At the source
David Levy
Friar Thomas crAquino: His life, thought arid works James A, Weisheipl (Blackwell £9.00) Professor Weisheipl is Professor of the History of Medieval Science at the PontificalInstitute of Medieval Studies in Toronto. The Pontifical Institute has long been one of the main centres of Thomist Studies associated with-the names of Anton Pegis, Armand Maurer and, perhaps -above all, Etienne Gilson. Gilson, who taught in Toronto, Was probably the most stimulating historian of philosophy that our century has produced. He combined an unsurpassed knowledge of his sources with a firm commitment to the basic philosophical positions established by St Thomas Aquinas in the, thirteenth century. Gilson's was a living Thomism, a perfectly considered framework of understanding within which other philosophical schools could be revealed in their specific virtues and limitations. Like G. K. Chesterton in his very different way, Gilson had the capacity to reveal the timelessness of the truths contained in what many still think of as "the perennial philosophy." A book like that of Professor Weisheipl reveals the extent of that achievement.
Weisheipl's original aim, as he tells us in his Preface, was to write the sort of book that he should have liked to read when he began his own Thomistic studies. As work progressed he found himself also engaged in the task of correcting some of the errors fact and interpretation that he discovered in the surrounding literature. The laudable attempt to combine the two tasks imposed considerable strains on the structure of the book, strains which may well be more apparent to its destined general reader than they were to the writer. A book which aims to provide a general introduction to the life and thought of Thomas Aquinas need not be weighed down with the sort of elaborate discussions of the chronology of the works that Professor Weisheipl provides, especially in view of the constancy of the basic positions to be found in the eighty or so works attributed to the Saint.
These are problems of style and structure of a type often found in the work of scholar-authors. They are, however, particularly important in the present case because of the peculiar difficulties that a modern reader faces in the essentials of Thomas Aquinas's ifnrgom the context in which they are disengaging
thought found. St Thomas was a theologian, perhaps the very greatest of theologians; he was also, like Professor Weisheipl, a Dominican friar and thus a member of an order whose primary apostolate was to preach and teach the Catholic faith. Most of St Thomas's writings • were consequently prepared for some specific purpose of his order within the general field of the church politics of his day. For this reason Weisheipl is right to note that "unless the teaching of Aquinas is seen in its true historical perspective, there is not only the danger of misunderstanding his teaching, but also the danger of rendering Thomas irrelevant to our age." There is, however, an opposite danger which consists in so stressing the historical context that the content of the writings is obscured through being too strictly tied to the momentary needs of the occasion of their composition. It is, of course, interesting to know the circumstances under which Aquinas wrote his treatise De ente et essentia but it would have been better to have some sort of exposition of the content of that treatise.
None of this would matter if the thought of Thomas Aquinas were not so important still. In Thomism the faith of the West and the universal principles of human reason meet in a harmonious synthesis. The thirteenth century was its context and Friar Thomas its vehicle.
Historical circumstances may explain the one, intellectual biography and genius the other.
The same factors can explain why the synthesis was never fully accepted by the civilisation in which it was achieved, and historians like Gilson have traced the consequences of this refusal through the maze of post-scholastic philosophy. Though the Thomist synthesis of Christianity and Greek metaphysics was the achievement of a particular man in a particular place and time, once achieved it partakes of the timeless structure of its inherent elements. To put it most simply, Thomism still makes sense because neither the content of Christianity nor the principles of reason suffer from change and decay. Western man has left the Middle Ages far behind but spiritually he is heir to their aspirations, and in so far as Western civilisation still has any specific character it is made up of the remnants of the same Christian and Classical elements that St Thomas was able to fuse in his thought. Is it not then possible that Thomism contains at least substantial clues to the solution of many of our spiritual and intellectual problems? Looked at from this point of view, Professor Weisheipl's approach, for all its devoted scholarship, seems a rather roundabout way of reaching the heart of the matter.
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