Book Description
In recent years, there has been a great revival of interest in natural law thinking, one that has occurred across a range of disciplines and perspectives—from the philosophical and theological to the most contemporary debates in the area of legal and political philosophy. Much of this recent work is traced to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. To explore and evaluate the current revival, this volume brings together many of the foremost scholars on natural law. They examine the relation between Thomistic natural law and the larger philosophical and theological tradition. Furthermore, they assess the contemporary relevance of St. Thomas's natural law doctrine to current legal and political philosophy.

The book contains an extensive introduction to the topic, followed by four sections that treat various aspects of natural law thinking. The first section examines some of the philosophical foundations of natural law, especially the understanding of nature it presupposes. The second section is devoted to the theological context in which St. Thomas's natural law doctrine is situated. The essays in the third section discuss the new natural law theory espoused by Germain Grisez and John Finnis and the hotly debated question as to whether their theory is genuinely Thomistic. The final section explores several contemporary legal and political issues in light of St. Thomas's natural law thinking. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

New Insights
"Commentary on Saint Paul's Epistle to the Galatians" is a collection of lectures on Galatians by St. Thomas Aquinas during his tenure as a professor the University of Paris, as recorded by a student. The book consists of six chapters, each with 5-9 lectures.Each lecture begins with a few lines from the Epistle.He then mentions a few points about the quoted lines, frequently doing this twice in the lecture.

The subjects of the Epistle include the questions of the relative importance of faith and works and the question of the role of the Jewish Law in Salvation after the Resurrection of Christ.I found that St. Thomas' explanations opened my mind to some meanings within the Epistle that I had not previously seen.For these insights alone this book is very worthwhile. ... Read more

Book Description
This is the fifth volume in this popular series of deluxe,small hardcover books that contain a collection of hundreds of directquotes and short sayings of great saints, this book being from the writingsof St. Thomas Aquinas. His words are arranged and classified by the virtuesrepresented in the 20 decade Rosary. The Rosary mysteries - Joyful,Luminous, Sorrowful, Glorious - provide us with a mosaic of virtues for thespiritual life, a ladder for advancing in holiness and in love of God andneighbor.

The previous volumes in this series featured quotes from the writings ofSt. Therese of Lisieux, St. Francis de Sales, St. Catherine of Siena, andSt. Teresa of Avila.

These lovely little books provide a handy pocket-sized volume of hundredsof meditations for prayer and spiritual reading arranged by themes andvirtues. They are ideal for anyone to carry with them to use for dailyspiritual reading and inspiration.

Imagine spending a few minutes each day with the great St. ThomasAquinas, the Angelic Doctor, widely considered to be perhaps the greatestmind in the history of the Church. Now you can do just that with thiswell-researched little collection of the most profound and practicalinsights from St. Thomas on so many important spiritual themes. ... Read more

Book Description
Dominican Fr. Brendan Larnen and children's author Milton Lomask present the latest in the Vision Books series of saints' lives for youth. The story of St. Thomas Aquinas is one full of moving and dramatic scenes: the flaming destruction of Monte Cassino Abbey, the reception into the Dominican order of the quiet, determined young Thomas, the breath-taking escape from the donjon tower, and the striking instances of the saint's eloquence and brilliance.

In this 26th volume of the acclaimed Vision Books series of saints lives, children from ages 9 to 15 will enjoy the exciting story of the man who wrote the masterful Summa Theologica, the advisor to popes who refused ecclesiastical honor, the simple friar who shook the medieval world with his intellect. ... Read more

Book Description
Text extracted from opening pages of book: CONCERNING BEING AND ESSENCE ( Dc Ente et Essentia) BY ST. THOMAS AgUINAS Ad Fratres et Socios.* 7 - Translated from the Latin with the Addition of a Preface by GEORGE G. LECKIE D. APPLETON-CENTURY COMPANY INCORPORATED New York London relations exist in God really; in proof whereof we may consider that in relations alone is found something which is only in the apprehension. . . . This is not found in any other genus; forasmuch as other genera, as quantity and quality, in their strict and proper meaning, signify something inherent in a subject. But relation in its own proper meaning signifies only what relates to another/' Now whatever has an accidental existence in creatures, when considered as transferred to God, has a substantial existence/ 5 Summa Theologica, Qs. 27-49, CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE ix I Biographical Account of St. Thomas Aquinas . . xiii II Thomistic Anthropology and Epistemology 1. Basic Features of Doctrine xvii 2. The Order of Abstraction and the Order of Signification xxiv Concerning Being and Essence Introduction 3 CHAPTER I What the Names Being and Essence Commonly Sig nify 4 II What Essence Is in Composite Substances ... 7 III How Essence Is Disposed towards Genus and Differ ence 16 IV By What Mode Essence Exists in Separate Sub stances 21 V How Diverse Essences Exist in Diverse Things . . 28 VI How Essence, Genus and Difference Exist in Acci dents 33 BIBLIOGRAPHY 39 GLOSSARY 43 vii PREFACE IN RECENT times St. Thomas Aquinas has come to suggest problems and solutions which are of the first order of im portance for speculative thought. And I do not mean merely for the history of philosophy or for the cloister-like seclusion of the class room in mediaeval philosophy. He is something more than a mere interval in the creative advance of evolution. First principles never become obsolete, and the doctrine of St. Thomas is replete with steady and rigorous ideas which can accomplish much in clarifying the present confusion of the arts and sciences. It is therefore time that he should leave the company of Latin scholars with their forbidding array of critical apparatus, footnotes, comments upon and citations of compara tive sources, and the dead weight of the gloss which preserves the letter but destroys the spirit. This translation of the De Ente et Essentia renders into Eng lish a very compact and highly significant matrix of arguments concerning the status of essence, being and existence. As a preparation for its principal task the opusculum examines the character of incomplex terms, genus, species and difference, how they stand to each other within the defined whole of an essence and in so doing how the incomplex terms are signs which signify the nature of individuated and unified substantial wholes existing in nature independently of the human mind. In addition, when St. Thomas passes from corporeal substances as such to intelligences, man and the angels, an example is given of the rhetorical shift by which scholastic thought effected the trope from the literal to the figurative. This rhetorical shift ix x PREFACE is in itself a study in the ' superposition' of concepts or iso morphic relationships. Modern formal logic makes the excessive claim that it has accomplished the first real advance in logic since Aristotle. If indeed it has measurably multiplied the modes of predication and relational order which can be grasped by voluntary synthetic acts of thought, still it most certainly has not clarified the modes of signification ( symbolic reference) handled so astutely by the scholastics. The reader, if he is accustomed to the inorganic and loose discursiveness of modern philosophy, nay, at times its almost total lack of order and discipline, may find that it requires a special act of the will to master the concepts of St. Thomas. But if he does master even the brief content of this little work he will find himself possessed of what may be called a prolegomena to every ... Read more

Book Description
Saint Thomas Aquinas is universally recognized as one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived. His writings combine the two fundamental ideals of philosophical writing: clarity and profundity. He is a master of metaphysics and technical terminology, yet so full of both theoretical and practical wisdom. He is the master of common sense. His major work, the Summa Theologica, is timeless, but particularly important today because of his synthesis of faith and reason, revelation and philosophy, and the Biblical and the classical Greco-Roman heritages.This unique book combines selected essential philosophical passages from Thomas' Summa with footnotes and explanations by Kreeft, a popular Thomist teacher and writer. Kreeft selected those passages from Thomas that are intrinsically important, non-technical enough to be intelligible to modern readers, and most likely to be used in a class or by independent readers who want to study the Summa on their own. Kreeft's detailed footnotes explain difficult or technical passages and call attention to points of particular significance for the modern reader. This book is the most intelligent, clear, and useful access to Saint Thomas in print. Includes a glossary and an index. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Awesome!
This book is exactly what I was looking for. I'm a college freshman and one of my classes is going through St. Thomas' Summa and this book is great at explaining important details.

Not what I expected...
Sitting in a coffee shop reading a commentary on the Summa, I was approached by a St. Thomas University professor whose specialty was St. Thomas; she asked me why of all things was I reading a book on St. Thomas.I told I had enjoyed St. Augustine's City of God and how a friend with a middle name of Thomas, who's father's middle name was Thomas, and who's grandfather's middle name was Thomas told me that I should read St. Thomas if I liked Augustine so much.The professor agreed and said that St. Thomas quoted Augustine much.So, armed with information that A Summa of the Summa was the definitive collection of St Thomas' work, I put down the commentary and immediately ordered a copy from Amazon. I was surprised though to find little similarity between the authors.Augustine is a theologian, while Thomas is a philosopher/logician.Though for well-rounded thinkers, the paths of these sets of disciplines should regularly cross, they are as yet distinctly different fields of study.As an engineer with a reasonably firm grasp of logic, my preference is to pursue more enjoyable reading, which I found to be Augustine's City of God and to a lesser degree his Confessions.The Summa of the Summa is page after page of unadulterated, dry logic.Ouch!

No Better Place to Start
On the one hand, the text of the Summa can be hard for beginners, even smart ones.On the other hand, textbooks where people tell you what other people thought suck.So Kreeft gives you the main dish, the text of the Summa itself (trimmed of some extraneous material not relevant to beginners (stop complaining specialists and fanatics!)), but with his lucid notes at the bottom of the page along with helpful illustrations.The book also sports a handy glossary.So go ahead, don't be afraid, read Aquinas, but don't be afraid to buy this book and have Kreeft along as a guide.

Embracing the title of "Beginner"
Most books on Thomas Acquinas can be summarized: "He was a great man and I understand him and you never will." Kreeft diverges from academic interpretation, often designed to show off the brilliancy of the academic interpreter, by providing the reader with Acquinas' own words. He carefully provides footnotes designed to clarify language (he makes use of a literal interpretation into English) and issues. It is an effective approach, but not just for "Beginners." Many people familiar with Thomist thought will find clarification in Kreeft's brief notes and even discover, as I did, understandings they thought they had were, to one degree or another, inaccurate. As I went through this book I found that the title of "Beginner" is in many ways a good thing, especially when climbing the heights of Thomas Acquinas and Krefft is an exceptionally good guide for that climb.
Portions of the Summa have been omitted, including Objections unique to Acquinas' time and irrelevant to the modern reader and Part III of the Summa. Frankly, while recognizing the religious focus of Part III might not be immediately useful to all readers, I would have liked to seen at least some of it with Kreeft's footnotes, perhaps as a second volume.

Aquinas For Dummies
This book is good if you are new to studying Aquinas, but considering in the inreoduction Kreft suggest not skipping the objections and reading the "on the contrary" and the "I answer that" first, he certainly edits many of the articles this way.It is my opinion that Kreeft cut out too much text. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Metaphysics, published by Philosophy Education Society, Inc. on March 1, 1999. The length of the article is 733 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Philosophy of Nature of St. Thomas Aquinas: Nature, the Universe, Man.(Review) (book reviews)
Author: David Ruel Foster
Publication: The Review of Metaphysics (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 1999
Publisher: Philosophy Education Society, Inc.
Volume: 52Issue: 3Page: 674

Article Type: Book Review

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