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3 1 6 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 3meaning. However, Kronman asserts that churches are woefully lacking intheir ability to address the question of the meaning of life, especially as itapplies to higher education. The reason for this is provocative.Religion cannot, by its very nature, be pluralistic. Secular humanismaccepts pluralism and different interpretations of the meaning of life. Religionmay be tolerant, but in the end, it must answer any question decisively. Themanner in which it arrives at such decisive answers sacrifices the intellect.Kronman contends that the mind must be left behind because the religiousbelieve in the finitude of human thought. While even secular humanistsconclude that human reason is finite in its abilities, they do not assert, asthe religious do, that there is something beyond reason able to carry us tothe truth. Religion is ultimately fundamentalist and intolerant. In the finalanalysis, it asserts that there is only one answer to the question of life’s meaning.Therefore, the most fundamentalist religion, and even the most tolerant,are, in the end, intolerant. In that religious sects reject pluralism and dismissat some point reason’s ability to know, it follows that religion is incapable ofserving the aim of higher education in any open way. 7 Is this true? Pope LeoXIII’s encyclical “On the Restoration of Christian Philosophy” is for the mostpart a positive appraisal of the role of the mind in discovering truth and themeaning of life absent of the authority of the church. 8Kronman laments that religious institutions are now practicing thatwhich higher education has abandoned, arguing that it impedes the questfor life’s meaning when churches are in charge of the investigation. In otherwords, our existence is left in the hands of clerics who ultimately will not toleratediffering answers to the question. One inconsistency about Kronman’sposition is that he wants it both ways—he wants students not to be relativists,yet his position seems in the end to foster precisely the type of relativism thathe finds disturbing in the modern university. He places his hopes in a revivalof secular humanism because it is more open to differing views about life’smeaning, but American universities have had a history of religious pluralismwithout fundamentalism. Further, he bemoans the fundamentalism ofreligious denominations in society, yet as such fundamentalism pertains to7Kronman, Education’s End, 162, 198–201.8Pope Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris (1879), http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris_en.html(accessed March 14, 2008). Pope Leo not onlypraises the early church fathers for their acceptance of Greek philosophy, but also lauds Thomas Aquinasand his ability to make Aristotle coherent in the church. Still, perhaps it is problematic that he alsoseems to consider theology the queen, the nondespotic ruler, of philosophy. The Catholic Church hasmade theology friendly to philosophy, but at what cost to philosophy?