Discursos y ensayos sobre estudios universitarios by John Henry Cardinal Newman

Abstract

Reviewed by: Discursos y ensayos sobre estudios universitarios by John Henry Cardinal Newman Pablo Blanco-Sarto Discursos y ensayos sobre estudios universitarios JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN, TRANSLATION AND INTRODUCTION BY PAULA JULLIAN AND ANA MARÍA NEIRA Santiago de Chile: Ediciones UC, 2021. 176 pages. E-book: $20,000.00 COP, $12 USD. ISBN: 9789561427501. The detailed historical and biographical editorial introduction focuses on the figure of John Henry Newman as an educator. It contextualizes the university text with the educational initiatives of the English saint, especially those in Birmingham. In The Idea of a University, Newman speaks of the relationship of the humanities not only with the arts but also with the sciences, especially physics and medicine. The Newmanian adventure in the Catholic University of Ireland aimed to overcome the dominant empiricism and pragmatism of the day, for which he proposed the study of the classics. It thus sought the integral education of the students, which was thought to transcend the education of a mere gentleman, and thus he proposed a liberal education. The editors insist on the idea of the university as sets of knowledge that constitute an organic whole, and so, the introduction focuses on the unity of knowledge, as it occurs in creation, despite the limitations of human intelligence that tend to fragment reality in order to know it in its totality. Newman witnessed the exclusion of theology from the universities, and so he insisted that it should be included in the university curriculum; otherwise, there remained a vacuum of knowledge that could only be filled by philosophy and theology. For this reason, the editors explain the necessary depth of knowledge and the importance of knowledge for its own sake. The absence of the love of knowledge [End Page 105] for its own sake, the editors argue, make the university disappear, turning it into a mere center for the dispensation of degrees. In Discursos y ensayos sobre estudios universitarios Newman alludes to the loss of the unitary dimension of knowledge, which leads to an impoverished fragmentation of knowledge. By leaving theology and philosophy out of the university, the understanding of reality was left without causes or ends, and so it was divided and impoverished. Including theology and philosophy in the overall university curriculum prevented the risk of partiality and many forms of reductionism. On the one hand, there was an excessive prominence given to science to the detriment of other fields, commonly known today as the arts and humanities. There was a risk of indiscriminate growth of one discipline in a unilateral way, which was an important issue when it came to the study of the human being. This vision of the unity was beautifully captured in this quote from the speech “Bearing of Theology on other Knowledge.” The second major theme discussed in the introduction is liberal education, which is found in the first part of Newman’s work, but in fact runs through all the texts of the book. Starting from a Socratic origin and medieval developments, Newman seeks to train the intellect of the student to form him for life. At the same time, for Newman liberal education was not limited to the learning of certain contents of a particular curriculum, as it had been in the medieval university, as well as the nineteenth-century university. Rather, Newman sought to develop the habit of autonomous thinking, or what he called the “culture of the intellect.” This educational proposal applied to students in all schools and faculties of the university, since this intellectual habit was good for the mind, providing it with the necessary skills to seek the good and the truth. Liberality thus referred to not seeking an immediate reward, but seeing the value of knowledge as such, as an end in itself. There is justification for this new translation into Spanish, despite the fact that Eunsa (Pamplona, 2011) and Encuentro (Madrid, 2014) have already published translations. The present edition is a selection of passages that includes speeches about letters and sciences, which were chosen deliberately. In addition, a summary of the most relevant ideas of each chapter is included, and the text has been edited in a way that only content relevant...