ABSTRACT
In many respects, John Henry Newman's conception of a university is far removed from the modern university of the twenty-first century. Newman provides an outline of his understanding of wisdom in Sermon 14 of the Oxford University Sermons, preached in Oxford on Whit-Tuesday morning, June 1, 1841. The sermon predates his conversion to Catholicism, but it shows in a number of passages that the ideas expressed in his later discourses on university education, which come to constitute his The Idea of a University, were already formed. Newman argues vehemently against breaking knowledge into parts, even though he recognises that it is possible to divide knowledge into different spheres—human, sensible, intellectual, and divine. There is much more that can be said about Newman's philosophy of education, in particular, that education is about the formation of good intellectual habits and not simply about the acquisition of skills useful for the workplace.
