It’s nicely coincident to my current series of posts that today is the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas. In addition to being one of the greatest thinkers in the history of the world, he is also my elder brother in the Dominican order, and my patron saint.

Recently I got a little book by Josef Pieper called The Human Wisdom of St. Thomas: A Breviary of Philosophy. I say that it’s by Josef Pieper, by that’s misleading—except for a brief forward, all of the text comes from St. Thomas’ own writings. Pieper has simply selected them and arranged them in an interesting and useful way.

Although St. Thomas is one of the great philosophers, he was primarily a theologian, and philosophy, the “handmaiden of theology”, was simply one of the tools he used to illuminate the glory of God. Thus, his philosophy is apparent throughout his writings…but he never attempted to write down his philosophy all in one place. It makes it hard to study.

What Pieper has done is pull brief quotations from across the vast expanse of Thomas’ work, and arrange them by topic…and then arrange them within each topic so that they almost form a continuous thread. His desire for this book was that the would-be Thomist would read a bit of it every day, so that Thomas’ principles and conclusions would sink in.

As an example of the style, the third section is titled (in Thomas’ own words),

There can be good without evil, but there cannot be evil without good.

The quotes in this section all build on this theme. Partway down the first page, for example, we see these three related thoughts:

No essence is in itself evil. Evil has no essence.

Evil consists entirely of not-being.

Nothing can be called evil insofar as it has being, but only insofar as it is deprived of part of its being.

Thus, a man who does evil is one who turns from that which would perfect him to that which diminishes him, makes him less a man. And yet, what remains of him is still good.

Pieper does provide a detailed set of citations at the end of the book; thus, I know that the four quotes I listed here are from the Summa Theologiae, the Summa Contra Gentiles, and from one of the “disputed questions”. Pieper also pulls quotes from the Compendium Theologiae, the commentaries on scripture, the commentaries on Aristotle, and a number of other short works.

In short, the whole book is remarkably pithy, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in St. Thomas and his thought. The joy of philosophy is the wonder at and contemplation of the richness of the world than it engenders, and the briefly stated ideas in this book are an outstanding place to get started with the wondering and the contemplating.