In a recent essay in America, Terence Sweeney drew attention to Pope Leo XIV’s consistent concern with education in his writings, including in “Magnifica Humanitas.” Mr. Sweeney noted the pope’s attention to a new reality: that in an age of artificial intelligence, especially in light of what the pope labels a “technocratic paradigm,” we are experiencing “certain currents of thought that interpret progress as surpassing the human condition, and which are often grouped under the labels of transhumanism and posthumanism.” 

So, what keeps education human or humane? In part, the pope provocatively insists, it entails discerning “when and for what purpose [A.I.] ought not to be used.” Why? Leo writes:

The speed and ease with which answers or summaries can be obtained risk extinguishing the desire to ask questions, which is a process that bears fruit only over time. As Plato wrote, the deepest and most important things are learned only after much time and effort, by engaging in discussion with others, “striking upon” ideas and experiences together like flint until the spark of understanding is kindled within us. We must learn, then, how to exercise restraint in the use of AI and to protect our young people from the promise of the perfect machine, from that subtle temptation which renders human thought seemingly superfluous precisely when it is most needed. (No. 140)

The pope worries about an educational culture that prioritizes intellectual products over processes, quick answers over arduous questioning. Put simply, the threat A.I. poses in our educational institutions is to render the activity of human thought itself superfluous—because its products can be more easily, quickly and accurately obtained through nonhuman means.

But this threat is real today largely because of a problematic, modern and essentially pragmatic account of the nature of human intelligence. Exercising restraint in the use of A.I.—indeed, resisting its use entirely in certain contexts—will require a paradigm shift in how human intelligence is essentially conceived, a shift that might be facilitated by engaging a medieval account of intellectual virtue.

By the mid-12th century, medieval scholars were intensely interested in the nature of the “good life,” where “good” refers not only to moral or ethical goodness but also to human happiness— what they called beatitude and what we might call human flourishing. As Christians, they were of course convinced that only God could be the ultimate source and content of such flourishing. Borrowing terms from St. Augustine, only God should be enjoyed for “his own sake,” or as the end of all desiring; there is nothing else beyond God in relation to which God might be reduced to a means. Conversely, everything else should be used as a means to arriving at beatific joy in God. 

But this framework raised thorny questions. For example, Augustine himself had asked about the status of other persons. Are they merely to be used in order to enjoy God? Aren’t they in some sense also ends in themselves? For the medievals, a similar dilemma emerged, perhaps surprisingly, in relation to the virtues. Are they merely useful in the journey to God? Patristic doctors of the church, including Augustine and Ambrose, seemed to contradict each other on this question. 

In the middle of the 12th century, Peter Lombard, in his immensely influential theological work, the famous Four Books of Sentences, addressed this question directly by attempting a middle way: “We say that the virtues are to be sought and loved for their own sake, and yet only for the sake of beatitude.” He resolved the apparent contradiction thus:

They are to be loved for their own sake, because they delight those who possess them with a sincere and holy delight and give birth in them to a spiritual joy [italics mine]. However…do not let the course of love end here, nor let this be the limit of delight, but let this joy be related to that highest good, to which alone we must adhere wholly, because it alone is to be loved for its own sake and nothing is to be sought beyond it, since it is the highest end. (Sentences, Bk I, d.1, c. 1, 9)

Put simply, Peter posits a hybrid notion. In some sense, the virtues are both ends and means; in some sense, they are inherently good, without reference to any utility or usefulness, except in relationship to God. For those who possess them, they are a source of delight and joy, without reference to anything else, except to God. In short, they are, perhaps paradoxically, “penultimate ends.” They have intrinsic but not ultimate goodness or worth.

What this hybrid notion introduces is a claim that in this life and in relation to everything else in this world, certain human acts and practices (and corresponding dispositions and inclinations) are intrinsically good and worthwhile, in and of themselves, requiring the addition of no utility or practical application for their justification. They are integral ingredients in human flourishing; it is simply good for humans to do them. If additional benefits are present, they would be, in medieval terms, accidental, extrinsic and unnecessary; not essential even if welcome. 

Recalling that the Latin virtus, and behind it the Greek aretê, is well rendered into English as “excellence,” this hybrid notion is applicable to many dimensions of human existence, including, for example, education and, more broadly, to the “life of the mind” or to the realm of human intelligence. The medieval thinkers certainly had a notion of intellectual virtue, which adhered to Peter Lombard’s account of virtue generally. For them, reading, thinking, wondering, discussing, asking questions, seeking answers and more were intrinsically good activities, yielding a joy integral to human flourishing. 

Perhaps, in the present moment, a striking aspect of this account of intellectual virtue relates to the production of texts. Put too simply, much scholarly writing in the Middle Ages prior to the Renaissance was done in order to facilitate excellent human thought, not the other way around, as in modern contexts, where scholars tend to think in order to produce excellent texts, for which alone they are rewarded and esteemed.

This obviously raises questions for the present moment: What is intellectual excellence for us? What is our definition of intellectual virtue generically, and what specific intellectual virtues should be cultivated for their own sake?

While various answers might be given, one thing is likely common across the board: Currently, we have no place for a notion of intellectual virtue like the medieval one. We assume, unreflectively, that the goal of education is its extrinsic and subsequent utility; we have a predominately utilitarian notion of intellectual virtue. We educate people in order that… and here will fill in our practical goal.

Whatever the answer given—to be good citizens, to be good employees, to be productive, to be effective, to be problem-solvers—it is extrinsic to the intellectual activity itself. Even the ubiquitous and much-vaunted ideal of “critical thinking” is typically a pragmatic notion. And when educational institutions tout an ideal of “forming minds,” a practical end seems always implicit, left to be supplied instinctively by others, even if left unsaid. 

We have long justified education in the humanities or liberal arts on the basis of what its graduates could produce for the state, for the economy, for corporations, etc. But already and every day more and more so, A.I. is more productive, more effective, more useful than any flesh-and-blood human. The seductiveness of A.I. exposes our deep attachment to these extrinsic products of intellectual activity. 

We need, by contrast, an educational culture in which it is good simpliciter, in and of itself, for humans to read, think, converse, wonder and ask, if for no other reason than the intrinsic value of such activities—or that such activities are, in and of themselves, sources of delight and joy, ingredient in human flourishing. When a human intelligence does these things, it cannot, by definition, be superseded or replaced by A.I., even if A.I. can simulate those things better and faster than humans can generate them. 

Unfortunately, unless and until we acquire such an account of intellectual virtue and an educational culture that intentionally cultivates it, the seductive allure of A.I. will be irresistible. 

It should be added that this is not an elitist account of intellectual virtue. As intended here, “excellence” does not mean how well one does the activity relative to other intellects; rather, the virtue lies in the doing of the activity, regardless of the relative sophistication. On this model, the genius and the simpleton can both be equally virtuous intellectually; the child reading a primer and the scholar reading a tome are equally excellent. 

It should also be noted that the extrinsic, practical benefits of A.I. are not here disparaged. When they serve the common good, they are to be pursued. As “Magnifica Humanitas” asserts: “We can embrace the technological progress that alleviates suffering and unlocks new possibilities, provided that we do not abandon the very essence of our humanity” (No. 126). But such goods are not the essential goal of intellectual virtue.

Recovering something like this medieval account of intellectual virtue is the only plausible argument against A.I. It is just good for humans to read, think, write, discuss, learn and know. To be humanly intelligent is superior to whatever an intelligence, human or otherwise, can produce.

Boyd Taylor Coolman is a professor in the theology department of Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences at Boston College.