|
Rating:  - Excellent for the novice
This book is an excellent introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas. There are tons of footnotes that really bring home the main points in each article. This is a "must have" book for the novice philosopher.
Rating: - Awesome!
This book is exactly what I was looking for. I'm a college freshman and one of my classes is going through St. Thomas' Summa and this book is great at explaining important details.
Rating:  - Not what I expected...
Sitting in a coffee shop reading a commentary on the Summa, I was approached by a St. Thomas University professor whose specialty was St. Thomas; she asked me why of all things was I reading a book on St. Thomas. I told I had enjoyed St. Augustine's City of God and how a friend with a middle name of Thomas, who's father's middle name was Thomas, and who's grandfather's middle name was Thomas told me that I should read St. Thomas if I liked Augustine so much. The professor agreed and said that St. Thomas quoted Augustine much. So, armed with information that A Summa of the Summa was the definitive collection of St Thomas' work, I put down the commentary and immediately ordered a copy from Amazon. I was surprised though to find little similarity between the authors. Augustine is a theologian, while Thomas is a philosopher/logician. Though for well-rounded thinkers, the paths of these sets of disciplines should regularly cross, they are as yet distinctly different fields of study. As an engineer with a reasonably firm grasp of logic, my preference is to pursue more enjoyable reading, which I found to be Augustine's City of God and to a lesser degree his Confessions. The Summa of the Summa is page after page of unadulterated, dry logic. Ouch!
Rating: - No Better Place to Start
On the one hand, the text of the Summa can be hard for beginners, even smart ones. On the other hand, textbooks where people tell you what other people thought suck. So Kreeft gives you the main dish, the text of the Summa itself (trimmed of some extraneous material not relevant to beginners (stop complaining specialists and fanatics!)), but with his lucid notes at the bottom of the page along with helpful illustrations. The book also sports a handy glossary. So go ahead, don't be afraid, read Aquinas, but don't be afraid to buy this book and have Kreeft along as a guide.
Rating: - Embracing the title of "Beginner"
Most books on Thomas Acquinas can be summarized: "He was a great man and I understand him and you never will." Kreeft diverges from academic interpretation, often designed to show off the brilliancy of the academic interpreter, by providing the reader with Acquinas' own words. He carefully provides footnotes designed to clarify language (he makes use of a literal interpretation into English) and issues. It is an effective approach, but not just for "Beginners." Many people familiar with Thomist thought will find clarification in Kreeft's brief notes and even discover, as I did, understandings they thought they had were, to one degree or another, inaccurate. As I went through this book I found that the title of "Beginner" is in many ways a good thing, especially when climbing the heights of Thomas Acquinas and Krefft is an exceptionally good guide for that climb.
Portions of the Summa have been omitted, including Objections unique to Acquinas' time and irrelevant to the modern reader and Part III of the Summa. Frankly, while recognizing the religious focus of Part III might not be immediately useful to all readers, I would have liked to seen at least some of it with Kreeft's footnotes, perhaps as a second volume.
|
