Theme 3: Educating for Practical Wisdom

Our University community strives for excellence in integrated learning and scholarship in search of truth and wisdom. In our Catholic and Marianist traditions of learning, we seek to render truth and wisdom practical and to transform the world into a place of greater realization of the truly human good. At the University of Dayton, we strive to develop a community of learners and scholars who, individually and collectively, think both critically and imaginatively, judge from sound moral principles and practical knowledge, and work collaboratively for the common good.

Practical wisdom, in the classical and Catholic tradition, is excellence in practical reasoning. Practical reasoning represents the capacity to draw on knowledge and intellectual skills to engage concretely in the world. Practical reasoning allows the individual to go beyond reflection to deliberate and decide upon the best course of action within a particular situation.¹ Engaged citizens and leaders of all sectors of society rely on this capacity for practical reasoning to construct the good in all facets of life. Practical reasoning allows one to see — to frame a problem or issue so that one understands causes; to judge — imagining the good to be realized and designing the appropriate response to realize the good; and to act — implementing that response. Practical reasoning also allows one to reflect — to untangle the complex web of experience and to draw practical knowledge from this experience.

Practical wisdom is a virtue or habit that combines skill in practical reasoning, a commitment to a moral tradition and practical knowledge. A commitment to a moral tradition involves 1) knowledge, i.e., principles and beliefs about the goods of human life and how to realize these goods, and 2) a set of habits or virtues that support the realization of the goods of human life. Learning a moral tradition enriches the practical imagination, which proposes what we can make of our lives and the futures that we can hope for, both individually and collectively. Practical knowledge is obtained through reflection on past actions and is usually tacit knowledge about how one rightly connects a particular situation with the goods one would like to realize. Engaging in the journey toward practical wisdom is an important way to realize excellence in integrated learning.

In educating for practical wisdom, the University gives priority to the ways the Catholic intellectual tradition can provide conceptual and moral resources to recognize critical issues in particular situations, to imagine how the good can be realized in these situations and practical guidelines to mobilize people to realize the good. In the Catholic intellectual tradition, practical reasoning can be enriched by virtues like justice, fortitude and temperance and by openness to the grace of God.

Learning practical wisdom is a developmental journey; the interdependency of practical reasoning, a commitment to a moral tradition and practical knowledge require a continual learning. People learn practical wisdom by exercising practical reasoning within a community of practice. Practical wisdom develops through conversations of inquiry, action and reflection that are well-facilitated and well-mentored. In a Catholic university, these conversations should involve many mentors who can demonstrate how the conceptual and moral resources of the Catholic intellectual and social traditions and the best of contemporary knowledge can be integrated in addressing issues of personal integrity and social responsibility.

In our globalized world, we can encounter many injustices, for example, the suffering and misery caused by unjust economic structures, the lack of opportunity caused by local and global poverty, and the discrimination suffered by minorities and women. In the Catholic moral tradition, the virtue of compassion is an important complement to practical wisdom. Compassion allows us to enter into the suffering of others in a way that we can perceive the affliction of the other and our role in causing that affliction, with a willingness to interpret the context of injustice from the perspective of those who suffer, and with a commitment to create new relationships that can transform ourselves, our neighbor and the institutional structures of society.² Local and overseas immersions are important in learning practical wisdom; they allow our students and faculty to enter into the plight of peoples and communities that suffer injustice.

Practical wisdom allows one to read the signs of the times and to be skillful in adaptation and change. Reading the signs of the times requires a deep knowledge of the trends within one's world combined with knowledge of an intellectual and moral tradition that allows one to evaluate these trends. At the University of Dayton, we draw on profound and longstanding intellectual traditions, especially the Catholic intellectual tradition, to evaluate the trends of our society. We make these evaluations in an open and critical dialogue with others and with a hopeful spirit that seeks justice, peace, reconciliation and the common good.

Cultivating practical wisdom enables students to develop a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives and to continually refine that purpose into a deeper sense of vocation. Learning in the Catholic and Marianist traditions strives to support students, inside and outside the classroom, to find and explore the deep purposes that lend meaning, wonder and fulfillment to their lives. "These purposes consist not merely in what students may find themselves especially fit for pursuing but in what each student is especially called to do. The University's commitment to support students' discernment of their vocations in academically appropriate ways follows from the fundamental objective to educate whole persons, in mind, spirit and body, for whole lives."³

¹ The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has been promoting practi- cal reasoning as an important way of integrating liberal education and professional education. See specifically William Sullivan and Matthew Rosin, A New Agenda for Higher Education: Shaping a Life of the Mind for Practice (San Francisco, CA, Jossey- Bass, 2008) and Anne Colby, et. al., Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2011).

² On the connection of compassion to practical reasoning, see Maureen H. O’Connell, Compassion: Loving our Neighbor in an Age of Globalization (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009).

³ "Habits of Inquiry and Reflection," 6