ABSTRACT
In this chapter I want to make a modest but specific point in favor of a general proposal. The general proposal is that Analytical Thomists – a term I apply to those working within the philosophical tradition stemming from Moore, Russell and Frege who, while not giving Aquinas the last word on any philosophical topic, agree that he should be given the first word – ought seriously to consider the merits of developing a detailed and sustained dialogue between the work of Thomas Aquinas and that of John Searle. Most analytic philosophers with an interest in Aquinas have tended to focus, quite reasonably, on the light that Frege and Wittgenstein throw on the works of the great scholastic thinker, although recently we have also seen John Haldane bring the work of Dummett and the semantic antirealists to bear on Aquinas.1 But as far as I am aware, there has been no sustained discussion of the contribution Searle might offer the Analytical Thomist, despite his being widely recognized as one of the most eminent, if controversial, analytic philosophers of the mid-to-late twentieth century.
