The Foundations of Thomistic Philosophy

“Philosophy has no part which he did not touch finely at once and thoroughly,” writes Pope Leo XIII of St. Thomas Aquinas. In these pages, the Dominican A. G. Sertillanges puts his readers in direct contact with the fullness of reality as mediated through the comprehensive wisdom of the Angelic Doctor. Neither rudimentary résumé nor technical treatise, The Foundations of Thomistic Philosophy conducts a broad overview of the core tenets of Thomistic thought in relation to God, creation and providence, the nature of man, and morality. Therein, Sertillanges writes, we find “a true account of things,” for St. Thomas “analyzes where others only depict…makes us understand, where they make us see; he reveals when others sing.” To receive the wisdom of Aquinas requires only one qualification: a mind and heart open to truth. The Foundations of Thomistic Philosophy, for its simplicity of content and sincerity of intent, bears out the ease of that requirement.