‘By the Very Rivalry’: On Some Necessary Tensions in Newman's Epistemological Formulations in the Idea of a University and the Grammar of Assent

Newman's educational writings can present an apparent contradiction or rupture, with the ‘intellectualist’ Idea of a University opposed to the ‘commonsensical’ Grammar of Assent . An appeal to the imagination—to imaginative and implicit reasoning—has sometimes been made in order to reconcile these apparent contradictions. While Newman's thought is best understood in terms of imaginative reasoning, this essay argues against the adequacy of the imagination to harmonise Newman's apparent inconsistencies, for two reasons: first, because Newman himself sees an educative role for such ambiguities; second, because the final objects of education (in Newman's estimation) are always beyond imagining and must involve habits of mind or virtues that go beyond the capacity of the imagination to realise.