Aquinas, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion

Thomas Hibbs is Dean of the Honors College and Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Culture at Baylor University. He is author of Virtue's Splendour: Wisdom, Prudence, and the Human Good and Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas: An Interpretation of the Summa Contra Gentiles.

"A remarkable teacher takes us on an exciting journey to recover Aquinas, following the contours of a graduate course to engage contemporary philosophers who might seem unlikely protagonists. Yet they become salient foils for unveiling the secret of Aquinas' metaphysical inquiry: a 'distinctive sort of intellectual activity closely allied to the imagination and always including appropriate emotional response' (p. 161). This daring venture both demands and displays a formidable familiarity with contemporary philosophy—from ethics to epistemology, metaphysics to theology, incorporating analytic with continental modes of reflection. With a judiciously critical eye given deft and gracious expression, we are moved gracefully among worlds of discourse, as we acquire the skills needed to compare them. Yet that is precisely what good teachers can do.April 2009"—David Burrell, C.S.C., Uganda Martyrs UniversityKampala, UGANDA". . . this book suggests and models a new direction for the methodology of contemporary philosophical discourse.64 1/16/2008 (online)"—Janine Marie Idziak, Intnl Journal for Philosophy of Religion". . . This is a heady mixture of philosophy, theology, and aesthetics. . . . Highly recommended."—Choice"Hibbs . . . convincingly argues that the practice of seeking the good—both moral and intellectual—leads to and requires metaphysics, and not the reverse. . . . The book will help those who want to (1) revisit Aquinas's epistemology, metaphysics, and virtue ethic, especially in light of [Hibbs's] substantial previous work on these questions; (2) investigate [Hibbs's] broader theses about metaphysics; (3) generate a more convincing philosophical foundation and a more robust description of social accountability for virtue theory and narrative ethics; or (4) engage one or more of [Hibbs's] admirably diverse interlocutors (Plantinga, MacDonald, Murdoch, Joyce, Turner, Marion, Zagzebski, Pieper, Gadamer, MacIntyre, Nietzsche, and others).March 2009"—CRISTINA L. H. TRAINA, Northwestern University"[This book] is an extremely broad-minded engagement—and this must surely be very welcome—with the basic contours of contemporary philosophy as practiced in the U.S. today."—Graham McAleer, Loyola College in Maryland

• ContentsPreface: Metaphysics and PracticeAcknowledgments1. Ethics as a Guide into Metaphysics2. Virtue and Practice3. Self-Implicating Knowledge: The Practice of Intellectual Virtue4. Dependent Animal Rationality: Epistemology as Anthropology5. Metaphysics and/as Practice6. Metaphysics, Theology, and the Practice of Naming God7. The Presence of a Hidden God: Idolatry, Metaphysics, and Forms of Life8. Portraits of the Artist: Eros, Metaphysics, and Beauty9. Metaphysics of Contingency, Divine Artistry of HopeNotesBibliographyIndex