Abstract

This volume makes available most of the major papers of the "man who may well have been America's outstanding teaching metaphysician during the second quarter of this century." Phelan did indeed have a long list of impressive students to his credit, most of them coming out of the University of Toronto and the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto. Included are Phelan's Aquinas Lecture of 1941, "St. Thomas and Analogy," "Being, Order and Knowledge," "The Concept of Beauty in St. Thomas Aquinas," "Justice and Friendship," "Verum Sequitur Esse Rerum," and eight others. The editor has added a bibliography of everything Phelan ever wrote, from books to book reviews to obituaries. Phelan's interests were clearly metaphysical; but his metaphysics was historical and interpretive, not creative.—E. A. R.