God, Philosophy, Universities

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the lecture and dinner celebrating the life and work of Alasdair MacIntyre and the 10th anniversary of Notre Dame's Center for Ethics and Culture this past Thursday.  The Reverend John Jenkins, President of Notre Dame; Dr. John Cavadini, chair of ND's Theology department; and Dr. John McGreevy, dean of ND's College of Arts and Letters reflected on Prof. MacIntyre's latest book, God, Philosopy, Universities:  A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition, with Fr. Jenkins situating MacIntyre's work alongside that of Aquinas and Newman.  Cavadini noted that the relevance of a Theology Department (as opposed to Religious Studies) goes much further and deeper than the courses taught in that department.  He suggested that the presence of Theology in the university curriculum orients the whole endeavor toward mystery, opening the university up to unity and integration of knowledge. 

MacIntyre offered a very moving response to the three papers.  His book grew out of his experience teaching a course by the same name (two of my children benefited greatly from the class).  He argued that a problem with undergraduate education these days is that it doesn't develop good generalists.  Specialists who have not been good generalists first become one-sided, lacking adequate knowledge of their own limitations.  In other words, they don't know what they don't know.

MacIntyre concluded that even at a place like ND with a core liberal arts requirement, his students are not well instructed generalists.  He offered two reasons for this (he said there were three reasons but I only caught two, so please fill in the gap).  First, students look at courses outside of their area of interest as isolated units.  Non-math or science majors are apt, for example, to look at the required math and science courses as boxes to check on a degree form, thanking God when the course is done and math and science are in the rear view mirror forever (I plead guilty to this attitude), rather than as an important and integral part of knowledge.  Second, the gpa.  Students are less inclined to take risks outside of their academic comfort zones because of the need to keep the gpa for graduate school applications. 

In response to a student suggesting that this generalist knowledge base couldn't be achieved in a four year undergraduate education, MacIntyre responded that two years of focused study in an integrated curriculum ought to be enough to provide undergraduates the tools to become well instructed generalists.