Dynamic Transcendentals: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty from a Thomistic Perspective by Alice Ramos (review)

164 BOOK REVIEWS Dynamic Transcendentals: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty from a Thomistic Perspective. By ALICE RAMOS. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012. Pp. 259. $65.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-8132-1965-3. Being is true in itself, but its truth is not just some lifeless or passive property of being knowable. Being is good, but its goodness is not just some lifeless or passive property of being desirable. The truth and goodness of being are, rather, active attributes of being. Having come from the One True Good, beings tend (each in its own way) to be and to become like the One True Good. And this tending-to-be-and-to-become-like-the-One-True-Good is something dynamic in things, a dynamic that is now returning (or likening) beings to the One True Good, who is now giving them being. Persons are caught up in the dynamic of the transcendentals in a particularly noble way, for persons tend to be and to become true and good precisely by knowing and loving the true and the good. By knowing and loving the true and the good, persons are being likened to the One True Good, God, as to him who knows and loves all. Such, in broad strokes, is the portrait of being that I find in the pages of Dynamic Transcendentals—a remarkable collection of essays by Alice Ramos. The collection is divided into three parts. The first is on truth, the second on the perfection of the universe, and the third on moral knowledge and art. In considering truth, chapters 1 and 2 provide an overview of the metaphysics of truth—how truth permeates creation and is measured by the divine mind by which all things are measured and to which all things seek conformity. Chapter 3 is a noteworthy essay on “Affections and the Life of the Mind.” It is standard for Thomists to hold that it is one thing to know the truth and another to be a morally good person. The distinction is in effect the denial of Plato’s thesis that knowledge is virtue. The Thomist position, however, can easily be misunderstood to mean that in real life knowing the truth and being a good person have nothing to do with each other. This essay is a masterful corrective to that misunderstanding. Ramos explains how in real life (not just in the abstract) certain moral virtues are essential prerequisites for truth seeking and truth finding. A culture of individualistic autonomy, unrestrained concupiscence, rampant curiositas, and “aesthetic self invention” so warps the characters of persons that their likening to God as knower is impeded. In our society, agents of truth are threatened on the one side by despair of ever finding truth and on the other side by a superficial and distracted glance at it (curiositas). Full flourishing as an agent of truth, especially in our culture, requires persons thoughtfully to aim at growing in hope, humility, and studiositas, and to call others to that same path. Ramos points to the lives of Jacques and Raissa Maritain as contemporary examples of lives lived in such a way. BOOK REVIEWS 165 The second part of the book, on the perfection of the universe, introduces a theme that continues until the end: the beauty of being. Ramos is careful not to take a stand on whether beauty is a transcendental attribute of being (although the subtitle suggests she thinks it is). She explores the more modest claim that the whole universe of finite beings is beautiful insofar as it is well ordered (chap. 4), and that evil and suffering do not ultimately show otherwise (chap. 5). The remaining essays of the book together show the great variety of topics in Aquinas’s thought in which beauty makes an appearance. The order of the cosmos is a grand display of beauty; moral character (especially temperance) is spiritual beauty; a life lived in consonance with Christ is beautiful; and ultimate human happiness calls us to a particular sort of beauty, namely, glory. Chapter 7, “On The Good and Glory” is an especially noteworthy account of honor, praise, and glory, their role in human...