Book Description

In this final edition of his classic study of St. Thomas Aquinas, Etienne Gilson presents the sweeping range and organic unity of Thomistic philosophical thought. Gilson demonstrates that Aquinas drew from a wide spectrum of sources in the development of his thought—from Aristotle, to the Arabic and Jewish philosophers of his time, as well as from Christian writers. What results is an insightful introduction to the thought of Aquinas and the Scholastic philosophy of the Middles Ages. Praise for The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas “As the only English version of any edition of Le Thomisme, and therefore for years a kind of manual for North American students approaching Aquinas, the book deserves recirculation. With it appears the masterful ‘Catalogue of St. Thomas’ works’ prepared by the Rev. I. T. Eschmann to accompany Shook's translation and available nowhere else. . . . Its overview of principles and conclusions in the history of the texts has not been surpassed.”—The Philosophical Quarterly “[This volume presents] L. K. Shook's English translation of the final version of the late Etienne Gilson's (1884-1978) classic overview of the Christian philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. . . . Gibson was one of the pioneers, in the early part of [the twentieth] century, of medieval philosophy in general and the work of Aquinas in particular. He sought to restore the study of Aquinas’ texts an historical sensitivity, thus rescuing them from the near canonical status accorded in the well-intentioned but inhabiting late nineteenth-century palpal revival of Thomistic studies and preserved in the so-called ‘manual theology’ of the seminar curriculum. . . . The endnotes are an invaluable resource, as is the still unsurpassed catalogue of Aquinas’ works compiled by Eschmann and included as an invaluable appendix here.”—Theological Book Review