Education and the grammar of assent

Abstract

John Henry Newman is probably known best for The Idea of a University. In his most philosophical work, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, however, he undertakes a detailed investigation of different ways of knowing and understanding in a manner that is of clear pertinence for philosophical enquiry into education. He offers many examples and descriptions of particular experiences, from religious and secular life, and on the strength of these he argues that before enquiry can take place there must be a prior attentiveness: in Newman's preferred terms, this involves an ‘assent’, a saying ‘yes’. There is an interesting resonance here with some of the work that occupied Ludwig Wittgenstein, found in his Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough and On Certainty. My purpose in this paper is to look at the place, within the university, of a grammar of assent. What is at stake here is not a question of the relations between the university and religion but rather the question of the ethics that constitutes enquiry in higher education.