FOREWORD

Not long ago I came across the program for an opening convocation in a university I went to years ago. On the cover I had scrawled the words, "intellectual virtues. . . just as moral virtues are to behavior,intellectual virtues are to sound thinking." The lecture of which that thought is the last artifact has long since disappeared from my memory. Yet the thought itselfthe idea of intellectual virtuesis like one of those seeds that can stay on the shelf a long time, but then when it's planted it declares its life and starts growing. I hereby drop the seed into the soil!

Intellectual virtues are habits of mind. Just as habits predispose us to behave in certain ways, habits of mind lead us to think in certain ways.

At MUSC, for example, those aspects of the program that aim at socialization into health professions, such as learning knowledge and skills that characterize the profession, have a lot to do with making certain kinds of action habitual. A student gradually starts to think and act habitually like a nurse, or doctor, or pharmacist. When the process is far enough along, we certify the product with a degree. That's training; it's an important part of what we do.

The other part of what we do is education. Education is not a means to an end. It doesn't even come to an end. Education is not defined by extrinsic rewards such as a degree, or even by successful assimilation into a profession. Rather, education is an activity that renders internal, personal benefits or goods. Its product is the shaping of consciousness, basically. Education affects what we do only indirectly, by directly helping to form who we are.

The goods that are credited to our personal accounts when we practice education around here can be described as the intellectual virtues. What are they? Here's my start-up list. . . .

1. Curiosity. Education fosters a thirst to discover, find out more. We get affected by things and we start to care more to learn about them. In training programs, discovery is unto knowledge: discoveriesare valued because we can use the knowledge they produce for doing things. In real scienceand all educationknowledge is unto discovery. What we know is no stopping place: it tantalizes us to new discovery. That is a premier intellectual virtue.

2. Criticism. A certain intellectual restlessness (skepticism) impelled Socrates to always want to question, to peel off another layer from appearance or opinion in a quest for truth. He gave deference to the wisdom of those who had gone before, but he handled the tradition critically. Education breeds a Socratic habit of mind, one that may be called, in the most positive sense, criticism.

3. Imagination. We think analogicallywe know things by comparing their likenesses and unlikenesses to other things. Creativity has a lot to do with the growing ability to create metaphors, which means to recognize fresh likenesses and broaden our manifold of knowledge.

4. Persistence. The strength to finish what we start and act on what we find.

Try yourself to name what education-real, deep-down thinking-does for you. It won't make you wealthy. Maybe your training will do that. But it will make you rich. The intellectual virtues are like money in the mind, steadily funding the inner life. Just have a look at these contributions from members of this University to Humanitas!

Albert H. Keller, D.Min