The Metaphysics of Creation: Aquinas's Natural Theology in Summa contra gentiles II - Hardcover

Kretzmann, Norman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198237871 ISBN 13: 9780198237877

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1999

Synopsis

Norman Kretzmann expounds and criticizes St. Thomas Aquinas's natural theology of creation, which is `natural' (or philosophical) in virtue of Aquinas's having developed it without depending on the data of Scripture. The Metaphysics of Creation is a continuation of the project Kretzmann began in The Metaphysics of Theism, moving the focus from the first to the second book of Aquinas's Summa contra gentiles.

About this title

About the Author:

Norman Kretzmann, Susan Linn Sage Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Cornell University, New York, completed this book at the beginning of 1998, and died in the summer of that year. He taught philosophy at Cornell for more than thirty years, and also held appointments at Bryn Mawr College, Ohio State University, and the University of Illinois, and visiting positions at Wayne State University and the Universities of Minnesota, Arizona, and Oxford.

Review:

`Significant ... Throughout, critical remarks and illuminating footnotes abound.'
Desmond Paul Henry, BJHP, Vol.8, No.3

`This renaissance of Thomist study is well illustrated by ... recently published ... The Metaphysics of Creation by Norman Kretzmann.'
Anthony Kenny, Times Literary Supplement, April 21st 2000

`The circumstances of the production of The metaphysics of Creation deserve particular remark. In 1992, Kretzmann was diagnosed as having terminal cancer ... The unfinished trilogy is a remarkable achievement for a man under sentence of death undergoing constant chemotherapy. But no reader
need make the slightest allowance for this; the quality of the thought and writing compares well with that of many a healthy philosopher at the height of his powers.'
Anthony Kenny, Times Literary Supplement, April 21st 2000

`the book is best read with the Summa contra Gentiles in hand, since it is full of perceptive close readings of chosen passages. Kretzmann's lucid analysis of the arguments, and his patient teasing out of their most difficult steps, is a service to the learned world, both theological and
philosophical. It should make widely known what a remarkable and undervalued work we possess in the Summa contra Gentiles.'
Anthony Kenny, Times Literary Supplement, April 21st 2000

`There is something poignant about a philosopher's spending the last months of his life demolishing a series of arguments for survival after death. It is characteristic of the rugged integrity which marked all Norman Kretzmann's writing.'
Anthony Kenny, Times Literary Supplement, April 21st 2000

`One of the most impressive features of Kretzmann's interpretation - something that is likely to be more appreciated by exegetically minded Thomists than by the analytic philosophers of religion for whom Kretzmann is writing - is the way he links together its various parts, especially the way
he insists upon the connections between the first and second books of the ScG, both of which have as their oject knowledge of God.'
Thomas S. Hibbs, Philosophy. 71.

`This renaissance of Thomist study is well illustrated by ... The Metaphysics of Creation by Norman Kretzmann'
Anthony Kenny, TLS

`the quality of the thought and writing compares well with that of many a healthy philosopher at the height of his powers.'
Anthony Kenny, TLS

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0198237871
• ISBN 13: 9780198237877
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 504