Main Points
Metaphysics, Abstract Thought, Intellectual Contemplation, Science of Being, and Contemplative Life.
Description
This Tremendous Lover by Dom Eugene Boylan, O.C.S.O., an Irish Cistercian contemplative, originally published in 1947, critiques the intellectual shortcomings of modern thought, identifying the abandonment of metaphysics and abstract reasoning as the source of prevalent errors and confusions. The book emphasizes the distinction between thinking with intellectual ideas versus mere imaginative phantasms derived from sense experience, arguing that failure to abstract leads to substituting sentiment for principle, metaphor for reality, and matter for ultimate truth. Theologically significant, it positions metaphysics as the foundational science of being, essential for all other disciplines and contemplative life, thereby calling for a recovery of true intellectual contemplation in line with Catholic tradition.
