Mark Nowacki

The metaphysical, epistemological, and theological background to Aquinas' theory of education in the De Magistro

This article explores the relation between Aquinas’ metaphysical, epistemological and theological ideas and his theory of education as presented in the De Magistro and other writings. Aquinas’ theory of education is based on a theological metaphysics of human nature and an account of human rationality that is grounded in human nature. In the first section after the introduction we provide a synopsis of Aquinas’ metaphysical narrative, but in a contemporary key that draws upon the resources of Analytical Thomism. However, this theologically inspired metaphysics leads to a somewhat neglected epistemology that is crucial to his understanding of teaching and learning in the De Magistro – the notion of connatural knowledge that we explore in the second section. Our exposition of the Thomistic ontology of the human person together with the notion of connatural knowledge, provide the context for understanding the De Magistro in the third section.

Aquinas on Connaturality and Education

Connatural knowledge is knowledge readily acquired by beings possessing a certain nature. For instance, dogs have knowledge of a scent-world exceeding that of human beings, not because humans lack noses, but because dogs are by nature better suited to process olfaction. As various ethicists have argued, possession of the virtues involves a sort of connatural knowing. Here, connatural knowledge emerges as a knowledge by inclination which systematically tracks the specific moral interests we humans possess precisely because we are human. In this essay we explore the importance of connaturality for moral education.

Kovesi, Connaturality, and the Metaphysics and Epistemology of Virtues

This chapter sketches a contemporary metaphysics that grounds an account of objective purposes and interests. This account is one way of providing the supplementation that Kovesis account needs. It introduces the notion of connaturality as a way of connecting the metaphysics of purposes with the purposes exemplified in human action and knowing. The authors show here how the purposes revealed at the level of our natures are exemplified in forms of directedness towards objective goods. The habitual connatural knowledge found in intellectual and moral virtues reveals by directed inclinations those interests we have qua human beings and leads us to our distinctively human sort of flourishing. The chapter develops a contemporary analysis of the epistemological notions of know-how and skill that explain why skill is at least in part a refined form of know-how. Keywords:connaturality; epistemological notion; habitual connatural knowledge; Kovesi; metaphysics of virtues; supplementation