I visited St Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, California, yesterday. Billed as one of the US' best Liberal Arts schools, it was quite an experience to walk around and attend mass.
Hidden in the mountains of Los Padres National Forest, halfway between Ojai and Santa Paula, the college is unknown to many. The college is one of only a handful of colleges nationwide that offers a liberal arts degree by studying the classics of Western civilization from 2,500 B.C. to the early 20th century.
This is a place that believes in the unity of the true, the good and the beautiful. And in learning by the Socratic method:
"Students are here to spend four years developing their intelligence and honing their minds," said Thomas Dillon, the school's president. "They read the authors that have shaped [this] world."
'There are no textbooks. There are also no lectures in the classroom. The curriculum is a sustained conversation in the form of tutorials, seminars, and laboratories guided by tutors who assist students in the work of reading, analyzing, and evaluating these great books. Students develop the lost tools of inquiry, argument, and translation — in critically reading and analyzing texts, in mathematical demonstration, and in laboratory investigation.
Equipped with these tools, the graduates are fortified to undertake any area of study, professional training, or vocation. Grounded in the arts of thinking and with a broad, integrated vision of the whole of life and learning, every subject becomes an open door.'
“There is truth, and we are seeking it — so much so that we leave out the opinions of textbook editors, and go back to original sources.”
'Philosophy is divided broadly into speculative and practical or moral philosophy. Speculative philosophy is interested in nature and its causes. Moral philosophy, on the other hand, is concerned with right reason as it applies to our active life, that is, as it regulates the life of the passions and appetites which move us. With the liberal arts as their tools and with Aristotle — “The Philosopher,” as St. Thomas called him — as their guide, students at Thomas Aquinas College study philosophy in all four years of the program.'
'"I looked at what my boss was doing and I asked myself if that is what I want to do for the rest of my life--sitting in an office 80 hours a week billing customers," he said.
Half of the college's graduates go on to either medical school or law school, Dillon said. And, this being a Catholic institution, there are some absolutes.
"There is a skeptical attitude in universities today that says there is no right or wrong, that there is no higher truth," Dillon said. "This is a self-defeating proposition. If there is no truth, then there is no point in teaching."
I agree very much. Here is a place that not only satisfies what Aristotle called the desire to know that defines the human species, but the cosmic yearning for meaning.
Philosophy instructor John Nieto said most students with degrees entering the college are in their late 20s or mid-30s.
"They recognized that something necessary was missing in their understanding of the world," he said. "What you can gain if you apply yourself here is a vision of the world that brings everything together."'
"You may only have one or two pages to read," junior Rory Nugent said. "But it's Aristotle, so it takes you an hour or two to figure it out."
The point to all this rigorous study, the students say, is not necessarily to graduate with a degree that allows them to be a banker, a doctor or a lawyer. Instead, they say, such study helps them become better thinkers and, as a result, better human beings.
"In high school I saw that you could come to know something and that education was far more than just practical," said senior Andrea Sassman, who is from Idaho. "There was education appropriate to a human being, so you are better able to think and better able to act."
Unlike many Great Books programs, Thomas Aquinas College instructors tell students that eternal truths can be pinned down through reason.
The school's bottom line is that truth is objective and can be discovered.
These are big claims, repudiated by some of the livelier intellects of the modern age. But they are claims I support. This view expresses a commitment that a rational science of human social order is possible with its ethical component firmly in place, is attainable, and that such a science is not merely an expression of a belief but can be articulated, studied and lived as a work of reason.
That certainly repudiates the prevailing relativism and scepticism of the age, and utterly rejects the nihilism of a world beyond good and evil. It may seem outdated but, in truth, its standard is timeless. And there are signs in other fields of a return to some such thing. When atheist scientists and philosophers, like Sam Harris in his book "The Moral Landscape", and Stuart Kauffman in Reinventing the Sacred, are affirming the existence of such a thing as "moral truth", and drawing upon the key themes of Aristotle and Plato, then the idea that there is such a thing as objective reality and an objective morality ceases to be an outlandish fancy
Here is Sam Harris in a chapter entitled 'Moral Truth' from The Moral Landscape.
'Many people believe that something in the last few centuries of intellectual progress prevents us from speaking in terms of "moral truth" and, therefore, from making cross-cultural moral judgments—or moral judgments at all. Having discussed this subject in a variety of public forums, I have heard from literally thousands of highly educated men and women that morality is a myth, that statements about human values are without truth conditions (and are, therefore, nonsensical), and that concepts like well-being and misery are so poorly defined, or so susceptible to personal whim and cultural influence, that it is impossible to know anything about them.'
Harris goes on to criticise moral relativism, showing how contextualism confers legitimacy upon some highly dubious moral propositions and practices.
'Once we see that a concern for well-being (defined as deeply and as inclusively as possible) is the only intelligible basis for morality and values, we will see that there must be a science of morality, whether or not we ever succeed in developing it: because the well-being of conscious creatures depends upon how the universe is, altogether.'
There is. It used to be called the Natural Law, seeing nature through the eyes of reason ...
Of course, Harris' view of objective reality is very different from the Thomist view.
'However, many people seem to think that because moral facts relate to our experience (and are, therefore, ontologically "subjective"), all talk of morality must be "subjective" in the epistemological sense (i.e., biased, merely personal, etc.). This is simply untrue. I hope it is clear that when I speak about "objective" moral truths, or about the "objective" causes of human well-being, I am not denying the necessarily subjective (i.e., experiential) component of the facts under discussion. I am certainly not claiming that moral truths exist independent of the experience of conscious beings—like the Platonic Form of the Good — or that certain actions are intrinsically wrong. I am simply saying that, given that there are facts—real facts—to be known about how conscious creatures can experience the worst possible misery and the greatest possible well-being, it is objectively true to say that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, whether or not we can always answer these questions in practice.'
'Clearly, we can make true or false claims about human (and animal) subjectivity, and we can often evaluate these claims without having access to the facts in question. This is a perfectly reasonable, scientific, and often necessary thing to do. And yet many scientists will say that moral truths do not exist, simply because certain facts about human experience cannot be readily known, or may never be known. As I hope to show, this misunderstanding has created tremendous confusion about the relationship between human knowledge and human values.'
But at least we are getting into the 'big questions' of philosophy.
Who am I? What is there? How do I know? What ought I do?
These are meaningful questions. There is such a thing as truth. And I know a place that teaches it. I've been there.
Thomas Aquinas College is an interesting place indeed. It teaches and encourages people to think, reflect, and argue. There's a lot of philosophical hard work to do to take all of this further. But it’s quite a place to visit. I enjoyed it very much.