Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in the Thomistic and Analytical Traditions

Contemporary western philosophy divides into three broad traditions: the analytical, the continental, and the historical. In the latter half of the twentieth century, analytical philosophy was dominant in the English-speaking world and tended to ignore the other two traditions. Now, however, analytical philosophy is less isolationist. It has come to appreciate the vitality of historical philosophy.

Given their commonality of interests and shared appreciation of the values of conceptual clarity and argumentative rigour, it is particularly appropriate that there should be engagement between the main English-language tradition and the philosophy of Aquinas and, more broadly, of Thomism. The essays in this collection range widely across the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind and action, and theory of value with most linking analytical and Aristotelian-Thomistic ideas and some focusing on Aquinas in particular.

This collection is distinctive in content and unusual in North American publishing in the areas of medieval philosophy, scholasticism, and Thomism in that the majority of the contributors are based in Europe―many at medieval universities in which scholasticism had a historical presence, and in some cases a prominent and distinguished one.

Mind, Metaphysics, and Value brings together the interests, knowledge, and expertise of a wide range of scholars to form a broad and exciting intellectual community.

John Haldane is a professor of philosophy at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and Royden Davis Professor of Humanities at Georgetown University, Washington DC.