Chamada de Artigos - Retriving Aquinas: Traditions in Dialogue - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia
Ricardo Barroso
Artur I. Galvão
Bruno Nobre
Ricardo Barroso Batista (Eds.)
In the broadest sense of the term, "Thomism" refers to a set of ideas and principles, both in philosophy and theology that can be considered as derivations or representations of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. However, Thomism cannot be considered simply as conceptual body. It also represents a certain view and way of doing philosophy and theology. Alasdair MacIntyre in his book Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, argues that the Thomist approach provides a coherent and skillful point of view for dealing creatively and critically with opposing views, contrasting this approach with the encyclopedic and the genealogical. The former imposes a single worldview, enclosing knowledge and "truth" in a monolithic structure of “progress,” while the latter, following Nietzsche, devalues and relativizes knowledge, reducing it to a multiplicity of perspectives, each with its own claims to truth, leading to incommensurability and the consequent subjugation of "truth" to the law of the strongest. On the other hand, Thomists have adopted, from the end of the thirteenth century to the present day, different styles and ways of thinking and maintaining dialogue with their “predecessors” and, at the same time, with their contemporaries, that is, Thomists are capable of what MacIntyre called the “rationality of tradition.”
Although the epithet “Thomist” originated in the fourteenth century is widely used to identify the adherents and defenders of the thought of Aquinas, there is, even today, no consensus among scholars on how to identify or describe this movement. Some of the most notable figures of Thomism, such as, for example, D. Kennedy (1912), A. Sertillanges (1939), R. Garrigou-Lagrange (1946) or J. Owens (1957), disagree among themselves on this point. More recently, J. A. Weisheipl (1967) proposed a definition of the Thomist movement that became popular: "(...) a theological and philosophical movement that begins in the thirteenth century, and embodies a systematic attempt to understand and develop the basic principles and conclusions of St. Thomas Aquinas in order to relate them to the problems and needs of each generation." This definition of Weisheipl regards Thomism as a movement whose participants, insofar as they are inspired by the thought of Thomas Aquinas, manifest the “rationality of tradition” by being able to illuminate and develop the teachings of the Angelic Doctor in such a way as to make them useful in approaching the problems of each age. This special issue of the Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia (RPF) assumes that Weisheipl's definition accurately captures this characteristic of all those who associate themselves in some way with the school of Aquinas.
Thomists have always been open to dialogue with other philosophies. While remaining faithful to the value of the philosophical theses of Thomas Aquinas, they did not fail to appreciate the thought of many other philosophers associated with other philosophical schools, even recognizing that some of these ideas could indeed be used to support, clarify, and advance some of the most fundamental theses of the Angelic Doctor. An example of this attitude of dialogue is the incorporation into the Polish Thomism of the phenomenology of Husserl and his interpreters, such as Roman Ingarden together with the work of Max Scheler. This approach became known as “Lublin Thomism,” and it yielded fruitful results.
A different example of a rapprochement between “opposing” philosophies was the development, in the 20th century, of so-called “Transcendental Thomism”. Kant exerted influenced many Thomists, and although most were inclined to reject Kantian idealism, some, such as Pierre Rousselot and Joseph Marechal, embraced the Kantian Copernican revolution towards the subject. Marechal, in particular, found in the subject the starting point of metaphysics, defending Kant's insufficiency because he failed to observe that only an Infinite Being could be the ultimate ground of the phenomenal object. On the other extreme of the spectrum, Étienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, influenced by Continental philosophy, proposed what today is called “Existential Thomism,” i.e., the notion that philosophical reflection begins with a first “intuition of being,” seeking to harmonize, through ethics and social philosophy, Thomism with “personalism”. At the same time analytic philosophy was moving away from neo-positivism, it was also moving closer to metaphysics. The work of the later Wittgenstein, together with the fall of verificationism and the popularization of Quine's thought, led many analytics to rethink the possibility of ontology. Then, with the emergence of Kripke's systematization of modal logic, which made it possible to return to the previously rejected theme of modalities, it opened the possibility of these philosophers to consider Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas as viable sources of inspiration. It was in this context that the first appearances of what would later be called “Analytic Thomism” began to appear. In addition to metaphysics, logical positivism had also left ethics poorer, dependent on emotivism, moral non-cognitivism and utilitarianism. The only valid opposition to these options came from the Kantian-inspired advocates of deontologies. It was with Elizabeth Anscombe that virtue ethics began to be recovered for moral philosophy. Anscombe's influential article, “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958), marked the beginning of a small but influential movement within analytic philosophy to make virtue ethics a respectable alternative. According to Anscombe, the only way to overcome the limitations of emotivism, behaviorism, utilitarianism, and Kantian deontologies was to rehabilitate the notion of virtue.
Despite the efforts of many Thomists to build bridges, from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, there remains a great distrust in the philosophical community towards these philosophical approaches. This thematic volume of RPF seeks to promote this trend of dialogue between Thomism and contemporary philosophy. The editors believe that the philosophy of Aquinas has considerable merit, and that contemporary philosophy, both analytic and continental, has much to offer to Thomists and all those interested in Aquinas' thought, just as they believe that Thomism continues to have much to offer to contemporary philosophical reflection. In this regard, we encourage the submission of original papers, namely, around the following points:
- Thought and Themes of Notable Contemporary Thomists.
- Contemporary Issues in Thomistic Metaphysics.
- Contemporary Themes in Thomistic Epistemology.
- Themes of Contemporary Ethics of Thomistic inspiration.
- Themes of political philosophy of Thomist inspiration.
- Themes in the Thomistic Philosophy of Language.
- Themes in Thomistic Philosophy of Mind.
- Themes in the Thomistic Philosophy of Religion.
- Topics on currents of Thomism: Analytical Thomism, Existential Thomism, Phenomenological Thomism, Lublin's Thomism, Aristotelian Thomism, Laval Thomism, Transcendental Thomism, Neo-Scholastic Thomism
- Problems between Thomism and other currents of Philosophy such as Continental and Analytic.
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