The Integration of Liberal and Professional Education

Education, in its final and highest achievements, tends to develop the contemplative capacity of the human mind. It does so neither in order to have the mind come to a stop in the act of knowing and contemplating, nor in order to make knowledge and contemplation subservient to action, but in order that once man has reached a stage where the harmony of his inner energies has been brought to full completion, his action on the world and on the human community, and his creative power at the service of his fellow-men, may overflow from his contemplative contact with reality – both with the visible and invisible realities in the midst of which he lives and moves.--Jacques Maritain As a member of both the theology and management departments, I find Jacques Maritain’s words to capture the essence of what it means to integrate liberal and professional education. As a form of contemplation (and leisure), liberal education cultivates the human intellect in a particular kind of ability to respond (responsibility) to the world. Its educative role must never be merely instrumentalized to careerist goals or even social utopianism. Yet, liberal education is not divorced from one’s work. It should be an animating source of meaning and insight as one begins to understand the meanin