Introduction to Scholastic Realism by John Peterson (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 643 9 of the religious value of studying natural theology. In any event, advanced Thomists, especially neo-Thomists influenced by Maritain, dearly will gain the most from Brady's text. Those who seek to explore their Thomism in contemporary circles and find new approaches to God would do well to find Fr. Brady's appropriately named text. Loras College Dubuque, Iowa DEAN A. KowALSKI Introduction to Scholastic Realism. By JOHN PETERSON. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. Pp. 190. $46.95 (doth). ISBN 0-8204-4370-4. Writing in a recent issue of New Blackfrairs, Catherine Pickstock posed the following question, and I think not rhetorically: "How should one respond to the death of realism, the death of the idea that thoughts in our minds can represent to us the way things actually are in the world? For such a death seems to be widely proclaimed by contemporary philosophers" (July/August 2000, p. 308). In his Introduction to Scholastic Realism, John Peterson attempts to provide a response to Pickstock's quandary by articulating a realist philosophy based, for the most part, on the writings of Thomas Aquinas. Using the techniques and meta-philosophical moves common to twentieth-century analytic philosophy, Peterson makes a strong case for understanding realism through the lenses of Scholastic philosophy. That Aquinas, following Aristotle, was unabashedly a realist in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and moral theory is not to be denied. But what is one to make of the philosophical suitability of Aquinas's version of realism at the beginning of the new millennium? Peterson provides a strong argument in favor of a Scholastic form of realism-in this book equated for the most part with Thomism-within the confines of recent analytic philosophy. While Peterson does not address the issues Pickstock raises through postmodernism, nonetheless the arguments in this book apply equally well to most forms of postmodernism. The architectonic of this book appears to be an ontological dialectic that forces the reader to come to terms with the adequacy of what Peterson refers to as Scholastic realism. Working within the structures of mid-twentieth century analytic philosophy-in fact, the philosophical shadows of G. E. Moore and Gustav Bergmann appear to hover continuously over the philosophical dialectic -Peterson engages the reader in a dialogue that confronts the philosophical weaknesses in most of the major ontological theories common to 644 BOOK REVIEWS mainstream Western philosophy. The result of the dialectic suggests, Peterson argues, that a form of Scholastic realism found in the writings of Aquinas can be justified adequately as the most perspicuous response to these major philosophical worries. Peterson articulates a version of moderate realism with a substantial form determining the set of essential properties that in turn constitute the essence in the particular thing. In many ways, this dialectic forces the metaphysician into accepting a theory of natural kinds akin philosophically to the writings of Kripke and the early Putnam. This theory of natural kinds, founded ontologically on a set of essential properties-the forma substantialis of medieval Thomism-serves in turn as the foundation for a theory of truth, a theory about the nature of facts, an analysis entailing the existence of God, a theory distinguishing knowledge from bdief, a theory of predication, the ontological underpinnings of a theory of natural law morality, an account of a theory of the person, and finally a theory of intentional logic at odds with the formalism prevalent in many contemporary logic texts. That Peterson here attempts a monumental philosophical undertaking is not to be denied. What is gratifying, however, is that for the most part the ontological dialectic in this book is persuasive and articulated in a perspicuous manner. This is not to suggest that there may not be some philosophical quibbles to which Peterson may need to respond. In some ways, this is not an easy book to read. The reader needs to bring to the philosophical table both a sense of Scholasticism and a sense of the general tenor of Nonetheless, one can read this book and emerge with a better handle on how Scholastic realism might deal with many of the problems found in twentiethcentury analytic philosophy" Throughout the text, Peterson...