Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Father of Modernity? Heaven forbid!

Via Thomistica.net: Tina Beattie's series on the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. The first installment is "Rediscovering a Father of Modernity."

The division into modern and premodern in relating philosophy to corresponding political trends may not be so helpful.

Beattie doesn't really explain what she means, except with the following:
"Aquinas brought to that era a synthesising brilliance with regard to texts and ideas which has left a deep imprint on western religion, politics, law and ethics."

So how does she define modernity? Catholic intellectuals would tend rather to define modernity by its rejection of what came before, including Aquinas and scholasticism.

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