Synopses & Reviews
The focus of this book is morals-how human beings should live their lives. For Dewan (and Thomas Aquinas) moralsis the journey of the rational creature toward God.While philosophical considerations are central here, Christian revelation and its truth constitute an enveloping context. These essays treat the history of philosophy as a development that proceeds by deepening appreciation of basic questions rather than the constant replacement of one worldview by another. Thus, the author finds forebears in Plato and Aristotle, in Augustine and Boethius, and especially in Aquinas. Written over a period of more than thirty years, the essays collected here treat both perennial issues in philosophy and such current questions as suicide as a weapon of war, the death penalty, and lying. Above all, they present the wisdom, the sapiential vision, that makes morals possible.
Review
"This book is a treasure trove of incisive and penetrating reason. Written by an acknowledged grand master of Thomistic philosophy, Fr. Lawrence Dewan, OP, this collection manifests the author's jeweler's eye for the ordering principles of being, nature, and human action, and for the judiciously framed distinction. These essays-- "St. Thomas, Our Moral Lights, and the Natural Order" especially comes to mind--, - grapple with crucial questions regarding St. Thomas's moral philosophy and theology. They should be read favorably fifty years from now, and are destined to augment the normative literature of recrudescent Thomistic renewal."
About the Author
LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P., is Professor of Medieval Philosophy and Metaphysicsat the Dominican University College in Ottawa and a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. In 2006 he received the Maritain Medal for Scholarly Excellence, conferred by the American Maritain Association.