William Norris Clarke, SJ (1 June 1915 - 10 June 2008) was an American Thomist philosopher and Jesuit priest. He was a president of the Metaphysical Society of America,[1] as well as founder and editor of the International Philosophical Quarterly.

The Reverend

William Norris Clarke

Born1 June 1915
Died10 June 2008 (aged 93)
Era21st-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy

Possessing a lively personality and restless intellect, Clarke did not allow his philosophical quest to be limited by traditional interpretations of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.[2] He insisted that

interpersonal phenomenologies need the ontological grounding of dynamic substance or nature as a unified center for its many relations and its self-identity through time; Thomistic metaphysics needs to enrich the data it is seeking to explain by the more detailed concrete descriptions of the actual life of real persons provided so richly by phenomenology.[3]

He was a major opponent of Neo-scholastic interpretations of Saint Thomas and Saint Anselm.[4]

Books edit

  • The Philosophical Approach to God: A Contemporary Neo-Thomistic Perspective, 1979, revised edition in 2007.
  • Person and Being 1993; reprinted with additional commentary by Ranier R. A. Ibana as Person, Being and Ecology in 1996
  • Explorations in Metaphysics: Being-God-Person , University of Notre Dame Press, 1995
  • The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (2001)

Media edit

References edit

  1. ^ "W. Norris Clarke".
  2. ^ David Paternostro, S.J., "Getting Personal: The philosophy of W. Norris Clarke, S.J.", America, April 29, 2015
  3. ^ "Clarke's Journey in His Own Words," AnthonyFlood.com
  4. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Live Reading #1 - Reason Fulfilled by Revelation: The 1930s Christian Philosophy Debates in France. YouTube.