I’ve been working through this volume, little by little, for quite some time now, and I finally finished during my lunch break today. I say “finished”; what I mean is, I’ve read the whole book. I’ve no doubt that I’ll return to it again in the future, as I certainly haven’t absorbed all Maritain has to say.

Maritain’s book is, as the title suggests, an introduction to philosophy; but the book is by no means a survey of the history of philosophical thought.
Maritain was a follower of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, and this is an introduction done from an explicitly Thomistic point of view. It is, in fact, an introduction to Thomism; other schools of philosophy (other than the Greek predecessors of Plato and Aristotle, who are described in some detail) are mentioned only in discussions of the errors avoided by Aristotle and Aquinas.

If you’re looking for a broad overview of philosophical thought, consequently, this is not the book for you. On the other hand, reading such a broad overview is often like reading a movie review by a reviewer who doesn’t reveal his biases. For my money, give me an author who tells me what he thinks is true, and why he thinks it is true. I might not agree with him, but I’ll learn more from him that way. Maritain is this kind of author.

And, of course, as my current goal is to learn more about Thomism, this is exactly the kind of book I was looking for.

Next up is a book recommended by the no-longer-anonymous James Chastek at Just Thomism, Foundations of Thomistic Philosophy, by A.D. Sertillanges, OP. The book is out-of-print, but I managed to find a copy at Amazon.

Speaking of which, another advantage of the Kindle: I was able to buy a nice Kindle edition of the Blackfriars translation of the Summa Theologiae for just a few books; the print edition is five big volumes and costs around $150, if I recall correctly. I can carry my copy around with me in its entirety–and it’s searchable. Woohoo!