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by: Josef Pieper
List Price: $11.00Amazon.com's Price: $9.90 You Save: $1.10 (10%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 189.4
EAN: 9781890318789
ISBN: 1890318787
Label: St. Augustine's Press
Manufacturer: St. Augustine's Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 122
Publication Date: 1999-04
Publisher: St. Augustine's Press
Sales Rank: 243313
Studio: St. Augustine's Press
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
A single theme runs through the three essays on St. Thomas gather in this book. It is the theme of mystery or, more exactly, the response of the searching human intellect to the fact of mystery. Both the fact and the response are suggested in a short biography of St. Thomas that forms the first essay and are then sketched out in detail by a presentation of the 'negative element' in his philosophy. The third essay shows that contemporary Existentialism is in basic agreement with the philosophia perennis on this fundamental element of philosophical thinking.
'Emphasis has been placed not so much on the positive attainments of philosophical thought,' Pieper says in conclusion, 'but rather on a no less important aspect: namely, that man, in his philosophical inquiry, is faced again and again with the experience that reality is unfathomable and Being is mystery - an experience, it is true, which urges him not so much to communication as to silence. But it would not be the silence of resignation, and still less of despair. It would be the silence of reverence.'
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - What Could Silence St. Thomas?
If you want to find a succinct compendium of Thomistic Epistemology then this is a must read. While some of other reviews do a good job describing the details of the book, I will focus on what I believe to be Pieper's true intent. The book should be read once to grow in knowledge and another time as spiritual reading.
Pieper begins with an overview of Thomistic realism and shows the link between anthropology and cosmology and faith and reason. For St. Thomas, human beings are created to love ... Read More
Rating: - The spirit and life of Aquinas
Pieper, in these three essays, describes what we have to learn from the works and life of Aquinas. The essays detail the scholastic arguements of the day and how Thomas, in the true spirit of open mindedness (his life and method are the definition of this oft abused term) brought some peace ond understanding to the various sides, a very serious matter in his day. The book explains how much of an Aristotilian Aquinas was, and more importantly how much he was not. Mainly by showing how the charactoristics ... Read More
Rating: - Great supplemental reading
St. Thomas Aquinas, needless to say, is not easy to understand. In this little guide, which makes nice supplemental reading to get a look "behind the scenes" of the saint's philosophy, Josef Pieper first sketches a biographical outlines of Thomas' life and then delves into the negative element in his philosophy and concludes with the "timelessness" of Thomism, which makes it a perennial philosophy.
This book is primarily concerned with St. Thomas' epistemological assumptions (which were taken ... Read More
Rating: - Illuminating
The unifying theme of the three essays composing this book is the paradox that the intelligibilty of things and their incomprehensibility both derive from their being creatures, that is, from their possessing natures that are communications of the ideas in the mind of God. Things can be known only because they are created, but at the same time, things are unfathomable because they are created: "one and the same factor explains both why things cannot be entirely grasped and why they can be known" (pp.95-6). ... Read More
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