
What is Scholé?
"My soul is restless until it finds rest in You."
Saint Augustine
My Search for Scholé
Scholé, in the words of Dr. Christopher Perrin, is an “undistracted time to study the things most worthwhile usually with friends with good food and/or drink.” It is a slower learning shifting from assessment focused to delight focused. Or, as Josef Pieper, a German philosopher wrote, scholé is a “contemplative beholding.” It is the practice of opening one’s self up to receive insight and truth and to see this as a gift. Scholé assumes that human beings are designed to puzzle, wonder, design, contemplate and reflect. Scholé is not about useful, utilitarianism and qualitativeness, but rather a pause of the chronos, chronological, always moving forward time, to enter into the kairos, non- moving, pivotal, sacred time, seemingly immeasurable by length, so that we may together contemplatively behold beauty, weighted by truth, with wings to soar with purpose and direction into goodness, our vocation (calling).
Philosophy must dance with practice, however. How do we take these ideas and do them practically? For starters, do less at one time (much not many). Integrate. Within your family, are you moving together towards one aim (telos), or are the members acting more independently and thus moving apart? Within our curriculum, can we study the same things and read the same books so we can all be a part of the same conversation? Can we see the subjects not as stand alone fragments but integrated parts that build upon and shed light to the others? Can we seek to create space to rest, to seek truth, to recognize goodness, to behold beauty, and to be present to others in conversation, celebration and feasting throughout our days and weeks?
