Jacques Maritain tells us that, apart from St. Thomas himself, his “principal teacher” in Thomism was John Poinsot. Poinsot, like Maritain and Thomas, expressly teaches that the basis of “Thomist realism” lies in the distinction between sentire, which makes no use of concepts, and phantasiari and intelligere, which together depend essentially on concepts. O’Callaghan makes no discussion of this point, resting his notion of realism rather on the widespread quo/quod fallacy, that is, the misinterpretation of concepts as the id quo of knowing. Poinsot demonstrates that this view conflates the distinct notions of species expressae and species impressae, demonstrating further that concepts as such cannot provide the cognitive basis of realism. O’Callaghan in effect suppresses the distinction betweenobjects and things in his effort to achieve the impossible. In this review, I show that it is a question of semantics vs. semiotics over which O’Callaghan stumblesin misrepresenting “Thomist realism.”

Mark Jordan’s recent book, Rewritten Theology, challenges the way in which the achievement of Thomas Aquinas has been both received and reformulated,often in order to serve particular theological and philosophical ends. It helps to unmask the often hidden presuppositions behind efforts to “police” Thomism, efforts which frequently require a revision and a rewriting of the texts of Aquinas themselves. At a time when it appears that there is a repristinization of the Thomistic “synthesis” reminiscent of Garrigou-Lagrange, this book is an auspicious reminder that such “synthesis” often comes at the cost of fidelity to theMaster in whose name it is fashioned.

Erasmus’s Adages were among his most influential works in his own time, particularly later editions, which included both Greek and Latin. In the adages included in volumes 35 and 36, Erasmus criticizes secular and ecclesiastical life, commenting on topics such as war, reform of the church and spiritual life, and the corrupting effects of the relentless pursuit of wealth and power. Erasmus aims his narrative and commentary in Paraphrase on the Gospel of Matthew (volume 45) at a general educated audience (rather than professional theologians). Together, these volumes provide readable and accurate edition of Erasmus’s work and helpful special indexes.

With a few exceptions, the relation of modern science to medieval natural philosophy is a question that has been largely shunned in the Neothomistic era, in favor of a preoccupation with establishing a “realist metaphysics” that has no need for science in the modern sense nor, for that matter, any need for natural philosophy either. Fr. Ashley’s work confronts this narrow preoccupation head-on, arguing that, in the view of St. Thomas himself, there can be no human wisdom which leaves aside scientific development. Ashley even goes so far as to point the way tothe possible development of philosophy beyond the terms of the realist / idealist framework in which Neothomism had its say.

Dwelling in the homeland would become a signature theme for the later Heidegger, pervading his work on technology, poetry, language, art, and the meaning of thinking. This question concerning the home would come to serve as a way of posing the question about continuity within his work and its relation to the decisive shifts that helped to shape his philosophical path of thinking. This article attempts to situate Heidegger both within his own work and within the history of philosophy by looking at the topic of “homecoming.”After offering a brief sketch of how North American philosophers have read Heidegger over the last twenty years, this article offers a review of four recent books that take up the question of continuity over Heidegger’s thought path. By focusing on Heidegger’s relation to medieval philosophy, the Greeks, the problem of will, and Gelassenheit, it shows how we can find a sense of unity in Heideggerian thinking by considering it against the discourse of a “first” and an “other” beginning.

Martin Rhonheimer’s The Perspective of Morality: Philosophical Foundations of Thomistic Virtue Ethics offers a bold summary of Thomistic virtue ethics, laid upon some not-so-Thomistic foundations, culminating in questionable, perhaps even dangerous, conclusions concerning actions evil in themselves. As anintroduction to ethical thought, the book covers a wide range of topics, including happiness, freedom, the nature of human actions, the moral virtues, conscience, the principles of practical reason, consequentialism, Kantian ethics, and much more. For some of these topics Rhonheimer provides a helpful summary of the ethics of Aquinas, sprinkled with thoughtful reflections for the modern age. For other topics Rhonheimer introduces questionable interpretations and developments of Aquinas, written with obscurity and lack of precision. This article provides some suggested alternatives to Rhonheimer’s account, especially with regard to the origin of the first practical principles.

Two essays relating Thomas and Whitehead have recently appeared. Coming To Be by James W. Felt, S.J., modifies Thomas by replacing his substantial form with Whitehead’s notion of subjective aim, the essencein-the-making introduced by God to guide the occasion’s act of coming into being. Felt also substitutes subjective aim for matter as the means of individuation. This is one of Whitehead’s individuating principles, although a case can be made that matter (the multiplicity of past actualities as proximate matter) is another. “God and Creativity” by Stephen T. Franklin develops a reconciliation of these two ultimates by conceiving of God as the source of creativity, and seeing creativity in terms of the Thomistic esse. In my reflections on this project I explore four alternativeswith respect to the source of creativity: (a) creativity as derived from the past; (b) creativity as inherent in the present; (c) God as the source of transitional creativity (Franklin); (d) God as the source of concrescent creativity (Ford). The last two differ with respect to being’s relation to becoming. Does being undergird becoming, or does becoming bring about being, such that apart from it there would be no being? Our theory of creation depends upon this question.

This article offers a detailed review of Filosofi italiani contemporanei, a book that presents overviews of seven contemporary Italian philosophers and philosopher/theologians—Luigi Pareyson, Emanuele Severino, Italo Mancini, Gianni Vattimo, Vincenzo Vitiello, Massimo Cacciari, and theologian Bruno Forte. Not intended as a comprehensive survey of the contemporary Italian philosophical scene, the book presents thinkers influential during the last three decades who have focused on tradition, post-metaphysical conceptions of being, origin, and principle, and the openness of philosophy to religion. Although eccentric by Anglo-American standards, the selection does not misrepresent recent Italian philosophizing, which has been more thoroughgoingly shaped by neo-scholasticism, idealism, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and nihilism than most English-language work. Open to international philosophy as well as to its own traditions, Italian thinkers work within a complex ethos that has produced significant recent philosophizing and holds great promise for the future.

The purpose of this review article is to offer a criticism of the interpretation of Duns Scotus’s conception of intelligible being that has been proposed by Michael Renemann in his book Gedanken als Wirkursachen. In the first place, the author shows that according to Scotus, for God “to produce a thing in intelligible being” and “to conceive a thing” amounts to altogether one and the same act. Esse intelligibile therefore does not have “priority of nature” with respect to “esse intellectum” or “esse repraesentatum”, contrary to Renemann’s interpretation. The distinction between Scotus’s second and third “instants of nature” consists in something else, then: the relation of reason, of which Scotus says that it is produced in the third instant, is not the relation of being actually conceived (first, because actual intellection comes already in the second instant, and second, because divine intellection, being the measure of the conceived objects, is not relative bud absolute) but it is a relation of comparison, viz. of an image to its exemplar. Next, the author shows how a misreading of two passages of Scotus’s Ordinatio misled both the Vatican editors and Renemann to create the chimaera of “verum esse secundum quid”. By way of a conclusion the author argues that Scotus’s doctrine of “esse intelligibile” does not make him any less a direct realist than Suárez, his position being quite plausible even from the point of view of common sense.