The far reaching changes in man's social and personal life taking place in our lifetime underline the need for a sound ethical evaluation of our rights and duties and of human behaviour both on the individual level and in the political society. On many issues judgments of value vary widely and a consultation of the thought of Thomas Aquinas on the basic questions will be helpful, the more since he is not only one of the greatest philosophers but also (...) succeeded in integrating in his moral philosophy the wisdom of the ancients, in particular of Aristotle and the Stoa. This book presents Aquinas's thought on such central questions as man's happiness, how to determine the morality of our actions, the natural law and the main virtues, as well as on the common good, war, human labour, love and friendship. Throughout the book the intellectual character of this moral philosophy is pointed out and problems are set in a historical perspective. (shrink)

The Physics is a most remarkable work, and profoundly influenced Medieval Philosophers. Thomas Aquinas wrote a detailed, impressive commentary. This essay studies in particular the composition of the Physics as Thomas saw it, his thorough study of Aristotle’s way of arguing and the important distinction he made between disputative arguments, which are only partially true, and arguments which determine the truth. Aristotle frequently uses proofs which are wrong when one considers the proper nature of bodies, but possible considering (...) their common nature. Thomas accepts proofs in the field of physics but discards those related to a certain mathematization of nature. Aristotle holds the unlimited possibility of movements becoming faster or slower, but according to Aquinas he is considering things in general : when we consider specific bodies there is a fastest movement. Thomas speaks of a way of reading a text which is according the intention of Aristotle, and proposes an understanding of particular texts based on the general doctrine of the Stagirite. Sometimes he goes beyond the text, as when defending the unity of time as dependent on the unity of the First Mover. The essay shows that in the commentary a coherent philosophy of nature shaping up. In some places Aquinas brings in God’s causality: nature is nothing else but the plan of divine art, placed within things. The study of nature shows that there is a first principle of the whole nature which is above everything, sc. God who gives being to things. (shrink)

Reading Aristotle with Thomas Aquinas: His Commentaries on Aristotle's Major Works offers an original and decisive work for the understanding of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. For decades his commentaries on the major works of Aristotle have been the subject of lively discussions. Are his commentaries faithful and reliable expositions of the Stagirite's thought or do they contain Thomas's own philosophy and are they read through the lens of Thomas's own Christian faith and in doing so (...) possibly distorting Aristotle? In order to be able to provide clarity and offer a nuanced response to this question, a careful study of all the relevant texts is needed. This is precisely what the author sets out do to in this work. Each chapter is devoted to one of the twelve commentaries Thomas wrote on major works of Aristotle including both his massive and influential commentaries on the Metaphysics, Physics and Nicomachean Ethics as well as lesser known commentaries. Elders places Thomas's commentary in its historical context, reviews the Greek, Arabic and Latin translation and reception of Aristotle's text as well as contemporary interpretations thereof and presents the reader with a thorough presentation and analysis of the content of the commentary, drawing attention to all the places where Thomas intervenes and makes special observations. In this way the reader can study Aristotle's treatises with Thomas as guide. The conclusion reached is that Thomas's commentaries are a masterful and faithful presentation of Aristotle's thought and of that of Thomas himself. Thomas's Christian faith does not falsify Aristotle's text, but gives occasionally an outlook at what lies behind philosophical thought. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Philosophical theology is the systematic inquiry about God's existence and being. We find it in Aristotle's Metaphysics, in Cicero's De natura ...

We question whether Plamondon & Alimi's model is useful in accounting for the nonsymmetrical and multiple-peaked velocity profiles observed in young and elderly subjects for ballistic aiming tasks. For these subjects, both data and observation suggest that a central representation initiates the movement in an appropriate direction but that multiple adjustments are made, both early and late, to achieve spatial accuracy.

Is there an alternative course to one which sets up hypotheses as to the nature of poetry and then proceeds to illustrate them? Happily, there is. Rather than beginning with the hypothesis we may begin with the fact, and let what may emerge. That is, rather than beginning with some notion of the nature of poetry, we may begin with individual poems and discover what we may of their nature or form. This procedure evidently involves four phases: examination of the (...) characteristics of individual poems, discovery, by comparison with other poems, of likenesses and differences, decision as to which of these likenesses and differences are relevant to poetic form, and the statement of form itself. Once we have discovered a given form, we shall be in a position to discuss the principles underlying the construction of such form, the various possibilities of such construction, and what constitutes excellence in a given form. Elder Olson, poet, critic, and Distinguished Service Professor in the department of English at the University of Chicago, is the author of six volumes of verse, including Collected Poems and Olson's Penny Arcade, and of numerous works of literary criticism. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are "The Poetic Process" and "On Value Judgments in the Arts" , the title essay on his most recent collection of criticism. Among the many awards which he has received are the Academy of American Poets award, the Longview Foundation award, the Emily Clark Balsh award and, for Olson's Penny Arcade, the Society of Midland Authors award. Both his poetry and his criticism are the subject of a book by Thomas E. Lucas. Part II of "A Conspectus of Poetry" will appear in the Winter 1977 issue of Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

Is there an alternative course to one which sets up hypotheses as to the nature of poetry and then proceeds to illustrate them? Happily, there is. Rather than beginning with the hypothesis we may begin with the fact, and let what may emerge. That is, rather than beginning with some notion of the nature of poetry, we may begin with individual poems and discover what we may of their nature or form. This procedure evidently involves four phases: examination of the (...) characteristics of individual poems, discovery, by comparison with other poems, of likenesses and differences, decision as to which of these likenesses and differences are relevant to poetic form, and the statement of form itself. Once we have discovered a given form, we shall be in a position to discuss the principles underlying the construction of such form, the various possibilities of such construction, and what constitutes excellence in a given form. Elder Olson, poet, critic, and Distinguished Service Professor in the department of English at the University of Chicago, is the author of six volumes of verse, including Collected Poems and Olson's Penny Arcade, and of numerous works of literary criticism. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are "The Poetic Process" and "On Value Judgments in the Arts", the title essay on his most recent collection of criticism. Among the many awards which he has received are the Academy of American Poets award, the Longview Foundation award, the Emily Clark Balsh award and, for Olson's Penny Arcade, the Society of Midland Authors award. Both his poetry and his criticism are the subject of a book by Thomas E. Lucas. Part II of "A Conspectus of Poetry" will appear in the Winter 1977 issue of Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

This learned book is a study of the fifteen questions of the first part of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae which deal with man as composed of body and soul, his faculties, and place in the universe. In twelve chapters Pasnau takes us from the theme of body and soul and the immateriality of the soul to closing pages on life after death. His philosophical approach of texts of a theological work have their justification in that “the real heart of Aquinas’s theological (...) project corresponds quite closely with what we consider the project of philosophy”, a claim which, although substantially correct, might be worded better, because the heart of Aquinas’s theology lies way beyond philosophy. Pasnau tries to explain Thomas’s texts acutely, raising the difficulties a modern reader would experience when hearing of these doctrines for the first time. The book is lively and stimulating, displaying acquaintance with many issues. (shrink)

The book, the first edition of which appeared in 1964, is divided into four not overly developed parts: : ethics as a philosophical discipline; : man's last end; : good and evil; : virtue and law. While in the first part of St. Thomas's Sententia in libros Ethicorum is the main source of Kluxen's account, the following sections are mainly an analysis of several treatises of the Summa Theologiae Ia-IIae. As a matter of fact Kluxen's purpose and substantial merit (...) are to bring out the status of ethics as a practical science not reducible to theoretical philosophy and to defend it against the intrusions of phenomenology, psychology, or sociology. To this effect he presents St. Thomas Aquinas's ethical thought. Kluxen shows an admirable acquaintance with the texts of St. Thomas and with relevant Thomistic literature; being also well versed in contemporary philosophy he manages to put the right questions. His well argued position is that ethics gives the rules of human conduct; its end is not knowledge but action ; it does not receive its principles from metaphysics: "Praxis is an original, primarily established way of human existence". This is certainly correct, but in order to explain and to confirm the principles we grasp spontaneously and to apply them to new fields of action, we need the assistance of general philosophy. (shrink)

Dr. Oguejiofor argues that Aquinas’s philosophical anthropology “is not much more than his philosophy of the human soul.” In his well-documented book he first gives a survey of the positions of philosophers on our question during the earlier part of the thirteenth century paying special attention to Albert the Great. Albert hesitated to accept Aristotle’s definition of the soul as the act of the body, believing that it is not compatible with the soul’s immortality. The second chapter explains this definition (...) and stresses the fact that the soul is immaterial and therefore subsistent. The author might have argued from the fact that it does not share its intellectual activity with the body. Surprisingly he thinks that many of M. Kelly’s remarks against the main argument of the mind’s immateriality—the mainstay of Thomas’s theory—are correct. The third, central chapter deals with Aquinas’s proofs of the soul’s immortality. It examines in their chronological order passages from six works of Thomas where they are put forward, paying special attention to chapters 79 to 81 of the Summa contra gentiles, II. The argument from man’s natural desire is linked to the immateriality of intellectual knowledge. The main arguments are: thought is immaterial and therefore the soul as its source also is; the rational soul transcends the contrary qualities responsible for corruption; the natural desire to exist for ever cannot be in vain. (shrink)

Professor Thomas Pogge, Professorial Fellow, Centre for Applied Philosophy, LPO Box 8260, Canberra. Tel.: +61 261255485; Email: tp6{at}columbia.edu ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract I would pay three million to go into space, says the banker to his attorney. — I wouldn't go if you paid me, the latter laughs, for me the French Riviera is quite exciting enough. Ah, I would pay a million for an extra year of life , the elderly tourist (...) effusively tells his lover. — We have never had even a hundred dollars , the Cambodian teenager replies, we are a large family. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In his detailed and well-argued study of the De interpretatione, Whitaker shows that the treatise is a coherent whole and is closely linked to the Topics and the Sophistici Elenchi, rather than to the Categories and the Prior Analytics as tradition has it. Convinced of the dialectical character of the book he rejects the title as spurious. It should be περὶ ἀντιφάσεως. In the first chapter Whitaker defends the reading πρώτων in 16a8 and explains that falsehood is stating as one (...) things which are in reality separated from each other, or as separate things which are one. Next he deals with the analysis of nouns and verbs. Departing from Alexander, he is right in holding that only man has speech. Animals can show something but do not signify it. The difficult sentence “being by itself is nothing” is understood as follows: being represents the combination of subject and predicate in an assertion. By itself it is nothing, but when used as a copula it gets an additional signification. However, I do not think that this understanding of προσημαίνειν is correct. In the interpretation of Whitaker, the text should simply say “it gets a meaning” without the “additional.” On this point one may usefully compare the commentary by St. Thomas Aquinas, In I Perihermeneias, lesson 5, which reviews the various options. The verb “to be” alone does not signify that something is, but it denotes pure actuality. (shrink)

In the introduction to this important study Bowlin draws attention to the fact that contemporary students of ethics often resort to Aristotle, but overlook Aquinas, one of the more able interpreters of the Aristotelian moral tradition. He intends to correct this situation by concentrating on a particular point of Thomas’s moral theory: the contingencies of various kinds which we must confront. Bowlin argues that Thomas’s treatment of the moral virtues is largely functional: they help to cope with contingencies, (...) although he leaves the connection between the virtues and these contingencies largely undeveloped. Chapter 1 deals with the difficulties caused by the different passions such as concupiscence, fear, and others. The next chapter takes us into the heart of the problem, the contingency of the human good. In Bowlin’s view this contingency results from the fact that circumstances can modify the morality of our actions. Given this variability, prudence and justice must help us to decide what is right to do. Bowlin’s treatment of justice is surprising: this virtue is viewed in the light of contingency, whereas for Aquinas it proceeds basically in an objective way. (shrink)

In his encyclopedic dictionary, Battista Mondin proposes to explain the meaning of the more important philosophical and theological concepts occurring in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas. In fact, his explanations often become short treatises so that the book is almost the equivalent of a summary, in alphabetical order, of the main themes of Aquinas's philosophy and theology. Mondin provides the historical background of the doctrinal content expressed by certain terms. The book has a total of five hundred thirty-eight (...) entries, most of which concern doctrinal terms. Some entries are about important philosophers quoted by Aquinas, for example, Aristotle, Averroes, Avicenna, Avicebron, Boethius, Dionysius, and Maimonides; others are entries such as Aeterni Patris, Augustinianism, analogia fidei, axiology; and modern terms such as contraception, ecology, ecumenism, euthanasia, reincarnation, sport. The texts are written by a specialist who has a very good knowledge of the theological and philosophical works of Aquinas. The wording of the articles is precise, succinct, and clear, and the explanations provided are generally reliable and complete. To those who read Italian, Mondin's book will be a valuable instrument: it will help them to find rapidly the essential points of Aquinas's views on a great number of theological and philosophical subjects. One can only marvel at the degree of completeness attained by the author.--Leo Elders, Kerkrade, Netherlands. (shrink)

It is not without a certain emotion that one opens this book devoted to the memory of a great scholar of medieval thought who worked and lived in the certainty that there cannot be a conflict between the Christian faith and science. In a significant essay, Benedict M. Ashley defends the idea of the philosophy of nature as continuous or identical with natural science. Ashley does allow, however, for so many divergences between philosophy of nature and natural science due to (...) later developments in science that this identification must be qualified. Steven E. Baldner points out some of the contradictions of Hartshorne's atomism: Hartshorne denies change and real causality. Anthony J. Celano recalls that Robert Kilwardby was very much aware that happiness as described by Aristotle is quite different from the beatitude promised by the Christian faith. The order of the divine entitative attributes in the Summa theologiae I, qq. 3-11 has baffled many a commentator. Lawrence Dewan connects it with some texts of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Jeremiah Hackett studies Roger Bacon's Moralis philosophia. Dealing with Luther's attitude toward St. Thomas, Denis R. Tanz accepts Erasmus's verdict that the weight given to Thomas in theology was an important factor in propelling Luther out of the Roman Catholic orbit. This opinion, however, confounds appearances with the real reason for leaving, namely, estrangement from several central positions of Catholic doctrine. It is a tribute to the Catholicity of Thomas that after 1519 Luther came to identify the Pope, the Church and all scholastic doctors with the Thomists and said that the Church had become the synagogue of the papists and the Thomists: Thomas had been made the arbiter of heresy. Mark F. Johnson stresses the sapiential character of the sacra doctrina. Mark D. Jordan wrestles with the question why Thomas wrote his Aristotelian commentaries. Arguing in the line of Owens's interpretation he reduces their importance with regard to Thomas's own positions. Jordan seems to think that Thomas's philosophy cannot be formulated without his theology, an explanation which is hardly satisfactory. Armand Maurer submits some reflections on St. Thomas's notion of presence. The question to what extent Albert the Great contributed to Aquinas's treatises of the morality of human acts and of natural law is examined by Ernest J. McCullough. Walter H. Principe points out how, according to Aquinas, food is assimilated into the veritas humanae naturae. Eric A. Reitan retraces Weisheipl's analysis of Aristotle's Physics and of St. Thomas' Commentary: the axiom, "whatever is moved, is moved by another" can be understood only within the context of the general science of nature. In his Liber de causis et processu universitatis Albert came to hold the same position as Thomas on the demonstrability of creation and of its beginning in time. Two final articles concern the difficulties underlying Aristotle's arguments in Physics 7 and 8, and Aquinas and Newton on causality: William Wallace connects Newton's universal gravitation with the axiom that nothing acts on itself. (shrink)

As Avatar: The Last Airbender illustrates, toughness and hardness can be accompanied by great sensitivity, rigidity by openness, roughness by love. Thus, the show sets up a one‐sided stereotype which over time dissolves into a balanced, at King Bumi rules Omashu, which is introduced as an ordered and well‐organized city, with mighty walls and tough guards who kick out the cabbage merchant due to some rotten cabbages in his load and demand respect for the elderly‐so far, so earthy. The Avatar, (...) is the great bridge between worlds not just between those of spirits and humans, but also between different sides. In Western philosophy, the terms “false alternative,” “false dilemma,” and “false dichotomy” refer to an informal fallacy which revolves around exactly such an illegitimate restriction of options. Philosophy provides the tools to uncover such fallacious reasoning and problematic assumptions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE GREAT GATSBY: ROMANCE OR HOLOCAUST? Thomas J. Cousineau Washington College In an otherwise appreciative response to The Great Gatsby, H. L. Mencken expressed a reservation about the plot ofthe novel, which he characterized as "no more than a glorified anecdote" (Claridge 156). Writing to Edmund Wilson, Fitzgerald suggested, in turn, that what Mencken did not find in Gatsby was "any emotional backbone at the very height of (...) it" (Turnbull 342). Critics ofthe novel, however, have tended to overlook the self-evident fact that the novel's ostensible emotional center—the reunion between Gatsby and Daisy—does not possess sufficient significance to justify the classic status that has been largely accorded to Fitzgerald's novel. We need only remember Daisy's effusive appreciation ofGatsby's "beautiful shirts," or the even more telling detail that the truly "romantic" moments in Daisy and Gatsby's relationship all occurred several years earlier in Louisville and that the period of the reunion is scarcely mentioned in the novel to convince ourselves that the putative grandeur of Gatsby's dream does not adequately account for the novel's power or its lasting significance. Reading Gatsby as a novel about its hero's dream makes of it, in fact, a precarious literary achievement, one whose numerous absurdities were perceptively delineated by the English novelist L.P. Hartley, who admired Fitzgerald's literary gifts but thought that he had squandered them in Gatsby. In a 1926 review of the novel, Hartley offered the following summary of its plot: An adventurer of shady antecedents builds a palace at a New York seaside resort, entertains on a scale which Lucullus would have marveled at but could not have approved, and spends untold sums ofmoney, all to 22Thomas J. Cousineau catch the eye ofhis one time sweetheart, who lives on an island opposite, unhappily but very successfully married. At last, after superhuman feats ofostentation and display, the fly walks into the web. A train ofdisasters follows, comparable in quantity and quality with the scale ofthe Great Gatsby's prodigies of hospitality. Coincidence leaps to the helm and throws a mistress under a motor-car. The car does not stop, which, all things considered, is the most natural thing that happens in the book. An injured husband finds the Great Gatsby in suicidal mood sitting on a raft in his artificial lake and (apparently) forestalls him; anyhowthey are both discovered dead. The elder Gatsby is unearthed and gives a pathetic account ofhis son's early years. All the characters behave as though they were entitled to grieve over a great sorrow, and the book closes with the airs oftragedy. (Claridge 178) Minor inaccuracies aside, this must be among the most cogent, disabused responses that the plot of The Great Gatsby has ever received. It is such a welcome antidote to the reams of interpretation ofthe novel produced by critics who, dutifully aping Nick Carraway in this respect, have allowed their conviction as to Gatsby's "greatness" to be matched only by their equally adamant certainty as to the moral tawdriness of Tom and Daisy Buchanan. As Hartley's exasperated summary reminds us, The Great Gatsby, read as the account ofthe eponymous hero's dream, simply cannot support the weight of morally serious interpretation that it would like to invite or that so many ofits critics, in their turn, would like to bestow upon it.1 Nor do we move any closer to appreciating the greatness of Gatsby by shiftingourattention tothe growth in moral awareness thatcountless critics have attributed toNick Carraway, whose self-evaluation as "one ofthe few honest people that I have ever known" (64) should in itself arouse our suspicions.2 As we shall see, the fruits ofNick's presumed moral education The seemingly indestructible resistance to Hartley's lucidity that has been displayed by the great majority ofthe novel's critics may be observed in the chapter that Jeffrey Hart devotes to Gatsby in his recently published Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe. Arguing that "magical transformation" is the novel's true subject (230), Hart credits Nick with achieving an "epiphany" whereby he recognizes Gatsby's superiority to "the whole damn bunch put together" (238) and concludes that the larger... (shrink)

Kutschera's book is an attempt at a positive answer to the question whether religious faith is still justifiable. To this effect the author examines problems of the science of religion, philosophical theology, and religious beliefs. He asserts that Aquinas's natural theology is a thing of the past, for the Aristotelian philosophy used by Thomas has no validity ; recent debate has shown that the proofs of the existence of God are not conclusive. Unfortunately, Kutschera presents no solid evidence; the (...) short passages purporting to show that the Five Ways are invalid are superficial. Kutschera reminds the reader that the impossibility of a rational foundation of the existence of God does not imply that God does not exist. (shrink)

In 1997 an international conference on Aristotle and modern science took place in Thessaloniki. Aristotle’s view of nature—his criticism of the atomists, on the one hand, and modern science, on the other—seem to be widely opposed, but in recent years science has changed so much that scientists resort to certain basic notions of Aristotle’s natural philosophy to underpin their theories and make material nature more intelligible. In a first paper Hilary Putnam argues against Victor Gaston that Aristotle’s theory of cognition (...) is a “ direct realism” and not as many say a theory based on representation. Perception and thinking are in direct contact with things and their properties. In a charming comparison Bas C. van Fraassen argues that both tragedy and science are subspecies of representation. As in poetry, in science the inexplicable is kept off stage. John P. Anton is confident that the revival of Aristotle’s model of science can provide a solution to the question of the unity of the various sciences. He levels a stinging attack at Putnam’s interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of cognition. Lambros Couloubaritsis voices amazement that in Physics IV Aristotle says nothing about the creative capacity of time, but believes that the notion of “appropriate time” will bring this out. James R. Brown argues that the main stream of science stemming from the seventeenth century is a fusion of the Platonic and mechanic traditions, but that in recent years Aristotle has made an impressive comeback. He examines to what extent the notion of potentiality may be in agreement with and help explain certain physical facts perceived by common sense observation, although it does no justice to quantum “ bizarreness”. He sees better help in the Platonic account of formal causality. Speaking about levels of reality Basarab Nicolescu believes that the universe is self-creating, showing an open structure. A flow of information traverses the various levels of reality. The notion of potency, we are told by Ephtichios Bitsakis, exercises quite some attraction on scientists. Indeed, Aristotle is a precursor of scientific realism, but his theories are marred by many inconsistencies: the Prime Mover, final causality, and entelechy contradict his dynamic view of nature and should be abandoned. In the transformation of massive particles into nonmassive ones the actual mass becomes potential. Thomas M. Olshewsky points out that Aristotle has a differentiated notion of prime matter and rejects absolute prime matter. Jagdish Hattiangadi suggests giving up the idea of substance. Demetra Sfendoni-Mentzou also tackles “the always actual question” of what matter is for Aristotle. Nowadays the idea of stable particles has disappeared and we have to deal with what is potentially real. (shrink)

It is not without a certain emotion that one opens this book devoted to the memory of a great scholar of medieval thought who worked and lived in the certainty that there cannot be a conflict between the Christian faith and science. In a significant essay, Benedict M. Ashley defends the idea of the philosophy of nature as continuous or identical with natural science. Ashley does allow, however, for so many divergences between philosophy of nature and natural science due to (...) later developments in science that this identification must be qualified. Steven E. Baldner points out some of the contradictions of Hartshorne's atomism: Hartshorne denies change and real causality. Anthony J. Celano recalls that Robert Kilwardby was very much aware that happiness as described by Aristotle is quite different from the beatitude promised by the Christian faith. The order of the divine entitative attributes in the Summa theologiae I, qq. 3-11 has baffled many a commentator. Lawrence Dewan connects it with some texts of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Jeremiah Hackett studies Roger Bacon's Moralis philosophia. Dealing with Luther's attitude toward St. Thomas, Denis R. Tanz accepts Erasmus's verdict that the weight given to Thomas in theology was an important factor in propelling Luther out of the Roman Catholic orbit. This opinion, however, confounds appearances with the real reason for leaving, namely, estrangement from several central positions of Catholic doctrine. It is a tribute to the Catholicity of Thomas that after 1519 Luther came to identify the Pope, the Church and all scholastic doctors with the Thomists and said that the Church had become the synagogue of the papists and the Thomists: Thomas had been made the arbiter of heresy. Mark F. Johnson stresses the sapiential character of the sacra doctrina. Mark D. Jordan wrestles with the question why Thomas wrote his Aristotelian commentaries. Arguing in the line of Owens's interpretation he reduces their importance with regard to Thomas's own positions. Jordan seems to think that Thomas's philosophy cannot be formulated without his theology, an explanation which is hardly satisfactory. Armand Maurer submits some reflections on St. Thomas's notion of presence. The question to what extent Albert the Great contributed to Aquinas's treatises of the morality of human acts and of natural law is examined by Ernest J. McCullough. Walter H. Principe points out how, according to Aquinas, food is assimilated into the veritas humanae naturae. Eric A. Reitan retraces Weisheipl's analysis of Aristotle's Physics and of St. Thomas' Commentary: the axiom, "whatever is moved, is moved by another" can be understood only within the context of the general science of nature. In his Liber de causis et processu universitatis Albert came to hold the same position as Thomas on the demonstrability of creation and of its beginning in time. Two final articles concern the difficulties underlying Aristotle's arguments in Physics 7 and 8, and Aquinas and Newton on causality: William Wallace connects Newton's universal gravitation with the axiom that nothing acts on itself. (shrink)

There are readers of Aquinas’s works, but Penguin’s surpasses all by its sheer size, the very representative choice of texts, the excellent translations, and scholarly, informative introductions. McInerny chose to present his selection in a chronological order, allowing the persevering reader to witness St. Thomas at work in Paris, Italy, again in Paris, and in Naples. In the introduction, the reader finds a survey of Thomas’s life, pertinent remarks on the relationship of philosophy and theology, on Thomas (...) and Aristotelianism, and an enumeration of some key Aristotelian doctrines. “In learning from Aristotle Thomas does not of course think of himself as conforming his mind to another’s, but rather as conforming his mind to the way things are”. McInerny also mentions the controversies after Thomas’s death and the revival of Thomistic studies. (shrink)

It is always difficult to present a collection of essays, and this the more so if written by twenty-eight authors. However, this imposing and beautifully printed volume has been planned very carefully, so that the various contributions create a fairly complete study of Aquinas’s thought in the Second Part of the Summa theologica. The essays have approximately the same length and are accompanied by numerous scholarly endnotes. L. E. Boyle recalls that St. Thomas’s intention was to connect moral theology (...) to dogmatics, the Second Part being foremost in his mind. It did indeed capture the attention of the students of his order. S. Pinckaers gives a fine survey of the sources used by Thomas in the I-II and brings out the place of the auctoritates in theology. S. J. Pope presents a compact summary of the contents of the Second Part but does not consider its relation to the Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics. (shrink)

Heidegger’s two modes of thinking, calculative and meditative, were used as the thematic basis for this qualitative study of physicians from seven countries . Focus groups were conducted in each country with 69 physicians who cared for the elderly. Results suggest that physicians perceived ethical issues primarily through the lens of calculative thinking with emphasis on economic concerns. Meditative responses represented 24% of the statements and were mostly generated by Canadian physicians whose patients typically were not faced with economic barriers (...) to treatment due to Canada’s universal health care system. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 887 could also be useful in a science course as an outside reading for those interested in expanding their intellectual horizons in an inter· disciplinary way. F. F. CENTORE St. Jerome's College U. of Waterloo, Ontario Die Metaphysik des Thomas von Aquin in historischer Perspektive, ILTeil. Salzburger Studien zur Philosophie, Band 17. By LEO J. ELDERS. Salzburg/Miinchen: Verlag Anton Pustet, 1987. Pp. 331. Paper, DM 54. (...) This is the second half of Elders' metaphysical study as promised in the prior volume (reviewed in THE THOMIST, 50 [1986], 463· 465) on common being. The present book centers on God, in contrast to ens commune. But it strongly renews {pp. 7, 24) the insistence that no Wolffian separation of ontology from philosophical theology is Summa theologiae in showing first that God's existence is not immedi· ately evident to us but needs to be demonstrated (pp. 28-88). It then presents the " five ways " for demonstrating the divine existence, with Latin text and German translation side by side {pp. 89-137). It re· duces other suggested " ways " to some one of the five, or else sets them aside in one manner or another (pp. 137-142). After that it treats the divine attributes according to the ways of negation, causality and eminence {pp. 143-187), and then the naming of God (pp. 189· 221), God's knowledge, life, truth, power and will (pp. 223-275), and :finally the divine action upon creatures (pp. 277-315). This treatment proceeds strictly in the order followed by the Summa theologiae. The book concludes (p. 317) that the philosophical theology of Aquinas is a coherent whole, based upon everyday experience yet for that very reason on principles that are metaphysically evident and ad· mitted by "common sense" (see also pp. 15, 200). The treatment is neatly addressed to the problems that have been under lively discussion during the past few decades, such as the " death of God." These are dealt with against an extensive and admirably detailed historical background stretching from the Greeks to the present day, with wide coverage of secondary literature, thoroughly justifying the book's designation of itself as a study pursued "in historical perspective." However, the advisability of the Summa's order of treatment for a work meant to explain the metaphysical thinking of Aquinas is open to question. Elders (p. 8, n. 3; p. 13, n. 4) is acquainted with the vigor· 338 BOOK REVIEWS ous protests of Gilson and Pegis against reading as philosophy what Aquinas wrote as theology. Yet Elders (p. 8) allows the stand that on the ground of its intrinsic rationality Aquinas would have adhered to the Summa's order even if he had been writing a purely philosophical theology. In the present case, one may strongly object, the result is a way of thinking that dulls sensitivity to the core position of existence in Aquinas' metaphysical thought. The long and checkered history of the notion " common sense " in western philosophy should be enough to dissociate that concept from Thomistic metaphysics, and here the appeal to " everyday experience " as a support calls first for careful analysis of the radically different ways in which existence and nature are originally attained by human cognition. The book finds (p. 101, n. 61), for instance, that in the demonstration of God's existence from motion Aquinas is employing without radical distinction the same principles as Aristotle but is applying them more strictly. The pro· foundly distinctive character of Aquinas' metaphysical acumen is thereby missed. This may be aptly illustrated by one example. The pointed assertion of the Summa contra gentiles (1.9.Inter) that without consideration of the proof for God's existence " omnis consideratio de rebus divinis necessario tollitur," is understood by Elders to mean "... ist jede philosophische Betrachtung des Seienden letztlich grundlos" (p. 89). Yet granting without hesitation that the proof of the divine existence is necessary for understanding metaphysically " that which exists " (das Seiende), one may, against Elders, take the statement of Aquinas at its face value as much more finely pointed. It means what it literally says, namely that things divine cannot be understood apart from consideration of the proof for God's... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS Lex et Libertas: Freedom and Law according to St. Thomas.Aquinas. Edited by L. J. ELDERS and K. HEDWIG. Vatican City: Pontificia Accademia di S. Thommaso, 1987. Pp. 286. L. 30.000 (paper). This 30th volume of Antonio Piolanti's Studi Tomis-tici contains the papers given at the fourth Rolduc Symposium (1986) on the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. Five of the papers are in French, and seven (...) in German. The other eight, plus a "Preface" (pp. 7-11) with a brief summary of each of the papers, are in English. There is no point in duplicating the summaries. Still less is there possibility of giving an appropriate critique of each of the articles in a short review, since in justice each would have to be assessed against the individual writer's own background and in accord with his special intents. The most that can be done is to touch on some general issues brought to foe fore in the volume. Of notable interest is Roberto Busa's paper on the methods and use of his Index Thomistieus. By direct investigation Busa (p. 36) finds that the ·combination lex et libertas is nowhere used in St. Thomas, and that its import is not indicated anywhere by the relevant conjunctions and prepositions in the Concordantia altera. Rather than being opposed notions "libertas est ecx: amore legis" (p. 36). Busa also notes "that in the works of Aquinas not a single instance of conscientia dubia or conscientia incerta occurs" (p. 133, n. 31). Jude P. Dougherty's "Aquinas on Punishment" (pp. 160-170) is a timely and solid article on that issue in.today's social circumstances. In regard to the death penalty the article concludes: " Given the views of Aquinas on punishment, it would be difficult to argue that Catholic social thought requires an abolitionist mindset " (p. 169). In this respecl Aquinas " remains unchallenged by the data uncovered by contemporary empirical study" (p. 170). Richly informative Scriptural and theological studies by J. P. M. van der Ploeg (pp. 185-199) and Johannes Stohr (pp. 219-241) deal with the Old Law and Aquinas's treatment of it. Four shorter articles (pp. 243-280) discuss Aquinas's moral doctrine in relation to the N.ew Law. The rest of the papers are in the more professedly ethical realm, on sensitive topics of concern today in the field of Catholic morality. They maintain the currently accepted level of discussion for philosophical wo.rk in that area. A masterly article by S. Pinckaers (pp. 15-24) locates the background against which these discussions hav.e been articulated. In that setting "liberty" and "law" were projected as though they stood in sharp contrast to each other. The basic problem then lay in the struggle 539 540 BOOK REVIEWS to uphold on the one hand individual rights against encroachment on the part of law, and on the other hand to safeguard law against erosion by individual claims. Pinckaers shows how drastically this attitude is opposed to the mentality of Aquinas, for whom the liberty at stake may be called "quality liberty" (liberte de qiialite-p. 19), as contrasted with " liberty of indifference." In consequence no opposition of law to liberty is felt in Aquinas, but rather a tension that evokes continual progress in moral life. Possibility to sin has accordingly no essential place in liberty, for liberty is found in its fullness in God (p. 23). The two profoundly different moral structures, namely that of St. Thomas and that of modern moralities of obligation, have their roots respectively in these two opposed conceptions of libe11ty, the " quality liberty" of the virtues and the nominalistic "liberty of indifference" (pp. 23-24). But despite this clear delination of the problem by Pinckaers the other papers remain far from achieving a breakthrough in regard to the conception of freedom. One article giants that though some things are forbidden we have in the vastly greater number of our acts (bei der uberwiegenden Zahl imserer Handlungen-p. 245) the freedom to do or to avoid. Another paper concludes (p. 21) that today's complicated moral problems cannot be solved onesidedly on the strength of either a "virtues ethic... (shrink)

아리스토텔레스의 작품들에 대한 토마스 아퀴나스의 주해의 의도는 최근 수 십 년 동안 제이퍼(H. V. Jaffa), 고티에(R. A. Gauthier), 브래들리(D. J. M. Bradley), 도이그(J. C. Doig), 엘더스(L. Elders) 등과 같은 여러 학자들 사이에서 종종 논쟁거리가 되어 왔다. 그 중에서도 용기라는 덕은 아리스토텔레스와 토마스 아퀴나스 사이에 있었던 논쟁들 중의 핵심적인 요소였다. 예를 들면, 드용(R. K. De Young)은 토마스 아퀴나스가 전쟁터에서의 용기보다는 오히려 순교자의 용기의 주요한 행위로서 인내만을 강조함으로써 아리스토텔레스의 용기 개념으로부터 갈라섰다고 주장한다. 이와 같은 그녀의 토마스 아퀴나스의 순교자의 인내에 관한 충실한 이해는 (...) 여러 관점들 안에서 성격상 철저하게 신학적이라는 것을 부정할 수는 없다.BR 그러나 드용의 주장과는 달리, 헤르트(J. A. Herdt)와 라이히버그(G. M. Reichberg)와 같은 학자들은 토마스 아퀴나스의 용기에 대한 설명이 더 광범위한 신학적인 전통들을 배경으로 하여 지속됨에도 불구하고, 가장 두드러진 것은 그의 용기에 관한 설명들이 아리스토텔레스로부터의 벗어남 또는 이탈이 결코 아니라고 주장한다. 그들은 그가 어떤 의미에서 아리스토텔레스에게 의존하고 있는 순교자의 용기의 주요한 행위로서 인내라는 전형을 주장하는 것 이외에도, 전쟁터 용기에 대한 아리스토텔레스의 분석을 거부하는 것이 아니라 오히려 아리스토텔레스를 능가하는 방식을 취하고 있다고 주장한다. 또한 그들은 그가 “은총은 자연을 완전하게 만든다.”라는 원리를 받아들임으로써 이러한 두 가지 형태들, 즉 후천적으로 획득된 용기와 주입된 용기 사이에 존재할 수 있는 다양한 관계들에 주의를 기울이고 있다고 주장하고 있다.BR 이 연구에서는 먼저, 연구자는 토마스 아퀴나스의 순교자의 용기와 인내에 관한 드용의 입장을 검토해보고자 한다. 이 방법의 일환으로서, 연구자는 드용이 지적한 내용들, 즉 순교자로서 인내와 신의 은총으로서 인내를 살펴볼 것이다. 그리고 나서 드용의 주장들에 대한 반론으로서 첫째, 연구자는 헤르트의 주장들을 중심으로 하여 토마스 아퀴나스가 신의 은총 없이도 시민의 덕으로서 인내를 가지는 것이 가능하다는 것을 분명하게 보여주고 있다는 것을 드러낼 것이다. 둘째, 본 연구자는 라이히버그의 주장을 중심으로 하여 토마스 아퀴나스는가 아리스토텔레스의 군대의 용기 또는 전쟁터에서의 용기를 대담함과 인내라는 두 가지의 정념들의 적절한 균형을 통하여 아리스토텔레스의 용기의 개념을 발전적으로 변용시켰다고 주장할 것이다. 결론적으로, 연구자는 토마스 아퀴나스가 아리스토텔레스의 용기의 개념을 단순히 그리스도교의 순교 또는 인내와 관련되어 있는 용기의 개념으로 변형시키려고 한 것이 아니라 아리스토텔레스의 부분적인 진리를 더 완전한 진리 쪽으로 나아갈 수 있는 지를 보여주고자 한 것임에 분명하다는 것을 제시하고자 한다. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Christ Who Meets Us in the Sacraments:The Influence of St. Ambrose on the tertia pars of St. Thomas's Summa theologiaeDamian Day O.P.IntroductionThe recent increased interest in St. Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers of the Church has produced a number of excellent studies of the Angelic Doctor's understanding of the authority of the Fathers and his use of them.1 In this article, I hope to contribute to (...) the ongoing study of Aquinas and the Fathers by examining how Thomas employs St. Ambrose in the tertia pars of his Summa theologiae [ST]. Thomas's use of Ambrose has received little detailed [End Page 103] attention. One of Leo Elders's last contributions to the study of Aquinas and the Fathers provided an overview of Ambrose's presence in Thomas's writings.2 I hope to expand upon Elders's work of cataloging and describing Thomas's numerous citations of Ambrose—Thomas names Ambrose over eleven hundred times in his writings3—by making a particular argument about Thomas's Christological and sacramental use of Ambrose. While Elders gives an excellent summary of where Ambrose appears in Thomas's corpus, he does not connect Thomas's use of Ambrose in his treatises on Christ and the Eucharist. I argue that Thomas's citations of Ambrose in the tertia pars help him develop an understanding of the Incarnation that supports his sacramental realism, especially emphasizing contact with Christ in the Eucharist.4Much recent reflection on the Eucharist has sought to deemphasize the substantial presence of Christ and emphasize his presence in other ways. Michael C. McGuckian, for example, argues that the Western emphasis on Christ's presence in the Blessed Sacrament has damaged the understanding of participation in the heavenly liturgy and obscured other ways in which Christ is present, such as in the bishop presiding and the proclamation of the word. He claims that "those other presences surpass the presence in the elements in their personal quality, their dynamic force and their effect on our [End Page 104] spirits and are not to be undervalued."5 Looking at Thomas and Ambrose, we will see that Christ's substantial presence in the Eucharist is preeminently personal, dynamic, and efficacious for our spirits. Colman O'Neill's masterful work of sacramental realism, Meeting Christ in the Sacraments, provides an entrée into such a study. The title derives from Ambrose. In his work A Defense of the Prophet David to Theodosius Augustus, Ambrose reflects on Psalm 51. Suddenly, in the middle of confessing his sins, David foresees the cleansing sacrament of baptism. In prophetic wonder, he cries out, "face-to-face you have shown yourself to me, Christ; I have discovered you in your sacraments."6 Even prior to their institution, David prophetically glimpses what the sacraments of the Old Law prefigure. In this vision, David sees "no longer in shadow, nor in figure, nor in type," but meets Christ in his sacraments.7 For Ambrose, the sacraments are real encounters with Christ. As O'Neill puts it, "Christ, who was worshipped from afar, comes near and touches the believer; and at his touch power goes out from him."8 For [End Page 105] Thomas, too, one meets Christ in the sacraments.9 While all the sacraments apply the merits of his Passion,10 the Eucharist is the locus par excellence for meeting Christ, since the whole Christ is there contained.11 The encounter is both personal and powerful.While the language of meeting or encountering Christ in the sacraments may seem to echo modern phenomenological philosophy, Thomas grounds the encounter in a realism of the Incarnation.12 His treatment of the encounter with Christ in the sacraments flows from his treatment of the Incarnation.13 Guy-Thomas Bedouelle summed up O'Neill's approach, which reflects Thomas's, as simply stressing, again and again, "that sacramental realism implies that the Church draws its life from the dynamism of the Incarnation itself."14 I argue that Thomas, in drawing his sacramental realism from the Incarnation, employs Ambrose as a key authority. First, I examine Thomas's knowledge and use of Ambrose's works. Second, I... (shrink)

Thomas Kjeller Johansen presents a new account of Aristotle's major work on psychology, the De Anima.

This is an edited transcript of a keynote paper given at IACR's 2021 Annual Conference. The paper outlines a critical realist approach to critique and illustrates its application to the contemporary economy. It argues that responsible, constructive critique depends on ethics, on causal explanation, and on the development of utopian visions. Utopias are tools, and concrete utopias are not visions of whole alternative ready-made societies, but rather partial models that can be built in practice as elements of the larger social (...) world. The argument is illustrated with three cases of digital utopianism, which help to demonstrate the practical challenges facing utopian schemes. Concrete utopias are a vehicle for combining our theoretical understandings of possibilities with an ethical analysis of needs in order to offer practical schemes for improving human flourishing. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore some of the consequences of Martin’s Conjecture on degree invariant Borel maps. These include the strongest conceivable ergodicity result for the Turing equivalence relation with respect to the filter on the degrees generated by the cones, as well as the statement that the complexity of a weakly universal countable Borel equivalence relation always concentrates on a null set.

How should critical realists do social theory? This paper considers several issues raised by this question, in response to Jamie Morgan’s recent article in this journal, and comments on his discussion of norm circles.

Submission by 31st July 2021 The relationship between pragmatism and critical realism is open to many interpretations. On the one hand, compared to more traditional approaches, the two approaches s...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Innova dies nostros, sicut a principio:Novelty and Nostalgia in Thomas of Celano's First and Second Lives of St. FrancisBarbara Newman (bio)IntroductionIn his sixth-century compendium of hagiography, Gregory of Tours argued that one should always speak of the vita patrum or vita sanctorum in the singular. According to Pliny, he noted, grammarians did not believe the noun vita had a plural. More to the point, although "there is a (...) diversity of merits and virtues among [the saints], … the one life of the body sustains them all in this world."1 Just as the Church, the body of Christ, is one, so too the saints. Their project of imitatio Christi re-presents the one and only life of Christ for each new generation. As a literary genre, hagiography fleshes out this insight, for no other genre is so steeped in self-citation. Every vita is such a tissue of biblical verses that, to edit a saint's Life before Google, one had to know Scripture by heart or spend endless hours with a concordance. After the Bible, quotations from a few classic vitae were constantly recycled: Athanasius' Life of St. Antony, Sulpicius Severus' Life of St. Martin, Gregory the Great's Life of St. Benedict. With the passage of time, newer classics joined older ones to produce one vast, self-referential monument, incarnate in the Acta Sanctorum: Gregory's vita sanctorum multiplied ad infinitum. So deep did this tendency run that, when an obscure saint needed a vita to justify a cult, shameless hagiographers would plagiarize whole paragraphs, plundering stories and miracles from earlier vitae to serve their turn.2 [End Page 169]It is small wonder, then, that the hagiographic genre is so often characterized as "traditional" or "conservative." It is nostalgic, too, in the sense that each saint's words and deeds bring a glorious Golden Age back to life—most often the apostolic age or the time of the Desert Fathers, but sometimes the graced beginnings of a religious order. Such memorials enabled later generations to idealize their glorious founders. This tendency to exalt the new as a renovation of the old has deep roots in Christianity; even the evangelist Matthew systematically represents Jesus as a new Moses. In the same vein, it is not unusual to find a saint identified as a new Jacob or a second David. On the other hand, many saints' Lives make an insistent claim to newness, renovatio. For the saints were, and are, extraordinary—not merely good men and women, but radical figures whose words and deeds shocked those around them, beginning with their parents. Like Jesus, they had not only admirers, but detractors in plenty. If their publicists held them up as exemplars of virtue, theirs was no ordinary kind, for the heroic virtue that gave saints their charisma could look much like madness. Despite the precedents of earlier vitae, their ascetic feats and challenging behavior often struck observers as new and unheard-of. In hagiography, therefore, claims of novelty play a key role that balances the familiar topoi. Sometimes the newness of a saint's charism is cause for joyful celebration. Jesus, after all, had declared ecce nova facio omnia (Rev 21:5). But "novelties" also had to be handled with care, for they could easily be condemned as heresies or extreme practices deviating from the tradition of the elders.This tension between novelty and nostalgia emerges most clearly in the vitae of saints who founded genuinely new forms of religious life. In this paper I will explore the way it plays out in two early Lives of Francis of Assisi, perhaps the most popular saint of all time. After his death in 1226, Francis set a speed record for canonization—one that would be surpassed in the Middle Ages only by his disciple, St. Anthony of Padua, and by the Dominican martyr Peter of Verona.3 Aside from his charisma and the exponential growth of the Franciscan Order, the fast-track canonization is due to Pope Gregory IX, who as Cardinal Hugolino had been personally close to Francis and supported his movement. For the ceremony in July 1228, less than two years after the... (shrink)

I defend social media’s potential to support Aristotelian virtue friendship against a variety of objections. I begin with Aristotle’s claim that the foundation of the best friendships is a shared life. Friends share the distinctively human and valuable components of their lives, especially reasoning together by sharing conversation and thoughts, and communal engagement in valued activities. Although some have charged that shared living is not possible between friends who interact through digital social media, I argue that social media preserves the (...) relevantly human and valuable portions of life, especially reasoning, play, and exchange of ideas. I then consider several criticisms of social media’s potential to host friendships, and refute or weaken the force of these objections, using this conception of a distinctively human shared life. I conclude that we should use the shared life to evaluate features of specific social media and norms for users’ conduct. (shrink)

Margaret Archer and Pierre Bourdieu have advanced what seem at first sight to be incompatible theories of human agency. While Archer places heavy stress on conscious reflexive deliberation and the consequent choices of identity and projects that individuals make, Bourdieu's concept of habitus places equally heavy stress on the role of social conditioning in determining our behavior, and downplays the contribution of conscious deliberation. Despite this, I argue that these two approaches, with some modification, can be reconciled in a single (...) emergentist theory of human action that is sketched out in this article. It examines how human dispositions and our reflexive decisions are related to the determination of human action, linking dispositions and decisions to their neural base in human physiology and to the social factors that influence them. As a result, it argues, we can see human action as the outcome of a continuous interaction between dispositions and reflexivity. The article goes on to relate this explanation back to Bourdieu's concept of the habitus and Archer's account of reflexivity. It argues that the weaknesses in Bourdieu's theory of action can be resolved by a reasonable reinterpretation of the habitus that makes it consistent with the emergentist theory and creates space for human choices as well as social influences on our behavior. This opens up a role for the sort of reflexive deliberations advocated by Archer and thus to a reconciliation of the key contributions of both Archer and Bourdieu. (shrink)

The grounds for critique offered by Roy Bhaskar have developed over the course of his work, but two claims have remained central: ethical naturalism and moral realism. I argue that neither of these is compatible with a scientific realist understanding of values: a scientific realist approach commits one to treating values as socially produced and historically contingent. This does not, however, prevent us from reasoning about values, nor from developing critiques by combining ethical reasoning with a theoretical understanding of the (...) social world and its possibilities. In particular, we can draw on a variety of Habermas's discourse ethics to offer provisional justifications for value-claims that support a critical stance. Thus we can develop grounds for critique that are both ontologically credible and anti-foundational, but also judgementally rational. (shrink)