Aquinas, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion Metaphysics and Practice [Hardcover]

In Aquinas, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion, Thomas Hibbs recovers the notion of practice to develop a more descriptive account of human action and knowing, grounded in the venerable vocabulary of virtue and vice. Drawing on Aquinas, who believed that all good works originate from virtue, Hibbs postulates how epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and theology combine into a set of contemporary philosophical practices that remain open to metaphysics. Hibbs brings Aquinas into conversation with analytic and Continental philosophy and suggests how a more nuanced appreciation of his thought enriches contemporary debates. This book offers readers a new appreciation of Aquinas and articulates a metaphysics integrally related to ethical practice.

Thomas Hibbs is Dean of the Honors College and Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Culture at Baylor University. He is author of Virtues Splendour: Wisdom, Prudence, and the Human Good and Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas: An Interpretation of the Summa Contra Gentiles.

Hibbs . . . convincingly argues that the practice of seeking the goodboth moral and intellectualleads to and requires metaphysics, and not the reverse. . . . The book will help those who wantto (1) revisit Aquinass epistemology, metaphysics, and virtue ethic, especially in light of [Hibbs's] substantial previous work on these questions; (2) investigate [Hibbs's] broader theses about metaphysics; (3) generate a more convincing philosophical foundation and a more robust description of social accountability for virtue theory and narrative ethics; or (4) engage one or more of [Hibbs's] admirably diverse interlocutors (Plantinga, MacDonald, Murdoch, Joyce, Turner,Marion, Zagzebski, Pieper, Gadamer, MacIntyre, Nietzsche, and others).March 2009[This book] is an extremely broad-minded engagementand this must surely be very welcomewith the basic contours of contemporary philosophy as practiced in the U.S. today.. . . this book suggests and models a newlcC