Norman Kretzmann - Aquinas, the Cambridge Companion to

The purpose of this series is to provide expository and critical surveys of the work of major philosophers. Each volume contains specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars, together with a substantial bibliography, and will serve as a reference work for students and nonspecialists. One aim of the series is to dispel the intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult and challenging thinker.

Among the great philosophers of the Middle Ages Aquinas is unique in pursuing two apparently disparate projects. On the one hand, he developed a philosophical understanding of Christian doctrine in a fully integrated system encompassing all natural and supernatural reality. On the other hand, he was convinced that Aristotles philosophy afforded the best available philosophical component of such a system. In a relatively brief career Aquinas developed these projects in great detail and with an astonishing degree of success.

In this volume ten leading scholars introduce all the important aspects of Aquinass thought, ranging from its historical background and dependence on Greek, Islamic, and Jewish philosophy and theology, through the metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, to the philosophical approach to biblical commentary.

New readers and nonspecialists will find this the most convenient, accessible guide to Aquinas currently in print. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Aquinas.

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO

AQUINAS

OTHER VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES OF CAMBRIDGE COMPANIONS:

ARISTOTLE Edited by JONATHAN BARNES

BACON Edited by MARKKU PELTONEN

DESCARTES Edited by JOHN COTTINGHAM

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY Edited by A.A. LONG

FOUCAULT Edited by GARY GUTTING

FREUD Edited by JEROME NEU

HABERMAS Edited by STEPHEN K. WHITE

HEGEL Edited by FREDERICK C. BEISER

HOBBES Edited by TOM SORRELL

HUME Edited by DAVID FATE NORTON

HUSSERL Edited by BARRY SMITH and DAVID WOODRUFF SMITH

KANT Edited by PAUL GUYER

LEIBNIZ Edited by NICHOLAS JOLLEY

LOCKE Edited by VERE CHAPPELL

MARX Edited by TERRELL CARVER

MILL Edited by JOHN SKORUPSKI

NIETZSCHE Edited by BERND MAGNUS

PLATO Edited by RICHARD KRAUT

SARTRE Edited by CHRISTINA HOWELLS

SPINOZA Edited by DON GARRETT

WITTGENSTEIN Edited by HANS SLUGA and DAVID STERN

The Cambridge Companion to

AQUINAS

Edited by

Norman Kretzmann

Cornell University

and

Eleonore Stump

St. Louis University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Cambridge University Press 1993

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1993

Reprinted 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

ISBN-10 0-521-43195-6 hardback

ISBN-10 0-521-43769-5 paperback

Transferred to digital printing 2005

CONTRIBUTORS

JAN A. AERTSEN is Professor of Philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He is the author of Nature and Creature: Thomas Aquinass Way of Thought and of many articles on the medieval doctrine of the transcendentals.

DAVID B. BURRELL, C.S.C., holds a dual Professorship in theology and philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Aquinas: God and Action; Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas, and of many articles on medieval philosophy and theology.

MARK D. JORDAN is an Associate Professor in The Medieval Institute of the University of Notre Dame. His published studies of Aquinas include Ordering Wisdom: The Hierarchy of Philosophical Discourses in Aquinas and The Alleged Aristotelianism of Thomas Aquinas.

NORMAN KRETZMANN is Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University. He has written widely on medieval philosophy and philosophy of religion and was the principal editor of The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy

SCOTT MACDONALD is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa and the editor of Being and Goodness: The Concept of the Good in Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology His articles include Ultimate Ends in Practical Reasoning: Aquinass Aristotelian Moral Psychology and Anscombes Fallacy.

RALPH MCINERNY is Michael P. Grace Professor of Philosophy and the Director of the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame. Among his many books and articles on Aquinas are Ethica Thomistica: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and Aquinas on Human Action.

JOSEPH OWENS, C.SS.R., an emeritus member of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies at the University of Toronto, has contributed many books and articles to the study of Aquinas and of ancient and medieval philosophy, most notably The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God: Collected Papers.

PAUL E. SIGMUND is Professor of Politics at Princeton University and the author of Natural Law in Political Thought and St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics.

ELEONORE STUMP is the Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy at St. Louis University. She is the author of several books and articles in philosophy of religion and medieval philosophy, including Dialectic and Its Place in the Development of Medieval Logic and Aquinas on the Foundations of Knowledge.

JOHN F. WIPPEL is Professor of Philosophy and Academic Vice-President of the Catholic University of America. His many articles and books on medieval philosophy include Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas and Truth in Thomas Aquinas.

NORMAN KRETZMANN and ELEONORE STUMP

Introduction

I. AQUINASS REPUTATION

People familiar with Thomas Aquinass work know that he ranks among the greatest philosophers, but the number of such people is still smaller than it should be. Anthony Kenny described and gave one reason for this state of affairs more than a decade ago, when it was even more deplorable than it is now:

Aquinas is little read nowadays by professional philosophers: he has received much less attention in philosophy departments, whether in the continental tradition or in the Anglo-American one, than lesser thinkers such as Berkeley or Hegel. He has, of course, been extensively studied in theological colleges and in the philosophy courses of ecclesiastical institutions; but ecclesiastical endorsement has itself damaged Aquinass reputation with secular philosophers. But since the Second Vatican Council [196265] Aquinas seems to have lost something of the pre-eminent favour he enjoyed in ecclesiastical circles. This wind of ecclesiastical change may blow no harm to his reputation in secular circles. (Kenny 1980a, pp. 2728)

The prognosis with which Kenny ends his diagnosis was being slowly borne out even before he published it. Philosophers, especially those in the Anglo-American tradition, have been bringing Aquinas into secular philosophical discussions. The philosophers of religion among them have, understandably, taken the lead in this process. It was natural that they began looking into Aquinas because of their special interest in his philosophical theology. But Aquinass systematic approach to philosophical theology led him to include in it full treatments of virtually every area of philosophy, regarding which he always shows how in his view the existence and nature of God is related to the areas subject matter. Consequently, philosophers of religion who first read Aquinas in connection with a narrow, twentieth-century conception of their specialization have been taking up appreciative investigations of other aspects of his thought, and they are gradually being joined by philosophers who have no professional interest in religion.