St Thomas Aquinas: Bloomsbury Library of Educational Thought
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Overview
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.
An overview and synthesis of St Thomas Aquinas’ influential educational thought in one volume, including coverage of the reception and influence of his work and its relevance today.
Written by a leading authority on Aquinas
Brings together the work and thinking of Aquinas, the aims of education, the nature of teaching and the structure and content of the curriculum in a form suitable for today’s students
Provides both a useful overview and synthesis of Aquinas’ key work in the field in one volume, saving students valuable research time
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
- Title: St Thomas Aquinas
- Authors: Richard Bailey, Vivian Boland OP
- Series: Bloomsbury Library of Educational Thought
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2014
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 256
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781441137388, 9781472518903, 147251890X, 1441137386
- Resource ID: LLS:9781441137388
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T10:15:36Z
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.