Christian theology conceives of ‘sacrificium intellectus’ to account for the message of Saint Paul that he will “take every thought captive to obey Christ”. Human insight gives way to the revealed truths of religion. In modern western cultures to explain the natural world has become the domain of science, and the imposition of collective rules of how we should live was shifted to democratically elected parliaments. In Germany legislation of bioethical issues is often justified with reasons that violate (...) standards of cognitive rationality. Is this another case of sacrificium intellectus? The Federal Constitutional Court refrains from the control of legislative arguments by conceding a broad margin of appreciation for the legislator. People have, however, a right to justification; they must not be subjected to arbitrary legal power. While the practice of democratic rule may seldom comply with the expectations of ‘government by discussion’, it is neither likely to gain acceptance as ‘government without discussion’. To impose legal force on the basis of false arguments and unsound reasoning is not a legitimate sacrificium intellectus, it is an intellectual scandal. (shrink)

That we are a conversation -- On the unity of thematic philosophy and philosophy as history of thought -- The relevance of intersubjectivity for first philosophy and the history of philosophy -- Education: responsive tradition -- Philosophy: wise about friendship? -- Vocative -- Philosophy versus faith? -- The universality of a Christian philosophy -- Sacrificium laudis, sacrificium intellectus -- Philosophy as mediation between faith and culture.

The aim of this article is to offer a non-trivial reflection about the violence embedded in self-sacrifice. Firstly, we will suggest a definition of violence which does not make self-sacrifice necessarily violent, but rather aims at being consistent with the common sense conception of sacrifice as actually violent. Framing this initial claim within the vectorial conception of sacrifice offered by Derrida, we will individuate in the violence against intellect the core of the violent dimension of self-sacrifice, insofar as the author (...) of the sacrifice does not limitedly commit part of her understanding in the sacrificial practice, but all of it, since she is both the agent and the patient of sacrifice. At this point, we will have gathered enough material to spell out two fundamental violent aspects of self-sacrifice. The first concerns the exemplar of self-sacrifice in Western tradition, that is, Jesus Christ’s. The self-sacrifice committed by God’s own lógos is the epitome of sacrifice as sacrificium intellectus, therefore the highest gradient of intellectual violence. At the same time, this is crucial as it further corroborates the interpretation of Jesus’ sacrifice as the last sacrifice: no mimetic attempt to reenact His sacrifice can hold the comparison under the fundamental aspect of intellectual violence. The second “mirror” to reflect about the violence of self-sacrifice will concern the sacrifice enacted by superheroes, namely Batman, and the extent to which the sacrifice of intellect is at play when kenotic self-sacrifice and scapegoating processes become hard to tell one from the other. (shrink)

In the mid-1260s in Paris, a dispute raged that concerned the relationship between faith and the Augustinian theological tradition on the one side and secular leaning as represented by the arrival in Latin of Aristotle and various Islamic and Jewish interpreters of Aristotle on the other. Masters of the arts faculty in Paris represented the latter tradition, indicated by the phrase "double truth theory." In 1269, Thomas Aquinas wrote the polemical work On There Being Only One Intellect, Against the Averroists (...) (De unitate intellectus contra averroistas). Thomas is intent on countering two views: first, that intellect is not a faculty of the soul that animates our body, and second, that there is a single intellect existing separately that suffices for all people. Brief as it is, this work puts into play all the significant strands of Thomas's teaching on man - historical doctrinal, philosophical, and theological. It is a valuable source for discussing Thomas's views on the relationship between Aristotle and Christianity and puts to rest the misleading claim that Thomas baptized Aristotle." The introduction places the work historically and sketches the controversy to which it was a contribution. Part 2 includes the Latin Leonine text and McInerny's translation. Part 3 analyzes the basic arguments of Thomas's work and provides a series of interpretive essays meant to make Thomas accessible to today's readers. (shrink)

Aquinas’ so-called “Intellectus essentiae Argument” for the distinction between being and essence is notoriously suspect, including among defenders of Aquinas’ distinction. For the paper in this volume, I take as my starting point the recent defense of the argument by Fr. Lawrence Dewan, O.P. Fr. Dewan’s project is unsuccessful. Pointing out some shortcomings in his readings allows me to take up his call to highlight the “formal” or “quidditative side” of Aquinas’ metaphysics, in this case in regards to the (...) proofs of the “real distinction.” Accordingly, the second half of this paper sets forth a way in which the famous “Intellectus essentiae Argument” of De Ente et Essentia 4 can succeed as a proof of the real distinction. Aquinas’ argument presupposes the prior real distinction between essence and supposit or individual substance. Esse is the ontological component that makes true our judgments that substances actually are: Obama exists. By contrast, this “truth-maker” cannot be predicated of humanity, although it is in Obama as really distinct from him. If Aquinas’ reasoning in this most contentious of his proofs can be saved, so, perhaps, can most of his other proofs. (shrink)

In this paper I take a closer look at Fr. Georges Florovsky’s original view on the relation between philosophy and theology. I argue that he tried to formulate an approach based on patristic experience and opposed to the dominating secular paradigm of philosophy. In some sense he wanted to reverse the traditional account. As Teresa Obolevitch aptly suggested, he wanted to replace the principle fides quaerens intellectum by the rule intellectus quaerens fidem. In that first default case the faith (...) needs to be justified or proved by the reason, in the second, unobvious one, the faith has an absolute priority and illuminates itself the natural thought. According to Florovsky, philosophy should not attempt to ground the theology, formulating arguments for the existence of God or proving the coherence of theism, but rather should accept theology as a fundamental premise and then develop a new, non-secular account for the old philosophical topics. (shrink)

In his commentary on Aristotle’s Peri hermeneias,1 Abelard distinguishes the form of an expression2 (oratio) from what it says, that is, its content. The content of an expression is its understanding (intellectus). This distinction is surely the most well-known and central idea in Abelard’s commentary. It provides him with the opportunity to distinguish statements (enuntiationes) from other kinds of expressions without implying a diference in their content, since the ability of a statement to signify something true or false (verum (...) vel falsum)3 cannot be found in its content. More precisely, Abelard distinguishes statements both from complete expressions (orationes perfectae) that are not statements but rather questions, requests, commands, etc. and from incomplete expressions, that is, mere word strings (orationes imperfectae), such as homo albus. These kinds of expressions, according to Abelard, do not differ in the understanding they present but in the way they present it. (shrink)

This study shows how St. Augustine of Hippo in his works on grace identifies the concepts of intellect and grace. It recommends this concept of "intellectus gratiae" as a key to Augustine's theology as a whole.

Objetiva-se com este artigo uma breve investigação sobre a relação existente entre Fé e Razão, especificamente no que toca à compreensão do intellectus fidei e da ratio fidei enquanto desdobramento temático. De acordo com a Carta Encíclica Fides et Ratio, a Fé e a Razão se assemelham a duas asas com as quais o espírito humano se eleva à contemplação da verdade. O desejo de conhecimento da verdade e, por conseguinte, de Deus e de si próprio é apontado como (...) uma vocação divina colocada no coração do homem por Deus. Embora as questões de fé possam passar por um tratamento racional, a fé possui a sua inteligência própria, específica não se limitando a esquemas relativos à razão demonstrativa, científica ou discursiva. (shrink)

This contribution examines two related points in relation to Aquinas’s understanding of contemplation, which is a sorely neglected topic in scholarship. First, after having outlined that the final act of contemplation culminates in an intellective, simple apprehension of the truth, I will examine how this act relates to the three operations of the intellect (grasping of quiddity, judgement, and reasoning) Aquinas identifies in a number of places. Second, I argue that his view of contemplation as simple insight is significantly indebted (...) to Neoplatonic sources; therefore, we must pay attention to the way he introduces Neoplatonic elements into his Aristotelian framework. I conclude this contribution by suggesting some reasons—of a theological nature—why Aquinas would have been drawn towards a non-discursive or “intuitive” notion of contemplation. (shrink)

If a thomist philosopher wonders how we get the idea of the infinite being, or why the act of being implies no limit, he will understand immediately what Polo intends by saying “mental limit” and its abandonment. The principles of such abandonment are habitual and active thinking. That Theory of knowledge justifies the fact that we really know that the act (esse) is the fundamental of being (ens) and the judgements and discourses spreading out from the transcendental notion of being.

"De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas" from Thomas Aquinas. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), sanctus, doctor Ecclesiae catholicae, theologus italianus et philosophus mediaevalis.

The article juxtaposes modern skepticism stating lack of the criterion of true beliefs about transcendent reality with respect to their contents, but accepting the assumption about existence and cognoscibility of those contents on the one hand, and — after M. F. Burnyeat — ancient skepticism understood as one that questions this assumption on the other. The doubt as to existence of beliefs — resp. propositions as contents of beliefs — is a link joining ancient skeptics with Wittgenstein. Their skepticism is (...) not - as modern skepticism - an epistemological position, but an ontological one — nominalism — questioning existence of universals that are the conditions of meaning and hence the conditions of truth of propositions. This is why the ancient dispute concerning the truth was in fact a dispute over the problem of universals, i.e. over existence of constant rules deciding which ways of connecting the subject and the predicate in a proposition are right and which are not. Realists referred to such rules, sophists denied their existence, and skeptics stated that without having such a rule at their disposal they do not ha-.: a basis for deciding the dispute between realists and sophists. This does not have much to do either with so-called correspondence concept of the truth or with the modern understanding of conceptual realism talking about \"ideal paradigms\" or \"common properties\" of things. Today\'s typologies of philosophical positions do not fit antiquity. Ch. S. Peirce\'s and D. Armstrong\'s arguments lead to the conclusion that Plato was a... nominalist in the modern meaning of the world. P. T. Geach\'s and N. Wolterstorff s analyses allow stating the same about St Thomas Aquinas. This places under the question mark the statement that the latter could be an advocate of the generally ascribed to him correspondence theory of truth, which also cannot be derived from Aristotle\'s philosophy without any doubts. (shrink)

A imagem de que restrições do mundo às nossas crenças e enunciados não são internas ao pensamento parece motivar a separação entre verdades de razão e verdades de fato. Esta separação parece ser crucial para entendermos argumentos em favor de certas versões de externismo. Neste texto, depois de considerar como pode ser feita a separação entre verdades de fato e verdades de razão, apresento uma distinção entre duas formas de externismo e defendo uma delas. Termino recomendando uma específica abordagem, holista (...) e externalista, da relação entre nossos pensamentos e o mundo. (shrink)

If a thomist philosopher wonders how we get the idea of the infinite being, or why the act of being implies no limit, he will understand immediately what Polo intends by saying "mental limit" and its abandonment. The principles of such ab andonment are habitual and active thinking. That Theory of knowledge justifies the fact that we really know that the act (esse) is the fundamental of being (ens) and the judgements and discourses spreading out from the transcendental notion of (...) being. (shrink)

One of the key doctrines of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas is his definition of truth as _adaequatio intellectus et rei_. The aim of this study is to make clear that the medieval doctrine presents the essential meaning of the term 'truth'. It also throws light on the much discussed continuity between medieval and modern thought.

Angesichts der in den letzten Jahren intensiv erforschten Abhängigkeiten des Denkens Meister Eckharts von der Kölner Dominikanerschule, vor allem von Dietrich von Freiberg und seiner Intellekttheorie, stellt sich die Frage nach den Begriffen vom Intellekt und von der Gottesschau, die in den Texten Eckharts und in volkssprachlichen Texten seiner Umgebung begegnen. Eine genaue Lektüre dieses Textmaterials läßt erkennen, daß man schon zu Lebzeiten Eckharts von einem Gegensatz zwischen Eckhart und Dietrich ausgegangen ist und die Differenz der Konzepte diskutiert hat. Es (...) geht dabei um ein grundsätzlich verschiedenes Verständnis der Gottesschau und um eine Privilegierung von Bildern der Passivität des Menschen in der Eckhartschule, deren Einfluß bis zu Juan de la Cruz, Friedrich Nietzsche und Ingeborg Bachmann spürbar ist. (shrink)

The Tractatus de intellectus emendatione was considered by a great part of scholars an incomplete work. In this essay, instead, the Author tries to explain how, on one hand, all is demanded by the method’s argument there’s in fact in the text, so its incomplete aspects are just formal, not about content. On the other hand, the theory, about the best knowledge of singular things should be deduced by the infinite order of ideas and eternal things, has many hard (...) problems, because the infinite can’t be never totally known, and so adequately. That’s properly the aporia inside spinozism, and we can find it, at the best, in this first work. (shrink)

This article reviews De unitate intellectus – Über die Einzigkeit des Intellekts 84 Euro978-3-7728-2840-9.

El papa Francisco, a través de la bula Misericordiae Vultus, ha convocado a toda la Iglesia para la celebración jubilar extraordinaria de la misericordia. Dicha celebración dará comienzo el próximo día 8 de diciembre del 2015 con la solemne apertura de la Puerta Santa o de la Misericordia en San Pedro. Una vez que todos los fieles la hayan atravesado experimentando “el amor de Dios que consuela, que perdona y ofrece esperanza”, se cerrará en la festividad de Jesucristo Rey del (...) Universo. Por tanto, es un año en el que se nos invita a reflexionar y meditar entorno a esta gran “virtud”. En este trabajo, pues, reflexionaremos sobre la identidad filosófica y teológica de la virtud de la misericordia. (shrink)

Trata-se de uma investigação sobre a teoria dos primeiros princípios da razão prática na obra de Tomás de Aquino. No centro dessa teoria está o termo “sindérese”, cujo conteúdo foi elaborado nas discussões da filosofia e da teologia medievais, a partir de sua menção na Glosa de Jerônimo a Ezequiel. Tal termo designa um conceito que apresenta um caráter inovador dentro da teoria da ação moral em comparação com a ética aristotélica. Afinal, Tomás de Aquino o entende como o hábito (...) dos primeiros princípios da moral, equivalente ao hábito dos primeiros princípios teóricos de Aristóteles. Dessa forma, o interesse é compreender como o conceito de sindérese é recebido e desenvolvido na filosofia moral de Tomás de Aquino através da análise das três questões tradicionais: de sua natureza, de sua infalibilidade e de sua extinção. (shrink)