Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word by Eileen C. Sweeney (review)

320 BOOK REVIEWS of a certain stripe, on the other. For those whose primary objective is to inquire into the distance between these two things, this volume will not be entirely satisfying. Even for readers of this bent, however, the volume should be of some use, owing to its careful and sympathetic attention to Suárez’s texts. Less tentatively, it should be said that philosophers who are interested in canonical problems and inclined to their formulation in contemporary terms will find Interpreting Suárez: Critical Essays a helpful and stimulating companion. ROBERT MINER Baylor University Waco, Texas Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word. By EILEEN C. SWEENEY. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012. Pp. 416. $75.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-8132-1958-5. Eileen Sweeney’s Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word provides an account of Anselm’s writings as a whole that is both daring and welcome. It puts at the forefront the notion of Anselm as a systematic thinker which is often lost when the whole corpus is not in view. Not many thinkers begin with a systematic and coherent conception of their thought and then spend the rest of their intellectual lives producing works to exemplify that system. Most discover their systems somewhere along the way, perhaps in mid-career, and then endeavor to get their later thought to express what their earlier thought had not achieved. Some work in an occasional manner and can be described as having a systematic strategy only in retrospect. How should Anselm’s corpus be classified in this regard? Sweeney finds Anselm’s works to be shaped by a basic structure of question and answer often founded on extreme polarities and near-impossible assertions and conditions. All of this serves one basic aim, she maintains: “Anselm’s corpus, from his earliest prayer to the last treatise, is a single project in which knowledge of self and God are inextricably linked. . . . What links the parts of Anselm’s corpus is the union they strive for with such intense desire, the union of soul with God. The construction of the problems and solutions that describe the distance and effect the reunion are carried over into all of Anselm’s speculative work, not just the ones engaged with the nature of God, but also logical writings, the dialogues on truth and free choice, and the letters” (7-8). BOOK REVIEWS 321 Sweeney begins her book with an introductory chapter entitled “The Problem with Anselm: The Coincidence of Opposites.” The opposites are, first, Anselm’s confidence in arguments and the rationality of his beliefs, and second, his affective piety and spirituality. Her outline of the subsequent chapters captures the scope of her achievement. Chapter 1, “The Prayers: Persuasion and the Narrative of Longing” (13-37), focuses on the narrative structure of Anselm’s prayers. She argues that “the prayers uniformly begin in the depths of sin, but they work toward the point at which the sins that separate Anselm from an infinitely unreachable God are forgiven by a God whose very transcendence transforms the sinner, who is absolutely other than God, into an intimate” (10). The second chapter, “The Letters: Physical Separation and Spiritual Union” (38-73), takes up Anselm’s letters, “which like the prayers, begin in anguish over separation, this time of beloved friends from each other, expressing intensely passionate, unsatisfiable longings” (10). Sweeney describes the specific character of the letters as follows: “While the grace and goodness of God overcomes the gap between Anselm and the satisfaction of his desire in his prayers, in the letters Anselm achieves union by foregoing physical closeness for spiritual communion. Anselm redescribes the intimate physical presence he desires and is entreated to provide as spiritual communion with and through God. Thus, the letters move from the fallen language of sorrow at physical separation and anguish at human conflict to the redeemed language of perfect union in the spiritual community of those dedicated to God and to each other united in God” (ibid.). In chapter 3, “Grammar and Logic: Linguistic Analysis, Method, and Pedagogy” (74-109), Sweeney offers an assessment of Anselm’s logical, grammatical...