Oliver Keenan and Daniel De Haan

Project leaders:
Dr Oliver Keenan (Blackfriars, Oxford)
Dr Daniel De Haan (Blackfriars and Campion Hall, Oxford)
Title:
Truth, Aquinas, and the Theological Turn in Continental Philosophy
Description:
This project draws philosophical accounts of truth developed within the continental tradition into dialogue with Thomistic metaphysics of knowing. A programme of intentionally dialogical events will explore the under-realised value of the Thomist tradition’s panoramic vision of truth to continental thinkers, alongside its vulnerability to phenomenological, hermeneutical, and genealogical interrogations. By attending to philosophical movements that have been neglected by Anglophone Thomists, we seek not only to indicate the value of Aquinas to this conversation, but to foster creative re-readings of his work, drawing attention to the latent resources of Thomistic thought to interrogate and strengthen the theological turn within continental philosophy.
Final Report:
The major achievements of the project were two-fold. First, the formation of a reading community of graduate students in theology, philosophy and adjacent disciplines, who participated in the reading classes and other events. This has developed into a number of doctoral projects and MPhil dissertations engaging with themes related to the project, particularly in the academic year 2022/3. Second, the enrichment of the research of the individual scholars involved in the project and, in particular, the two project leaders.
In terms of research findings, I would highlight the following conclusions, intuitions and questions as informing future developments:
Conclusion 1): in the light of interrogation by contemporary continental philosophy, Aquinas’s concept of truth can be rearticulated as an asymmetrical dynamism or tension between two intrinsically related poles, one in the stability of extra-mental being (the ontological generosity of reality), the other in intra-mental becoming (the infinity of the passive intellect).
Intuition 1): that further theological reflection will reveal that these poles are themselves dynamisms, with the event of truth as a perfection of the intellect emerging in the coming together of the dynamism of reality with the dynamism of the mind. In other words, we are gesturing towards a variant of Transcendental Thomism that emerges further down the post-Kantian stream than Lonergan/Rahner’s point of departure.
Conclusion 2): the articulation of an ontology of truth is a neglected task of fundamental theology. This ontology necessarily corresponds to the various ways in which language is meaningfully deployed (from the mundane to the mystical). While fundamental theology often concerns itself with the sources, methods and authorities for dogmatics, in addressing the question of truth only indirectly, theologians have failed to render what we owe to the academy.
Conclusion 2) an aporetic, rather than simply vague, concept of truth (such as that offered by Aquinas) has a invaluable capacity to interrogate the truth-theories implicit within the regional rationalities of the disciplines that make up the academy.
Conclusion 3) The observation of certain structural similarities between scholasticism and continental philosophy, such that continental philosophy might be seen as an agnostic fourth-wave of scholasticism. In particular, both are concerned with cultivating particular practices of communal and careful reading of a particular canon of texts.
Intuition 2): to this (very) limited extent, there is a value to defending the analytic-continental divide, or at least re-framing it in terms of basic orientation.
Conclusion 4) One of the cluster of intuitions that we have tested and (with hindsight perhaps unsurprisingly) found not to hold is that engagement with Aquinas has the potential to mediate a better conversation between analytic and continental philosophers. There are a number of issues here: (a) debates quickly devolve into repetitive discussions of ‘ontotheology’; (b) the analytic-continental divide ultimately tracks the speculative -vs- historical versions of Thomism too closely to provide a neutral comparitor; (c) the question of the extent to which Aquinas’s work is a Platonist (rather than a basically unreconstructed Aristotelian) emerges repeatedly.
Conclusion 5) Painting with very broad brushstrokes, readings of Aquinas are often unconsciously influenced by Heidegger – unless they are consciously situated with regard to Frege. To this extent, Heidegger’s critique of Aquinas on truth misses the mark.
Intuition 1) In the wake of the pandemic, questions of space/place are beginning to displace questions of time/history within Catholic theologies. While the modernist crisis bequeathed to the 20th century the question of history–how truth could be present in the contingencies of truths–the 21st century will have to grapple with the question of the emplotment of truth withing safe and sacred spaces. In this regard, the work of liturgy in the thought of Jean-Yves Lacoste represents a transposition of Heidegger’s account of temporality into spatial terms.