Fb2 Art and Scholasticism with Other Essays ePub

5 STARS FOR CONTENT.

This is one star for the printing. It is like they had some interns scan an old version of this, and didn't bother to check to see if the scans were legible or not. Once you get through the first 30% of the book, entire pages have the first, the last, or both words missing on every line. You end up guessing what word it might have been, based on an occasional first letter or shadow of a last letter. Sometimes the text of a page runs crooked or at a slight diagonal. This is a terrible publication for such a brilliant and beautiful content. A real shame. Made by people who seem to have never made a book before.

This facsimile is basically unreadable. The paper is so shoddy that the print from the other side is visible.

What is even worse, is that all of the pages on the right hand side are cut off. A full word or two is missing on the margin.

Avoid at all costs. This product should not be sold by Amazon.

The French philosopher Jacques Maritain's ART AND SCHOLASTICISM: WITH OTHER ESSAYS: PRIMARY SOURCE EDITION (2014) purports to be a reproduction of a book in the public domain that was originally published in 1923.

The 2014 reproduction contains a brief introduction (pages i-iii) and only one nine-part essay, "Art and the Schoolmen" (pages 1-124), accompanied by twelve appendices, each of which is keyed to a specific footnote in the text (pages 125-179). The reproduction contains no table of contents nor an index. In addition, the translator is not identified by name. Nevertheless, it conveys the flavor of Maritain's Thomistic thought adequately enough.

Now, what Maritain in his titles refers to as "scholasticism" and "schoolmen" are somewhat misleading terms. Maritain refers only to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and his interpreters and commentators. So perhaps the title should have been "Art and Thomism" or perhaps "Art and the Thomistic Tradition of Thought."

Even though Maritain and many other Roman Catholics in the 20th century commonly referred to "scholasticism" instead of referring to "Thomism," the medieval schoolmen and the medieval scholasticism that St. Thomas More and other Renaissance humanists criticized referred to the medieval tradition of Aristotelian logic that dominated the arts curriculum in medieval universities. The arts faculty in medieval universities such as the University of Paris were the schoolmen, and their programmatic emphasis on the Aristotelian tradition of logic was known and is still known as scholasticism.

But when Maritain and other Roman Catholics refer to "scholasticism," they are not referring to the arts curriculum in medieval universities that was the target of St. Thomas More's criticism, as the American cultural historian and theorist Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2003), pointed out years after Maritain's book was published.

In Ong's book RAMUS, METHOD, AND THE DECAY OF DIALOGUE: FROM THE ART OF DISCOURSE TO THE ART OF REASON (Harvard University Press, 1958), Ong details the history of logic (also known as dialectic) from antiquity onward, including the medieval tradition of Aristotelian logic.

Basically, as mentioned, what Maritain refers to as "scholasticism" and "the schoolmen" were the medieval worldview of St. Thomas Aquinas and his interpreters and commentators. In the Roman Catholic Church in the 20th century before the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas in philosophy and theology enjoyed extraordinary status. St. Thomas Aquinas's thought included material that Maritain gathered together as a view of art that interested young Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) in the 1930s. (McLuhan may have read a later edition of Maritain's book that came out in 1930, which contained an additional essay.)

In a letter to the aging French philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) dated May 6, 1969, the Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who received his Ph.D. in English from Cambridge University in 1943, says, "My first encounter with your work was at Cambridge University in 1934. Your ART AND SCHOLASTICISM was on the reading list of the English School. It was a revelation to me. I became a Catholic in 1937." See the LETTERS OF MARSHALL MCLUHAN, selected and edited by Matie Molinaro, Corinne McLuhan (his widow), and William Toye (Oxford University Press, 1987, page 371).

Speaking broadly, serious works of literature can be considered to be works of art, which is probably why Maritain's book was put on the reading list for the English School at Cambridge University. In any event, McLuhan was interested in various forms of art.

In the last sentence of his 1969 letter to Maritain, quoted above, McLuhan mentions his conversion to Roman Catholicism. His conversion represents an example in his personal life of what C. G. Jung, M.D. (1875-1961), the Swiss psychiatrist and psychological theorist, refers to as enantiodromia - a big turn-around -- in one's life.

But McLuhan does not explicitly spell out a connection between his encounter with Maritain's ART AND SCHOLASTICISM and his conversion to Roman Catholicism. Nevertheless, the last sentence about McLuhan's conversion to Roman Catholicism must have been connected somehow in his mind with his 1934 encounter with Maritain's book.

In McLuhan's 1943 Cambridge University doctoral dissertation, published posthumously as THE CLASSICAL TRIVIUM: THE PLACE OF THOMAS NASHE IN THE LEARNING OF HIS TIME, edited by W. Terrence Gordon (2006), McLuhan includes three books by Maritain in the bibliography - two in English (1930 and 1938) and one in French (1932).

In his 1969 letter to Maritain, mentioned above, McLuhan also indicates that he has read Maritain's book THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE: AN OLD LAYMAN QUESTIONS HIMSELF ABOUT THE PRESENT TIME (1968). In that book Maritain vents his misgivings about the Second Vatican Council in the Roman Catholic Church. Vatican II represents a big turn-around in the Roman Catholic Church. Among other things, Vatican II declared peace with other religious traditions.

Unfortunately, Vatican II did not declare an end to the church's contending with modernity. For example, the Roman Catholic bishops have led spirited campaigns in the United States against legalized abortion in the first trimester, against same-sex marriage, and against the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act (also known as ObamaCare). These views and the church's other views regarding sexual morality grow out of the broad anti-body view of the Roman Catholic tradition of moral theory.

In any event, Maritain was a prolific scholar and one of the major figures in the multi-national Thomistic revival in Roman Catholic circles in the first half of the 20th century. (The Roman Catholic Church can be described as a multi-national corporation with branches in numerous countries around the world.)

For many years in his life, McLuhan taught English at St. Mike's at the University of Toronto, which was one of the two leading centers in North America of the Thomistic revival. (The other leading center of Thomistic philosophy in North America was St. Louis University, the Jesuit university in St. Louis, Missouri. McLuhan had taught English there earlier in his career when he was working on his 1943 Cambridge University doctoral dissertation. There were also branches of the Thomistic revival in the British Isles and Continental Europe and elsewhere in the world.)

The Thomistic revival was part of the Roman Catholic Church's contending with modernity and its secular spirit. Briefly, the church was contending with modernity and its secular spirit because modernity and its secular spirit did not conform to the broad contours of the medieval Roman Catholic worldview, but Thomistic philosophy and theology did. Concerning how American Catholics joined in their church's contending with modernity, see Philip Gleason's book CONTENDING WITH MODERNITY: [AMERICAN] CATHOLIC HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (Oxford University Press, 1995).

To put the church's contending with modernity and its secular spirit, I should mention here that the Frankfurt school of critical theory was also engaged in vigorously contending with modernity. However, unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Frankfurt school of critical theory represented an atheistic and therefore secular critique of modernity.

Because the Roman Catholic Church's contending with modernity strongly involved advancing and promoting Thomistic thought in philosophy and theology, Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy was generally shunned by non-Catholic academics - not just by the Frankfurt school of critical theory - as religion.

But McLuhan had no professional training in philosophy or in theology. In philosophy and theology, he was an autodidact. Through his own diligent efforts at self-education in philosophy and theology, McLuhan was steeped in and influenced by the Thomistic revival in philosophy and theology - and more generally, by the Roman Catholic Church's contending with modernity and its secular spirit, because of the church's commitment to the medieval Roman Catholic worldview. His church's spirit of contending with modernity informs McLuhan's two most important experimental books: THE MECHANICAL BRIDE: FOLKLORE OF INDUSTRIAL MAN (1951) and THE GUTENBERG GALAXY: THE MAKING OF TYPOGRAPHIC MAN (1962).

Nevertheless, in the late 1950s, as part of his ongoing self-education in philosophy, McLuhan carefully worked his way through the lengthy book INSIGHT: A STUDY OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, the major philosophical treatise by the Canadian philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (1904-1984). Before undertaking to write INSIGHT, Lonergan had undertaken two detailed studies of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas.

In the 1950s Roman Catholic intellectuals in the Toronto area regarded Lonergan as a rising star. McLuhan most likely heard about INSIGHT from other faculty at St. Mike's, where he taught English.

In this monumental philosophical treatise INSIGHT, Lonergan thoroughly works his way out of the kind of naïve realism that characterized the Thomistic revival that Maritain represents. Instead of embracing the naïve realism of the Thomistic revival - and of Maritain - Lonergan makes a profound inward turn of consciousness.

However, to this day, Lonergan's INSIGHT has not made a big impact on college-educated Catholics or on non-Catholics - or on McLuhan enthusiasts.

In McLuhan's book UNDERSTANDING MEDIA: EXTENSIONS OF MAN (1964), McLuhan also makes the inward turn of consciousness. This exploratory book helped catapult McLuhan to extraordinary fame and celebrity in the 1960s and 1970s. As we might expect, his extraordinary fame and celebrity in the 1960s and 1970s prompted a backlash from certain academics - and not just non-Catholics.

To this day, McLuhan enthusiasts have tended not to investigate the influence of Maritain's book ART AND SCHOLASTICISM or Lonergan's book INSIGHT on McLuhan's thought - or more generally, the influence of the Thomistic revival on his thought. But McLuhan converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1930s when both Maritain as one Thomistic author and the multi-national Thomistic revival were rising to ascendancy in Roman Catholic circles around the world. Between McLuhan's early stint of teaching English at St. Louis University and his later stint of teaching English at St. Mike's at the University of Toronto, McLuhan devoted a substantial part of his adult life to teaching English at the two leading centers of the Thomistic revival in philosophy in North America. In addition, he independently studied Lonergan's INSIGHT in the late 1950s. It looks to me like McLuhan found something nourishing to his thought in the Roman Catholic tradition of thought.

I know, I know, many academics today tend to be anti-religion in general. So their anti-religion tendency might deter McLuhan enthusiasts today from investigating how McLuhan was influenced by the Roman Catholic tradition of thought - and especially by the Thomistic revival in the 20th century, of which Maritain was a part. The goal of such an investigation should not be to urge anti-religion academics to become interested in the Roman Catholic tradition of thought that influenced McLuhan, but to understand McLuhan's thought as arising from the cultural matrix of the Roman Catholic tradition of thought.

If McLuhan enthusiasts today do not understand how the Roman Catholic tradition of thought, and especially the Thomistic revival, influenced McLuhan's thought, then they probably do not understand his thought very deeply - because they do not understand where he is coming from.

Yes, to be sure, each book by McLuhan should stand on its own merits - as each and every book should. However, to understand any book by McLuhan well, McLuhan enthusiasts should understand where he is coming from. (As a rule of thumb, this is probably true of other authors' books as well.)

Very large type, parts missing when scanned and generally a poor copy! I recommend anyone wanting to read Art And scholasticism to get the full volume.

I purchased this issue as a replacement for an older edition of the same title that I have. My older version is a translation by J.F. scanlan (Essay Index Reprint Series)by the Books for Libraries Press.

I was disappointed in this particular issue because some of the essays that I expected to be in the volume were not. Specifically, Frontiers of Poetry.

I will be returning this edition and will try to locate a good used copy of the 1971 reprint. Besides, I really like having all the endnotes.

If you want a better edition of this title try ISBN 0836922417

P.S. The binding on this edition is cruddy.

wonderful reproduction of a classic book in english translation. Maritain's idea of art as making is an essential component of any understanding of contemporary catholic aesthetic theory.

A very, very poor binding of a masterful work by Maritain. Typos abound, text italicized or bold in the original is not here, overall the text seems unedited. Above all, this printing is missing the quite extensive footnotes and endnotes, as well as the essay "Frontiers of Poetry." Do not recommend; use the free online version.

A+