Is Thomism still the RCC's official philosophy?

[tomndebb]

@BrainGlutton

As mentioned in the OP, the above was written in 1945. Is it still true?

Regarding Philosophy, itself, ignoring entanglements of Theology? No way. I knew seminarians in the early 70s who considered Thomas to have been superseded by Kant, the Phenomenologists, (the Existentialists for a couple of guys, although those guys were considered flighty), all the Language people circling around each other in the 20th century, and couple of others. They respected Maritain and Gilson for their historical perspective, but did not think that either of them was producing ground-breaking insights into Philosophy.

@Bertrand Russel

Catholic ecclesiastics must accept St Thomas if they concern themselves with philosophy.

I have trouble even believing that this was true in 1945. On the other hand, I only peeked back a little bit at the pre-Vatican II church, knowing its pastoral and liturgical presence much better than its philosophical or the theory behind its theology, so I could have missed something. In addition, the Catholic Church in England had its own traditions, showing a love-hate relationship with the Church of England, and this may have spilled over into the way Catholic schools approached philosophy.

The rector of the Cleveland seminary helps out at my parish on some weekends. I cannot promise an immediate answer, but I’ll ask him how strongly his school is pushing Thomas in the Philosophy Department. (My guess is that it will be little different than the situation of the Detroit seminarians I knew 35 years ago, but I’ll ask.)

[Johanna]

@Captain Amazing

Some of their methods have been revived in modern education. The whole idea of “discussion groups” is sort of a revival of the Scholastic method of “disputation”, whereby the teacher proposes a debatable question, and the students try to answer it, giving evidence to support their postions.

That was earlier practiced in the school of Abu Hanifah al-Nu‘man ibn Thabit, founder of the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence in al-Kufah, Iraq, in the 8th century. al-Kufah was also the home of al-Kindi, the first Arab philosopher, who lived in the 9th century. The Abbasid golden age of learning owed a lot to his contribution. Thomas Aquinas drew upon the work of the Iranian theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali (d. 1111), but I forgot what it was, someone help me out here.