Being Philosophical

Everyone must become a philosopher. The alternate is to forego living a human life, or as D. Q. McInerny illustrates, to run while choosing to be hamstrung. But not all philosophizing is equal, and it requires discipline and systematic study. In "creative impatience with ignorance" and "an unswerving commitment to the truth," one can be confident he is at least moving in the right direction toward genuine philosophy.But most importantly, philosophy requires teachers. To philosophize is, after all, to be an eternal student, a person who even while instructing others relies on the guidance found in the 'fertile' human wisdom cultivated throughout the ages. And the most fecund of all philosophy, according to McInerny, is that contained in Aristotelian-Thomism. His concise and thorough defense of the philosophical life and its lodestar, Thomism, must be read as deliberately as it was written. For McInerny makes a bold claim: if one is truly serious about philosophizing, an encounter with t