Irony, philosophy, and the Christian faith -- Socratic immanence: Montaigne's recovery of philosophy as a way of life -- The virtue of science and the science of virtue: Descartes' overcoming of Socrates -- The quest for wisdom: Pascal and philosophy -- Wagering on an ironic God.

In recent years, there has been a remarkable resurgence of interest in classical conceptions of what it means for human beings to lead a good life. Although the primary focus of the return to classical thought has been Aristotle's account of virtue, the ethics of Aquinas has also received much attention. Our understanding of the integrity of Aquinas's thought has clearly benefited from the recovery of the ethics of virtue.Understood from either a natural or a supernatural perspective, the good life (...) according to Aquinas involves the exercise not just of the moral virtues, but also of the intellectual virtues. Following Aristotle, Aquinas divides the intellectual virtues into the practical, which have either doing (prudence) or making (art) as an end, and the theoretical or speculative, which are ordered to knowing for its own sake (understanding, knowledge, and wisdom). One of the intellectual virtues, namely, prudence has received much recent attention. With few exceptions, however, contemporary discussions of Aquinas ignore the complex and nuanced relationships among, and comparisons between, the different sorts of intellectual virtue. Even more striking is the general neglect of the speculative, intellectual virtues and the role of contemplation in the good life.In Virtue's Splendor Professor Hibbs seeks to overcome this neglect, approaching the ethical thought of Thomas Aquinas in terms of the great debate of antiquity and the Middle Ages concerning the rivalry between the active and the contemplative lives, between prudence and wisdom as virtues perfective of human nature. In doing so, he puts before the reader the breadth of Aquinas's vision of the good life. (shrink)

IN THE INTRODUCTION TO HIS STUDY of contemporary epistemology, Alvin Plantinga asserts that the “ahistoricism” of analytic philosophy has proven an impediment to progress in epistemology; what we need, he urges, is “history and hermeneutics.” In its turning to history, epistemology is beginning to resemble recent ethical theory, which has readily availed itself of the history of philosophy as a means of enriching its discourse and circumventing seemingly insoluble debates. There are other similarities between contemporary epistemology and recent ethical theory. (...) The standard division in contemporary epistemology pits internalism against externalism. The former demands that individuals have cognitive access to the justifying conditions of their belief and that the belief be formed in accord with appropriate rules. The latter drops the requirement of internal access but demands that a belief be formed by a process, reliably aimed at the production of truth. Internalism’s accentuation of epistemic rights and duties calls to mind ethical deontology, while the externalist emphasis on the production of true beliefs is akin to moral consequentialism. Lately, virtue epistemology has emerged to counter the two dominant theories of knowledge, just as virtue ethics arose as an alternative to deontology and utilitarianism. (shrink)

Thomas Hibbs is the Dean of the Honors College at Baylor University.

In contrast to the fairly entrenched interpretation of Pascal as a fideist who repudiates reason, and perhaps even ethics, in order to render religious faith the only viable option, this essay argues that an ethics of thought or belief pervades Pascal’s apology for the Christian faith. The ethics of thought is a topic much neglected among Pascal’s commentators but of great interest to contemporary virtue epistemologists and philosophers of religion. The central themes in Pascal’s ethics of thought emerge partly from (...) his confrontation with Descartes’s conception of human inquiry, in response to which Pascal forges his own conception of the ethics of thought, an ethics grounded in the inclinations and habits of the human heart. It turns out, moreover, that the standard objections against Pascal’s account of human reason repose upon a selective reading of texts and a failure to grasp Pascal’s dialectical method. Locating particular passages within the context of Pascal’s rich conception of the human condition, this essay evinces the many ways in which Pascal links knowledge to virtuous dispositions and thus develops an ethics of thought, at the pinnacle of which resides the vision of charity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aquinas and Black Natural LawThomas S. HibbsIn 1857, after the United States Supreme Court ruling in Dred Scott, Frederick Douglass chastised the court for arrogating to itself the role of God, that of being absolute judge. While the Supreme Court has its own authority, he argued, "the Supreme Court of the Almighty is greater. Taney can do many things but he cannot change the essential nature of things—making evil (...) good and good, evil."1 The passage is one of many in Vincent Lloyd's Black Natural Law that underscore the appeals of African American leaders, as part of their critique of slavery and segregation, to a higher or more fundamental law than that of human law. Lloyd describes the function of natural law reasoning, which he traces through the writings of Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Martin Luther King Jr., in this way: From the careful examination of a "particular view of human nature" and its implications, they "apply those implications to the specifics of an ethical or political debate."2 That sounds similar to the way some contemporary Catholic proponents of natural law depict their own deployment of it. Early in the book, Lloyd suggests that "European and Catholic natural law traditions can learn much from the black natural tradition."3Concerning what might be learned, he focuses on an expansive conception of reason in the African American tradition, a conception of reason that is integrated with the role of emotion or passion and that is not [End Page 943] individualistic, but communal. He also underscores the epistemic privilege of the oppressed, the way suffering injustice attunes us to justice. Beyond the themes mentioned explicitly by Lloyd, I would add the paradoxical claim that natural law teaching is not just about the accessibility of fundamental precepts of justice, but also about the human capacity for moral blindness and the way in which the violation of the natural law is in important ways its own punishment. Because of the regularity of such blindness, attention to the obstacles to the perception of the natural law must become "part of the very activity of natural law." The ways in which these matters are articulated by African American authors can be, as Lloyd suggests, highly instructive. I would add that Lloyd's treatment of natural law in the African American tradition can also be fruitful for recovering neglected features of Aquinas's account. In what follows, I want to take up each of these themes and set them in conversation with the texts of Aquinas. As Alasdair MacIntyre, among others, has urged, seeing one's own tradition from the perspective of another, can, at a minimum, help us see it more clearly.4 As MacIntyre also notes, any such attempt faces the difficulties of translating from one tradition or community of inquiry to another. I must, accordingly, stress the limitations to the current essay, which can be nothing more than a preliminary investigation. I will largely be taking Lloyd's interpretation of the authors he studies as my assumed starting point, although in some cases I will offer my own reading of texts and authors he considers.5 What I will provide will be no more than an initial conversation, a first reading of Lloyd's theses in relation to germane themes and arguments in Aquinas. A much longer exchange, based on an immersive study of selected African American texts and the chief commentaries on them would be needed to advance the [End Page 944] conversation further. Before doing so, however, I want to provide a further reason that Catholic natural law thinkers should be eager to engage the Black natural law tradition, a reason derived from Joseph Ratzinger's reflection on the strange situation of natural law in the modern world.Ratzinger on the Vanishing Evidence for Natural Law and the Engagement of Wisdom TraditionsAs the contemporary Catholic natural law theorist Russell Hittinger has shown,6 Ratzinger, as a ressourcement theologian, is a critic of "rationalism," with "little confidence" in the older, "moral-juridical manualist and casuistical approach to natural law, which was prominent in casuistical approaches."7 In fact, he thinks that... (shrink)

In contrast to the fairly entrenched interpretation of Pascal as a fideist who repudiates reason, and perhaps even ethics, in order to render religious faith the only viable option, this essay argues that an ethics of thought or belief pervades Pascal’s apology for the Christian faith. The ethics of thought is a topic much neglected among Pascal’s commentators but of great interest to contemporary virtue epistemologists and philosophers of religion. The central themes in Pascal’s ethics of thought emerge partly from (...) his confrontation with Descartes’s conception of human inquiry, in response to which Pascal forges his own conception of the ethics of thought, an ethics grounded in the inclinations and habits of the human heart. It turns out, moreover, that the standard objections against Pascal’s account of human reason repose upon a selective reading of texts and a failure to grasp Pascal’s dialectical method. Locating particular passages within the context of Pascal’s rich conception of the human condition, this essay evinces the many ways in which Pascal links knowledge to virtuous dispositions and thus develops an ethics of thought, at the pinnacle of which resides the vision of charity. (shrink)

Acclaimed as one of the great filmmakers of the 20th century, Ingmar Bergman is for many an arch-modernist, whose work is characterized by a high degree of self-conscious artistry and by dark, even nihilistic themes. Film critics increasingly identify him as a kind of philosopher of the human condition, especially of the dislocations and misery of the modern human condition. However, Bergman’s films are not embodiments of philosophical theories, nor do they include explicit discussions of theory. Instead, he attends to (...) the concrete lived experience of those who, on the one hand, suffer from doubt, dislocation, and self-hatred and, on the other, long for confession and communion. In the middle of his career, especially in his famous faith trilogy of the early 1960s, Bergman investigated the lived experience of the absence of God. It is commonly thought that after this period, the question of God disappeared. However, in his last two films, Faithless and Saraband, Bergman explores the lived experience of the absence of God. Indeed, he moves beyond a simple negation to explore the complex interplay of absence. He even illustrates the possibility of a kind of communion for which so many of his characters—early, middle and late—long. (shrink)

In Aquinas, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion, Thomas Hibbs recovers the notion of practice to develop a more descriptive account of human action and knowing, grounded in the venerable vocabulary of virtue and vice. Drawing on Aquinas, who believed that all good works originate from virtue, Hibbs postulates how epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and theology combine into a set of contemporary philosophical practices that remain open to metaphysics. Hibbs brings Aquinas into conversation with analytic and Continental philosophy (...) and suggests how a more nuanced appreciation of his thought enriches contemporary debates. This book offers readers a new appreciation of Aquinas and articulates a metaphysics integrally related to ethical practice. (shrink)

Despite the growth of interest in the ethics of Aquinas and the proliferation of publications devoted to the topic, there remains a paucity of studies of an introductory nature. Thus the publication of a revised version of Ralph McInerny’s Ethica Thomistica is a welcome event indeed. In a remarkably brief exposition, McInerny covers the basic topics of Thomas’s moral philosophy.

Investigates the intent, method and structural unity of Thomas Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles. The author of this study argues that the intended audience is Christian and that the subject is Christian wisdom.

The fusion of law and virtue is a distinctive feature of the ethical writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, particularly of his most mature and most detailed ethical treatise, the secunda pars of the Summa Theologiae. By way of preface to his treatises on virtue and on law in the Summa, Thomas states that the former is an intrinsic, the latter an extrinsic, principle by which man is led to his end. It is evident from even these brief remarks (...) that virtue and law are integral parts of an overarching moral pedagogy intended to lead man to his ultimate end. The end consists, as Thomas says, in the contemplation of the divine essence, but the possession of the intellectual and moral virtues is a prerequisite to the experience of the beatific vision. Hence, moral instruction, of which the secunda pars is an exemplary instance, is directed to the inculcation of the virtues--to the formation of character. ;In this context, the role of natural law is to circumscribe the parameters of the moral life and to provide a background to moral deliberation. Submission to human, divine, and finally eternal law marks the various stages in man's education in moral perfection. The hierarchy of the laws is thus parallel to the hierarchy of the virtues, natural and infused. Law, as the Thomistic dictum runs, is for the sake of virtue. Thomas' view of law, then, is teleological, not deontological; that is, laws are intelligible in light of an overarching conception of the goods of a community or of human nature. But the goods or practices which the laws are intended to succour are themselves embodiments of virtues such as justice. ;While a comprehensive treatment of the secunda pars is beyond the scope of this investigation, we will provide an analysis of exemplary instances of moral pedagogy in the Summa. From this examination of representative passages, it will be possible to defend certain conclusions concerning the doctrinal structure and rhetorical intent of the Summa. (shrink)

This volume begins with excerpts from Aquinas' commentary on De Anima, excerpts that proceed from a general consideration of soul as common to all living things to a consideration of the animal soul and, finally, to what is peculiar to the human soul. These are followed by the Treatise on Man, Aquinas' most famous discussion of human nature, but one whose organization is dictated by theological concerns and whose philosophical importance is thus best appreciated when seen as presented here: within (...) the historical philosophical framework of which it constitutes a development. Aquinas' discussions of the will and the passions follow, providing fruitful points of comparison with other philosophers. (shrink)

Nihilism, American style -- The quest for evil -- The negative zone : suburban familial malaise in American beauty, Revolutionary road, and Mad men -- Normal nihilism as comic : Seinfeld, Trainspotting, and Pulp fiction -- Romanticism and nihilism -- Defense against the dark arts : from Se7en to the Dark knight and Harry Potter -- God got involved : sacred quests and overcoming nihilism -- Feels like the movies.

Aquinas’s questions, Jenkins asserts, are not necessarily our questions nor is his terminology our own. The contemporary questions and terminology that Jenkins has in mind are those of analytic philosophy. The gap between Aquinas and contemporary philosophy is especially pronounced when it comes to knowledge, where a welter of terms “such as cognito, intelligere, notitia, credere, opinio, fides, and especially scientia” would need to be properly translated and understood before engagement with contemporary positions could take place. But it is not (...) just that we need to be more careful in our translations; rather we must locate the “elements” of Aquinas’s philosophy within the “specifically Christian wisdom that is its telos”. Jenkins’s book succeeds admirably at doing just that. (shrink)

In the preface to the second edition of Beyond the Post-Modern Mind, Huston Smith states that the book issues an invitation "to step outside our current Western outlook to see it in perspective". Smith's thesis, developed in a number of eclectic and topically diffuse essays, is that our "current outlook," the postmodern outlook, is transitional and that the wave of the future will be a return to the "perennial philosophy." Smith sees postmodern thought as merely a symptom and consequence of (...) the inevitable breakdown of the modern worldview. (shrink)

Norena's book continues his previous work on Vives's life and is to be followed by the publication of an English translation of Vives's De Anima et Vita. As Norena's title indicates, the focus of the book is upon Vives's study of the emotions, which constitutes the third book of De Anima et Vita and which Vives calls the "foundation of all moral discipline, private and public.".

Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology introduces, recapitulates, and develops a dialogue, the initial versions of which were presented at a forum sponsored by the Center for a Postmodern World in Santa Barbara in January, 1988, between David Ray Griffin and Huston Smith. The book, which is part of the SUNY series in constructive postmodern thought, begins with a clarification of the term "postmodern". Both Smith and Griffin are advocates of forms of postmodernism at odds with dominant trends in postmodernism, trends (...) which they describe as "deconstructive or eliminative." Instead, they advocate a "constructive or revisionary postmodernism." A distinctive feature of their "revisionary" postmodernism is its theological orientation. (shrink)

The book provides an affirmative answer to the question whether there is a "philosophical ethics distinct from moral theology". Situating the question within the famous debates among Thomists over the existence and nature of Christian philosophy, McInerny engages the views of Gilson, Maritain, and Gauthier.

While many 20th-century fads in philosophy and theology have come and gone, McInerny's faith in Aristotelian-Thomism was boldly prophetic. His defenses of natural theology and law helped to create dialogue between theists and non-theists, and to provide a philosophical basis for Catholic theology.

For half a century, Ernest Fortin's scholarship has charmed and educated theologians and philosophers with its intellectual search for the best way to live. Written by friends, colleagues, and students of Fortin, this book pays tribute to a remarkable thinker in a series of essays that bear eloquent testimony to Fortin's influence and his legacy. A formidable commentator on Catholic philosophical and political thought, Ernest Fortin inspired others with his restless inquiries beyond the boundaries of conventional scholarship. With essays on (...) subjects ranging across philosophy, political science, literature, and theology Gladly to Learn and Gladly to Teach reflects the astonishing depth and breadth of Fortin's contribution to contemporary thought. (shrink)

For half a century, Ernest Fortin's scholarship has charmed and educated theologians and philosophers with its intellectual search for the best way to live. Written by friends, colleagues, and students of Fortin, this book pays tribute to a remarkable thinker in a series of essays that bear eloquent testimony to Fortin's influence and his legacy. A formidable commentator on Catholic philosophical and political thought, Ernest Fortin inspired others with his restless inquiries beyond the boundaries of conventional scholarship. With essays on (...) subjects ranging across philosophy, political science, literature, and theology Gladly to Learn and Gladly to Teach reflects the astonishing depth and breadth of Fortin's contribution to contemporary thought. (shrink)