Dr. Kim Hermanson

Facilitating Creative Breakthroughs

st. thomas aquinas

To Know a Thing is to Awaken to its Depth

Thomas Aquinas once wrote that “To know a thing is to awaken to its depth, complexity and presence.” According to Aquinas, each thing (and each of us as well) secretly and profoundly “desires to be known.” My passion has always been teaching and learning, and in Aquinas’ remarks we see how central beauty is when we teach and learn. Beauty is the depth at which we see something, meaning that we aren’t seeing the person/student/client through an old, cloudy “image” of who we think they are. As the philosopher Simone Weil said, paying attention to another is an act of love.

Sort of like watching a flower blossom.

“To know a thing is to awaken to its depth and presence”

 

To create is always to learn,
to begin over,
to begin at zero. — Matthew Fox

 

In John O’Donohue’s book The Invisible Embrace of Beauty, O’Donohue mentions St. Thomas Aquinas, who believed that beauty was the perfection of a thing. “To know a thing is to awaken to its depth, complexity and presence.” According to Aquinas, each thing secretly and profoundly desires to be known.

O’Donohue’s discussion links learning, creativity, and beauty together. My Ph.D. is solidly in the area of “learning,” yet beauty and creativity seem so central to the learning process. I can’t think of one term without the other. Being in nurturing, beautiful environments opens our hearts, and having an open heart is necessary for true learning. And when we learn, we move a step closer to wholeness, which gives birth to more beauty. (Now if we could just do something about ugly schools and corporations and city buildings and…)