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Thomism and the Future of Catholic Philosophy

1998 Aquinas Lecture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

John Haldane
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When one takes account of the scale and range of Aquinas’s achievements it becomes clear why he deserves to be described as the greatest of the mediaeval philosopher-theologians, for he was the first thinker of the high mediaeval period to work out in detail the new synthesis between Catholicism and philosophy. It is sometimes supposed that this just meant ‘Christianizing’ Aristotle. Even were that the limit of his achievement it would have been considerable, but in fact he went further. For while he opposed unquestioning appeals to authority, he believed in the idea of cumulative philosophical and religious wisdom and sought to integrate Neoplatonist, Augustinian and Anselmian ideas, as well as Aristotelian ones, with scripture, patristic teaching and evolving Catholic doctrine.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 80 , Issue 938 , April 1999 , pp. 158 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Footnotes

1

The following is the text of the 1998 Aquinas Lecture delivered in Oxford on 12 February 1998. I am grateful to the Dominicans of Blackfriars for the invitation to give the lecture and for their hospitality. I have drawn material from two other essays: “Thomism” in Craig E. (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1998) and “What Future has Catholic Philosophy?” in Virtue and Virtue Theories, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, Vol. 72, 1998