Thomas Aquinas: A Portrait

I have two shelves of books by and on Aquinas, and when I bought this I expected to learn nothing new but to get a different insight into him. I was not disappointed on either score. Turner shocked me a bit when, early on, he deemed Aquinas a materialist. What he means by this is not the current philosophy of materialism born of logical positivism (the scientific method), which holds as foundational that the only reality is material reality, that there is no such dimension as the spiritual, or if there is, we cannot know about it. Aquinas' materialism is not that kind of materialism. Dr Turner explains that Aquinas' materialism is based on the reality of matter and that it is knowable, knowable because of abstraction which is per se nonmaterial in essence. He also maintains that Aquinas does not denigrate matter, as do the Platonists and such. Matter is good, matter has its own value. Humans are body and soul, matter and spirit, and the body has its value and meaning. Aquinas never maintains, as do many philosophers of bygone ages, and a lot of "spiritualities" of the present, that the body is wretched and of no count, that the soul is entrapped in the body like a bird in a cage, and yearns to be free. No, for Aquinas, and for Aristotle whose philosophy he uses and builds upon, the body is an essential part of what it is to be humans. We do not shed our bodies at death and "become angels." We are not angels entrapped in a body. More, while the nonmaterial soul (spirit) of a person survives death--defined as separation of body and soul, matter and spirit, material cause and formal cause--that surviving soul, spiritual and therefore incapable of decomposing, continues to exist as an immortal substance but is not a person. The reason? Aquinas says that a human person is matter, the body, "informed" by the soul, which defines man's nature as a rational animal. Upon death, the soul continues to exist, but not as a person. Only at the general resurrection when God reunites the souls of all those who ever lived with their bodies in some fashion known only to Him, is the person that we are reconstituted.Dr Turner offers a fresh insight into the principles upon which Aquinas constructed his philosophy, a philosophy which he clearly states is handmaiden to revealed truth of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. It is delightful to see a small but brilliant number of philosophers returning to Aquinas; as G.K. Chesterton said, Aquinas is the philosopher of common sense, appealing to the common man. For Aquinas, matter is reality, the spiritual world is reality and knowable through the material world around us as detected by the five senses and processed through the material brain by the immortal substance that is our soul, or in the words of Aquinas, what "forms" the matter of our bodies to be human.The price is extremely reasonable. The field of Aquinas is populated with books, most of them of specialist nature and expensive to boot. This one is not. I highly recommend it and in the future I intend to re-read it, for this book is a mine of insights that one reading alone will not exhaust.

I enjoyed this book so much I'm now starting it again. At first I thought it was going to be a struggle to find my way into it. Looking back, I wonder now why I thought so. Occasionally Turner writes a sentence that needs a bit of unpacking, but beyond that he's wonderfully clear, and when necessary provides good analogies for some of the more difficult patches.I'd read Chesterton's 'biography' of Aquinas last year, but have already forgotten most of it. Yet at the time it gave me an enthusiasm for Aquinas that I'd never previously had. Turner recommends Chesterton's book in spite of its datedness and hurried writing (typical of Chesterton, of course, a man who seemed to write a book a month). He sees value in its way of getting to grips with the person of Aquinas. Turner's own book isn't intended to be for academics and great minds: it's intended for such as me, the kind of people who never make it to a philosophy class, but are interested in knowing more about it; never make it to a theology class, but read theology continually in various forms.Turner does a great job at expounding Aquinas' thinking, and this is where the book really struck home for me. The earlier part, where he gives some background to Thomas' life, didn't grab me quite so much, but that may be because at that point I was looking for something different from the book.As he explores Thomas' philosophical teaching, Turner opens up all manner of ways of thinking about theology, about God, and humanity, and who we are.This is the reason I'm going back through it again. I started reading the library copy, and couldn't mark anything in it (it was too new-looking to do that!) but I bought a Kindle copy when I was about a third of the way through, and it's heavily highlighted. No doubt it will be more so by the time I've re-read it.

This is an excellent portrait of Thomas from a professor that has broad familiarity with his work. There are some quotations from Thomas and others included in order to make certain points though mostly the text refers to readily available sources from Thomas and others - Augustine for example, that I find being familiar with ahead of time enables the discussion points to be very interesting. A surprise for me is how late Aquinas would have become familiar with newer translations directly from the Greek of Aristotle. This portrait works by taking Thomas' works and using them to imagine the sort of individual Thomas must have been and what he must have been trying to do in his work. For example, the emphasis that Thomas was deliberately not drawing attention to himself so that he could more adequately live up to the Dominican motto seems an interesting conclusion to make. Interesting too that Denys even has his name in print in a color that blends with the background of the cover - is Denys trying to do the same as Thomas in this respect? But in short, this book serves as an excellent addition to the work on Thomas and will certainly serve a good purpose as an introduction to the Saint and to theology for students.

Very dry and nothing biographical in it, despite the description. It is a discussion of this theology/philosophy by someone with a definitive interpretation to put forward, full of assumptions and pop psychological analysis about Aquinas' state of mind. This is not a book for non-academics unless you happen to be fascinated by Aquinas. I actually studied Aquinas' writings as part of my medieval studies degree (just to give you some background on where I am coming from) and I found this book hard going and one-sided.

A fresh and engaging approach to Thomas the materialist

Denys Turner is obviously a very experienced scholar in this field and he writes an excellent summary of Aquinas'teaching both for the scholar and the general reader. He is very readable. It is not often that one can read a book on philosophy with such pleasure. The book has even been compared to G.K.Chesterton's book on Aquinas. I recommend it most strongly.

Godo book