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Vagabond of Letters

2 and 4 stars

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2020

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I never knew Aquinas was of imperial blood. However, there is little of Thomas in this book, which is unsurprising given that so little is known of him besides his literary output, in which he is invisible and would remain so even if not placed next to such blinding fusion-fire of reason, logic, and truth.

Notes scribbled while reading:

<i>Pleasure to read; well styled; spoiled by rants about a determined God (thwarting his will) and comparisons of calvinism and jansenism to Manichaeanism - in fact different subspecies. Also anticapitalistic and not much about Thomas.

Better entitled 'Intellectual Vignettes of the Middle Ages and Renaissance of the 12th Century'

Dislikes and slurs augustinians, and pits Aquinas against them, even though he was an Augustinian in soteriology and predestination.</i>

Christopher (o.d.c.)

Absolutely brilliant, as far as it goes.

Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2015

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Chesterton himself is very modest about writing about a saint and philosopher without going very deeply into either philosophy or theology:

"... It is the fate of this sketch to be sketchy about philosophy, scanty or rather empty about theology, and to achieve little more than a decent silence on the subject of sanctity. And yet it must none the less be the recurrent burden of this little book, to which it must return with some monotony, that in this story the philosophy did depend on the theology, and the theology did depend on the sanctity. In other words, it must repeat the first fact, which was emphasised in the first chapter: that this great intellectual creation was a Christian and Catholic creation and cannot be understood as anything else."

Which is why I give it four stars instead of five. GKC, for all his beef with Macaulay, really does write like a Tory, or Catholic Macaulay, namely with brilliance, but sometimes without seriousness:

"... Against all this the philosophy of St. Thomas stands founded on the universal common conviction that eggs are eggs. The Hegelian may say that an egg is really a hen, because it is a part of an endless process of Becoming; the Berkeleian may hold that poached eggs only exist as a dream exists; since it is quite as easy to call the dream the cause of the eggs as the eggs the cause of the dream; the Pragmatist may believe that we get the best out of scrambled eggs by forgetting that they ever were eggs, and only remembering the scramble. [...]The Thomist stands in the broad daylight of the brotherhood of men, in their common consciousness that eggs are not hens or dreams or mere practical assumptions; but things attested by the Authority of the Senses, which is from God."

... but this sort of fooling is not typical. For the most part, the paradoxes and contrarian views are genuinely thought provoking, and if the book only hints at philosophy, it deals with medieval history, comparative religion and modern conventional wisdom (which hasn't changed all that much since 1933) very well. At any rate, this is a point still worth making:

"... He may not be a Liberal by the extreme demands of the moderns for we seem always to mean by the moderns the men of the last century, rather than this. He was very much of a Liberal compared with the most modern of all moderns for they are nearly all of them turning into [.. not gonna say it...]. But the point is that he obviously preferred the sort of decisions that are reached by deliberation rather than despotic action; and while, like all his contemporaries and coreligionists, he has no doubt that true authority may be authoritative, he is rather averse to the whole savour of its being arbitrary."

Geoff Puterbaugh

The Dumb Ox

Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2012

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St. Thomas Aquinas was nicknamed "The Dumb Ox" not because he was stupid, but because he didn't talk very much. According to many, he was the greatest philosopher between Aristotle and Descartes.

An example of his silence was the night he was more or less forced to dine with the French King, the universally-beloved St. Louis. Royal dinners were not his style, and he sat silently while the French nobility did their "witty conversation" thing. There was a pause in the "witty conversation," and St. Thomas suddenly smashed his fist down on the table, exclaiming, "THAT should settle the Manichees!!"

The other guests stared dumbfounded at this horrible breach of etiquette, but the King was smart enough to send two secretaries around to St. Thomas, to make sure he didn't lose that thought.

This volume also contains another Chesterton masterpiece, his life of St. Francis.

I am not a Catholic, not even a Christian, but I found a lot of stuff in these biographies which makes a LOT more sense than what Atheists Inc. have brought to America and Europe. I'd much rather listen to a Te Deum than watch "reality TV," for example. And these two short biographies are worth your time because they are an excellent visit with Dr. Sanity.

The complexity of wanting things

Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2015

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Chesterton is such a wonderfully fluid writer who draws one into the story immediately. I loved his work on St. Thomas He states on p. 123, "He was not a person who wanted nothing; and he was a person who was enormously interested in everything. His answer is not so inevitable or simple at some may suppose. As compared with many other saints, and many other philosophers, he was avid in his acceptance of Things; in his hunger and thirst for Things. It was his special spiritual thesis that there are really are things and not only Thing;that the many existed as well as the One." Chesterton's understanding of St. Francis is equally as profound and one that calls us to mediation and contemplation."To read Sacred Scripture is to turn to Christ for advice."

cbotx

A philosopher on philosophy

Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2020

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If you enjoy the ramblings of a philosopher on another philosopher's philosophies then this is the book for you. There seemed to me very little about the man himself and his life other than a few anecdotes and many comparisons between him and other philosophers or saints. It did at least spark an interest for me which I'm now hoping a little internet searching can fulfill to at least know a summary of his life story.

Top reviews from other countries

RichardDM

The best place to start with Thomas Aquinas (or G. K. Chesterton)!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 18, 2018

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Chesterton is simply masterful in his telling of the life and works of the theological giant that is Thomas Aquinas. Compelling, funny, profoundly erudite. Even if this is all you read of Chesterton or Aquinas you will not be disappointed but I suspect once you read this, it won't be all you read, if you get my drift.

Amazon Customer

Wow - Thomas Aquila’s plus a remarkable tour through almost 3 thousand years of philosophy.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 22, 2018

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He’s so modest a about this book, but I’ll have to read it many more times to really see it’s riches. Highlights ...the human portrait of Thomas, the history of Aristotle in the Arab world, the argument that catholic philosophy is the only one on the side of life, the critique of agnosticism and the term’s founder Huxley and the quip that Francis Bacon always a 3rd rate philosopher.

Mark Ronan

St. Thomas Aquinas

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 28, 2011

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I thought this book was an interesting read on a wonderful Saint. The book is well written but I found it quite heavy going in places because it details many of the philosophies in existence and then compares and contrasts them. As a result I found many of the arguments for and against particular philosophies quite difficult to follow.

The book also details the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, known as Thomism, in some detail. However, I did enjoy the parts of the book that detailed directly the main elements of his life, which gives the reader an indication of the type of man he was. It is also clear that St. Thomas Aquinas was a very intellectual man. However, his fellow university students who gave him the nickname "Dumb Ox" on account of the fact that he appeared to know nothing and was a very fat man did not immediately know this intellect.

In conclusion I think it fair to say that St. Thomas Aquinas was well ahead of his time, a brilliant thinker and he has become one of the most influential philosophers and theologians that has ever lived. The book contains 97 pages of text and no pictures.

Sue 1485

a readable introduction

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 15, 2013

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Readable, but more of a meditation than any sort of useful summary. You will get a sort of Impressionists' view of Aquinas. You will get little nuggets of his philosophy, but they will not be at all developed. And of his great theology of Being you will hear almost nothing at all. Could it be that Chesterton, despite being an amiable writer and himself a supporter of Aquinas, found himself a little out of his depth?

Amazon Customer

As such the book was a great disappointment. Others may feel differently

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 6, 2016

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This book is written by Chesterton and therefore you would expect a high level of scholarship. And I do not deny that this may be the case, but I find the style intolerably pedantic and slow and difficult to read. As such the book was a great disappointment. Others may feel differently.

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