In So What’s New about Scholasticism? thirteen international scholars gauge the extraordinary impact of a religiously inspired conceptual framework in a modern society. The essays that are brought together in this volume reveal that Neo-Thomism became part of contingent social contexts and varying intellectual domains. Rather than an ecclesiastic project of like-minded believers, Neo-Thomism was put into place as a source of inspiration for various concepts of modernization and progress.

This volume reconstructs how Neo-Thomism sought to resolve disparities, annul contradictions and reconcile incongruent, new developments. It asks the question why Neo-Thomist ideas and arguments were put into play and how they were transferred across various scientific disciplines and artistic media, growing into one of the most influential master-narratives of the twentieth century.

Edward Baring, Dries Bosschaert, James Chappel, Adi Efal-Lautenschläger, Rajesh Heynickx, Sigrid Leyssen, Christopher Morrissey, Annette Mülberger, Jaume Navarro, Herman Paul, Karim Schelkens, Wim Weymans and John Carter Wood reconstruct a bewildering, yet decipherable thought-structure that has left a deep mark on twentieth century politics, philosophy, science and religion.

• Acknowledgments 8
• Table of Contents 10
• Into Neo-Thomism: Reading the Fabric of an Intellectual Movement 12
• Part I .Shaping A New Society 32
• The Thomist Debate over Inequality and Property Rights in Depression-Era Europe 32
• Religion, human rights and democracy in post-1940 France in theory and practice: from Maritain’s Thomism to Vignaux’s secular re 50
• Epistemological Tracks: On Religion, Words, and Buildings in 1950’s Belgium 70
• When Personalism Met Planning: Jacques Maritain and a British Christian Intellectual Circle, 1937–1949 88
• Part II. Encountering Phenomenology, Existentialism, and Aesthetics 124
• Neo-Scholasticism, Phenomenology, and the Problem of Conversion 124
• A Great Deal of Controversy? A Case Study of Dondeyne, Grégoire, and Moeller Integrating Phenomenology and Existentialism in Lou 142
• Gilson’s Poietics 170
• Psychology from a Neo-Thomist Perspective. The Louvain-Madrid Connection 192
• Part III. Reconciling Science and Religion 192
• Science contra Science. The Battle for Legitimate Knowledge in the Spanish Catholic Journals in the Early Twentieth Century 216