Guide to Thomas Aquinas

I have found that European scholars in the humanities always do the best job of providing a "guide" or "introduction" to a discipline. That is certainly true here. Pieper uses his profound knowledge of Thomas Aquinas to choose out what would best help a student new to the subject. The book is a series of lectures prepared for his university classes. It puts Aquinas in his 13th century historical context, especially the rise of the university, and explains the nature of the literary genre that Aquinas used. Pieper's view of Aquinas: a person committed to knowing Things As They Are; hence, he embraced Aristotle (just then becoming known in the West) and the Bible, seeing the task of the philosopher and the theologian to be the same: the show more right understanding of reality. Highly recommended for those interested in reading Aquinas himself. show less

A better title might be 'A Preface to Thomas Aquinas,' since Pieper spends very little time on Aquinas's ideas, and a lot of time on the context surrounding them: the rise of the university and its methods of teaching and learning, of Aristotle, of the preaching orders, and so on. It's all very easy to read until the final lectures, which do get into the ideas, broadly understood, and at that point Pieper's Germanity comes out a little bit more. But certainly a good place to start if you want a very sympathetic introduction to Aquinas's life, times and context.

A wonderful little book, describing Aquinas and his methodology in its historical environment.