Won over to Thomism first by John Finnis, then by Ed Feser.

Thanks for the responses. This is a question I would peruse myself, but my class readings have prevented me from getting to even short articles unrelated to class, nevertheless the copy of Maritain's Scholasticism and Politics I checked out two months ago . . . (hooray for unlimited renewals!)

iwpoe wrote:

This one seems promising (anyone listened to it through?):

https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/ancient-medieval-philosophy/id382668779?ign-mpt=uo%3D8

I've started a few lectures from that series. I generally trust material from the University of Notre Dame.

Greeting, everyone -

Currently reading John D Mueller's Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element (ISI Books, 2014). He argues that, if one wishes to understand Aquinas (especially his economics), one must understand that Aquinas' thought is a synthesis of the insights of both Aristotle and Augustine. At one point he quotes Copleston on the issue: "What [Aquinas] did was to express Augustinianism in terms of Aristotelian philosophy” (Aquinas [New York: Penguin, 1991], 33, quoted in Mueller 379 fn. 50).

He raises an interesting objection to reading Aquinas as "essentially Aristotelian" in his discussion of the thought of Heinrich Pesch:

Though extraordinarily fruitful, the Thomistic revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in which Pesch participated was burdened by a neo-Thomism that viewed Aquinas as restating an essentially Aristotelian philosophy. As I have suggested, the formula of Scholastic economics, is Aristotle + Augustine = Aquinas. The neo-Thomist formula, on the other hand, is “AA economics”: Aristotle = Aquinas (= Catholic social doctrine. Which raises the obvious question: After Aristotle, why do we need Aquinas or Catholic social doctrine?). Neo-Thomism and probably Pesch himself influenced the erroneous statements in Joseph Schumpeter’s otherwise valuable History of Economic Analysis (1954) that Aquinas’s economics was “strictly Aristotelian” and that Augustine “[n]ever went into economic problems.” (Mueller 118).

As someone who grew up on Francis Schaeffer and has only been studying Thomism for the last two or three years (I can't remember when I started reading Ed's blog), is it proper to say that understanding both Augustine and Aristotle are proper for understanding Saint Thomas' thought?

Karl
14 Nov 2016

Much agreed with you on Hedwig Conrad-Martius.

Edith Stein - Einführung in die Philosophie (ESGA 8), Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person (ESGA 14), Was ist der Mensch? (ESGA 15), and Übersetzung: Des Hl. Thomas von Aquino Untersuchungen über die Wahrheit - Quaestiones disputatae de veritate 1/2 (ESGA 23/24), 

Since DanielCC has already mentioned Stein, all I have left to say is that her realist phenomenology is the reason I am no longer a Kantian agnostic. I read in an article by Mette Lebech that Antonio Calcagno is translating either ESGA 14 or 15.

Franz von Baader - "Ueber zeitliches und ewiges Leben und die Beziehung zwischen diesem und jenem", and Die Weltalter, ed. Franz Hoffman

Baader was influential for several 20th century Christian thinkers, such as Erich Przywara, Max Scheler, Edith Stein, and Herman Dooyeweerd. He did have an anti-Thomist streak to his thought (see Friesen, "The Mystical Dooyeweerd," (7) The four types of ground motives). On the other hand, I find his critique of Enlightenment thought top-notch. The essay listed above is mentioned in the editorial footnote of Stein's Investigation Concerning the State (20 - 21n40, I believe).

Herman Dooyeweerd - De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (3 vols., Amsterdam: H.J. Paris, 1935 - 6), Vernieuwing en Bezinning om het Reformatorisch Grondmotief, ed. J. A. Oosterhoff (Zutphen: Van den Brink, 1959), and every one of his Philosophia Reformata articles.

I don't know how to explain my fascination with this guy, considering his (extremely) weak understanding of Thomism and the history of philosophy. He has some interesting critiques of Husserl's notion of naive experience, and was one of the few other Christ