Thomistic and Anti-Thomistic Catholic Philosophers/Theologians

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newenglandsun

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Hi, I’m hoping to find a list of Catholic philosophers/theologians who are either Thomistic or anti-Thomistic.

All I know right now on the Thomistic side is F.C. Copleston and Etienne Gilson.

All I know right now on the anti-Thomistic side is Thomas Flint.

Any more?
 
For Thomists, I would also include Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Edward Feser, and David Oderberg.
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by anti-Thomist, though I know Sir Anthony Kenny has written a fair amount on Thomism coming from the position of an agnostic.
 
ccmnxc said:
For Thomists, I would also include Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Edward Feser, and David Oderberg.
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by anti-Thomist, though I know Sir Anthony Kenny has written a fair amount on Thomism coming from the position of an agnostic.
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Mostly to the divine sovereignty positions.
 
newenglandsun said:
Hi, I’m hoping to find a list of Catholic philosophers/theologians who are either Thomistic or anti-Thomistic.

All I know right now on the Thomistic side is F.C. Copleston and Etienne Gilson.

All I know right now on the anti-Thomistic side is Thomas Flint.

Any more?
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Why are you compiling this list ?

Linus2nd
 
Linusthe2nd said:
Why are you compiling this list ?

Linus2nd
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Future studies. I don’t know when I’ll get to it though. I’d like to make a well-informed decision before I dive into Thomism or anti-Thomism though.
 
newenglandsun said:
Future studies. I don’t know when I’ll get to it though. I’d like to make a well-informed decision before I dive into Thomism or anti-Thomism though.
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For an introduction to Thomistic thought the best book would be Aquinas by Edward Feser. You should also throughly acquaint yourself with his blog at
edwardfeser.blogspot.com/. He usually posts about every two weeks or so. Familiarize yourself with his acrchives as well. You will find there the best pro and anti Thomistic thought, current and past. He is coming out with a new book soon which should be very interesting as well. It is important to get a firm grounding in Thomistic thought before heading into those who disagree with him. And this will take you at least a year or two. If you try to avoid making a firm foundation in Thomistic thought, dealing with his opponents will cause great confusion of mind.

Linus2nd
 
Linusthe2nd said:
For an introduction to Thomistic thought the best book would be Aquinas by Edward Feser. You should also throughly acquaint yourself with his blog at
edwardfeser.blogspot.com/. He usually posts about every two weeks or so. Familiarize yourself with his acrchives as well. You will find there the best pro and anti Thomistic thought, current and past. He is coming out with a new book soon which should be very interesting as well. It is important to get a firm grounding in Thomistic thought before heading into those who disagree with him. And this will take you at least a year or two. If you try to avoid making a firm foundation in Thomistic thought, dealing with his opponents will cause great confusion of mind.

Linus2nd
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Excellent. I think I’ll also try and get some more Etienne Gilson as well.
 
Hello, newenglandsun,

Keep in mind that even among Thomists there are different schools. Fr. Garrigou-Legrange, O.P., has a very different outlook from Etienne Gilson. Both were trying to be faithful to the Church and to the Master, but have different interpretations.

Here is a very incomplete list, from the top of my head.🙂 Caveat: the classification is very much debatable!

“Classical” Thomists (who follow largely the interpretive school begun by Thomas de Vio, also known as Cajetan, and Francesco Silvestri):

Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.
Tomas Tyn, O.P. (Don’t know if his work has been published in English.)
Jacques Maritain (with some rapprochement to the next group, below.)
Joseph Gredt, O.S.B. (Don’t think he has anything published in English, however.)
Louis-Bertrand Geiger, O.P.
John Wippel
Jan Aertsen
Fran O’Rourke
William Norris Clarke, S.J.

Thomists who, while follwing Thomas closely, usually do not follow Cajetan’s interpretations:
Etienne Gilson
Cornelio Fabro, C.S.S.
Josef de Finance, S.J. (with some affinity for the so-called transcendental Thomists; again, I don’t think he has a lot published in English).

I am not sure where to classify Karol Wojtila (Bl. John Paul II), because his fundamental principles are basically of the second school, but his method and writing style are very different.

I include here some of the so-called “transcendental Thomists,” who attempt to justify Thomas’ philosophy starting with the principles of Kant or Heidegger:

Joseph Marechal, S.J. (I don’t know if there are any English editions.)
Johannes Baptist Lotz, S.J. (I don’t know if there are any English editions.)
(Karl Rahner, S.J., is in this tradition, but I would recommend his work only with certain reservations.)

As regards non-Thomistic philosophers/theologians:

The following three are not Thomistic in their method, but I wouldn’t call them anti-Thomistic either:

Josef Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) (Very recommendable as a theologian, all around, and not just because he was Pope :).)
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Henri de Lubac

Those who are more sharply non-Thomistic:

Maurice Blondel (from the 19th Century)
Jean-Luc Marion (still alive)

I am sure there are a lot of others, but that is all I can think of right now. Hope this helps!
 
James Ross was a rather innovative, relatively recent Catholic thinker. I would call him an “analytic scholastic.” He makes use of both Aquinas and Scotus, but is also sometimes critical of both.

For instance, he believed that Scotus’s modal arguments for God’s existence improved upon Aquinas’s (in the sense that Scotus’s rely on weaker principles). (They are also better than, say, Alvin Plantinga’s in my opinion, since they avoid some controversial elements: they don’t underspecify what a “maximally perfect being” would be, and they do not make use of the controversial axioms for iterated modalities, like “possibly necessary”.) He believed that Aquinas’s has the best account of omnipotence (he makes the case that it is difficult to state an account of omnipotence in terms of “doing,” ie. that God can “do everything logically possible”–while he thinks that there are advantages to stating it in terms of having states of affairs “under God’s power”).

He argued that the principle of sufficient reason (and similar scholastic causal principles) had to be false because it/they entail(s) modal fatalism. To that end, he developed a weaker “principle of hetero-explicability” rooted in Scotus. He also tends toward voluntarism with regard to God’s reasons for creating.

His Philosophical Theology is challenging but worthwhile. (I think his position on the principle of sufficient reason is too strong, though. Alex Pruss makes the case in The Principle of Sufficient Reason that the principle doesn’t in fact entail modal fatalism, since, given an otherwise explained being, a free choice is itself a sufficient account of an action.)

Some of Ross’s other works are very good as well. His book Thought and World is a fantastic articulation of moderate realism, derived from that of Aquinas but eminently conversant with contemporary philosophy. Ross has lots of good examples from materials science etc.

I have not read it yet, but he also wrote a book on analogy that looks quite good.
 
This is an old post so I don’t know if anyone is still listening, but I can’t believe that no one has mentioned Josef Pieper. Pieper is one of the most influential Thomistic philosophers out there. Last I knew his writings were (in part) required reading for all seminarians.
 
newenglandsun said:
Hi, I’m hoping to find a list of Catholic philosophers/theologians who are either Thomistic or anti-Thomistic.

All I know right now on the Thomistic side is F.C. Copleston and Etienne Gilson.

All I know right now on the anti-Thomistic side is Thomas Flint.

Any more?
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Rickaby SJ cannot be excluded from the Thomist side…

However I think your quest is flawed from the start.
Binary positions rarely end well or go anywhere.

Theologians may agree or disagree based on the topic in question.

Further, even those pro-Aquinas would be the first to say there are different “schools” of Aquinas who argue amongst themselves as to what Aquinas meant not just on certain topics but in his very systemic approach (eg manualists, Suarez, Gilson, etc).
 
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