cognitio fidei praesupponit cognitionem naturalem

"Under otherwise similar conditions, seeing is surer than hearing; but if the one from whom we learn something by hearing is capable of grasping far more than one could obtain by seeing for oneself, then hearing is surer than seeing."

--St Thomas Aquinas, quoted by Josef Pieper in "An Anthology".

It occurs to me that this is also a way to think about the difference between what Aquinas called disciplina (instruction) and inventio (discovery) in De Magistro.

Now in those things that come about by nature and art, art works in the same way and uses the same sorts of tools as nature. For just as nature uses warmth to heal someone suffering from a cold, so also does a doctor. This is why art is said to imitate nature. Similarly, in the acquisition of knowledge, the teacher leads the student to the knowledge of things the student previously did not know in the same way that someone leads himself to discover what he previously did not know.

The process of discovery begins with applying common self-evident principles to particular subject matters, and then proceeding to some particular conclusions, and then from these moving on to other conclusions. In light of this, one is said to teach another, when he makes clear through certain signs the path (discursum) of reasoning he himself took. Thus the teacher's presentations are like tools that the natural reason of the student uses to come to an understanding of things previously unknown to him.

Therefore, just as the doctor is said to cause health in the sick man with nature working, so also one is said to cause knowledge in another by the activity of the power of reasoning in that person, and this is called teaching. In this way one person is said to teach another and to be his teacher. Thus the Philosopher says that a demonstration is a syllogism causing knowledge.

Now if someone proposes to another certain ideas that are not self-evident or if he does not manifest how they follow from self-evident principles, then he does not cause knowledge in that person, but rather opinion or belief. For those ideas that follow necessarily from the first self evident principles have to be true, and those that are contrary to them have to be false. But to all other ideas he can give his assent or not.

I am sure it would sound very strange to many to say that our country's secular public schools tend to inculcate belief rather than knowledge. But it is true in many ways. This is in some ways what "information" poured into the vessels is all about. I remember about a year before we started homeschooling my oldest son -- he was in first grade then. My husband lit a cigar -- something he used to do oh, about once or twice a year maybe, and mostly in regard for his grandpa's memory? My son said with terror in his voice: "Don't smoke that! It will KILL you!" That was a pivot towards our decision to homeschool (and now he is in his junior year at Thomas Aquinas College)

One of the goals of both classical education and unschooling is to set an example and provide a method for a lifelong continual examination of assumptions. Not all at once, of course; but as you go, and getting the big rocks in place first, hopefully.

Belief is not a bad thing, of course. If you go through everything you meet up with in a day and decide if you really "know" it yourself, vs whether you believe it on some kind of justified trust, you might be surprised. We believe many things on the evidence of others. It certainly streamlines things. Often there is no reason to do otherwise. If you have a habit of distrusting everything that you don't know by direct empirical evidence, that might be something you want to examine in yourself too.

But it's useful to think of why we believe what we do, what are our criteria for belief, and how we can teach our children to make the distinction.

Pieper says that one criterion is credibility. That certainly seems to be true. He also says:

"The premises of belief are not a part of what the believer believes. They pertain rather to that which he knows, or at least must be able to know. It is another matter that in the ordinary course of events only a few really know what is in itself knowable. In any case this does not detract from the validity of the proposition:

cognitio fidei preasupponit cognitionem naturalem.

Belief does not presuppose knowledge based upon belief in its turn dependent upon someone else, but rather knowledge out of one's own resources."

I understand that to mean that when you believe something, you don't base it upon a whole string of beliefs none founded upon actual known reality, but somewhere behind your beliefs is knowledge or at least potential knowledge. ... you could discover it for yourself if you had the opportunity, but either you don't have the opportunity or it is more efficient to take it on trust.