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Femina ut Imago Dei in the Integral Feminism of St. Thomas Aquinas. By JOSEPH FRANCIS HARTEL. Analecta Gregoriana 260. Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1993. xvi + 354 pp. $40.00.
Revisionist histories often do more than revise: they provoke, and even surprise. Accordingly, when the title of this volume seems to suggest a positive link between feminism and Thomas Aquinas, readers may find reason to approach it with either anticipation or dread. Alas, neither the hopes of modern feminists nor the fears of some traditionalists will find their realization in this volume. For when Hartel hails the "integral feminism" of Aquinas, it is an attempt to revise not our understanding of the angelic doctor but of the term "feminism" itself. Thomas's feminism, for Hartel, is nothing other than Thomas's doctrine of woman--a "theocentric" doctrine which Hartel explains in fine and technical detail but which finally appears no less traditional and subordinationist than it ever has.
There are really two books intermingled here. One is Hartel's painstaking exposition of Aquinas, and this book is very good. The other is Hartel's...