John Inglis

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 439-440 [Access article in PDF] John F. Wippel. The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being. Monographs of the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, No. 1. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 2000. Pp. xxvii + 630. Cloth, $59.95. Paper, $39.95. In this weighty volume, John Wippel brings together much of the important research that he has carried out on the metaphysics of Aquinas over the last three decades in order to produce as he calls it, a "Summa metaphysicae" based on the original texts of Aquinas (xxvii). Throughout much of the twentieth century metaphysics has been thought to be Aquinas's greatest philosophical achievement. The historical research of Etienne Gilson and Joseph Owens together with the philosophical reflections of Jacques Maritain did much to place this topic at the heart of Aquinas scholarship. Therefore, this volume both represents Wippel's central research interest and brings to a head an entire school of Aquinas studies of the twentieth century. It is the clearest and most detailed account of the subject in the English language, bearing the hallmarks of Wippel's scholarship: clarity in reference to the arguments and attention to textual chronology.Metaphysics here does not mean so much a focus on Aquinas's treatment of Aristotle's four causes or his act and potency as much as a clear presentation of Aquinas's reflections on existence (esse) and the implications that this has for his thought. After an introductory discussion of the nature and subject of metaphysics for Aquinas, Wippel devotes the first part of the book to Aquinas's view of existence in order to unpack what it means to talk about individual things as beings, being in general, and the catagories of Aristotle (73-74). Masterfully, he explains Aquinas's analogical approach to being and guides the reader through the interpretive thicket of Cornelio Fabro, G. P. Klubertanz, and Ralph McInerny. An interesting parallel is presented between Parmenides' problem of the one and the many and Aquinas's philosophically interesting view of the composite manner in which concrete individuals exist (161-170). Since no individual creature is the author of its own existence, but does in fact exist, each finite being must receive existence from a single being that exists necessarily. Wippel highlights this and other approaches that Aquinas takes to clarify relations between the many individual beings and the single divine being that lies beyond the study of metaphysics.Part two is devoted to many of the ways in which Aquinas talks about concrete individuals. Here Wippel explains Aquinas's distinctions between substance and accident as well as between matter and form and how they relate to existence. Part three concludes the work with a treatment of what Aristotle and Aquinas call divine science. This consists of more than a hundred pages on Aquinas's famous arguments for the existence of God (379-500) and a discussion of what human beings can understand about God (501-575). Not only does Aquinas conclude that God exists, but he indicates the limited manner in which human beings can understand the divine. The problem is that if we acquire language in relation to concrete individuals, how can we use words to discuss a being who is not bound by space or time? The solution is to speak of words like "good" and "wise" in an analogical sense. Words like these when applied to creatures are used in a sense that is both similar to but different from the way they are used to [End Page 439] speak of the divine. Reiterating the theme of the one and the many, the name "good" has a single and most excellent meaning when applied to God and a limited sense when applied to creatures.This is an excellent and accessible book for the educated reader and specialist alike which can be supplemented by works such as Wayne Hankey's God in Himself: Aquinas' Doctrine of God as Expounded in theSumma Theologiae (Oxford: Oxford...

This volume contains the seminal articles that define the influence of Aquinas within legal philosophical thought. A comprehensive reference for those new to the field, it covers such topics as the relation of virtue to law, the common good, natural law, natural rights and property rights; together with social and political issues like abortion, feminism, homosexuality, environment, civil disobedience and just war. Attention is devoted to the new natural law theory and its limitations, as well as the place of historical context in the recovery of social thought.

Aquinas is often presented as following Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" when treating moral virtue. Less often do philosophers consider that Aquinas's conception of the highest good and its relation to the functional character of human activity led him to break with Aristotle by replicating each of the acquired moral virtues on an infused level. The author suggests that we can discern reasons for this move by examining Aquinas's commentary on the "Sententiae" of Peter the Lombard and the "Summa theologiae" within their historical context. The author's thesis is that Dominican pastoral and intellectual concerns led Aquinas to argue that moral virtue must necessarily be ordered toward the highest good. Understanding this purpose helps to explain his presentation of moral virtue and its implications for standard philosophical interpretations of his work

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:“First the Bow is Bent in Study …” Dominican Education before 1350 by M. Michèle MulchaheyJohn InglisM. Michèle Mulchahey. “First the Bow is Bent in Study …” Dominican Education before 1350. Studies and Texts, vol. 132. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1998. Pp. xxi + 618. Cloth, $110.00.In his The Setting of the Summa theologiae of Saint Thomas, Leonard Boyle represents one of the more interesting directions in the recent historiography of Latin medieval philosophy (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1982). His claim is that if we are to understand Aquinas, we need to pay closer attention to the Dominican intellectual context. With a focus on the moral component of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, Boyle establishes that Aquinas did not converse alone with Aristotle and Averroes in some philosophical ivory tower as historians often imply, but that he wrote and disputed in light of Dominican goals. This point helps to clarify the context of Aquinas’s texts—a type of historical context not found in the standard philosophical accounts. In the book under review, the first detailed history of Dominican medieval education, M. Michèle Mulchahey supplies a more extended treatment of this intellectual context.Commonly, intellectuals in the high middle ages are presented as spending their lives at universities studying philosophy, conducting disputations, and lecturing on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard. Anthony Kenny and Jan Pinborg present such a picture in their helpful contribution to The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy ([Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982], 11–42). Mulchahey argues that this sort of picture is rather simplistic when applied to the Dominican intellectual life. From the early years of the order, there was to be a “doctor” in each and every local Dominican house (132). One of Mulchahey’s more interesting conclusions is that the schools associated with these local houses were more advanced than has often been thought. For example, each house was to include lectures on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard and on Scripture, that is, on the very texts which historians commonly associate only with the universities (134–136). Furthermore, disputations were conducted frequently at local houses (134, 167) and by the middle of the thirteenth century, the works of Aristotle were often taught (220). Her point is that if we are to understand the intellectual world in which a Dominican like Aquinas spent his life, then we need to be clear about this context and not just about that of the universities.Even at the university, Dominicans studied and lectured at Dominican houses and not at institutions of the secular clergy. For instance, even when Aquinas was a Bachelor of the Sentences and a Master of the Sacred Page at the University of Paris, he lived and taught at the Dominican convent according to the distinct traditions and practices [End Page 361] of the order. Furthermore, select Dominican schools of higher learning, including those associated with universities, produced teachers for local Dominican communities. Mulchahey argues convincingly that the structures of Dominican education came to exist from the bottom up within a Dominican context and not as an extension of the statutes of the universities (351–378).This Dominican context helps to provide a response to an objection that John Jenkins raises to Boyle’s view of the audience of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae—an issue that has important implications for how to read this work. Boyle argued that the Summa arose out of the pastoral needs of ordinary Dominicans and reflects this institutional purpose. Jenkins “rejects” this claim, arguing that Aquinas’s text is so dense and conceptually difficult that it could only have been written for those who were prepared to study the Sentences of Peter the Lombard at the University of Paris. (See John I. Jenkins, Knowledge and faith in Thomas Aquinas [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997], 81, 89–90.) Mulchahey provides important support for Boyle’s view by establishing that it was the policy of the order to prepare ordinary Dominicans to study the Sentences of Peter the Lombard at the local houses. At a time when there were few universities, the Dominicans established hundreds of sites of higher education at...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Omne Agens Agit Sibi Simile: A “Repetition” of Scholastic Metaphysics by Philipp W. RosemannJohn InglisPhilipp W. Rosemann. Omne Agens Agit Sibi Simile: A “Repetition” of Scholastic Metaphysics. Louvain Philosophical Studies, Vol. 12. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1996. Pp. 368. Paper, BF 1,450.The technical sounding title of this volume could mislead the reader into thinking that it concerns some obscure point of Latin medieval thought, rather than an issue central [End Page 131] to medieval metaphysical speculation. In fact, Philipp Rosemann charts the metaphysical theology of a significant number of intellectuals, ranging from Plato to Aquinas, in a dense and perceptive historical narrative that reaches its telos in Aquinas’s view of the emanation from, and return to, God. Too often historians and philosophers atomize specific medieval issues by treating them apart from the textual, historical, and metaphysical context. The classic case of this occurs when the wider web of metaphysical and monastic concerns is neglected in presentations of Anselm’s argument for the existence of God. Rosemann supplies much of this context in a concise yet detailed discussion of Hellenistic and medieval views on causal similitude, i.e., the degree of similarity that must exist between every cause and effect.The book is divided, as it were, into three equal parts: the first is devoted to the ancient philosophers Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Proclus; the second to Pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, Eriugena, Peter the Lombard, Avicenna, Averroes, and Albert the Great; and the third to Aquinas. These figures were included for two reasons: first, for contributing views of causal similitude that take into account either a Neo-Platonic emanational causality between different types of beings or/and a peripatetic efficient causality between individual substances; and second, to provide the background for Aquinas’s reconciliation of both types of causality.In the second part of the book, Rosemann presses his thesis that there is a Trinitarian context to Western metaphysical reflection which must be understood if we are to be clear about the history of Latin medieval thought. His point is that within this context intellectuals produced detailed accounts of a hierarchy of beings each of which stands on a scale closer to or farther away from a single divine “being” (111). Individual beings, including physical objects, both replicate and exteriorize various qualities of the divine (115). From this perspective, Latin medieval inquiry into issues concerning causality and the human mind form at the same time an inquiry into the interior character of a triune God (145, 349). For example, it becomes clear why Eriugena claims that a human being has no direct knowledge of his or her individual essence (125). In imitation of the divine, one reasons about one’s concerns, and only then is one able to reflect on this reasoning. Such reflection yields self-knowledge (124–27). Since human self-knowledge reflects divine self-knowledge, human self-knowledge is required in order to inquire into the mind of God. According to Rosemann, the medievals extend to the divine Socrates’ dictum regarding the unexamined life.Recent writers have devoted attention to the Neo-Platonic framework of Aquinas’s project. For example, in his important God in Himself (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), Wayne Hankey has clarified the two emanations that structure the first part of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae: the first a procession of three persons internal to God, and the second the procession of creation. The first plays a causal role in regard to the universe while the second mirrors the metaphysical structure of the first. Rosemann places this intellectual achievement in a more precise historical context, carefully isolates Aquinas’s types of causal relations (280–88), and offers a splendid account of the role played by causal similitude in the emanation and return of individual substances to God (262–77). Individual beings bring about effects that are species-specific to the point that they both lead to the flourishing of the species and represent [End Page 132] the divine. The higher the type of being, the more elevated and individual the degree of representation. For example, while a stone might express external physical characteristics of strength, a human being can obtain a...

The first volume of the Mediaeval Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (=MCS1) edited by G. R. Evans in 2002 provided the first comprehensive study of those works that house much Latin medieval philosophy from the middle of the twelfth century to Martin Luther in the sixteenth century. Philipp Rosemann rounded out this project in 2007 with The Story of a Great Medieval Book: Peter Lombard's Sentences (Peterborough, ON: Broadview), which serves as an introduction to the second volume he has now edited of the MCS (=MCS2). These volumes provide much of the context for Latin philosophical work in the later Middle Ages, which is arguably the most understudied period of Western thought. Steven Livesey gives ..

The Islamic philosophical tradition was the privileged site for the study and continuation of the Classical philosophical tradition in the Middle Ages. An initial chapter on the history of Islamic philosophy sets the stage for sixteen articles on issues across the Islamic, Jewish and Christian traditions. The goal is to see the Islamic tradition in its own richness and complexity as the context of much Jewish intellectual work. Taken together, these two traditions provide the wider context to which Latin Christian intellectuals would turn. The articles are grouped under six topics relevant both to the period and to current philosophical interest: the Islamic philosophical context, the nature of philosophy in the Middle Ages, Neoplatonism and the activity of the soul, creation, virtue, and the Latin reception. Since the nineteenth century Islamic and Jewish philosophy have been neglected in the standard histories of medieval philosophy. The time is right to begin to write a more balanced history of medieval philosophy. In order to begin to write this history, this book focuses on the Islamic, Jewish, and Christian use of - and reaction to - Classical philosophy during the Middle Ages.