This paper presents and defends a model of religious faith as an epistemic disposition. According to the model, religious faith is a disposition to take certain doxastic attitudes toward propositions of religious significance upon entertaining certain mental states. Three distinct advantages of the model are advanced. First, the model allows for religious faith to explain the presence and epistemic appropriateness of religious belief. Second, the model accommodates a variety of historically significant perspectives concerning the relationships between faith and evidence, faith (...) and volition, and faith and doubt. And, finally, the model offers an appealing account of what unifies religious faith with other kinds of faith. (shrink)

Can God create an unliftable stone? Beall & Cotnoir propose that ‘God can create an unliftable stone’ is a truth-value gap (neither true nor false). However, this yields a revenge paradox on whether God can eschew gaps. Can God avoid gappy ascriptions of power? Either way, God’s power seems to have limits. In response, it may be said that ascribing God the power to avoid gaps is itself gappy—it concerns a power that God neither has nor lacks. Yet this ends (...) up being inconsistent, for it implies that God definitely lacks that power. Following Aquinas, perhaps Beall & Cotnoir could accept this lack and still uphold omnipotence, suggesting that the power to avoid gaps is impossible for God. Yet the Aquinian stratagem is enough to block the original paradox, which saps the motivation to proffer truth-value gaps in addition. I conclude that the gappy solution is either inadequate or insufficiently motivated. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX Notes Reference Further reading.

A confluence of scholarly interest has resulted in a revival of Thomistic scholarship across the world. Several areas in the investigation of St. Thomas Aquinas, however, remain under-explored. This volume contributes to two of these neglected areas. First, the volume evaluates the contemporary relevance of St. Thomas's views for the philosophy and practice of education. The second area explored involves the intersections of the Angelic Doctor’s thought and the numerous cultures and intellectual traditions of the East. Contributors to this (...) section examine the reception, creative appropriation, and various points of convergence between St. Thomas and the East. (shrink)

Generous selections from these four seminal texts on the theory and practice of education have never before appeared together in a single volume. The Introductions that precede the texts provide brief biographical sketches of each author, situating him within his broader historical, cultural and intellectual context. The editors also provide a brief outline of key themes that emerge within the selection as a helpful guide to the reader. The final chapter engages the reflections of the classic authors with contemporary issues (...) and challenges in the philosophy and practice of education. (shrink)

Connatural knowledge is knowledge readily acquired by beings possessing a certain nature. For instance, dogs have knowledge of a scent-world exceeding that of human beings, not because humans lack noses, but because dogs are by nature better suited to process olfaction. As various ethicists have argued, possession of the virtues involves a sort of connatural knowing. Here, connatural knowledge emerges as a knowledge by inclination which systematically tracks the specific moral interests we humans possess precisely because we are human. In (...) this essay we explore the importance of connaturality for moral education. (shrink)

Gregory T. Doolan provides here the first detailed consideration of the divine ideas as causal principles. He examines Thomas Aquinas's philosophical doctrine of the divine ideas and convincingly argues that it is an essential element of his metaphysics. According to Thomas, the ideas in the mind of God are not only principles of his knowledge, but they are productive principles as well. In this role, God's ideas act as exemplars for things that he creates. As Doolan shows, this theory (...) of exemplarism is an integral part of Thomas's account of the existence and order of the created universe. It also accounts in part for the freedom of God's creative act. The volume begins with an introduction to Thomas's doctrine of exemplarism and then addresses his arguments for the existence of exemplar ideas within the mind of God. Having established the existence of divine ideas, Doolan considers how Thomas reconciles their multiplicity with God's simplicity. The work identifies the various things for which Thomas posits divine ideas. As Doolan is careful to show, Thomas does not consider all of these ideas to be exemplars because not all of them act as causal principles. After identifying the ideas that do act in this way, Doolan considers how such exemplars can be causes of natural things without compromising the causality of natural agents. The volume culminates with a consideration of the role that the divine ideas play within the structure of Thomas's theory of participation. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gregory T. Doolan, assistant professor of philosophy at The Catholic University of America, is a contributor to Wisdom's Apprentice: Thomistic Essays in Honor of Lawrence Dewan, O.P., and Reassessing the Liberal State: Reading Maritain's Man and the State. This is his first book. (shrink)

This article explores the relation between Aquinas’ metaphysical, epistemological and theological ideas and his theory of education as presented in the De Magistro and other writings. Aquinas’ theory of education is based on a theological metaphysics of human nature and an account of human rationality that is grounded in human nature. In the first section after the introduction we provide a synopsis of Aquinas’ metaphysical narrative, but in a contemporary key that draws upon the resources of Analytical (...) Thomism. However, this theologically inspired metaphysics leads to a somewhat neglected epistemology that is crucial to his understanding of teaching and learning in the De Magistro – the notion of connatural knowledge that we explore in the second section. Our exposition of the Thomistic ontology of the human person together with the notion of connatural knowledge, provide the context for understanding the De Magistro in the third section. (shrink)

IT HAS OFTEN BEEN SUPPOSED that Aristotle's account of thought and action imposes severe limits on the functions and scope of practical reason; and insofar as Thomas Aquinas accepts Aristotle's account, he seems to be forced into the same restrictive view of practical reason. Practical reason expresses itself primarily in deliberation ; and the virtue that uses practical reason correctly is the deliberative virtue of prudence. Aristotle believes that deliberation is confined to means to ends, while will is focused (...) on ends. Some ends that are assumed on some occasions may on other occasions also count as means to more ultimate ends; but it seems that the most ultimate ends must be taken for granted in any deliberation. Since every deliberation must take for granted some end to which the deliberation finds means, the conclusions of rational deliberation must ultimately be about means to ultimate ends that are not themselves subject to practical reason. (shrink)

The tragic unfolding of world events since September 11, 2001, has added great urgency to practical and theoretical issues arising from the phenomenon of international terrorism. This paper applies a traditional concept of just war theory drawing largely on Aquinas and Augustine to legitimate violent action against groups who are not themselves representatives of states. Traditional just war theory is couched largely in terms of the legitimacy of defensive war directed at polities. New applications of the theory are required (...) to deal with contemporary international terrorism. In presenting a new application of the theory I argue that the purely defensive conception of just war advocated in recent Catholic Church documents and taken up by some contemporary theologians and philosophers is problematic. In dialogue particularly with Joseph Boyle, I maintain that traditional just war theory provides the salient criteria for a polity’s violent actions against groups that are not themselves, or at least, need not be polities – including actions that may be characterised as punitive rather than purely defensive in nature. The traditional concept of just war is in this respect more coherent. (shrink)

Generous selections from these four seminal texts on the theory and practice of education have never before appeared together in a single volume. The Introductions that precede the texts provide brief biographical sketches of each author, situating him within his broader historical, cultural and intellectual context. The editors also provide a brief outline of key themes that emerge within the selection as a helpful guide to the reader. The final chapter engages the reflections of the classic authors with contemporary issues (...) and challenges in the philosophy and practice of education. (shrink)

Students of the history of ethics sometimes find themselves tempted by moderate or extreme versions of an approach that might roughly be called ‘historicist’. This temptation may result from the difficulties of approaching historical texts from a ‘narrowly philosophical’ point of view. We may begin, for instance, by wanting to know what Aristotle has to say about ‘the problems of ethics’, so that we can compare his views with those of Aquinas, Hume, Kant, Sidgwick, and Rawls, and then decide (...) what is true or false in each theorist's position. But this narrowly philosophical attitude soon runs into difficulties, and writers on the history of ethics often warn us against it. (shrink)

The principle of proportionate causality is often cited as a cause for concern that Thomistic metaphysics may be irreconcilable with a theory of biological evolution. St. Thomas does hold that for the generation of what he calls perfect animals, a generator of the same species is required. This study clarifies what the proportionate causes of generated organisms are for Thomas, examining his views about spontaneous generation, reproductive generation, and hybridization, while also articulating the roles of both the heavenly bodies and (...) their separate movers as universal causes of generation. This study establishes that Thomas’s assertion of the need for a univocal generator for perfect animals is grounded not in the principle of proportionate causality, but rather in physical and biological doctrines received from Aristotle and in a causal principle that seems reconcilable with biological evolution, namely, that a remote universal cause requires more mediating causes to produce more powerful effects. (shrink)

Interpreters of Aquinas tend to posit a seamless transition from knowledge of the transcendentals in the abstract to naming God as one, true, and good. Some even suggest that the convertibility of the transcendentals with being implies the unity, truth, and goodness of esse divinum. Others hold simply that the meaning and order of these divine names is founded upon the meaning of the transcendentals. This study: (1) explains why Aquinas avoids “transcendental arguments” for these divine names; (2) (...) argues that truth and goodness, as divine names, are derived not only from the transcendental meanings of these terms but also from specific perfections: namely, truth of intellect and moral goodness; (3) shows that the order of these divine names in the two Summae (being, good, one, true) better reflects the order of the transcendentals as received perfections than their more familiar order in the abstract (being, one, true, good). (shrink)

Interpreters of Aquinas tend to posit a seamless transition from knowledge of the transcendentals in the abstract to naming God as one, true, and good. Some even suggest that the convertibility of the transcendentals with being implies the unity, truth, and goodness of esse divinum. Others hold simply that the meaning and order of these divine names is founded upon the meaning of the transcendentals. This study: explains why Aquinas avoids “transcendental arguments” for these divine names; argues that (...) truth and goodness, as divine names, are derived not only from the transcendental meanings of these terms but also from specific perfections: namely, truth of intellect and moral goodness; shows that the order of these divine names in the two Summae better reflects the order of the transcendentals as received perfections than their more familiar order in the abstract. (shrink)

Today the connection between "person" and the "I" is acknowledged in many respects but not always analyzed. The need to relate it to the reality of the human being has sparked the present investigation of the philosophical anthropology of four thinkers from the late ancient, medieval, and contemporary periods. Although it may seem that the question of the role of the "I" with respect to the human being hinges on the larger problem of objectivity v. subjectivity, this does not seem (...) to be the case. Many topics, however, are necessarily entailed in this investigation such as individuality and universality, soul and body, consciousness and action, substance and history, the self and the other, the metaphysical and the phenomenological, and experience and the ethical. At the end of this study we arrive at more than a grammatical use of the "I." From reflection on the contributions of Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, and Wojtyla, the ontological role of the "I" is identified. In doing so, one realizes that the ontological does not forsake the concrete, but penetrates it more deeply. Indeed, that was what Plotinian philosophy claimed to be doing: recognizing the richness of human reality. (shrink)

IN THIS PAPER, I PROVIDE A FORMULATION of Thomas Aquinas’s account of the nature of human beings for the purpose of comparing it with other accounts in both the history of philosophy and contemporary analytic philosophy. I discuss how his apparently dualistic understanding of the relationship between soul and body yields the conclusion that a human being exists as a unified substance composed of a rational soul informing, that is, serving as the specific organizing principle of, a physical body. (...) I further address the issue of Aquinas’s contention that a human rational soul can exist without being united to a body and show how this ability of a human soul does not contradict the thesis that a human being exists naturally as embodied. I will also respond to two related questions. First, what accounts for the individuation of human beings as distinct members of the human species? Second, what is the principle of identity by which a human being persists through time and change? (shrink)

Aquinas’s eudaimonism is normally interpreted as twofold in that it divides into the imperfect natural happiness of Aristotle and the perfect supernatural happiness of Augustine. I argue that Aquinas is logically committed to a third type of happiness that, in light of the standard view, renders his eudaimonism threefold. The paper begins with an overview of the standard twofold model of Aquinas’s eudaimonism; it then turns to the model’s logical problem whose solution requires the postulation of a (...) third type of happiness. In the second part of the paper, two clarificatory issues are addressed and several objections are considered. In closing, I explain why Aquinas’s commitment to a third type of happiness offers the Christian wayfarer grounds for a new optimism. (shrink)

In a number of texts throughout his career, Thomas Aquinas identifies different senses of the term ‘esse’. Most notably, he notes that according to one sense, the term signifies the act of existence (actus essendi), which he famously holds is really distinct from essence in all beings other than God. Perhaps surprisingly, he also notes on a number of occasions that according to another sense, the term ‘esse’ can signify that very principle that he says is distinct from the (...) act of existence, namely, essence. In light of Aquinas's semantic theory, this paper investigates how he coherently holds within his metaphysical system that this term ‘esse’ can signify in different ways both essence and the act of existence. More broadly, what it shows is how, for Aquinas, the metaphysician can look to the modes of signification (modi significandi) of terms and as well as their modes of predication (modi praedicandi) to draw careful conclusions about the modes of existence (modi essendi) of real beings. These considerations reveal that in Aquinas's view, although the grammarian and logician in their way are also concerned with these semantic modes, it is not their job to employ them to discern the various senses of the term ‘being’ or the fundamental modes of being. In the end, this is a task for the metaphysician. (shrink)

The End of the Timeless God considers two approaches to the philosophy of time, presentism and eternalism. It is often held that God cannot be timeless if presentism is true, but can be if eternalism is true. R. T. Mullins draws on recent work in the philosophy of time as well as the work of classical Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas to contend that the Christian God cannot be timeless in either case.