Thoughts on the emergence of a final relevant question to guide educating in friendship

With its pursuit of self-interested power, political factionalism is functionally opposed to democratic politics, which mostly anticipates disinterested solutions of practical wisdom. Can authentic friendship, understood as a terminal value distinct from the transactional common sense valued by the politics of democratic society, support a vulnerable democracy? This presentation proposes a democratic role for education if the final relevant question for educators is, “Will I cooperate with God’s solution to evil?” This question emerges from the moving viewpoint of self-appropriation proposed by Bernard Lonergan SJ. At stake in this question is access to the wisdom that values the creation of the human community and history grounded in the intimate union of freedom and responsibility. Love supports a vulnerable democracy. When the teacher answers the question with “yes,” he or she offers encounters inviting students to affirm the faith, hope, and charity that are the harmonious continuation of knowing, choosing, and acting. The criterion of success is the question’s capacity to orientate harmoniously, without eroding human freedom, the student’s unrestricted desire to know with, first, the desire for a valued and valuable unity in all human inquiry, and secondly, to inspire attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible, and loving participation in one’s community.