Customer Reviews

On Aquinas: Foreword by Sir Anthony Kenny

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Editor Brian Davies writes in the introduction: "The lectures presented in this volume were delivered as an introduction to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. But they present a highly personal interpretation of the Saint, and contain many original and unexpected developments of his ideas."

Indeed. McCabe's conversational tone is perfect for the reader unfamiliar with the thought of the medieval theologian. In particular, I think McCabe's approach will appeal to students in science who haven't had any exposure to philosophy, but would like to get a sense of Aquinas' depth, and how his philosophy remains more than just relevant.

Herbert McCabe, O.P. was one of the great, yet often unheralded, twentieth century commentators on Aquinas. Other great thinkers who have acknowledged McCabe's positive influence on their thought include: Alasdair MacIntyre, Stanley Hauerwas, Anthony Kenny, Terry Eagleton, and Seamus Heaney. In this set of lectures, McCabe shows how Aquinas was a careful and original philosopher who argued for positions that remain defensible today (even in light of important innovations in contemporary philosophy). Above all, McCabe shows that Aquinas was neither dogmatic nor authoritarian, and grounded his philosophical positions on sound reasoning and argumentation; and thus McCabe does us the great service of helping to 'rescue' Thomas from some of today's more dogmatic and simple-minded 'Thomists'.

I wanted to add something for possible readers to make life easier for everyone: McCabe, who liked something called "radical orthodoxy", supported the ordination of women "priests", contraception, Marxism, and numerous other novelties. If you like those sorts of things and would appreciate an attempt to support them using St. Thomas, you'll probably like this book. If not, you very probably won't. My review details other problems with the book as well.

It is obvious from the title of this review that I did not care for McCabe's book. I will detail the problems of his little work and suggest some wholesome alternatives. It should also be noted that the book is just a collection of lectures given by McCabe in an extremely conversational style. He is of the analytic school of neo-Thomism and refuses to even acknowledge other schools of Thomism besides the Existential and Historical. He even goes so far as to say that no one understood St. Thomas until the 1940's and that the period before that was a dead zone. Such a view is extremely uncouth and does a grave injustice to previous scholars.

McCabe's work fails from the start with a wildly cartoonish presentation of St. Thomas's life and era. According to him, St. Thomas was made to enter the church because he would have been useless on the battlefield. The Middle ages are presented as something akin to a Monty Python skit. This view of that era, long held by many academics due to unfounded prejudice, has been corrected by historians of late. "Inventing the Middle Ages" by Norman Cantor is an enjoyable read on how these views came to be (as well as detailing where the really romantic notions of the era came from) and Regine Pernoud's "Those Terrible Middle Ages" takes on the grosser myths of the middle ages in an entertaining fashion. Other books on the subject are readily available as well, but philosophy should be the primary concern here.

Unfortunately, McCabe's errors are not only in the field of history, which, if they were confined to that subject, would be excusable. He makes a series of bizarre comments on St. Thomas's outlook and lauds him as-I do not make this up-a "proto-Protestant". McCabe also bills Thomas as a Socialist. What we are given in McCabe's book is a profoundly absurd portrait of one of the greatest thinkers in history, but St. Thomas doesn't really even seem to be the focus. Instead, the work is divided into a number of generally unconnected chapters. On occasion, he does have some worthwhile and accurate depictions of St. Thomas's thought, but the entire thrust of the work is McCabe's ideas about St. Thomas's ideas (which, as McCabe admits, are not the ideas of the historical St. Thomas!). McCabe refers to his own "Thomas" who holds ideas markedly different from the "historical" St. Thomas. In other words, he simply rewrites the angelic doctor according to his own (McCabe's) progressive ideas of what he should have said. Such a position is wishful thinking at best and exemplifies the madness that has overtaken academia.

In short, it is not really "On Aquinas" but "On McCabe" or "St. Thomas as seen by a non-solipsistic Wittgenstein (that is to say, blindly)". He makes frequent digressions that generally devolve into pushing various social agendas, such as Socialism and post-conciliar theology. Much of the work is devoted to his own personal interpretation of ethics. He also makes the egregious mistake of assigning the rationale of Vatican II to the philosophy of St. Thomas, whereas the architects of that council tended towards more modern philosophies. That is a simple fact as the number of times Aquinas is cited in that council's documents is far less than, say, Karl Rahner or Congar. As Rahner was not a Thomist but an existentialist and Hegelian, McCabe's assessment is simply incorrect. In summary, McCabe's work is a convoluted jumble of occasional facts (readily available elsewhere) blended with many tangents and personal foibles. It's nonsense, admittedly readable nonsense, but nonsense all the same. The crumbs of truth sprinkled here and there are swallowed up by the tide of absurdities. Avoid it and do not assign it to students unless you wish to poison their minds and libel one of greatest philosophers and theologians of all time. It is a crude charicature of the angelic doctor at best.

I had promised to give some alternatives, and so I shall. For a very good book on Aquinas as a person and as a thinker, G.K. Chesterton's "The Dumb Ox" is emminently readable and concise. J.P. Torrell's 2 volume work, "Saint Thomas Aquinas," is a scholar's text and quite dry, but it is very academic. For a consideration of his philosophical thought, Copleston's "Aquinas" is largely good as is Joseph Pieper's work. If one really wants to get down to brass tacks and tackle the fundamentals of St. Thomas's thought, however, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange's "Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought" is superb (be forewarned, it is challenging and requires some knowledge of systematic philosophy), and it is in print through LuLu's Ex Fontibus imprint (it can't be ordered through Amazon yet). In a word, there are better books than McCabe's and they are in print. It is my hope that this review has been informative and helpful.