Wisdom, Law and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics by Lawrence Dewan, O.P. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Wisdom, Law and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics. By LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. Pp. xvi+ 690. $85.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-8232-2796-9. This is a collection of twenty-seven papers written by Lawrence Dewan over a span of more than three decades. Up to now many of them have been hard to come by and have not received anything like the attention they deserve, and so Fordham Press is to be thanked for issuing this volume. It includes a bibliography and a good index of names and subjects. Regrettably there is no index of texts of St. Thomas. Also regrettable is that the notes have all been sent to the back of the book. This may make the pages more pleasing to the eye, but besides the annoyance of having to go back and forth, there is the problem that the notes are substantial and sometimes very important, and this layout risks their being overlooked. But it is a solid and handsome production, and I found very few printing errors. As for the content, the praise that I am inclined to lavish upon it might put some readers off. I shall try to keep sober. The subtitle calls the papers "essays in Thomistic ethics." This is true, but the perspective taken throughout is that of the title's first word: wisdom. These are studies in St. Thomas's sapiential approach to ethical matters, his characteristic treatment of them in light of the "highest causes." The primary focus is the treatment's metaphysical dimension. This of course is understood to be at the service of the theological; as Dewan says in the Introduction written for the volume, "the presence of Christian revelation and its truth constitutes the allenveloping context." The essays form a surprisingly coherent whole, and Dewan has chosen to arrange them systematically, under six headings. The first five go from the general to the particular-the order that Thomas himself recommends in ethics. The last is a "Methodological Postscript." The opening group of papers is called simply "Universal Considerations." In most of these the aim is to bring out some aspect of the metaphysical point of view and its controlling function in Thomas's ethical thought. Titles include "Wisdom and Human Life: The Natural and the Supernatural," "Wisdom as Foundational Ethical Theory," "St. Thomas, Metaphysics and Human Dignity" (an extended plea for hylomorphism as fundamental in establishing the human 497 498 BOOK REVIEWS person's dignity), "Truth and Happiness," and "Is Liberty the Criterion of Morals?" A passage from this last piece typifies Dewan's program: "I submit that one must move from freedom to its source in reason and from practical reason to contemplative reason if one is really to discover reason in all its amplitude as the source of 'ought' and 'ought not' for human action. It is the goal that is the principle of practical reason, and the goal is contemplation of the truth" (120). Notice that the (ultimate) goal is not moral goodness itself. Dewan is emphatic about the fact that for Thomas the moral good is not man's highest good. It is not reason's highest good. "Ethics is of secondary importance. We must not let ourselves be caught in the spell of 'the sanctity of ethics.' In some ways, this is a sort of substitute for religion.... In the face of this, we must assert the primacy of contemplation and the role of ethics as in the service of contemplation. Ethics is essential, but it is not what is best" (57). For the same reason, neither is the moral good what is most delightful (although it is delightful, pace Kant). In another paper in this group, "Is St. Thomas a Spiritual Hedonist?", Dewan carefully lays out Thomas's highly nuanced understanding of the relation between desire of the good and desire of pleasure or delight. One especially interesting result of this analysis is that the desire of happiness constitutes a condition of the very possibility of the highest moral good, charity. Charity's chief delight, of course, is not in its own inherent goodness, but in that of its chief object...