Sapientis is an online course of studies based entirely on the principles of Aristotelian Thomism. Its goal is to lead students to the complete grasp of the natural and artificial orders in the universe and of our moral duties resulting from this order.
We offer two ways to participate in our courses:
Sapientis Full Semester Courses
Sapientis Crash Course (three hour seminars)
Our programs are an innovative melding of the best in modern technology and an authentic timeless program of Thomistic studies. Through this medium we are able to reach potentially hundreds of thousands of students who, for reasons of geography, age and financial situation, would never be able to complete a course of Thomistic study in the conventional way.
Lectures are delivered via an online classroom that allows students to have the benefit of immediate interaction with the lecturer. We also offer the benefits of traditional distance education. All lectures are available as downloads after the class. This allows you to review the material at your own pace and in your own time and ensures that you never miss a lecture.
Full Semester Courses
The full Sapientis curriculum is a four-year program of studies. It is a comprehensive overview of all things that man can know and the logical tools by which those things may be pursued, even down to their ultimate elements. Unifying the intellectual endeavors of humanity, Sapientis arranges the knowable universe according to necessary laws of reality and presents the arts and sciences in the order that the human mind demands.
Our program is based on the intellect’s natural learning processes of induction and syllogism; always leading the mind from what is better known, more certain, and more general to what is less known, less certain, and more specific.
Sapientis is an overarching superstructure in which all particular arts and sciences find a place somewhere because it is a curriculum that deals with course-subjects in a higher fashion, pursuing their connections and dependencies on one another, until it arrives at a complete framework for any and every intellectual pursuit open to humankind: starting from Sapientis the student can go anywhere. It is curriculum at its highest perfection, yet its foundations are nearly as old as schooling itself: since the time of Aristotle, more than two thousand years ago, the system presented in Sapientis has been in development; it was present in Ancient Rome, it flourished in the medieval universities, it was nearly snuffed out during the Enlightenment, it was given new life in the 19th century only to be forgotten in our own.
The goal of the Sapientis program is to revive this ancient tradition in order to address the scientific, moral and economic challenges presented by our own age. You will therefore find that the Sapientis program is rooted in the past but not afraid to confront the present.
Crash Courses
Crash courses are intense three-hour lectures that deal with contemporary topics. Dealing with everything from Healthcare reform, through torture to ”What is Culture?” they allow students to quickly gain an insight into the true state of the question and offer solutions rooted in the Scholastic tradition.
Crash Courses do not and cannot replace the benefits gained by following our full program but they do provide insights to complex modern problems.