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Your Excellency, Reverend Fathers, Governors, Faculty, members of the student body and particularly you who join that body today: On this occasion it is customary for the president to offer a few thoughts on Catholic liberal education as we understand it here at Thomas Aquinas College. Let me begin by telling you that you are not here to study the great books. Now I must explain myself, for you may very likely think that that is precisely what you are here to do. Let me be clear. You are here to read and discuss the great books, but not to learn them. The books are not themselves the objects of our study. You are not here to study the great books as outstanding examples of the creativity of the human spirit. Neither are you here to study them in order to become familiar with your own culture and civilization, valuable as that might be. And you certainly are not here to become experts on them so you can make money lecturing about them. Rather you will read the great books; you will read the works of
Homer, Shakespeare, Plato, Euclid, St. Augustine, Descartes, Newton,
St. Thomas Aquinas, and all the others; and you will discuss them,
precisely because, more than lesser works, they can open up for
you the truth about reality. And the truth about reality is what
you are here to learn. Starting PointsWhat does it mean for these books to "open up the truth about reality?" Is it that their authors will tell you the truth and you will believe them? Perhaps, in some cases, that will be the best you can do. But that is not what the College intends. It is not even what the authors themselves intend. The argument from authority is the weakest form of argument, and the authors of these books usually try to give you some better argument. That is one of the reasons we call these books "great." They do not just give you a string of assertions and ask you to accept them because the author is an expert. All too often, that description fits rather a textbook. An argument takes you from something you knew already to some new knowledge. But this process cannot be an infinite regress. There must be some things that we know without an argument. In each subject there must be starting points. You do not hold the truth of these starting points by an argument. Rather, these starting points are known by you in some other way. Each science has different starting points, and some even have a different kind of starting point. Each kind is held with a different degree of certitude, and consequently the conclusions of the arguments will also be held with a different degree of certitude. In sacred theology, the starting points are taken from Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church. Those starting points are held by faith. Theology begins from these starting points and proceeds by argument to other truths. In other subjects, the starting points are known through experience,
but the kind of experience required also varies. In the case of
mathematics, the experience is immediate and universal like, for
example, the experience of whole and part. Everyone sees immediately
from the experience of whole and part that the whole is greater
than the part. In ethics and politics, by contrast, the experience
is indistinct, and its acquisition may require years of living.
To see, for example, that it is true that virtues and vices are
habits may take some experience of life. Natural philosophy reflects
on the ordinary, common experience, while experimental science is
based on a special experience of nature revealed in the laboratory. A Life Lived in the Truth
It is not only the starting points that differ, but also the modes of argument. For while argument moves you from what you know to what you do not know, there are different kinds of argument, and they produce different degrees of certitude about their conclusions. There are arguments that are demonstrative and arguments that are only probable. There are demonstrations that something is true and demonstrations of why it is true. There are dialectical arguments and rhetorical arguments. There are arguments by analogy and arguments by example. Some of these arguments are appropriate to some subjects and some to others. Now the liberally educated man knows the correct starting points and the proper kinds of argument for each subject. Within the curriculum of this college, you will formally study the kinds of argument from the text of Aristotle's logical works in freshman philosophy, but more broadly, you will learn what starting points are proper to each subject, and the modes of argument proper to it, by reading and discussing the writings of the seminal thinkers who embody each field of study most perfectly. By reading and discussing the great books you will learn some truth about reality, but - and this is perhaps more important - you will also learn how to learn the truth and how to distinguish it from error. Eventually, you will be what Aristotle says is true of the liberally educated person, "critical in all or nearly all the branches of learning." This will enable you to live a truly free and humane life - a life lived in the truth. This education is liberal because it liberates you from ignorance and error. At the practical level, it makes you able to judge what others tell you. Since it is also Catholic, it enables you to live life in the light of Him who says, "I am the way, and the truth and the life" and "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." So I invite you to begin today the activity that will, I hope,
occupy you the rest of your life. I invite you to begin a life of
wonder about the good and the true; a life devoted to wisdom. -- Qtrly Newsletter, Fall 2009 |
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