Category: Blogposts

by Jeffrey Bond

Today we present the third and final installment of an essay on John Locke’s doctrine of toleration.  The first part can be found here, and the second here.  An earlier version of this essay appeared in A Letter from the Romans, the Newsletter of the Roman Forum and the Dietrich von Hildebrand Institute, February, 1999, No. 4.

PART III

Although Locke initially attempted to identify toleration with the Christian virtue of charity, his doctrine of dogmatic toleration actually rests upon his conviction that human knowledge concerning eternal salvation is wholly subjective. Although Locke’s epistemology is somewhat concealed in his Letter, we know from his Essay Concerning Human Understanding[1] that he is an empiricist. That is to say, Locke denies that man has any innate speculative or practical notions; rather, man depends solely upon sense perception and internal reflection to obtain knowledge. Accordingly, Locke defines knowledge as “the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our Ideas” (p. 525). He asserts that his definition of knowledge is sound because it “is evident that the Mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention of the Ideas it has of them” (p. 563). Hence, Locke rejects the realistic epistemology of the ancients and the medievals who understood truth as the mind’s conformity to things. For Locke, reason has no intuitive capacity, no immediate grasp of the reality outside of itself; knowledge is therefore merely discursive. Indeed, Locke defines knowledge by the discursive act of the knower rather than by the object known. Man can know the operations of his own mind, but he cannot objectively know things outside of his mind. As a result, man is restricted to engaging in hypothetical explanations of the object before him by means of sense perception and introspection, for man cannot truly know the object itself.

We can understand, then, why Locke belittles the value of speculative knowledge at the beginning of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Since man cannot really grasp things as they are in themselves, he ought to turn his attention to matters that directly affect his life and conduct here and now. After all, Locke believes that the empirical phenomena that the mind encounters through the senses are in themselves worth little or nothing; it is the mind’s activity, according to Locke, which gives meaning to the otherwise meaningless phenomena. Here we see a perfect correspondence between Locke’s epistemology and his famous labor theory of value. In the Second Treatise, Locke stresses again and again that man’s labor gives value to nature which, prior to the addition of human effort, is relatively worthless. Since man can perceive no definite purpose or end in the empirical phenomena of nature, it is his labor, physical or mental, which artificially creates value where there was none before. In the physical realm, man’s labor transforms the meager material of nature into whatever his desires lead him to value; and in the mental realm, the activity of man’s mind brings organization and structure to the phenomena that he cannot really know in themselves. Therefore, just as physical labor is the source and value of real property, so too mental labor creates meaning by transforming the worthless raw materials of the empirical world into man’s own intellectual property, namely, his ideas.

Locke’s doctrine of toleration is a supreme example of man’s creative power with respect to intellectual property. Like the invention of money, which he identifies as the artificial creation most responsible for lifting man out of the poverty of the state of nature, Locke’s doctrine of toleration has no objective ground in the nature of things; and yet this doctrine, once it has been conventionally accepted by others, is capable of transforming the entire world in accordance with his personal vision. For Locke, even the law of non-contradiction, which the ancients and medievals identified as the first principle of the speculative intellect, has no intrinsic worth due to its speculative truth; the only value of the law of non-contradiction, or any other idea, is the labor put into formulating it, and its subsequent acceptance as valuable by others, much as men once agreed to make gold or silver the medium of exchange. Locke himself recognizes that his doctrine of toleration has no intrinsic value; but if men subjectively believe this doctrine to be true or valuable, much as they believe in money, then the doctrine becomes true and valuable for them. Although Locke rejects the possibility of a self-evident truth that can be grasped immediately by the mind, he is willing to operate as if his doctrine of toleration is self-evidently true. Simply put, the power to affect human behavior is more important to Locke than theoretical reasonableness, because man cannot really know whether or not his ideas actually conform to reality. Locke believes that man’s relation to the universe can only be defined in terms of man’s awareness of the ideas of order he constructs in his own mind, for each individual creates for himself the meaning of all empirical phenomena.

Locke’s position would seem to be as follows: since man cannot really obtain objective knowledge of a divine order outside of himself, it makes no sense to attempt to impose or even urge religious uniformity on men, for there is no standpoint outside of ourselves from which religious and political disputes can be settled. Consequently, it would be irrational to impose religious ceremonies and doctrines where man possesses mere opinions, and no real knowledge. For Locke, even the very idea of God is the product of the mind’s activity. In fact, the mind that conceives of God is really God himself. This radical subjectivism, however, is not directly taught by Locke, who apparently wished to avoid the anarchy to which this view would lead if widely embraced. Consider what Locke writes in his Two Tracts on Government about the destructive practical consequences of the collapse of all law: “all authority will vanish from the earth and, the seemly order of affairs being convulsed and the frame of government dissolved, each would be his own Lawmaker and his own God.”[2] While Locke’s view does in effect make each man the measure of all things—his own Lawmaker and his own God—Locke is at pains to conceal the full implications of his doctrine of dogmatic toleration. And yet, because he denies that there are any innate speculative or practical notions, Locke cannot really say that peace and order are objectively preferable to anarchy. He seems to grant implicitly that peace and order are self-evident goods for man, yet his own subjectivism undermines his arbitrary preference for a comfortable life rather than a violent death. Locke can really only say that he himself prefers peace and order to anarchy, although what he means by “peace” and “order” is of course wholly subjective. Apparently Locke spoke his real mind when he asserted at the beginning of the Letter that all claims of orthodoxy are disguised quest for power, for this assertion rightly applies to his own attempt to establish a new orthodoxy, i.e., to remake the world in his own image.

Despite first appearances, the doctrine of toleration is, ironically, an attempt to impose religious uniformity on the world. Locke’s claim to orthodoxy is hidden by his emphasis on toleration, but the toleration Locke preaches is dogmatic, not practical. Thus Locke gives the appearance of neutrality with respect to religious belief, but his position is anything but neutral. Real neutrality would have to allow men to consider every position, including the position that said it was the one and only true position. But this position, which is that of the Catholic Church, cannot be permitted because it directly questions the truth and authority of Locke’s dogmatic toleration. The Catholic Church, then, is the greatest impediment to Locke’s quest for power because the Church embraces dogmatic intolerance. Locke’s plan is to impose religious uniformity on the world by eliminating any real choice with respect to religion. The plan is as follows: as long as each religious group subordinates its doctrine and practices to the one supreme doctrine of toleration, these religious groups are free to differ all they want in their self-confessed subjective beliefs. And despite all their apparent disagreements, they will nevertheless belong to Locke’s universal church of toleration. The Catholic Church will then be eliminated by consensus, for all the other churches will be united against the Catholic Church for rejecting the one supreme dogma. Toleration will then become the ultimate religious good.

If the implications of Locke’s doctrine of toleration appear to be frightening, that is because they are. To see the real meaning of Locke’s doctrine is to see the internal logic of the modern enterprise. Although Locke repeatedly asserts, as do all contemporary Lockeans, that each individual is the measure for himself of religious truth, nevertheless Locke sets forth this very doctrine as somehow true for all men, namely, that God only requires each man to perform those actions and hold those beliefs that he subjectively believes God requires of him. But how, given Locke’s subjectivism, can he claim to know that the Catholic position—which says that each individual is not the measure of religious truth—is wrong? On Locke’s own terms, he must admit that an individual Catholic, who subjectively believes that the Catholic position is true, is as right in his belief as Locke is in his own. The reason Locke hates the Catholic position is that the individual Catholic claims that Catholic beliefs are objectively true and necessary for himself and others. Locke cannot say that the Catholic position is wrong, unless he claims that objectivity in religious matters is in fact possible after all. But because Locke begins by denying that men can resolve political and religious disputes on the basis of the objective merits of the conflicting positions, the best he can do is to try to achieve power over the Catholic position by convincing the world that the doctrine of toleration is in each man’s best interests. In this way, Locke works to create a universal consensus that the doctrine of toleration is sacrosanct. This, of course, requires the absolute suppression of true Catholic doctrine, or the transformation of Catholicism into a subjective sect like every other religious sect.

Recall that Locke said that only those who teach the duty of tolerating all men will be granted the right to toleration by the magistrate. Note that what is prior for Locke is the duty to tolerate others. Only those who will accept the duty of toleration are granted the civil right to be tolerated themselves. This priority that Locke gives to the duty of toleration is mirrored in the way in which men enter into the Lockean social contract. In fact, it is now clear that Locke’s doctrine of toleration is not an addition to the social contract, but the very essence of it. Each man must first renounce his natural right to denounce and punish evil in others before he is granted the civil right to have his life, liberty, and property protected by the magistrate. We can see, then, in the very origin of the social contract, the “logic” of our contemporary situation where our duty to tolerate evil has increasingly eclipsed individual rights, even understood in Lockean terms. When a man enters into a Lockean social contract and accepts the duty to tolerate the subjective opinions and practices of all other men, that man thereby renounces his right to make objective judgments. The apparently irresistible allure of this contract is that those who accept the duty of toleration will likewise have the right to have their own subjective views tolerated by others, as long as these view do not violate the doctrine of toleration which holds the entire contract together. Clearly modern man has not been able to resist Locke’s flattering assumption that each man’s subjective views are sufficient for his happiness as long as he does not insist on their absolute objectivity. Like his forebears in Eden, modern man seems unable to resist the promise of being a God unto himself, even at the price of being a communion of one.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of Locke’s doctrine of toleration is that it is wholly negative and without objective content. Like Protestantism, which gave birth to this monster, Locke’s doctrine is only intelligible insofar as it is a rejection of Catholicism. Since an individual’s religious interests cannot be established objectively, the interests of each individual are determined by his freedom to choose those doctrines which he believes will advance his interests. But no one is really free to choose other than Locke’s position. The situation is much like that of the communist elections we were repeatedly told about in grade school: there are many candidates to choose from, but they are all communists. American elections in Lockeland are no different. By convincing men to embrace subjectivity as the pseudo-objective truth, Locke seemingly satisfies the soul’s desire for objective truth while simultaneously emptying that truth of any real content. Thus, man is left adrift in the sea of constantly shifting, subjectively determined interests of all parties to the social contract. Life is reduced to vector forces, and to the vectors go the spoils. In Lockland, objective claims about right and wrong will be rarely made, and even more rarely understood. Since there is no objective knowledge to which men can refer to resolve disputes, there is no real boundary to the magistrate’s authority, or rather, power over men. Thus does the so-called order established by Lockean law become an end in itself. Unlike the ancients and medievals, who understood law to be a means to promote other ends, such as virtue and the salvation of souls, Locke sees only the power of the law, not its reasonableness. And there is no standard external to the magistrate’s will that man can evaluate with his reason. Therefore, the obligation to obey does not depend upon knowledge, but upon power; and the sole foundation of the magistrate’s power is the need to avoid the consequences of anarchy. But one man’s anarchy is another man’s order. Hence, the will of the magistrate becomes the supreme temporal and spiritual power in Lockean society, and in Locke’s church there are conveniently no clergy from whom the magistrate must wrest power.

Although Locke’s imposition of a universal church is achieved indirectly rather than directly, it is all the more powerful for having entered, as it were, through the back door. And because Locke’s doctrine of toleration instills in men a subjectivist habit of mind, it renders them inhuman by eroding their ability and desire to make objective judgments about good and evil. Thus, Locke’s doctrine not only undermines the specifically human act of moral judgment, but it also destroys rationality itself. It is difficult to imagine a doctrine better suited to prepare minds for the reign of the Anti-Christ, the anti-Logos. Certainly Locke’s doctrine, which is contrary to reason, is grounded upon faith alone, where “faith” is understood in the most subjective sense of the word. In fact, Locke’s universal church seeks to replace the three supernatural virtues as follows: faith is reduced to an irrational belief in the social contract, which is really a contract with nothingness; hope is reduced to the vain expectation of endless material comfort; and charity is reduced to the supreme duty of toleration, the practice of which leads to the eternal loss of our very selves.

NOTES

[1] All quotations from Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding are from Nidditch, P., ed., An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford University, 1979).

[2] Abrams, P., ed., John Locke: Two Tracts on Government (Cambridge University, 1967), p. 45.

by Jeffrey Bond

Today we present the second installment of an essay on John Locke’s doctrine of toleration.  The first part can be found here.  An earlier version of this essay appeared in A Letter from the Romans, the Newsletter of the Roman Forum and the Dietrich von Hildebrand Institute, February, 1999, No. 4.

PART II

Having briefly reconstructed the orthodox Catholic teaching on toleration, both dogmatic and practical, we are now in a better position to consider Locke’s arguments for toleration in his Letter.  Locke’s professed reason for promoting toleration is the same as that given by proponents of toleration today:  he wishes to establish peace in civil society by putting an end to men persecuting and even killing one another over religious differences.  We see immediately, then, that Locke’s promotion of toleration is consistent with what he identifies as the purpose of the social contract as outlined in his Second Treatise.  Man voluntarily leaves the state of nature and enters into civil society to protect his life, his liberty, and his property from invasion by others.  Locke teaches that the very purpose and justification for civil society consist in this alone:  to ensure a life of comfortable self-preservation.  Thus, Locke defines the commonwealth as “a society of men constituted only for the procuring, preserving, and advancing their own civil interests,” and he carefully restricts these civil interests to “life, liberty, health, and indolency of the body; and the possession of outward things, such as money, lands, houses, furniture, and the like.”  In fact, Locke expressly asserts that the jurisdiction of the magistrate, who in Lockean society possesses the legislative power, “neither can nor ought in any manner to be extended to the salvation of souls” (p. 172).  Locke rejects not only the Platonic and Aristotelian teaching that politics is the architectonic art the business of which is the care of souls, but also the Catholic Church’s perfection of that teaching, which holds that politics, while remaining autonomous in its own realm, must nevertheless be subordinate to the higher principles revealed by the Catholic Faith.

Having so narrowly limited the business of government to that which pertains to the body alone, it becomes an easy task for Locke to accomplish what he sets forth as his goal in the Letter:

I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion, and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other.  If this be not done, there can be no end put to the controversies that will be always arising between those that have, or at least pretend to have, on the one side, a concernment for the interest in men’s souls, and, on the other side, a care of the commonwealth (p. 171).

We are not surprised, then, when Locke informs us that, “the church itself is a thing absolutely separate and distinct from the commonwealth.  The boundaries on both sides are fixed and immovable.”  Moreover, Locke asserts that the church and commonwealth “are in their origin, end, business, and in everything perfectly distinct and infinitely different from each other” (p. 184).

By insisting that the line between church and state is absolute, Locke attempts to put two traditional notions to rest:  first, that religious purposes are served by civil authority; and second, that civil interests are served by the public support of religion.  In order to undermine this traditional Catholic teaching on the mutual reciprocity between the Church and the state, Locke uses two sets of parallel arguments:  the first set is dependent upon his understanding of religion, which is generically Christian, but specifically Protestant; and the second set is dependent upon Locke’s understanding of the nature of civil society.  Having already defined the commonwealth in such a way as to limit it strictly to matters pertaining to the body, Locke then defines a church in such a way as to limit it strictly to matters pertaining to the soul:

A church, then, I take to be a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord in order to the public worshipping of God in such a manner as they judge acceptable to Him, and effectual to the salvation of their souls (p. 175, emphasis added).

As Locke’s subjective language makes clear, his definition is clearly Protestant, emphasizing as it does the private judgment of the church members as to what is and is not acceptable to God.  Furthermore, Locke’s definition of a church emphasizes the freedom to join, not the content of what the church believes.  Note, however, that the freedom Locke grants to individuals to define what is acceptable to God, as well as the freedom to join or leave any church without physical coercion, does not include the freedom to extend their religious concerns into the affairs of the body politic.  Locke insists that civil authority may not be assisted by religion in any way, nor may religion be served by an intervention of the civil authority.  He rejects the idea of legal imposition of religion; instead, he carefully limits the legally permissible scope of religious activity so that conflicts will not arise.  In this way, Locke attempts to establish civil peace by effectively banning religion from the body politic, as if men’s souls were not merely distinguished notionally from their bodies, but were somehow completely separate in reality itself.  By treating the soul and body as abstractions, as if a human being were two distinct things instead of one, Locke is able to make a radical separation in principle between church and state.  In language made familiar to Americans through the First Amendment to the Constitution, Locke insists that the laws may neither establish nor forbid any articles of faith or forms of worship.

There is, of course, a problem with Locke’s insistence on the absolute separation of church and state.  Although he neatly divides reality into two completely distinct worlds, nevertheless man’s civil and religious interests, just as a man’s body and soul, must still live together in the same place.  Clearly, then, some relationship between them must exist, and therefore Locke is compelled to consider more specific rules to govern possible conflicts.  The principle he enunciates is as follows:  the magistrate can forbid anything that endangers the civil interests of the commonwealth, whether it occurs in a church or not.  Thus, whatever the magistrate can lawfully forbid in the public realm he can also forbid in the private realm if it has practical consequences adverse to civil interests.  For example, if it is unlawful to kill infants in secular life, then it can also be forbidden in a church, even if that particular church claims such killing as part of what they believe is owed to God.  Hence, according to Locke, the magistrate is not actually forbidding a religious sacrifice; it is the slaughter of children that is forbidden.  The magistrate, since he cannot concern himself with the good of souls, cannot forbid something because it is a “bad” religious practice, but only because it is a bad political practice.

But what is to be done if the magistrate, while operating within his legitimate authority, violates a man’s religious conscience?  Locke states that anyone is free to break a law that violates his conscience, but he must suffer the punishment for breaking that law.  If, however, the magistrate acts outside of the law, then there is no obligation to obey him.  Locke’s position is thus summarized as follows:  there is no legitimate civil law that has a specifically religious purpose; and the individual has no exemption from legitimate civil law on religious grounds.  There can be no doubt, then, that Locke’s separation of church and state is heavily weighted in favor of the state.  In addition, the state, in principle, makes no distinctions between true and false religion in deciding what religious doctrines it will or will not suppress.  Locke writes the following:

Further, the magistrate ought not to forbid the preaching or profession of any speculative opinions in any church, because they have no manner of relation to the civil rights of the subjects.  If a Roman Catholic believe that to be really the body of Christ, which another man calls bread, he does not injury to his neighbor. . . I readily grant that these opinions are false and absurd.  But the business of laws is not to provide for the truth of opinions, but for the safety and security of the commonwealth, and of every particular man’s good and person (p. 205).

Locke is apparently willing to tolerate this central Catholic doctrine concerning the Eucharist—even while he ridicules its content—but he refuses to tolerate Catholic opinions in practical matters, as we shall soon see.  The reason for Locke’s intolerance in non-speculative matters becomes clear when he finally admits that the boundaries between the church and the state are not as “fixed and immovable” as he had initially claimed.  He now acknowledges that there is in fact a meeting point between the church and the state:

The good life, in which consists not the least part of religion and true piety, concerns also the civil government; and in it lies the safety both of men’s souls and of the commonwealth.  Moral actions belong, therefore, to the jurisdiction both of the outward and inward court; both of the civil and the domestic governor; I mean both of the magistrate and the conscience.  Here, therefore, is great danger, lest one of these jurisdictions intrench upon the other, and discord arise between the keeper of the public peace and the overseers of souls.  But if what has been already said concerning the limits of both these governments be rightly considered, it will easily remove all difficulty in this matter (pp. 205-206).

While admitting the “great danger” of conflict with respect to the realm of moral actions, Locke is confident that invasions by one jurisdiction into another will be rare, presumably because men in Lockeland will prefer their civil interests to religious ones.  With self-interest having been liberated by means of the narrowing of civil interests to bodily concerns alone, Lockean men can be counted on to choose their own comfortable self-preservation rather than risk the possible loss of life, liberty, and property for the sake of their private religious beliefs.  Therefore, despite Locke’s sudden concern for the “good life,” he is manifestly not reverting to the classical and medieval teaching that promotes virtue for its own sake as the proper political end for man.  After all, Locke has so arranged matters that the state and church have an interest in moral actions for very different reasons.  Lockean morality is not for the sake of virtue or for the salvation of souls, but rather for the sake of preserving property and a pleasant existence.  In sum, civil society has a legitimate interest in morality only insofar as it is concerned with protecting life, liberty, and property, but no further.

Like Hobbes and his followers, who initially banished all traditional moral education in favor of a new “scientific” analysis of humanity, but then rushed to assure us that moral education can be used to restrain the passions their systems have unleashed, Locke, too, finds himself looking to morality to prop up his social contract.  Modern man has every reason to fear this kind of moral education, for our age has seen it all too often in the form of re-education camps, gulags, mental hospitals, and the silencing of those who have embraced traditional morality.  Instead of the objectively good life being the purpose or end of civil society as it was for the ancients and the medievals, Locke seeks to use morality as a means to support his radically limited political ends.  If we keep this in mind, it is easy to understand why and when Locke sets limits to his doctrine of toleration which, in effect, subordinates the church to the state.  For example, because Lockean society is built upon the social contract, Locke is very concerned with men keeping their promises.  He therefore refuses to extend the right of toleration to atheists because their denial of the existence of God undermines civil society:  “Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon the atheist.  The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all” (pp. 212-213).  Although in the Second Treatise Locke suggests that enlightened self-interest—without any additional moral support—is sufficient to keep men true to their promises, here, in the Letter, Locke indicates that the social contract itself depends upon some religious belief.

Locke’s social contract, however, does not rely upon just any religious belief.  He seeks to promote only those beliefs that will support, and not challenge, the limited political ends which he has proposed.  Therefore, just as Locke refuses to tolerate atheists for their lack of belief, he is even more determined to suppress Catholicism for having the wrong religious beliefs, namely, those that undermine his doctrine of toleration.  Locke makes his case as follows:  “I say, first, no opinions contrary to human society, or to those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society, are to be tolerated by the magistrate” (p. 210).  Although Locke admits that examples of these kinds of opinions are rare in any church, he identifies another “more secret evil” which is more dangerous to the commonwealth.  This greater danger, Locke explains, is “when Men arrogate to themselves, and to those of their own sect, some peculiar prerogative covered over with a specious show of deceitful words, but in effect opposite to the civil right of the community” (pp. 210-211).  For example, although Locke notes that no sect openly teaches that princes may be dethroned by those who differ from them in religion, certain sects, he claims, say the same thing in other words:

What can be the meaning of their asserting that kings excommunicated forfeit their crowns and kingdoms?  It is evident that they thereby arrogate unto themselves the power of deposing kings, because they challenge the power of excommunication, as the peculiar right of their hierarchy.  That dominion is founded in grace is also an assertion by which those that maintain it do plainly lay claim to the possession of all things. . .  I say these have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate; as neither those that will not own and teach the duty of tolerating all men in matters of mere religion (p. 211).

 Although Locke does not mention the Catholic Church by name here, his attack upon certain distinguishing aspects of Catholic doctrine is unmistakable, such as the pope’s authority to excommunicate even kings.  Moreover, in his less famous An Essay on Toleration,[1] Locke writes that Catholics or “any similar group” should not be tolerated because “where they have power, they think themselves bound to deny it to others.”  Catholics, “who owe blind obedience to an infallible pope,” cannot be won over “either by indulgence or severity;” they are “irreconcilable enemies” both in regard to their “principles and interest.”  Catholics, Locke explains, are “like serpents” who can “never be prevailed on by kind usage to lay by their venom” (pp. 95, 96).  Thus, Catholicism ought not to be tolerated because it contains doctrines “absolutely destructive to society” (p. 92).  Locke even goes so far as to imply, by way of comparison to the brutal persecution of Catholics in Japan, that it would be prudent to employ a similar policy of suppression in England.  For although he generally counsels against persecution, since it often engenders compassion and esteem from those of different religions, Locke argues that this will not occur in the case of the persecution of Catholics who “are less apt to be pitied than others, because they receive no other usage than what the cruelty of their own principles and practices are known to deserve.”  After all, Catholics will not “be thought to be punished merely for their consciences” because they “own themselves at the same time the subjects of a foreign enemy prince” (p. 96).  In his Letter, Locke makes this same accusation against those who submit to a “foreign enemy prince,” by which title Locke clearly means the pope, and perhaps even the Prince of Peace, our Lord Himself:

That church can have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate which is constituted upon such a bottom that all those that enter into it do thereby ipso facto deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince.  For by this means the magistrate would give way to the settling of a foreign jurisdiction in his own country, and suffer his own people to be listed, as it were, for soldiers against his own Government.  Nor does the frivolous and fallacious distinction between the court and the church afford any remedy to this inconvenience, especially when both the one and the other are equally subject to the absolute authority of the same person, who has not only power to persuade the members of his church to whatsoever he lists, either as purely religious, or in order thereunto, but can also enjoin it them on pain of eternal fire (p. 212).

Because Catholicism will not and cannot teach Locke’s doctrine of dogmatic toleration, and because Catholics submit to the pope and ultimately to Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, Catholicism cannot be granted the right of toleration by the magistrate.  As was evident from the beginning, Catholicism is Locke’s mortal enemy.  Note, however, that Locke rejects the primacy of the pope not on theological or religious grounds, but because the papacy allegedly undermines civil society.  Earlier in the Letter, Locke directly challenges the Catholic doctrine of apostolic succession, but his argument is weak in the extreme.  Consider his response to those who would insist that the true church must have a bishop “with ruling authority derived from the very apostles:”

To these I answer:  In the first place, let them show me the edict by which Christ has imposed that law upon his church.  And let not any man think me impertinent, if in a thing of this consequence I require that the terms of that edict be very express and positive; for the promise He has made us [Matthew 18:20], that wheresoever two or three are gathered together in His name, he will be in the midst of them, seems to imply the contrary.  Whether such an assembly want anything necessary to a true church, pray do you consider.  Certain I am that nothing can there be wanting unto the salvation of souls, which is sufficient to our purpose (pp. 176-177, emphasis added).

Certainly the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura is lurking behind Locke’s response, to say nothing of his explicit reliance upon private judgment and individual certitude.  The only support Locke gives for his position is to quote a single passage from Matthew, all the while ignoring the more determinate passage two chapters earlier where our Lord explicitly founds His Church on the Rock which is Peter (Matthew 16:18).  Locke shows little interest in pursuing the all-important question of church authority; and if we consider the context of the passage Locke does cite (Matthew 18:15-20), we see that when our Lord says “wheresoever two or three are gathered in My name,” His words presuppose that the two or three are already in His Church, which Matthew records our Lord as having established two chapters earlier.  In other words, two or three men coming together in His name does not definitively found a church, because Christ established His Church on Peter; but whenever those who are already in His Church gather in His Name, our Lord says He will be with them.

Locke likewise does not pursue the question of how Scripture is to be interpreted with any genuine concern, for he immediately falls back on the subjectivity of all interpretation.  He writes as follows:

But since men are so solicitous about the true church, I would only ask them here, by the way, if it be not more agreeable to the church of Christ to make the conditions of her communion consist in such things, and such things only, as the Holy Spirit has in the Holy Scriptures declared, in express words, to be necessary to salvation; I ask, I say, whether this be not more agreeable to the church of Christ than for men to impose their own inventions and interpretations upon others as if they were of Divine authority, and to establish by ecclesiastical laws, as absolutely necessary to the profession of Christianity, such things as the Holy Scriptures do either not mention or at least do not expressly command?  Whosoever requires those things in order to ecclesiastical communion, which Christ does not require in order to life eternal, he may, perhaps, indeed constitute a society accommodated to his own opinion and his own advantage; but how that can be called the church of Christ which is established upon laws that are not His, and which excludes such persons from its communion as He will one day receive into the Kingdom of Heaven, I understand not (pp. 177-178).

If there is no living authority established by God to interpret even the “express words” of Holy Scripture, then each man logically becomes the ultimate authority for himself.  There is something deeply ironic about the fact that Locke—in the very place where he presents himself as somehow knowing the mind of the Holy Spirit, the true laws of the church of Christ, and who will and who will not be saved—criticizes the pope for allegedly manipulating the church of Christ to accommodate his own opinion and his own advantage.  Finally, Locke shows the disingenuous nature of his inquiry into these fundamental theological matters when he writes at the conclusion of the passage quoted above that this is “not a proper place to inquire into the marks of the true church” (p. 178).  Since Locke began his Letter by setting forth toleration as the chief characteristic mark of the true Church, his comment must be seen as ironic.  At the same time, Locke’s comment points to the very heart of his doctrine of toleration because it indicates that theological debates of this kind are precisely what he wishes to eliminate by convincing men to adopt dogmatic toleration.  All claims to orthodoxy, as Locke has already insisted, are just pretenses to seeking power.  Rather than engage in frivolous and fruitless speculations, then, Locke invites his readers to accept the true church’s sole article of faith, namely, that this is no objective knowledge of a divine order.

(Continued in Part III . . . )

NOTES

[1] All quotations from Locke’s An Essay on Toleration are from Viano, C., ed., “An Essay on Toleration,” in John Locke: Scritti editi e inediti sulla toleranza (Einaudi, 1961).

In general we consider something to be legitimate when it is operating in accord with the laws and rules which properly govern that thing. In this way, we say that a person acts legitimately when he operates in accord with the laws of the state in which he dwells. In this is perhaps the first meaning of the word. However, states likewise have a legitimacy or illegitimacy by which they must be measured. Since Locke, many have seen that legitimacy as something “derived from the consent of the governed.” Some, such as Max Weber with his notion of “Legitimitätsglaube”, exclude all normative criteria for legitimacy and reduce it to a set of beliefs that a people have about their government.^[1] Such notions, however, are (finally) excluded when one turns to the teachings of the Church summarized well by Pope Saint John XXIII, “Since God made men social by nature, and since no society can hold together unless some one be over all, directing all to strive earnestly for the common good, every civilized community must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and has, consequently, God for its author.”^[2] Political legitimacy, therefore, must be derived from God.

Continue reading “A Note on the Legitimacy of Governments”

by Jeffrey Bond

Today we conclude our series on the different methods of teaching.  Part I and Part II are available here.
– The Editors

Part III: The Problem of Seminar

The open-ended nature of the seminar paradoxically requires that there be fairly strict guidelines for the teacher using the seminar mode; the teacher using this mode cannot simply rely upon the order of learning proper to the subject matter itself. Indeed, if the seminar teacher were to insist upon following a strict order determined by the subject under study, he would stifle the untutored efforts of the students and thereby undermine the very purpose of the seminar. But if the seminar teacher is not to follow the order intrinsic to the subject itself, how is he to guide the students? What criteria is he to employ?

Once it is recognized that the purpose of seminar is not to resolve to knowledge but rather to reasoned opinion, the guide for both teacher and students must be the text under consideration. We can well understand, then, why Great Book schools that claim that the seminar is the heart of their curriculum must also insist that the real teachers are the books, and not the living instructors who use these books in their classrooms. By this account, a Great Book itself is supposed to provide the definitive standard on how to read it, the discipline to which it belongs, and its ultimate meaning. In a word, the greatness and even the truth of these texts are believed to be somehow “self-authenticating.”

This view of the Great Books is inadequate. It cannot reasonably account for how these books were designated “great” in the first place. To argue that the real teachers are books, and not living men, ignores the fact that someone—and not a book—must have established the canon of Great Books by a standard outside of the books themselves. Here we have a secular version of sola scriptura, the Protestant teaching that the Book of books can enlighten its readers without the need of a living teacher. Quite apart from the fact that the teaching authority of the Catholic Church, which established Scripture’s authority in the first place, has rejected this claim (as does the plain meaning of Holy Scripture itself), we can see that the doctrine of sola scriptura destroys the authority of the very book it seeks to elevate. Sola scriptura implicitly posits private judgment as an authority higher than that of Holy Scripture. Similarly, the Great Book schools that, in effect, make every book a sacred text, proceed as if each chosen book can serve as its own authoritative teacher. If this method were rigorously followed, however, the authoritative measure guiding the reading and selection of Great Books would necessarily be private judgment. The matter could not be otherwise, for if there were no authority or standard beyond that of the text, every reader would be free to draw his own interpretation. And so every man would be his own teacher.

It would be foolish to deny that Great Books are virtually indispensable to liberal education. Yet efforts to educate would be vain were we not to recognize that education is ordered not to books but to truth. Nonetheless, for the purposes of the seminar one can grant, in a certain sense, supremacy to the text. It remains, then, to set forth specific guidelines for seminar, including the proper relationship among teacher, students, text, and truth. Having done so, we must revisit the tutorial and lecture modes and do likewise.

Guidelines for Seminar

Leading a seminar is an art of sorts, for there are certain procedures that, if followed, can produce a thoughtful and, it is hoped, inspiring conversation that promotes habits in the interlocutors requisite for the intellectual life. In order to set forth the steps that the teacher of seminar must follow to obtain this desired end, it is necessary to outline what can be called the “phases” of seminar. It should be recognized from the outset, however, that while we can sketch these phases in rough form, it would be a mistake to pretend to that we can systematize and predict the phases of the seminar as if they were the phases of the moon. Seminar is not a science.

A seminar, like a tutorial, normally begins with the teacher asking a question. Given the fact that a seminar generally deals with an extensive amount of material, and often an entire work, this opening question should be of the sort that directs the conversation to the heart of the text under consideration. The text, like a hard nut, has to be cracked open by the opening question so that students can get to the meat hidden within. A question of this kind is not easily answered, but rather requires an extended conversation, if it is to be answered at all. Indeed, it will often be the case that the interlocutors in the seminar will fail to reach a consensus.

Because the failure to reach consensus can be a source of frustration for students who have been trained to look for simple solutions that can be written down in their notebooks and memorized, the teacher of seminar must repeat from time to time, as does Socrates in the Platonic dialogues, that often the best that can be achieved in a conversation of this sort is a greater awareness of what one does not know. If nothing else, seminar should manifest that the questions addressed by the Great Books are not easily answered, and this realization should move students to a greater sense of humility and wonder. Needless to say, to recognize that these fundamental questions are not easily answered is not to say that they cannot be answered. Through the experience of seminar, the students must come to realize that often one can only take the first dialectical steps in examining a question thoughtfully. To advance beyond this initial inquiry would require more time and a more precise investigation. The meaning of a truly great text will not be exhausted by one or even many discussions.

1. The First Phase

In the first phase of seminar, especially with inexperienced students, one should expect a rather chaotic discussion. Most students, like the character Meno in the Platonic dialogue of the same name, invariably assume that the answers are easier than they really are. Hence students can be expected to be impatient with one another and to ignore the objections raised against their own opinions. In word, they can be expected to seek victory rather than truth. Moreover, rather than honestly weigh the merit of the opposing opinions of their fellow students, most students will seek confirmation of their own positions by looking to the teacher for an official stamp of approval. The teacher of seminar must resist the students’ desire to have everything that is said filtered through him, because his first goal in the first phase is to get the students to talk with one another rather than look to the teacher as judge of each thing that is said. This is no small task, but it is essential if the students are to progress in their ability to converse intelligently with one another. If the teacher in the first phase of seminar actively enters the discussion in a substantive way, the students will inevitably learn to wait passively for answers from the teacher rather than actively to seek answers for themselves.

Here in the first phase the seminar teacher should generally restrict his input to questions and procedural matters. For example, when a student, ignoring what was just said by another student, arbitrarily attempts to move the conversation in a different direction, the teacher should ask that student whether his remarks address what was just said. Similarly, whenever a student fails to address previously expressed opinions contrary to his own, the teacher can ask that student how his own view squares with the contrary opinions which have already been set forth. Moreover, whenever it is clear that a student is criticizing another student’s position according to an inadequate understanding of that position, the teacher can insist that the student first repeat the substance of the position he is criticizing to the satisfaction of the other student before he continues with his critique. These and other techniques must be employed if the students are to learn to listen carefully and to respond thoughtfully to one another.

2. The Second Phase

Once students have taken seriously the need to talk with each other, the seminar can move into the second phase. Whereas the seminar teacher can be content in the first phase with the students presenting unsupported opinions (insofar as the goal is simply to habituate them to speaking with one another), the second phase should be characterized by the expression of opinions grounded in the text. In reality, of course, this second phase will not always be so clearly separated from the first phase. Nevertheless, there is a definite progression in the seminar as the students increasingly begin to examine the text for evidence to support their positions. To encourage this practice, the teacher of seminar need only ask a student who presents an unsupported opinion where he finds evidence for his position in the text. If this is done at the right time and in the right manner, the students will soon follow suit and begin to make this same demand upon each other. As a result, a salutary docility to the mind of the author will begin to direct the conversation along a more fruitful path, as unsupported opinions give way to more thoughtful judgments based upon an analysis of the text.

3. The Third Phase

As students acquire the habit of paying closer attention to the text in their efforts to answer the opening question, they can be expected to become better readers as they prepare for seminar outside of class. As they read, they will ask themselves, “What is the major problem that this text is addressing?” Having considered this question, they will naturally be attentive to the solution the author appears to be proposing, as well as the key steps taken by the author to reach that solution. As students improve in their preparation for seminar, one can expect the conversation to become more focused. Here we can discern in the seminar a third phase characterized by the greater likelihood that the students will reach consensus on the meaning of the text. Although it would be unreasonable to expect to reach conclusions in every seminar, the students can at least be expected to eliminate inadequate interpretations more readily.

In this third phase of seminar, the teacher can feel freer to participate in the conversation in a substantive way, and not simply as an intellectual traffic cop. Here he can sharpen and deepen the discussion by means of his own study of the text. But like a good athletic coach, he must be careful not to push the students beyond their capacity at any given time. The coach himself may well be able to perform a certain action perfectly; but what matters is what the players themselves can achieve. If he hopes to see his players perform well, the coach must assist his players in their labors without doing their work for them. Therefore, as in the first two phases of seminar, the teacher must endeavor to strike a mean between excessive interference, which derails the students’ own efforts, and an extreme laissez-faire approach that promotes intellectual chaos.

The teacher of seminar must also remember that his participation in the give-and-take of seminar must model what he expects from his students. If he is to inspire others to engage in a fruitful dialectical inquiry, he must convey—not only through his words, but most especially through his actions—his willingness to submit his own reasoning to examination by others. Both teacher and students must strive to follow this ideal, which is well expressed by Socrates in Plato’s Gorgias, where he explains his philosophical modus operandi:

And what kind of man am I? One of those who would gladly be refuted if anything I say is not true, and would gladly refute another who says what is not true, but would be no less happy to be refuted myself than to refute, for I consider that a greater benefit, inasmuch as it is a greater boon to be delivered from the worst of evils oneself than to deliver another (458a).

4. The Fourth Phase

It should be noted that the first three phases that we have outlined are all ordered toward the interpretation of the text (even if the first phase is merely preparatory). In these phases the students are concerned with asking themselves what the author is trying to show them. In the fourth phase, which in a certain sense transcends the limitations of seminar, the focus shifts from what the author is saying to whether what the author is saying is true or not. In the first three phases the teacher will find it necessary to remind the students that one cannot judge the veracity of the text until one has first established its meaning. (And this goes hand in hand with the practice of not criticizing the opinion of another student until one has demonstrated that one understands the other’s position.) In the fourth phase, however, if in fact the students have reached a certain consensus on the text, the question naturally follows whether or not what the author is saying is true.

Given the difficulties inherent in the study of the Great Books, it must be understood that many seminars will never reach the fourth phase. And even when they do reach this fourth and final phase, it must be stressed that the end is to have the students discuss whether the agreed upon teaching of the text is true, not to have the teacher dictate to them what the truth is. With this caution in mind, the teacher of seminar should at times push the seminar into the fourth phase, even if the consensus as to what the author is saying is only tentative. For example, the teacher may say, “Let us assume at this point that we have rightly understood what Freud is saying about the nature of mind. Let us now ask ourselves, ‘Is it true?’” While a premature attempt to move into the fourth phase will undermine the habit of submitting to a thoughtful examination of the text, the artificial attempt always to suppress this last and highest phase of the seminar would be equally destructive. In making the decision to move beyond the text, the teacher of seminar must obviously be guided by his own knowledge both of the subject matter and of the degree of comprehension his students have of the text. He must also be guided by the nature of the text in question and the relative importance of confronting the question of truth with respect to a given author.

Not every text, of course, will readily answer to the question, “Is it true?” Of some texts, especially poetic and rhetorical texts, it may be more appropriate to ask, “Is it beautiful?” or “Is it good?” In this context, the teacher of seminar must help the students distinguish between the question “How well does this work of art move us?” and the question “To what end does this work of art move us?” Authors such as Milton and Nietzsche may move us powerfully, and yet we may not be moved towards the Good or the Beautiful.

5. A Final Thought on the Four Phases of Seminar

It needs to be reiterated that a seminar cannot be expected to follow these four phases in strict order. There will generally be a certain overlap among the four phases outlined above, for even experienced students can be expected on occasion to lapse into the first two phases.

Teacher and Text

Our investigation of the phases of seminar has revealed that even here, where one must grant supremacy to the text in a certain sense, the text itself cannot be supreme in the ultimate sense. This is truer still with respect to the tutorial and lecture modes of teaching, because they are expressly ordered toward the truth of things, not books. Indeed, even when a text contains nothing but truth, as is the case with Holy Scripture, there still must be a living authority to explain the truth that the text contains. Books cannot be their own masters. They are instead instruments of the art of teaching and in no way a substitute for a teacher. No object explains, interprets, or validates itself, especially a book. Rather, that which interprets and explains is a mind. It is a telling fact, furthermore, that some of the greatest teachers of mankind, such as Socrates, who rather lived philosophy and thereby led others to it, and Jesus, the Teacher, left us no writings at all. A teacher, then, is a living and right intelligence honed by experience. Such a one should ordinarily have a wide, systematic, and deep reading. But more importantly, he is one who can orally demonstrate, defend, and convey his erudition. Moreover, the teacher must stand somewhere in a durable intellectual tradition of universal and objective worth that recognizes a book’s value from the standpoint of a rational whole or ordered body of perennial truths; that is, a proven and justifiable wisdom that both draws from and exceeds the written work of man, and judges it. For the ground of truth is ultimately to be found in the tale of nature, human reason, and Eternal Reason, which transcends any and all products of the pen.

This having been said, we should acknowledge the proper sense in which it can be said that the teacher subordinates his own mind to a text. After all, it is reasonable to suppose that most living teachers will not possess as deeply and as fully the knowledge of things possessed by the greatest teachers of the past. We are speaking here of men such as Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the other Doctors of the Church. In studying the works of teachers such as these, the living teacher himself must be docile if he is to come to know the truths that he hopes to teach others. Even here, however, in attempting to form his mind according to the truest texts, a teacher in the ordinary course of things is dependent upon the prior direction he himself has received from a living teacher (cf. Acts 8:26-38). For the only reason a man seeks in the first place to form his mind according to a given text is because he has reason to suppose that the text itself conforms to the truth of things in some, if not all matters. But how can he know this without a hearing it from another? This question brings us back to the demonstrated superiority of the tutorial mode of teaching where the text serves as an instrument of the living teacher who can address his students at whatever level he finds them.

Teacher and Students

Our investigation of the modes of teaching has appropriately led us to the paradox of learning and its consequences: to learn something in the natural order, we must already know it in some way. Indeed, how can we come to know a thing unless we stand in some prior relation to it? For if we learn something new and objective, we grasp it; but if we grasp it, we grasp it in the recognition that it means something, or is intelligible to the mind, such as it is. That being the case, it follows that we stand in some prior relation to it. This insight is of capital importance, because it suggests that there is a natural order to the mind and thus an order of knowledge that is in accord with reason and nature. It is this that sets the limits to the whole sphere of teaching and learning.

Now, in general, the student is possessed neither of the experience, wide reading, nor the intellectual whole that is the privilege of the teacher. The student, then, if left to himself, even with ample time, to decipher the works of great authors, presuming he happened to know who they were, would languish, more often than not, in a desultory mix of error and insight dictated by the vagaries of an untutored taste. In fine, while the student must certainly think for himself, more so he must think rightly, which demands guided acquaintance with the deep truths of man’s long and arduous investigation of reality, as well as tested ability to wield them in the service of Truth.

Without the cultivation of the teacher, the student’s mind is a field of wild flowers mixed with, and often choked by, weeds. The furrows and sprouts of genuine knowledge come when the field has been cleared and exposed to the sun, overturned, and irrigated by one who knows his art. Truly, the seeds and tendrils of knowledge are within the student by nature; but they are in need of experience and educational soulcraft in order to mature into the good fruit of learning, as the young vine is in need of the vinedresser. Art and nature work together to achieve the ends to which nature is ordered, but which nature has difficulty in attaining without the human person who is, in respect of nature, both apprentice and master.

However gifted the teacher, and whatever mode of teaching he employs, the acquisition of knowledge and the inculcation of the intellectual and moral habits necessary to the acquisition of that knowledge are ultimately dependent on the receptivity and will of the student. Nevertheless, the teacher, if he provides a good example, can assist the student even in acquiring these habits. In a very real sense, then, teachers themselves must be students of that which they do not know, not only so that they may continue to learn themselves, but also so that they may provide a living model for their students. It bears repeating that teachers must exhibit the habits that they desire to see in their own students.

We see in the Platonic dialogues exemplary imitations of philosophical conversations involving young students who possess the habits we should encourage in our students. The best of these students are Simmias and Cebes in the Phaedo, Glaucon and Adeimantus in the Republic, the young Socrates in the Parmenides, and Theaetetus in the dialogue of the same name. Theaetetus, a young man about whom Socrates prophesied great things, is perhaps the best model of all. Theaetetus is said to combine qualities that seemingly defy combination: he is courageous, and yet patient; daring, but docile. Socrates also praises Theaetetus for his sense of wonder, the mark of a philosopher. Most important of all, Theaetetus is willing to slay his own intellectual offspring when he discovers that the opinions to which he has given birth, under the influence of Socratic midwifery, are without the living truth.

If the noble pagans, such as Plato, understood the need for intellectual humility so that those seeking the truth might practice “benevolent disputation by the use of question and answer without jealousy” (Seventh Letter 344b), then we, as Catholics, must have even greater vigilance concerning the danger of intellectual pride. Scientia inflat, as St. Paul warns us (1 Cor. 8:1). The sole remedy for this grave malady is the divine charity about which St. Paul writes:

Charity is patient, is kind; charity does not envy, is not pretentious, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, is not self-seeking, is not provoked; thinks no evil, does not rejoice over wickedness, but rejoices with the truth; bears with all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Cor. 13:4-7).

by Jeffrey Bond

Today we continue our series on the different methods of teaching.  Part I of Jeffrey Bond’s essay was posted yesterday, and Part III will follow tomorrow.
– The Editors

PART II

The Primary Mode: Tutorial

From the foregoing we conclude that the tutorial represents a sort of mean. It is a mean between the lecture and the seminar, one employing the strengths while avoiding the weaknesses of each.

Regarding strengths: with the lecture the tutorial shares the sine qua non of teaching, namely, that it is ordered not to opinion but knowledge. At the same time, however, the tutorial shares with the seminar the indirect method of teaching through questions compelling students to think for themselves. Regarding weaknesses: the tutorial avoids the passivity that lectures can engender. Yet it also prevents discussions from degenerating into irrelevance or merely verbal battles, as can easily happen in seminar.

One might object that the tutorial is really possible only when teaching on a one-to-one basis. It is true that in some respects this arrangement might seem ideal, especially for a gifted student who could proceed rapidly with a teacher undistracted by the difficulties of weaker students. Nonetheless, in certain respects a one-to-one relationship of teacher to student is less than ideal. There are genuine benefits to the intellectual life when a small group of minds consider together the same question. Not only do teacher and students experience the quest and acquisition of knowledge as a good that is common to all, but they also discover that the opinions, questions, and objections raised by others, even the less gifted, are instrumental to deepening their own understanding. Indeed in attempting to address positions set forth by classmates, students must articulate and refine the knowledge they have already come to possess in some measure.

Rather than impeding acquisition of knowledge, a small group of students is positively desirable inasmuch as students, guided by the tutor, work together to discover what is true. As students struggle with the tutor’s questions and their own differing views, they participate in their own learning. It is essential for the tutor, then, to encourage students to direct their arguments not just toward himself, but also toward each other. He must not intervene to do their thinking for them. Instead he must assist students to achieve knowledge for themselves. Only thus will students really see at all. From this it follows that, occasionally, the tutor must leave his students perplexed, in a condition Plato describes as the travail of psychic childbirth (Theaetetus 150b-151d).

From the foregoing we conclude that the tutorial mode is, all things considered, the best mode of teaching, and therefore it should be the primary mode of teaching at any liberal arts institution. One could object that the lecturer can be an equally effective teacher. Yet such an objection itself indicates the tutorial is best, and this especially inasmuch as a lecturer excels to the degree that he raises questions anticipatory of students’ objections. Further evidence of the superiority of the tutorial method is that, whenever appropriate, the tutor may employ the mode of either lecture or seminar. The reverse, however, is not true for the lecturer. He cannot equally employ the tutorial mode. As for the seminar, inasmuch as its proximate end is not knowledge but practice in discovering and expressing reasoned opinion, it is a mode of teaching in an analogous sense only.

The Auxiliary Modes: Lecture and Seminar

Despite the inherent weaknesses of lecture and of seminar, both should play a significant role in any liberal arts curriculum. One must often use the lecture method, for example, in the study of history because students generally cannot master all of the facts necessary to participate productively in a history tutorial or seminar. To compensate for the danger of passivity, however, these lectures should be followed by a question and answer period. In addition to formal lectures, an informal lecture mode should be judiciously employed in any tutorial or seminar when the difficulty of the subject matter requires it.

The seminar method should be used primarily in a class by that name. Such would be the sole place in the curriculum where a course is named not by a definite subject matter but by the methodology employed. This indicates, again, how the seminar is not strictly speaking ordered to knowledge. It is instead ordered to developing habits requisite to discovering and expressing reasoned opinion. Although both tutorial and seminar can be said to belong to the genus of teaching, the specific difference between them is the end for which they are employed. This difference in end is reflected in both the choice of texts and the more extended length of the readings for the seminar classes. While the texts of the seminar should normally be Great Books, these are nonetheless books from which a teacher would not intend to harvest a definite body of knowledge. Rather these books would be used both to sow and to fertilize the seeds of knowledge. From this less restricted end it follows that in seminar longer readings would not only be permissible but indeed desirable and normative.

In tutorials, on the other hand, one would generally read shorter selections from which to gather a definite conceptual harvest. Indeed, tutorials require that students not leave the classroom each day with their minds full of mere opinion about the subject matter. Inasmuch as a sure grasp of these arts is essential to progressing intellectually, the teacher must more firmly direct the tutorial than the seminar.

Here we note that the seminar develops skills in reasoning and exposition, and does so in part to improve the quality of student participation in the tutorial. If a student is not given the wider forum of the seminar for developing such skills, we cannot expect him to express himself well in the tutorials. There will therefore be times when, if the material allows it, the tutorial teacher conducts class more in the manner of a seminar. Conversely, there will be times in seminar when the difficulty of the material compels the teacher to adopt a tutorial mode.

Although the tutorial and seminar differ in kind (insofar as the former aims at knowledge and the latter at reasoned opinion), from the perspective of students and observers there may appear to be a difference in degree only. This misperception arises because, while the tutorial and seminar differ formally, they are quite alike materially. Both employ the same elements of Great Books, a teacher posing questions about these books, and students in conversation seeking answers to such questions. And indeed, with regard to these material elements the difference between seminar and tutorial is only one of degree: in seminar the readings are longer and the students give greater direction to the discussion; in tutorial the readings are shorter and the discussion is guided more closely by the questions of the tutor. Nevertheless, with regard to their respective formal ends there is a difference not of degree but of kind. In the tutorial the teacher questions for the sake of helping students see what they must see. In the seminar he questions for the sake of helping students practice what they must practice. In the tutorial the teacher strives for knowledge. In the seminar he strives for rational habits and opinions propaedeutic to such.

Given this difference between tutorial and seminar, it is appropriate whenever possible for a tutorial to conclude with a resume, given by either student or tutor, which draws together the key points of the discussion. If the discussion has not led to definite conclusions, the resume should at least delineate the main problem as it stands and the most reasonable solutions thus far proposed. Either during or after the resume, the tutor will often find it necessary to give a certain polish to the conclusions that are reached so that the students leave the classroom with a clear grasp of what has been achieved as well as what has been left undone.

(To be continued.)

by Jeffrey Bond

The practice of teaching is without a doubt the guiding compass of human society.  Nothing else so reliably and powerfully governs the trajectory of a community as the formation of its young people and the determination of their habits of thought.  This is why Plato, in Book VIII of his Republic, identifies a failure to educate properly as the root cause of the degradation of the just city.  Today at the Josias, we offer the first in a series of posts on the different methods of teaching.
– The Editors

To educate man is the art of arts,
for he is the most complex and mysterious of all creatures.
–St. Gregory Nazianzen

Concerning teaching, Catholic educators must take their bearings from St. Paul’s exhortation to Timothy:

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths (4:1-4).

With the above in mind, we wish to explain our understanding of teaching and the employment of its different modes. In the first part of this essay we will explain and distinguish the lecture, tutorial, and the seminar modes of teaching. In the second part we will set forth the way in which these different modes should be used according to their relative strengths and weaknesses. In the third and final part we will present guidelines concerning the relationship among teacher, students, text, and truth; and we will do so in light of certain methodological problems characterizing the different modes of teaching.

PART I: THE DIFFERENT MODES OF TEACHING

The Lecture

The word “lecture” comes from the Latin lectus, the perfect passive participle of the Latin verb legere, which means “to pick out” or “to read.” A lecture, then, is literally something “picked out” or “read.” Certainly it is true that lectures are often read rather than delivered from memory or given extemporaneously; but whether or not a lecture is actually read, it always has the quality of something read insofar as the lecturer must “pick out” in advance the material he intends to present in an uninterrupted manner. In fact the lecturer must carefully select beforehand not only what he will say but also the order in which he will say it. If the lecturer desires to have his students come to the knowledge that he himself possesses, he must prepare his material in such a way as to lead his students through the steps that their minds must follow. Hence the lecturer must consider beforehand how to lead his students from what they already know to what they do not yet know. If the lecturer is to teach, that is, if he is to cause knowledge to come to be in the souls of his students, he must reproduce the proper order of learning by which he himself discovered what he previously did not know. As St. Thomas Aquinas explains, “one person is said to teach another inasmuch as, by signs, he manifests to another the reasoning process which he himself goes through by his own natural reason” (De Magistro).

The virtue of the lecture mode is that it allows the teacher to lead his students systematically from ignorance to knowledge. Because the lecturer can order his arguments in advance and choose appropriate illustrations, he can demonstrate the clarity and internal beauty of a given subject matter. This in turn can attract and order the minds of listeners who thereby develop the intellectual habit of carefully following the reasoning of another.

The primary weakness of the lecture mode is that the teacher—even if he himself possesses perfect knowledge—cannot anticipate all of the problems and questions his students may have. At best he can set forth the common obstacles that a student may face. This is the manner in which St. Thomas Aquinas proceeds, outlining objections to his own position as prelude to resolving a given question.

This being said, it remains that a student’s difficulties may be quite idiosyncratic. Indeed, a student may not see how his own objection was in fact raised and addressed by the lecturer himself. Difficulties of this sort may thus prevent a student from perfectly following the reasoning of the lecturer. Furthermore, once the chain of reasoning has been broken for a student, he can at best seize upon only the lecturer’s conclusions. He will not have grasped the arguments upon which those conclusions rest. As a result the student may indeed have acquired right opinion, but he will not have achieved genuine knowledge. Moreover, rather than develop proper docility toward the teacher – and especially toward the truth – the student may instead succumb to a certain passivity, one disposing him to shirk an active role in his own learning. This danger is especially evident in our own times when the habit of passivity is daily fostered through television, movies, video games, and spoon-fed “education.”

There is another serious weakness in the lecture mode of teaching. Even if the student has followed the lecturer’s reasoning, the lecture mode itself cannot compel the student to establish the lecturer’s knowledge as his own. True, the best students may rehearse the reasoning process for themselves and for others. Yet it would be naive to expect most students to do likewise. Even should some attempt such, there is no guarantee that someone will be present to correct mistakes or challenge arguments. In sum, insofar as reasoning and exposition belong to practical knowledge, the lecture mode does not guarantee that a student will subsequently reason well by himself, let alone explain his reasoning to others.

The Tutorial

The word “tutorial” comes from the Latin tutor. The latter means “watcher, protector or defender,” and is itself related to the verb tueor, “to see, to look or gaze upon, to behold, to regard, to consider, to examine.” Etymologically speaking, then, it is clear why—as opposed to the lecturer—the tutor has generally been understood to be a teacher working with one or a small number of students. If he is to “watch” or “consider” his students closely, the tutor cannot do so with large numbers. If he is to protect students from error, he must work with them as individuals and not as a crowd. That the tutor addresses fewer students than the lecturer, however, does not in itself distinguish him from the latter. After all, one can as easily lecture to few as to many. Nevertheless, by virtue of the smaller number of students in his charge, the tutor can consider a student’s opinions, questions, and objections as they arise. Hence, whereas the lecturer must “pick out” his material and order it prior to his lecture, the tutor is free from the beginning to question his students. This in turn allows for a more immediate and thorough grasp of what his students already know or do not know.

As previously noted, a lecturer can anticipate the opinions, questions, and objections of his audience. He can skillfully weave these into the fabric of his lecture. Nonetheless, though he may entertain a spontaneous question or two during the body of his address, the lecturer cannot remain in the lecture mode if he is perpetually open to interrupting questions. Indeed to the extent that he is open to interruptions, he is not lecturing. By contrast, from beginning to end the tutor operates according to a more informal give-and-take with his students. It is a give-and-take arising from the particular needs of the students themselves. This is so even when it is the tutor, rather than the students, who himself identifies those needs through astute questioning. Accordingly the tutor may move freely backward or forward on the path to knowledge according to the specific difficulties confronting his students.

In contrast, the lecturer cannot readily evaluate the particular needs of his audience, and this even if he periodically reminds his audience of what he has earlier concluded. At best he can speculate about when to repeat himself or when to clarify. When viewed in this light, the tutorial stands to the lecture as the spoken word to the written word. As Plato demonstrates in the Phaedrus, the spoken word can teach souls more perfectly because it can respond differently to different people, whereas the written word, when questioned, merely repeats itself over and over again (274c-278d).

True to the etymology of the name, then, the tutor is one who “looks at” and “examines” the student with respect to what the student knows and does not know. The tutor, like the lecturer, must know the subject he teaches; but the tutor does not unfold this knowledge in a formal and direct manner. The tutor is therefore free to engage his students at their own level. This is essential: the teacher is no more able to transfer knowledge into the minds of his students than is the physician to transfer health into the bodies of his patients. The physician’s art must imitate and assist nature’s own healing processes. Likewise, because the mind is ordered by nature to truth just as the body is ordered by nature to health, the teacher must imitate and assist the natural processes of reasoning. To quote again St. Thomas Aquinas: “Just as the doctor is said to heal a patient through the activity of nature, so a man is said to cause knowledge in another through the activity of the learner’s own natural reason, and this is teaching” (De Magistro) (emphasis added). This being understood, we see that the tutor can assist nature more effectively than a lecturer. The tutor can examine his “patients” on a case-by-case basis. Hence, he can more easily determine their weaknesses and more easily apply fitting remedies.

Like the physician, the best way for a teacher to examine his students is by asking questions designed to expose common problems. By asking his students questions rather than presenting answers, the tutor’s mode of teaching—as compared to the lecturer’s—is indirect. The tutor’s questions compel students to exercise their own minds and to reason by their own lights. Here it helps to recall the Platonic notion that education does not consist in bestowing intellectual vision so much as in “turning” the mind’s eye, namely, directing the mind’s eye toward reality or truth (Republic 518b-d). In his dialogues Plato also shows that this turning—literally a conversion—is achieved best through conversation. The tutor knows that his students share but do not yet clearly see the common notions about reality that are in all men. With skillful questioning he can help students grasp these fundamental notions, notions that are the starting points of all knowledge. By asking the right questions in the right order, the tutor can lead students to the knowledge of the arts and sciences grounded upon these starting points, or first principles.

Although the tutor proceeds in a less formal and direct manner than the lecturer, the tutor’s questioning-method is anything but random. Indeed his questions arise from knowing both the subject matter and, by means of his questions, his students’ intellectual condition. Stated otherwise, by so-to-speak directing indirectingly, the tutor himself is guided by the intrinsic order of the subject matter. In treating of the various arts and sciences he knows and proceeds according to what is antecedent and what is consequent.

The Seminar

The word “seminar” derives from the Latin seminarium, a seedbed. Hence a seminar is meant to be seminal with respect to learning. It contains and contributes “seeds” for fertilization and growth.

Here we note that, unlike the words “lecturer” and “tutor,” there exists no English word for the teacher who employs the seminar method. Indeed the word “seminarian” denotes not the teacher but the student. This etymological peculiarity indicates that the seminar method focuses upon the students while the teacher seeks not to engender knowledge but to prepare the ground thereof. This preparation in turn entails a more active exchange among the students themselves. It is an exchange wherein students struggle to uncover and express the principles and developments of knowledge.

Unlike the lecturer, the seminar teacher does not guide students by unfolding formally what he himself already knows. Neither does he, as the tutor does, closely question students to correct their thinking so that they may attain certain knowledge. Instead the seminar teacher encourages students to wrestle with fundamental problems, problems with which every student must struggle if he is to make a good beginning in any discipline. The seminar teacher therefore leads more by raising questions than by providing answers.

Again, as opposed to both the lecture and the tutorial, the proximate end of the seminar is not the acquisition of knowledge. Rather it is the development of habits requisite for discovering and expressing reasoned opinion. This is not to say that the seminar teacher and his students can be indifferent to knowledge. After all, one of the fundamental lessons students must learn from seminar is not to confuse verbal victory with knowledge of truth. This being said, it remains that in seminar genuine knowledge is an accidental outcome. The seminar’s essential purpose is to develop skills in reasoning and speaking, skills without which the student normally cannot progress in knowledge, whether this knowledge be of a general or specific kind.

From the perspective of the teacher, then, the seminar is a practical training ground for the three verbal arts which the Medievals called the trivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. And yet if the student’s training is to be meaningful, the material upon which he exercises his mind must be of the sort to prepare him eventually to acquire knowledge. The Great Books, about which we will have more to say, serve this purpose well. They serve it well because they effectively raise the questions every mind confronts in its search for wisdom.

If the primary weakness of the lecture is that it can instill passivity, the primary weakness of the seminar is that it can inspire students with a false sense of intelligence and intellectual progress. Moreover, because the seminar can dissolve readily into meaningless chat or merely verbal battle inspired by love of victory, it can lead frustrated students into misology; it can tempt them with hatred of argument or logos itself. This is a danger, grave and always present, about which Plato, in order to forestall the death of logos, has the soon-to-die Socrates warn us in the Phaedo (89d-91c). It is a danger the seminar teacher must always bear in mind.

(To be continued.)