Mortimer Jerome Adler - Saint Thomas and the Gentiles (Aquinas Lecture 2)
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Saint Thomas and the Gentiles Aquinas Lecture ; 1938
author
:
Adler, Mortimer J.
publisher
:
Marquette University Press
isbn10 | asin
:
087462102X
print isbn13
:
9780874621020
ebook isbn13
:
9780585306254
language
:
English
subject
Thomas,--Aquinas, Saint,--1225?-1274, Learning and scholarship, Wisdom.
publication date
:
1988
lcc
:
B765.T54M23 1988eb
ddc
:
922.245
subject
:
Thomas,--Aquinas, Saint,--1225?-1274, Learning and scholarship, Wisdom.
Page i
St. Thomas and the Gentiles
Page ii
PERMISSU SUPERIORUM
Page iii
The Aquinas Lecture, 1938
Saint Thomas and the Gentiles
Under the Auspices of the Aristotelian Society of Marquette University
by Mortimer J. Adler
FIFTH PRINTING
MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY PRESS MILWAUKEE 1948
Page iv
COPYRIGHT, 1938 BY THE ARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY OF MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY
First Printing March, 1938 Second Printing June, 1938 Third Printing August, 1943 Fourth Printing October 1948 Fifth Printing June, 1988
PRINTED AT THE MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY PRESS MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN
Page v
Prefatory
The Aristotelian Society of Marquette University each year invites a scholar to deliver a lecture in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas. Customarily delivered on the Sunday nearest March 7th, the feast day of the Society's patron saint, these lectures are called the Aquinas Lectures.
This year the Aristotelian Society has the pleasure of recording the lecture of Dr. Mortimer J. Adler, associate professor of the philosophy of law in the University of Chicago since 1930. Dr. Adler was instructor in psychology in Columbia University, from 1923 to 1929, assistant director of the People's Institute, New York City during 1928 and 1929, and has been visiting lecturer at St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland since 1937. As
Page vi
a member of the Thomistic Institute of America and of many other learned societies he has forcefully defended the cause of Thomistic philosophy. Among his publications are Dialetic (New York, 1927), Crime, Law and Social Science, in collaboration with Prof. Jerome Michael (New York, 1933), Art and Prudence (New York, 1937), and What Man Has Made of Man (New York, 1937). To this list the Aristotelian Society has the honor of adding St. Thomas and the Gentiles.
Page 1
I.
In the sixty years which have elapsed since the encyclical Aeterni Patris, the study and teaching of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas have been pursued with increasing vigor. In works of exposition and commentary, in polemical tracts against adversaries, in countless panegyrics which have rivalled each other to reach the summit of praise, and even in attempts, necessarily fewer in number, to supplement or extend the doctrine itself, ample evidence has been given of the vitality of a philosophy which dared to be called perennial. It would be pleasant for us to celebrate the name and work of St. Thomas by rejoicing in these manifestations. We could do no more than repeat, of course, what has already been often repeated by voices more eloquent than ours and speaking from a fuller vision than
Page 2
we have attained. If I depart from this procedure, it is not from a wish to avoid reiteration, for that necessarily occurs when the members of a community express to each other their common sentiments and devotions. It is rather because I cannot help thinking of the larger company of men who have heard the clearest voices, but have not heeded. If they have read St. Thomas or what has been written in his tradition, they have not discovered why it is that we rejoice. On the contrary, the praises which might arise here would not re-echo in other corridors of learning. We would be deaf if we did not hear a reverberation of a different sort, an answering cry of dissidence, almost vituperation. Let us forego, then, the pleasure of congratulating ourselves on this anniversary of the teacher to whom we hold all men should be disciples, to ask the unpleasant question whether our discipleship has been at fault.
I would first be sure that you are acquainted with the facts which cause me to invite you to join in this course of self-exami-
Page 3
nation. Otherwise, failing to see the ground for it, you might dismiss my concern as unduly morose. I am, perhaps, more conversant with such facts than others, because I come from a university where the feeling against St. Thomas is out of all proportion to the effort which has been made in his behalf. This is not an isolated phenomenon. Wherever in the secular universities there has been a revival of interest in mediaeval philosophy, leading inevitably to an enthusiasm for St. Thomas, it was not long before another renaissance occurred, a revival of the cries against scholasticism, authoritarian dogmatism, the anti-scientific spirit, metaphysical verbalism, an out-moded formal logic, and a puerile subservience to antiquity, especially the scheme of Aristotelian categories. We must not be allowed to forget that all the values most prized by modern men were won by a struggle against the decadent scholasticism of the 15th and 16th centuries. The sudden threat of Thomism quite naturally awakens the passions which preceded the birth of modern
Page 4
times. If we are surprised at the vehemence with which the spirit of the Renaissance reasserts itself to prevent any backsliding, it can only be because we had not understood our allegiance to St. Thomas as a signal for backsliding. In the name of St. Thomas we should be even more opposed than Francis Bacon, David Hume and the rest to the corrupt scholastics of the Renaissance, with their logic-chopping and their senseless opposition to the findings of scientific research. It is we, not St. Thomas, who have been misunderstood, and the fault is ours. We must not permit ourselves to suppose that the contemporary reaction has been occasioned by a fresh reading of the Thomistic texts. They along with other great works of ancient and mediaeval philsophy are read less, and less carefully, by our contemporaries than they were by the founders of modern thought. No, the reaction has been caused by queer persons, like myself, who have become acquainted with the wisdom of St. Thomas and, with almost romantic excitement, have been unguarded in their
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