Headmaster’s Perspective - Philosophy as Love of Wisdom: Beginning in Wonder and Culminating in Knowledge
While it is rare for most high school students to take even one philosophy class in four years, the students at Chesterton Academy of St. John the Evangelist (CASJE) study philosophy in each of their four years. But what is philosophy? Cicero tells us in the Tusculan Disputations that the origin of the word “philosophy” can be traced to Pythagoras, who used the novel term when asked what art it was that he practiced. Rather than identify himself as the practitioner of any single art, such as geometry, logic, or rhetoric, Pythagoras called himself a philosopher, the etymology of which is “lover of wisdom.” When pressed further as to who is a philosopher, Pythagoras likened life to the Olympic Games which attracted people from near and far. Some, according to Pythagoras, were drawn to the games by a desire to compete and win glory, while others came to seek out profit. The best of men, however, came to the Games neither for fame nor money, but to watch everything closely for no reason other than a desire to observe what is done. So, too, in life many seek material goods or fame, but the philosophers long to know the nature of things.
There is no better introduction to the philosophic desire to know for its own sake than the dialogues of Plato in which the chief interlocutor is almost always Socrates. In Plato’s Theaetetus, Socrates claims that philosophy begins in wonder, which is the appropriate response to the recognition of one’s own ignorance when confronted with the mystery of being. The Socratic spirit of inquiry, which is characterized by his habit of asking the “What is?” question in every field of study, is a core feature of academic life at CASJE. These questions—What is virtue? What is justice? What is piety?—are the starting points of the philosophic quest for knowledge. Socrates’ mode of investigation into these fundamental questions, which is now known as the Socratic method, involves the systematic pursuit of truth by asking questions designed to help others give birth to the ideas within them. This mode of teaching is employed at CASJE not only in every philosophy class but also in every other field of study where conversation among friends is the most fruitful path to answering the ultimate questions about reality: What is the good? What is the true? What is the beautiful? As demonstrated by Socrates and his successors in the Western philosophic tradition—especially Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas—these transcendental realities exist in themselves independently of man and have their source and perfect ground in the One who is those things by nature, because God is Being Itself, He Who Is, from whom all things come to be and without which nothing can be. Man is made for the knowledge of reality. Being—the mystery and holiness of being—is our true vocation and eternal destiny.
Philosophy has as its object being and the truth about being. Freshman at CASJE, through their encounter with Socrates and Plato, as well as Plato’s most famous disciple, Aristotle, are introduced to logic, the proper starting point of philosophy. Logic, the discourse of the mind in the search for truth, involves the mind reflecting on the way the mind works. Hence, logic has to do not with real being, but with the being of reason—mental being. Logic is the general method of philosophy by means of which one learns to reason rightly and to understand the nature of valid inference and demonstrative argument, the foundations of epistemological certitude. Sophomore year is devoted to further study of Plato’s and Aristotle’s teachings concerning the higher branches of philosophy: the study of mobile being, which is the study of nature (classical physics); the study of human being, which involves the study of the soul (psychology) as well as moral and political philosophy; and metaphysics, the study of immobile being, Being Itself.
Having completed their investigation of Plato and Aristotle, as well as the foundations of medieval philosophy, students in their junior year first encounter the prince of philosophers, St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest disciple of Aristotle. Here students confront the issue of Christian philosophy, the relationship of reason and faith, and discover that Christian revelation enters materially, but not formally, into the study of philosophy by way of suggestion for research and in judging the conclusions of philosophical reasoning. This is so because the principles of philosophy derive from the light of natural reason working on experience whereas the principles of revealed religion, namely, the articles of Faith, are superadded to reason by the light of faith. In other words, if philosophical argument is true, it is true on the basis of natural principles which even the atheist or skeptic must accept in spite of himself. And since faith is a heavenly donation to the mind, nothing in reason obliges the atheist or skeptic to subscribe to an article of faith. The atheists and skeptics, as well as all opponents of objective reason, must therefore be engaged and routed on the rational plane. But because faith enlightens and perfects reason, the philosopher who is also a Catholic Christian has a certain advantage because he sees philosophy from a higher standpoint, the standpoint which reason longs and struggles to attain. Thus, philosophy is finally better, indeed best, when partnered with the promptings of revelation and for being able to judge and be judged by the infallible Spirit of Truth expressed through the Magisterium of the Church.
In the second half of their junior year and in their senior year, the students at CASJE will investigate the modern rejection of St. Thomas Aquinas’ grand synthesis of faith and reason as presented by Machiavelli, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Smith, and Marx. Here, as in their earlier study of the ancient and medieval philosophers, our students will not only learn the history of philosophy, but also philosophize themselves as they grapple with the modern claim to have reestablished philosophy on new principles based on the new science and a radically different understanding of man, nature, and the universe. Our students will then consider the Catholic response to modern philosophy as set forth by Catholic thinkers such as Pope Leo XIII, Hillaire Belloc, and G. K. Chesterton himself.
As Aristotle rightly noted, all men by nature desire to know. Hence, either we philosophize, or we refuse to philosophize. If we philosophize, we philosophize; and if we refuse or reject philosophy, we still philosophize. Reason cannot but reason, well or ill. So, our goal at CASJE is that our students begin to philosophize well. As human beings we are fitted to know Being Itself, for we are made in the image and likeness of He Who Is. It is our ontological kinship with the divine source of reality, even with the wound of fallen nature, that forms the very basis of genuine education. In his very being man is pontifical, a bridge between time and eternity, above the beasts and below the angels, though in frequent struggle with the lower nature and infernal powers. Finally, in the Catholic scheme of things, philosophy is the essential and proper preparation for the study of sacred doctrine, for just as grace presupposes and perfects but does not destroy nature, so faith presupposes and perfects but does not destroy reason. Indeed, the question of the relation between nature and grace, reason and revelation, is ultimately a question of respecting the need for both distinction and integration. In sum, philosophy is the handmaiden of theology and the preamble of faith, and thus indispensable to an authentic Catholic education.
