St. John Henry Newman - The Idea of a University | Preface

"The view taken of a University in these Discourses is the following: That it is a place of teaching universal knowledge."

In 1854, Newman was invited to Dublin by the Catholic Bishops of Ireland to serve as rector for the newly established Catholic University of Ireland, now University College, Dublin. Though he retired after only four years, during this time he composed and delivered the lectures that would become The Idea of a University.

In The Idea of a University, St. John Henry Newman champions a “discipline of mind” that enables its possessor to distinguish essence from accident, means from end, and good from evil. These habits are now all too rare. The reader of The Idea of a University will delight in the melody of Newman’s prose, the sharpness of his insights, and the force of his arguments, but will also rejoice to find something incomparably more valuable, a vast vista of an orderly life of learning with a glimpse of the mind’s last end—God.

—description from the Cluny Media edition [https://clunymedia.com/collections/john-henry-newman/products/the-idea-of-a-university]

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The Idea of a University full text: https://www.newmanreader.org/works/idea/

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