Course seeks to inform students of Saint’s influences
The Program of Liberal Studies (PLS) is offering a class this fall entitled, “Aquinas’s Philosophical Bookshelf or Aquinas’s ‘Great Books’” in anticipation of the “Aquinas at 800” conference taking place on campus September 22–25.
The course is taught by Professor Denis Robichaud, the John and Patrice Kelly Associate Professor of Liberal Studies. Robichaud explained to the Rover, “It struck me that constructing a course around ‘Aquinas’s Philosophical Bookshelf’ or his ‘great books,’ as it were, could be immensely rewarding. Studying Thomas Aquinas from the perspective of intellectual and cultural history offers a different and complementary vantage point than theology. … I hope that studying both what Aquinas wrote and what he read will be an enriching education for students.”
The course is designed to supply students with an understanding of the texts that informed St. Thomas’s own writings, as well as give them a broader understanding of the historical and cultural transformations his sources underwent prior to their scholastic reception.
“I want to have a better understanding of how Aristotelian ideas were widespread and diffused throughout different faith traditions and how Aquinas is a descendent of this intellectual tradition,” said PLS student Ainsley Gibbs, a senior enrolled in the class.
Fellow PLS senior Maria Murinova echoed this sentiment: “I think the class will help me better understand the significance of Aquinas’s work to his own era and appreciate how his writings brought together so many important historical and philosophical ideas before him.”
Viana Schlapp, another student participating in the course, connected her experience of studying Aquinas to her hopes for the approaching conference: “For years I criticized Aquinas’s work as being dull or overly formulaic until I discovered his writings on the virtues, which are based in a good and true understanding of the human person. I am certain the conference will be full of challenging questions (just as Aquinas would want) and ultimately remind us of our shared end—Aquinas’s understanding of ‘beatitudo,’ or perfect happiness with God.”
Robichaud told the Rover that the upcoming “Aquinas at 800” conference was a central factor that informed his design of the course. “Experts from around the world are coming to campus to discuss Aquinas’s thought from different perspectives (theology, ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, history etc.).”
He continued, noting his decision to require students to attend the conference: “It is a small but important way to initiate our class into scholar practices and integrate our studies into broader Catholic and intellectual traditions.”
Aquinas’s Philosophical Bookshelf fulfills the Intellectual and Cultural History requirement of the department which, according to the syllabus, aims at “providing a forum for students to discuss how and why scholarship has formed around texts [and] examine texts through their historical genealogies, context, fortune, and transformation.”
Murinova further told the Rover that this integrated historical approach to the Thomistic tradition is something she is especially interested in: “I’m really looking forward to learning about Aquinas’s own academic formation, especially the texts that shaped his philosophical framework. The influences from Arabic philosophy on the texts he would have been using are particularly interesting, as I haven’t had a lot of exposure to that historical tradition and its significance.”
The “Aquinas at 800: Ad multos annos” conference intends to “explor[e] the ongoing importance of his thought to contemporary cultural, philosophical, and theological discussions.”
Co-sponsored by more than ten different centers on campus, the conference will take place September 22–25. Keynote speakers will include Rev. Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Jean Porter, Rudi te Veldi, and Rev. Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P.
Daniel Martin is a junior from Skippack, Pennsylvania in the Program of Liberal Studies. He can be contacted at dmarti29@nd.edu, although emails not structured according to Aquinas’s question, objection, sed contra, and reply dialectic will be swiftly deleted without consideration.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
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