The Common Things: Essays on Thomism and Education

by Daniel McInerny (Editor)

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. The 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 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. ABOUT THE
Daniel McInerny is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of St. Thomas/Center for Thomistic Studies in Houston, Texas. THE In addition to the editor, the contributors to the volume Benedict M. Ashley, O.P., Romanus Cessario, O.P., Charles Dechert, Donald DeMarco, Curtis L. Hancock, Gregory J. Kerr, Joseph W. Koterski, S.J., Robert Lauder, Herbert I. London, Robert J. McLaughlin, Daniel McInerny, John M. Palms, Jerome Meric Pessagno, Ernest S. Pierucci, Alice Ramos, Mario Ramos-Reyes, Walter Raubicheck, Peter A. Redpath, Gregory M. Reichberg, James V. Schall, S.J., Francis Slade, Michael W. Strasser, and Henk E. S. Woldring. PRAISE FOR THE "These essays are a considerable addition to Thomistic thought about education."― Review of Metaphysics

281 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1999

About the author

Daniel McInerny is the author of Christ-haunted, darkly comic fiction. His novel, THE GOOD DEATH OF KATE MONTCLAIR, will appear from Chrism Press in March 2023.

He is also the author of the comic thriller, HIGH CONCEPTS: A HOLLYWOOD NIGHTMARE, as well as the humorous Kingdom of Patria series for middle grade readers.

Subscribe to Daniel's Substack, "Daniel McInerny's Studio Stories," at danielmcinerny.substack.com.

And find out more about Daniel's work at danielmcinerny.studio.

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A BROAD COLLECTION OF ESSAYS---BUT NOT "ONLY" (OR EVEN PRIMARILY) ABOUT "THOMISTIC" EDUCATION

This 1999 collection is subdivided into three main parts: "The Private Life of the Academy" [with essays such as "The Public University and the Common Good"; "What Happened to the Catholic University?"; "The Catholic College: At the Crossroad Or At the End of the Road?", etc.]; "Manifesting the Common" [with essays such as "Learning as Recollection---A Thomistic Approach to Recovering Higher Education"; "A Humble and Trembling Movement: Creative Intuition and Maritain's Philosophy of Education", etc.]; and "Political Aspects" [with essays such as "Education for Politics: Knowing, Responsibility, and Cultural Development"; "The Multiconfusion of Multiculturalism"; "Truth Values and Cultural Pluralism," etc.].