8/16/2019 Recensión O'Callaghan Thomist Realism
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Ars Disputandi
Volume 5 (2005)
ISSN: 15665399
Eileen SweeneyBOSTON COLLEGE, USA
Thomist Realism and the LinguisticTurn: Toward a More Perfect
Form of Existence
By John P. O'Callaghan
Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003; ix + 368
pp.;hb. $ 59.95; ISBN: 0-268-04217-9.
[1] This book is an heroic attempt to bring Thomas Aquinas to
bear onthe post-Wittgenstinian world of philosophy of language.
O'Callaghan's maincontention is that Aquinas is not subject to the
same charge of `mental representa-tionalism' as earlier gures, and
thus escapes the criticisms of such views made by contemporary
philosophers of language. In order to do that, the author
engagesthe recent work of Fodor, Putnam, and other contemporary
gures, modern philo-sophical accounts of language and
representation in Locke, Berkeley, and Hume,and develops a careful
interpretation of Aquinas.
[2] The author's attempt to stand Aquinas up as a real
interlocutor in
the contemporary debate hearkens back to the project of Thomists
of the 1950s.Some might want to reject such a project out of hand
on the premise that it isanachronistic as an interpretation of
Aquinas and unsuccessful as an attemptto convert analysts into
Thomists. I am skeptical about this kind of project,
but I don't reject it out of handafter all, what use is
reading gures in thehistory of philosophy if we don't take them to
speak, somehow, to contemporary issues? My difculty with
Callaghan's book is more practical; the book cannotquite unify
thetwothingsit is attemptingpresenting an interpretation of
Aquinasand entering into the debate of contemporary analytic
philosophy of language. Itsimply becomes too difcult to keep track
both of O'Callaghan's views of Aquinasandhisargumentsagainst
various interpreters of Aquinas, as well as hisarguments
explaining and objecting to the views of contemporary
philosophers of language.One gets down many layers into an argument
about the internal inconsistency of Putnam's views on
essences, for example, and loses track of how all this relatesto
Aquinas. Since Putnam criticizes an Aristotle-like position on
essences, inrefuting Putnam, O'Callaghan is showing that some such
position can perhaps bereconstituted. But this is a bit of a
stretch. Moreover, the author's view of therelationship between
Aristotle and Aquinas sometimes assumed to be identical,sometimes
not is not really clear or clearly argued for.
[3] However, on these two different tracks, Aquinas
interpretation andcontemporary philosophy of language, a number of
good points are made. First,
c June 2, 2005, Ars Disputandi . If you would like to
cite this article, please do so as follows:Eileen Sweeney, `Review
of Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn: Toward a More Perfect
Form of Existence,' Ars
Disputandi [http://www.ArsDisputandi.org] 5
(2005), paragraph number.
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8/16/2019 Recensión O'Callaghan Thomist Realism
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Eileen Sweeney: Review of Thomist Realism and the Linguistic
Turn: Toward a More Perfect Form of Existence
contemporary philosophers of language are brought into dialogue
with the widerphilosophical tradition and problems in the history
of philosophy. O'Callaghanshows the way in which philosophers like
Putnam and even McDowell try but
do not escape thinking in the terms of modern philosophy.
Second, Aquinas'account of knowledge is re-interpreted in such a
way as to free it from some of the projections of modern
philosophy. Thus, for example, O'Callaghan's accountof abstraction,
the intelligible species, and the nature absolutely considered
arehelpful and illuminating.
[4] Further, O'Callaghan's joint consideration of Aquinas and
contemporary philosophy does get to a very important insight
about the difference between
Aristotelian and Putnamian essences. `For Putnam,' he
writes, `essence ifithasany place at all, is a fundamental
part of a classicatory scheme, a special set of abstractproperties
under which the values of the bound variable of a conceptual
schemeformally considered (a science, for example) may fall;'
whereas, for Aquinas and
Aristotle, `essence is an intrinsic principle of a being,
its actuality limiting but alsoenabling the being to be as it is. .
. ' (271) O'Callaghan asks whether Putnam canachieve his goal of
saving Aristotle's `common-sense world' without committinghimself
to Arisototle's metaphysics. O'Callaghan's answer seems to be that
if Putnam wants his Aristotelian cake, he has to eat it too. I
think it is probably rightthat he is going to have eat some kind of
cake, i.e., commit himself to somethingmore than he wants to
epistemologically or metaphysically in order to leave the
world of ordinary experience standing.[5] In the end,
O'Callaghan wants to align Aquinas with the later Wittgen-
stein in terms of the ways Aquinas sees language use and
understanding within the
context of human life as whole. The `more perfect existence' of
the title is a quotefrom Aquinas referring to `that very social and
political existence made possible
by language.' (289) While O'Callaghan is unwilling to
reduce understanding andthereby rationality to language use as
McDowell, following Wittgenstein, seemsto do, he nds in Aquinas a
model of the way in which those activities are seenholistically, as
is the human being him/herself. If connecting Aquinas to
Wittgen-stein is a way of restating in a more contemporary way
Aristotle and Aquinas'hylomorphism and their view of the
essentially social/political nature of human
beings, I can agree, but more than that will not wash.[6]
O'Callaghan makes his case that Aquinas is no modern philosopher
but
in the end cannot convince me that Aquinas alone among
philosophers from theancient through the modern world survives 20th
century debates in philosophy of language.
Ars Disputandi 5
(2005), http://www.ArsDisputandi.org
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