¹ homo dicitur causare scientiam in alio … et hoc est docere. Translations of the De veritate are taken from John P. Doyle's translation, found in Wade, William Ligon S.J., On the Teacher: Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas: A Comparison, ed. Doyle, John P. (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2013), pp. 197-226Google Scholar. Further references will be cited as DV, followed by question, article, and reply numbers, as appropriate, and followed by the page number from the Doyle translation; as, in the present case: DV, 11.1/p. 206. All other translations of Thomas's texts are my own.

² Wade, Francis C. S.J. comes to a similar conclusion in “Causality in the Classroom,” The Modern Schoolman 28 (1959), pp. 138-46, especially pp. 144-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Maritain, Jacques, in Education at the Crossroads (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1943)Google Scholar, insists on the instrumentality of teaching but does not touch on its objective causality; see especially pp. 29-33. McDonnell, Cyril, in “The Causal Link Between Teaching and Learning: Some Metaphysical, Ethical, and Political Considerations,” Yearbook of the Irish Philosophical Society (2009), pp. 43-63Google Scholar, also stresses the instrumental nature of pedagogical causality without further identifying what sort of causality is at stake; see especially pp. 58-61.

³ Summa Theologiae I.117.1 (cited herafter as ST followed by part, question, article, and reply numbers, as appropriate); DV.11.1.11/p. 209. It is worth noting that, in his discussions of teaching, Thomas seems to have in mind fairly direct interactions between an instructor and beginners (incipientes, as Thomas calls them in the prologue to the Summa). Teaching by means of questions or in a collaborative context complicates the picture, though I think Thomas's fundamental insights remain. But my focus in this paper is on that simpler, more paradigmatic case, though I make a few comments on the complications below.

⁴ DV 11.1/p. 203.

⁵ In V Metaphysicae 3.13. All Latin texts are taken from the Busa edition available at copusthomisticum.org; citations from Thomas's commentaries will include book, lectio, and paragraph number from that edition. Other texts will include the customary divisions in arabic numerals, with book numbers in Roman numerals.

⁶ DV 11.1/p. 205.

⁷ Ibid., p. 204.

⁸ Ibid., p. 205.

⁹ Ibid., p. 206.

¹⁰ De potentia 5.5; see also ST III.62.1 and In IV Sent. 1.1.4.2.

¹¹ ST III.102.1.

¹² St. Thomas Aquinas, De principiis naturae, cap. 4.

¹³ In V Metaphysicae, 3.10. [S]anitatis causa est medicus et artifex in genere causae efficientis.

¹⁴ Albertson, James S. S.J., “Instrumental Causality in St. Thomas,” New Scholasticism 38 (1954), pp. 409-35, at p. 414CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ In IV Sent., 1.1.4.1; quoted in and translated by Albertson, “Instrumental Causality,” p. 415.

¹⁶ Albertson, “Instrumental Causality,” p. 419.

¹⁷ DV 11.1/p. 206.

¹⁸ DV 11.1.14/p. 210. See also Boland's, Vivian discussion in St Thomas Aquinas (Continuum Library of Educational Thought, vol. 1; London and New York: Continuum, 2007), pp. 49-50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ ST I.117.1.

²⁰ Ibid.

²¹ DV 11.1.4/p. 207.

²² Ibid.

²³ DV 11.1.11/p. 209.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ See his editorial comment, in Poinsot, John, Tractatus de Signis: The Semiotic of John Poinsot, 2nd ed., trans. and ed. Deely, John N. (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine.s Press, 2013), p. 36Google Scholar.

²⁶ Ibid., pp. 194 and 197.

²⁷ Ibid., pp. 25-26.

²⁸ Ibid., p. 166.

²⁹ Ibid., p. 202.

³⁰ Ibid., p. 174, quoting ST I-II.18.2.2.

³¹ Ibid., p. 25; see also p. 203.

³² In II Physic., 5.5.

³³ Shane Drefcinski, for example, argues that “the moral educator would seem to be an efficient cause of the student's behavior in much the same way that a person who gives advice is an efficient cause of the advisee's subsequent action” (“What Kind of Cause is Music's Influence on Moral Character?” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 85 (2011), pp. 287-96, at p. 294.

³⁴ DV 11.1/p. 202-3. In this respect the moral educator Drefcinski considers in the previous note is not engaged in the same task as the teacher of the De magistro. For more on the relation between consilium and purposeful action, see White, Kevin, “Aquinas on Purpose,” Proceedings of the ACPA 81 (2008), pp. 133-47, especially pp. 136-8Google Scholar.

³⁵ In VII Physic., 6.6-9.

³⁶ See In V Metaph., 2.8. Ad hoc autem genus causae (i.e., efficient cause) reducitur quicquid facit aliquid quocumque modo esse, non solum secundum esse substantiale, sed secundum accidentale; quod contingit in omni motu.

³⁷ The mirror analogy is from In VII Physic. 7.9. See also 7.6-8 for the rest of the relevant argument.

³⁸ In V Metaph., 2.4. Perficiens autem dicitur causa efficiens.

³⁹ Ibid., 2.5 l. ille, qui dolat ligna et lapides, dicitur domum facere. Et haec non proprie dicitur efficiens domus

⁴⁰ Ibid., 2.6. Agente principali.

⁴¹ Ibid., 2.7. Consilians autem differt ab efficiente principali, inquantum dat finem et formam agendi.

⁴² Ibid., p. 169.

⁴³ Ibid., p. 172.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ DV, 2.1.4, cited in Poinsot, p. 199.

⁴⁶ Poinsot, p. 173.

⁴⁷ DV 11.1.12/p. 209.

⁴⁸ See Deferrari, Roy J., A Latin-English Dictionary of St. Thomas Aquinas: Based on The Summa Theologica and Selected Passages of His Other Writings (Boston, MA: Daughters of St. Paul, 1986)Google Scholar, s.v. excito.

⁴⁹ Poinsot, Tractatus, p. 171.

⁵⁰ ST I-II.9.1, cited in Poinsot, p. 171.

⁵¹ See ST I-II18.2 and 5 and DV, 15.2.

⁵² Poinsot, p. 172.

⁵³ Ibid., p. 198.

⁵⁴ See Deely's comment on quid morale, Poinsot, p. 199, n. 13.

⁵⁵ Poinsot, p. 201.

⁵⁶ Ibid., p. 199.

⁵⁷ Expositio Peryermeneias, I.7.5.

⁵⁸ Bl. John Henry Newman, in the opening pages of An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, offers another view on the significance of questions. He maintains that a question is such a way of “holding a proposition” as to “imply the possibility of an affirmative or negative resolution of it” ([Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1979], p. 25.) On this account, a question structures the mind's awareness so that it is aware of a possibility. Now consider a case in which a teacher poses a question to the learner, who then returns with an answer that provides new knowledge for the teacher. This kind of learning combines elements of teaching and discovering but ultimately depends on the teacher's question working as an objective cause with respect to the learner, who then takes up the role of the teacher by becoming an objective cause in return. As students approach the maturity of knowledge found in their teachers, one might well expect that this kind of collaboration and turn-taking would increase in frequency. But rather than undermining the Thomistic account I have been developing, it simply shows its application in a new context.

⁵⁹ Poinsot, p. 199.

⁶⁰ Showing that the conclusions of this paper extend to all these diverse modes of teaching would require one to move beyond the De magistro’s focus on scientific knowing and so beyond the limits of this paper; but I think a good case can be made for that extension.

⁶¹ The banking metaphor is from Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (NY: Continuum, 1970; 30^th anniversary edition, 2000), pp. 71-86Google Scholar; see also DV, 11.1.6/p. 208.

⁶² I presented an earlier draft of this essay to the Kenrick-Glennon Seminary faculty colloquium, and I am grateful for the helpful suggestions the participants offered, especially those of John Finley and Lawrence J. Welch.