Book Overview

Concerned with the trendy, technocratic, and at times sophistical character of contemporary education at all levels, both public and private, the authors of this collection seek to reinvigorate a Thomistic approach to education appropriate to the problems of our day. With its main inspiration taken from the work of Jacques Maritain, especially his 1943 Education at the Crossroads, the volume presents a trenchant critique of the "privacies" of contemporary education, with its emphasis upon the conventional and useful. At the same time, the essays present the outlines of the proper alternative, an education which helps students draw out from themselves the desire for truths which transcend the contingencies of culture and utility. Such an education seeks to guide students to "the common things" available to all human beings.

At the same time, these essays present the outlines of the proper alternative, an education which helps the student “draw out” from himself his desire for truths which transcend the contingencies of culture and utility. Such an education seeks to guide the student to “the common things” available to all human beings who iwll have the courage to seek the truth. Accordingly, these essays uphold an account of man's intellectual and affective capacities which understands these capacities as naturally ordered to truth. The essays approach the task in different but complementary ways: in critiques of contemporary theories of education, in speculative accounts of knowledge and learning, in applications of theory to specific institutional settings, and in discussions of the political contexts governing modern education.

In this rich variety of ways, the essays in The Common Things not only point the way back to the crossroads Maritain spoke of fifty years ago; they go on to indicate something of the landscape along the road not taken by contemporary education.

This text is no longer in publication. Therefore, we are making its contents available online.

Contents

• Daniel McInerny, “Editor’s note”

• Benedict M. Ashley, O.P., “Introduction”

1. John M. Palms, “The Public University and the Common Good”

2. Herbert I. London, “The State of the Academy and the Hope for the Future”

3. Alice Ramos, “The Enlightened Mentality and Academic Freedom”

4. Francis Slade,“Was Ist Aufklärung? Notes on Maritain, Rorty, and Bloom With Thanks But No Apologies to Immanuel Kant”

5. Donald DeMarco, “The Darkening of the Intellect: Four Ways of Sinning Against the Light”

6. Curtis L. Hancock, “What Happened To The Catholic University?”

7. Gregory Kerr, “The Elements of Discord: The Sine Qua Non of Education”

8. Robert J. McLaughlin, “The Catholic College: At The Crossroad Or At The End Of The Road?”

9. Robert E. Lauder, “Maritain: Philosophy, The Catholic University and Truth”

10. James V. Schall, S.J., “On The Education of Young Men and Women”

11. Gregory M. Reichberg, “Studiositas, The Virtue of Attention”

12. Joseph Koterski, S.J., “Education: Restoring the Goal of Development to the Ideal of Learning”

13. Romanus Cessario, O.P., “John Poinsot: On The Gift of Counsel”

14. Peter A. Redpath, “Learning as Recollection—A Thomistic Approach to Recovering Higher Education”

15. Daniel McInerny, “A Humble and Trembling Movement: Creative Intuition and Maritain's Philosophy of Education”

16. Ernest S. Pierucci, “Great Books Business Education”

17. Michael W. Strasser, “Arts in Conflict”

18. Walter Raubicheck, “The Freshmen Seminar: A History of the Western University”

19. Henk E.S. Woldring, “Education for Politics: Knowing, Responsibility. and Cultural Development”

20. Jerome Meric Pessagno, “The Multiconfusion of Multiculturalism”

21. Mario Ramos-Reyes, “Latin American Democracies at the Crossroads”

22. Charles R. Dechert, “Truth Values and Cultural Pluralism”

• Contributors

• Index