Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in the Thomistic and Analytical Traditions

by John Haldane (Editor)

Contemporary western philosophy divides into three broad traditions: the analytical, the continental, and the historical. In the latter half of the twentieth century, analytical philosophy was dominant in the English-speaking world and tended to ignore the other two traditions. Now, however, analytical philosophy is less isolationist. It has come to appreciate the vitality of historical philosophy.

Given their commonality of interests and shared appreciation of the values of conceptual clarity and argumentative rigour, it is particularly appropriate that there should be engagement between the main English-language tradition and the philosophy of Aquinas and, more broadly, of Thomism. The essays in this collection range widely across the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind and action, and theory of value with most linking analytical and Aristotelian-Thomistic ideas and some focusing on Aquinas in particular.

This collection is distinctive in content and unusual in North American publishing in the areas of medieval philosophy, scholasticism, and Thomism in that the majority of the contributors are based in Europe - many at medieval universities in which scholasticism had a historical presence, and in some cases a prominent and distinguished one.

Mind, Metaphysics, and Value brings together the interests, knowledge, and expertise of a wide range of scholars to form a broad and exciting intellectual community.

Contributors: Fergus Kerr, David Braine, Richard Cross, John Haldane, Christopher F. J. Martin, Stefaan Cuypers, Jonathan Jacobs, David S. Oderberg, Christopher Hughes, Gerald J. Hughes, S.J., Gyula Klima, and Martin W. F. Stone

Genres: Philosophy

238 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2002

About the author

John Joseph Haldane KHS FRSE FRSA (born 19 February 1954) is a Scottish philosopher, commentator and broadcaster. He is a papal adviser to the Vatican. He is credited with coining the term Analytical Thomism and is himself a Thomist in the analytic tradition. Haldane is associated with The Veritas Forum and is the current chairman of the Royal Institute of Philosophy.

He has been a visiting lecturer in the School of Architecture of the University of Westminster, at the Medical School of the University of Dundee, at the University of Malta, at the Thomistic Institute at the University of Notre Dame, at the University of Aberdeen, at Denison University, at the University of St. Thomas, at The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, and the Institute for the Psychological Sciences. He held the Royden Davis Chair of Humanities at Georgetown University, and delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen in 2003-04, and the Joseph Lectures at the Gregorian University in Rome.

He was appointed to the University of St Andrews in 1983 where he has held a lectureship, a readership and as of 1994 is University Professor in Philosophy. From 1988 to 2000 and from 2002 to the present he has been Director of the University Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs. In addition, he has held fellowships at the University of Pittsburgh, University of Edinburgh, St John's College, Oxford, Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University and at the Centre for the Study of Sculpture in Leeds, England. Starting in autumn 2015, he holds the J. Newton Rayzor Sr. Distinguished Chair in Philosophy at Baylor University.