ABSTRACT
In his 1999 Irish Aquinas Lecture entitled “The Spirit of Thomism and the Task of Renewal,” John Haldane continues to advance his oft-made thesis that Catholic philosophers and theologians should embrace the considerable achievements of analytical philosophy.1 These achievements include: precise propositional analyses, detailed logical argumentation, and dialectical accuracy in questions of knowledge, reality and value. Analytical thinkers have used these achievements to develop the fields of philosophical logic and semantics. If one doubts the potential here, then Haldane says to look at the work of Anscombe, Geach and Dummett. In these respects much of the spirit of Scholastic “Aristotelianism” survives in analytical philosophy. Haldane contends that the view of the analytic tradition as anti-metaphysical, resolutely skeptical and essentially nihilistic, is, in truth, a minority view applicable only to Hume who himself is effectively criticized from within the analytic tradition by the likes of Reid and Wittgenstein.2 In conclusion, Haldane proposes an exchange between analytical philosophy and Thomism.3 By offering “intellectual fruits,” analytical philosophy will renew Thomism, while Thomism by offering “spiritual fruits” will help analytical philosophy which does have the fault of not recognizing the goal of philosophy – morality and personal formation. Here Haldane references the call of John Paul II in his 1998 encyclical, Fides et Ratio, for a “sapiential dimension of enquiry.”
