Chapter One: Introductory

The word "philosophize" means both "to inquire whether we ought to philosophize or not" and "to devote oneself to philosophical speculation." Aristotle, Protrepticus

The story about Thales and the well is too good to be true, so it has become symbolic. Any aspiration to wisdom, any attempt to go beyond the common sense of the plain man to attain a sapiential over-view, runs the risk of reducing us to a condition inferior to that of the practical man of affairs. More often than not, the philosopher steps for the elevator only to get the shaft and in those nether regions to which he then plummets he may find himself less concerned to resume philosophizing than to consider just what it was he was doing before he fell. But that, as Aristotle observed, is yet another instance of philosophizing. It was once thought to be characteristic of man that he not only acts but reflects on his activity. There is much to be said for the view. It is surely the case that, from the dawn of philosophy, one of its recurrent problems has been the nature of philosophy itself. In the essay which follows, we shall be engaged in philosophizing of a second order, philosophizing about philosophy, about philosophizing, not in all the generality that suggests, of course, but with reference to the recent resurgence of discontent with Thomism. The discontent to which I refer has sought to take its warrant from Pope John's call for aggiornamento, for an updating and renewal within the Church. And since Thomism, for better or worse, has long been bound up with the Church's intellectual apostolate, both philosophical and theological, it is hardly surprising that Pope John's call for renewal has been taken as an invitation to reflect critically on Thomism. This critical reflection has been both good and bad -- more bad than good, I think, and I am referring to the quality of the discussion. It is into this murky area that I propose to enter now.

    Something of the disillusion of the unrequited is often evident in remarks about Thomism. With a shock that is profound but certainly not speechless, it dawns upon the incipient critic that most philosophers who lay claim to the title of Thomist are pretty miserable thinkers, not exactly electric in the classroom and painfully narrow in their interests and information. The day this realization comes can be a dark one and in its want of light a sometimes mordant, often humorous, frequently telling rhetoric is born. Categories take shape, a typology is devised. One becomes aware of Thomists of the strict observance; of calced and discalced Thomists; of Thomists who proceed as do, in another field, New Critics; of Thomists who approach the text as the focal point of a network of historical relations. There emerge to the wondering eye existential Thomists and -- though this is rather by accusation than claim -- essentialistic Thomists; there are phenomenological Thomists and analytical Thomists. And, in a classic of Timese, there are even peeping Thomists. Psychologists make a characteristic contribution and, if they don't exactly reduce Thomism to breast feeding, locate the phenomenon at a certain stage of childish intelligence.

    In this twilight of the student soul, a vast distaste begins. How can any, let alone all, of this be relevant? (Relevance becomes an absolute in the rhetoric to which we refer.) If one would speak to his contemporaries, he must take on their coloration. If Thomism is irrelevant, let us then turn to contemporary philosophy. Now this exhortation, so seemingly simple, so often made, is far more difficult to heed than is commonly recognized, for to what contemporary philosophy are we to turn? There is no such thing as contemporary philosophy, of course, at least if this is construed as some sum total of commonly held tenets of the day. There are contemporary philosophies, philosophies as numerous, one sometimes thinks, as philosophers. And it is at once an impressive and depressing thought that there may be more professional philosophers alive at this moment than have graced the planet in all previous ages together, this in a time when philosophy is under siege, both from within and without, when its territory, because of the erosion and occupation which have been going on for centuries, is next to non-existent. There seems so little left for the philosopher specifically to do; whole regions and continents of his domain have "come of age" and metamorphosed into sciences. One entire wing of contemporary philosophy may be seen as simply acquiescing to this rape and contenting itself with  tireless and all too often tedious parsing of the sentences scientists emit -- when they speak a parsable language -- while another wing seeks to reoccupy territory ceded long since to the poet. The wings of which I speak are hardly usable categories, of course. The historian of philosophy has trouble enough with past ages, but his problems become impossible when he tries to follow the moving finger of his own day. How then those blithe spirits who speak of the imperative need to recast in "existential" terms the message of the Church? If their motive is to ingratiate themselves with some putative zeitgeist, they are culpably unaware of the uncounted tribes of certified philosophers who would be left icy cold by such prestidigitation. The difficulties "scholastic terminology" is alleged to present to the "modern mind" are as nothing to the difficulties many modern minds encounter when they attempt to read an existentialist (who, if he is worth his salt, will decline the epithet). A phenomenological approach -- most often undefined -- is a variant of the existential prescription for relevance, but the most thorough and authoritative history of the phenomenological movement does not succeed, in two volumes, in discerning what precisely phenomenology or the phenomenological method is. Indeed, when as if in despair its learned author seeks to sum up his most informative work by performing a phenomenological analysis, this reader has the distinct and disappointed feeling that he might be reading a chapter of Book Delta of the Metaphysics, or Augustine, or Alcuin, or Abelard, or .... But why go on? The much touted revolutionary method is fuller of echoes than of new notes.

    Now, as I hope will emerge from the sequel, the author of the present essay is not uninterested in contemporary philosophies. Indeed, I shall argue that the very spirit of Thomism requires an endless openness to whatever philosophizing goes on; Thomism, in short, is not a closed system. But more of that anon. My present target is that fuzzy mind which, understandably and often justifiably put off by the Thomism of many texts and classrooms, bids goodbye to all that and turns with relief and uncritical admiration to a monolith which, being non-existent, can only be mythical, namely, "contemporary philosophy." It is a holy and wholesome thought to go beyond Thomism, in the sense of what St. Thomas himself knew and wrote, but it is surely axiomatic that one cannot go beyond before he has caught up. A distaste for Thomism, however understandably acquired, is not a critique of Thomism. Simply to ignore St. Thomas should be recognized for what it is, ignorance of St. Thomas, and not billed as a thought-out replacement for the role the Common Doctor of the Church has been chosen to play. For every specific and textual criticism of St. Thomas there seem to be a hundred tirades launched out of a pique so mindless one would like only to be amused were such tirades not bruited about as intelligent instances of aggiornamento. These counterfeits of argument lead to the issuance of promissory notes bearing the watermark of relevance which function as good money so long as it is not noticed that their sources are, if possible, more innocent of "contemporary philosophy" than they are of the doctrines they so cheerfully claim to go beyond.

    Needless to say, the foregoing paragraphs do not refer to those many thinkers who, whether because of or despite the literary forms assumed by responses to the Church's recommendation of St. Thomas, have absorbed the doctrine of their master and then gone beyond it in many directions. Gilson, Maritain, DeKoninck, Fabro, Pieper, Rahner, Dondeyne, Lonergan -- one feels the list should not even be begun because, no matter how lengthy, it would be incomplete. I fear that I shall never forget the young priest who, in the common room of a major seminary where I was visiting, launched without preliminary into an attack on a Maritain he had not read on a point he could not possibly have given previous thought to with a vehemence that crescendoed as his coherence decrescendoed. With a wave of his pink perspiring hand he disdainfully dismissed a lifetime of intellectual effort by a man from whom anyone can learn. In that encounter I came to suspect that humor is the only adequate defense against these latter-day Cornificians and I wish to confer on that young man the status of a paradigm for purposes of this essay. Certainly the stature of Maritain, being utterly unmeasured by that strident critic, could scarcely have been trimmed by what he said. But the simple fact is that such outbursts have become commonplace; they cannot be ignored; they should be displayed for the mirth they unwittingly evoke. What is pardonable, at least as a passing phase, in an undergraduate is reprehensible in those who may seem to the uninstructed to be speaking with something resembling authority. For it is a melancholy truth that the horizon is cluttered with the hasty triptychs of iconoclasts; that few are less flexible than they who assail dogma; that the dullest monologists hold forth on the necessity of dialogue; that a little philosophy is a dangerous thing.

    The level on which I begin, then, is one on which I hope to address myself to my paradigmatic young man. A superficial level, therefore; the level of the bull session, that inevitable refuge in the springtime of our discontent. I am not being condescending. This is the level on which most of us usually are and it is there that attacks are made on Thomism, on seminary education, on the curricula of our Catholic colleges. My point thus far has to do with the maladroitness of archers rather than the absence of a target. Thomism is open to criticism and it is open to defense, but only on the assumption that we know what it is that we are criticizing and what it is that we are defending. This is not merely a matter of definition, of course; it must be insisted upon that one can enter the discussion only if he is qualified to do so -- provided he wants to be taken seriously. Curiously enough, those who say most emphatically that they learned no philosophy in college or seminary seem to assume that that all too obvious fact equips them as critics of philosophy and philosophical curricula. But no doubt they have become Renaissance men in the interval. In an age of auto-suggestion and self-appointment, the reminder must be made that we are dealing with serious matters when we speak of the philosophy of Christians, that in this area more is required than the drive for self-expression. What is at issue cannot be decided by a plebiscite with each man having one vote whatever his credentials. In an atmosphere where adolescents in minor seminaries are urged to turn their uncluttered minds on the question of clerical celibacy, its pros and cons and doubtful future, one may seem the enemy of democratic ideals if if he reacts by saying he has not the faintest interest in the results of such fledgling efforts, adding that he is shocked by the suggestion that discussion profits in direct ratio to the incompetence of the interlocutors. One notices that the same priests who apologize for what they regard as clerical and incompetent statements on marriage themselves sail onward into discussions of conjugal intimacies which are at once embarrassingly graphic and hilariously wonderlandish.

    But let us return to an earlier, perhaps concealed, admission. Most Thomists, we said, are pretty miserable thinkers, not exactly electric in the classroom and painfully narrow in their interests and information. Say that is true. I think it is; I am a Thomist, or try to be, and I have no illusion about being unequivocally included in the "some" my "most" requires for contrast. All right. For whatever comfort it provides, we could equally well and truly say that most philosophers are pretty miserable thinkers, not exactly electric in the classroom and painfully narrow in their interests and information. Furthermore, it could be truly claimed that Thomists have a penchant for dismissing, under the guise of refuting, positions they do not comprehend, for pigeonholding real or imaginary adversaries, for racking up cheap victories over absent and unmet rivals before classrooms of perhaps impressed students.But as much can be said of most philosophers without qualification of school and persuasion. Now I am not impressed with the force of this tu quoque; the "So's your old man" argument may make sibling rivals out of just plain rivals but it doesn't redeem dear old Dad. What I want to get out of this unsettling parallel is simply this. The real or considered failure of one's philosophical seniors is not as such an argument against philosophy; indeed, seriously to make this appraisal requires that one perform, and perform well, the activity he judges to be performed badly by those he criticizes. This is the paradox of anti-philosophy, insisted on from the beginning. By the same token, if one feels that he can seriously and without rancor or superbia vitae make the judgment about Thomists stated above, the conclusion to be drawn, I should think, is not that we must bid a fond or unfond adieu to Thomas Aquinas. One would be better advised to ask what, in the species of Thomism one reacts against, has gone wrong, wherein has it failed, what ameliorations in the response to the Church's invitation that we take Thomas as our guide are possible and desirable. In a word, it seems to me, that for the Catholic the only valid criticism of the Thomism that is the going concern of a given day is the initiation of a more adequate, less flawed, more defensible Thomism. That is a claim that requires more than my hearty assurance, to be sure, and I shall be trying later to show that alternatives to this suggestion are not true options for the Catholic.

    It used to be said, some years back, and this was a serious suggestion which I don't wish to lampoon, that the ecclesiastical directives having to do with the role of St. Thomas referred to seminaries and not to Catholic colleges whose clientele are laymen. The reason for the directives, the suggestion continued, lay in the fact that seminarians had to learn the language of the Scholastic theology they would later study. Even in those days when I felt a good bit less ironic on this question than I have subsequently become, it struck me as an odd notion that what by implication was treated as an inferior philosophy might be good enough for future priests but would hardly do for the laity. (This was long before the current ascendancy of the layman.) The judgment that Scholastic philosophy is at best a vocabulary for theology at least exhibited a laudable sensitivity to the need for a precise language with which to confess our faith and reason about its contents. But, as even the proponents of this suggestion would doubtless have agreed, this is a poor defense of the traditional Catholic philosophy. I mention it now for several reasons. First, I do not regard this as the Church's real reason for preferring the philosophy of St. Thomas. Second, it serves as a preparation for our later discussion of the paradox of Thomistic terminology. Why is it that courses in Thomism have sometimes seemed very much like courses in a foreign language, a kind of church Esperanto to be learned like any jargon? That this should have come about is a profound betrayal of St. Thomas; its remedy can be found by having recourse to what I at least take to be the true philosophical significance of some current inquiries which are called phenomenological.

    Another kind of discussion that went on in more halcyon days, when it was not considered gauche to admit that the Church had indeed expressed Herself on the role of St. Thomas, had to do with the degree of the individual Catholic's obligation to abide by the Church's wish. It is only a suggestion, it used to be said, we don't have to do things that way. I was reluctant then, and I am equally reluctant now, to discuss the presence, let alone the degree, of guilt in this attitude. Perhaps some will find it indicative of galloping docility on my part, but I did find that a strange reaction and, in my simplicity, likened it to a child's acting contrary to the wishes of its parents simply because the wish had not been stated in the form of a command. Whence the delight in saying the advice was not binding and obligatory when it emanated from a source whose only concern is our welfare? And in the case of philosophy, what else could the Church wish to have fare well than our reason? Isn't it obvious that, if the Church suggests we begin the study of philosophy with St. Thomas, the first and obvious basis for this advice would be to achieve the desired term of philosophizing? Normally when parents suggest one route among many to their children, it is because that route leads more surely to the goal. To take delight in the fact that one is not prevented, under penalty, from taking the long way round or a cul-de-sac is an elation I find it difficult to share.

    It is not unlikely that what others in their turn found difficult to bear in the contrary attitude was a kind of smugness among Thomists, their suggestion that nothing awaited them over any horizon you could name but a sensation of déjà vu; horizons need a sun and surely there is nothing new beneath that. For Thomism can become a shield and an excuse: a shield against disturbing novelties and an excuse for intellectual lethargy. The opera omnia of Aquinas -- and here and there a few Thomists contacted Thomistic texts elsewhere than in citations in manuals -- were treated as if they were an encyclopedia. Somewhere in the more manipulable Parma, if not in the sandwich-board size volumes of the incomplete Leonine edition, was the answer to any question you could succeed in framing; like a lawyer preparing a brief, the dutiful Thomist was assured of his precedents; he had only to marshal the material to fit the special difficulty. When one wasn't struck by their diversity, one was assailed by the thought that Thomists constituted a kind of international Mafia or Cosa Nostra; the invitation to philosophize which, in the beginning, its attraction undiminished by our vague conception of what it was, seemed a call to a solitary and lonely enterprise suddenly became more like an enrollment in a fraternal elite. One half expected to be taught the special handclasp. I had the good fortune to do some of my graduate work at Laval University, where I studied under Charles DeKoninck. Once at a convention, after I had been teaching for a few years, a nun I had never met before, discovering my past broke into the most conspiratorial smile and whispered, "Ah, you're one of Charlie's boys!" The little wave she gave me when she left was not the secret sign, only a merry benediction, but it was clear that I had been rescued from limbo at least in virtue of a shared teacher, on  the wider scene, Aquinas too is sometimes treated as if he were the shared talisman of the initiate. Small wonder that it all appears less than enticing to many. There are not a few anthologies containing sections entitled "Marxism and Thomism." When Thomism become a party line, it is not surprising that many prefer a private number.

    In case it should need overt mention, I wish to make it clear that, with respect to Thomism, I stand no nearer the obscurantist devotees than I do the kookie critics of it. For that is simply not the option and it never was. What I shall be arguing for in what follows is not the "official view"; I am not sure what it is, or indeed if there is one, in the areas we shall explore. Thomism has become institutionalized, there is no doubt about that, and it is a matter we shall discuss. But what I shall be doing is expressing one man's response to the clear invitation of the Church that he begin the study of philosophy with St. Thomas Aquinas. That is the side of the matter I shall stress. The invitation is addressed to you and the question is, what will your response be? There is no sense thinking the matter can be dissolved by a sociological analysis of Thomism as an institution. You can't let the matter go by arch observations on how they reacted to it. If I wanted to be timely, I could say I am going to stress the existential side of the question. I speak without authority, save that of my arguments and interpretations; I am not attempting to wrap myself in the mantle of orthodoxy, a corner of which I offer you for salvific cover. But I do hope to dissipate some of the nonsense that has spread over the land. Paint as black a picture as you like of the current situation of Thomism and I feel confident a few more daubs could be added. But remember that the same thing could be done with philosophy, period. The question remains, what next?

    In recent years a distinction has been drawn between the teaching of St. Thomas and the Thomistic tradition. Gilson and Fabro, with somewhat different emphases, have insisted on the distinction, both feeling that over the centuries what St. Thomas taught tended to become obscured and distorted in the writings of his followers. This may not seem to be a serious matter, but the fact is that some followers of Thomas greet the eye within the Leonine edition of Aquinas' two summae. Cajetan's commentary on the Summa theologiae and Sylvester of Ferrara's commentary on the Summa contra gentes are printed along with the texts they comment. Furthermore, both the Cursus philosophicus and the Cursus theologicus of John of St. Thomas have taken on a privileged status as authoritative expositions of the thought of the Angelic Doctor. It is easy to appreciate the dismay felt by one who thinks these commentators have distorted the thought of Aquinas to find their writings almost as accessible and prominent as those of St. Thomas himself. He would prefer to separate Thomas from the Thomistic tradition, to rescue Aquinas from his followers. Now there can be no question of our entering into this criticism here, but there is a variation on the suggested separation that we can argue for. If it is true that the favor the Church has shown Aquinas does not transfer automatically to his friends and commentators, it is equally true that we need not equate the role Aquinas is meant to play in our intellectual life with past or present curricular interpretations and implementations of that role. Someday, no doubt, an intrepid historian will be found who will undertake to describe what has happened to St. Thomas since the time of Leo XIII. Whatever the details of that history, many  are acquainted with its ultimate expression from their student days. Manuals almost as lengthy as the Summa theologiae, written in Latin less graceful, played the role of middleman between the student and St. Thomas. To be sure, they all endeavored to proceed ad mentem Divi Thomae and to encapsulate the thought of the master. But why, one has to wonder, should Thomas have been treated as if his own as I hope will emerge from the sequel, the author of the present essay writings were lost and only some fragments in the form of quotes, shored against our ruin? The literary form of the Latin manuals insured that intellectual excitement would be kept to a minimum. How many recall somnolent aulae maximae where theses were intoned with syllogisms and prosyllogisms following hard upon? Steve Allen used to have a wild skit called Question Man; you gave him answers and he would provide the questions they resolved. Somehow such manuals did not elicit laughter. The vernacular phase that followed produced text books which did little credit to the Latin from which they were derived and sometimes outright violence to the English they professed to be. For all that, there were teachers who taught well with those manuals and there was always a surprising number of textbooks which, once one got used to them, were well done.

    I mention these things because memories of them lie behind many expressions of distaste for Thomism. Any word spoken in favor of Thomism is interpreted as a blanket defense of that mountain of manuals written ad mentem Divi Thomae, as a claim that all those boring teachers were really excellent. One gathers that for many the Latin formulae took on definitiveness and authority. as if from their very syntax, and later it came almost as a surprise to learn that some vulgarians actually claimed to be doing philosophy in some modern languages. With realization and with the diminution of surprise, it dawned on the victim of the Thomistic tradition that outside the walls the twentieth century was going on apace. But what relation to the issues of the day did his catechetical instruction in philosophy and theology have? There were philosophers in the prime of life or past it who hadn't yet found entrance to the manuals, there to be refuted in a crisp paragraph. One could remember articles entitled Aliae Sententiae Erroneae circa ... Refutantur, but the poor devils impaled there had long since gone to their their reward. One had learned where Montesquieu, Kant, Descartes, Hobbes, and Pufendorf had gone wrong, but who in the world were Heidegger and Russell and Wittgenstein? Would it really have been surprising if one had gotten the impression from those manuals that the age of philosophical variants and errors was happily past and that a world-wide consensus had been reached which was being retailed in the manual? In that case, wouldn't one's confidence in the value of those courses waver when he learned that philosophy was a going concern among his contemporaries, that there were hundred and thousands of philosophers who seemed not to have the faintest inkling of the sort of thing those manuals contained, let alone interest in it? It was just possible that philosophers of the day were doing something else than providing a new catalogue of errors for some future generation of manualists to refute. One could read Kierkegaard and sense that there was something important and interesting being said. Cast forth finally into the twentieth century where no one thinks in Latin, many felt they had been cheated and toyed with during all those years of training. They might turn to Maritain or Pieper or Gilson, of course, but these men were pointing them toward their contemporaries, these men were finding valuable contributions in authors who had never spent fifteen consecutive minutes considering Scholastic philosophy, What then? With disenchantment came rejection and with rejection came the demand for something else, for "relevance." and isn't that the meaning of aggiornamento?

    In order to understand the profundity of the distaste for Thomism, one has to recognize that what we have been describing was not the experience of a few but an all too common experience. If the picture had been only half as black as it is painted, who could blame those who were subjected to such instruction if they want to throw the whole thing overboard? Surely it is understandable if they are impatient with suggestions that the thing could be tidied up here and there and then it would be all right.They want nothing to do with the Thomistic tradition and they can hardly be expected to be other than dry-eyed at the prospect and hope that it will be eradicated. It is precisely here that I introduce my variation on the distinction Gilson and Fabro have drawn between Thomas and the Thomistic tradition.

    One who feels, as I do, that the Church's wishes with respect to the role St. Thomas should play must be abided by, one who neither wishes nor expects any alteration in those wishes, is not committed to a total or even partial defense of the Thomistic tradition as we have sketched it so blackly above. If that manual interpretation of Aquinas were the only possible response, I would join the chorus of exterminators.

    But I refuse to believe that the Church is urging us to continue what has not worked, that She is insisting on an approach to philosophy that has as it usual and predictable result a distaste for and rejection of philosophy. We must learn to distinguish between St. Thomas and the the Thomism that was too often obtained in our colleges and seminaries. The latter can be extirpated and cast forth and leave untouched the doctrine of Aquinas himself. If one response has failed, get rid of it; but this cannot be taken to mean that no other response to the stated wishes of the Church is possible.

    But now we reach the heart of the matter. When the disenchanted mind turns to contemporary philosophies, a sense of embarrassment can arise at the reminder that the Church has actually expressed Herself on the matter of philosophical instruction. One would prefer to have this mentioned sotto voce if at all, concealed as a gaucherie that should not have been committed and will presently be rectified. Who among our contemporaries gives a tinker's dam for such authoritative directives concerning approaches to philosophy? Is not philosophy by its very nature an enterprise based on reason alone? After all, Aquinas himself said that in philosophy authority is the weakest argument; it is no real argument at all, it seems, but a kind of despair of reason. How can philosophy survive except as free inquiry and how is free inquiry possible when there are encyclicals and canon laws which would restrict our philosophical freedom from the outset? All those ecclesiastical documents may seem remnants of a surpassed attitude, something to be discreetly done away with so that the Catholic, like his contemporaries, can philosophize with hindrance and a priori restriction. Here we have the source of that attitude which, depending on one's point of view, can be described as rebellious or truly free and which begs not to be told how to do philosophy. Isn't that demand reasonable? Is it necessary that the Catholic be different from his non-Catholic contemporaries in this? Rather than indoctrination in an alleged true doctrine for which others seem to have disinterest if not contempt, shouldn't there be untrammeled inquiry, a following of the argument whither it goest? Philosophy, it can be objected, does not consist of revealed truths which must be dutifully memorized and assented to because of the authority proposing them. If there are philosophical truths, they must be attained by argument, by appeal to what is accessible in principle to any man, whether or not he has religious faith. Surely that is so, and it is a fact that may easily seem incompatible with the Thomistic tradition. Moreover, it may seem to call into question the source of that tradition, namely the Church's proposing St. Thomas as a guide for our philosophizing. How can the Church dictate of such a matter if philosophy is free inquiry?

    I have tried to express an attitude that must be taken seriously into account. One of its assumptions is that, in the normal course of events, philosophy is something that is done without presuppositions; the philosopher is one who begins his task with a tabula rasa. What he seeks is evidence and argument and any reference to authority or to truths held on religious belief must be regarded as inappropriate. I shall attempt to show in the sequel that this description of philosophizing does not seem to square with the facts; nevertheless, in doing this, I shall not be out to pooh-pooh the attitude. I have been attempting to describe here.

    The plan of the essay to follow can now be given. What I am out to show is that a viable and defensible response to the Church's wishes that we take St. Thomas for our philosophical guide can be given. Enough has already been said to make it clear that I have no intention of defending an indefensible traditional response. Before attempting to allay the current fears about any sort of Thomism and before attempting to suggest a possible future Thomism, I want first to remove a more remote impediment to accepting what I have to say. My opening topic is entitled Tradition and Philosophy. However novel and original a philosopher purports to be, this is not the year One so far as philosophy goes; indeed, most philosophers who are conscious of launching a new movement go to some pains to place what they are doing in relation to what has gone on earlier in the history of philosophy. There is, in short, a sense of tradition in philosophy and we shall want to examine the concept of tradition to see what modifications it introduces into the view that philosophy is something which starts from scratch and without presuppositions.

    A second topic, narrower than the first but broader than the specific matter of Thomism, is that of the relation of faith and philosophy. the man of faith comes to philosophy with a number of its big questions already answered; if he truly believes, he has no doubt that God exists, that the soul is immortal, that the world around us is the effect of a transcendent cause. These are not the sum of his certitudes, of course, but they are sufficient to indicate that he is not likely seriously to entertain the possibility that airtight arguments could be devised which would show that for man death is the utter end, that the world is completely self-sufficient, that it is impossible that God exists. How then can the man of faith be a philosopher? It is certainly obvious that if no satisfactory answer to that question can be devised, the further question as to what kind of philosopher he might be will simply not come up.

    Finally we shall arrive once more where we began. What in an age of renewal is the role of Thomas Aquinas? This essay is written out of the conviction that the Church has been right all along in directing us to St. Thomas and that She continues to be right. However, since we have excused ourselves from defending the Thomistic tradition, we shall have to sketch the shape of a once and future Thomism. This will be a Thomism which does not exhaust itself in the reading of thirteenth-century texts, though a knowledge of those texts will be an essential component of it. This will not be a Thomism for which everything has been settled in advance; but neither will it be one for which nothing has been or can be settled philosophically. This will be a Thomism which is, by definition, open to every and all instances of philosophizing, but it will not be a dilettantish eclecticism either. The narrator of The Great Gatsby, Nick Carroway, describes himself as having been that narrowest of specialists, the well-rounded man. His new attitude is summed up in the observation that the world is much better looked at from a single window after all. For the Thomism I shall commend, Thomas himself may be the window, but what he gives access to is the universe itself, a universe populated not only by things but also by what men have tried to understand of things.

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