The Pupil as a Person
The idea of being is the explosive source of all intelligibility and truth, producing rock solid foundation to all cognitive sciences, including education, and to morality.
Education is possible because true knowledge is available. We need, however, to entertain an accurate study of the subject of education, the individual child. This is a far more controversial proposition than it appears at first. For, how do we define a “human being”? Moreover, how do we define a “person”?
It is fashionable today to talk of the human “person”, of “personal” relations, of education centred on the “person”. But, what is the accepted meaning of “person”? P. Singer, a very popular and influential philosopher, thinks that everyone should agree with his definition of person: “Person is a being who is aware of itself, capable of having memories of the past, and expectations and dreams for the future”.
On the basis of this definition, he declares all higher animals “persons”: dogs, cats, horses are “persons” because they can fulfil all the above requirements; on the other hand, foetuses, even newly born babies, and elderly people with dementia or other serious mental illnesses are not “persons”. For Singer the concept of “person” is the guiding principle of important ethical choices: a “person”, whether animal or human, must be respected and protected; a non-person may be disposed of if the need arises. Abortion, euthanasia, embryo-experimentation, even infanticide may be justified since we are not dealing with “persons”. This is one example of the tragic consequences of a bad definition of person.
If the discovery of the prodigious idea of being marks Rosmini’s philosophy as the work of a genius, his second discovery about what constitutes a human being is of fundamental importance in what J. Searle calls the “appalling confusion” about the essence and nature of the human being. This is what he wrote recently in an article entitled, “What’s wrong with the philosophy of mind?” an assessment of materialistic theories over the past fifty years:
“Seen in perspective, the last fifty years of the philosophy of mind present a very curious spectacle. The most striking feature is how much of mainstream philosophy of mind seems obviously false. I believe there is no other area of contemporary philosophy where so much is said that is so implausible; obvious facts about the mental, such as that we all really do have subjective conscious mental states and that these are not eliminable in favour of anything else, are routinely denied by many, perhaps most, of the advanced thinkers in the subject”.
Together with the deep crisis about truth, therefore, the other most insidious tendency today is precisely the negation of the existence of the “soul” or of “mind”. Philosophy of Mind is the most striking modern branch of philosophy, and there seem to be a general consensus that talk of “soul” is a superstitious remnant of unsophisticated times, that there is no spiritual soul or mind, and that a careful study of the nature and functions of the brain is sufficient to explain the whole cognitive and volitive dimensions of the human person.
This materialistic view is certainly not new; what is new is the immense progress in the study of the brain, of behavioural psychology, and of technology, together with a clearer and more refined scientific understanding of the process of evolution, which seems to rule out any possibility of a “spiritual” entity. Everything in the universe is open to scientific investigation hence everything is material, publicly observable, including the human person. Such views open the gate for a most extensive negation of the dignity of persons, of freedom, and of morality.
Rosmini’s teaching on the “subject” of all human experiences, Man, is most enlightening and persuasive. He begins, as usual, with a careful observation of facts and then provides two definitions,
“A human being is an intellective and volitive animal subject”
“A human being is an animal subject endowed with the intuition of indeterminate-ideal being and with the perception of corporeal-fundamental feeling, and acting in accordance with the animality and intelligence it possesses”
Thus the idea of being is not the only primordial element “innate” in us. There is another element essential for our knowledge of ourselves and of the world, the “innate” fundamental feeling whereby our soul feels constantly and permanently the body, and through which we can feel all other sensations. We would not be able to feel external bodies that stimulate or press on our body if we did not feel constantly our own body.
Our soul, therefore, from the moment of conception, is united to the body which is the term of its fundamental feeling and through which it feels all other sensations, and is united to the idea of being, the object of pure intuition, and through which it forms all other ideas with the help of the senses.
The Soul is that which “feels” in us.
Human soul is the principle of an active, substantial feeling which, identically the same, has as its terms 1- extension (and in it a body) and 2- being. It is therefore at one and the same time sensitive and intellective (rational).
The human soul is that first principle of feeling and understanding which, without ceasing to be one and to have a single radical activity, is constituted by something felt, extended and corporeal, and by something understood, that is, indeterminate being.
The soul is, therefore, a substantial feeling. Observe carefully, however, this word “feeling”. In the same way that one cannot have a Cheshire cat’s grin without the cat, there cannot be “feeling” without that which feels and that which is felt, without the soul that feels and the body that is felt. The conjunction of the soul to the body is what we call “life”, hence we can see how intimate the connection of soul and body is. Life always refer to sensation, and properly speaking, resides in the soul where alone sensation is present. However, life can be attributed to the body but only in so far as the body is intimately conjoined to the soul. Feeling is the distinguishing mark of a “living” creature, and animals are defined by Rosmini as “subjective beings with feeling”. The feeling principle in animals and in human beings is the soul.
However, soul and body are completely different and even opposed in their natures: the soul “feels”, the body does not feel but is the cause of sensation or feeling, the means whereby the soul feels. The brain, being body, cannot feel anything; it is the soul that is the subject of sensations. Yet, it is the most common mistake today among philosophers of mind to say that it is the brain that feels!
The soul, therefore, is essentially a principle that feels. All the feeling activities of the soul are expressed by us with the word “I” or “Myself”. The I is not the pure soul, because babies or whoever cannot say “I” have nonetheless their soul: the I is the soul that reflects on itself, is the soul perceiving itself, becoming aware of itself in its various operations. When we say “I read, I see, I wish…” the words express that we are doing the actions, and the soul is aware of itself doing the actions.
“I cannot doubt that I who feel, think, speak, am the soul. The soul, therefore, as I presently conceive it, is that being which I intend to express when I use the word “I”. The person who says “I” performs an interior act by which he enunciates his own soul. “I”, therefore, is the vocal sign enunciated by an intellective soul of his own act when he turns attention internally to himself and perceives himself”. (Psychology, 69)
The soul manifests the unity of the human subject, since the same soul intuits the idea of being and perceives his body, the “I who feels is the same I who understands”. The primordial intellective perception in a human being is the intellective perception of himself: the feeling soul perceives the body with a fundamental and constant feeling, but this perception remains obscure and not an object of knowledge until it is enlightened by the light of the idea of being which is present in the human soul. The soul applies the idea of being to the felt body and perceives it as its own body intellectually, thus acquiring knowledge of itself.
The soul in animals is a feeling principle, but it has only corporeal sensations. Animals do not intuit being, do not have the idea of being, therefore they can never reach awareness of themselves, they can never think or say “I”, their feeling of the body remains constant but in total darkness. They react to the stimulations of their body and of bodies by the force of instinct.
Will and Freedom
Sensation and intellect are passive faculties, the former receiving the action of internal or external bodies, the latter receiving the light of reason. To every passive faculty there is a corresponding active one, instinct as a reaction to sensation and the will as a reaction to what is intuited by the intellect. Instinct drives the animal to pursue pleasurable sensations and to recoil from painful ones; the will directs the human subject to acknowledge and love what the intellect presents as being or truth.
The will is a complex faculty that develops with age; the will of the child is only an “affective” will, wanting what is pleasurable on the basis of experience not of judgment. Later the child progresses to wanting pleasurable things on the basis of knowing that they are good for him, but he is still unable to distinguish between greater and lesser goods, immediate or delayed goods.
A further important stage is when the child passes from merely affective to “appreciative” will, when he is able to evaluate the known objects and choose one over the other; although the choice is still based on instinct rather than on intelligence.
A quality shift happens when the subject comes to realise that there are other persons who have the same rights, needs, dreams, desire for happiness. At this stage, the subject begins to see people and things not as means to his own pleasure but as independent and valuable in themselves. This is the time of “objective” knowing, when we forget ourselves and consider the world as it is; persons and objects are acknowledged for what they are and are “willed”, loved, valued as good in themselves.
It is at this moment, when a person is able to differentiate between good relative to oneself or subjective, and good relative to others or objective, that the conflict between the two orders of good begins: it is the moment of decision for the will, which will pursue one rather than the other. It is at this crucial moment of choice between the subjective and the objective that we experience the faculty of freedom. It is freedom that will make the choice between the two conflicting goods, hence freedom in humans is qualified as “bilateral”, it can choose one or the other. In this choice man has no other master but himself: freedom is the apex of man. The act of freedom engages the whole man, since it directs all other active faculties (instincts, volitions) towards the decided purpose.
Freedom, born of reason, is not easy, since it has to compete with passions, customs, desires, affections, persuasions, habits, conditioning, all forces that do not easily conform to the categorical demands of the “intelligent will”.
The intellect, in conclusion, sees the truth of things, knows things as they are; freedom determines the will to either acknowledge, love, embrace the known truth or to reject it, or distort it, or hate it; the action follows from the choice of the free will.
This meticulous examination of intellect, freedom, and will proves the innate tendency of the child towards truth (vision of being), and towards morality and goodness, which is to “follow in all things the light of reason”, that is, to acknowledge the truth of things and to love them according to their order.
Rosmini’s views on this are at the opposite side of the far more popular teaching of Rousseau, who said that the power moving the child is simply egotism or self-love. For Rosmini the child is naturally open to all things, intellectually and affectively: truth and love are the prime movers. However, there is also the dark reality of original sin, with its negative consequences and the bad inclinations of a corrupt human nature.
The human person
One can immediately understand why the “person”, the seat of intellect, freedom, and will, is the supreme principle in a human subject. All human instincts derive from the subjective fundamental feeling, but intellect, freedom, and will derive from objective being, since their acts follow necessarily from the intuition of being and truth. It is the link with the object seen by the intellect and freely willed, that gives the human person the infinite dignity that makes the person an end and never a means. It is because human beings are “persons” that they are infinitely valuable and endowed with an infinity dignity.
Rosmini defines person “a substantial, intelligent subject, in so far as it has a supreme and incommunicable principle of activity”, that is a free will. Since it is the intellect and the free will that makes one a person, then every human being is a person from conception since its soul is enlightened by the idea of being at conception, making the new human subject intelligent and endowed with free will, even if the full use of such faculties is not immediate or may become impaired at any time later.
To sum up, the will, which is the constitutive of personhood, is the active, supreme principle in man. As such, it directs and binds together all other principles, setting them in their proper order, and using them as means to achieve the moral perfection to which personhood is called to by the constant link with the idea of being, and ultimately, with God.
Education of the Person
The child is the “subject” of education so all efforts must be geared towards helping him to develop all his faculties harmoniously, in the right hierarchical order. We have seen that it is often a mistake in education to concentrate on the growth of a section of the child, to insist on some qualities or talents ignoring the others, or to approach subjects in an exclusive and disconnected way. Rosmini distinguishes between formation of human nature and formation of person, the former interested in developing aspects of one or the other of human faculties, or of individual talents, the latter instead concentrating on the harmonious growth of all the main constituents of the human subject, mind, heart, feeling, instinct, intellect, reason, will, nature and super-nature.
The person is the supreme principle of the human subject, hence the child must be educated to direct to the perfection of the person all his faculties and talents. If the aim of education, and its fundamental unity, is the perfection of the person, then parents, teachers, society, Church should value schools as places where the formation of persons is cultivated, according to truth and moral good.
We have seen that for Rosmini man is “an intellective and volitive animal subject” hence education based on personhood tends towards a full and harmonious development of the three basic faculties belonging to a child:
1- “Feeling” is the means whereby the child has a direct contact with the real things that make up the universe, starting with the feeling of “myself”, or “fundamental feeling”. The harmonious development and nurturing of the body, of the senses, is therefore hugely important for the child, but not for its own sake but for the good of the whole person. What good would it be for a child, for example, to have a perfect, athletic body, or to develop to a high degree his artistic or musical skills, if he is morally evil? Nonetheless, schools should provide great opportunities for children to develop a wide spectrum of sense experiences since the “matter” for their knowledge is provided by the senses. Rosmini, for example, insists on the importance of exposing the child to harmonious and beautiful surroundings, full of light and order.
2- “Intelligence” is the faculty that is made up by the innate, constant vision of the idea of being, and, hence, of truth. It is the means whereby a child acquires ideas and knowledge: of himself, of other people, and of the things of the universe. It is the faculty that opens up the mind to infinity, and leads him to God, the source of all being. Since the intellect, through the idea of being, sees things as they are in themselves and sees them in their order, it constitutes the first essential step to acknowledging and loving being, which is the condition for moral perfection. Pure knowledge, however, if not followed by “acknowledgment” does not improve the person; again, one may be a most knowledgeable man, and a despicable human being! Rosmini distinguishes “intellect” from “reason”, the former being “infallible”, since it is simply the constant vision of the divine idea of being; the latter, instead, is our application of the idea of being to the matter provided by experience of real things, and here we can indeed go wrong if we do not follow all necessary logical steps. It is important, therefore, that we provide pupils with the means for using their reason properly, providing reasons for all things, and asking reasons for what they say or do. Teacher-supervised debates, if properly conducted, can contribute greatly to educate children in the proper use of reason.
3- “Will” is the supreme principle of activity which provides the basis of the incommunicable individuality that constitutes each human creature as a person. The intellect is a passive faculty, receiving the light of being; its active faculty is the will, that guided by the faculty of freedom, acknowledges – or rejects – the truth that has been presented to it.
The will is the true seat of personhood, since it is the supreme principle to which all others obey, and the seat of morality which consists in “acknowledging being in its proper order”. The formation of a “good will” is therefore the most important purpose of education.
In educating the child it is the authenticity, the sincerity of the teacher and of the school as a whole in presenting “knowledge” that will help the child embrace it from “the heart”, acknowledging and delighting in it.
For Rosmini the child must tend to union with being, the whole of being, in order to reach his perfection. Now, being is one, but it has three modes, real, ideal, moral, and hence being is “reality”, “truth”, “goodness”. The child reaches out to real being through “feeling” hence to happiness; to ideal being through “intelligence” hence to truth, and to moral being through “the will” hence to love and goodness.
The harmonious development of the three main faculties of the child – feeling, intelligence, will – will lead him necessarily to happiness, truth, and goodness.
The supernatural world of the child
What has been said above applies to every child in education. State schools have the duty to cater for the needs of children according to the lofty demands of their human nature and the infinite dignity of their personhood, clearly indicated by the light of reason common to all.
Rosminian schools, however, have the far greater task of catering for children who, by means of Baptism, have new supernatural faculties, a new fundamental feeling, a new intellect, a new will, and hence a new personhood.
We have seen that grace is the perception of God in the depths of our soul, a perception which is real not merely ideal. In the order of nature, man can only have a negative idea of God with the light of reason, like a person born blind can only have a negative idea of light and colours.
The “character” and the “sanctifying grace” given at Baptism as an entirely free gift from God allow us to “perceive” God who “acts” really in our soul. God acts in us directly, creating in us
a new “fundamental feeling”, which is a feeling of the supernatural, going far beyond the feeling of the limited existing things of the universe, a feeling of Absolute Being, of real infinite Power, of the creative power of the Father;
a new intellect superior to the simple intuition of “ideal being” since it now has the perception of unlimited, real, personal Truth, the Son of God;
a new will, acknowledging not only the truth seen by the intellect and loving the limited goods of this world, but affirming the absolute, infinite goodness of Absolute Being, and experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit who draws it to loving God as the true source of happiness and bliss.
God, through grace, creates in us a new being, more precisely, completes and raises to perfection our human soul in ways not possible to unaided human nature. The whole of the New Testament bears witness to the reality of the new birth to a supernatural life: “Unless you are born again of water and the Holy Spirit you cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven”; “In Baptism we die to ourselves and we are raised to a new life”; “Our old self has been crucified with Christ, so that we too may be raised to a new life”. The full immersion in the waters of baptism symbolises our death to the “old self” in union with Christ, the coming out of the waters is the symbol of our resurrection to a new life, in union with the resurrected Christ.
In the soul touched by grace there is not only a divine effect but there is God Himself. God is therefore not only the “efficient cause” – producing various effects in our soul – but is the “objective formal cause” – that is, God is the cause and the effect at the same time of what is happening in the soul, without in any way becoming our soul. In simpler words, God creates in us a new fundamental feeling, a new intellect, and a new will that have as their Object only God: so we “feel God”, we “gain a deeper, fuller knowledge of the perceived God”, and we “love God as the fullness of goodness and happiness”.
Rosminian Schools, therefore, cannot simply be “academies” of knowledge and of training in various practical skills; they must be centres where “faith” is nurtured, where development of the supernatural faculties is given a place of prominence.
How to go about in this adventure we may call “supernatural education”?
In a precious booklet entitled, “Christian Education”, written for his sister and appreciated by Manzoni as “very like the work of an ancient Father of the Church”, the young Rosmini highlighted the following means:
But perhaps what every Rosminian School should have as a fundamental document underpinning the whole ethos is Rosmini’s booklet which has become a “spiritual classic”; Governors, Management Team, and Teachers should become very familiar with its content, discussing ways of implementing it in every aspect of the life of the school.
The title of the book is, “Maxims of Christian Perfection”, published in Rome in 1830, as part of the spiritual mission confirmed to him as the will of God by Pius VIII. The Maxims were, first of all, the spiritual path followed by Rosmini in his life. They originated from his profound meditations on the Gospels: like the six jars containing “wine of the best quality”, the six Maxims are drawn from the Gospel and lead back to it. This is what Rosmini wrote about the Maxims:
“The book ought to be read over and over again, because it is not possible to savour it unless it has been ‘chewed and masticated’ all the time”
“I believe that the Maxims are never understood, discussed, meditated enough, opened up, and kept to perfection”
“This booklet is simply the essence of the Gospel. In my opinion it will be of greater spiritual benefit to you than anything else, because it teaches how we can direct and order everything to the supreme end, to the highest good to which we aspire and in which alone we find complete fulfilment”.
Like the parables of Jesus, each Maxim has a major theme, but the more one reads it the more one discovers new insights, new meaning, and new directions, truly a mine of great treasures. The six themes of the Maxims are:
Methodology and Teachers
Education is a very complex art, and it demands a most enlightened methodology. Rosmini wrote a very sound book on the topic, which would be of great benefit to teachers. Its study could be the object of future meetings like the present one! Just a few words about what he wrote about teachers.
Teachers are responsible for the education of children in schools. They must acquire a thorough knowledge of each child, knowing that each is a world in itself, with a unique destiny: “I think it is absurd to expect that all children should be moulded in the same way”. It is often the case, says Rosmini that some children become restless, making little or no progress for the simple reason that the teacher is not able to identify the best way to deal with each individual child on the basis of the child’s actual needs. “Give me good teachers, and even awful schools will soon be put right”. It may be useful to quote the passage I read out to you a few days ago:
“It is often the case that what are called “weak and feeble intellects” are such simply because they cannot follow the line of reasoning at the common speed; it is easy then for them to miss a link in the chain, halting at once their understanding, like someone is stopped at one side of the river because the bridge is not there. This observation goes against the opinion of those who think that there are doctrines or subjects which are too difficult for some intellects; the truth is that all subjects are open to anyone if only great care is taken to provide each pupil with a full and clear presentation appropriate to the particular speed of his reasoning” (Methodology).
It is the mark of a good teacher the ability to “think big”, for “only great men can educate other great men”. Signs of such greatness are: the ability to combine easy presentation with depth of content, a moral coherence between teaching and life, a calm and assured communication, and a great care to nurture at the same time all the faculties of the person.
Rosmini also argued that teachers should enjoy the freedom to teach their subject as they think most appropriate, without interference; they are actually guilty of “cowardice” if they allow themselves to be dictated about the method of teaching their subject.
“Pensare in grande”
Main Text
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