According to Catholic and earlier traditions, there are two basic forms of knowing: ratio (active) and intellectus (receptive contemplation). We mostly associate school with active thinking: the acquisition of facts, analyzing a book, memorizing Latin paradigms. These are essential but with the deepest traditions of the Church, SAS proposes that ratio finds its proper end in intellectus: the purpose of analyzing a novel is to better enjoy it, to see more deeply. The purpose of studying the Catechism is not merely to memorize doctrine or come to a theoretical knowledge of God, as important as those things are, but rather to come to know God more clearly and intimately. In order to have this higher form of knowledge, space must be made for silence, for community, for rest and enjoyment of God's gifts.

Intellectus has another fundamental role in knowledge. Intellectus sees first principles which are the basis for any kind of reasoning. (So, for instance, according to St. Thomas Aquinas we cannot prove that “every agent acts for an end,” or nothing acts without purpose, but rather we assume it as a first principle from our observation of the world). That is not only does ratio end in intellectus, it also starts with it.

There can be a confusion in the language of “contemplation.” This does not merely mean a subjectively sentimental enjoyment of a text, math equation, piece of art or a sunset. Rather it is an ordered vision of the particular object (or person) being contemplated in a greater whole. 

By "excellence" (aretē) we move behind Aristotle and Aquinas' understanding of virtue to its root meaning as excellence in any field. The ancient Greek word aretē, originally meant being excellent at something. Later, Aquinas used it more specifically to mean intellectual and moral virtues: "the firm attitudes, stable dispositions, habitual perfections of intellect and will that govern our actions." (CCC 1804). 

The intellectual and moral virtues sharpen the will and the mind, a virtuous mind understands how the will and the intellect go together. There is a danger in classical education in that it sometimes can be more concerned with the material covered (reading lists) rather than formation. This is to put the cart before the horse. Formation in the intellectual and moral virtues (or, character) is essential to living a good life. The material we engage are the tools for formation but mastery of the material is only a secondary goal.

For St. John Henry Newman, the highest act of the intellect is not the gaining of facts or mastery of one discipline, but rather the ability to see the whole of reality. The philosophical habit of mind (not the discipline of philosophy) is, for Newman, the ability to see how the various disciplines in “the circle of knowledge” relate and interpenetrate each other. This is the task of the imagination.

There is a danger in the attempt to master specific disciplines that we forget that all disciplines are abstractions. The ophthalmologist, the brain surgeon, and the nephrologist all play important roles in medicine. However, we don’t see eyes, brains and kidneys walking down the street. Specialization is an abstraction. The family doctor, who has a sense of the whole body and mind, is tasked with understanding the patient’s overall health and in that sense has the most important role in health care.

The same is true with learning. While we pursue specific disciplines at St. Augustine’s (math, science, humanities, Latin), we always keep in mind that these are avenues into a vision of the whole of reality. This is essential. It takes the imagination to put these partial views into a vision of the whole truth.

St. Albertus Magnus once thanked his fellow friars for the opportunity to "pursue the truth in the joy of friendship." Like Newman, we at SAS believe that truth has to be personally received and made your own. Memorizing facts, while important, is not in itself wisdom. According to Augustine, wisdom is received by the inner light that is Christ. Teachers play a mediating role in this process. Genuine friendship creates the trust and openness necessary for intellectual and spiritual inquiry. When we trust someone, we're willing to ask hard questions, admit what we don't know, and let new ideas change us.

This intellectual friendship is a cornerstone of the school and we seek to cultivate it among our faculty and student body. We position our faculty not as mere colleagues, but as members of an active intellectual community, in which robust conversation, shared texts, and intellectual life are shared not as utilitarian aspects of our jobs, but as natural features of a common friendship. We welcome open and civil conversation in which faculty voice a variety of perspectives and opinions, within the capacious Catholic (whose root means “universal”) tradition, working in the good faith understanding of our brother and sisterhood in Christ and our shared attempts to further apprehend the truth. In parallel, among our students, we seek opportunities to call them into an elevated form of friendship with each other, rejecting the cultural assumption that young people do not desire or are not capable of substantive friendships in which they learn and are formed. Lastly, we intentionally cultivate properly ordered friendship between faculty and students, in which the faculty act as authorities yet demonstrate genuine care and empathy for their students, and students, in turn, show respect for faculty yet are comfortable voicing their concerns and questions. 

The history of western education has a lesson. Without grace building on nature, we cannot get very far down the road towards a good mind and will. The Sacraments, and a sacramental life, are the necessary means towards this goal.

Sacraments are "Efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us." (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1131). In plain terms, this means they're sacred rituals that actually deliver God's grace to us—not just symbols, but actions that really do something spiritually. Jesus created them and gave them to the Church to pass on.

Beyond the grace of the seven Sacraments, they and a sacramental way of life changes how we see the world. We can see the world with greater depth and clarity. When God became human in Jesus (the Incarnation), it changed how we should see the physical world around us. Through faith and formation, we learn to see what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins described: a "world...charged with the grandeur of God."This intellectual friendship is a cornerstone of the school and we seek to cultivate it among our faculty and student body. We position our faculty not as mere colleagues, but as members of an active intellectual community, in which robust conversation, shared texts, and intellectual life are shared not as utilitarian aspects of our jobs, but as natural features of a common friendship. We welcome open and civil conversation in which faculty voice a variety of perspectives and opinions, within the capacious Catholic (whose root means “universal”) tradition, working in the good faith understanding of our brother and sisterhood in Christ and our shared attempts to further apprehend the truth. In parallel, among our students, we seek opportunities to call them into an elevated form of friendship with each other, rejecting the cultural assumption that young people do not desire or are not capable of substantive friendships in which they learn and are formed. Lastly, we intentionally cultivate properly ordered friendship between faculty and students, in which the faculty act as authorities yet demonstrate genuine care and empathy for their students, and students, in turn, show respect for faculty yet are comfortable voicing their concerns and questions.