An Historical–Philosophical and Phenomenological Study of a Catholic Perspective of Liberal ...

1131 Pages·2014·12.06 MB·English

AN HISTORICAL-PHILOSOPHICAL AND
PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY
OF A CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVE OF
LIBERAL EDUCATION

Oratorium Sancti Philippi Nerii Pharrense
Pharr, Texas
MMXIII
ii
iii

AN HISTORICAL-PHILOSOPHICAL AND
PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY
OF A CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVE OF
LIBERAL EDUCATION

by Leo-Francis Daniels, C.O.

Libraria Oratorii Pharrensis
Pharr, Texas
MMXIII
iv

ISBN-10: 0615902332
ISBN-13: 978-0-615-90233-3

Dewey Decimal Classification: 370.114
Library of Congress Classification: LC311

Copyright © 2013 by The Pharr Oratory of St. Philip Neri
v

Preface
Classical liberal education was born of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle of ancient Greece; it was
later formulated by the ancient Romans, and was finally concretized in the High Middle Ages as a
curriculum of the seven liberal arts known as the Trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the
Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy). Hanging on a Perennialist Aristotelian
theoretical framework, liberal education is characterized by a constant philosophical-rhetorical tension
forming a dynamic part of an unending educational process.

Classical liberal education is embedded as a Greco-Roman-Judeo-Christian cultural stream within
Western culture; its curriculum and methodology can be summarily described as Western civilization’s
great writings with whose authors liberal education learners, in their careful reading and study, enter into
constructive dialogue. Under the medieval influence of the seven liberal arts, the monastic and cathedral
schools, Scholasticism (e.g., Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas), and the Latin translations of the works
of renowned Moslem commentators (e.g., Ibn Sinâ and Ibn Rushd) on Aristotle and other ancient Greek
philosophers, the European university came into existence. The historical-philosophical methodology,
besides functioning to identify liberal education’s primordial components, singled out key contributory
players to the origins of liberal and Catholic liberal education; these critical contributors were, then,
isolated and elaborated upon: To wit, Socrates, the Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, Jewish-Pagan-and
Christian authors of the first centuries of the Common Era, Cicero, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas,
John Henry Newman, Bernard Lonergan, Luigi Giussani, and Jacques Maritain. Through the awareness of
recurrent themes from among the historical-philosophical data, definitions of classical liberal were
gradually developed, revealing, all the while, 24 pertinent considerations, or factors, carrying the research
even more deeply into the notion of liberal and Catholic liberal education.

The resulting coalescence demarcating the boundaries for classical liberal education received their
credibility and validation, throughout, from the historical-philosophical data gathered from various and
distinct epochs, authors, cultures, geographies, religions, and educational backgrounds and from the
theoretical phenomenological data taken from 20 in-depth interviews (Denzin, 2006); the data, which was
multifarious, germane, and sufficiently divergent temporally, categorically and proportionally, abounded to
a convergence suitable for demonstration by triangulation. Because American educators have, in more
recent years, been in academic disarray concerning the definitions and origins of liberal education, schools
and educators purporting to offer a liberal education have often resorted to describing their educational
service with jargon and generalities reflecting the uncertain identity of their institution's purposes and
pedagogy (Kimball, 1995; Muir, 1996, 1998, 2004, 2005).

The problem is even more serious for Catholic parents who, desiring a specifically Catholic liberal
education for their children, find themselves at great risk when paying for instructional service that could
very well be neither an authentically Catholic nor a genuinely liberal education. While the historical-
philosophical research design proved adequate to uncover the historical course and resulting convergence
of definitions of classical liberal education, another research design was necessary to provide insights into
how liberal education might be considered today by Catholic educators. By adding a second-phase
phenomenological research design to the first-phase historical-philosophical design research, the study was
able, by in-depth interview, “to focus on descriptions of what people experience and how they experience
what they experience” (Patton, 1990, p. 71).

The instrument of research for probing each participant’s mental dispositions about liberal and
Catholic liberal education became the personal interview which is considered the main method of data
collection in phenomenological research as it provides a situation where the participants’ descriptions can
be explored, illuminated and gently probed (Kvale 1996). The questions for the in-depth interview of the
phenomenological study emanated from 23 essential components for a liberal education deduced from the
first-phase historical-philosophical research design. With the introduction of the phenomenological
research design, the study became bipartite in nature, setting out, by means of the historical-philosophical
vi
research design, (1) to cut through the extraneous ambiguities and unfounded uncertainties about classical
liberal education by following closely upon the continuous Greco-Roman-Judeo-Christian cultural current
within which classical liberal education remained securely afloat until the Enlightenment and (2) to
rediscover and salvage, by means of the phenomenological research design, what remained of liberal and
Catholic liberal education in the personal history and mental disposition of 20 Catholic teachers of a
bicultural-bilingual pre-K through grade 12 Anglo-Hispanic Catholic school system with nearby campuses
on both sides of the international border in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, and in Pharr, Texas, USA.

This study serves as a resource for the history of liberal education, bringing the reader in contact
with liberal education’s roots: With its pagan, Jewish, Christian and Moslem connections and with its
expression in today’s postmodern Anglo-Hispanic world. Classical liberal education and Catholic classical
liberal education serve humanity in two ways: In purely secular terms, learners can profit from this study
in classical liberal education with the knowledge that there is a transcendent reason for human existence
and that this reason can be discovered in their very nature as human beings, in their rationality as framers of
their own destiny, in uncovering the direction toward veritable human fulfillment, in identifying which of
the many passing means and goals validly and efficaciously work for their good (morality), in being able to
lead others with personal competence, objectivity, integrity, logic, reliability, humility, other-centeredness,
virtue, valor, and self-sacrifice, and in allowing the lifelong student of liberal education ultimately to rest in
the truth, goodness, unity, and beauty of humanity’s final end.

In addition to these secular transcendent reasons for human existence, the study of specifically
Catholic classical liberal education serves to help learners understand that, of all visible creatures, only
human beings are able to know and love their Creator. Human beings alone are the only creatures on earth
God has willed for their own sake, for they alone are called by God to share, by knowledge and love, in
God’s own life. It was for this end that human beings were created, and this is the fundamental reason for
their dignity: By embracing in his human heart the Father's love for men, Jesus loved them to the end, for
greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends; in suffering and death his
humanity became the free and perfect instrument of his divine love which desires the salvation of men
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 356 and 609).
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES......................................................................................................................................xiii

CHAPTER 1: STATE OF THE QUESTION...................................................................................................1

Background of the Study...........................................................................................................................1
Statement of the Problem..........................................................................................................................5
Purpose of the Study..................................................................................................................................6
Significance of the Study...........................................................................................................................6
Nature of the Study....................................................................................................................................8
Methodologies.........................................................................................................................................10
General Norms for Historical and Phenomenological Methodologies............................................10
Specific Norms for Historical-Philosophical Methodology.............................................................10
Specific Norms for the Phenomenological Methodology................................................................11
Research Questions.................................................................................................................................11
Theoretical Framework...........................................................................................................................12
Neo-Thomist Integral Realism.........................................................................................................12
Experimentalism and Perennialism..................................................................................................13
Definitions...............................................................................................................................................13
Historical-Philosophical and Phenomenological Study...................................................................13
Historical-philosophical Design.........................................................................................13
Phenomenological Design.................................................................................................13
Catholic Perspective from a Philosophical Viewpoint.....................................................................13
Catholic Perspective from a Theological/Socio-Political Viewpoint..............................................15
Liberal Education.............................................................................................................................15
Assumptions............................................................................................................................................16
Scope and Limitations.............................................................................................................................17
Delimitations...........................................................................................................................................18
Summary..................................................................................................................................................18

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW........................................................................................................20

Conditions, Norms and Clarifications for Organization and Order........................................................20
Constraints for Fruitful Discussion of Liberal Education................................................................20
Norms for Identifying Liberal and Catholic Liberal Education.......................................................20
Restatement of Purposes..........................................................................................................................21
Two-Phase Design: Historical-Philosophical and Phenomenological....................................................21
Phenomenological Study Yields Current Relevance.......................................................................21
Historical-Philosophical Study Sets the Groundwork......................................................................21
Division and Rationale of the Literature Review....................................................................................21
General Literature............................................................................................................................21
Historical Primary and Secondary Source Literature.......................................................................21
Philosophical Literature...................................................................................................................21
Posited Assumptions in Defining Liberal Education..............................................................................22
Outline of the Literature Review.............................................................................................................22
General Literature............................................................................................................................23
Doctoral Dissertations......................................................................................................................35
Historical Primary and Secondary Sources......................................................................................43
Liberal Education Current Begins: Ancient Greece................................................................................45
Principal Contributory Claimants to the Origins of Liberal Education...................................................45
Socrates: 1st Contributory Claimant to Origins of Liberal Education..............................................46
Sophists: 2nd Contributory Claim to Origins of Liberal Education..................................................62
Plato and Aristotle: 3rd Contributory Claim to Origins of Liberal Education..................................81
viii

Isocrates: 4th Contributory Claim to the Origins of Liberal Education..........................................143
Jews, Pagans, and Christians: 5th Contributory Claim to Liberal Education.................................150
Cicero and Augustine: 6th Claim to the Origins of Liberal Education...........................................155
Thomas Aquinas: 7th Claimant to the Origins of Liberal Education..............................................177
Newman, Lonergan, and Giussani: 8th Contributory Claim to the Origins
of Liberal Education........................................................................................................199
Jacques Maritain: 9th Contributory Claim to Origins of Liberal Education...................................262

Modern and Contemporary Philosophical Literature and Liberal Education.......................................294
Martin Bernal and Samuel Huntington..........................................................................................294
Martin Bernal: Aryan and Ancient Models.....................................................................295
Samuel Huntington: Cultural and Religious Similarities................................................296
Bernal Versus Huntington................................................................................................296
Anti-Bernal socio-political propositions..........................................................................297
Ambrose and Augustine: Judeo-Christian Origins.........................................................................297
Mehdi Nakosteen: Islamic Contribution to Liberal Education......................................................297
Harold Taylor: Liberal Education As a Seedbed for Change.........................................................298
Paul Oskar Kristeller: Humanistic Education................................................................................298
Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich: Class, Race, and Gender Injustice..................................................300
Jane Roland Martin........................................................................................................................300
Diane Ravitch ...........................................................................................................................300

Historical and Professional Inaccuracies Uncovered by James Muir...................................................302
John White: Questionable Theory and Aberrant Practice..............................................................302
John Dewey and Jean Jacques Rousseau.......................................................................................307
Sophists ...........................................................................................................................307
Montaigne, Bacon, Locke, Mill, and Spencer.................................................................308
Richard Stanley Peters...................................................................................................................310
Paul H. Hirst...................................................................................................................................310

Historical Addenda Relative to Liberal Education..............................................................................312
Greek Current in Liberal Education: Personages.......................................................................312
Greek and Roman Education (Hellenization).............................................................................316
Roman Current in Liberal Education: Personages......................................................................320
Christian Current in Liberal Education: Personages and Institutions.........................................322
Medieval Revival........................................................................................................................337
Islam and the Ancient Liberal Learning Tradition.....................................................................338
Contributions of Islam................................................................................................................350
University: Formation As a Society and a School......................................................................353
Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Scholasticism and the University..............................................363
Controversy between the Realists and Nominalists....................................................................368
Renaissance throughout Europe.................................................................................................378
Educational Significance of Reformation Principles..................................................................383
Enlightenment.............................................................................................................................386
Pragmatism.................................................................................................................................393
Rebirth of Classical Liberal Education.......................................................................................397
Quadrivium and Occultism.........................................................................................................422

Catholic Classical Liberal Education in the 21st Century......................................................................427
Postmodern Philosophical-Rhetorical Tension in Catholic Liberal Education.....................................430
Philosophical-Rhetorical Tension and Birth of Liberal Education.......................................................434
Vindication of the Catholic Church as Authoritative Teacher..............................................................434
Values Beneficial to and Critical of Catholic Classical Liberal Education...........................................435
Liberal Education Makes Intelligible the Church’s Teaching Authority..............................................436
Liberal Education As Necessary for Intellectual and Emotional Growth.............................................437
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Point of Decision: Definition of Classical Liberal Education...............................................................440

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY................................................................................................................451

Historical Method Included in the Social Sciences...............................................................................451
Enhanced Bipartite Methodology..........................................................................................................451
Important Distinctions in Research about the Historical Method.........................................................451
Essentials for Historical Research.........................................................................................................452
Inter-discipline of Historical Research..................................................................................................452
Research Becomes Productively Served by Philosophy.......................................................................453
Triangulation’s Place in Historical Research........................................................................................453
Importance of Triangulation..................................................................................................................455
Phenomenological Research Embraces Subjectivity.............................................................................456
Establishing Validity and Reliability.....................................................................................................456
Textual Reliability.................................................................................................................................456
Indirect Approach of Qualitative Research...........................................................................................456
Minimalist Inductive Approach Can Elicit Certitude............................................................................457
Illative Sense.........................................................................................................................................458
Eliciting Certitude without Clear and Certain Evidence.......................................................................458
Suitability of the Qualitative Research Method....................................................................................459
Researcher’s Role as Both Historian and Philosopher..........................................................................459
Phenomenological Methodology Background......................................................................................460
Importance of Historical Research........................................................................................................460
Importance of Phenomenological Research..........................................................................................460
Phenomenological Identification of Liberal Education.........................................................................461
Appropriateness of the Phenomenological Design................................................................................461
Acquisition of Data from Outside Awareness.......................................................................................462
Assumptions..........................................................................................................................................462
Second Phase Research Design and Population....................................................................................463
Uniqueness of Sampling.................................................................................................................463
Pharr Oratory of St. Philip Neri School System (POSS)...............................................................463
Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas...............................................................................................464
Interview Questions........................................................................................................................465
Schematic Representation of Question Development....................................................................468
Schematic View of the Historical-Phenomenological Processes...................................................471
Phenomenological Process.............................................................................................................471
Triangulation: Universal Data, US Data, Latin American Data............................................................478
Permission and Legal Considerations...................................................................................................478
Conclusions and Implications in the Use of a Bipartite Methodology..................................................478

CHAPTER 4: SECOND-PHASE PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH...............................................479

Preliminary Notions for 2nd Phase Phenomenological Research...................................................479
Purpose of the Second-phase Phenomenological Research.............................................480
Detailed Explanation of Second-Phase Study Methodology.............................480
Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen Adaptation....................................................................480
Phenomenological Researcher Mentality: Epoche............................................481
Selection of Participants....................................................................................481
Profile of Teacher Participant Sampling..........................................................................482
Data Analysis Procedure..................................................................................................483
Careful Reading and Verification of Transcripts..............................................483
Organization of Data.........................................................................................483
Units of Meaning................................................................................484
Thematic Clusters...............................................................................484
Textural and Structural Compositions................................................485
x
Individual Descriptive Textural Composition.....................................485
Individual Descriptive Structural Composition..................................485
Composite Textural Description.........................................................486
Individual Composite Structural Description.....................................486
Synthesis of Texture and Structure.....................................................486
Four Composite Descriptions..............................................................486
Singularity of Design..........................................................................487
Data Analysis and Interpretation of 2nd Phase Phenomenological Study......................................487
Organization of Interview Data of 20 Participants according to Meaning
Units, Textural Themes, Textural and Structural Descriptions.......................................487
Participant 1.......................................................................................................487
Participant 2.......................................................................................................506
Participant 3.......................................................................................................510
Participant 4.......................................................................................................519
Participant 5.......................................................................................................529
Participant 6.......................................................................................................537
Participant 7.......................................................................................................548
Participant 8.......................................................................................................559
Participant 9.......................................................................................................569
Participant 10.....................................................................................................578
Participant 11.....................................................................................................589
Participant 12.....................................................................................................597
Participant 13.....................................................................................................605
Participant 14.....................................................................................................611
Participant 15.....................................................................................................618
Participant 16.....................................................................................................622
Participant 17.....................................................................................................630
Participant 18.....................................................................................................638
Participant 19.....................................................................................................644
Participant 20.....................................................................................................648

Summary, Schematic Overview, and Statistical Analysis.............................................................661
Constituent Characteristics of Liberal Education............................................................661
Overall Analysis of Participant and Probed Trait Characteristics...................................668
Distribution: Language, Place of Education, Education in Years...................................669
Distribution: Years of Schooling ....................................................................................670

Four Reductive Analyses Arriving at the Essence of Liberal Education.......................................671
I. Composite Textural Description: Factor-Focused (1st Reduction)..............................671
From Sensing Textures to Interpreting Emerging Structures....................................703
II. Composite of Structural Descriptions: Participant-Focused......................................704
Participant 1.......................................................................................................704
Participant 2.......................................................................................................705
Participant 3.......................................................................................................707
Participant 4.......................................................................................................708
Participant 5.......................................................................................................709
Participant 6.......................................................................................................712
Morbid Conversation: Poisonous Narcissism.....................................714
Healthy Conversation: Generosity and Productivity..........................719
Totality, Oratory Schools, God, Goodness, & Virtue.........................721
Participant 7.......................................................................................................722
Participant 8.......................................................................................................726
Participant 9.......................................................................................................727
Participant 10.....................................................................................................730
Participant 11.....................................................................................................732
Participant 12.....................................................................................................733