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Brinda Sharma

Two Roles for Catholic Philosophers

www3.nd.edu

In what follows I will describe the two principal roles that, as I see it, are incumbent upon Catholic philosophers. In a certain respect, there is nothing new in what I have to say on this topic, since the two roles correspond exactly to the two separate tasks that St. Thomas Aquinas, the prototypical Catholic philosophical inquirer, takes up in the Summa Theologiae and the Summa Contra Gentiles. Still, in light of recent philosophical developments, especially the many trenchant critiques of modernist conceptions of rationality and philosophical inquiry, we are in a position to challenge some deeply entrenched ways of thinking about the distinction between philosophy and theology, the division of labor among Catholic philosophical inquirers, and the self-conception that Catholic philosophers should take to their interactions /230/ with non-believing philosophers. I intend to press this challenge here, if only inchoately. ..

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