Abstract
The article presents an analysis of a reaffirmation of St. Thomas Aquinas’s synthesis as the only non-alternative form of authentic Catholic philosophizing in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the light of the papal encyclicals Aeterni Patris and Studiorum Ducem, the author has carried out an overview of the basic motives for the canonization of Aquinas’ conceptual system which initially had been vied upon by Popes as an intellectual antidote against the intoxicating mistakes of Modernity for protecting the Church’s official teaching. However, it is also shown in the paper that the neo-scholastic project contained not only an oppositional mentality and negative self-identification based on the critical repulsion from the age of Modernity, but it also had a powerful previously undisclosed heuristic potential as well. This claim is substantiated by the revealed thematic diversity, ideological plurality, and teleological goal-setting of neo-Thomism’s various forms and subdivided branches. The diversiform neo-Thomist intellectual project proves the existence of its rather elastic doctrinal boundaries which enable the movement’s capability of preserving relevance and openness to the contemporary intellectual challenges without removing its core historical doctrinal frame. It is also noted that the multiplicity of forms of neo-Thomism primarily emerged due to the posting of various epistemological issues as a primary basis. As a result, this methodological approach artificially increased the number of starting points for further philosophical explorations within the neo-Thomist project.
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