Grammatical Thomism as Friendly Amendment: Analytic Philosophy and the Interpretation of Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas holds a dual role as a profound philosopher and theologian and root of the Thomist thinking that has shaped Catholic thought for centuries. The paper distinguishes four operations through which the Thomist tradition has sustained itself across the centuries—exegesis, translation, application, and friendly amendment. The paper argues that Analytic and Grammatical Thomism share a common genealogy in mid-century Catholic Oxbridge philosophy but a different method. Analytic Thomism translates Thomas’s thought into analytic terms and places Thomas in dialog with contemporary philosophy. Grammatical Thomism reorders Thomas’s thought to place forms of life and language prior to metaphysics using Wittgenstein’s philosophical grammar. The paper defends Grammatical Thomism as a legitimate, though controversial, form of the tradition against the claim that such amendment is a capitulation to other forms of thought rather than a proper extension of Thomism. The paper concludes by examining the substantial and resolute readings of religious language as an example of Thomism engaging with a live debate within the Wittgenstein scholarship.