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Show -87- is the more appropriate, is clearly defended by some of them. As an example of the first attitude, I shall quote the following words of James Collins: Thomists are becoming better prepared to meet the challenge of existentialism. The counterclaim has been advanced by Gilson and others that the philosophy of St. Thomas is the only genuine existentialism. Here is another instance in which trends in modern philosophy have forced Thomists to review their dootrine critically and bring to the fore half-forgotten truths of their own tradition. To compare the Thomistic textbooks in metaphysics and theory of knowledge of half a century ago with those of today is to appreciate the difference between Thomism as an answer to the post-Kantian world and as it is understood in a world sympathetic to existential themes. That Thomism does indeed satisfy the claims of a philosophy of existenoe has been brought out under pressure exerted by the recent movement. But as yet very little beyond the original assertion has been done in support of the exclusiveness of Thomism as being the only true existential philosophy.* And, as an Instance of the second attitude, I shall quote the following words of Ernest Kilzer: To characterize the philosophy of St. Thomas by means of the term 'existentialism' and to contrast it with the 'essentialism' of Plato and many later varieties of idealism including those of the present day has definite advantages. It calls attention to the creatureliness and contingency of finite things, to the primacy of being over knowing, to the domination of our knowledge by concretely existing objects whose content our abstract concepts cannot exhaust. But it is not perhaps superfluous to point out that the term •existence*, to say nothing of 'existentialism* is not current in the language of St. Thomas, and that if we 1#Collins, J., "The Mind of Kierkegaard", in The Modern Schoolman. Vol.XXVI, no.l, (November, 1948),pp.5-6. |
