Abstract

This pioneering monograph, published by the Jesuit Faculties of Philosophy and Theology at Montréal, disclaims being ‘un essai original de philosophie spéculative’. Nevertheless Père Desjardins’ critico-historical study of the metaphysical grounding in some Absolute Reality of the absolute character experienced in moral obligation leads him beyond criticism of the notable diversity of its evaluation by neo-Scholastics to a deeper exploration of moral obligation in human action and its dialectic of physical liberty and moral necessity. The deontological argument to God was first formulated by Bańez, when the sixteenth century discoverers of the New World met pagans ignorant of God’s revealed sanction for morality. Today’s growing appreciation of Bańez’s creative insight into Thomist metaphysic is tested, perhaps, by this succinct argument in his commentary upon the Summa theologiae 2a-2ae, 10, 1