The Platonic Heritage of Thomism by Arthur Little, S. J. (review)

264 BOOK REVIEWS the point of their maximum intelligibility is the point of their critical insertion into an open, personal Thomism. Dr. Collins is the specialist in this sort of positive critique because he perceives that Thomas is the greatest among greats, but not one against others. Manhattan College, New York, N.Y. JAMEs V. MuLLANEY The Platonic Heritage of Thomism. By ARTHUR LITTLE, S. J. Dublin: Golden Eagle Books, 1952. Pp. 305 with index. 18s. In this work Father Little offers a very convincing study of the decisive influence of the thought of Plato in the formulation of the central doctrine of participation as the key to Thomistic metaphysics. It is held that this influence is not so readily recognized by many Thomists for the reason that St. Thomas, an acknowledged Aristotelian, radically changed what he consciously or unconsciously borrowed from Plato and expressed the latter in Aristotelian language of potency and act. Thus with some degree of truth, from different approaches, one might call practically all Thomistic philosophy Platonic and yet also say nothing is Platonic. For the purpose of this discussion the author at the outset (Preface) defines the term Platonic influence thus: " What we shall mean by Platonic elements of Thomism are those doctrines of St. Thomas that are derivable from the parts of Plato's own philosophy that were rejected or neglected by Aristotle." What Aristotle so indiscriminately rejected in the thought of his teacher was, of course, the Platonic doctrine of Ideas or Subsistent Forms, not only in its original expression, but in any modification of it. Father Little feels that the reluctance of Thomists to admit this influence (a reluctance noticeable in St. Thomas himself in view of historical circumstances under which he wrote) and to insist on an almost exclusive Aristotelian source for the Saint's philosophy is to endanger the Thomistic central doctrine of participation. Incidentally the author notes five other philosophers in Italy, Germany, and France who also arrived at the same conclusion independently of one another, namely, C. Fabro in his La Nozione metafisca di participazione secondo S. Tomaso; P. Santele, S. J., in Der Platonismus in der Erkenntnislehre des heiligen Thomas; L. B. Geiger, 0. P., in La Participation dans la Philosophie de S. Thomas; J. de Finance, S. J., Etre et Agir, and G. Isaye, S. J., in La Theorie de la Mesure. In an introductory historical section the author treats of the "battle of Aristotle " and his commentators of more than a thousand years after the Greek philosopher's death, especially the Mohammedan Averroes and the Christian Siger of Brabant, both considered heretical within their BOOK REVIEWS 265 respective faiths. Although St. Thomas had proved that a philosopher who accepted Aristotle, and even Averroes, .with critical reserve need not be a heretic, nevertheless defenders of the Stagirite, even where he taught the truth, faced great difficulty in their defense, in view of the notable Aristotelian errors which were generally evident. The author also shows that St. Thomas was sometimes more generous in his interpretation of Aristotle than the latter deserved. For example, since Aristotle insisted on the absolute or metaphysical necessity of eternal motion in the world it would follow that God as the Immovable Mover was not the efficient causes even of motion in the universe. Yet in his commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics (II, 2) St. Thomas seems to permit the conclusion that in a single passage Aristotle (Metapkysics 993b25) held for such efficiency which would be quite contradictory to his fundamental principle of eternal motion in the universe. Thus Aristotle would be shown to have exactly the same divergence from the doctrine of Creation as did Plato, both explaining the world as forms efficiently produced by God in a subject matter independent of Him. Actually the cleavage between the universe and God in Aristotle is far more complete within the exact interpretation of Aristotle's own principles. This is a position at complete variance with the fundamental doctrine of St. Thomas. In the second section we proceed to the fundamental thesis of participation as the ascent from the many to the one. In general, " to participate means to have or to be in...