My most profound class was one I took near the end of my senior year on the philosophy of 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas. Taught by Professor Frederick Strothmann, it was a very small class of somewhat dissimilar people. We all read from a two-volume translation of Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, and we all wrote term papers; but our classroom discussions were the most thought-provoking aspect. These exchanges took on an intensity of inquiry that has remained a part of me all of my life, opening my mind to different ways of approaching moral questions.
World War II had just ended. The campus was full of returning veterans who had lived through war experiences that were beyond their capacity or desire to describe. We were very patriotic, with a great sense of purpose. Arriving at the age of official adulthood, we were preparing to take our place in the life of our country.
The course focused on a topic that seems far removed from medieval theology: the legitimacy and duties of the upcoming international military tribunals. The tribunal most important to Professor Strothmann was the one known today as the Nuremberg judgments. We talked about the ramifications and the legal precedents that might be set, then used the writings of Aquinas to examine the moral and ethical reasons for the various possibilities. Eventually the discussions moved into the problems of punishments after judgments—in war, in peace and in private life.
This was an upper-division and graduate course, and most of us had our own ideas, which we freely expressed. In doing so, I began to realize how much I was influenced by my own spiritual beliefs and my past. Afterward, Professor Strothmann told us about how he left his native Germany because he couldn’t reconcile his own beliefs with those of his government. We talked a great deal about what it means, in philosophical terms, to be human and to have human rights, and we studied what Aquinas considered to be human actions and human reactions to life’s challenges. My most important realization was the extent to which my own judgments were smug and narrow because of my lack of experience.
Professor Strothmann’s course changed my thinking and my self-image. We didn’t answer all the questions, but we learned to ask questions—and, most of all, to question ourselves.
—MARILOU SUTTER TOMBLIN, ’46
