Writer · Modern
G. K. Chesterton
1874–1936 · Common-sense Thomism; Distributism
Received into the Church 1922; a diocesan investigation toward a possible cause was opened in 2013 and closed without proceeding in 2019.
Journalist, novelist and apologist whose “Orthodoxy” and “The Everlasting Man” argued that Christianity alone fits the shape of reality and that the sane man believes in both reason and wonder. With Belloc he proposed Distributism, the wide ownership of productive property, and his “St. Thomas Aquinas” was praised by Gilson as the best book on Thomas ever written.
Why he matters: The most quoted Catholic apologist of the twentieth century, through whom C. S. Lewis and countless converts came to faith; his instinct for common sense, paradox and the goodness of ordinary things is a philosophy in itself.
School of Thomism · Analytic and Aristotelian Thomism
Anscombe, Geach, MacIntyre and the recent analytic Thomists: Thomas's ethics and philosophy of mind in conversation with Wittgenstein and Aristotle, strongest on action, intention and the virtues.
Others in this strand: G. E. M. Anscombe, Alasdair MacIntyre
Reading
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OrthodoxyG. K. Chesterton · How he came to believe; the book to start with.
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The Everlasting ManG. K. Chesterton · Man and Christ in the story of the world; the book that converted C. S. Lewis.
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St. Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb OxG. K. Chesterton · Thomism in plain English.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.