In a recent article in The Observer, Notre Dame senior Richard Taylor reflects thoughtfully on tensions that arise for anyone pursuing the intrinsic goods of education — like wisdom, knowledge and understanding — in a course of study that is often aimed at, and shaped by, instrumental ends. In other words, Taylor writes beautifully about the dissonance one experiences when attempting to live the intellectual life on a campus like Notre Dame’s.
I agree with most of Taylor’s main claims. For instance, I agree that neither minors nor programs (not even Sheedy) can transform you intellectually without your own reasons and hard work. Indeed, the impulse to seek intrinsic goods we lack by joining another club or picking up another credential is among our worst habits (as high-achieving faculty as well as students). It’s also true that the pleasures and value of the intellectual life is relatively low hanging fruit in our community, ripe for the picking without any need for permission or much more than a “worn-out library book.” Finally, I agree that there’s a paradox in using educational terms as a verb in a certain register, as if I could teach you something whether you like it or not. Taylor is right about the dilemma this poses for the pedagogue, but not — I think — about the final inference he draws.
Even if a healthy intellectual culture requires free and active participation on the part of individuals, the conditions for their growth can be actively created and intentionally sustained. Indeed, Taylor’s reasonable suggestion that students can and should decide for themselves to value and prioritize the beauty of reflection and understanding starts sounding like the poetic individualism of Thoreau by the end of his article. We should celebrate our free will and use it wisely. We should recognize and activate our ability to impact our environment and culture. But at the end of the day we are dependent, rational animals, and learning through dialogue is an irreducibly communal endeavor. Even if building, and then inviting students into, communities of learning is — as Taylor implies — really the best an educator can aim to do. It’s also, for that reason, the least we can responsibly aim at.
The Sheedy Program is not a panacea for all the intellectual ills that afflict college students, nor is it even an antidote to all the most serious obstacles to pursuing an intellectual life as part of “the anxious generation.” Instead, it’s a community, intentionally designed and embodied in space and time, that aims at a common good. Much like the Dominican community Sertillanges belonged to, or the faculty of which he was a part, the Sheedy Program aspires to structure our collective experience in order to inspire, invite and convene. And while it started small (with just two faculty and an inaugural cohort of 30 four years ago), we are a community that continues to grow (we’ll have 250+ students participating by 2027), in the hopes of serving as many students as would benefit from it. Looking around — at programs like Glynn, majors like the Program of Liberal Studies and programs like the Sorin Fellows — I’d say the appetite for such communities and the willingness to build and sustain them is already a strong feature of our university’s ecosystem.
My hope is that what we do in Sheedy can be a model for those wishing to create communities that support the disciplines of desire and habits of mind Taylor describes so eloquently. Not everyone needs, or even wants, to integrate business with the liberal arts. But I’d venture to say all of us could benefit from some more rituals, routines and structures that support our intellectual aspirations.
And I hope Mr. Taylor will consider being a guest of honor at our community’s next dinner.
Paul Blaschko
Assistant teaching professor of philosophy and director of Sheedy Family Program in Economy, Enterprise, and Society
Nov. 12
