Casual Thomist

Edward Feser's comments are really what sparked my interest in the time period. Thanks for all the advice!

I would definitely be interested in looking at any literature you can throw my way from either perspective. What prompted the question in my mind is some assertions from modern day Thomists who say that while yeah, Galileo's world system was the nail in the coffin for Aristotle's physics, it was not for his metaphysics and the philosophy of nature behind them; I'm curious to see if they're right or not. Latin would be important if I wanted to make the transition into philosophy and make an examination of metaphysics/philosophy of nature the center of research, since St. Thomas Aquinas would definitely be at the center of that. Any way I can get that background without sinking sixty grand into a year in Chicago would be a big plus.

I'm under no illusions as to the current job market. I've been out of undergrad for about two years and the main reason I didn't initially go to grad school is because I got scared off by people telling me that I would never have a job, and that resulted in a six month stint volunteering abroad and an aborted foray into law school. Whether I go into history or philosophy, I'm at peace with the notion I meant spend a long time as an adjunct working for relatively little.

I will admit that my interest in Scholastic metaphysics is rather broad and my number one priority right now is narrowing down towards a research question. I would say that my highest interest is in the way St. Thomas and the scholastics restated and used Artistotle's four causes and principles. I asked my original question because I have two ways of stating my determined question, one in terms of philosophy and one in terms of history. If I were to frame my study in terms of philosophy, I would want to examine a question such as: "How can the principle of motion (for example) be defended against Humean scepticism?" From a historical perspective, I would want to examine the question of the early modern transition away from metaphysics, essentially: "what grounds did Descartes, Spinoza, etc give for abandoning Aristotle's causes? Where they intellectual or did they stem from political/cultural/"practical" origins? Did they make any real attempt to respond to the questions posed by the Medieval Scholastics? I came up with these examples somewhat off the cuff, but I hope they help explain where my thinking is. As for MAPSS, unfortunately your example of a serious gap was right on the money as I would probably need to know Latin but don't. I have a professor who is willing to tutor me and possibly build an intermediate independent study for me, but it is still a serious issue.

Is it possible to transition into philosophy? I got a bachelors in history in 2017 from a small liberal arts college without any reputation and originally planned to study intellectual history, but since then have found my interests drifting towards pure philosophy instead (I'm interested specifically in scholastic metaphysics). How difficult would it be to use my degree to get into a philosophy program, and if it is possible for me to do so, what would you recommend I do with my time between now and November to increase my chances? For example, I work at the institution I graduated from and have the opportunity to get a minor for free over the next year. My GRE scores are good but could be better (168/155/6.0), and my GPA was 4.0. I also have a 1/3 tuition reimbursement to MAPSS at University of Chicago from a failed application to the Committee on Social Thought. If there is any other information that would be helpful for answering this, just let me know!