PESCH, TILMANN

Jesuit philosopher whose works constitute a major contribution to the textbook, or manual, tradition in the Thomistic revival of the late 19th century; b. Cologne, Feb. 1, 1836; d. Valkenburg, Holland, Oct. 18, 1899. He entered the Society on Oct. 15, 1852, and was ordained in 1866. From 1867 to 1869 he taught philosophy at Maria-Laach. After a lapse of seven years, during which he was exiled in Belgium and devoted himself to pastoral work and philosophical polemics in the vernacular, he taught philosophy at the Jesuit College at Blyenbeek, Holland, from 1876 to 1884. Thereafter he spent his life in writing and pastoral care. His textbooks constitute the following parts of a series called Philosophia Lacensis, all published in Freiburg im Breisgau: Institutiones philosophiae naturalis (2 v. 1880; 2d ed. 1.897), Institutiones logicales (3 v. 1888–90; 2d ed., 2 v. 1914–19), and Institutiones psychologicae (3 v. 1896–98). Inspired by aeterni patris, Pesch explicitly followed St. Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great, while incorporating material from F. de toledo, the Conimbricenses, F. suÁrez, S. maurus, and J. Kleutgen. His tract on Iogie includes Aristotelian logic (Dialectica ), epistemology (Critica ), and quaestiones ontologicae. Consequently the Cartesian and Kantian traditions, though rejected, condition the place and function of epistemology in his synthesis.

Bibliography: j. l. perrier, The Revival of Scholastic Philosophy in the 19th Century (New York 1909). Stimmen aus Maria-Laach 57 (1899) 461–475. h. hurter, Nomenclator literarius theologiae catholicae (Innsbruck 1903–13) 5:1873–74.

[n. j. wells]