Opera Omnia. Tomus I. De ipsa philosophia in universum by Jacobus M. Ramírez, O. P. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 161 never really makes clear from intrinsic reasons why this progress is good and desirable, and how it corresponds to God's creative purpose. Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley Berkeley, California JOHN H. WRIGHT, s. J. Jacobus M. Ramirez, 0. P., Opera Omnia. Tomus I. De ipsa philosophia in universum. 2 vols., ed. Victorinus Rodriguez, 0. P. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. Instituto de Filosofia ' Luis Vives,' ~1)70. pp. xxxii + 881, with subject index, index of Thomistic citations, and analytical index. 900 pts. ..,..,? The two volumes here under review, which make up the first tome of the Omnia Opera of the distinguished Spanish Dominican and Thomist, Santiago Ramirez (1891-1967), are devoted to a full analysis of philosophy in general, its nature, its component parts, and its distinctive characteristics . The work was begun over fifty years ago and approximately half of the first volume has been published previously, in a series of articles appearing in La Ciencia Tomista between 1922 and 1924. The remainder of the first volume and all of the second were written between 1956 and 1958 but have not been published heretofore. Apparently Ramirez wished to revise the manuscript in its entirety before putting the work into print, and indeed set himself to this task in 1966 after he had finished his labors on behalf of the Second Vatican Council. He was able to revise only about fifteen pages before his death, however, and these now appear among the introductory pages of the first volume. The portions of the work that appeared in La Ciencia Tomista were translated into Spanish by Jesu Garcia Lopez and published at Madrid in 1954 under the title Concepto de Filosofia. The present Latin edition is therefore the first appearance of the work in its complete form. A superficial examination of the two volumes with their many distinctions and divisions could easily create the impression that this is scholasticism gone wild. The format, the concise Latin expression, the detailed articulation of the treatise into parts, chapters, and articles, and the many schematic diagrams will indeed appear formidable to philosophers who have not had considerable scholastic training. But like all of Ramirez's work, this is a truly exhaustive study of everything St. Thomas Aquinas has to say about philosophy in general, its various fields, and their interrelationships among themselves and with other areas of knowledge. Not only this, but the author ranges back into Greek antiquity for the sources 162 BOOK REVIEWS of Aquinas's thought, and then surveys in detail and with extensive quotation the entire commentatorial and manual traditions, as well as opposing schools of thought, down to the present day. The serious student cannot help but find the resulting work a treasure of information and rewarding insights that bear on recent discussions of the philosophical enterprise as a whole, even despite the fact that it eschews completely the modern idiom and any reference to the contemporary problematic. Ramirez tells us in his final attempt to reorganize the matter treated in these volumes that he long wondered how to entitle it. His first thought was to call it "The Essence of Philosophy" (Essentia philosophiae) , but this he discarded as not broad enough for his purposes, since he wished to discuss not only the nature or essence of philosophy but also its characteristic method. Then he entertained the idea of naming it " The Philosophy of Philosophy" (Philosophia ipsius philosophiae), a title which would enlarge the scope all right but at the price of being too redundant and not properly descriptive. His third choice was lengthier and more prosaic, " On Philosophy Itself, In General" (De ipsa philosophia in universum), but he finally adopted this as accurately portraying his detailed reflection on the nature, division, and method of philosophy, staying merely at a general level and not descending into special problems associated with the various fields into which the discipline is divided. It was his aim from the beginning , of course, to treat such a subject matter according to the mind and spirit of Aristotle and Aquinas, and yet to do so without excluding the thought of others. In this inspiration he acknowledges a debt to Leibniz, who...