debate

Experience and Knowledge

BY LORENZO ALBACETE

The claim in The Risk of Education, by Luigi Giussani, that the ultimate means of verifying the educational proposal is its correspondence with personal experience may appear to support the separation between education and objective truth. This separation is a central dogma of many contemporary educational methodologies. But, in fact, precisely the opposite is the case with Giussani’s book. Experience, appropriately understood, is the key to knowledge. Consider the meaning of the word “experience” in this account of a vacation in the mountains: “I had a great time. I went mountain climbing, hiking, cannoning down a river with falls, swimming in a lake, and horseback riding. I’ve never done these things before. They were great experiences. On the way back, however, I had a real scare. We were returning in a small airplane that had a new guidance system, recently installed. Suddenly, approaching the airport in a thick fog, something went wrong with it, and we had to land almost blind. Thank God, however, the pilot had lots of experience flying in bad weather, and we were able to land safely.” In the first case, “experience” refers entirely to sensual and psychological satisfaction, to the thrill of doing new things. The more of such pleasant experiences, the better. When the excitement of a new thrill disappears, the sensual or psychological satisfaction of doing these things is diminished, and they are no longer considered great experiences. It soon becomes a matter of, “Been there. Done that.” It doesn’t satisfy or even interest us anymore. In the second case, “experience” designates something completely different. It refers to things that happen that shape the way we are, the way we deal with life, the way we evaluate and judge new situations. It has nothing to do with sensations and thrills. The first use of “experience” is really content–free, since it is sensations, feelings, and emotions that matter; the reality behind them is beside the point–indeed, one keeps going from one to another in search of more of such “experiences.” The realities behind these experiences are held to be pleasant or unpleasant, exciting or boring. They are never judged as real or unreal, objectively good or bad. This kind of experience has nothing to do with knowledge. The second use of the word is completely different. Here the content of the experience is crucial, since it shapes the subject in an objective way. Here the word “experience” refers to an event, an encounter that engages the “I” at the deepest possible level, the level of the religious sense, the level at which the meaning of life is sought and anticipated, the level where the Mystery behind reality is perceived. It is one thing to say that John, a pilot, has had many experiences. It is another to say that he is an experienced pilot. The first one says nothing about who he is; the second one is an expression of his identity.

In The Risk of Education, Father Giussani defines experience as the “valorization of an objective relationship.” It is how we understand reality, how we discover its meaning. “True experience,” he explains, “throws us into the rhythms of the real, drawing us irresistibly toward our union with the ultimate aspect of things and their true, definitive meaning.” After the Second Vatican Council, Catholic education sought to appeal to experience instead of abstract concepts. But, tragically, experience was understood in the content-free meaning characteristic of the dominant culture. Recognizing the dangers of reducing the Christian proposal to pure subjective emotions, others sought to define the Christian experience as praxis, which is engagement with reality according to an ideological vision. This too deprived the Catholic proposal of its specificity. Instead, an education in the faith should be based on the experience of the event of Christ as corresponding perfectly with the constitutive desires of the human heart. This helps us recognize that the experience that allows us to truly know what is real, what is true and good, the experience that shapes our identity and moves us to action, is the experience of the event of Christ, the experience of the Church. Outside this experience, reality vanishes into emotions, abstractions, and ideologies. Only within it is a truly human culture generated.