Care of Souls and the Rhetoric of Moral Theology in Bonaventure and Thomas, The

Part 1 Bonaventure's Early Moral Pedagogies

Part 1 Bonaventure's Early Moral Pedagogies It is good whenever it can be done to skip introductions and to plunge into the texts and questions that make up the substance of a lecture. But we cannot skip over an introduction here. The texts we will be considering are difficult for us modern readers, and the questions that arise out of them are quite unfamiliar to us, accustomed as we are to very different ways of talking about moral matters. An introduction is needed to check our prejudices and to help us towards a reading of the texts that is something like the reading they request of us. What I will be talking about in these three lectures is the theory and practice of moral education in Bonaventure and Thomas. The very phrase "moral education" brings unpleasant images to mind—spankings and scoldings inflicted on children in order to make them do what they don't want to do. Indeed, the term "moral" has become so debased in our everyday speech that it seems simply to mean hypocritical ideologies of repression. To be "moral," in this meaning, is to lie about one's inmost desires, so as to avert pain and punishments or to collaborate more fluently with institutions that exercise power over others. This meaning of the word "moral" is a popularized and diluted version of the critique of morality by Nietzsche. Of course, Nietzsche would have been appalled to find that his biting thoughts had passed over into mere "common sense." The common-sensical meaning of "moral" cannot stand if we are to make any progress with pre-Nietzschean texts about moral matters. So what I must do, by way of introduction, is to rescue the word "moral" from the pejorative sense of its everyday use and to give back to it some of the sense that it has in Bonaventure and Thomas. 1. "Moral" Formation and its Genres In Bonaventure and in Thomas, "moral" knowledge is the study of how we can reach our highest happiness, of how we can become what we most deeply desire to be. Their considerations of "morality" are inquiries into what human beings want, how they can attain it, what it is for them to be happy. The ultimate end or purpose of moral inquiry is to help those engaged in it to find happiness. Thus, for Bonaventure as for Thomas, shared moral inquiry serves as public persuasion to the real good and an instruction in how to attain it. When they understood moral inquiry in this way, as persuasion to happiness and instruction in it, Bonaventure and Thomas simply followed what they had learned from pagan philosophy and the Christian traditions. Despite sharp disagreements about many things among ancient writers of philosophy, there is agreement in their texts on the rhetorical and pedagogical intention of moral inquiry. Indeed, the persuasive or instructional force of moral inquiry is more important to ancient philosophy than the sum of particular doctrines. That is why there was such richness in the literary genres used by ancient moralists. The ancient moralists taught as members of philosophical schools—that is, as members of communities of teachers and students held together over time by the lived continuity of teaching. The criterion of membership in the ancient schools was not conformity to some abstract doctrinal standard--some list of statements—rather, incorporation into the community, a kind of apostolic succession. It is difficult for us to characterize the ancient philosophic schools because we have seen nothing quite like them since their extinction. The closest we can come, I think, is to imagine them as religious communities or religious orders, using the word "religious" in the modern sense. Some warrant for this imagining is to be had in the fact that some pagan philosophers viewed Christianity itself as a philosophical school—a wicked one, to be sure, but philosophical nonetheless.1 The philosophic communities do look to us as if they were religious orders—characterized by a shared way-of-life, often including poverty, dietary restrictions, liturgical practice, sometimes celibacy, sometimes prescribed dress. These communities also—and more important—shared moral patterns. The daily life of such schools was partly the technical discussion of philosophical texts or problems, but also and more essentially the moral formation of their members. The aim in the schools was not just to concoct theories about the good, but to train the community...