Person, Being & History: Essays in Honor of Kenneth L. Schmitz ed. by Michael Baur, Robert E. Wood (review)

299 BOOK REVIEWS Person, Being & History: Essays in Honor of Kenneth L. Schmitz. Edited by MICHAEL BAUR and ROBERT E. WOOD. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011. Pp. 388. $55.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-08132 -1857-1. It is evident from this collection of essays that Kenneth Schmitz is not only an inspiring teacher and scholar but someone who brings forth in those who know him the admiration due a beloved colleague and sterling person. The editors describe the book as a “long overdue Festschrift” by eighteen contributors, mostly former students whom Schmitz taught at Marquette University and University of Toronto, but also fellow colleagues who have been engaged with his work and themes over his long career. As can sometimes happen with a Festschrift, there is heterogeneity to the different contributions, and the book sometimes has the feel of a miscellany of essays, reflecting the interests of the contributors as much as the dominant concerns of Schmitz. The editors divide up these diverse contributions under three headings. Part 1 deals with “Themes in the Philosophy of Kenneth L. Schmitz,” part 2 deals with “Reading the History of Philosophy in the Spirit of Kenneth L. Schmitz,” and part 3 deals with “Themes in the Spirit of Kenneth L. Schmitz.” The number of contributors in part 2 (13) exceeds by far the number in the other two parts (3 and 2, respectively). This distribution of concerns is understandable in that part 2 reflects very much the influence of Schmitz as a teacher, and more particularly as a teacher of Hegel to whom he introduced many of these contributors. It is evident that this influence has had long-lasting effects. For someone who is coming to Schmitz’s work for the first time, the contributions in part 2 will not help greatly in telling us fully of his thematic concerns, either in their extensive range or in their intensive comprehension. On this score the essays in part 1 will be of greater assistance, and in particular the long opening essay by James Kow. Entitled “The Philosophy of Kenneth L. Schmitz: The Recovery and Discovery of Things, Being and the Person,” it gives a very helpful introduction, both chronologically and thematically, to the philosophical concerns and published work of Schmitz. One might have preferred more engagement with the substance of Schmitz’s view by more of the contributors, and hence more communication of what is distinctive in the contribution he has made beyond his obvious personal influence as a teacher. BOOK REVIEWS 300 Such an engagement is not absent from the contributions in part 2, yet on the whole it is not extensive, with exceptions, such as the piece by Jennifer Bates who takes up the theme of wonder in Schmitz as well as Hegel. Kow’s opening discussion is helpful in highlighting some of the themes dear to Schmitz’s heart. These themes might be summarized in relation to a succinct statement Kow quotes from Schmitz himself concerning his own studies of the Middle Ages. What Schmitz found “most distinctive and pervasive” was “a certain luminous density.” He explains: “I want to remark the . . . medieval sense of the concrete . . . what I call a certain earthiness. . . . For medieval concreteness was a physical concreteness that made room within it for the symbolic and the vicarious; in a word, it was a sacramental concreteness” (5). Kow goes on to illustrate how this realization formed something of a background: for Schmitz’s examination of the nature of things and being, with Aquinas as a central partner in his search; for his recognition of the importance of history, with Hegel as an important point of reference; for his stress on the person, in the company of Gabriel Marcel in particular. Schmitz’s recovery of medieval realism is inseparable from the following concerns: his understanding of creation as gift; his critical encounters with contemporary thought; his weighing of the contributions of German idealism (with Aquinas never out of earshot); his exploration of the meaning of being a person, with the works of Pope John Paul II as a central interest; and finally his efforts to recover the meaning of wonder in its porosity to...