Dr. Zena Hitz Speaks on the Life of the Mind

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“What is the Life of the Mind?” Dr. Zena Hitz posed this question to the students and faculty of Thomas Aquinas College, California, in her recent Friday-night lecture. The College community gathered in St. Cecilia Hall that evening to hear Dr. Hitz speak on learning, teaching, and the intellectual life as part of the ongoing St. Vincent de Paul Lecture and Concert Series.

Dr. Hitz teaches at St. John’s College in Annapolis, a liberal arts school where, like at Thomas Aquinas College, the professors are called tutors and the Great Books are considered the primary teachers. Dr. Hitz is herself an alumna of St. John’s College, as well as of Cambridge University, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University, where she received her doctorate in ancient philosophy. She has taught philosophy at McGill University, Auburn University, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, as well as in prison programs and to other non-traditional students. She has written and spoken extensively on the good of learning for its own sake and is the author of Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life.

Drawing on examples from literature, film, history, and theology, Dr. Hitz’s lecture explored what the life of the mind entails and what true learning resembles. She examined St. Augustine’s Confessions and a French arthouse film, the lives of Albert Einstein and Malcom X, and the model of wisdom presented by the Blessed Virgin Mary to sketch an image of the life of the mind. Inspired by these images, she investigated the distinction between the acquisition of mere facts and the active, living understanding that comes with true learning.

“Our inner lives, following the paintings of Our Lady at the Annunciation, are gardens enclosed,” she reflected. “And the word ‘garden,’ I think, is significant. A garden is, after all, a living thing or a collection of living things. In other words, our inner lives are lives; they are sources of activity and growth.”

Dr. Hitz invited her listeners to ponder what teaching and learning might be if they are to lead, not to the mere possession of other people’s judgements, but to an authentic growth in wisdom.

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