PRAXIS. A Version of the Human Condition Notes by Dr.Bernard Lee, S.M.

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1 Immediate Ramifications PRAXIS A Version of the Human Condition Notes by Dr.Bernard Lee, S.M. What it means to be a Catholic university is that higher learning is shaped in significant, experienceable, empirically describable ways by Catholic culture. This presumes that we have a working model of Catholic culture as well as of university culture. In this gathering, we are considering Thomas Groome s description of Catholic culture as a working model. For us who already have first hand experience of both Catholic and university culture, a praxis model says that we do not get clarity primarily or only by arguing the model intellectually (though that has pay-off), but by setting it to work in the stream of experience, and then judging whether the outcome makes sense to our experience. At some common sense level, probably anyone could say, let s just try it out and see whether it works. Why bother about all this praxis stuff? Well, the think-act conversation is more than just trying it out. It s the kind of conversation that constitutes culture when it goes on with some normative regularity. If what we do together functionally deepens our hold on Catholic mission in a Marianist university, the follow up is how do we replicate the same kind of mission appropriation back home in our institutional culture. That has been Tom Groome s concern in the formation of Catholic and Christian identity. How does a praxis model help us understand the socialization process through which our identity is formed? And, how might this process give identity to a Catholic, Marianist university? That s what we hope our time with Tom Groome will help us fashion. A Quick Take on Praxis Three quick things can be said about the meaning of praxis that will be pursued below in greater, but still limited, detail. First, this is a way of thinking that says the human calling to participate in creating human history. For a Christian, this presumes that we regard God s intentions for human history, as we learn them through Jesus Christ. Truth is essential for the right work in making history, but making history is the human destiny. This has implications for the idea of a university, and for the role of Catholic and Marianist culture in the culture of the university. Second, all our learning takes rise from our being in the world, that is, from experience, and then from reflection upon experience:

2 a. Everything we know shapes our world-view. b. Our world-view, in turn, affects our living in the world (sometimes a lot, other times a little). c. The effects of what we know of our living belong to the meaning of what we know. William James said that if you want to know what something means, set it to work in the stream of experience, and what it does belongs to what it means. As we explore eight narrative components of Catholic culture, we must do so not [only] by intellectual discussion, but also by setting them to work in the stream of our universities lives. If the eight gifts of the Catholic narrative that Tom Groome describes are to be fully understood, setting them to work in the stream of our universities experience is essential to our grasp of their real meaning. Third, there is a relentless and ever-unfinished rhythm between action and reflection. I know what something means through my involvement and exposure and my reflection on it. How I interpret will then influence my further presence in the world, which in turn will give me new insight into what I am trying to understand. The new insight will reshape my being-in-the-world, which then reshapes my interpretation of the world. This is the hermeneutical circle. It s also sort of a praxic circle. It goes on relentlessly. The discussion to come is not organized around the above three quick takes, but contextualizes them. A Less Quick Take on Praxis Praxis is an awkward word. And grabbing hold of it is difficult because it sounds so much like practice and practical. All these words are of course related. But conflating them misses the richer sense of praxis. Thomas Groome addressed praxis in the context of forming Christian identity in a religious education context. John Dewey developed a kind of praxis approach (not his word, though) to education of any kind. Johannes Metz used a similar approach in developing the essential relationship between the mystical and the political. We will use it (and Tom will help us) to strategize the development of the Catholic story in the institutional culture of higher education. Greek and Hebrew Visions of the Human Condition Praxis is an alternative way of interpreting what it means to be human, one that has deeper affinities to a biblical world (and thus to Jesus assumptive world) than to the Greek interpretation of being human, which has influenced Western experience profoundly. For short hand, I will use Greek and Hebrew for these distinct meanings. Greek means a long tradition grounded in people like Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas, Maritain, Rahner, Lonergan, etc. Hebrew means a long tradition grounded in the prophets, more recently in American pragmatism, John Dewey s theories of education, phenomenology (John Paul II s book, Person Acting), a line of Western philosophers, liberation theology, political theology, and methodologies in ministry education (practical theology).

3 This is intricate theoretical stuff, but is having a significant impact upon education at all levels. The Hebrew and Greek senses of human nature differ significantly. Each of them makes good sense and can make a good case for itself. I started in one and landed in the other. My Hebrew tendency certainly colors how I tend to see things now so I am acknowledging my bias up front. A Greek Model of Human Nature and Human Fulfillment The Greek word for knowledge is gignoskein. It emphasizes the intellectual or cognitive grasp of something. Something is true when what is in the mind deeply resembles what is out there objectively. The desire for truth is what drives the human person. Thomas Aquinas says that Happiness consists in the operation of the speculative intellect rather than the practical intellect... [And] perfect happiness consists entirely in contemplation (II-II, q. 3, a. 5). The contemplation of truth, beauty, and goodness satisfies human beings in the fullest, most complete way. Aristotle s thinking has had a profound influence upon Western culture generally and Western Christianity specifically. In his major work on Ethics, he describes three kinds of knowledge. a) The most important kind of knowledge is of truth, beauty, goodness, first principles (and for Christians, God). Our splendor is in our rationality, and because it is, the contemplation of beauty, truth, and goodness, and above all, the contemplation of God, is what fulfills us most completely and most finally. This kind of knowledge is called theoria and our use of it is episteme, to use his language. But theory doesn t mean there what it means in English today. It s not formulating possible interpretations of something; rather, it is immediately knowing the good, the true, and the beautiful, and finding ultimate human fulfillment in so doing. b) Since we live in a world with other people, we have to make sense of this; we are obligated to help make it a good world. The most important question is: what kind of a world should we be making together? Now Aristotle adds a wonderful piece to this: if you know what kind of a world we should be making, your knowledge implicates you in working to build such a world. Knowing what kind of a world we need is phronesis. Being faithful to the implication of that knowledge is praxis. There s no human virtue unless there s both phronesis and praxis. Knowing what needs to be done implicates us in doing it in whatever ways are feasible. Incidentally, for Aristotle, the best possible world is one that maximizes the contemplation of truth, beauty, and goodness the world that empowers people to become philosophers, that is, lovers of wisdom. c) The third kind of knowledge is about production: knowing how to make things. This kind of knowledge is techne; knowing how to build a house or make a table; actually doing it, using the knowledge productively, in poiesis. Unlike prhonesis, knowing how to build a house doesn t by itself implicate me morally actually to build one.

4 Something else may implicate me (a homeless person), but the knowledge itself doesn t implicate me. Since contemplation is the highest experience open to a rational being (this is a Greek presupposition about human nature), the possession of truth about first things is its own reward. Its value doe not lie in its application, but only in its contemplation. The classical liberal arts tradition celebrates the quest of truth for its own sake, because possession of it fulfills the deepest human hungers. In The Idea of a University, John Henry Newman writes: That alone is liberal knowledge which stands upon its own pretensions, which is independent of sequel [consequences], expects no complement, refuses to be informed by any end [goal], or absorbed into any art, in order duly to present itself to our contemplation. (Newman, 108). The ascetical tradition (e.g., the three ages of the interior life, or the interior castles) gives to the contemplation of God the top billing. A Hebrew Model of Human Nature and Human Fulfillment Praxis is really a judgment and a theory about what it means to be human. It resembles Hebrew more than Greek (and Western Christianity has been very Greek, very Hellenized). The Hebrew sense of human nature is very similar to Aristotle s description of phronesis/praxis but without theoria/episteme above it. In both instances there is urgency about building the right kind of world. But the difference is huger than that easy sentence may evoke! The huge difference, however, is that in the Hebrew anthropology, when human action/living coincides with God s action/living, that is union with God, and there is not a higher one in life to be sought in contemplation. Contemplation and ecstasy are not dismissed, but they enhance the relationship and the deepened collaboration that follows them. Living does not exist for them, but they for living. In the creation account in Genesis, God tells the first human beings to take charge of the earth and make it fruitful, As the story unfurls, and human beings are called to be holy as God is holy, we learn that God s holiness is experienced above all in God s insistence upon tender mercies (hesed) and justice or righteousness (tsedeq). In her Magnificat, this is the kind of world that Mary announces, because it interprets her son s mission. Whether Greek or Jew, to know what kind of a world we are called to make implicates us in making it, and requires our commitment. For a Greek, the doing of it is humanly penultimate, for the contemplation of God is ultimate; but for the Jew there is an ultimacy about this and therefore a different kind of urgency, and a different kind of spirituality.

5 Action/Reflection, Reflection/Action, On and On and On The Hebrew word for knowledge, yada, also has the meaning of sexual intercourse ( he took her into his tent and knew her ). For a Jew, knowledge is never simply a cognitive grasp. It is an interactive engagement with what is known, and the engagement itself teaches us, gives us knowledge. We are involved and implicated in our knowing. There is a relentless rhythm between action and reflection. ThinkAct is like a single word. The French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty says, for example, that human comportment or behavior is the most primordial form of thought. We know through our involvement, and what we know then shapes the further involvement, which reshapes understanding, and once again revises how we live. This is incessant. Any thing we learn shapes how we see the world. How we see the world shapes how we are in the world. And the impact of anything known upon living is not just after the fact of knowing: what knowledge does in the world belongs to its meaning. Practice isn t just the application of theory. The effects of the theory enter into the theory s innards. That s why our strategic planning around the narrative elements of Catholic culture is so critical to the very meaning of Catholic culture. The hermeneutical tradition deepens this Hebrew sense of human experience. There is no such thing as an uninterpreted fact. Our experience is shaped by history, by culture, above all by language, by family background, by mood, etc. These conditioning agents do not necessarily interfere with accurate interpretation, but they do shape it deeply. No one gets it all without remainder. We do not even know ourselves that way. It helps to understand that there is no such thing as perfect objectivity. We are all conditioned, that is biased by previous experience. Bias is what makes experience possible, having a point of view, a platform from which to view. Bias is not dangerous, but being unaware of it is! Involvement in anything always deepens understanding, reshapes understanding, which then reshapes involvement often making it far more effective in terms of what we want to happen, or think should happen. Praxis like yada which means both knowledge and intercourse involves the whole person and elicits commitment. Praxis is a contact sport. So What??? Our issues then are perhaps two-fold: 1. How shall we name and prioritize the shapes of Catholic culture to which we choose to give strategic defining priority in Marianist universities? 2. How will praxis function vis-à-vis these priorities in our university culture?