Skip to main content

Playing Aquinas


I had forgotten that Aquinas had a Neapolitan connection, once having taught at the university here, until I stepped into a Dominican Church this morning and found a chapel dedicated to him.

I once 'played' him in a philosophy of religion lecture (for visiting American students) opposite a fellow student (to whom teaching had been farmed out). He 'played' Wittgenstein. We debated how language related to the world and as a saint I had the audience on my side both as they were good Catholic folk from Pennsylvania and because Aquinas has the more accessible argument!

It was an unfortunate piece of casting as I was as thin as a rake and St Thomas was notoriously fat (to the point of having tables adapted to accommodate his belly) nor was I then either a Catholic or a saint! I tried remedying the former, the latter is still a work in progress!

In this depiction (above) he looks rather fierce, bad tempered and probably in need of his lunch!

I wonder if there are still Thomists (or neo-Thomists) - I expect so such is the fertility of the saint's mind. He was certainly right on the corrosive power of usury to economic, social and moral bonds! He was deeply influential on my two principal philosophy teachers: from the first came qualified agreement and from the second abiding revolt (and both were Jesuits). I think, on the whole, I was closer to the second.

The programme of separating faith and reason ultimately diminished both. Religion became an affect of the soul, the world became separated and circumscribed by reason rather than the world being a meaningful living cosmos apprehended by intellectual vision that is, in its very nature, a religious world (rather than one created by a 'religious' being). The world was opened to a different kind of usage whose consequences gather pace (one that Aquinas himself would have deplored).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Buddha meets Christ in embrace

Reading Lama Anagarika Govinda is proving nostalgic on a number of fronts. I recall my first reading of it in my first year at university, bought at Watkins, the famous 'esoteric' bookshop in Cecil Court in London. I sat in my hall of residence room transfixed by a world made familiar; and, it was deepening of a commitment to contemplation (which has been observed fitfully)! I remember returning, at the time, to my school to give a talk to the combined fifth form on Buddhism and using Govinda as the backbone of my delivery (both this book, and his equally wonderful, the Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism). I was voted (I immodestly remember) their best invited speaker of the year. I had even bought a recording of Tibetan music as opener and closer! He reminded me of how important Buddhism was (and is) to my own thinking and comprehension of my experience. The Buddha's First Sermon in the Deer Park was the first religious text I read (of my own volition) at the tender age...
13 comments
Read more

Luminous Spaces - the poetry of Olav H. Hauge

Don't give me the whole truth, don't give me the sea for my thirst, don't give me the sky when I ask for light, but give me a glint, a dewy wisp, a mote as the birds bear water-drops from their bathing and the wind a grain of salt. It began with a poem, this poem, in Mark Oakley's 'The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry' - a wonderful series of meditations on particular poems, one each chapter. The poet is the Norwegian, Olav H. Hague (1908-1994). I immediately ordered, 'Luminous Spaces: Selected Poems & Journals' and was enjoying dipping until, at the weekend, recovering from a stomach bug, I decided to read them through and fell wholeheartedly for a new friend. Hague was born on a farm. His formal education was brought short by a combination of restricted means, an inability to conquer mathematics: and, a voracious diet of reading ranging beyond the confines of any confining curriculum. He went to a horticultural college instead an...
1 comment
Read more

Red Shambala

Nicholas Roerich is oft depicted as a spiritual seeker, peace visionary, author of numberless paintings, and a brave explorer of Central Asia. However, Andrei Znamenski in his 'Red Shambala: Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia' has him perform another role - that of geopolitical schemer. The scheming did have at its heart a religious vision - of a coalition of Buddhist races in Central Asia that would establish a budding utopia - the Shambala of the title - from which the truths of Buddhism (and co-operative labour) would flow around the globe. This would require the usurpation of the 13th Dalai Lama to be replaced by the Panchen Lama guided by the heroic saviour (Roerich) who appears above dressed for the part. In the achievement of these aims, the Roerichs (including his wife, Helena, who had a visionary connection with 'Mahatmas' whose cryptic messaging guided their steps) were willing to entertain strange bedfellows that at one time include...
Post a Comment
Read more