When we talk about classical liberal arts education, it can be easy – in our enthusiasm for what is surely an antidote to so many of the ills of contemporary pedagogies – to invoke the transcendentals almost automatically. Most people are unlikely to object to the True, the Good, or the Beautiful, even if we might disagree, in practice, over what these entail, so it’s tempting to toss them around in unexamined – albeit well-intentioned – ways. But when we say that classical education seeks Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, what do we, as a Catholic and a Christian institution, mean?
By setting them as ideals and ends of education, we affirm the universal and distinctive qualities of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, while also acknowledging their necessary interrelations. For the sake of clarity – and with apologies for the reductive nature of such definitions – we might understand each as some character of the real: Truth as that to which our intellect is drawn, Goodness as that to which our will is drawn, and Beauty as that to which our appreciation – we might even say our wonder or gratitude – is drawn. We find Truth, Goodness, and Beauty at work in the world, and we can meaningfully seek them, but no worldly reality perfectly captures what they are. They belong properly only to God as the source and summit of all being.
When we say that classical education seeks the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, this is not a noble abstraction but something infinitely more urgent and profound. We mean that the aim of classical or liberal arts education in developing and exercising our human capacities – our critical thought, creativity, empathy, humility, intellectual honesty, memory, and discipline – is ultimately to seek God, our Creator. As Christians, moreover, we embrace the essential mystery of the Incarnation, whereby the Word of God takes our humanity as His own and divinizes it without effecting its dissolution. We know that God is present to His creatures in a vividly personal way, and that seeking Him – seeking Truth, Goodness, and Beauty – should absorb our entire, redeemed humanity and all of human experience, alive in sacrament and Scripture but excluding no part of the life He gives.
In fact, authentic education invites us to participate in God’s creative work by embracing our continued formation, applying our will and effort to realizing our full potential. Education is the work of a lifetime, which is the reason classical education aims to teach us how and why to learn, just as much as what.
The capacity to desire and to recognize Truth, Goodness, and Beauty is inherent to our humanity, even as natural law is written deep in our souls. Our ability to reason, to choose, and to wonder exist in us as human creatures and partake in the Creator’s light, which is why Aristotle, Plato, and other pre- or non-Christian thinkers still offer profound contributions to our search for understanding.
But when we seek the Good, the True, the Beautiful as Christians, we do so with all the resources of nature and revelation, adding to the full exercise of our human capacities the heritage of our Christian Theological tradition and the manifold gifts that come with seeking in faith. Why pursue the project of Classical Education via this Christian tradition? Because we earnestly want them in their fullness. We want the fullness of being in its – in His – authentic reality. Because we know and love the goal.
