St Thomas Aquinas

It may be surprising that the thought of a medieval theologian still informs many areas of intellectual debate, but there continues to be lively interest in the work of Thomas Aquinas. He considers the most radical questions for our thinking about education: what is a human being? what does it mean to learn? what does it mean to teach? what does it mean to know, to understand, and to search for the truth?

In this text, Vivian Boland offers a short biography of Aquinas focused on his personal experiences as a student and teacher. The book then provides a critical exposition of the texts in which Aquinas develops his views about education and includes a short account of the reception and influence of his thinking. Finally, it considers in some detail the most significant points of contact between Aquinas's educational thought and current concerns – his conviction about the goodness of the world, his holistic understanding of human experience and his contributions to virtue theory – and highlights the continuing relevance and influence of this work and thinking within educational philosophy today.

Vivian Boland OP is currently Vicar of the Master of the Dominican Order, based at Santa Sabina, Rome. He lectured for many years in theology and philosophy, most recently at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham and at Blackfriars, Oxford, UK. He contributes frequently to theological and pastoral journals. Aquinas’s thinking about education has been one of his main research interests.

Series Editor's Preface
Foreword

Introduction

Part I: An Intellectual Biography of Thomas Aquinas
1. Learning: Monte Cassino, Naples, Paris, and Cologne
2. Teaching: Paris, Naples, Orvieto, and Rome
3. Reading, Disputing, Repeating
4. Sources and Resources
5. Openness and Criticism
6. Thomas Opts for the Dominicans and for Aristotle

Part II: Critical Exposition of Aquinas's Work
II (A): Can One Human Being Teach Another?
7. Thomas on Teaching: Contexts
8. Thomas on Teaching: In II Sentences 9 and 28
9. Thomas on Teaching: Quaestiones disputatae de veritate 11
10. Thomas on Teaching: Summa theologiae I 117
II (B): Knowledge, Truth, Faith Reason
11. Knowledge
12. Truth
13. Faith and Reason, Theology and Philosophy
II (C): Pedagogy
14. Towards a 'Sound Educational Method': In Boethii de Trinitate 5-6
15. Kinds of Speculative Sciences
16. Method in the Speculative Sciences
17. From Sensation and Imagination to Understanding and Wisdom
18. The Roots of Aquinas's Pedagogical Concern: Scholastic, Aristotelian, Christian
19. From Socrates to Jesus
20. The Most Excellent of Teachers

Part III: The Reception and Influence of Aquinas's Work
21. From Controversial Theologian to Doctor of the Church
22. The Second Scholasticism
23. The Third Scholasticism
24. The Twentieth Century
25. Thomists on Education in the Twentieth Century
26. Interpreting Aquinas Today

Part IV: The Relevance of Aquinas's Work Today
IV (A): Creation
27. The Meaning of Creation
28. The Goodness of Creation
29. God's Complete Freedom
IV (B): The Human Being
30. Aquinas Opts for a 'Holistic Anthropology'
31. The Unity and Integrity of the Human Being
32. Praise of the Body
33. The Image of God
IV (C): On Virtue
34. Virtue Theory
35. Dispositions
36. Shaping Character, Strengthening Dispositions
IV (D): On Virtues
37. Intellectual and Moral Virtues
38. Cardinal Virtues: Pieper and Geach
39. Contemporary Receptions of Aquinas on Virtue: Hauerwas and MacIntyre
40. Criticisms of Virtue Theory
41. Virtues for Learning and Teaching
42. Human Flourishing: Action, Contemplation, and Teaching

Bibliography
Index of Persons and Subjects