Summa Theologiae

⚖The case for it

The Summa is built to be read in pieces. Each article runs a page or two, and the shape is a working method: the position Aquinas rejects gets stated first, in its strongest form, with sources, before he answers it. He does not win by making his opponents dim. His physics is dead and he walked away from the book unfinished; both true, and neither one touches the discipline underneath. Read the questions on anger, or on whether law can make people good, and you watch a man argue against himself in public and keep going.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Aquinas never finished it; he stopped writing after a vision and called everything he'd done straw. What exists runs well past a million words in a format (objections, sed contra, reply to each) that never once varies across thousands of articles. The metaphysics presumes Aristotle's physics. You can admire the cathedral and still notice that nobody reads it whole; even Dominicans use the index.

— the honest librarian