ANALYTICAL THOMISM:

A PREFATORY NOTE

Thomism, conceived of as the set of broad doctrines and style of

thought expressed in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and of those who
follow him, first emerged in the thirteenth century. Aquinas himself was
born in 1225 into a religious culture in which the dominant tradition of
speculative thought was a version of Christian neoplatonism heavily influ-
enced by St. Augustine. Early in his studies as a Dominican, however,
Aquinas came under the direction of Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus),
who was to exercise an important role in communicating his own enthu-
siasm for innovations in philosophical, theological and scientific thought.
The period was one in which works of Aristotle which had hitherto
been unknown in the West, but had been preserved in the Arab world,
were being translated into Latin. As Albert had recognised, an intellectu-
al revolution was already under way, and Aquinas advanced it further with
the benefit of translations provided by his contemporary William of
Moerbeke. By the time of his death, in 1274, Thomas d'Aquino had
produced a vast body of work spanning the range of speculative and
practical enquiries: from metaphysics and theology to ethics and politics.
So began Thomism.
Although his Christian Aristotelianism was later to be judged the
"most perfect" reconciliation of philosophy and faith, and was made, in
effect, the official system of thought of Roman Catholicism, Aquinas's
ideas have never been without critics and "improvers," from both outwith
and within the community of his fellow believers. Thomist thought first
came under attack from Bishop Tempier of Paris in 1270 and again seven
years later, though at neither point was Aquinas mentioned by name.
Other critics, particularly Franciscans who were generally loyal to Au-
gustineanism, subjected Aquinas's ideas to severe censure. It is unsur-
prising, therefore, that within ten or so years of his death a defence
movement had begun to develop. One of the first literary expressions of
this was William of Macclesfield's Correctorium corruptorii "Quaes-

"Analytical Thomism: A Prefatory Note" by John Haldane,

The Marxist, vol. 80, no. 4, pp. 485-486. Copyright © 1997, THE MONIST, La Salle, Illinois 61301.
486 JOHN HALDANE

tione" (of 1282) responding to earlier criticism by the Franciscan William

de la Mare.
Times move on, and one common effect of the passage of years is to
make people worry less about defending or promoting every last detail of
an author's system. In the sixteenth century, in what are now Spain,
Portugal and Italy, a movement developed that sought to extend the
doctrines of Aquinas in ways that would enable it to engage with a largely
post-Christian rationalism. That project, or similar ones, have been re-
established or begun throughout the last five centuries. Thus we have, in
order, Aquinas himself; late-thirteenth and fourteenth centuries'
Thomism; the "second" Thomism of sixteenth-century Iberia; and in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, European and North American neo-
Thomism; the last of these in versions and styles varying from delicate
exegesis of the thoughts of the master to avowedly syncretist statements
to the effect that Aquinas was a kind of neo-Kantian or a neo-Hegelean.
Analytical Thomism is not concerned to appropriate St. Thomas for
the advancement of any particular set of doctrines. Equally, it is not a
movement of pious exegesis. Instead, it seeks to deploy the methods and
ideas of twentieth-century philosophy—of the sort dominant within the
English-speaking world—in connection with the broad framework of
ideas introduced and developed by Aquinas. Form, matter, existence, in-
dividuation, concepts, mental utterances, good and evil all get some
treatment in the pages that follow. The collection of essays also begins and
ends with a set of metaphilosophical, or at any rate methodological, re-
flections. The first raises objections to the prejudices of much analytical
thought and suggests a common cause between analytical critics, if not
defectors and Thomist metaphysicians. The second, by contrast, raises
serious doubts about the very possibility of separating Aquinas's ideas
from their original theological framework.
The implied debate is a version of one first conducted between Fran-
ciscan and Dominican mendicants in the Middle Ages. While there is no
doubt that it is important and it will be returned to, there is also good
reason to consider various ideas as they are presented without any or only
minimal reference to their relations with theology. Aquinas is a great
thinker and for so long as he is read there will be Thomists. Analytical
Thomism is further evidence of this fact.
John Haldane
University of St. Andrews,
Fife, Scotland