Abstract

For all its originality and traditional wisdom the metaphysics of a thirteenth century Aristotelian Christian comes in a remote idiom to the current secularist mind, even though this be conscious or semi-conscious of the ambiguous epistemological and ethical presuppositions respectively of its scientific method and practical living. The problem of presenting its achievement in appealing contemporary guise remains acute and fluid. The usual, direct solution is adopted here in personal fashion by Father Reith, who states his modest terms of reference as follows: “It is not my intention to write an apology for the metaphysics of St. Thomas. His philosophy is its own best apology…. The present book is an attempt to restate as accurately as possible, in the manner and sequence found in the writings of St. Thomas, those metaphysical principles that have become the natural foundations upon which our contemporary Christian philosophy has been built”. If this system of thought seems formidably doctrinal to the rootless positivist, its questions refuse to leave him in peace: those human questions which concern ultimate truth in reality as a whole, in particular man’s own social and physical order in the universe—his origin, value and destiny, the reality of the laws, moral and positive, which his practice implicitly accepts—whose roots should be critically inspected and explained by some one at some time, for his own speculative benefit and for that of others.