BOOK REVIEWS 507 seethes with a rancor far from the Spirit whom Christians believe to be the Consoler. ANDREW HOFER, O.P. Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception Washington, D.C. Aquinas: A New Introduction. By JOHN PETERSON. New York: University Press of America, 2008. Pp. 243. $33.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-7618-4104-3. This is the latest monograph on Scholastic philosophy from the pen of John Peterson. This reviewer recalls reading Peterson’s Realism and Logical Atomism a quarter-century ago, when fewer philosophers in the general tradition of analytic philosophy were giving Scholastic philosophy much credence. Certainly times have changed, and Peterson’s latest book on Thomas Aquinas is a welcome addition to the growing list of studies utilizing what John Haldane often refers to as “Analytical Thomism.” While Aquinas certainly is not reducible to a late twentieth-century analytic philosopher, the too quickly articulated criticisms put forward against reading Aquinas through some of the lenses of analytic philosophy are often misplaced and strident. Peterson does not refer to Haldane’s category, but throughout this monograph he uses the tools and techniques of analytic philosophy and he often refers to philosophers in the analytic tradition. This book is unequally divided into six chapters, covering the general topics of change, being, truth and knowledge, universals, free will and determinism, and moral theory. While Peterson’s self-proclaimed subtitle for his study is “A New Introduction” to Thomas Aquinas, this reviewer demurs from that claim. What one finds in this study are the thoughts and reflections of a mature philosopher who has ruminated at some length, trying to sort out the meaning of difficult and deep philosophical propositions found in the manytexts and commentaries of the man from Roccasecca. What is particularly significant at the present time in Aquinas scholarship is that Peterson takes Thomas to be the first- rate philosopher that he is. Recent studies have emphasized—too much, in the mind of this reviewer—the theological aspects and presuppositions in Aquinas’s work. This book is a mild corrective to this trend. Peterson regards Aquinas as an externalist in his philosophy of mind and a realist in his ontology; this analysis is in accord with the recent work of Eleonore Stump and in conflict with some of the more recent internalist accounts of Aquinas offered by Scott MacDonald and Alvin Plantinga, among others. Moreover, Peterson affirms realism as a foundation for Aquinas’s moral theory—what this reviewer calls “ontological foundationalism”—which is in BOOK REVIEWS 508 opposition to the general trend of what is called the “New Natural Law” theory. Peterson’s philosophical dialectic seems to be directed towards philosophers of the analytic tradition from the early and mid-twentieth century like Moore, Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, and Strawson. While this conversation is not to be neglected, it might be suggested that these discussions have been going on for some time. What is needed now is a worked-out realism based on the texts of Aquinas that would be part of an ongoing dialectic with postmodernist philosophers. In discussing Aquinas in New Blackfriars a decade ago, Catherine Pickstock raised the issue of how Aquinas might be approached now that philosophical realism is moribund. Given the prevalence of this position in contemporary philosophy, an alternative query might be posed: how does this dialectic go forward when philosophical realism is almost held hostage? That Peterson affirms this philosophical realism is not to be denied; that his dialectical audience is a bit dated is worrisome. A reviewer must always be on guard lest he read a monograph through positions that the reviewer himself might have taken. Nonetheless, it is fair to say that this book disregards the recent cohort of philosophers who have been working in the vineyard of Aquinas studies. John Haldane, who is not mentioned, and Anthony Kenny, who is graced with a single reference, are two notable cases of philosophers who have generally worried about rendering Aquinas’s thought in patterns consistent with analytic philosophy. Fergus Kerr’s work too, which is illustrative of this direction, is excluded. John O’Callaghan’s philosophy-ofmind studies along with the analytic work of Brian Davies offer significant rigor...
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May 22, 2012
Brian Leahy 
Open Access
