John Henry Newman – The Modern Frame

Some Further Thoughts on Modern Education

Given what I have said so far about education in the West, specifically about ancient and medieval forms of higher education as they relate to instrumentality and specialization, my treatment of modern forms of higher education needs to be further explored and expanded upon. Here I will continue the general focus on higher education and concerns of instrumentality and specialization, but with an exclusive focus on the modern epoch.

Education: Instrumentality and Specialization

Education in the West has taken many forms throughout history. Like philosophy, its genesis can be traced to ancient Greece, where the first schools of thought were recorded. The first rival conceptions of education–such as those advanced by the ancient sophists, Isocrates, and Plato¹–are in many ways mirrored in modernity, albeit in very different circumstances. Beginning in Greece we find tension with respect to education, which concerns the debate between theoretical and practical forms of higher learning, i.e., between disinterested truth and application or utility. Of course, there is an academic history of this thought, the aggregate of which has come to be known as the philosophy of education. It is not my intention, however, to explore the history of this thought here. It is rather to contrast the varying forms of higher education as they have existed across history in the West in terms of two specifics: instrumentality and specialization. Most important to this comparison will be the question of telos, that is, what is and what has been the goal or purpose of education? What is its raison d’être?

Beyond the Instrumental and Non-Instrumental: Some Thoughts on The Person

At this point the notion of goods as they relate to the instrumental and non-instrumental can be added to our considerations. I have spoken of two distinct “stances” or approaches to the world as adopted by homo sapiens. One views things¹ in terms of their purported usefulness or utility, of their instrumental value for the sake of some further end or goal. The other views things for their own sake, as ends in themselves, as such. Furthermore, it is the human person–conceived as a unique subject existing beyond or outside the instrumental and non-instrumental²–which adds yet another level of complexity to our understanding of these stances, particularly the instrumental.³