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Thomism for the Times

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2024

Thomas Gilby O.P.
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He witness of The New Scholasticism, a quarterly review and the organ of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, to a vigorous Thomist movement in the United States, is confirmed by a book recently published, Contemporary Philosophy and Thomistic Principles, in which Thomism is presented as a complete and authentic philosophy, not a sort of philosophical parasite on a religion of authority; and as a philosophy able to meet present problems and complete the solutions advanced by modern thinkers. It lays the ghost, evoked by Mr. Wyndham Lewis in Time and the Western Man, of a Thomism incurably conservative, forever the old against the new, anti-modern in a stupid historical manner. The page-references to Aquinas, Thomas, steadily grow in the index to names in books of science and philosophy. His name comes readily to the journalist’s pen and the mouth of that public which reads the review pages of the more serious dailies, and a lady over the tea-pot can quite easily remark, ‘Of course, Mr. So-and-so, you know, is a tomist.’

Dr. Bandas begins with a particularly firm and downright piece of writing on Fundamental Principles (Chapter I). The foundation of Thomism on Being is clearly indicated, as well as the transcendental value and immunity from empirical criticism of the principles immediately deriving from Being—identity and contradiction, substance, sufficient reason, causality.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 13 , Issue 147 , June 1932 , pp. 340 - 353
Copyright
Copyright © 1932 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 By the Rev. R. G. Bandas, Ph. D. Agg. (Angelico, Rome), S.T.D. et M. (Louvain). With an Introduction by the Rev. J. S. Zybura, Ph.D., (New York: The Bruce Publishing Co.; pp. viii, 468; $4.50.).

2 ‘An intuitive effort in which the savant by a flash of genius transports himself into the heart of reality, round which he had hitherto been hovering, penetrates to its depth, and quaffs the live current’ (p. 188). The thought is the thought of Bergson, but the voice ….

3 Cf. IV Contra Gentes, 11.

4 As regards inaccuracies in the text. We are tired of reading that St. Thomas was a monk (p. 3) —the verbal suggestion of a' monkish philosopher' so easily follows. The condemnation of the inanity and servility of the scholasticism of the period preceding the Council of Trent is summarily extended to include the Thomism of the time (p. 20). But a movement which produced Cajetan and Ferrariensis, both of them profound and vigorous thinkers, and not at all the type to run in blinkers, and which saw the beginnings of the brilliant Spanish group was scarcely in decline. Francis of Victoria, contrary to what is suggested (p. 22), was a pre-Tridentine, for he died only a year after the Council was convoked. These are Dr. Zybura's. Dr. Bandas repeats Olgiati-Zybura's inadequate definition of cause as that by which being begins to be (p. 61). The metaphysical principle of identity seems rather too quickly particularized (p. 67). A quotation from the de Ente et Essentia should be re-punctuated to read, ‘Being is predicated of substance primarily and absolutely, of accidents only in a restricted sense’ (p. 68). Is it true to say that science is inseparably fused with philosophy in the works of Aristotle (p. 86), and that whatever is moved is moved by another is an example of a self-evident truth of natural philosophy, underived from metaphysics (p. 114)? In the prima via it is treated as a metaphysical conclusion. And how can scientific conclusions be ‘only probable,’‘though not devoid of certitude’ (p. 101)? There is looseness, too, in the statement (p. 116) that ethics is a practical philosophy or an art, and that its theoretical principles are furnished by psychology. There is a speculative science of ethics. Dr. Bandas shows a tendency to identify intellectual life with the ‘conceptual’ (p. 192) and ‘intentional’ (p. 256). Supernatural contemplation seems to be taken as an extraordinary grace de jure (p. 298). And though understandable in its context, this is an unfortunate phrase; ‘Eternity, as such, is only a chronological attribute’ (p. 350).