Augustine and Liberal Education (review)

Kim Paffenroth and Kevin L. Hughes, eds. Augustine and Liberal EducationAldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2000 Pp. xvii + 215. $69.95.

This collection of twelve essays originated with discussions in Villanova University's humanities program about what it means to be a Catholic university in the Augustinian tradition. The book honors Professor John A. Doody, the university's humanities program director. Essays are grouped under four headings, the first three of which examine education in the Confessions. Kim Paffenroth's essay considers the pear-tree incident as an extended comment on how good or evil is provoked by good or bad company. Hence, education in groups can be a source of evil, particularly in a society that promotes success, not wisdom, as Augustine charged his own society with doing. Debra Romanick Baldwin explicates Augustine's contrast between Faustus and Ambrose as teachers. The former, while initially interesting, finally could not quench his famous student's desire for truth, while the latter, far wiser but less exotic, opened his student to the riches of scripture. Augustine's comparison is not merely that of a good to a bad teacher but serves to illumine the complexity of teaching. Good skills may be put in the service of truth or falsehood, and there is no simple correlation between good or bad teaching and the quest for truth. Thomas Martin's essay encourages us to read the Confessions as a set of exercises appropriate to a philosophical school, taking cues from Pierre Hadot's Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault.

The second group of essays explores education in Augustine's other works. Philip Cary's article examines Catholic and Protestant readings of Augustine and the implications of his eudaemonistic ethic for their respective theories of education. Daniel Doyle sees the bishop as teacher through his preaching and exegesis, and Kevin Hughes explains how Augustine's love of learning called into question "the arts reputed liberal" as much as it calls into question current manipulation of texts in the name of academic pride.

Teaching and authority in Augustine comprises the third section. Richard Jacobs narrates how the bishop's pedagogy takes students beyond a teacher's opinion to the truth itself. Teachers function only indirectly in illumination. Felix Asiedu's essay compliments this notion in his explication of De utilitate credendi. How authority should function in education and other contexts is taken up in Mark Doorley's article. Any authority without humility fails to account for human contingency, particularly regarding knowledge. Andrew Murphy's essay relating Augustine and English Protestants on the status of the earthly city reveals their common outlook on the appropriate use of coercion.

The final two essays bring Augustine to bear upon contemporary education and confirm that this book is as much about the academy as it is about Augustine, since current concerns with pedagogy and authority prompt the discussion. Marylu Hill recounts the current dearth of reading skills among students, invoking Augustine's model of the solitary reader, enhanced and modified by John Henry Newman's and John Ruskin's contributions to the modern academy. Finally, Thomas Smith pits Enlightenment theorists who presumably worked in the name of liberal inquiry against Christian support for free inquiry. He argues that the former are found lacking, while Christian faith provides firmer foundations for liberal education.

Typographical errors are glaring and abundant, and the book's price will be prohibitive, but the quality of the essays is remarkably uniform, and copious endnotes will please the serious scholar. This is a book that can be appreciated across the humanities, especially in a time when the mission and purpose of church-related education is under serious scrutiny. The essays are too sophisticated to suggest less than a nuanced reading of both Augustine and the current milieu.

 

William McDonald , Tennessee Wesleyan College

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