History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson

HoP 445 - Band of Brothers - the Jesuits

·22 min·2 clips

What do Descartes, Voltaire, and Foucault have in common? They all studied at Jesuit schools.

The clue is in the title. A roll call running from Descartes to Foucault shares one background detail: Jesuit schooling. That is the host's way in. The order founded by Ignatius of Loyola did not set out to build schools, but colleges quickly became part of the work. Messina came first in 1548. The Roman college followed, and over the next couple of centuries more than 800 Jesuit schools appeared around the world, especially in Europe, and also in the Americas and Asia. That reach helps explain why Jesuit education brushed against so many later thinkers. Acosta then pushes the story outward. He wants to explain how human beings came to live in the Americas while keeping the biblical flood in the picture. His answer has a naturalistic shape: movement from Asia by land bridge, followed by a ranking of societies by distance from an assumed cradle of humanity. The ranking is ugly. Still, the host lingers over an important wrinkle. Acosta treats Amerindian difference as the product of education and custom, not bodies or climate. That makes the theory both objectionable and worth picking apart. Acosta also belongs to the history of exploration. His Natural and Moral History of the Indies mixes empirical research, missionary aims, and pious caution. Even the compass gets a theological reading. On his account, discoveries happen when God permits humankind to find the right instruments for the moment. The episode ends back with scholasticism. Loyola and later Jesuit rules give Thomas Aquinas special reverence, telling teachers to follow him wherever possible and depart only with reluctance. Aquinas is not new here, but he is becoming central to Catholic intellectual life in this period.

As heard by us

Jesuit classrooms become a durable thread through the history of philosophy.

The episode treats Jesuit schooling as a practical route into modern philosophy. It opens with Rene Descartes, Voltaire, Desmarquis de Condorcet, Denis Diderot, Gian Battista Vico, and Michel Foucault, then moves back to Ignatius of Loyola's first colleges and out across Europe,…

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Why you'd press play

For when you want philosophy traced through classrooms, missions, and a very large Jesuit footprint.

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