowledge is subject to restriction, isolation or
marginalization.5 For him, to remove or marginalize religion and the humanities is to reduce
5
Read John Newman, The Idea of a University (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1960).
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education to the acquisition of techniques of production. It is to remove the dimension of
meaning from human existence. For while science without religion can dehumanize, and art
without religion can demoralize, it can, and must also be said that religion without science is
superstitious, and without art impersonal. Religion becomes sacralism, a toxic substance and a
public nuisance, when it is separated from the sphere of the tedious task of tidy thinking.
The tragedy of undevelopment in Nigeria, our land of enormous but unfulfilled
potentials populated by men and women of innumerable and exquisite talents, is in fact the
tragedy of a monstrous misconception of what it means to be human, of what development is,
and of what education is. It is the tragedy of a developmental anemia whose proximate cause is
the violation of the integrity of education, and whose ultimate cause is anthropological
impoverishment (pauperisation anthropologique), to borrow the words of late Cameroonian
philosopher Englebert Mveng. Not knowing what it means to be human, which is what the
humanities teach us, we resort to the morality of the jungle manifest in a system of government
that dishonours and disables the people it ought to enable in the first instance. Ours is a land of
diversities—ethnic, religious, linguistic, etc. But we hardly dialogue because we are yet to take
the humanity of others seriously. We cannot take the humanity of others seriously because, in
the first instance, we have not taken our own humanity seriously. We cannot attain national
integration when, in our multi-ethnic society, we do not take the humanities seriously. When we
do not take our humanity seriously we resort to acts of incivility. In every department of
common life, our attitude of deceit, of command and control, our bullying and intimidating
conduct, these make due process unattractive. Why should I queue if I can push my way
through? Why should I wait for traffic to clear before I enter the road? It is the attitude and
conduct found among the leaders and the led.
The marginalization of the humanities in our system of education violates the integrity of
education and has led to untold consequences for the human person and the society. History is
the memory of a people. Without it, they are like computers without memory. When the
teaching of history is considered less important in our schools that is when citizens are formed
who neither can enter into the network of relationships that human existence is, nor act
collaboratively and responsibly in the task of working for the common good. Neglect of the
study of literature breeds a generation of human beings who are violent and vulgar in their use of
language. The neglect of the arts has dulled our collective sense of beauty, and it is manifest in
pervasive urban decay in Nigeria, the continuous deterioration of our cities into unplanned and
over-populated junkyards. Beauty has deserted our cities because we have banished her from
our souls by marginalizing art. The spirit of Boko Haram is not just among us, it is also within
us.
We do need more security. There is no doubt about that. But where there is no virtue
there is no security. Technical education must coexist with ethical education. But techniques do
not teach virtue because they do not teach morality. Technology teaches the student how to
accomplish what is possible, not how to differentiate what is right from what is wrong. That is
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what education has become in Nigeria. That is the result of over-regulation of the education
sector by government. Recent experiences point to the sad fact that things have not changed.
Government and its agencies still pretend to monopolize knowledge on how schools are to be
run.
Our policy makers have prioritized education in science and technology to the detriment
of studies in humanities because we are in a hurry to meet up with the rest of the world when it
comes to technology. The problem, however, is that technique without virtue is another name
for science without conscience. It breeds individuals who can operate machines but who cannot
relate with others. Such is the consequence when what ought to be a joint effort of all who are
concerned becomes the prerogative of officials in a gigantic bureaucracy that stifles initiatives.
Policies are meant to serve the people. The people are not to be subservient to policies. But that
is the dream of living in a free country, not in an empire that masquerades itself as a federal
republic. Nigeria de-emphasizes the study of philosophy, history, arts, theology, because she
wants to catch up with leaders of the computer age and race. She ends up breeding Yahoo boys
and girls in the cyber world, cultists on campuses, thugs in legislative and executive chambers of
government, quack pastors in hallowed places of venerable religions, terrorists in her cities.
In Nigeria, we are locked up in our homes, in our cities, because of fear of armed robbers.
In fact, to protect ourselves from robbers we live behind bars. We all are locked up in a land
bedeviled by lifelong insecurity because our system of education—inspired by and at the service
of a reductionist notion of development—is more concerned with machines (science and
technology) than with the human beings who are to be served by the machines (humanities).
With these considerations, I affirm, by way of a first submission, that: for the complete
transformation of the human person, we need a philosophy of education that stands on three
legs—intellectual formation, character or moral formation and technical formation, and this
tripod must be rooted in spiritual formation.
But there is a second submission I need to make. It borders on the need to give
metaphysics its rightful place in our philosophy of education if the very ground on which
education ought to stand would not undergo an erosion.
The denial of the spiritual dimension of the human person is the erosion of the ground on
which education ought to stand. It makes for an inadequate account of what it is to be human,
that is, an inadequate philosophical vision of human existence. Such inadequate philosophical
anthropology gives rise to an inadequate philosophy of education. If we do not know what it is
to be human we cannot know what type of education befits the human person, and, an inadequate
philosophy of education, even when devoutly implemented, cannot facilitate authentic
development.
Authentic development is centred on the human person. An adequate
understanding of what it is to be human is a necessary prerequisite for a philosophy that protects
and promotes the integrity of education capable of fostering authentic development.
The well-publicized advance, the many laudable achievements and impressive inventions
of science and technology have inspired some to marginalize metaphysics and any religion that
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lays any claim to the metaphysical. Yet, the African mindset has refused to ignore the
metaphysical, and even many African products of western education continue to believe in the
metaphysical. Our enterprise in the field of education would be ill-served by any attitude that
dismisses or marginalizes religion. The African always manages to find his or her way back to
metaphysics. This calls for a rethinking of what metaphysics is.
Bernard Lonergan would speak of metaphysics as “the department of knowledge that
underlies, penetrates, transforms, and unifies all other departments.”6 Metaphysics underlies all
other departments of knowledge for two reasons. First, because its principles are “the detached
and disinterested drive of the pure desire to know” that is in every human being. Secondly,
because it manifests this drive of pure desire to know in “its unfolding in the empirical,
intellectual, and rational consciousness of the self-affirming subject”. It penetrates all other
departments because the constitutive principles of other departments are the same principles as
metaphysics. It transforms all other departments because human consciousness is polymorphic
and because it corrects the bias of common sense from which even science is not insulated.7
Metaphysics unifies all other departments of knowledge because, whereas other departments
address particular ranges of questions, metaphysics addresses the question at the origin of all
questions, that is, the question of being, which is the total question. It seeks the total answer by
“transforming and putting together all other answers”. This makes metaphysics “the whole in
knowledge but not the whole of knowledge”.8
The human being has a pure desire to know which unfolds in the empirical, intellectual,
and rational self-consciousness of the self-affirming subject. An anti-metaphysical philosophy of
education, in its attendant affirmation of the empirical as sole criterion of knowledge, as
paradigm of authentic cognition, is a restriction of this pure desire, an incarceration of the
6
Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, no.
3 Eds. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: Lonergan Research Institute of Regis College, 1992),
415.
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“Common sense is subject to a dramatic bias, an egotistic bias, a group bias, and a general bias that
disregards the complex theoretical issues in which it becomes involved and their long-term consequences from
which it blindly suffers. Scientists are not just scientists but also men of common sense; they share its bias insofar
as their specialty does not correct it; and insofar as their specialty runs counter to the bias of common sense, they
find themselves divided and at a loss for a coherent view of the world. Metaphysics springs from the pure desire to
know; it is free from the restrictions of particular viewpoints; it distinguishes positions from counterpositions in the
whole of knowledge; it is a transforming principle that urges positions to fuller developments and, by reversing
counterpositions, liberates discoveries from the shackles in which at first they were formulated” (Bernard Lonergan,
Insight, 415).
That our pure and unrestricted desire to know does not translate into the empiricist claim of pure objectivity
is the argument of Jürgen Habermas in his Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971). “The
concept of ‘interest’ is not meant to imply a naturalistic reduction of transcendental-logical properties to empirical
ones. Indeed, it is meant to prevent just such a reduction….Knowledge-constitutive interests can be defined
exclusively as a function of the objectively constituted problems of the preservation of life that have been solved by
the cultural form of existence as such” (196).
8
“A whole is not without its parts, nor independent of them, nor identical with them. So it is that while the
principle of metaphysics are prior to all other knowledge, still the attainment of metaphysics is the keystone that
rests upon the other parts and presses them together in the unity of the whole” (Bernard Lonergan, Insight, 416).
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knowing subject within the prison walls of sensation. Contrary to the propagated misconception
and popularized practice of religion as that which imprisons the mind, it is actually religion
rightly conceived and rightly practiced within the framework of a well-understood metaphysics
that liberates us and allows us to actualize our transcendentality, that is, our infinite desire for the
infinite. The pure desire to know is the infinite openness to the infinite in the human quest for
what is true, for what is good, for fullness of life in the experience of loving and being loved.
Any talk of metaphysics no doubt raises the question of the possibility of knowing what
lies beyond the empirically observable, beyond what activates the senses in human experience.
Lonergan addresses this question by clarifying what metaphysics is. And this clarification comes
by way of introducing the notion of proportionate being. By proportionate being he means
“whatever is to be known by intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation”. Proportionate being
is “whatever is to be known by human experience, intelligent grasp, and reasonable affirmation”.
This prepares the way for him to speak of explicit metaphysics as “the conception, affirmation,
and implementation of the integral heuristic structure of proportionate being”.9
According to Lonergan,
Prior to the understanding that issues in answers, there are the questions that anticipate
answers…..such anticipation may be employed systematically in the determination of
answers that as yet are unknown; for while the content of future cognitional act is
unknown, the general characteristics of the act itself not only can be known but also can
supply a premise that leads to the act. A heuristic notion, then, is the notion of an
unknown, and it is determined by anticipating the type of act through which the unknown
would become known. A heuristic structure is an ordered set of heuristic notions.
Finally, an integral heuristic structure is the ordered set of all heuristic notions.10
The issue then is not what empiricism denies, that is, the possibility of knowing what lies beyond
human experience, but how the human person knows whatever is to be known by human
experience, intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation. There is metaphysics because, in the
pure desire to know found in every human being, questions are raised; questions anticipate
answers that as yet are unknown; and an ordered set of notions of unknown constitute a heuristic
structure. Metaphysics is the integral heuristic structure of whatever is to be known by human
experience, intelligent grasp, and reasonable affirmation. Now, if metaphysics so explained is
vital to the process of knowing, it cannot be excluded from our notion of education.
But education today is seen as transference of or direction to knowledge, and knowledge
is defined, using the paradigm of mathematical sciences, as that which is quantitative and
tangible. Consequently, there appears to be no place for metaphysics in such a picture, because
metaphysics is seen to be unrelated to the quantitative and tangible. But this needs not be so.
9
Bernard Lonergan, Insight, 416.
Bernard Lonergan, Insight, 417.
10
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For, in fact, as Lonergan explains, metaphysics and mathematics are not strange bedfellows.
They are corollaries.
if metaphysics cannot reproduce the sensed as sensed, it can uphold sensible quality only
by assigning some corresponding intelligibility. But mathematical science already offers
a corresponding intelligibility, and though the materials of mathematical intelligibility are
quantitative or, more accurately, ordinable, mathematical intelligibility is not itself
quantitative.11
Metaphysics so conceived organizes knowledge by providing laws that guide the cognitional
process.
The detached and disinterested desire to know and its unfolding in inquiry and reflection
not only constitute a notion of being but also impose a normative structure upon man’s
cognitional acts.12
This brings me to my second and final submission in this paper. It is this: instead of the
suspicion of metaphysics that characterizes philosophy of education in our time, safeguarding the
integrity of education for the sake of the whole person makes it attractive, if not imperative, to, at
least, take metaphysics seriously as that which imposes a structure on our cognitional acts. This
will ensure that our education stands on three legs and that the legs are firmly rooted in the
transcendentality that characterizes our humanity, that is, in our infinite openness to the infinite.
Conclusion: Vision of the Proposed Dominican University Ibadan
This intervention may be described as a long introduction to the vision and inspiration of the
proposed Dominican University Ibadan. I have already acknowledged my indebtedness to Paul
VI’s Populorum Progressio.
But Populorum Progressio—this fact often goes
unacknowledged—is itself indebted to a Dominican intellectual tradition, a tradition that goes all
the way to Dominic de Guzman passing through its articulation in the works of Thomas
Aquinas.13 And there is a conceptual symphony between this tradition and a practical wisdom
emanating from the traditional way of life in Africa. Think of the African traditional cooking
stove made of three stones, and think of the Dominican life of prayer and study, and you have the
vision of the Dominican University Ibadan.
11
Bernard Lonergan, Insight, 420.
Bernard Lonergan, Insight, 420
13
It is a well-known fact that the principal redactor of this encyclical was French Dominican Father J.
Lebret. See his Dynamique concrete du devloppement (Paris: Economie et Humanisme, Les Editions Ouvrieres,
1961).
12
13
It is a vision of education standing on three feet. These three are intellectual formation or
formation for truth, moral formation or formation for the good, and technical formation or
formation for good work. And the three feet stand on the ground of spiritual formation. These
correspond to the Dominican tradition of uniting the quest for spiritual formation and the quest
for intellectual formation, the union of the quest for God in the quest for truth with the quest for
truth in the quest for God. It is a quest for God and a quest for good in the quest for personal
self-realisation in communal self-realisation. Here then is a concrete expression of the
Dominican tradition of prayer and study. It is the cultivation of spiritual and intellectual life
which will express itself in a well-cultivated moral life placed at the service of the common
good.
Dominic saw the decadence in the Europe of his time and founded an Order with a
mission to transform not only the Church, but also the society. The mission was to be carried out
by friars who would cultivate their spiritual life and their intellectual life in community. He
formed communities of friars whose engagement with the Church and society would be
constantly nourished by a desire for God and a desire for truth for the good of the Church, the
academia and the society. Corresponding to this double desire, he left his friars with a legacy of
prayer and study.
After him came his disciple, Thomas Aquinas, whose intellectual contribution and
achievement especially in the University of Paris is well-known. It is to the credit of Aquinas
that he elaborated a philosophy and theology capable of forming the human person in his or her
spiritual, intellectual, moral and technical dimensions. This is where the vision of the Dominican
University belongs. Recalling and considering Paul VI’s statement that development of peoples
is another name for peace, the Dominican University intends to form men and women of
actualised potentials and fulfilled aspirations. For, after all said and done, a developed polity is
an aggregate of men and women of actualised potentials and fulfilled aspirations not in one but
in all dimensions of human existence.
If all that has been said so far explains the vision, one is permitted to ask: first, what
justifies this vision? Secondly, does such a vision have any room for someone who does not
belong to the religious tradition that inspires it? In other words, in a university so envisioned, for
instance, will there be room for those who have other religious convictions? Or, in further
words, must one be Catholic before he or she can be admitted and blossom as a member of the
academic community of this University?
The second concern is perhaps greater than the first. In Nigeria, religion is present in the
public square. Nigerians love religion. But they are also afraid of religion. Religion is seen as
divisive, superstitious, and therefore to be consigned to the closet. However, practical wisdom
teaches us that while religion cannot be banished, it can and must be managed. That this must be
one of the goals of education in Nigeria is a point I have insisted on in making a case for the
spiritual dimension of education. Religion can neither be ignored nor wished away. For while
people may dispense with going to the Church or Mosque or the Synagogue or a Shrine, even
14
those who would not frequent such places cannot and do not dispense with religion. Every
human being practices a religion in so far as every human being has what Paul Tillich calls an
ultimate concern. To every human being something is unconditionally sacred. It may be the
God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, Allah in the religion of Islam. Or, as is the case in western
societies, it may be civil rights, the Constitution, the flag etc. The problem is not religion but the
separation of religion from the noetic sphere, and its consignment to a sphere where religion and
the good use of the intellect walk on either side of a street without exchanging glances. Reason
dictates that I respect the religious convictions of my fellow citizen as that which is integral to
his or her dignity as long as such convictions are not inimical to the common good. Reason also
dictates that I practice my religion without violating the rights of others. And in so far as a
school is a place of rational inquiry and discourse, a university is a place of intelligent
management of diversity of all kinds—intellectual, ethnic, racial, gender. And one of the
diversities to be managed is religious. What is being described here transcends tolerance of
diversity. In today’s global village, a school must be a place to learn to practice religion without
descending into incivility. Reason obliges respect for freedom and thus dictates that religious
convictions must neither be used to repress nor be repressed.14
No one would deny that education in a Dominican university is education in a Catholic
environment. But studying in a faith-based environment does not compel one to share in the faith
of those who established and administer the institution. Education is not Catholic by the mere
fact that it takes place within the four walls of an institution named Catholic. Neither is the
product Catholic simply because he or she has passed through a Catholic school. The product of
such an education may neither be in full communion with the Catholic Church nor enter into full
communion with the Catholic Church. The idea of catholicity here, while not excluding that
which is found in the catechism, has to do with wholeness (katholos). Catholic education does
not necessarily make its students “Catholic” in the sense of religious affiliation with the Catholic
Church. Education is catholic if and when it promotes integral humanism, that is, the dignity of
the human person in his spiritual, intellectual, moral and technical dimensions. It takes such
education to form men and women who will undertake the task of a common life lived in
reconciliation, justice and peace.
The challenge of Catholic university education in the 21st century is not just to form men
and women who will be intelligent and cultural Catholics, men and women of Catholic
“The value of freedom, as an expression of the singularity of each human person, is respected when
every member of society is permitted to fulfill his personal vocation; to seek the truth and profess his religious,
cultural and political ideas, to express his opinions, to choose his state of life and, as far as possible, his line of work;
to pursue initiatives of an economic, social or political nature. This must take place within a ‘strong juridical
framework, within limits imposed by the common good and public order, and, in every case, in a manner
characterized by responsibility.
“On the other hand, freedom must also be expressed as the capacity to refuse what is morally negative, in
whatever guise it may be presented, as the capacity to distance oneself in view of the genuine good, within the
context of the universal common good” [Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social
Doctrine of the Church (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2004) 200/111]. Read also John Paul II, Centesimus
Annus, 17 and 42; and John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, 55.
14
15
intelligence. That challenge includes—and the very notion of catholicity makes this
imperative—respecting the religious liberty of peoples of other faiths who study in our Catholic
schools. Such are the men and women who will lead Nigeria, in her ethnic and religious
diversity, from the insecurity of a state held together at gun point to the harmony of a veritable
nation.
To the first concern, I shall respond by saying that the developmental needs of the
peoples of Africa will not be met unless we formed men and women of spiritual, intellectual and
moral competence present and actively deploying their competence in every sphere of human
endeavour in the search for common good. The development of Africa cannot be left in the
hands of technocrats alone. For while technical competence is necessary, it is insufficient.
Education today must include the acquisition of technical competence at the same time as
spiritual, intellectual and moral competence. The driver’s seat of Africa’s vehicle for
development must be occupied by those who desire the truth, the good and efficiency.