Alone among Thomas Aquinas' works, the Summa Theologiae contains well-developed and integrated discussions of metaphysics, ethics, law, human action, and the divine nature. The essays in this volume, by scholars representing varied approaches to the study of Aquinas, offer thorough, cutting-edge expositions and analyses of these topics and show how they relate to Aquinas' larger system of thought. The volume also examines the reception of the Summa Theologiae from the thirteenth century to the present day, showing how scholars have understood (...) and misunderstood this key text - and how, even after seven centuries of interpretation, we still have much to learn from it. Detailed and accessible, this book will be highly important for scholars and students of medieval philosophy and theology. (shrink)

Deep neural network models have revived long-standing debates on the value of explanation versus prediction for advancing science. Bowers et al.'s critique will not make these models go away, but it is likely to prompt new work that seeks to reconcile explanatory and predictive models, which could change how we determine what constitutes valuable scientific knowledge.

Like many of his medieval successors, Peter Abelard offers principles for ranking sins. Moral self-knowledge, after all, requires that we recognize not justour sinfulness, but also the extent of our offense. The most important distinction among sins is that between venial and mortal sins: venial sinners show less contempt and may also be victims of bad moral luck, and so they are far less blameworthy. However, the subjective principle which Abelard uses to protect the venial sinner from blame appears to (...) have absurd consequences: some agents whom we intuitively find saintly turn out to be mortal sinners, while other agents whom we intuitively judge wicked turn out to be mere venial sinners. I argue that Abelard suggests promising replies to these objections, but these replies themselves depend on controversial views about moral psychology. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung: Seit jeher dienen Städte als Projektionsfläche sowohl für die Identifikation von problematischen Tendenzen der Gesellschaft als auch für die Entwicklung erstrebenswerter gesellschaftlicher Zukünfte. Als Kristallisationspunkt und Triebkraft soziopolitischer Entwicklungen nimmt die Stadt eine zentrale Stellung in Praktiken des Regierens und deren Beobachtung ein – und doch tut sich die Politische Theorie traditionell schwer damit, ein Verständnis von Stadt zu entwickeln, das diesem Status und den damit verbundenen Ambivalenzen gerecht wird. Allzu oft verbleiben entsprechende Debatten dem Souveränitätsparadigma verhaftet, sodass die (...) Stadt primär in Relation zum Prinzip territorialstaatlicher Souveränität begriffen wird. Unser Beitrag argumentiert, dass eine Auflösung dieser konzeptionellen Verwicklung dazu beitragen kann, das Verhältnis zwischen dem Städtischen und dem Politischen als ein konstitutionslogisches, das sich von anderen Konstitutionslogiken des Politischen unterscheidet, sichtbar zu machen. Dazu greifen wir auf eine raumtheoretische Perspektive der Moderne zurück, die Stadt und Territorialstaat nicht als „Kleines“ und „Großes“, sondern als zwei eigenständige, zugleich komplementäre und konfligierende Modi der räumlichen Vergesellschaftung begreift. Unser Beitrag zeigt auf, dass Verdichtung und Heterogenisierung, als die beiden wesentlichen raumstrukturellen Merkmale des Städtischen, mit einer spezifischen Konstitution des Politischen im Sinne einer Erzeugung von kollektiver Macht und gesellschaftlicher Ordnung verbunden sind. Die Stadt tritt damit nicht bloß als Ort der Materialisierung übergreifender soziopolitischer Phänomene in den Blick, sondern als räumliches Prinzip, das Möglichkeiten für gemeinsames Sprechen und Handeln sowie für Praktiken der konfliktiven Infragestellung hegemonialer Projekte erst hervorbringt. Eine dergestalt angelegte politische Theorie der Stadt erlaubt es, politische Praktiken nicht nur in der Stadt zu lokalisieren, sondern als genuin städtische Phänomene zu erfassen und sowohl die Komplementaritäten als auch die Widersprüche zwischen den Raumprinzipien der Stadt und des souveränen Territorialstaats herauszuarbeiten. (shrink)

Aquinas is quite clear about the definition of moral virtue and its effects, but he devotes little space to its function: How does it accomplish what it accomplishes?Aquinas’s treatment of the acquired moral virtues in our non-rational appetites reveals that they have at least two functions: they make the soul’s powersgood instruments of reason, and they also calm the appetites so that one can make moral judgments with an unclouded mind. Virtue in the will has a different, “strong directive” function: (...) it directs our will to certain goods prior to reason’s forming its judgment. Aquinas must also hold that the virtues of the non-rational appetites exercise strong direction as well, but we cannot see why unless we examine his account of the infused moral virtues. (shrink)

Drawn from a wide range of writings and featuring state-of-the-art translations, _Basic Works_ offers convenient access to Thomas Aquinas' most important discussions of nature, being and essence, divine and human nature, and ethics and human action. The translations all capture Aquinas's sharp, transparent style and display terminological consistency. Many were originally published in the acclaimed translation-cum-commentary series _The Hackett Aquinas_, edited by Robert Pasnau and Jeffrey Hause. Others appear here for the first time: Eleonore Stump and Stephen Chanderbahn's translation of (...) _On the Principles of Nature_, Peter King's translation of _On Being and Essence_, and Thomas Williams' translations of the treatises On Happiness and On Human Acts from the Summa theologiae. _Basic Works_ will enable students to immerse themselves in Aquinas's thought by offering his fundamental works without internal abridgements. It will also appeal to anyone in search of an up-to-date, one-volume collection containing Aquinas' essential philosophical contributions--from the Five Ways to the immortality of the soul, and from the nature of happiness to virtue theory, and on to natural law. (shrink)

Jeffrey Hause - Virtue and Ethics in the Twelfth Century - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.2 328-329 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Jeffrey Hause Creighton University István P. Bejczy and Richard G. Newhauser, editors. Virtue and Ethics in the Twelfth Century. Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 130. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2005. Pp. vi + 393. Cloth, $189.00. The essays collected in this fascinating volume on virtue reveal both the increasing (...) debt twelfth-century thinkers owe to Augustinian moral psychology, as well as the extent to which those thinkers integrate classical moral philosophy and its canons of rationality into their medieval Christian worldview. However, the authors also explore the historical, social, economic, and theological genesis of.. (shrink)

Aquinas is quite clear about the definition of moral virtue and its effects, but he devotes little space to its function: How does it accomplish what it accomplishes?Aquinas’s treatment of the acquired moral virtues in our non-rational appetites reveals that they have at least two functions: they make the soul’s powersgood instruments of reason, and they also calm the appetites so that one can make moral judgments with an unclouded mind. Virtue in the will has a different, “strong directive” function: (...) it directs our will to certain goods prior to reason’s forming its judgment. Aquinas must also hold that the virtues of the non-rational appetites exercise strong direction as well, but we cannot see why unless we examine his account of the infused moral virtues. (shrink)

Aquinas argues that an agent’s act may be voluntary, involuntary, or even nonvoluntary. An agent performs a non-voluntary act on these conditions: (a) the agent does not know the act falls under a certain description D, (b) the act under D is not contrary to the agent’s will, and (c) if the agent had known that the act fell under D, the agent would still have performed it. Aquinas’s full account of non-voluntary acts is terse and ambiguous and seems to (...) contradict his fuller, more articulate, and philosophically rich views on voluntary and involuntary acts. The appearance of inconsistency, however, is illusory. Once understood, his account of non-voluntary acts clarifies various aspects of his theory of responsibility that are hard to glean from other discussions and reveals just how strongly Aquinas is inclined to Augustinian internalism. (shrink)

Debates in Medieval Philosophy: Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses aims to de-mystify medieval works by offering an illuminating, engaging introduction to the problems that medieval philosophers from Augustine through Ockham wrestled with. Each of the volume’s 11 units presents a debate that will enable students to return to the primary texts prepared to think critically and imaginatively about them. Debates include: Does Anselm have a hierarchical or a flat conception of free will? Is Abelard’s ethics conceptually impoverished? Does Avicenna teach (...) that we acquire concepts through abstraction or emanation? What is Aquinas’s purpose in writing the Summa contra gentiles? How sound are Ockham’s criticisms of Scotus’s theory of universals and individuation? The 10 essays newly commissioned for this volume will advance scholarship in medieval metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, logic, and philosophical theology, and in particular they will showcase what is philosophically distinctive and original in medieval philosophy. Students without experience in the history of philosophy will benefit from each unit’s clear, sharply written introductions that supply the necessary background to approach the debates intelligently. In addition, the volume’s general introduction elucidates the value of studying the history of philosophy through debate, in particular the history of medieval philosophy. Students will find in these debates models that will train them to formulate their own critical evaluations of a wide range of philosophical texts by thinkers with diverse philosophical commitments. (shrink)

Alone among Thomas Aquinas' works, the Summa Theologiae contains well-developed and integrated discussions of metaphysics, ethics, law, human action, and the divine nature. The essays in this volume, by scholars representing varied approaches to the study of Aquinas, offer thorough, cutting-edge expositions and analyses of these topics and show how they relate to Aquinas' larger system of thought. The volume also examines the reception of the Summa Theologiae from the thirteenth century to the present day, showing how scholars have understood (...) and misunderstood this key text - and how, even after seven centuries of interpretation, we still have much to learn from it. Detailed and accessible, this book will be highly important for scholars and students of medieval philosophy and theology. (shrink)

(1996). (East) German intelligentsia before and after 1989. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 550-555.

Jean Porter’s excellent study not only offers a clear and expansive picture of Aquinas on justice but also touches on nearly every other topic in Aquinas’s ethics. Of course, Aquinas himself thinks that no topic in philosophy or theology can be understood, or understood well, apart from its connection to multiple others, and Porter’s book is in this respect, as in so many others, deeply Thomistic. In the course of exploring justice—justice as a virtue, justice as a moral ideal, and (...) the special authority carried by the precepts of justice—Porter also reveals Aquinas’s thought on practical reason, moral inconsistency, virtue, eudaimonism, and normativity.“Aquinas gets justice right,” Porter asserts. Unlike most... (shrink)

In the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, increasingly sophisticated ethical thought made its way out of the theology texts and into pastoral guides and sermons, making it possible for a greater number of ethically informed lay people to share pastoral responsibility. One exercise of this responsibility was fraternal correction, through which a person, motivated by charity, rebukes a neighbor for his or her wrongdoing. This essay argues that the practice of fraternal correction is in fact a sort of blaming, (...) since it includes a judgment of blameworthiness and opprobrium for the offender’s bad choice, moral address directed to the offender, the demand for a response, and holding the offender accountable. However, in contrast to other forms of blame, the source of the offender’s accountability to the corrector in fraternal correction is the social system created by the exercise of mercy. (shrink)

Ancient Greek drama became the driving force in the Western theatrical revolution of the 1920s with Leopold Jessner's famous staging of King Oedipus in 1919. Once again theatre defined itself as the public tribune: the Athenian polis with its direct democracy giving way to the concept of a new social collective for the scientific age. The urgency of the impulse for social change coupled with the experience of World War I led to the investigation of images and action as forces (...) of internal necessity arising from the existentielle Angst of a whole generation of artists who found themselves face to face with the spiritual bankruptcy of the bourgeois social order. The long-term effects of the new dramatists’ radical re-viewings of the Greek theatre's potential as a progressive social undertaking—revealing its use value—may be detected in current-day rehearsal practices. Some of these effects are the subject of this article, which presents the author's experience of directing Sophocles’ Antigone in 1986 at the ancient Greek theatre of Oeniades. (shrink)

What kind of society do we live in? What kind of politics can help us to live in a good society? The first of these questions is essential to theory of society, the second to political theory. The contributions in this volume investigate the relationship between these two questions and, thus, open new perspectives for assessing politics and the society. The opposing terms "renewal" and "disenchantment" are herein used as leading ideas by which political theory could provide impulses to theory (...) of society. (shrink)

In this study, Daniel Westberg offers readers an account of Aquinas’s ethics and the action theory that underlies it. Both friends and enemies of Aquinas have covered this subject matter before, but early commentators misunderstood central parts of Aquinas’s ethical theory, and they handed down their misinterpretations in traditions that continue into the present. Against the traditional view that Aquinas’s medieval Christian inheritance, with its focus on the will, and on grace and love, required an action theory fundamentally different from (...) Aristotle’s, Westberg shows that the core of Aquinas’s action theory is authentically Aristotelian. Aquinas is neither a natural law theorist nor a voluntarist, as he is commonly thought to be. Instead, he holds a complex yet plausible account of human action that gives a greater role to practical reason and prudence than commentators generally recognize. This central contention is important, for it counters centuries of misinterpretation, and Westberg argues effectively for it. For this reason, anyone with a serious interest in medieval ethics should read Westberg’s study. (shrink)

The subject of intercultural exchange is complex and demands that we keep the basic issues that shape our views of the world in mind. And one of these basic issues is what we mean by “European identity.” The ideological concerns over the norms of identity became necessarily entangled in the post-1989 interests and agendas of Europe’s various nations. So the great challenge for us as academics as well as for the policymakers in Brussels and Strasburg is to focus on these (...) dialectics. European identity is too varied to be a unitary and homogenous thing; indeed, one of the battles within it is between the advocates of a unitary identity and those who see the whole as a complex that is irreducible to a unified identity. In this article I explore how the theatre, in the aftermath of the Second World War, served as a laboratory for the investigation, analysis, and constuction of dramatic models that became a means of transcultural communication. As attested by the continuing success of the experimental approaches of Brecht, Grotowski, La Mama, and Suzuki, this endeavour reflected the struggle of people from different cultural backgrounds to understand and accept each other. One of the reasons the theatre continues to have the potentiality to promote transcultural integration is that it deals in concrete particulars with universal resonances. As I will demonstrate with examples from my own work in various countries, the production and directing of plays by these and other dramatists shows that it is only in the performance—by transforming the familiar into the unfamiliar, by making the habitual and customary seem strange and unexpected—that the motives, relationships, and events enclosed in the written play are released so as to stimulate the audience to re-examine their own contemporary realities. Transcultural theatre thus creates dramatic experiences that are adequate and responsive to the changing world of migration and mobility in which both practitioners and audiences actually live. As such it offers the kind of transcultural education that promotes communication and understanding and that fosters an open-eyed and open-hearted attitude to the changing realities of Europe. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).