Brief Notices

BRIEF NOTICES Neo-Platonism and the Ethics of St. Augustine. By REv. BRUNO SWITALSKI , C. SS. R., ~- T. D. Krol Brothers. Chicago, Til., 1946. Vol. 1: Plotinus and the Ethics of St. Augustine. Pp. 142. Fr. Switalski presents us with an English translation of his dissertation presented at the .University of Warsaw in 1938 which incorporates subsequent research on Plotinus. He promises to supplement this work with a second volume on the influence of Porphyry, the greatest disciple of Plotinus, on Augustine's moral viewpoints, and thus make a significant and valuable contribution to the important and complicated problem of the relationship of Christianity to the contemporary Hellenistic culture. He neatly delimits the problem by comparing the contributions of the most prominent representatives of the two cultures, Augustine and Plotinus, in respect to the norms of morality, eudemonology, aseetical and mystical life; and, finally, in their treatment of the problems of virtue and of evil, aretaics and ponerology. In the first part of his work, he sketches with broad but competent strokes the main features and the sources, pagan and Christian, of Plotinus' ethics; and he attempts to sift out the ethical teachings of St. Augustine from their religious and dogmatic matrix and present them as an ethical system. With regard to Plotinus and his sources, Fr. Switalski shows a wide acquaintance with the voluminous literature, and treads his way with calm assurance through the maze of conflicting interpretations of Plotinus. By proceeding from an ontological foundation, the Plotinian discussion of happiness makes the sublimity of the " way of purification " and the degrees of virtue intelligible to us. However, by introducing a new element-that which is beyond the intellect and inaccessible to reason-Plotinus broke with the rationalistic and utilitarian ethics of his Hellenistic forebears, and placed a strain on the imagination which was too great for it, leading in his disciples to mythology, superstition, and other excesses. For his exposition of the thought of St. Augustine, Fr. Switalski does well to depend on Portalie in the Dictionnaire Theol. Catholique, and concludes to the strongly theological character of St. Augustine's ethics. In the second part of his work, Fr. Switalski surveys St. Augustine to find the places where he implicitly or explicitly depends on Plotinus. But first he shows the influence of the Enneads on the conversion of Augustine from Manichean materialism, in that they prepared his mind for the acceptance of the sublime doctrines of the Incarnation and Redemption. St. us BRIEF NOTICES 129 Augustine exalts and praises the Platonists above all other philosophers, and regards Plotinus as the greatest of all Platonists. However, Fr. Switalski qualifies the conclusion of Portalie that no other philosophy gave any real impulse to Augustine's thought. He admits other influences although none so predominant as that of Plotinus, whom he equates, at least in the early period before 400, with the " Platonici " and the " Libri Platonicorum." He finds literal citations from Plotinus in the City of God and in the Confessions ; similarity of ideas in C. Academicos, De Beata Vita, De Ordine, Soliloquia, De Musica, and in the works against the Manichees. Fr. Switalski , nevertheless, very prudently looks on the argument from similarity of ideas with reserve, since truth is accessible to the human mind without external influence, and St. Augustine was gifted with a brilliant intellect. He concludes his scholarly and balanced study,".... Augustine does not blindly follow the Neoplatonic philosopher but judges his doctrine in the light of the authority of the Church . . . . he selected only those ideas from the writings of Plotinus which were not opposed to Christian revelation." Some Illustrations of St. Thomas' Development of the Wisdom of St. Augustine. The Mu Nu Sigma Lecture 1946. By VERY REv. GERALD B. PHELAN, Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S. C. The Argus Press, Chicago, ill., 1946. Pp. 56. This slender volume is a lecture delivered at Mundelein College, in which Dr Phelan proposes to show without in any way detracting from his glory, how much St. Thomas owes to St. Augustine. The core of the lecture is the highly unconventional notion of wisdom which is applied to the teaching of St. Augustine. " St. Augustine's wisdom...