When junior Garrett West presented a paper on Medieval philosophy at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, a student said they’d never met a theist who could actually have a conversation about philosophy.
“Being there really made me appreciate me being at HIllsdale. I recognize how rare the sort of education we receive here is,” West said. “I hope I was able to show a little bit of this education to the people I met.”
West presented his paper at Chapel Hill as part of its Undergraduate Conference on Philosophy on March 29. He submitted a paper on Saints Bonaventure and Aquinas to Chapel Hill’s philosophy club after Phi Sigma Tau, Hillsdale’s philosophy honorary, forwarded the call for papers over Christmas break.
“I realized the Bonaventure paper was under the word limit and submitted it,” West said.
The philosophy club selected West’s paper, along with three others, out of the more than 100 papers it received. The club flew West to North Carolina for an all-day conference at which he presented his work.
In his paper, West offers a critique of Bonaventure’s reworking of Augustine’s theory of illumination and presents, instead, Aquinas’ epistemology.
“I’ve always been really interested in epistemology in particular,” West said. “I started to read Aquinas’ theory of knowing and I was comparing it to Bonaventure as I was reading.”
West submitted it to Lee Cole, instructor of philosophy, as the final paper for Cole’s survey course in Medieval philosophy. Cole learned that West submitted the paper only after it was accepted.
“I had only remarked that it was an especially strong paper. Garrett is always an especially strong student, but he turned a corner here in his writing,” Cole said. “He was flirting with graduate level writing and reflection.”
West’s paper stood out among the other papers presented, since the other papers focused on ethics and language rather than philosophy, and there are no Medieval philosophy professors at Chapel Hill.
“How alien West’s topic is speaks all the more to the quality of the work,” Cole said.
“I had to do a 35 minute Q and A after,” West said. “Basically, I talked about Thomas Aquinas the whole time. Before I went, I think that none of them would have thought that any medieval philosopher could have a robust philosophical system that’s still applicable today.”