Disputation as a Moral Virtue

A Christian academic practice that employs disputation must do so within a certain moral practice and intent to develop certain habits of reasoning. There is much for us to learn from the virtue-ethic tradition. The Aristotelian concept of phronesis, or practical reasoning, has formed the nucleus of some significant twentieth-century reflection on the nature of moral reasoning and virtue, and it provides a good model of what we should be trying to achieve.

Phronesis is concrete; it is not theoretical generalization; instead, it works itself out anew in each new practical set of circumstances. Phronesis operates on a case-by-case basis not in the pure realm of theory but with a sense of this is what the situation calls for. Disputation in a classroom, a public debate, or even over coffee should be more than two people ranting and emoting. It should be a skill learned that has certain postive purposes. A good dispute is phronetic because it is not just an internalized set of thinking skills. It is more like a habit of interpretation based on a long formed practice. It is a virtue, which as Augustine pointed out, "is a good habit consonant with our nature." We form phronesis through practice, and this requires a concrete pattern within which to do so.

Here is where we can also learn from the Thomist tradition that adapted Aristotle to Christian concerns. Thomas Aquinas defines a virtue as

An operative habit essentially good, as distinguished from vice, an operative habit essentially evil. Now a habit is a quality in itself difficult of change, disposing well or ill the subject in which it resides, either directly in itself or in relation to its operation. An operative habit is a quality residing in a power or faculty in itself indifferent to this or that line of action, but determined by the habit to this rather than to that kind of acts. Virtue then has this in common with vice, that it disposes a potency to a certain determined activity; but it differs specifically from it in that it disposes it to good acts, i.e. acts in consonance with right reason (Summa 2.55.2).

In other words, virtues are

a) good habits that predispose us to good actions;
b) they represent a certain mature good quality made resident in a person;
c) they are in accord with correct reason and reasoning.

For Aquinas the cardinal virtue of prudentia is the habitual judgment of how best to respond in ever new circumstances. Education, I would contend, is about cultural, intellectual, and moral prudentia. An education that fails to translate into life's new circumstances is ultimately a failure of phronesis. We are seeking to teach a form of disputation not just to self-perpetuate our careers and studies, but to pursue a particular set of qualities that have as their end an ability to explore the truth, to convince others of the right actions at hand, to clarify misunderstanding, and so on. This raises particular concerns for the Christian. What exactly is the structure of reasoning and faith? Are they on a level playing field?

John Henry Newman argued in his last book The Grammar of Ascent that we begin not by reasoning but by apprehending the object, which then gains our assent. We only later begin to unpack the implied details of what we have given our assent to. We often believe what we cannot understand and what we cannot exhaustively comprehend or prove. Conviction is something we all grow into over time. His point is that faith is rational in the same way other matters are rational. Most of life is about commitments made on trust in others' credibility.

This says much about Christian education. We do not reason our way to faith; we begin with its assumptions (ala' Anselm's fides quaerens intellectum--faith seeking understanding). Concrete reasonings are not ultimate tests, but they are sufficient tests in practical reasoning. Newman divides forms of assent into two types:

1. Notional assent, which includes profession, credence, opinion, presumption, and speculation;
2. Real assent, which is imaginative certainty given to what we experience in the real world.

Beliefs in what the Church teaches are forms of assent both notional and real. We gain certitude--a state of mind--all the time by directing ourselves and giving ourselves towards particular truths, and this lived involvement with the object of our assent gives our certitude a quality of irreversibility. It is not our job as educators to disabuse our students of their traditions and convictions, though that will happen at times in the process of exploring the truth together. Rather, we are to help them when possible to work within their tradition to pursue the true, good, and beautiful in such a way that those goods are clarified and the false versions once held are cast aside.

Christian education operates as a way of reinforcing the Christian faith, not by an unquestioning repetition of only certain denominational dogmas, but by a debated, thick ecumenism practiced in true covenant community. We all have an illative sense, a faculty of theoretical reasoning that judges the validity of inferences in much that same way that our prudence (prudentia, phronesis) judges life practically. This theoretical faculty includes a sense of judging what authorities we can give our trust to.

All good reason, if you will, is based on some measure of faith, and all true faith has some measure of rationality in it. Christian education understands this truth. Our warranted presuppositions framework and proceed from our faith.