St Thomas Aquinas

Description

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 Vicar of the Master of the Dominican Order, based at Santa Sabina, Italy. He lectured for many years in theology and philosophy, most recently at St Mary's University College, UK, and at Blackfriars, UK. He contributes frequently to theological and pastoral journals.

A series that recognizes the importance of theorizing for educational thought and to that end seeks to gather together the thoughts and ideas of important educational thinkers. * Yearbook of the Irish Philosophical Society * Aquinas' theory of education is based upon a perceptive account of human person as a rational animal. In this book, Vivian Boland shows the subtlety and breadth of Aquinas' understanding of human intellectual life, looking at the connections between sensation and reason, communal pedagogy and personal virtue, the creative causality of God and the reality of free will. His work makes St. Thomas' thought accessible and illustrates well its perennial relevance. -- Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Thomistic Institute, Dominican House of Studies, Washington, USA The publication of this paperback edition of Vivian Boland's St Thomas Aquinas will be welcomed by anyone engaged in the process of teaching and learning for it underscores that this is a venerable tradition. Here Boland reassesses the life and thought of St Thomas Aquinas in an engaging and assessable style. There are four sections to the book: part 1 sets the scene of who is Thomas Aquinas; part 2 is a critically engagement with Aquinas's thought about teaching and learning; part 3 considers the reception and influence of the work; and part 4 considers the argument that Aquinas's approach to teaching and learning is rooted in theological convictions and is philosophically coherent. -- Michael A. Hayes, President of Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland It was once fashionable in philosophy courses to jump from the study of Plato and Aristotle to that of the 17th century Empiricists and Rationalists, as though nothing of importance was said in between. So it was with educational theory and ideas. But Vivian Boland's book fills the gap, showing how Aquinas' extensive philosophical writings, covering the main themes of philosophy, led to a distinctive understanding of education which is extremely relevant to today. Those themes in ethics and epistemology illuminated what it means to be human, and the central place of reason, knowledge and virtue in that humanity. Those perceptions are central, it is argued, to the aims of education and thereby to the role of the teacher. Moreover, the book, like Aquinas, does not remain in the realm of pure philosophy, but shows, too, how the educational ideas are manifested in a distinctive scholastic pedagogy from which we can learn. The book is not just about Aquinas as a philosopher, but also about Aquinas as a teacher. -- Richard Pring, Emeritus Professor at the Department of Education, and Emeritus Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, UK