The Institute of St John offers formation in philosophy and theology to all those who wish to deepen their understanding of truth and reality. The complexity of today’s world challenges our ways of thinking, our values and our beliefs; it often leaves us struggling to make sense of our experience. The ISJ gives people a place to think about the great questions that concern us as human beings and as believers in today’s world; it offers a formation that allows people to reflect profoundly and intelligently on these questions, both from a philosophical and a Christian standpoint.

Aristotle wrote that “all people desire to know” (The Metaphysics Book Alpha). The human intelligence has a thirst to search and understand. It is above all to develop this great natural capacity of the human person that the ISJ formation course is proposed. To seek the truth in a structured way nourishes a profound dimension of the person; it is the beginning of the path to wisdom, which for the ancient Greeks is the true purpose of all philosophy. The formation offered is realist; it starts with our own experience and is structured by the thought of Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas, without neglecting the insights of other thinkers down the ages.

ISJ London was founded in 2012 and since then about thirty students have followed our formation programme by coming to classes two days a week between the months of September and May. Students attending the course have a wide range of intellectual backgrounds and experiences; no previous formation is required to follow the course.  Currently we are offering the opportunity to follow our Sapiens Programme.  For more information about this programme go to the dedicated page.

The ISJ is run by the brothers of St John, a religious community of the Roman Catholic Church founded in 1975 by a French Dominican priest, fr Marie-Dominique Philippe. At the heart of the life of the brothers of St John is the search for the truth; they wish to share this search with anybody who is thirsty to understand reality more deeply in all its richness and complexity.

Fr Benedict Bedingfeld CSJ