Ricardo Barroso Batista, Bruno Nobre, and Artur Ilharco Galvão, “Retrieving Aquinas: Traditions in Dialogue,” Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 79, no. 1–2 (2023): 13–24, https://doi.org/10.17990/RPF/2023_79_1_0013.
| Item Type | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author | Ricardo Barroso Batista |
| Author | Bruno Nobre |
| Author | Artur Ilharco Galvão |
| Abstract | In the broadest sense of the term, “Thomism” refers to a set of ideas and principles, both in philosophy and theology that can be considered as derivations or representations of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. However, Thomism should not be considered as a mere conceptual body. It also represents a certain view and way of doing philosophy and theology. Alasdair MacIntyre, in his book Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, argues that the Thomistic approach provides a coherent and skillful point of view for dealing creatively and critically with opposing views, contrasting this approach with the encyclopedic and the genealogical approaches. The former imposes a single worldview, enclosing knowledge and “truth” in a monolithic structure of “progress,” while the latter, following Nietzsche, devalues and relativizes knowledge, reducing it to a multiplicity of perspectives, each with its own claims to truth, leading to incommensurability and the consequent subjugation of “truth” to the law of the strongest. On the other hand, Thomists have adopted, from the end of the thirteenth century to the present day, different styles and ways of thinking while maintaining dialogue with their “predecessors” and at the same time with their contemporaries, that is, Thomists are capable of what MacIntyre called the “rationality of tradition”. Although the epithet “Thomist” originated in the fourteenth century is widely used to identify the adherents and defenders of the thought of St. Thomas, there is, even today, no consensus among scholars on how to identify or describe this movement. Some of the most notable figures of Thomism such as, for example, D. Kennedy (1912), A.Sertillanges (1939), R. Garrigou-Lagrange (1946) or J.Owens (1957), disagree among themselves on this point. In more recent times, J. A. Weisheipl (1967) proposed a definition of the Thomist movement that became popular: “(...) a theological and philosophical movement that begins in the thirteenth century, and embodies a systematic attempt to understand and develop the basic principles and conclusions of St. Thomas Aquinas in order to relate them to the problems and needs of each generation.” This definition of Weisheipl regards Thomism as a movement whose participants, insofar as they are inspired by the thought of Thomas Aquinas, manifest the “rationality of tradition” by being able to illuminate and develop the teachings of the Angelic Doctor in such a way as to make them useful in approaching the problems of each age. This special issue of the Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia (RPF) assumes that Weisheipl’s definition accurately captures this characteristic of all those who associate themselves in some way with the school of Aquinas. As such, Thomists have always been open to engage in dialogue with other philosophical traditions. While remaining faithful to the value of the philosophical theses of Thomas Aquinas, they did not fail to appreciate the thought of many other philosophers associated with other philosophical schools, even recognizing that some of these ideas could indeed be used to support, clarify, and advance some of the most fundamental theses of the Angelic Doctor. An example of this attitude of dialogue is the incorporation into the Polish Thomism of the phenomenology of Husserl and his interpreters, such as Roman Ingarden, together with the work of Max Scheler. This approach became known as “Lublin Thomism,” and it yielded fruitful results. One of the most notable examples of this “union” is visible in the work The Acting Person of St. John Paul II. A different example of a rapprochement between “opposing” philosophies, was the development, in the 20th century, of so-called “Transcendental Thomism”. At the time, Kant exerted a great deal of influence with many Thomists, and although most of them were inclined to reject Kantian idealism, some, such as Pierre Rousselot and Joseph Marechal, embraced the Kantian Copernican revolution towards the subject. Marechal, in particular, found in the subject the starting point of metaphysics, defending Kant’s insufficiency because he failed to observe that only an Infinite Being could be the ultimate ground of the phenomenal object. On another spectrum, Étienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, influenced by Continental philosophy, proposed what today is called “Existential Thomism,” i.e., the notion that philosophical reflection begins with a first “intuition of being,” seeking to harmonize, through ethics and social philosophy, Thomism with “personalism.” Although “Existential Thomism” has sometimes been presented as a counterpoint to modern existentialism, the main reason for the label is its emphasis on Aquinas’ doctrine of existence as applied to the action and lives of human agents. Despite the efforts of many Thomists to build bridges, from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, there remains a great distrust within the philosophical community towards these philosophical approaches. If this mistrust was already felt in continental philosophy, its impact has been more profound among analytic philosophers (influenced with logical positivism). Nevertheless, these barriers did not preclude the formation of new bridges. At the same time that analytic philosophy was moving away from neo-positivism, it was also moving closer to metaphysics. Perhaps the most important transformation in this respect was made by Wittgenstein himself, when he abandoned his previous view of language as a mirror of reality and embraced, instead, a multifunctional theory of language where usage would determine meaning. For Wittgenstein, the task of philosophy would no longer be to discover the structures of the World through a reductive analysis of the logical structure of language, but would be to describe the history of language use. The work of the later Wittgenstein, together with the fall of verificationism and the popularization of Quine’s thought, led many analytics to rethink the possibility of ontology. Then, with the emergence of Kripke’s systematization of modal logic, which made it it became possible for these philosopher to consider possible to return to the previously rejected theme of modalities, it became possible for these philosopher to consider Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas as viable sources of inspiration. It was in this context that the first appearances of what would later come to be called “Analytic Thomism” began to appear. It should be noted that some historians of analytic philosophy have pointed out that analytic philosophy, from its beginnings, was founded on beliefs compatible with those of Thomas Aquinas and, therefore, similar to those of Thomism. For instance, Frege, despite his problematic conception of existence, defended the objectivity of knowledge and Brentano – an influential predecessor of analytic philosophy – defended the intentionality of mental states, a scholastic idea already present in Aquinas. The arguments in defence of metaphysical and epistemic realism, one of the most central debates in analytic philosophy (between realism and anti-realism), is inadvertently populated by arguments of Thomistic origin. In addition to metaphysics, logical positivism had also left ethics poorer, dependent on emotivism, moral non-cognitivism and utilitarianism. The only valid opposition to these options came from the Kantian-inspired advocates of deontologies. It was with Elizabeth Anscombe that virtue ethics began to be recovered for moral philosophy. Anscombe’s influential article “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958) marked the beginning of a small but influential movement within analytic philosophy to make virtue ethics a respectable alternative. According to Anscombe, the only way to overcome the limitations of emotivism, behaviorism, utilitarianism, and Kantian deontologies was to rehabilitate the notion of virtue. |
| Date | 2023 |
| Language | English |
| Rights | © 2023 Aletheia - Associação Científica e Cultural |
| Volume | 79 |
| Pages | 13-24 |
| Publication | Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia |
| DOI | 10.17990/RPF/2023_79_1_0013 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| ISSN | 0870-5283 ; 2183-461X |
| Date Added | 10/11/2023, 6:54:28 PM |
| Modified | 10/11/2023, 10:03:37 PM |
In the broadest sense of the term, “Thomism” refers to a set of ideas and principles, both in philosophy and theology that can be considered as derivations or representations of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. However, Thomism should not be considered as a mere conceptual body. It also represents a certain view and way of doing philosophy and theology. Alasdair MacIntyre, in his book Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, argues that the Thomistic approach provides a coherent and skillful point of view for dealing creatively and critically with opposing views, contrasting this approach with the encyclopedic and the genealogical approaches. The former imposes a single worldview, enclosing knowledge and “truth” in a monolithic structure of “progress,” while the latter, following Nietzsche, devalues and relativizes knowledge, reducing it to a multiplicity of perspectives, each with its own claims to truth, leading to incommensurability and the consequent subjugation of “truth” to the law of the strongest.
On the other hand, Thomists have adopted, from the end of the thirteenth century to the present day, different styles and ways of thinking while maintaining dialogue with their “predecessors” and at the same time with their contemporaries, that is, Thomists are capable of what MacIntyre called the “rationality of tradition”.
Although the epithet “Thomist” originated in the fourteenth century is widely used to identify the adherents and defenders of the thought of St. Thomas, there is, even today, no consensus among scholars on how to identify or describe this movement. Some of the most notable figures of Thomism such as, for example, D. Kennedy (1912), A.Sertillanges (1939), R. Garrigou-Lagrange (1946) or J.Owens (1957), disagree among themselves on this point.
In more recent times, J. A. Weisheipl (1967) proposed a definition of the Thomist movement that became popular: “(...) a theological and philosophical movement that begins in the thirteenth century, and embodies a systematic attempt to understand and develop the basic principles and conclusions of St. Thomas Aquinas in order to relate them to the problems and needs of each generation.”
This definition of Weisheipl regards Thomism as a movement whose participants, insofar as they are inspired by the thought of Thomas Aquinas, manifest the “rationality of tradition” by being able to illuminate and develop the teachings of the Angelic Doctor in such a way as to make them useful in approaching the problems of each age. This special issue of the Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia (RPF) assumes that Weisheipl’s definition accurately captures this characteristic of all those who associate themselves in some way with the school of Aquinas.
As such, Thomists have always been open to engage in dialogue with other philosophical traditions. While remaining faithful to the value of the philosophical theses of Thomas Aquinas, they did not fail to appreciate the thought of many other philosophers associated with other philosophical schools, even recognizing that some of these ideas could indeed be used to support, clarify, and advance some of the most fundamental theses of the Angelic Doctor. An example of this attitude of dialogue is the incorporation into the Polish Thomism of the phenomenology of Husserl and his interpreters, such as Roman Ingarden, together with the work of Max Scheler. This approach became known as “Lublin Thomism,” and it yielded fruitful results. One of the most notable examples of this “union” is visible in the work The Acting Person of St. John Paul II.
A different example of a rapprochement between “opposing” philosophies, was the development, in the 20th century, of so-called “Transcendental Thomism”. At the time, Kant exerted a great deal of influence with many Thomists, and although most of them were inclined to reject Kantian idealism, some, such as Pierre Rousselot and Joseph Marechal, embraced the Kantian Copernican revolution towards the subject. Marechal, in particular, found in the subject the starting point of metaphysics, defending Kant’s insufficiency because he failed to observe that only an Infinite Being could be the ultimate ground of the phenomenal object.
On another spectrum, Étienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, influenced by Continental philosophy, proposed what today is called “Existential Thomism,” i.e., the notion that philosophical reflection begins with a first “intuition of being,” seeking to harmonize, through ethics and social philosophy, Thomism with “personalism.” Although “Existential Thomism” has sometimes been presented as a counterpoint to modern existentialism, the main reason for the label is its emphasis on Aquinas’ doctrine of existence as applied to the action and lives of human agents.
Despite the efforts of many Thomists to build bridges, from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, there remains a great distrust within the philosophical community towards these philosophical approaches. If this mistrust was already felt in continental philosophy, its impact has been more profound among analytic philosophers (influenced with logical positivism). Nevertheless, these barriers did not preclude the formation of new bridges.
At the same time that analytic philosophy was moving away from neo-positivism, it was also moving closer to metaphysics. Perhaps the most important transformation in this respect was made by Wittgenstein himself, when he abandoned his previous view of language as a mirror of reality and embraced, instead, a multifunctional theory of language where usage would determine meaning. For Wittgenstein, the task of philosophy would no longer be to discover the structures of the World through a reductive analysis of the logical structure of language, but would be to describe the history of language use. The work of the later Wittgenstein, together with the fall of verificationism and the popularization of Quine’s thought, led many analytics to rethink the possibility of ontology. Then, with the emergence of Kripke’s systematization of modal logic, which made it it became possible for these philosopher to consider possible to return to the previously rejected theme of modalities, it became possible for these philosopher to consider Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas as viable sources of inspiration. It was in this context that the first appearances of what would later come to be called “Analytic Thomism” began to appear.
It should be noted that some historians of analytic philosophy have pointed out that analytic philosophy, from its beginnings, was founded on beliefs compatible with those of Thomas Aquinas and, therefore, similar to those of Thomism. For instance, Frege, despite his problematic conception of existence, defended the objectivity of knowledge and Brentano – an influential predecessor of analytic philosophy – defended the intentionality of mental states, a scholastic idea already present in Aquinas. The arguments in defence of metaphysical and epistemic realism, one of the most central debates in analytic philosophy (between realism and anti-realism), is inadvertently populated by arguments of Thomistic origin.
In addition to metaphysics, logical positivism had also left ethics poorer, dependent on emotivism, moral non-cognitivism and utilitarianism. The only valid opposition to these options came from the Kantian-inspired advocates of deontologies. It was with Elizabeth Anscombe that virtue ethics began to be recovered for moral philosophy. Anscombe’s influential article “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958) marked the beginning of a small but influential movement within analytic philosophy to make virtue ethics a respectable alternative. According to Anscombe, the only way to overcome the limitations of emotivism, behaviorism, utilitarianism, and Kantian deontologies was to rehabilitate the notion of virtue.
