ABSTRACT
The harnessing of education to the instrumental needs of the state and of its citizens and the understanding of this as the paramount purpose of education are an orthodox view. Whitehead acerbically remarks that in the schools of antiquity philosophers aspired to impart wisdom, whereas in modern colleges the aim is much humbler—it is to teach textbook subjects—and the consequent drop from the goal of attaining Divine Wisdom marks an educational failure. Giambattista Vico stands as a convenient bridge between what might call the modern world of universal education of which Whitehead saw the beginning and the older medieval conception of education that is represented by Bonaventure, Aquinas, and Augustine and in whom the ultimate point of education is union with God who is Wisdom personified. Bonaventure presents a threefold division of philosophy into rational, natural, and moral.
