Bishop Robert Barron recalled his time as a Basselin Scholar in the School of Philosophy in his Catholic University Commencement Address on May 17.
"My years at Catholic University, where I studied philosophy, corresponded to some extraordinary events in the wider world. Ronald Reagan was elected president during my time here, and I had the opportunity to attend his inauguration on an unusually beautiful January day. The Iranian hostages were released around that time, and I took part in the celebration on the Mall. Just a few months after his inauguration, and as I was preparing for my comprehensive exams, the president was shot, and Pope John Paul II was nearly assassinated just a few months later. But while all of this upheaval and excitement was proceeding in the outside world, I was largely preoccupied with my studies, which amounted to an opening up of a higher world. For I was a student of philosophy. Plato speaks of the escape from the cave, which is to say, from the world of ordinary experience, in order to find a world of mathematical and philosophical truth, a dimension of reality that does not change and that brings us closer to God.
Philosophy, in imitation of Plato, has inquired into questions such as the nature of the good life, the ultimate origin of all things, the meaning of truth, the nature of justice. These are, in themselves, perfectly useless questions and those who entertain them are useless persons. I mean both of these as a compliment. One of the most important truths I learned from Aristotle—and I learned it here—is that the liberal arts, which is to say, those that are liberi, free from practicality, are higher than the practical arts, for they are focused on things that are good in themselves. So, knowing how to fix a car is a useful art—and a most important one—for it is subordinated to the good of driving the car; and surgery is a useful art, for it is subordinated to the good of the health of the body. Politics is a useful study, but it is in service of something higher, namely, justice. Why do we drive cars at all and what do we do with our healthy bodies? Why should we choose this candidate or that? Neither mechanics nor biology nor political science can answer those questions. They can be answered only by the useless study, which enquires into issues of truth, goodness, and beauty. I consider my years of philosophical study here, under a series of masters, one of the great privileges of my life. The wonderfully useless years that I spent here set the tone for the rest of my life and career. I know that the vast majority of you did not major in philosophy or theology, but I also know that the spirit of these two disciplines pervades this place."
He recalled in particular his intellectual debt to Msgr. Robert Sokolowski, the Caldwell Professor of Philosophy, who has taught at Catholic University since 1963.
"My greatest teacher when I was a student at Catholic University was Msgr. Robert Sokolowski, and Msgr.’s master idea, reiterated in numerous of his articles and books, is the non-competitive transcendence of God. The most basic claim of the Christian faith is that God became one of us, without ceasing to be God and without compromising the integrity of the humanity that he assumed. Precisely because God is not a being in the world, not one reality among many, he can assume a human nature without doing violence to it. How different this is, Msgr. Sokolowski often observed, from the ancient myths which show divinities entering into the world aggressively, destructively."
Listen to Bishop Barron's commencement address