More Aquinas Translations

For Pre-order here:

My question:  Why?

We already have the old Dominican friars translation, the later translation contained in a million volumes with commentary, and Freddoso is publishing a new translation with Hackett. Sure, maybe they aren't facing Latin and English, but big deal: Aquinas' Latin is super easy.

Pet Peeve

Michael pointed me to this discussion over at First Things.  Someone kindly mentioned this blog.  One pet peeve I have with all "these people" (the narrativists) is the use of the term "univocal metaphysics". There really is no such thing.  If one bothered to find out what the word "univocal" means, one would learn it is a property of terms, or concepts.  So when I hear this stupid phrase, I automatically think 'univocal to what?' Oh well. As the eminent Notre Dame historian (that's right, the same department as the eminent Brad Gregory) John van Engen once said in class, "historians aren't conceptually gifted".

PS: Rachel Fulton. Seriously? She is the go-to medievalist for Scotus and univocity? Just look at her CV. She's an expert at intellectual history, prayer, liturgy, and JRR Tolkien. She's not going to be worrying about Scotus' argument from certain and doubtful concepts and whether the response that Scotus tips in is from Henry, or maybe Richard of Conington.

There is a real crisis of authority going on.

Read the Original - If You Can

Translated sources attract errors just as translated scriptures foment heresies, and when the inexperienced attempt their own translations, the results can be even worse.

Although it is off the topic of this blog, the review from which the quotation above was taken may be of interest. It exposes recent amateurish histories of Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and John Cabot--all explorers of the New World. The critique has distinct similarities to critiques found here of amateurish theologians who attempt a coherent historical narrative of "how we got here" without bothering to read the original sources. The problem is similar for both groups: pastry-makers posing as scholars convince others by the tastiness of their concoctions. The author concludes his book review:

I could multiply the dispiriting litany of errors, but it is more interesting to try to understand what drives these writers to parade their inadequacies in the marketplace. It is tempting to blame postmodernism, which has blurred the difference between drivel and truth; or the popularity of television-history, where no standards of veracity or scholarship apply; or the temptations aroused by vulgar sensationalists, who have made fortunes by proclaiming the peripeties of the Holy Grail and "proving" that the medieval Chinese discovered Rhode Island. I suspect, however, that the very virtues of my discipline are responsible for the vices of the writers who abuse it. Because history is the people's discipline, books about it are relatively salable—invitingly so, to indolent cupidity. History's accessibility to non-specialists makes it seem dangerously, delusively easy.

Academic historians tend to welcome recruits from other ranks, like owls nurturing cuckoos, and applaud the intrusions of neophytes with a glee that physicians, say, would never show for faith-healers or snake-oil salesmen. I am afraid it is time for historians to wipe the smiles from our jaws and start biting back. If escape from the poverty of your own imagination is your reason for exploiting the stories history offers, or if you are taking refuge from another discipline in the belief that history is easy, without bothering to do the basic work, you will deserve to fail.

--Felipe Fernández-Armesto

New Doctor

There is going to be a new Doctor of the Church.  Scotus? No, Hildegard. Huh. Apparently Albert was also declared doctor before being canonized.  So there is no reason why Scotus couldn't be as well.  So why hasn't he?  Oh right, thanks radical orthodoxy, Brad Gregory, Fr. Robert Barron, 99% of Catholic intellectuals.

Question

Not to constantly bash Thomists... but they deserve it so I will anyway. When did "analogicity" become a useful word to describle analogy? I saw it in Stephen Hipp's (u. of st. thomas) essay in the Scotus Quadruple Conference proceedings and now in the title of steven Long's (ave maria u.) talk at the Fordham... conference. Seriously, this is but more evidence that there is nothing left to say about Aquinas and analogy that hasn't been said a hundred times each decade since the death of Thomas.