Check out this beauty:
It lists for a hefty hefty HEFty $275--$55 per volume 🤯--but our friends at Amazon will let you have it for $247.50. Believe it or not, I...with my little Retired Too Early Pension...thought about buying it. (Or maybe the paperback version, which Amazon will let you have for $131.10-- $26.22 per volume.)
Because I've been thinking...this fiction reading...even popular fiction with the Slough House series and maybe some other stuff...is fine and fun, and I've certainly chowed down on more pages than I can imagine doing without a "disciplined" reading program...but it's not really what I started this thing for. I started it because there was a book series... A History of Philosophy by Frederick Copleston, S.J....that I'd wanted and tried to read since I was a teenager, but it had kicked my ass. So I thought I'd apply the Longest Journey Begins With A Single Step adage. At first that meant 15 minutes (minimum) per day. And it took a long time...but I did it. It wasn't about how many books I read or how many pages I averaged, it was about taking on a big challenge and sticking with it.
So I decided I wanted to get back to that concept. And I've been wanting to head into some religious waters...so I decided to try out Aquinas' Summa. Honestly...I don't know if I can do it. We're talking about 3,020 pages of heavy material. And there's no way I can do 30 pages a day of that, so I'm setting my sights on 10 pages per day. Which means that reading this will take about ten months. It's more than a little bit intimidating.
The Louisville Free Public Library has volumes 1, 2, 3, and 5 (go figure), though, so I decided to give it my best shot. Picked up Volume 1 today. Will commence reading tomorrow.
Wish I had some company. If you're tempted, go to https://archive.org/details/summatheologica0000thom_h1q3/mode/1up and throw down.
And for the record, Volume I has xix + 580 = 599 pages.
Day 1 (DDRD 2,636) January 17, 2025
Read to page xix--none of which was written by Aquinas. It wasn't easy going, but I made it.
Tomorrow page 1 and St. Thomas.
From "Encyclical of Leo XIII": "Now men, blasphemous, proud, deceivers, go from bad to worse, wandering from the truth themselves and leading others into error." (xiv)
Does this remind you of anyone?
And here's a good word I've never encountered before:
: an originator or chief advocate of a heresy
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heresiarch
So.
Day 2 (DDRD 2,637 January 18, 2025
Read to page 10.
St. Thomas seems to think people are pretty stupid:
"It may well happen that what is in itself the more certain may seem to us the less certain on account of the weakness of our intelligence, which is dazzled by the clearest objects of nature; as the owl is dazzled by the light of the sun. ...Hence the fact that some happen to doubt about articles of faith is not due to the uncertain nature of the truths, but to the weakness of human intelligence...." (3)
There are more snipes, but that seems sufficient to show St. Thomas' perspective. And I don't disagree with him.
Hell, every time I drive on the Waterson Expressway I conclude that most of my fellow human beings are are absolute idiots. But the problem for me here is that St. T is equating lack of faith with a lack of intelligence. That seems ass backwards to me. In my travails, I have usually (but not always) found that the most faithful people are of lesser and limited intelligence. St. T us obviously a smart fellow. Maybe he can only see things from his perspective, and assumes that other faithful folks are as smart as he is.
Another difficulty I'm having with these early pages is that St. Thomas often proves his points by quoting from either Aristotle or the Bible. With respect to the former, "It's true because the Bible says so" isn't a good argument. As far as the latter, I don't see why Aristotle should be the Determiner of Truth in all things. I mean...he got a lot of shit wrong.
Maybe it's my lack of understanding (as a stupid human being), but I found this ironic: "proof from authority is the weakest form of proof." (5)
Ah, but wait. Here's a "clarification": "...for although the argument from authority based on human reason is the weakest, yet the argument from authority based on divine revelation is the strongest." (5) There's game, set, and match for you. (My court, my rules!)
Okay, this seems to be a blatant contradiction. On the use of metaphor in scripture, St. T first says it's okay because "...holy writ is proposed to all without distinction of persons--To the wise, and to the unwise. I am a debtor (Rom. I. 14)--that spiritual truths be expounded by means of figures taken from corporeal things, in order that thereby even the simple who are unable by themselves to grasp intellectual things may be able to understand it." (6) Then in the next paragraph we get this: "The very hiding of truth in figures is useful for the exercise of thoughtful minds, and as a defense against the ridicule of the impious...." (6) WTF?
I was starting to wonder if I would make it through 10 pages this morning when this happened:
for pages 8 and 9, and page 10 was blank, so BINGO! A little bit of a cheat, but hey, letter of the law, baby.
Day 3 (DDRD 2,638 January 19, 2025
Read to page 20. For real.
Under the sub-question "Whether God is a body?" (which was anticipated by my then five year old son, Jimmy when he asked me, "Does God have a butt?"), St. Thomas says Yes, then "proves" it by quoting quoting Genesis, Hebrews, Job, Psalms, and Isaiah. What the actual fuck. I guess I can prove the existence of UFOs by quoting Whitney Streiber, Erich von Däniken, and Steven Spielberg, huh? I'm getting clise to tapping out here. Jesus take the wheel!!!
And then...St. Thomas refutes the God has a body thing, which is more sensible, but refuting a spurious argument does not advance your cause IMHO.
And by the way, for a $55 volume, this book is very poorly made. There's so little margin at the gutter that words can't be read without exerting serious pressure on the page. In fact, here I'm pressing down hard with my thumb (hard enough that my nail turned white)
yet the words thing, composite, knowledge, concrete, and because have all vanished into the gutter.
Hmmm. Don't know what happened to my spacing there, but I don't seem to be able to fix it. Maybe it's a(nother) sign that I should give up on this book. It just seems pointless. Which is pretty uppity of me in that St. Thomas is one of the (if not the) greatest philosophers of all time...and Summa Theologica is his masterpiece, but hey...call 'em
like I see 'em.
Perhaps to be continued.
Project cancelled Tumbling central
( red red red ) money.
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