Pity and Piety

The first full day of the Great Books High School Summer Program at Thomas Aquinas College, New England, began early for a few ambitious students who joined prefects at the gym, starting the morning with conversation and a workout. Afterward, students, prefects, and faculty came together for Mass in Our Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel, grounding the day in prayer before heading to breakfast in Gould Commons.

Before diving into their first class, students gathered for a final orientation with Dr. Josef Froula, the director of the New England High School Summer Program. Dr. Froula introduced the students to the purpose of the program and the Discussion Method, which they will encounter during the next few weeks — a style of learning that invites careful reading, deep listening, and open conversation. 

With foundations laid, students joined their sections and began their first seminar on Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. The conversations were lively and probing, provoking questions about fate and free will, the blindness of pride and prescience of prophecies, and most predominantly, the human impulse to pity the tragic. Destined to kill his father and marry his mother, Oedipus comes to the tragic realization that he has fallen into the snares of fate and fulfilled the prophecy. “Does Oedipus deserve to be pitied?” the students questioned. 

“His situation was pitiable, but he fell into it because he was proud and thought that he could avoid the will of the gods,” explained Augustine P. “The pity we feel for him does not mean he was not also guilty.”

After the midday Mass, the students, prefects, and tutors gathered around lunch tables to continue the morning’s discussions over nachos. From pity to piety, the conversation moved from Oedipus to look ahead to their next class, on Plato’s Euthyphro, a dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro where they attempt to define the virtue of piety. Prompted by their tutors’ questions, students began to ponder and discuss the nature of piety and its relationship to justice and divine command. 

After class, students bustled to take section photos in record time, then changed and prepared to compete in The Section Games. Come back to the Summer Program Blog tomorrow morning to see the events of this afternoon and evening!