I enjoyed Thomas Storcks Why Study Philosophy, a solid defense of Aristotle and St.

Thomas as the indispensable guides for American cultural and Catholic ecclesial renewal. But in his attempt to defend these masters of the philosophia perennis, he inadvertently slights others. Moreover, although having correct philosophical answers is vitally important, the capacity truly to question ourselves and the reality around us is just as important, perhaps even more so for us denizens of what Alasdair MacIntyre has called, a culture of answers without questions, that is, we need both twenty-first-centuryThomasesnot mere Thomistsand fearless Socrateses. Storck claims that the perennial philosophy began with Aristotle, but it is certainly arguable that it began earlier with Plato, to whose work Whitehead once quipped all philosophies are mere footnotes. But I dont think this is an incidental matter for Storck, for he suggests that Aristotle got right what Plato got wrong. This is correct in some respects, but not in others, and he neglects to mention that Aristotle got some vitally important things wrong that Plato got right. For example, in his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle criticizes Platos theological approach to ethics, studiously avoiding any talk of the Good, and relying exclusively on the good-forman as it is linguistically, conceptually, and empirically found in nature and Athenian culture. Because of these limitations, his depiction of the magnanimous man, the pinnacle of virtue, is, one must admit, a jerk. Some of what Aristotle gained in conceptual rigor by his more earthly and systematic inquiry he lost in spiritual depth and comprehensive insight by his, for want of a better word, secularism. One must join Platos soaring participatory metaphysics to Aristotles earthly empiricism to have the right balance. Boethius, for example, did not see Aristotles thought mainly as a correction of Platos but as its indispensable complement, and thus he spent his career trying to synthesize the two. Indeed, Aquinass philosophical thought is as much Platonist as it is Aristotelian, since he was as much an Augustinian as an Aristotelian. St. Thomas metaphysics of esse and his understanding of the status of universals go way beyond Aristotles thought, and are in great tension with it, and in lesser tension with Platos. (See Lloyd Gersons Aristotle and Other Platonists, Cornell, 2005; and Aquinas the Neo-Platonist http://www.scribd.com/doc/95911599/Aquinas-theNeoplatonist). Regarding ethics, St. Thomass primacy of the intellect and the transcendental of truth does preclude voluntarism and fideism, but this doesnt mean that a moderate emphasis on the will and the transcendental of love, as is found in St. Bonaventure, is necessarily problematic. There is, after all, no definitive Church teaching on this issue, and an overly intellectualist notion of human action has its own problems. Is prudence mainly about rigorous thinking in accordance with right theoretical principles, or about the hearts reasons that reason cannot always fathom? While the latter can lead to irrationalism and sentimentalism, the former can lead to neurotic, rigid, egg-headedism. I commend Storck for calling the Church back and America tothat is, for the first time, as midtwentieth-century neo-Thomism never really caught onThomism as the architectonic paradigm for thought and action. I agree that Thomism is the only foundation on which we can effectively build a culture of life and inaugurate the reign of Christ the King. Yet, we need Thomistically formed Catholics that can think for themselvescreatively, analogically, and prudently. The old manual Thomism, like the old Baltimore Catechism, was good on the answers, but bad on the questions. We need a Socratic Thomism.

MacIntyre: We have within our social order few if any social milieus within which reflective and critical enquiry concerning the central issues of human life can be sustained . . . .This tends to be a culture of answers, not of questions, and those answers, whether secular or religious, liberal or conservative, are generally delivered as though meant to put an end to questioning. What is the antidote to this? A new St. Thomas? Yes! But not only him. MacIntyre says that we need a new St. Benedictand we just lost a good one. But I wonder if we shouldnt add Socrates to the list. Thomistic Catholics with a genuine spirit of erotic, Socratic questioning, souls with true metaphysical courage, are, I think, the most effective antidote to the suffocating, antiquestioning, partial-truth culture we live in, in both its traditionalist and modernist varieties. Paul Evdokimov, an Eastern Orthodox theologian, writes: The outdated religious person and the modern sophisticated irreligious individual meet back to back in an immanence imprisoned within itself . . . . The denial of God has thus permitted the affirmation of man. Once this affirmation is effected, there is no longer anything to be denied or subordinated. . . On this level total man will not be able to ask any questions concerning his own reality, just as God does not put a question to himself. Perhaps what is really important in life is not so much the right answers as the true questions, for they themselves open the heart to the mystery of God. As Origen said: "Every true question is like the lance which pierces the side of Christ causing blood and water to flow forth. St. Thomas was as much a questioner as an answerer, and we need to imitate him as much as we need his grace-filled philosophy.