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Discussion
- Franciscan Studies
- Franciscan Institute Publications
- Volume 3, Number 4, December 1943
- pp. 409-411
- 10.1353/frc.1943.0026
- Article
- Additional Information
FR. IGNATIUS BRADY, O. F. M .:— One o f the resolutions submitted for con sideration by this twenty-fifth Jubilee Conference calls for the revision or re-writing of Turner’s History of Philosophy. The resolution reads: "In respect to the Fran ciscan Institute: . . . 3) A revision of Bishop Turner’s History of Philosophy, now in its fortieth year o f publication, is suggested as another practical task.” This, no doubt, will appear to be a rather strange suggestion. W hy should this be proposed as a task for a Franciscan school of higher studies? The explanation lies in the fact, per haps not widely known, that by the last will of Bishop Turner St. Bonaventure’s College at Allegany, New York, with which the Institute is now connected, received full rights to revise and re-edit his textbook. And with the excellent program now in force and the projected program of the coming years, the philosophical section of the Franciscan Institute would provide a most opportune setup in which to achieve the revision. As Fr. Thomas and Fr. Philotheus have told us in the course of this Con ference, the future lectors to be trained at the Institute will receive a solid training in the whole field o f philosophy and the history of philosophy. Hence the revision would not envision only a just and adequate treatment of the Franciscan School at the hands of competent writers and teachers, but would embrace all periods of history now found in the pages of Turner. That this is the fortieth year of its publication (1903-1943) is sufficient reason in itself to show that the book needs a revision. None will gainsay the statement that the last forty years have seen the discovery of a tremendous amount of new material in the field o f medieval philosophy alone, not to speak of the earlier periods or of new trends in modern thought. There is a great distance, for example, between the little monograph of M. De W ulf, Etudes sur Henri de Gand, mentioned in Turner’s History, p. 384, and the excellent work of J. Paulus, Henri de Gand, Essai sur les tendances de sa metaphysique (Vrin, Paris, 1938). From the latter we realize, as Professor Gilson points out, how important a study of Henry of Ghent’s work is for a due appreciation of Duns Scotus.1 There is a great difference likewise between the schematic, truly textbook treatment given the doctrine of St. Thomas in Turner, pp. 347-380, and the integrated picture that genuine Thomists now present of the deep metaphysical origi nality of the Angelic Doctor.2 It is almost needless to mention the work that has been done in revealing the great use Scholastic Christian philosophers made of the inherent potentialities of Greek thought and the extent to which they far surpassed their early Western forebears ;3 or the growing realization of the role played by Ploti nus and the Arabian philosophers in the formation of Christian medieval thinkers. And, to pass over the intervening centuries, let us simply point out how necessary an adequate picture of the growth of Marxian philosophy and its offspring is for the present-day student, or of the results of positivism in modern thought — and therefore of the vital importance of Scholastic philosophy today (provided it itself is vitalized).4 — These are but random examples; everyone who teaches the history of philosophy could conjure up with ease a dozen more o f the same type. In those same forty years too (or, to be more exart, in the last twenty years), the whole approach to the history o f philosophy as well as the method of dealing with individual philosophers has changed considerably. Much credit must surely be given to the late Clemens Baeumker for an organic conception of such history (with out the apriorism of a Hegelian) as "an evolution of a unified organism of ideas DISCUSSION 1. Paulus, op. cit., p. 393: M . Gilson aÆrme . . . qu'on ne comprendra bien la synthèse scotiste qu’en la rapproachant de la synthèse henricicnne et en étudiant cette dernière avec plus de soin qu'on ne...