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The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)

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St. Thomas Aquinas was not a man short of words. The depth of his thinking, and the sheer volume of his texts, makes his thinking both profound and difficult. But most of all, the aspiring student of Thomas' work may be afraid to face the daunting task of diving into the vast ocean of Thomas' words.

For them, this volume is exactly what they need.

By gathering up some of the top Aquinas scholars in the field, this volume presents the major topics of Aquinas' work in a lucid, considered, and (most importantly) easily understood way. While certainly not comprehensive (that is not its aim, and after all, the book would be another 500 pages at least), any potential Thomist scholar would be greatly served by this volume. Not only do the various authors give the reader a general overview of Thomas' thought and development, they also introduce some of the disputes going on within academic Thomistic studies. As such, this volume is a good starting point for those interested in Aquinas, be it an academic interest or an desire to learn about the life and thought of a Doctor of the Church.

Admittedly, one should not try and delve into this book with no previous background into Thomas' thought. It does presume some level of familiarity with the terminology Aquinas gained from Aristotle, as well as from the Church Fathers and others. Given this, a general background in philosophy and/or patristic/scholastic theology should suffice for most of the work.

If you want to understand Aquinas, but are just starting out, you should have this book on your shelf. Highly Recommended.

Aquinas stands along with Augustine, Duns Scotus and Ockam as the greatest Christian theologian-philosophers of the medieval period. Yet quite often Aquinas's thought is overlooked in most philosophy courses which skip from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes. This volume helps remedy the situation by giving a rigorous and up to date precis of Aquinas's philosophical thought, from his metaphysics, theory of mind and cognition, ethics, and his relation to theology. The volume is edited with contributions from Stump and Kretzmann, who themselves are leading experts on medieval philosophy.

This book is a must have for any serious student of Aquinas and medieval philosophy.

This is a nice piece. It gathers fine articles written by well-known scholars of Thomas Aquinas. The themes are very well chosen inasmuch as they go thru all the most important aspects of the philosophy of this great thinker. It gives you, at the same time, a just idea of the relation of Thomas' thought with that of Aristotle an also its independence, its uniqueness. It makes you want to dive into Thomas Aquinas' system. Don't hesitate: just buy it.

The cover states the book is for "students and nonspecialist", which I found to be not true. The best example was in the chapter Metaphysics, if you do not already understand the concepts and especially Aquinas` arguements before reading the book you will definitly not understand them after reading the book. I felt the book confuses much more than enlightens.