Curriculum: Departure at De Paul

"Serenity may be the fruit of wisdom," allows Gerald F. Kreyche, chairman of De Paul University's philosophy department. "But it can also be the symptom of sleep."

Since its founding 57 years ago, Roman Catholic De Paul taught philosophy with the serenity of somnambulism. Its curriculum rested comfortably on the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th century Italian theologian who established Aristotelian philosophy as a rational basis for Christian belief. At Chicago's De Paul, as at most U.S. Catholic colleges, modern thinkers were studied to be refuted rather than understood, as if philosophy were a kind of secular theology....

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