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Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

Volume 6 | Number 2 Article 27

12-2017 in Our Core Patrick Tully Ph.D. University of Scranton, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Tully, Patrick Ph.D. (2017) "Philosophy in Our Core," Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal: Vol. 6 : No. 2 , Article 27. Available at: https://epublications.regis.edu/jhe/vol6/iss2/27

This Praxis is brought to you for free and open access by ePublications at Regis University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal by an authorized administrator of ePublications at Regis University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Tully: Philosophy in Our Core

Philosophy in Our Core

Patrick Tully Professor of Philosophy University of Scranton [email protected]

Abstract

The Jesuit (and Catholic) educational tradition is characterized by a number of identity-conferring basic positions that are incompatible with correlative positions on offer in the popular culture. Some of these fundamental differences between the tradition and the culture are philosophical in nature in that they bear on questions of moral truth and philosophical anthropology. Institutions of higher education committed to forming their students in light of these basic and counter-cultural beliefs must ensure that the incompatible cultural alternatives are carefully examined and the reasonableness of the Ignatian (Catholic) alternatives carefully explored. The discipline Philosophy plays an irreplaceable role in this sort of tradition-culture engagement. With this in mind, institutions of higher education that claim the Jesuit and Catholic tradition as their own must ensure that Philosophy remains (or is restored to) a significant part of their core curricula.

Not too long ago I had the opportunity to work unprepared to work through the moral quandaries with a cohort of twelve first-year medical students that await them in their chosen field, and to at a local medical school. My task was to deliver to engage the great existential questions that life will these future doctors the component of a sooner or later press upon them. A core year-long course in the profession of medicine; we requirement in this ancient discipline would no would meet three or four times that year and doubt be a step in the right direction for these discuss the field of medical ethics. Although our institutions, and eliminating or reducing such a time together would be short, I was keen on requirement would no doubt be a step in the getting to know these students on a somewhat wrong direction for Jesuit colleges and personal basis. At our initial meeting I asked each universities. of them where they grew up, where they went to college, why they wanted to be a physician, etc. In While it may be the case that decision-makers at the course of that first meeting, in order to gauge Jesuit colleges and universities will continue to their formal preparation for thinking about ensure that exposure to philosophy remains a medical ethics, I also asked them whether they had distinctive mark of the education these institutions any undergraduate coursework in philosophy. offer, a “some Philosophy, any Philosophy” Only three raised a hand. Of these three, two had minimalist approach to executing this a semester-long self-standing course in ethics as commitment would surely leave many students part of their undergraduate degree requirements.1 underserved. Questions about what our students’ These two students, the two whose undergraduate exposure to this discipline should look like must education seemed to have left them better be answered thoughtfully. The breadth of prepared than their peers to navigate the moral Philosophy and the rather common need to fit a dimensions of their chosen field, were Jesuit requirement in this discipline into just one or two educated; one was from the University of courses require difficult decisions to be made. Scranton, the other from Xavier University. I Logic, , epistemology, ethics, and offer this story both as a point of pride for those social and are just a few of the of us engaged in Jesuit higher education and as a areas one might like to cover, and each of these way to emphasize the importance of preserving branches has subdivisions of its own. To sort the study of Philosophy as a distinctive mark of through the multitude of options and make this tradition. It is disturbing to see so many appropriate decisions about what all of their colleges and universities proudly turn out future graduates ought to know, a Jesuit institution physicians, nurses, teachers, attorneys, would do well to ask itself what it seeks to accountants, etc. who are technically proficient yet accomplish by means of this element of its core

Jesuit Higher Education 6(2): 155-165 (2017) 155 Tully: Philosophy in Our Core curriculum. Wrestling with that question should There are certain cultural tendencies, perhaps pre- raise two other questions: “What do the Jesuit and critical habits of thought, that bump up against the Catholic traditions—traditions that these foundational, philosophically substantive institutions publicly claim as their own—have to commitments of the Ignatian worldview. A say about the matter?” and “What feature(s) student who has been well grounded in should a Philosophy requirement at Jesuit and Philosophy and who appreciates the philosophical Catholic schools operating in the early 21st- dimensions of these Ignatian commitments will be century first-world share?” Such questions draw prepared to go into the world, challenge these the focus of decision-makers away from their own “errors of the age,” and offer a better alternative. philosophical preferences and specialties and place In doing so these men and women can change the it on two often-clashing outlooks on the human world in ways that others cannot, taking what has being and the world: that offered by the Jesuit and been passed on to them by the Jesuit tradition and Catholic tradition, and that offered by the offering it to their coworkers, their family, their dominant culture from which our students come friends, their neighbors. Indeed, the right kind of and to which they will return. philosophical background can empower these graduates to become links in a chain that stretches If Jesuit institutions of higher education carefully back for centuries and which, through them, will assess and refine the Philosophy component of reach into the future. their respective curricula in the manner described above, it may very well turn out that their alumni, But what are these “errors of the age” and how including the aforementioned medical students do they philosophically bump up against the from Xavier and Scranton, will enjoy a common aforementioned ideas at the heart of Jesuit philosophical foundation, one that will give them education? In what follows, I offer three. There a shared outlook, idiom, and way of proceeding as are no doubt more, and maybe even some that are they—separately and together—respond to the more profound than the three I examine, but the Ignatian challenge to be salt and light in the world. three I identify are at work in our students’ basic What, though, should that shared foundation look outlook and, at the same time, are deeply at odds like? with the basic commitments of the Ignatian tradition that we call our own and promise to pass Cura personalis, magis, finding God in all things, and on to our students. The three ideas that I speak of metanoia are Ignatian terms that are employed in are , individualism, and relativism. much of the serious talk regarding the institutional identity and educational aspirations of Jesuit * colleges and universities. These words express ideas that shape our institutions and are frequently The “materialism” in play here is metaphysical offered as ultimate justifications for policies and materialism. Let this phrase stand for what Thomas practices in all areas of institutional life. These Nagel describes as ideas shape how we seek to shape our students. Yet what sometimes goes unnoticed in this a comprehensive, speculative world Ignatian educational discourse is that these words picture that is reached by extrapolation and phrases are philosophically heavy; heavy in from some of the discoveries of biology, what they presuppose and heavy in what they call chemistry, and physics—a particular those committed to this tradition to do (and not naturalistic Weltanschauung that postulates to do). Were they to be evacuated of this deeper a hierarchical relation among the subjects philosophical meaning, these terms might be of those sciences, and the completeness reduced to vague, cost-free clichés that give an in principle of an explanation of Ignatian luster to all sorts of policies and everything in the universe through their proposals that are appealing for any number of unification.2 other reasons, while demanding little of those who invoke them and offering no guidance to students Nagel’s words lay out well the grand idea behind exposed to them. Here is where Philosophy has an what so many students accept as the starting point important role to play. and reasonable parameters for all serious inquiry

Jesuit Higher Education 6(2): 155-165 (2017) 156 Tully: Philosophy in Our Core regarding the human person, namely, that It makes them all to be, at best, ennobling cultural everything “really real” about us is fully myth and, at worst, naive nonsense. What exactly explainable by reference to our material is an attitude of “care” in this worldview? What constituents. The belief is that human beings are are aspirations for “the greater” on this account of merely biological creatures, and that the whole of the human being? For that matter, what is the one’s interior life—deliberating, willing, hoping, measure of the good, the greater, the lesser? What loving, wondering, worshipping, etc.—is in reality is a “mind” here, and what does it mean to seek a only a complex nexus of biological phenomena. transformation of self? And what a fool’s errand it For so many students this is the presumptively- is to try to find God in anything, let alone in all true background account of the human being; the things. If metaphysical materialism is true, then solid ground upon which serious-minded people the foundational commitments and animating stride.3 While our culture, including our students, aspirations of the entire Ignatian educational may not have this background anthropology laid tradition are—to put it in the most philosophically out in their minds as elaborately as Nagel’s charitable words—held without warrant. formulation, it is nevertheless the case that so many believe it to be true. Why is this so? Philosophy, however, has something to say on behalf of the philosophical anthropology that the The materialism uncritically adopted by so many Jesuit and Catholic tradition offers. Consider Pope of our students appears to be allied with the Emeritus Benedict XVI’s observation that freedom, epistemological principle, also uncritically love, and evil are “three themes fundamental to adopted, that only “scientific” knowledge is human existence.”6 Consider, too, the late 20th authentic knowledge. These metaphysical and century Catholic writer Walker Percy’s epistemological commitments underwrite the observation that principle that all and only the deliverances of “science” are to be accepted as features of [t]his life is much too much trouble, far objective reality.4 A worldview hangs on this too strange, to arrive at the end of it and principle; the difference between the propositions then be asked what you make of it and Science gives us knowledge of part of reality and Science have to answer, ‘Scientific humanism.’ alone determines what is real is profound. The latter That won’t do. A poor show.7 leaves no room for any matter-independent dimension to reality, and so belief in a soul, God, Finally, consider Walt Whitman’s experience that and free will, that is, belief that these are really real “a morning-glory at my window satisfies me more despite being empirically undetectable, becomes than the metaphysics of books.”8 Taken together, intellectually disreputable and thus somewhat these three (of countless) examples manifest the embarrassing in serious public conversation. While remarkable human capacity to engage in serious many do believe in such things, these beliefs bear philosophical reflection about a wide range of the taint of a dubious provenance given that they experiences, and to be conscious of oneself are based not upon science but upon the softer engaging in such reflections. Yet all of these ground composed of some mixture of blind faith, activities and experiences are among the data that upbringing (which means, to some critics, must be explained, and explained well, by any indoctrination), and/or a personal (read purely account of the human being that claims to be subjective) experience. While students may support complete and credible. Graduates of institutions a certain amount of public space for one “to that place themselves within the Jesuit and personally believe” in such things, the consensus Catholic tradition ought to have considered view seems to be that these beliefs cannot rise to carefully a slew of interrelated philosophical the status of knowledge because the requisite questions provoked by these authors’ words. This empirical justification is, by the very nature of the tradition is rich with thinkers and texts that model objects in question, unavailable.5 such careful introspection, like St. Augustine’s 5th century Confessions and St. John Paul II’s 20th It is not difficult to see how this account of what century personalism.9 One recurring philosophical is real conflicts with the Ignatian ideas of cura question of particular importance here is whether personalis, magis, finding God in all things, and metanoia. materialism offers a sufficient explanation—that

Jesuit Higher Education 6(2): 155-165 (2017) 157 Tully: Philosophy in Our Core is, a complete and credible account—for the wide privatization of the good.”11 Two years later the variety of activities and experiences that fill the Supreme Court of the United States gave voice student’s daily life. The problematic explanatory and heft to this outlook by proclaiming that “at gap between a third-person objective account of the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own their life as an organism and their inescapably concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, first-person experiences as a self in the world and of the mystery of human life.”12 should be familiar territory to them. The more recent phenomenon of publicly Furthermore, while considering accounts that identifying as something other than what one purport to fill this explanatory gap, students manifestly is, and the mutually-affirming should also understand well the inherent weakness narcissism that characterizes much of social of the often-assumed but less-often examined media, are perhaps symptoms of this elevation and principle that only empirical explanations are acceptance of the self as the unquestioned final acceptable. As contemporary philosopher Edward criterion for answers to an ever-widening set of Feser points out, that kind of popular, pre-critical questions. The commonplace invocation of the is either self-defeating or trivially true. principle of autonomy as the (putatively) supreme The proposition Only scientific knowledge is authentic principle that ought to settle so many morally knowledge is not itself scientifically (“scientifically” significant public policy questions (e.g., those understood here in a narrow sense of regarding access to abortion, physician-assisted “empirically”) verifiable, and thus the principle suicide, and pornography) both reflects and eliminates itself. If one were to avoid this reinforces this tendency. One notable difficulty by expanding the meaning of “scientific manifestation of the sort of individualism in knowledge” to include any conclusion drawn by question here can be found in the area of means of reasoning from observed data (including reproductive technology. The laboratory first-person data introspectively observed) to production of a child according to the preferences unobserved proportionate causes, then the of the parent(s) is a widely accepted project which improved statement would become rather less regularly includes the discarding of other controversial and, more to the point, unable to laboratory-generated embryos who do not fit the ground a peremptory dismissal of the desired profile. Furthermore, this desired profile metaphysical presuppositions behind the Ignatian may be one that includes a disability. In some ideals we have been considering.10 cases the production of the preferred kind of child may involve not only the selection of an embryo * with a certain disability, but also the subsequent choice by the parent(s) not to mitigate the Individualism is another cultural error that bumps disability by means of available and effective up against the accounts of the person, the world, therapies.13 What morally underwrites this practice and God that underlie well-known Ignatian (insofar as it is ever seriously challenged) are commitments. As with materialism, it is likely the individualized, subjective accounts of health and case that many students at Jesuit institutions have disability that are grounded not in the nature of the uncritically adopted this basic stance from the thing (that is, in the proper functioning of the culture rather than appropriated it as their own organs and systems of the human being) but in the after a careful philosophical examination of its preferences of the parent(s).14 As suggested earlier, foundations and implications. The individualism a similar autonomy-heavy, individualistic approach in question here identifies the subject as the to the value of life is found in the standard cases uncontested criterion of just about everything that in favor of rights to abortion and physician- has anything to do with the good for oneself and assisted suicide.15 the kind of life one chooses to lead. This cultural norm leaves little room for anything other than Students emerging from institutions of higher oneself to question the truth of one’s judgments education that claim the Jesuit and Catholic bearing upon such matters. Almost thirty years traditions as their own ought to be prepared to ago philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre described this challenge philosophically our culture’s habitual cultural shift as heading in the direction of “the and seemingly rarely examined elevation of the

Jesuit Higher Education 6(2): 155-165 (2017) 158 Tully: Philosophy in Our Core individual. Philosophy does have the resources to The challenge to the individualism of the day lay bare and push back against what so many offered by just these two philosophers is students seem to take for granted, namely, that substantial and sophisticated, and there is more each person is alone competent to craft his or her where it came from. Our graduates should know own answers to the basic questions, “What am these challenges well. I?”, “What is the value of my life?”, and “How ought I live?”, and that such self-constitution is Perhaps some students have moved past the sort best done free of any unwanted baggage that of inchoate individualism in question here and family, community, and tradition would offer as endorse some form of libertarianism. Their strand guidance. Contemporary philosophers Peter of individualism may be one that follows the spirit Singer and Alasdair MacIntyre, despite widely of Ayn Rand, whose character John Galt declares divergent views on many important issues, each “I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will call attention to the eminently contestable never live for the sake of another man, nor ask philosophical anthropology that is suggested by another man to live for mine.”19 Rand believed this cultural orthodoxy. Singer finds the idea of that “[i]f any civilization is to survive, it is the the “independent individual” to be “unhistorical, morality of altruism that men have to reject.”20 At abstract and ultimately inexplicable.”16 MacIntyre the heart of this posture towards the world stands elaborates, pointing to some indisputable facts the atomic individual, and the development of about each of us: civilization is to be measured in terms of its “progress toward a society of privacy.”21 Yet, as We find ourselves placed at some with the aforementioned brand of individualism, particular point within a network of this notion of the human being and this account relationships of giving and receiving in of progress seems conceptually incompatible with which, generally and characteristically, the Ignatian ideal of cura personalis as a legitimate what and how far we are able to give and authoritative call to serve the authentic well- depends in part on what and how far we being of others. The great distance between the received…. So understood, the ideals of Rand and those of Ignatius is made relationships from which the independent manifest simply by attending to the sort of practical reasoner emerges and through metanoia that each calls for. Here again, Philosophy which she or he continues to be sustained has something important to say. For example, are such that from the outset she or he is Robert George, a contemporary public intellectual in debt.17 who has spent a career philosophically articulating and defending elements of the moral worldview With each human being having been utterly at the which Jesuit colleges and universities claim as their mercy of, and shaped by, particular families, own, explains that libertarianism communities, and traditions, the idea of the independent individual on offer in our culture is a affirms a genuine truth—in this case, the fiction, an impoverished account of the concrete value and importance of liberty or person. MacIntyre also points to certain recurring personal autonomy—but affirms it so patterns that are no doubt to be found in each emphatically and indeed single-mindedly student’s life and that generate certain basic that it winds up denying other equally commitments that are neither revocable nor important truths and values. conditioned upon one’s changeable preferences: Libertarianism of the Ayn Randian sort emphasizes individualism so strongly that And the kind of care that was needed to it ends up treating human sociability and make us what we have in fact the values connected to it (e.g., friendship, become…had to be, if it was to be marriage, community, solidarity) as purely effective, unconditional care for the instrumental goods, rather than intrinsic human being as such, whatever the and constitutive aspects of human well- outcome. And this is the kind of care that being and fulfillment. The value of human we in turn now owe or will owe.18 relationships and associations is reduced to their utility and efficiency in enabling

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the partners or members to achieve their however, such is not the case. So many students individual goals.22 take it for granted that even the most settled moral beliefs are not really true in any “hard” George, MacIntyre, and Singer are just a few sense, that is, in any sense that would allow one to notable philosophers who offer a reasoned say that those who think otherwise are actually critique of, and plausible alternative to, the mistaken, that they are in error. Their relativism fits individualism that characterizes so much of rather easily with the materialism and contemporary culture, the culture from which our individualism that round out this suite of ideas students come and to which they shall return. The that shape so much of their worldview. It also insights that these and other philosophers offer disposes them to accept some of the more are grounded in reason and other common philosophically elaborated defenses of this elements of the lived experience of these students. position, leaving them to wonder skeptically what This lived experience, together with the kind of sort of empirical confirmation can be found for sustained critical reflection that characterizes the belief that something even as odious as slavery Philosophy, can provide an oft-missing measure is, in fact, objectively morally wrong. “Where,” they of rational depth and force to the Ignatian ideals might learn ask, “would one look, and what would that shape the identity and characteristic discourse one need to observe, to confirm (or falsify) this of Jesuit colleges and universities. In this way, proposition?” Finally, if what is authentically good Philosophy offers an irreplaceable contribution to for an individual is simply whatever he or she our tradition’s case that the individualism of the asserts to be good based upon personal feelings day does not withstand scrutiny, and that the and preferences (which surely have been partly obligations related to cura personalis and being men shaped by cultural practices and preferences), on and women for others are more than mere what grounds could one individual claim that sentiment. This case, grounded as it is in reason another’s conception of the good is inadequate, or and common experience, may travel well as the even mistaken? Can a preference be mistaken? students leave our institutions and re-enter the What would such an assertion even mean? world. With the status of moral “facts” thus settled, * moral beliefs lose objective measure and, with that, rational force. Contemporary philosopher In addition to materialism and individualism, and teacher James McBrayer finds this moral relativism—the belief that there are no downgrading of moral beliefs to be rooted in a objective moral truths to be known—is a dangerous, unsustainable, and demonstrably false background belief that so many students bring distinction between fact and opinion that has been with them into our classrooms. This belief is to be woven into the curriculum and culture of so many distinguished from the idea that moral truths are elementary and secondary schools. According to difficult to discern but are, at least in principle, McBrayer, many of our students come to our knowable (like, for instance, the truths of particle institutions believing that a fact is “something that physics). The underlying metaphysical position is is true about a subject and can be tested or simple: there is no moral dimension to reality that proven” and a belief is merely “what someone one can know in the robust sense of this term. As thinks, feels, or believes.”23 Over the course of with the other two background beliefs already their primary and secondary education, it becomes discussed, our students’ commitment to this kind axiomatic to these students that each of our claims of relativism seems not to have been borne of belongs in one, and only one, of these two careful and sustained philosophical deliberation. categories.24 As soon as the claims of morality are Most students seem to take for granted that one placed in their proper category, namely that of can, with persistent and careful study, correctly belief, the notion that some moral claims could be grasp the nature of quarks and stars and viruses true and others false becomes intellectually and gravity. These things are, in a loose sense, unsustainable (and culturally inappropriate). The “out there” to be known; they are “really real” and fruit of this categorizing and consequent deflating one can get it right about them (and one can get it of moral claims is a moral relativism that wrong, too, as history has shown). With morality,

Jesuit Higher Education 6(2): 155-165 (2017) 160 Tully: Philosophy in Our Core undermines any serious moral discourse about Philosophy, though, can help here. It is the what is right and what is good.25 discipline best equipped to challenge those for whom moral relativism is the presumptively right Here is MacIntyre’s “privatization of the good” in position. Instead of treating relativism as the full bloom. Individualism and moral relativism enlightened third way above the fray of ongoing each contribute to the idea that what is moral disagreement, Philosophy asks, persistently authentically good for any individual is simply and in an intellectually demanding way, simple but what that individual determines to be good for profound questions such as “Is moral relativism himself or herself, and this determination will be true?” and “How does one know it to be true (or based upon personal feelings and preferences. false)?” Furthermore, this discipline teaches us not This account of the human good, and its to accept any answer simply because it is sincerely corollaries in the fields of applied ethics and held. Instead, it demands that all answers be public policy, seems to function as common philosophically developed and subjected to ground in our students’ moral worldviews, sustained critical scrutiny; reasoning and evidence, however inchoate these worldviews may be. not feeling and popularity, are the standards that Because it is rarely, if ever, called into question must be met. these students fail to see that this common ground ultimately reduces to what McIntyre calls “private James Rachels is one contemporary philosopher arbitrariness.”26 who challenges moral relativism by asking relativists why a reasonable person ought to One of the costs of this moral worldview is the believe their foundational claim that there are no rather stultified moral reasoning that its adherents objective moral truths. Rachels reports that the often engage in. Many students earnestly endorse answer he would usually receive was something moral propositions regarding substantive human along the lines of, “Because people disagree on goods (e.g., Health care is good; we as a people should moral issues.”28 This answer is consistent with the promote it.) that, when coupled with their answer that I have been offered by so many characteristic default-to-relativism, makes them students throughout my teaching career. Yet, vulnerable to a certain kind of manipulation. For Rachels presses, how is it that disagreement over a example, in the morally complex field of particular issue is sufficient to show that there is biomedical research, proponents of research no objective truth in that area? Perhaps, he offers, projects often employ moral terms in their cases one reason there is disagreement in this area is for public funding. They explain that the proposed that some people are right and others are research is aimed at developing cures and mistaken. 29 Such is often the most reasonable therapies for certain diseases and thus is good and explanation for disagreement in other areas of ought to be supported legally and financially. human inquiry. Consider history and the various Students are often persuaded by such cases and sciences. The story of each of these disciplines is express support for public policies to protect, and rife with disagreement, yet it is not considered a public funding to facilitate, these endeavors. Yet sign of great wisdom to conclude from this fact when serious moral objections are raised about that there is no objective truth in these areas. Yet some element(s) of an otherwise appealing project so many students find this to be the only (say, that it calls for creating and experimenting reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the fact upon human embryos) many of these same of moral disagreement. The inconsistency here is students summarily dismiss such concerns rather noteworthy, but is a problem of which few because, they point out, moral objections are really students seem to take note. just subjective preferences that must not be imposed upon others and must not be permitted Furthermore, Rachels and many others suggest to obstruct progress. In this way the culture has that the proponents of this standard case for formed these students in such a way that they relativism overstate the nature and depth of the constitute easy and reliable support for such moral disagreement one observes. Does a bit of morally problematic research.27 careful study not reveal at least hints of a historically and culturally transcendent consensus on at least a few foundational principles (e.g.,

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Friendship is to be respected; Health should be promoted), identity-contributing element to this tradition. As a consensus that perhaps points away from educators in institutions committed to the relativism? Assuming that anything short of Ignatian principles cura personalis, metanoia, the unanimity trumps any claim to truth in this area of magis, and finding God in all things, is it not our inquiry, some thoughtful students might quickly obligation to prepare our students to push back point to individuals who claim to remain outside against these harmful and mistaken cultural of this putative moral consensus (in my presumptions by offering them our tradition’s experience, these individuals are always richer and more accurate accounts of the person, hypothetical since the students know no real the community, and the world? deniers of these propositions) as a defeating counter example. Yet to this granting of veto- Consider for a moment just a few of the properly power to the (imagined?) gainsayer, 20th century philosophical questions generated by the familiar philosopher Anthony Flew had this to say: Ignatian ideal cura personalis: What does this phrase mean? Who counts as a person: the unborn, the The attempt to show that there is no permanently unconscious, the profoundly philosophical knowledge by simply urging disabled? Why? Is cura personalis objectively that there is always someone who can be obligatory, or merely a suggested way of relied on to remain unconvinced is a proceeding? Is failure to care for the person a common fallacy...I called it the But- moral failure? What is a moral failure? What is There-Is-Always-Someone-Who-Will- authentic care? Is there such thing as inauthentic or Never-Agree Diversion.30 false care? By what criteria does one make such a judgment? Are there authentic human goods? St. In this way philosophy can diagnose and offer Ignatius believed the answer to this last question reason-based pushback against the moral to be “yes.” Plato agreed. In Plato’s Gorgias one relativism that is orthodoxy among so many of finds Socrates criticizing the orator Gorgias for our students. This particular error leaves no room pandering to his audience rather than teaching for belief in the objectivity and truthfulness of the them about right and wrong. “The difference,” moral dimensions of Ignatian ideals like cura Socrates explains, “is that pandering pays no personalis, metanoia, and the Ignatian call to be men regard to the best interests of its object but and women for others; it must be challenged if catches fools with the bait of ephemeral pleasure these elements of our tradition are to be found and tricks them into holding it in the highest credible. esteem.”31 Socrates goes on to declare this sort of approach “dishonorable” in that “it makes * pleasure its aim instead of good” and “because it has no rational understanding of the nature of the Philosophy is a discipline uniquely equipped to various things it applies to or the person to whom prepare our students to stand athwart the it applies.”32 Here the great Socrates gestures materialism, individualism, and moral relativism of toward a philosophical claim that forms part of our culture. It offers sustained, reason-based the foundation of the Catholic intellectual critiques of these cultural presumptions which are tradition, namely, that there are authentic human in irreconcilable conflict with some of the deepest goods that are the keys to human well-being, and commitments of the Jesuit and Catholic tradition. that there are false, counterfeit “goods” that tempt Other disciplines—Literature, History, Theology, one in the other direction. But is Socrates (and St. etc.—each in their own way can challenge these Ignatius) right here? Is this foundational claim, a errors, but none can do so in the manner of claim which anchors the Ignatian notion cura philosophy. As each of these three errors is, at personalis, true? If so, what are these authentic bottom, a properly philosophical claim, each is in human goods that ought to be pursued? These are need of a properly philosophical challenge. among the properly philosophical questions that Furthermore, the Jesuit and Catholic tradition’s must be addressed systematically if one committed respective alternatives to each of these claims are to caring for persons is to be confident that their in need of robust and properly philosophical obligation is real and that the care they are articulation and defense given that each is an providing is authentic. Given this requirement, an

Jesuit Higher Education 6(2): 155-165 (2017) 162 Tully: Philosophy in Our Core institution committed to handing on to its stage along the continuum of growth and decline. students an understanding of, and developing in The simple and profound philosophical questions them a sustained commitment to, the Ignatian generated by these conflicting anthropologies ideal cura personalis should see to it that these should be addressed head on: Which is the more students appreciate the philosophical grounds of adequate account?33 Are the practices identified this ideal. In doing so, these institutions will be above consistent with a correct understanding of preparing their students to push back against the the subject who is the object of cura personalis? Do widespread tendency to level all accounts of what such practices serve the authentic good of all is good and what is right by reducing them all to those involved? Note, again, that these are mere cultural idiosyncrasy and/or personal properly philosophical questions, and they preference. demand properly philosophical attention. If Jesuit institutions of higher education are going to The foregoing does not come close to exhausting recommend our vision of the human person over the ways in which one might trace out the that offered by much of contemporary culture, philosophical dimensions of the notion cura then it is incumbent upon us to do so in a manner personalis. Notice that if the good of a particular that is philosophically serious. Here, then, one thing is determined by the nature of that thing, finds a crucial and irreplaceable role for then an investigation into the good of the person Philosophy in bringing our students to appropriate will involve an investigation into the nature of the the truths of our tradition and take them out to person. And here again one sees the Ignatian the culture. understanding of the human being to be conceptually incompatible with the materialism * discussed above. According to the tradition that Jesuit colleges and universities claim as their own, The challenge briefly laid out here is nothing new. the person is (in very broad terms) a body-mind It is just the Socratic (and Ignatian) call to the combination, each part an essential aspect of the examined life. As mentioned earlier, there are identity of the whole. Care for the person, many disciplines, each in its distinctive way, which therefore, is care for a being whose body is part of can challenge our students to examine not only its identity, but which is, at the same time, not their own lives but also the life of their merely a body. The implications of this communities and the basic commitments of their philosophical anthropology on what should count culture. Philosophy has an irreplaceable role here, as authentic cura personalis are profound. Following too. To diminish the role of this discipline in our the Ignatian account, to promote, protect, and schools is to diminish the preparation we offer to respect the living human body, whether an our students whom we challenge to go and set the embryo, a newborn, a profoundly disabled child, world on fire. This challenge echoes the challenge an aging adult suffering from dementia, etc., is to that the life of Socrates raises, namely, to do promote, protect, and respect the person. Our where they live what he did in Athens: revere truth students should, at the very least, understand the and justice, question the prevailing “wisdom” of nuanced philosophical arguments that underwrite the age, irritate, cajole, point to nonsense and call this position. They should come to see just how it nonsense, demand and help find better answers. the de-personalization and instrumentalization of The alternative to this understanding of the body on offer in our culture—the renting of Philosophy as a friend of cura personalis, metanoia, surrogate mothers, the purchasing of organs from etc. is what may be called “Philosophy without the poor, the banality of sex in a hook-up culture commitment.” This alternative understands saturated with pornography, the sexualization of philosophy to be little more than a buffet of ideas ever-younger girls, the putative “right” to and arguments which equip one to support or to physician-assisted suicide, the normalization of critique just about any position, depending upon contraception, the laboratory production of one’s desires. Philosophy on this model does not embryonic human beings for experimentation, just revere truth and justice, does not illuminate cura to name a few—are incompatible with this personalis, is not animated by the magis, and does understanding of the person as essentially, but not not seek metanoia. Instead, one engaged in this way exclusively, a living body always at some particular

Jesuit Higher Education 6(2): 155-165 (2017) 163 Tully: Philosophy in Our Core of philosophizing is akin to G. K. Chesterton’s culture that will often be at odds with all that we new rebel. Chesterton writes, stand for. If we have not prepared them to withstand these challenges and to be leaven in the [T]he new rebel is a skeptic, and will not world by exposing the philosophical errors of the entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; age and offering a better alternative, then we have he can never be really a revolutionist. And not done for them all that we could, and should, the fact that he doubts everything really have done. Indeed, one clear measure of the gets in his way when he wants to authenticity and depth of an institution’s denounce anything. For all denunciation commitment to its Ignatian beliefs and animating implies a moral doctrine of some kind; aspirations, and to the well-being of its students, is and the modern revolutionist doubts not that institution’s commitment to Philosophy in its only the institution he denounces, but the core curriculum. Maintaining (and restoring, even doctrine by which he denounces it…. In expanding, where needed) a central role for short, the modern revolutionist, being an Philosophy in the core curricula of Jesuit colleges infinite skeptic, is always engaged in and universities is a necessary element in undermining his own mines. In his book authentically living out the mission and identity of on politics he attacks men for trampling Catholic and Jesuit institutions of higher learning. on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes Notes

of revolt. By rebelling against everything 1 The third had a couple of weeks of ethics as part of an he has lost his right to rebel against Introduction to Philosophy elective. anything.34 2 Thomas Nagel, Mind & Cosmos (New York: Oxford Standing in contrast to the role that Philosophy University Press, 2012), 4. might play in the new rebel’s life stands the role 3 For each of the last several years I have asked the students that Philosophy plays in the Catholic and Jesuit in my Introduction to Philosophy classes whether they tradition. Philosophy in this tradition, one shaped believe that the empirical sciences could, at least in principle, in part by the ideals and aspirations of cura “read” my brain activity and allow others to know precisely what I was thinking about and how I felt about what I was personalis, magis, finding God in all things, and metanoia, thinking about (e.g., “You are thinking about your is Philosophy with a perspective, with deep grandmother’s kitchen, and you feel that you miss her. You commitments, with a certain orientation. It is also hope to see her again someday.”). In every class to date Philosophy that will frequently bump up against, the vast majority of students answered in the affirmative. When asked what they base this answer upon, they are and can stand up against, the aforementioned typically unable to elaborate. errors of our age. It is not Philosophy as a buffet of ideas, arguments, and positions that can be 4 By “science,” I mean empirical investigation, and by used as needed to manipulate others, to advance “scientific” I mean the data and conclusions generated by empirical investigation. one’s program, to make oneself useful to those who would pursue lesser things. Instead, it is 5 For a careful critique of the scientism discussed here see philosophy as Socrates practiced it, it is Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction philosophy in the Ignatian tradition that our (Piscataway, NJ: Editiones Scholasticae, 2014), 9-24. colleges and universities claim as their own. 6 Edward Pentin, “Benedict XVI Publicly Responds to Within this tradition, both the role and the value Atheist’s Critique,” National Catholic Register, September, 24 of the study of philosophy far exceed that of 2013, accessed January 5, 2017, cultivating a set of transferrable intellectual skills http://m.ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-benedict-publicly- responds-to-atheists-critique/#.WWJpd4TyuM- (critical thinking, etc.). This ancient discipline also offers our students what no other discipline can: a 7 Lewis Lawson and Victor Kramer, eds., Conversations with sustained, direct, and nuanced rational articulation Walker Percy (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, and defense of the Catholic and Jesuit tradition’s 1985), 317. identity-conferring beliefs and ideals. As our 8 Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” in Walt Whitman (1819- graduates leave us we know that they head off to a 1892), Modern American Poetry, eds. Ed Folsom, Cary Nelson,

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and Trish Loughran, accessed January 5, 2017, 23 James McBrayer, “Why Our Children Don’t Think There http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/whitman/s Are Moral Facts,” The New York Times, March 2, 2015, ong.htm accessed April 1, 2016, http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2015/03/02/ 9 For an undergraduate-accessible account of St. John Paul why-our-children-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/. Note II’s philosophical-theological anthropology, see Michael how the materialism and scientism discussed earlier Waldstein, introduction to Man and Woman He Created Them: underwrites this distinction. A Theology of the Body, by John Paul II, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006), 1-130. 24 As McBrayer points out, this dichotomy does not withstand scrutiny given that so many claims easily fit into 10 Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics. both categories, e.g., I think that the earth orbits the sun.

11 Alasdair MacIntyre, “The Privatization of the Good: An 25 David Brooks, “If It Feels Right,” The New York Times, Inaugural Lecture,” The Review of Politics 52, no. 3 (1990): 344- September 13, 2011, accessed April 4, 2017, 361. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/opinion/if-it-feels- right.html. 12 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833, 851 (1992). 26 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 8. 13 For a detailed exposition of these practices see Susannah Baruch, David Kaufman, and Kathy Hudson, “Genetic 27 Eric Cohen, “The Ends of Science,” First Things November Testing of Embryos: Practices and Perspectives of US In- 2006, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2006/11/the- Vitro Fertilization Clinics,” Fertility and Sterility 89, no. 5 ends-of-science. Some may notice that here the supposed (2008): 1053-1058. fact-value dichotomy is either ignored or invoked, depending upon the rhetorical needs of those who support the research 14 For a critical elaboration on this point see Luke Gormally, in question. “The Good of Health and the Ends of Medicine,” in Natural Moral Law in Contemporary Society, H. Zaborowski, ed. 28 James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 3rd ed. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, (USA: McGraw-Hill, 1999), 17ff. 2010), 264-284. 29 Ibid. 15 It is my experience that most students see physician assisted suicide as morally licit and a matter of autonomy 30 Antony Flew, There Is a God (New York: Harper Collins, alone. Indeed, my experience is that upon first considering 2007), 41. Flew, a well-known contemporary philosopher and the issue in class most students have a very difficult time long-time athiest moved late in his life from atheism to deism coming up with any plausible philosophical rebuttal to the because, he explains in this book, that is where the evidence orthodox autonomy-grounded justification that is on offer in lead. the culture. 31 Plato, Gorgias, trans. Walter Hamilton (London: Penguin 16 Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Group, 2004), 464e. Cambridge University Press, 1993), 227. 32 Ibid., 465. 17 Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals (Peru, IL: Carus Publishing, 2001), 99. 33 This question demands the consideration of another properly philosophical question: What are the standards for 18 Ibid., 101. adequacy here?

19 Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (New York: Penguin Putnam, 34 G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Haddonfield, NJ: Dodd, 1999). Mead & Co, 2013), 29.

20 Ayn Rand, “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World” in Philosophy: Who Needs It? (New York: New American Library, 1982), 61.

21 Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual (New York: Signet, 1963), 84.

22 Robert George, “Libertarianism,” in Mirror of Justice: A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory, May 20, 2010, accessed December 5, 2016, http://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/05/li bertarianism.html

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