The Ledesma–Kolvenbach University Paradigm

Abstract

This first article, which synthesises the whole issue, briefly describes the university model which its author baptizes as the “Ledesma – Kolvenbach paradigm”. The corresponding presentation was a means of approaching the panorama and setting the pace of the later seminars. The i+m in the title refers to “identity and mission”. Ledesma himself was a well known theologian and teacher who played a considerable role in the Ratio Studiorum (“The Official Plan for Jesuit Education” dated in the sixteenth century); he is the one who structured the four dimensional framework of the model.) Kolvenbach, the resigning Jesuit superior general, gave the model its widely accepted form in his last university lectures, where he coined the latin terminology of the paradigm. The characteristics and principal implications of the four dimensions of the Model are described – the four final aims of the Jesuit university—that is: the practical dimension ((utilitas), the social dimension (iustitia), the humanist dimension (humanitas) and the religious dimension (fides). Most of the study is dedicated to “the reason behind” this study. The very short second part of the study makes several suggestions for the application of this model and is therefore about the “how”.