Part I: Aquinas and Erasmus
Erasmus’s worldview was more humanist than that of Aquinas, who was more scholastic in his approach of philosophy and theology. Each had been formed by different environments: Aquinas had come to maturity during a highly scholastic age while Erasmus came to maturity during the height of the Renaissance, when humanism and the first breathings of Protestantism were coming to the fore. While both were committed Roman Catholics, their worldviews allowed them to adopt someone different positions of topics such as education and the nature of free will.
With free will, for instance, both Erasmus and Aquinas agreed that man possessed it, as ordained by God. But Erasmus contended with the arguments of Luther—namely that free will did not exist—and adopted a middle of the road position between Luther’s skepticism and the Church’s teaching. Aquinas was far less middle of the road, as he explained that free will was a necessary quality of humanity as that was how God willed it to be, but that the use of free will was contingent. (In other words, Aquinas was able to distinguish between different sorts of freedom whereas Erasmus was not) (Watson, 1969).
With education, Erasmus’s humanism was most apparent: he felt that teachers should be open to alternative perspectives and not be constrained by local interests, narratives or ways of thinking. The purpose of education, in Erasmus’s mind was to create culturally and ethically-minded individuals (Ornstein et al., 2013). For Aquinas the purpose of education was to grow in Wisdom—i.e., in closeness...
Aquinas shows in the Summa that the ultimate end of the universe is Truth and that all teaching should be oriented towards God/Truth, which Aquinas says is the pursuit of the wise. Thus, the main difference in worldview between the two here is that Aquinas’s view is oriented specifically towards God, while Erasmus’s is oriented more towards man.
Part II: Responses
Post I
It is important to remember that there are stages to development and that these should be considered and provided for when conducting education. Children have psychological, biological and psychosocial needs that must be met in order for development to occur properly. Both Erasmus and Comenius approached this issue with a humane sense of how important understanding is to education. They both adopt a sense of the importance of empathizing with others and appreciating where others are coming from. This is the basis of the appreciation that has been cultivated towards the education of children: understanding their needs and where they are coming from helps teachers to approach them with caution and care. The same can be said for adults, who are in need of education: they have a history, a background, a culture, and ideas that need to be understood so that education can appropriately take place.
Post II
Worldview is important and can help one to understand where another is coming from. For instance, knowing that Aquinas used philosophy and Catholic theology to meld his sense of the world and to orient all things towards God helps one appreciate the point that Aquinas…
