The eminent thinker William Barclay emphasizes what education is and is not. “True teaching is not teaching a student what to think, but teaching him how to think. Any teacher who sets out to make the student think and believe the same as him, is a bad teacher. The good teacher is willing to help the student think for himself. True education does not consist in introducing concepts into the student, but extracting them from him. One of the biggest mistakes is confusing teaching with indoctrination. Teaching builds character and independence, indoctrination destroys both. What should we do to promote this education? “
Along these lines, in the second half of the 20th century, two works were published that profoundly revolutionized education: their authors, Pierre Hadot, a professor at the College of France, and the Canadian Jesuit Bernard Lonergan, from different perspectives, have profound innovative coincidences.
Pierre Hadot, historian of Greco-Roman philosophy is recognized, not only in France, but also in Germany, England and the United States for his research on ancient philosophy as spiritual exercises, which radically transforms the previous approaches. Hadot and Lonergan were influenced by three philosophical currents: neo-scholasticism, existentialism and the thought of H. Newman in his The grammar of assent. The most important thing about this philosophical approach lies, rather than transmitting information, in questioning the reader, proposing the formation of the person, transforming his heart, providing the student with skills that guide him in concrete aspects of personal life, of the police and the cosmos. Hadot thinks that other expressions such as thought exercises, intellectual exercises, or even ethical exercises do not express the psychological background from which a deep inner transformation must arise, as Socrates claimed in the Platonic dialogues and also in the Stoic philosophy of Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius. and Seneca.
The interlocutor in the dialogues is not presented with abstract or theoretical expositions, but rather a practical and concrete exercise that opens up change, questioning their points of view, transforming their personality. It is a friendly fight to find a method that will lead us to discover the authentic truth and genuine values. In short, we are invited to a spiritual conversion: to overcome the values of the sensible world and move towards the values of the spirit.
Now, before outlining the thought of Bernard Lonergan in his book Insight, let’s see how this author interprets Socratic ignorance: “I only know that I know nothing.” In the dialogues it is not explained what this means learned ignorance;. However, it is obvious that it cannot be taken literally. The heart of the Socratic enterprise, according to Lonergan, lies in the discovery of what is to understand: of the correct use of words, of arriving at the meaning of things, otherwise we will be prisoners of untrained ignorance;. Socrates is representative of the learned ignorance;: his proposal is methodological, it shows the way to discover the meaning, the purpose of things. The profound changes in the person, in society and in culture, derive from assuming the meanings that flow from the correct understanding of reality.
For the Canadian Encyclopedia, Lonergan is “a brilliant and original thinker of the highest rank.” He received 21 honorary doctorates and important distinctions such as the “Fellow of the British Academy”. His method has been applied to practically all disciplines. His main work Insight understand human understanding It is a universal method, the key of which is in the art of the question, the didactic and educational method that Socrates popularized with his maieutics. Lonergan, through the “intelligent spark” (insight), teaches us the basic structure of human knowing and deciding, so that, in a creative way, we make of our life a work of art, a new man, who builds, enlightened by values a new society and a new world.
We have endeavored to apply this method to Legal Deontology, the Theory of Law and Legal Argumentation (Ed. Oxford). To despise these subjects is to remain the prisoner of a supine ignorance.
All students should be taught professional deontology by this method, since education, instead of putting concepts in the head, consists of bringing out (lead) the values of the heart.
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