The Return of the Manuals?
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Books reviewed:
R. E. Houser, Logic as a Liberal Art: An Introduction to Rhetoric and Reasoning. Washington, D.C: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020.
Michael J. Dodds, O.P., The One Creator God in Thomas Aquinas and Contemporary Theology. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020.
Teaching the subjects of logic and natural theology well is no easy task and aids are greatly to be desired, particularly by beginning teachers. Prof. Houser and Fr. Dodds have recently and respectively published excellent means to each end. This review of both books is based upon my own classroom use. My reason for discussing these two books together is to discuss, at the end of this essay, a few ideas concerning philosophical pedagogy in today’s classroom.
Let’s start with logic, for that is a very good place to start.
The Art of Thinking Well
I assigned Houser’s logic textbook as the main text during a semester-long course for seminarians (philosophy majors) and other interested students. While it was not a general education course, the book was put to the test by a sample of its central target audience. The fact that the text was itself honed by classroom experience shows, as it is approachable for students when reading and facilitates classroom discussion.
The book is divided into four parts. Each chapter in each part is divided a brief foray into the basics or essentials of the chapter topic, a deeper look at the reasons behind it and the connection to the primary sources in the tradition underlying it, and, lastly, a problem set. (More about these three below.) The first of the book part covers, in a general way, the trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. The remaining three parts pace through the traditional three parts of logic—classical, Aristotelian logic—the mind’s act of understanding (which use terms as its tools), of judging (propositions), and of reasoning (arguments).
First order or sentential logic makes brief appearances, second-order predicate logic not at all. In neither case is this a drawback. The text introduces some logical operators, for instance, the use of “→” for if–then propositions, but not with the same mode or end as a symbolic logic course. Houser is deliberate here, arguing to both instructors and students that the book aims “to study logic in its ‘natural’ setting” (xxviii) and that symbolic logic “tends to separate the logic we have already learned during our normal intellectual development from the logic we learn in logic class” (xxvii).
Part I consists of six chapters (or “lessons”): one on grammar, three on rhetoric, and two on logic. Lesson 1, on grammar, introduces the parts of speech and discusses sentence syntax. It includes extensive examples and exercises on diagramming sentences. Although the text partly expects the readers to induce the various conventions for sentence diagramming, it does suggest a few helpful books towards this end. Lessons 2–4 discuss, in turn, the origins and types of rhetoric, the cannons of rhetoric (the five rhetorical skills and five parts of a classical speech), and the three classical rhetorical appeals. These lessons are especially clear and helpful as introductions the essentials of rhetoric as a liberal art.
It may be surprising to see such chapters in a logic textbook. However, after reflecting upon the semester using the book, I am no longer surprised. As Houser argues in a note to the instructor, discussing five different ways to use the book when teaching a logic course, “too many teachers of philosophy are dismissive of grammar and really despise rhetoric” (xx). Unfortunately for my first time using the book, we did skip Lesson 1, and spent only a day or so discussing some highlights from Lessons 2–4. However, I now see the wisdom of these first lessons. Houser notes, “in defense of keeping some rhetoric,” that “the ‘information revolution’ makes it more necessary than ever to distinguish ethos, pathos, and logos” (ibid.). This is true. In hindsight I also add that the “disinformation” revolution and the degeneration of grammatical skills promoted by social media makes it necessary also.
At various points in the course, for instance, it became clear that some students could not parse the logical structure of a proposition expressed in a grammatically complex sentence because they could not wade through the grammar of the sentence itself. (Again, Houser warned me, xxi: “Please don’t skip diagramming sentences in lesson 1.”) Thus, Part I helpfully displays all three arts of the trivium together in their essentials, allowing students, through practice and a bit of suffering (pathêmata mathêmata) to grasp their difference and complementarity.
Part I closes with two chapters on logic. Lesson 5 distinguishes the logic of the Topics from the other logical treatises, while also noting their basic connections. Lesson 6 discusses how this “logic of discovery and proof” is organized, and serves as a preface for the remaining three parts.
I mentioned that Houser lays out five pathways through the book. They are:
Skipping grammar and rhetoric (so, starting at Lesson 6 or 7)
Purely formal logic (so, starting with Part III, the logic of propositions, Lessons 13 and following, skipping the logic of terms)
Analysis of problems (a focus on the central lessons in Parts II, III, and IV, “teaching theory by doing problems in class”)
Even-handed (again, skipping Part I, and dipping into the essentials of the remaining parts)
Logic of argumentation (beginning with propositions in Part III, but focusing more on argumentation in Part IV)
Indeed, some pathway is needed, because it would be difficult to teach the entire book in one semester, at least in a way in which most students would profit. Regardless of pathway, there are a few lessons along the way which can be skipped, depending on the needs of instruction, thus giving a course more breathing room. (I will suggest my own “route” below.)
Overall, the lessons in Parts II–IV will provide all manner of instructors of classical logic with a sound basis for real classroom work and student progress. The content of each lesson clearly and cogently explains the elements of Aristotelian logic, and only in few places would one qualify or modify Prof. Houser’s explanations.
The text does feature some omissions and changes, however. There is no centralized discussion of univocal, equivocal, or analogous terms (although this can be easily remedied in class). While various fallacies are discussed along the way, there is no lesson dedicated to them. (I note that the text on pp. 69–79, a quote from Carrel, should be set off as a block quote, not as the main text.)
One example of a change: the “if–then” proposition is named a “conditional” proposition, not a “hypothetical” one. Thus, within propositions, Houser divides categorical ones against hypothetical ones, instead of the usual simple versus compound. (That is, conditional, conjunctive, and disjunctive propositions end up being species of hypothetical propositions.) Houser’s reason for this is that the syncategorematic nature of the logical connectives in compound propositions makes their possession of truth or falsity hypothetical (p. 158). While this naming seems a bit arbitrary (one could also argue that the truth or falsity of compound propositions is conditioned by their component parts), the overall approach does have the advantage of emphasizing what is formal about the division of propositions, which is how they admit of truth and falsity, depending upon their categorical or non-categorical character. By contrast, the typical division into simple and compound is a more material division.
Furthermore, there are only hints at the logic which is the subjects of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (sometimes called “material” logic). While this is a usually the case with such books, there are two ways in which Houser’s hints are helpful. First, he does discuss necessary and sufficient conditions in one of the more advanced lessons, which instructors could use to cover some areas of overlap with the logic of scientific demonstration. Second, the exercises provide ample opportunity to introduce ideas from material logic in an informal way. For instance, the problem set in Lesson 29 ends with an extended excerpt from William Harvey’s famous demonstration of the nature of the heart and the circulation of the blood.
Indeed, the exercises are the stunning strength of this book and they make it a joy to use as a teacher. Some logic texts—which will remain nameless—are often a dread to use in this regard. Even the harder example problems are more like toy examples, or they are simply not well suited for properly challenging beginners.
In contrast, and true to the aim of the book, Houser’s problem sets present Aristotelian logic in its natural environment. They are divided into various levels of difficulty, and the harder problems are often excerpted or adapted from classical texts in literature, history, science, philosophy, and theology. They are all aptly chosen and well suited to the purposes of each lesson. To be sure, there are easier examples that are common to other textbooks. It is the moderately and more difficult exercises where the book truly excels.
By submitting the work of the text to the great minds of history and their thinking things through, Houser helps students to begin to see the power of classical logic in the concrete. For instance, Lesson 29, “Extended Categorical Arguments” contains more challenging examples, but they parse well and allow students to see logic at work in real thought. Among others, for instance, the lesson features a three-paragraph selection from Democracy in America in which Alexis de Tocqueville argues that democracies tend to centralize power insofar as citizens in a democracy are isolated individuals. The in-class analysis of such a passage shows students immediately how the tools of logic supply aids to considerations in political philosophy.
Apart from the problem sets, the book also features repeated and substantive connections to Aristotle’s own texts, whether by quotation, paraphrase, or reference. I took advantage of these connections to point students to the original texts, basing a few discussions on these primary sources. (While it may be an opinion I outgrow, it seems that, due to the aid that a good secondary source can provide beginners or undergraduates, logic is the area where students are ill-served by an exclusive reliance upon primary texts.) Houser also supplies connections to the other areas of philosophy throughout the text, both in the explanations of the chapter topics and in the problem sets.
The next time I use this book (this fall), it will be with a modification of one of the pathways discussed above. Specifically, the course will begin by covering the entirety of Part I on the trivium. Then, I hope to try what more or less amounts to the third option, an analysis of problems, supplemented by selections of primary texts.
Houser’s Logic as a Liberal Art has much to recommend it and little, if anything at all, against it. After working through it in a rigorous way, students are shown the groundlessness of Descartes’s opinion that Aristotle’s “logic corrupts good sense rather than increasing it,” or Locke’s view that the human mind “can reason without being instructed in methods of syllogizing.” I highly encourage instructors and students, of all levels, to consider using Houser’s book.
The Philosopher’s Ways to God
Fr. Dodd’s book was assigned in my semester-long natural theology course in the role of second fiddle, as it were. The book itself is well suited to do this, since it is a lithe introduction to and commentary on a substantive portion of St. Thomas’s “treatise on the One God,” Summa theologiae, Ia, qq. 2–26, alongside qq. 44–49, with references across the range of Aquinas’s corpus. The text is divided into ten chapters with two appendices (one philosophical, on key terms, and one theological-historical, discussing monotheism in a broader context).
While I used the book in a philosophy course, Fr. Dodds does highlight the theological formality of the underlying text of the Summa and points out connections and contrasts between Aquinas’s positions and contemporary theological debates, all while devoting the substance of the book to the work of philosophy as ancilla theologiae. It made the book particularly fitting for my course, which is taught mostly to seminarians preparing to study theology at major seminary.
Dodds’s introduction discusses the basics of the book’s topic, the life of St. Thomas, his theology, and the purpose and method of the Summa itself. Its section “Thomas and Thomism(s)” is a helpful overview for those new to the subject, in particular upper-level undergraduates going on to graduate work. The book’s ten chapters are structured by following St. Thomas’s own order: God’s existence (ch. 1; ST, q. 2), the ontological attributes (ch. 2; qq. 3–11), knowing and naming God (ch. 3; qq. 12–13), and then the operative attributes: God’s knowledge and life (ch. 4; qq. 14–18), will (ch. 5; q. 19), love, justice, and compassion (ch. 6; qq. 20–21), providence (ch. 7; qq. 22–24), power (ch. 8; q. 25), and beatitude (ch. 9; q. 26). The last chapter discusses creation and divine action (ch. 10; qq. 44ff, et al.), about which Fr. Dodds has written elsewhere.
As those familiar with the text of the Summa will note, or as those who have taught courses in natural theology might immediately realize, the book spends far less of its time where many courses spend most of theirs. That is, the Five Ways are treated in one chapter (ch. 1, pp. 24–60), and attributes such as simplicity, perfection, goodness, and unity occupy another (ch. 2, pp. 61–79). In the course for which I assigned this book, for instance, we spend a little over four weeks on the Five Ways. Even in his discussion of qq. 3–11, Dodds focuses a bit more on questions qq. 7–11 (13 pages) than on qq. 3–6 (6 pages).
The fact that the books skews towards later questions actually turns out to be an advantage. As an instructor, it is often a concern to focus more on the more basic and central questions and articles, while it is the later ones where students frequently have more questions. Thus, if a course begins “wisely and slow” by deliberately laying a solid foundation on the earlier questions, students can then read the later questions with benefit, and the instructor can draw on, for a second opinion, Fr. Dodds’s clarifying commentary.
Throughout the book, Fr. Dodds lays out the basics of the subject without belaboring controversy, although he does not skirt it when the need arises. This allows the main text of the book to be accessible to the serious beginners in its audience, while also pointing out where to go to study the difficulties more deeply. Fr. Dodds is also gentle and unassuming when presenting his own resolutions to problems, and if they are sometimes too brief, this is partly due to the scope of the book itself.
So, for example, a thread running throughout the book is a concern that Fr. Dodds addresses in The Unchanging God of Love. Aquinas’s doctrine of divine simplicity and immutability seem incompatible with God possessing attributes of love and mercy. Thus, at the relevant junctures through the text, the controversies about these issues are noted and introduced. While this can have the effect of topicality at times, the footnotes contain clear and direct references to major sources. Indeed, the footnotes are replete with sources to which the intrepid upper-level undergraduate or beginning graduate student can turn for the controversies. Two other topics where Fr. Dodds’s treatment and method are effective for the beginner are his considerations of the problem of evil and the nature of divine action (on the latter, he has another book: Unlocking Divine Action).
Now, one place where readers may find Fr. Dodds’s method a bit too topical is the chapter on the Five Ways. On the whole, the consideration of each Way is given in clear terms, with all the basic clarifications that teachers expect and students need. However, this means that well-known debates—at least, well known to Thomistic scholarship—over the First, Third, or Fourth Ways are mentioned only in passing or not at all. For instance, Fr. Dodds introduces without much ado the interpretation of the First Way as belonging to natural philosophy. While I agree with this view, Fr. Dodds only notes the extensive disagreement in a few footnotes. At the same time, however, he presents the clearest defense of the First Way in such a short space that I’ve read. On the whole, in my view, Fr. Dodds writes with beginners in mind and steers a pleasant mean between an analytic barrage of objections and counter-replies and an erudite avalanche of secondary source considerations.
Elsewhere in the book, Fr. Dodds’s style permits substantive connections to perennial and contemporary theological topics, which I found especially helpful in my course. For instance, the discussion of providence and predestination is clear and helpful, and draws on recent work in the field (for instance, Long, Nutt, and White’s Thomism and Predestination). As already noted, the discussion of God’s mercy makes extensive reference to contemporary theologians who think that, in order for God to be truly merciful and loving, He must also truly suffer. Dodds dissolves this concern handily. Other examples include his brief discussions of pantheism and panentheism, or clarifications of misconceptions concerning Aquinas’s doctrine of God’s relation to creation. The chapter including the latter, on knowing and naming God, is again to be noted for its clarity that does not pass over issues of substance.
As should be clear by now, this book is warmly recommended to teachers, especially those beginning instructors tasked with an undergraduate natural theology course and looking for a helpful secondary text. It would also serve well as a stand-alone source for independent study.
In Defense of Today’s “Neo-Manualism”
In past unenlightened ages, it was a trope—and then a cliché—to denigrate a philosophical or theological view as bearing too much a resemblance to the “schoolmen” or the “scholastics.” In the last century, and even in this one, if you wish to dismiss summarily the mode or content of a book, simply call it a “manual” or its author a “manualist.” Surely you know the kind: those “Neo-Scholastic” manuals, written in a cramped Latin parceled out into enumerated paragraphs, all crested with a “nihil obstat” and appropriate “imprimatur.”
However, there is a lot about manuals that is simply a myth that needs to be quashed. This is because, as in any age in literate human history, there were good and bad books for students. Manuals overlapped with both. Furthermore, their use and abuse coincided with teachers both good and bad, and was incidentally tied to academic and ecclesial politics that either no longer apply or which now train their focus on other controversies. Blaming “the manualists” for the tribulations of philosophical and theological education partly overlaps with—and is about as accurate as—personally blaming Christian Wolff for the limitations of early Neo-Scholastic philosophy.
Now, the books reviewed above are not “manuals” in the derogatory sense. However, there is something about them that hearkens back to the better elements and best instances of that tradition. Indeed, there is a case to be made for a new brand of manualism, and not only because it’s already happening but because it is a good idea.
In an essay for The Homiletic and Pastoral Review, “Philosophy in the Seminary Curriculum” (May 2004), Msgr. Robert Sokolowski suggests “that it would be a good idea to develop textbooks” for the courses usually taught at the minor seminary level (and, in most undergraduate philosophy programs at Catholic colleges and universities). Sokolowski observes:
The tendency now is for teachers to develop their own courses on the basis of primary texts and selected readings, but I think it would be advisable to have books that summarized the most important concepts in each of the courses I have mentioned. A textbook of this nature need not be coextensive with the entire course, but it could provide the core content of the course, the basic material that definitely ought to be covered. More material could be added at the discretion of the teacher, but the basics should be made available in a systematic way. I think that students benefit from a good textbook. It provides order in the course, and it makes sure that the essentials have been presented. Such texts could also be a great help to teachers.
Many teachers probably follow a mix of these two approaches. For instance, my courses are typically based upon a sequence of primary texts. However, I also try to avoid a mere series of selected readings and to incorporate a single book or two as secondary sources, as long as the book progresses “right alongside” the work of the course, so to speak. These are books that, as Sokolowski hoped, are not “coextensive with” my courses, but complement or supplement them in some way.
Before pursuing this idea of “manuals,” however, we should raise and settle an objection or two that might have come to mind. For instance, (1) surely there are already books for the above courses—indeed, great books, the primary texts. It is these that students must be reading. Furthermore, (2) the use of a textbook or “manual,” besides being a lowly secondary source, would also be limiting insofar as it would expose students to only one possible voice among many in the secondary literature. Finally, (3) the addition or use of a secondary book would surely detract from the unity and order of a current course.
However, this approach (1) need not ignore primary texts, and the “textbooks” used should not either. Indeed, neither of the books reviewed above do this, instead hewing closely to primary texts. Consider also that, at most undergraduate institutions, the practice of reading difficult primary texts is not widespread, and students can be unprepared for such a rigorous experience, making it more a rigamarole than rewarding. Furthermore, especially at smaller undergraduate institutions, someone might find that they are the sole faculty representative of Aristotle or Aquinas, just one among the many at the modern “multiversity.” In such cases, a strong, clear alternative “voice” to which students can listen may be of great help. This addresses the concerns in (2), to which we should add that the primary texts ground a tradition of reading and learning the truth from such text into which students are inevitably introduced. Lastly, (3) it is true that secondary sources can detract from the unity of a course, and should be used judiciously. However, it is also just as true that they can further inspire students by opening up more avenues of inquiry that (a) either they would not have realized through their own personal study, (b) one simply does not have the time to discuss in class, or (c) which primary texts do not consider.
In that same article, Msgr. Sokolowski also recommends that a “streamlined Thomism” be taught:
I think that seminarians should learn the essentials of Thomism, but they should not be expected to become medieval philosophers. Some may wish to become expert in medieval thought, but most of them, in their general education, would be better served by the fruits of Thomism, not by the whole orchard. In learning such a streamlined Thomism, seminarians would be introduced to the great tradition in philosophy, because in Thomas’s writings we find not only his own thought but many of the essentials of the thought of Aristotle and the Platonic tradition. Thomas gives the student access to the great classical tradition of philosophy. A seminary program should distill for the students the central teachings of Aquinas, formulated in a classical vocabulary but also adapted and supplemented in view of our contemporary needs and understandings. I think there should be a new revival of Thomism in the educational effort of the Church. Certainly, the important historical research into Aquinas and medieval thought that has occurred in the past 150 years should continue, but for a more general education, especially in the seminary but in college programs as well, a kind of distilled, modern Thomism should be formulated. In the past three or four decades Thomism has been replaced in Church institutions by an eclectic and historical study of philosophy, but such an approach never comes to a conclusion and does not form the mind in the way a Christian philosophy should. A return to a Thomistic approach would be very desirable.
Again, while there is much to ponder in what Sokolowski suggests, I think that, in its main lines, it is correct. Students ought not be turned into little scholars of a particular age of philosophical history, but formed into philosophic wonder; their minds must be shaped by principles, not filled with a database of positions; lastly, it is Aquinas to whom we ought turn and upon whose thought we should formulate, in our teaching and carrying on of the “great classical tradition,” a distilled presentation of these essentials. Forming students in these principles prepares them for their own further studies and deeper understanding of philosophy.
The above two books by Prof. Houser and Fr. Dodds are recent entries in what could be an unofficial series answering to Msgr. Sokolowski’s call for “textbooks” that aid students and teachers, especially those in undergraduate programs that are small or burdened with too many of the ill-effects that attend modern curricula in the multiversity. Others could be added. For instance, in philosophy of the human person, one thinks of Steven Jensen’s recent (and excellent) The Human Person: A Beginner's Thomistic Psychology. Jensen addresses in greater breadth areas that Jim Madden’s Mind, Matter, and Nature considers in a bit more depth. Richard Berquist’s recent book on the natural law is a promising entry in that area. Feser’s Scholastic Metaphysics and his Five Proofs are also used in my courses, alongside excerpts from Fr. Clarke’s The One and the Many. I also assign parts of Reinhard Hütter’s John Henry Newman On Truth and Its Counterfeits when we read Newman’s Grammar in my epistemology course (see the Thomistica review of Hütter’s book here).
If there is to be a “new manualism,” then I hope to see more of these sorts of books.