Journal of the History of Philosophy

BOOR REVIEWS 315 There are two essays on Brentano in this work; the first of them (35-6o) is far more important in connection with his legacy. This essay is an overview of the philosophical orientation that Brantano conveyed to his pupils. This orientation is of course psychological in character. The psychology in question is, moreover, one in which "intentionality" becomes the central theme. It is well known that, according to Brentano's early formulation of this notion, the object exists in the act, though there is some dispute about how this is meant. Smith insists that it is "to be taken literally" (42). While it is uncertain how a literal reading could here be contrasted with a metaphorical one, it should be kept in mind that Brentano also warns against construing the inexistent object as something which exists in the proper sense (im eigentlichenSinn). This caveat unfortunately does not receive due attention from Smith. While the same point is again made by Twardowski, Smith hardly takes it into account in his otherwise excellent essay on this crucial figure in the school of Brentano. This book is nonetheless worth reading, for it effectivelybrings home the merits of Brentano's thought and will hopefully generate further interest in Brentano and his school. R. D. ROLLINGER Freiburg University Gerald A. McCool. The Neo-Thomists. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1994. Pp. vi + 166. Paper, $2o.oo. In reviewing the different philosophic movements of the twentieth century--logical positivism, analytical philosophy, process philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism, hermeneutics--a place will have to be given to the revival of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas 02~5-1274 ). From early in this century until well into the 197os, the required philosophy courses at many Catholic colleges and universities were structured around the philosophy of Aquinas. Now, in retrospect, Thomists note a decline in enthusiasm which began, curiously enough, with Vatican II (1962-65); but the momentum engendered by the encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris 0879 ), seems to be sufficient to carry Thomism into the twenty-first century, though not without its own internal controversies and factions. Gerald A. McCool, S.J., professor at Fordham University, has in America been the historian of this revival and to some extent its decline. His Nineteenth-CenturyScholasticism : The Searchfor a Unitary Method (1977; paperback 1989) studied how Catholic intellectual life, wounded by the Enlightenment and the aftermath of the French revolution, struggled to find a metaphysical basis for the teaching of Catholic theology. It is an interesting story how small groups of Italian priests, almost independently of each other, discovered that the works of Aquinas would serve them in their seminary classes. It is the story of how two brothers, Giuseppi and Gioacchino Pecci, became caught up in this movement, and when Gioacchino, Cardinal Archbishop of Perugia, was elected pope in a878, he was in a position to share his enthusiasm, and did so with 3~6 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 35:2 APRIL ~997 Aeterni Paths, which recommended to the whole church a return to the scholastics of the middle ages, especially the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. McCool continued his research of the revival of Thomism in his 1989 From Unity to Pluralism: The Internal Evolution of Thomism, which, building on the nineteenth-century heritage, studied the twentieth-century work of such Thomists as Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson. Though the work of revival was largely carried out by religious, it is noteworthy that the two French scholars were laymen: Maritain, a convert to Catholicism , only discovered Aquinas after this conversion; and Gilson, a born Catholic, came to his study of Thomas after his Sorbonne teacher, Lucien Ldvy-Bruhl, suggested that an interesting research project would be looking into the medieval background of Descartes. In The Neo-Thomists McCool presents us with a most readable and, for the undergraduate teacher, a very handy digest of his earlier research. The nineteenth-century revival is handled in a chapter leading to Aeterni Paths, and then the story continues with the work of Jesuits such as Pierre Rousselot and Dominicans like Ambroise Gardeil, Pierre Mandonnet, M. D. Chenu, and Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange. The work of revival...