We need Garrigou's philosophical & theological works in print! Pt. 1

We need Garrigou's philosophical & theological works in print! Pt. 1

Maybe we should all email the Tan Books editors and ask them to reissue Garrigou's philosophical and theological works as well, rather than just the ascetical/spiritual works? I encouraged them to do so some time ago, but they said that the demand for hard Thomistic philosophy is rather low nowadays. I am desperate to get hold of Garrigou's commentaries on the Summa.

I agree. Those need to be available in print. I have been down there to TAN Books (Rockford, IL) several times and have had nice chats with them about their plans for the future. I will go there again once or twice again this summer and will make that suggestion. I will assure them that I will be ordering Garrigou's philosophical and theological works for my classes if they decide to reprint them. My recommendation is that those of you who teach do the same, if you can. What they need to know is that they will sell.

In addition to their many reprints of Garrigou's spiritual works, they have already published three "purely" theological works, namely The Theological Virtues, Vol. 1, Life Everlasting, and Predestination, which are in fact no mere ascetical works as Garrigou's prefaces to those works indicate--I shouldn't say "merely ascetical", because his ascetical works are in a sense at a higher level than his theological works, but, you know what I mean! (By the way, on the relationship between ascetical and scholastic discourse, see Three Ages of the Interior Life, Pt. III., Ch. 1, i.e, the first chapter of Vol. II in the TAN reprint.) So they have already reprinted these (purely speculative) theological works by Garrigou and have had a lot of success. They are likely to have equal success with other works. I will recommendthey reprint at least "Reality," since that one is most likely toget a higher readership than some of the philosophical works, say, Le sens commun, or Le realisme du principe de finalite--which haven't even been translated.

For the theological commentaries on the Summa, you might want to call or email The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (ca. Lincoln, Nebraska). I visited them earlier this spring. I was very impressed. They use Garrigou's theological commentaries a lot for their courses, so they have in-house reprints of his works (in English, primarily), and are thinking of reprinting them for real. So you might want to contact them and express your interest, should they reprint them. They have already done that with some of their other textbooks, for example, with Dr. D.Q. McInerny's philosophy series (not Ralph, the NotreDame McInerny, but rather, his brother, Daniel) which is very good, and includes textbooks for logic, natural philosophy, philosophical psychology, ethics, metaphysics, natural theology, and epistemology--all from a very solid traditional thomistic viewpoint. (You can find a few of D.Q. McInerny's textbooks at the FraternityPublication's page.)

Fraternity Publications' contact info is:

Fraternity Publications Service
Griffin Rd., PO Box 196
Elmhurst, PA 18416
Phone # (570) 842-4000 Ext. 401
Fax # (570) 842-5144
e-mail: publications@fssp.com

Good luck!

(To see pt. 2 of this post, click here).