By Subhasis Chattopadhyay –
Saint Thomas of Aquinas was considered foolish by his classmates because he was an introvert. Maybe, he was dyslexic. Maybe, he did not have the gift of the gab. But man, when this same Thomas began writing, he shook not only Europe but eventually even Eastern thinkers.
Within European metaphysics, he first revised the theodicy of St. Augustine of Hippo. This is no mean task since tinkering with St. Augustine without having the depth of St. Thomas of Aquinas is intellectual hara-kiri. It is not for nothing that Hannah Arendt, the Jewish thinker, did her doctoral work on St. Augustine’s concept of divine love. Arendt had the intellectual chutzpah to deal with both Sts. Augustine and Thomas. One cannot be studied meaningfully without the other. Be that as it may, we turn to the effect that this introvert had on Eastern thinkers. Neo-Advaita and Vishishta-Advaita scholars from the last century onwards have had to negotiate him.
Thomas’s world view and the Hindu world view are very different, yet it is certain to this author that St. Thomas inaugurated what is now known as Early Continental Modernism as Adi Shankaracharya in the 8th Century A.D. inaugurated a more invigorated phenomenological turn within Hinduism. This inward movement, or vita contemplativa is a marker for true modernity everywhere. This author had written of St. Thomas’s role as the first Modernist in Prabuddha Bharata, but that is beyond the scope of this blog-post. We now turn to St. Thomas’s learning. A touchy matter in these days of reductionism and dumbing down.
From children to adults, everyone is glued to social media and cannot concentrate for too long a time. Further, none has the time to think, pause and write sustainedly on one topic. And the empiricists among us want everything quantified: so much score in a subject means a candidate has that much grasp of that subject. Whereas, truth be told, we are all in the grips of a deadly credential fetish.
St. Thomas’s writings which we all talk about but never read should be a wake-up call to both Christians and Hindus. How many Christian schools and universities in India bother to engage their students and teachers with neo-Thomism? And in like manner, how many of us Hindus bother with St. Thomas of Aquinas when we speak of Christianity? This Saint has suffered the faith of Adi Shankaracharya who established Advaita Vedanta. Both are paid normative and nominal homage on special occasions, and then we simply move on to shorter topics with so much jazz.
I wonder why I do not see fresh copies of the Summa in Indian Christian philosophy departments?
Subhasis Chattopadhyay is a blogger and an Assistant Professor in English (UG & PG Departments of English) at Narasinha Dutt College affiliated to the University of Calcutta. He has additional qualifications in Biblical Studies and separately, Spiritual Psychology. He also studied Hinduism separately and remains a staunch Hindu. He had written extensively for the Catholic Herald published from Calcutta. From 2010 he reviews books for the Ramakrishna Mission and his reviews have been showcased in Ivy League Press-websites.
He tweets at @bookbewitched and is also on Instagram: chattopadhyay.subhasis