Wisdom's Apprentice

Lawrence Dewan OP (1932–2015) graced the world of scholarship with the impressive lucidity, depth, and comprehensiveness of his research on the philosophy and theology of St Thomas Aquinas. A long-time professor at the Collège Universitaire Dominicain in Ottawa and a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas, his hundreds of articles and reviews brought him international renown as a foremost authority on metaphysics, natural philosophy, and ethics as well as on aspects of the work of John Capreolus, Albert the Great, Etienne Gilson, and Jacques Maritain.

Prompted by the honoree’s seventy-fifth birthday in March 2007, Wisdom’s Apprentice gathers the work of twelve distinguished scholars who pay grateful homage to their friend and mentor. Part I engages fundamental metaphysical issues, Jan Aertsen writing on truth as a transcendental, Stephen Brock and David Twetten on the doctrine of being, and J. L. A. West on supposit and nature. Part II contains essays on natural theology, with Ralph McInerny and Leslie Armour posing questions on the rational basis of man’s knowledge of God and Gregory Doolan showing how deliberately Aquinas integrates divine ideas into his doctrine of God. In Part III natural philosophy comes to the fore: Christopher Decaen expounds the impossibility of action at a distance, Jude Dougherty the relationship between physics and philosophy, and Ralph Nelson the influence of Bergson on an important difference between Gilson and Maritain. The two authors of Part IV address the world of man; Kevin Flannery argues that for Aristotle no less than for Aquinas acts can be good or bad in their very species and Heather McAdam Erb unfolds Aquinas’s views on interior peace, the foretaste of eternal life. The volume is rounded off with an introduction to and short biography of Fr. Dewan by Peter Kwasniewski, together with a bibliography of his work.