John W. Carlson's "Words of Wisdom": Bibliography

Samuel Johnson inaugurated the age of the English dictionary, or "word-book" as he would say, and as it becomes easier and easier to mechanically reproduce texts, there are more dictionaries now than ever. There's nothing like a computer to help the book industry, right?

Given the plethora of dictionaries, one might wonder: do we really need another? Why purchase John W. Carlson's Words of Wisdom? Perhaps the publisher was hoping a catchy title would signal the book's pretensions: "This is no ordinary philosophic dictionary," the title seems to say, "rather, this dictionary cares about wisdom and tries to foster it."  Ambitious. Does it succeed?

Regarding the bibliography, the cut-and-paste powers of the computer were well-employed here. There is little one couldn't find in the bibliography of a contemporary Thomistic-oriented dissertation. Furthermore, as was pointed out earlier in this blog, the perspective of these bibliographies is rather limited. Here are the divisions with my thoughts on them.

• Section I, Works by St. Thomas Aquinas in English. This confirms what the title of the book implies: that the target buyer-peruser of this work is an under-educated student or professor of philosophy or theology -- the sort who skims a book in order to have more time to mention it while discussing politics over a couple of beers. When a bibliography lists the works of an author only in translation, it implies that the reader would not or could not make use of the author's works in their original language. In other words, it assumes that scholars will probably not find the bibliography (implied: the dictionary) valuable.
• Section II, Recent Commentaries and Elaborations on Perennial Themes. This section could also be entitled, "Books I Like That You Should Consider Reading." The books in this section are mostly by Thomists from 1940 onward (e.g., Maritian, Lonergan, Giles Emery), along with personalists (e.g., Wojtyla, von Hildebrand), and a handful of others who, for some reason, count as the lucky few (e.g., Henri de Lubac, John Milbank). There is at least one notable exception to what I have said. This section, as a good dictionary shouldn't, stretches the meaning of a term. How could the works of John [Poinsot] of St. Thomas (included here) count as "contemporary" and on perennial themes, but the works of Friedrich Nietzsche (included below) counted as either not contemporary or not on perennial themes? A single explanation suggests itself: Carlson misuses words to fit his own purposes: he includes John of St. Thomas in Section II because he agrees with that way of thinking, while he sticks Nietzsche in Section III because the German fellow is disagreeable. Thus, a brief dictionary of Carlson's language would be as follows. "Perennial theme" = "Whatever Carlson thinks is true" = an amalgam of Poinsotian Thomism mixed with personalism and other contemporary (mostly-) Catholic thought for good measure.
• Section III, Works by Other Authors Cited in This Dictionary. One of the chief jobs of a good dictionary is to make clear distinctions. If a dictionary of flora and fauna does not clarify the difference between an apple and an Adam's apple, then it is better used to prop up my desk rather than to raise my understanding. In this case, Carlson makes a division in his bibliography that manifests what books are worthwhile in his judgment. They are, in descending order: 1st, the works of Thomas in English. 2nd, the works of people who agree with or expound on Thomas, or who are pretty much good chaps whose books are still in print. 3rd, everyone else. Since they are neither contemporary nor Thomists, they count as "other." This implies they are lesser (otherwise, why not include studies on them in the Section II?). Although Carlson gestures toward Albert the Great, Aristotle, Augustine, Cicero, Plato, Scotus, and Suarez, among others, his entries rely far more on the authors in Section II of his bibliography than the authors in Section III.

In sum, the bibliography gives evidence of what the title implies: this is not a scholarly dictionary. It seems to me that the best feature of Carlson's dictionary is its bibliographic introduction. This helps readers find other dictionaries that will probably be more helpful.

My next post on this book will examine the dictionary entries themselves.

Epistemology Prior to Metaphysics

[I]f I am concerned to meet Kant's demands upon any future metaphysics, if I am impressed by Hume's argument that the central science is the empirical science of man, if I respond to Descartes' aspiration for bold yet methodical initiative, these themes from a past that is over are but overtones in the problem that is our existential situation. If its confusion is to be replaced by intelligible order and its violence by reasonable affirmation, then the nucleus from which this process can begin must include an acknowledgment of detached inquiry and disinterested reflection, a rigorous unfolding of the implications of that acknowledgment, an acceptance not only of the metaphysics that constitutes the unfolding but also of the method that guides it between the Charybdis of asserting too little and the Scylla of asserting too much.

--Bernard Lonergan, Insight, Chapter 16.

Every attempt at metaphysical synthesis, especially when it deals with the complex riches of knowledge and of the mind, must distinguish in order to unite. What is thus incumbent upon a reflexive and critical philosophy is above all to discriminate and discern the degrees of knowing, its organization and its internal differentiations.

Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, Preface

Lonergrin

That’s not a typo but a reference to an inside joke with M. Sullivan going back to our Newman bookstore days. Oldest friend, bitterest foe, here’s to you, buddy.

I happened to pick up Lonergan’s Verbum articles the other day, which caused me to think back to my early undergraduate days. I was a brash young Seventh-Day-Adventist soon to be entangled in the coils of popery, and was just getting into philosophy. And yes, I was a die-hard Thomist. The first book of philosophy I read was that James F. Anderson anthology of Thomistic metaphysics (of which I now possess an autographed copy). This was followed by Aristotle’s Categories, then Thomas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, followed by a simultaneous read of Maritain’s Degrees of Knowledge and Lonergan’s Insight.

As I’ve been reading Scotus on matters Trinitarian of late, I decided to flip through Lonergan’s Verbum articles, and see if he had any opinions on say, the formal distinction. In the process I came across a rather startling phrase. Now, those that know me know that I have a knack for picking out shocking phrases at random (indeed, even my girlfriend now knows this feature of mine, after I skimmed through a lengthy bio of Cranmer over the weekend); but this was not one of those times. Scotus had a rather large entry in the index. So here is the quote:

“Kant, whose critique was not of the pure reason but of the human mind as conceived by Scotus, repeatedly affirmed that our intellects are purely discursive, that all intuition is sensible (p. 39-40 CW 2).”

Obviously its the first part of the sentence that’s the shocker, but seemed fairer to include the second. Lonergan goes on in a lengthy footnote to show Scotus’s mechanical view of cognition, rejection of “insight” into the phantasm, a “nexus” of concepts (or may just a concept; I can’t tell what the subject of Lonergan’s sentence is here) not being accidents in the intellect, and so on. Most of this doesn’t really matter, as Lonergan references a long series of passages from the spurious De modis significandi (known to be by Thomas of Erfurt but maybe word never got around; it fooled Heidegger as well), and after all, Scotist scholarship was in its infancy at the time and Scotus wasn’t the primary object of his book. It is an interesting area for research; Boulnois has a book with a promising title, but he seemed more concerned at the end (the part I read) to show how the 13th century shifted into onto-theology which runs through Leibniz and into Kant. But he didn't seem to make the further claims of say Marion or "RO" that onto-thelogy=modernity=bad. Also, Kant probably never read Scotus; Boulnois suggests that it was Suarez's metaphysical disputations that mediated scholastic thought to the early moderns.