Living Thomism

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORs: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS oF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JosEPH Publishers: Sheed & Ward, Inc., New York City VoL. IV JULY, 1942 No.3 LIVING THOMISM I. THE COMMON PHILOSOPHY 0 one, it may be imagined, would be more surprised than St. Thomas himself, at the use of the name Thomism to designate the common philosophy (philosophia communis) worked out collectively through the centuries . This perennial philosophy, however, which had a long history before St. Thomas summed it up and gave new expression to it in his own unique way, may be less inappropriately called after Thomas for a number of reasons. St. Thomas was a great innovator, courageous enough to go against the pseudoAugustinian and pseudo-Aristotelian currents of his time. This he did not by breaking with tradition but by transforming it. So selfless was his presentation of the truth of things that no personal idiosyncracies color or distort their expression. True to St. Thomas' insight that "the study of philosophy is that we may know not what men have taught but what the truth of things is," Thomism does not go back to Thomas but advances deeper into things. Not ancient or neo, but current and living, it is ready to answer the most crucial philosophical questions of today. Thomism makes its appeal not in the name 369 370 EMMANUEL CHAPMAN of St. Thomas or any of his great successors, but by reason of its adequation to the real with which it is in fertile contact including every kind of reality, material and cultural, human and divine. It is philosophically alive to all things, in their manyness and oneness, diversity and sameness, becoming and being, change and permanence, existence and essence, unity, truth, goodness, beauty. IT. NoT A SYSTEM Always open to further explorations of reality, Thomism has within itself the challenge to deepen and perfect itself. This openness to all of reality also guards it against the sin of intellectual pride of even pretending to be a finished system of philosophy . The very notion of a closed system is indeed a negation of the true nature of philosophy. Might not philosophy today have been much less discredited, had its overrationalistic system builders from Descartes through Spinoza, Hegel, and others been modest enough not to have attempted to set up rival systems of the universe? This is not to deny the constructive genius that went into the making of some of these philosophical systems long since wrecked by reality. Nor is it to fail to appreciate some of the scattered truths still clinging to these magnificent ruins, truths which Thomism can keep alive within its own organism. Like St. Thomas, who confessed the anguish he experienced for his erring adversaries, the Thomist has compassion for the philosophers who had the genius to err greatly. For error, too, plays a role in the drama of philosophy which affords its special kind of catharsis. Those engaged in the perilous adventure of sounding the ontological depths of being are warned not to take the roads which lead to blind alleys or into pitfalls. By meeting the challenge, truth can be possessed more consciously and critically. The defeat of the system builders who violated the nature of philosophy by breaking down its limits, confirms the truth that although a perfect work of reason, philosophy is only one way of knowing reality, and that even when brought to its highest aChievement it will not displace the other fundamental modes of LIVING THOMISM 371 knowing-the way of common sense, the empirical sciences, the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Philosophy does not displace , nor swallow up monopolistically, the other ways of knowing so carefully distinguished in order to be integrated properly. Sufficiently critical and aware of itself, philosophical reason does not shut itself off arbitrarily from what is either above or below it, the suprarational or infrarational, the deliverances of objective sense data charged with meaning, the vital powers, inclinations , tendencies, and even the infrasensible depths of the unconscious . Not:fixated narcissitically upon itself, a healthy reason is socialized enough to live its own life fully in conjunction with others, from the lowliest motions of...