The Fundamental Dispositions to be Fostered
We have had a view of the being who is to be formed into a true human person, perfecting himself by knowledge and by love, and capable of giving himself; and we have seen that to achieve rationality and freedom this being must have knowledge taught and discipline, and these require the office of the teacher. I now come to the second general topic, the basic dispositions of human nature.
If the nature and spirit of the child are the principle agent in education, then, obviously, the fundamental dispositions to be forested in this principal agent are the very basis of the task of education. They are tooted in nature but they may be warped, and they need to be carefully cultivated. Without pretending to a complete enumeration, I should say that the fundamental dispositions are the five following ones:
First, the love of truth, which is the primary tendency of any intellectual nature […]
Second, the love of good and justice, and even the love of heroic feats, and this too is natural to the children of men. […]
Third, the disposition which might be called simplicity and openness with regard to existence. A disposition which is natural, though often thwarted by egotism or pride or unhappy experiences, and which is so elementary that we cannot express it in terms of psychology. […]
The fourth fundamental disposition concerns the sense of a job well done, for next to the attitude toward existence, there is nothing more basic in a man’s psychic life than the attitude toward work. […]
The fifth fundamental disposition is the sense of cooperation, which is as natural in us, and as thwarted too, as the tendency to social and political life.
—Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), 36-8.
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