Why Critical Thomism Is A Postmodern Philosophy

Why Critical Thomism is a Postmodern Philosophy A Tract Book Essay By Anthony J. Fejfar, J.D., Esq., Coif © Copyright 2007 by Anthony J. Fejfar When you are in academia, people expect you to fit your academic positions into consensually acceptable analytic categories. While my Critical Thomist philosophy can be described as a Neo-thomist philosophy, many do not find this category helpful. This is because Neo-thomism sort of fell off the map around 1960. Before that, it was quite popular, at least in some circles. No, today, people expect you to have your philosophy to be either modernist or postmodernist. After thinking it through, I think that it is fair to describe Critical Thomism as a postmodern philosophy, rather than a modernist one.

I have taken this position bccause Critical Thomism can, and does

engage in critical deconstruction, just as much as does the postmodernism of Derrida and Foucault. While Critical Thomism can decontruct, it can also then reconstruct in a way which is non-materially foundationalist. While there is a certain foundationalism to Critical Thomism, it is not one which can be used deontologically. While the Platonic Forms exist for the Critical Thomist, they are more like guides or signposts, not verbal orders of some sort.

Similarly, Critical Thomism is a fallible philosophy

in many respects. What we know, we know probabilistically, not with absolute certainty. What we know, we know on the basis of experience, understanding, and intuitive judgment and reflection, which can be revised and reformulated based

upon new experience, better understanding, and intuitive judgment and reflection. Additionally, it clear that Critical Thomism is not modernist. Modernism, in its typical form is and was based upon scientific or atheistic materialism. Critical Thomism, on the other hand, recognizes, in the first instance, the existence and action of the Quantum Field, Being, Logos, Substance, and Form. Metaphysics grounds and guides Critical Thomism in the same way that modern atheistic, materialist, science guided and grounded modernism.