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Anarchy and Grace: St Thomas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Pascal Lefébure O.P.
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Even for those who are still willing to learn with St Thomas Aquinas, the image of him may be that of one whose achievement was, supremely, synthetic: starting from the first and ultimate principles, he descends steadily down from God to man, in the manner of those streams from the heavens down the mountains into the plains celebrated in the psalm (103, 13) which St Thomas chose as the text of his inaugural lecture as Master in the university of Paris:

Rigans montes de superioribus suis, ‘ de fructu operum tuorum satiabitur terra From your dwelling you water the hills; earth drinks its fill of your gift

This image has some measure of truth in it, but for reasons which will appear only slowly in the course of this article. Nevertheless, the plain—and to us more sympathetic—fact remains that this image is also false: St Thomas found men much as we find men: man is broken and lives in a broken society, a creature always liable to fall apart into his constituent pieces within a society riven by discord and distortions.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 50 , Issue 589 , June 1969 , pp. 461 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © 1969 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Footnotes

page 461 note 1

Since this article is intended to be primarily a piece of exegesis, I have thought it best to include ample references so that anybody so inclined is in a position to follow up or check any particular statement. But for the sake of the scurrying reader, I have also tried to simplify the notation of such references, as follows: All references, unless otherwise stated, are to the Summa Theologiae, and the first figure or couplet of figures denotes the Book of the Summa, the second figure denotes the Question within that Book, a third the Article within that Question, and any possible further symbol denotes either the corpus of the Response to the Question or the Reply to an objection (or both). Thus, for example, 1–2, 3, 4 in c. and ad 2 would denote the first part of the second Book, the third Question, and the corpus of the Response as well as the Reply to the second objection in the fourth Article.

References

page 462 note 1 This will be the subject of one of a series of two articles which we shall be publishing later this year and the object of which will be to call in question certain historical affirmations made by J. Noonan in his book on Contraception—ED.

page 463 note 1 The change of subject from ‘St Thomas’ to ‘the scholastics’ here is deliberate. For in this whole area of justice St Thomas shared with his contemporaries a common and particular debt to Aristotle: cf. Psychologie et Morale aux XII et XII Siécles, O. Lottin, O.S.B., especially Vol. 3, 1 (1949), pp. 283–299; et cf. ibid. Vol 3, 2, pp. 579–601. For the Summa itself, v. 2–2, 63–78.

page 464 note 1 v. generally 1, 80; ibid. 19, 1; 1–2, 18, 1. Et cf. 1, 59, especially art. 2; ibid. 62, 1, and the lucid and useful notes to these articles by Fr Kenelm Foster, O.P., in the English translation of the Summa, Vol. 9, 1. 50–64, Angels.

page 466 note 1 v. 2–2, 26, 2 and 3; 27, 4, in c. and ad I, ad 2; et cf. 1–2, 68, 8 ad 2; 109, 3; 1, 60, 1–5, especially art. 5, and the notes to this Question by Fr Kenelm Foster, O.P., op. cit., as well as his notes to 1, 54, 2; ibid. 55, 1; 62, 1.

page 470 note 1 cf. a passage from the first article of the trilogy by Fr Kerr: ‘Marcuse's thesis is that the necessary institutional changes must be carried out by people who are already freeing them‐selves from the repressive and aggressive needs of our society, people who are therefore, at least potentially, the bearers of essentially different needs, goals and satisfactions, people (to anticipate again) with a different understanding of finis (end) and beatitudo (happiness). It is important to notice that Marcuse is not falling into the liberal separation between individuals and institutions. He is simply saying, against a certain kind of Marxist, that there can be no destruction and renewal of institutions which will be liberating unless it is carried through by people who are, in the very process, changing their attitudes and responses‘: New Blackfriars, March, 1969, at pp. 311–312.

page 470 note 2 The phrase is borrowed from R. D. Laing, The Divided Self, with merely the change of person from the third to the first. The whole passage, in our perspective, is, mutatis mutandis, richly suggestive: ‘Even when she began to “be herself”, she could at first only dare to do so by completely mirroring the doctor's reality. She could do this, however, since although his reality (his wishes for her) were still another's, they were not alien to her: they were congruent with her own authentic desire to be herself (p. 173). Is it indelicate to recall one traditional title of the founder of the Order of Preachers, derivative, of course, from his own Master: ’Doctor veritatis'?