1

Integral Humanism and the Integrity of Education[1]

Anthony A. Akinwale

President and

Professor of Theology and Thomistic Studies

Dominican Institute

Ibadan

Abstract

After an attempt to articulate an integral humanism, the paper makes use of what is articulated. to describe what constitutes authentic development. By way of two submissions, it proposes a notion of education of the whole human person, a holistic education that can lead to the complete and positive transformation of the human person

I would like to state ab initio the presuppositionthat drives this intervention. The identification and explication of my key concepts will facilitate the concretization of my intention.

There are three key concepts in the intervention, and these are humanism, education and development. Humanism here is the promotion and protection of the human person, of all that renders possible the actualization of his potentials in the fulfillment of his aspirations in every dimension of human existence. The fact that what is sought is the fulfillment of the human being in his whole existence in what informs the usage of “integral” to qualify the humanism being proposed here.

The integrity of education will need to be safeguarded if this holistic fulfillment is to be attained, that is, if the human being is to have the slightest possibility of actualizing his potentials and fulfilling his aspirations in every dimension of human existence. The integrity of education is the protection and promotion of all the provinces of knowledge, as opposed to a policy of education that promotes one of its provinces, to the detriment of other provinces. The integrity of education is respected when no sector of the universe of knowledge that a university is is excluded from the academia.

Authentic development is development of a polity in the development of the human beings who constitute its population. It is attained where human beings actualize their potentials and fulfill their aspirations, that is, where integral humanism is protected and promoted, and where the protection and promotion of integral humanism inspires an education whose integrity is jealously guarded. In other words, respect and promote the integrity of man and the integrity of education and what you have is authentic development.

What has just been said informs the presupposition that occupies the driver’s seat in this journey of ideas that I hope this lecture is. The thesis guiding my intervention is that authentic development requires an adequate philosophy of the nature and function of education, and an adequate philosophy of education in turn requires an adequate philosophical account of what it means to be human. It is my submission that our attempts at development have so far ended in futility because of an inadequate philosophy of education, and our inadequate philosophy of education is itself rooted in the quicksand of inadequate philosophical account of the human condition. In other words, we remain undeveloped because we have failed to understand human nature. As the dialogue in Plato’s Republic amply demonstrates, dialogue on the state of the human being and dialogue on the state of the society are inter-related and inseparable. The two shed light on each other.

In the history of the human family, development has almost always been conceived exclusively in terms of economic indices. From the point of view of economic indices, development is the eradication, or at least substantial reduction, of material poverty. It takes place where there is maximization of pleasure and social benefits, where such maximization of pleasure and social benefits is itself a product of maximization of economic profit, and where economic profit procuresand is procured by the maximization of political power in military supremacy and or diplomatic clout. Development, from the exclusively economic perspective, has always been seen as the maximization of power for the sake of maximization of profit, and the maximization of profit for the maximization of power. We are dealing here with a conception of development that flows from the fact that agenda for development has almost exclusively been left in the hands of economists, politicians and military strategists. Merchants in search of commodities alert and enter into alliance with politicians who deploy the military strength and strategy at their disposal to invade and conquer peoples in whose lands such commodities are found. It is a dangerous deployment of the entire arsenal of concupiscible and irascible appetites disconnected from the authority of well-enlightened reason.

To be deduced from this logic of development is the fact that Nigeria prominently features on the list of undeveloped countries because, as is the case with many a country of the two-third world, her indices of economic poverty are many and well-documented. The collapse and or absence of infrastructure, the astronomically rising number oftalented and intelligent but unemployed citizens, ignorance and disease in a land inhabited by citizens of unactualized potentials, to mention but these, would make Nigeria eminently qualified to be in the league of undeveloped countries..

The gravity of poverty in our world makes it tempting for rich and poor nations, and for many an expert on the economy to assume, often without sufficient scrutiny of the assumption, that the economy holds the key to authentic development, and maximization of material prosperity is the alpha and omega of human fulfillment. Development so conceived is the availability of more money, abundance and consumption of more and more goods, invention of machines and tools of increasing sophistication and efficiency, infrastructure of breath-taking beauty, etc. And, since the notion of development tends to influence, if not determine, philosophy of education, education is itself reduced to science and technology, the acquisition of techniques of invention of gadgets, and the skillful plotting of strategies for making profit. But economic growth is only one aspect of human existence, one set of operations among others sets of operations to be deployed for the attainment of the best way to live. Our personal and collective fulfillment would be jeopardized if and when development is conceptually and practically reduced to economic growth.

In a consumerist society, unrestrained acquisitive instinct gives rise to an insatiable desire for material goods, and, in an attempt to satisfy this insatiable appetite, the human person degenerates into a power addict who spends his time, talents and energy scheming for greater personal power and perpetual maximization of profit at the expense of other human persons. Pope Paul VI, in his landmark Encyclical Letter on the Development of Peoples, Populorum Progressio, already counseled against this tendency when he proposed that authentic development be seen as the orientation of the whole person to the Creator.[2] “Just as the whole of creation is ordered toward the Creator, so too the rational creature should of his own accord direct his life to God, the first truth and the highest good” (Populorum Progressio, n. 16).

These preceding remarks inform the three moments in this intervention. Taking my cue from the wisdom of Populorum Progressio, according to which authentic development is centred on the human person orientated to God, I shall, in the first moment, attempt to articulate what makes us human. In the second moment, I shall use this articulation of what makes us human to describe what constitutes authentic development. And, in the third moment, I shall, by way of two submissions, propose a notion of education of the whole human person, a holistic education that can lead to the complete positive transformation of the human person.

Four Dimensions of Human Existence

Our humanity is to be recognized in four characteristics that belong to the human nature, traits that distinguish the human person from lower creatures. Each of these characteristics represents a fundamental orientation in the human person, that is, what the human person naturally desires and what the human person has the potential to attain. Taking my inspiration from the Canadian philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan, I shall identify these traits as the yearning for truth, the yearning for good, the yearning for God, and the yearning for love.

First, to be human is to search for and to be able to know the truth. The intellective faculty with which the Creator has endowed human beings is made for the acquisition of truth. A sign of this is in the fact that even the one who tells lies does not like to be deceived by others.

Secondly, to be human is to yearn for and to attain the good. The Creator has given every human being a will whose natural movement is to whatever is perceived to be good. The truth and the good which human beings naturally desire and which human beings are able to attain are beyond what is found in transient and finite realities. The restless human spirit has an infinite desire for the infinite. No sooner is one desire satisfied than the human being desires more. The finite, oftentimes without acknowledging it, seeks fulfillment in the infinite.

Thirdly, while theologians readily admit it and some philosophers readily deny it, there is, in that desire for and openness to the infinite in the human person, a natural desire for God. In other words, at the root of the human quest for the infinitely true and the infinitely good is a more profound yearning, the yearning for Infinite Being, the yearning for God. The restlessness of the human spirit testifies to an infinite desire for the infinite that is in man, and this infinite desire for the infinite that animates man in turn bears testimony to a desire for God, whom Martin Buber refers to as the Divine Thou, encountered in the human Thou. A true encounter with the human Thou is the medium for a real encounter with the divine Thou.[3] In the natural desire for friendship, in the natural desire to love and be loved, is a desire for infinite love. The human dissatisfaction with all his love manifests a desire for Love that transcends all loves.

This natural desire for love and friendship is the fourth fundamental characteristic of our human nature. Therefore, upon reflection on what it is to be human, it becomes obvious that there are, to the human person, intellectual, moral, technical and spiritual dimensions. How these four dimensions help to shape a notion of authentic development and a corresponding notion of educationis what I shall now try to explain.

Authentic Development

Authentic development is actualization of the potentials and fulfillment of the desires of the human person in each of the four dimensions I have identified. But I must issue a caveat here. We have infinite desires, but we only have finite means. Thus, in the intellectual dimension, the human person is animated by an infinite desire to know the truth and has the potential to know the truth. But his intellective faculty is finite and limited. Nonetheless, intellectual development is the fulfillment of the human desire to know the truth in the actualization of the human potential to know the truth.

In the moral dimension, the human person is encountered as a being who is animated by a desire for infinite goodness and who can be an agent—albeit limited and finite agent—of goodness to himself and others. Here, moral development is the fulfillment of the natural desire for goodness in the actualization of the human capacity to do good.

In the technical dimension, the human person manifests himself as a being who desires fulfillment in working and who can find fulfillment in working. Here, technical development, or what we call today scientific and technological development is the fulfillment of the human person in the actualization of his capacity for work. Again, while his desire is for the infinite, his capacity if limited, his work imperfect.

And in the spiritual dimension of human existence, the human being shows himself as a being who—some might argue against this—desires God, and who is capable of knowing God, even though his knowledge of God is imperfect. Here, spiritual development is the fulfillment of the natural desire for God in the actualization of the human capacity to know and love God.

Given these dimensions, it would amount to a monstrous misconception of the human person if his fulfillment were simply to be reduced to the good of the market in the achievement of science and technology. That is the illusion of fulfillment in economic progress. Authentic development includes but is not limited to economic, scientific and technological development. To avoid the abyss of science without conscience, the development of the whole person must be seen as technical, moral, intellectual and spiritual.

Economic, scientific and technological development must be founded in the fulfillment of the natural yearning for the truth, that is, intellectual development; in the fulfillment of the natural yearning for the good, that is, moral development; and in the fulfillment of the natural yearning for God, that is, in spiritual development. The good is that which everyone desires. Authentic development is about the attainment, not just of the good of the market, but the attainment of the good of the moral order, the good of the intellectual order, and the good of the spiritual order. Anything short of this leads to the formation of fragmented individuals, schizophrenic victims of arrested development. And, since the good is that which everyone desires, it is the universal desire for the good that drives the quest for development. But the highest good is God. Therefore, development, understood theologically, is, in the final analysis, a desire for God. To use the economy as the ultimate index of development is to ignore or deny the fact that human nature is capax Dei. And the God that we are capable of knowing is met in our common life, in our inter-personal relationships when they are marked with a constant orientation to rectitude. For as Lonergan said:

There is still a further dimension to being human, and there we emerge as persons, meet one another in a common concern for values, seek to abolish the organization of human living on the basis of competing egoisms and to replace it by an organization on the basis of man’s perceptiveness and intelligence, his reasonableness, and his responsible exercise of freedom.[4]

This vision of authentic development is sustained by a philosophical and theological anthropology, an understanding of human nature inspired by divine revelation intelligently received, or rather, an account of human nature informed by faith and reason. This theological understanding of what it means to be human is formed by the conviction contained in the Biblical saying that no human being lives on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God (Mt 4:4). Inseparable from this is the anthropological conviction that the human person counts more than economic prosperity. In concrete terms, what makes us human is not just the fact that we desire and can procure and possess in abundance what to eat and drink. Authentic human existence is not just a matter of satisfaction. It is, ultimately, a matter of values.

When economic gains are prioritized over human dignity that is when the world is ordered as if the human person existed for the economy and for the state, and not the other way round. Communism treated the human person as if the state created the human person, as if he were a creature made by the state for the state. For its part, heartless capitalism, driven by market forces, operated as if the human person were nothing but a creature made by the market for the market, with his life governed ineluctably by market forces. But the human being is neither a tool in the hands of the businessman or woman seeking to maximize profit, nor a tool in the hands of the politician who seeks to maximize power, nor a tool in the hands of the hedonist who seeks to maximize pleasure. Integral humanism postulates that the dignity of the human person has primacy over politics and the economy. Politics and the economy must be organized by the human person and for the human person, not the other way round, to avoid what personalist philosopher, Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II) describes as “la chosification de l’être humain” (the reification of the human being).

The search for authentic development highlights the need for a new humanism, that is, for a new understanding of what it is to be human that respects and promotes the dignity of the human person by the fact that it tells the truth about the human person. And it tells the truth about the human person because it respects, reflects and promotes the supernatural destiny of the same human person. By virtue of this transcendental humanism, authentic development is the human response to the call to a higher state of perfection, “a new fullness of life” which is beyond the mere satisfaction of material wants and needs (Populorum Progressio, n. 16). Implicit in this theological anthropology is the understanding that the human person is greater than what he produces, purchases, possesses, and consumes. For a human being who is described solely in terms of production, possession and consumption is nothing but a mobile bundle of sensations, a being whose life is exclusively dominated by sensual desires and aversions of his own and of others.