I came to the Dominican School, as the only (and the last) undergraduate student, with little experience in the field of philosophy. I had a little knowledge in the subject matter itself, and absolutely none in the method (writing research papers, reading journal articles, and such). This could have been a great handicap for me as a student taking classes entirely with graduate students, in which the classes were a little modified, but not much, to suit my standing. This did not turn out to be the case, not so much through my efforts, but through the method of the school. This is not by any means to say that the school is a lightweight in the field of philosophy, which it takes very seriously, and looks upon as a most necessary discipline (both in itself and as a prerequisite for theology).
One can conduct philosophy as a narrow field that has little to say outside of questions of language and meaning (the way of much of twentieth century analytic philosophy, for instance) using a language too obscure to admit of amateur study, or as a field that always returns to the basic questions asked, on different levels, by all people, the answers to which have repercussions extending to culture, science, and the conception of man. The Dominican School espouses this second view, with the happy - and somewhat inevitable - result that the classes, even when edging into remote or abstruse territory, plant the material firmly and with a sense of wonder into the mind of the student.
Philosophical questions admit of many answers, and though the Dominican School is well known for adhering to Thomism, the history of philosophy is in some ways an equal commitment. The mantra is often repeated: we must engage with the world, but to do this we must understand its philosophy. All of the above observations were probably reasons for the fact that, two years after arriving at the school green and a bit confused, I realized that I could tackle a philosophical problem with both a sense of its place in history and a sense of its relevance today (not to forget, of course, what Thomas would have said). A web had been formed in my mind, in which various philosophers, ideas, and times exist not in a separate and confused fashion, but coexist in a continuing conversation, a conversation that the Dominican School continues, and one which I am happy to continue at graduate school next year, with many thanks to my late undergraduate alma mater.
