The Love of Truth

Edited by Robert Edward Brennan, O.P. “What we need is not truths that serve us but a truth we may serve.” This famous proposition of Jacques Maritain is a fitting epigraph for this volume, at the heart of which is a recognition of the fundamental relationality of the truth: Knowledge of the truth begets love. The Love of Truth: Samplings in the Thomistic Synthesis illustrates the centrality and profundity of love which permeates the entirety of Angelic Doctor’s intellectual legacy. The contributors are sixteen of the brightest Thomistic luminaries of their age—including Jacques Maritain on necessity and contingency; Vernon J. Bourke on potency and act; Anton Pegis on being and unity; Mortimer J. Adler on law; John A. Ryan on Aquinas’s economic philosophy; Yves R. Simon on the crisis of liberalism; and Walter Farrell, O.P., on representative government. Originally published in 1942 as Essays in Thomism, and edited by Robert Edward Brennan, O.P., The Love of Truth: Samplings in the Thomistic Synthesis captures the sapiential dynamism of the twentieth-century revival of Thomism. Life comes before doctrine: for life leads to the knowledge of truth. (Saint Thomas Aquinas) Robert Edward Brennan, O.P. (1897–1975) was a Dominican priest, psychologist, and internationally acclaimed author. He was a professor at Providence College from 1931–1943, where he directed its Thomistic Institute. His writings include General Psychology: An Interpretation of the Science of Mind Based on Thomas Aquinas (1937), History of Psychology: From the Standpoint of a Thomist (1945), and The Image of His Maker: A Study of the Nature of Man (1948). Paperback: 466pp. ISBN: 978-1950970131