1. The classical mind.--2. The medieval mind.--3. Hobbes to Hume.--4. Kant to Wittgenstein and Sartre.

Proceedings of an international research and development conference, Tuscon, Arizona, October 1985. One hundred and twenty-eight papers are presented in this hefty volume.

"Translated with an uncanny sense for the overall point of Augustine's doctrine. In short, a very good translation. The Introduction is admirably clear." --Paul Vincent Spade, Indiana University.

Thomas Williams presents the most extensive collection of John Duns Scotus's work on ethics and moral psychology available in English. This accessible and philosophically informed translation includes extended discussions on divine and human freedom, the moral attributes of God, and the relationship between will and intellect.

It is somewhat misleading to think of the Franciscans as forming a “school” in ethics, since there was a fair bit of diversity among Franciscans. Nonetheless, one can identify certain characteristic tendencies of Franciscan moral thought, and certain “celebrity” Franciscans whose views in ethics and moral psychology are particularly noteworthy. I shall first offer an overview of the general character of Franciscan moral thought in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and then turn to a more detailed examination of (...) the thought of John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308) and William Ockham (c. 1288-1347) on three central matters of debate: the nature of the virtues, the relationship between intellect and will, and the relationship between moral requirements and the divine will. (shrink)

This discussion recounts the development of several anthropological definitions of human nature. It then examines conclusions of studies in other disciplines that make possible a revised empirical definition of human nature and which have led to re-examination of paleoanthropological data classed as unimportant under the rubrics of preceeding studies. Finally, this discussion appraises certain of these data, as they pertain to the question: "Do empirical evidences suggest that a human nature, as well as a human structure, may be the product (...) of evolutionary processes?". (shrink)

This paper considers Aquinas's accounts of the end of human action and the structure of human action, examines the debate between intellectualist and voluntarist interpretations of Aquinas, and corrects mistaken accounts of Aquinas's views on freedom, necessitation, and causation.

An examination of jealousy and envy in the novels of Jane Austen.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Category of Action Self ‐ Motion and the Metaphysics of Freedom The Relationship between Intellect and Will The Two Affections of the Will References Further reading.

The author sets out to explain Pope Benedict XVI’s view of global governance, especially as expressed in his 2009 encyclical letter Caritas in Veritate. In so doing, the author first recognizes some of the more significant arguments against global governance, then goes on to suggest that much of the opposition to Benedict’s proposal stems from two misconceptions: a failure to place Benedict’s statements in the social tradition of the Church, which has always asserted that every society, including global society, has (...) need of a corresponding authority to insure the common good, and confusion of the terms “global governance” with “world government.” The latter connotes a powerful, centralized political structure while the former allows for a subsidiary, multi-tiered approach to coordinating the world geo-political situation. The author asserts that Benedict’s proposals reflect tthis second approach. The final sections of the article look at two special cases where global governance seem particularly pressing: international conflict resolution and global economic development. (shrink)

Philosophers, archeologists, and other heritage professionals often take a rather negative view of heritage reconstruction, holding that it is inappropriate or even impermissible. In this essay, we argue that taking such hardline attitudes toward the reconstruction of heritage is unjustified. To the contrary, we believe that the reconstruction of heritage can be both permissible and beneficial, all things considered. In other words, sometimes we have good reasons, on balance, to pursue reconstructions, and doing so can be morally acceptable. In defending (...) this claim, we discern a number of arguments made against heritage reconstruction and demonstrate that these arguments are either exaggerated or lack support. (shrink)

According to the privation theory of evil, evil is nothing. In De casu diaboli Anselm’s student-interlocutor raises three arguments meant to show that evil is in fact something: the argument from fear (if evil is nothing, there can be no reason to fear it), the argument from signification (if evil is nothing, “evil” has no signification; if “evil” has a signification, evil is not nothing), and the argument from causal efficacy (if evil is nothing, how can it enslave the soul (...) to passion and cause it so much trouble?). I expound the account of language that Anselm uses to answer the argument from signification and the distinctions between justice and advantage and between positive and privative evils that he uses to answer the arguments from fear and from causal efficacy. I conclude that, by the time Anselm gets done with it, there is not much left of the privation theory. (shrink)

I shall confine my attention to the one Scotist doctrine that seems to be singled out as especially worrisome, the doctrine of univocity. In the first part of the paper I argue that the doctrine of univocity is true. So even if the doctrine has unwelcome consequences, we ought to affirm it anyway; it is not the job of the theologian or philosopher to shrink from uncomfortable truths. In the second part I argue further that the doctrine of univocity is (...) salutary. That is, it does not have the deplorable consequences that have been attributed to it. It should be noted that by “consequences” I mean logical consequences. What historical consequences the doctrine may have had are beside the point: if people have been led astray by false inferences from the doctrine of univocity, the proper remedy is to correct their inferences, not to reject univocity. (shrink)

Colleen McCluskey begins Thomas Aquinas on Moral Wrongdoing with an overview of Aquinas’s account of human nature and his theory of human action. She discusses the powers of the soul, including the sensory appetite and its passions, the intellect, and the will. Crucially, she devotes considerable attention to the ways in which the passions can affect the intellect’s judgment and, thereby, the will. She then explores Aquinas’s account of the ontological status of evil as a privation, arguing that criticisms (...) of the privation theory can be met, though the theory is not enough by itself to acquit God of responsibility for the existence of evil. The centerpiece of Thomas Aquinas on Wrongdoing is a careful exploration of Aquinas’s understanding of the three sources of moral wrongdoing: defects in the intellect, defects in the sensory appetite, and defects in the will. Finally, McCluskey examines vices, which are firmly rooted dispositions, acquired by repeated action, that prompt particular acts of wrongdoing. She provides a helpful overview of Aquinas’s treatment of the vices both in ST II-II, where the vices are discussed in relation to the virtues to which they are opposed, and in the contemporaneous De malo, questions 9–15, in which Gregory the Great’s list of seven capital vices provides the structuring principle. (shrink)

After setting out in part 1 Scotus's libertarian account of the will, I shall discuss two of the most important implications Scotus understood his account to have. First, according to Scotus, the Thomist understanding of the will as intellective appetite is inadequate to provide a libertarian account of freedom. Scotus therefore rejects that understanding and offers an alternative moral psychology. In part 2 of the paper I therefore draw attention to the passages in which Scotus offers his reasons for rejecting (...) Aquinas's account in order to show that they arise directly out of the libertarian account of the will I stated in part 1. I then ask whether Scotus is in fact justified in supposing that Aquinas's conception of will is incompatible with freedom as Scotus understood it. In parts 3 and 4 of the paper I shall argue that he is, since Aquinas's conception of possibility at best allows him to make room for diachronic alternatives, whereas Scotus insists on synchronic alternatives. -/- The second implication of Scotus's libertarian understanding of freedom is his distinctive conception of choice and of rationality in action. In part 5 of the paper I explain this conception and show why Scotus associates it with a libertarian understanding of freedom. (shrink)

Scotus is notorious for occasionally making statements that, on their face at least, smack of voluntarism, but there has been a lively debate about whether Scotus is really a voluntarist after all. Now the debate is not over whether Scotus lays great emphasis on the role of the divine will with respect to the moral law. No one could sensibly deny that he does, and if such an emphasis constitutes voluntarism, then no one could sensibly deny that Scotus is a (...) voluntarist. As I am using the word, however, voluntarism is the view that (i) the goodness of almost all things, as well as the rightness of almost all acts, depends wholly on the divine will and (ii) what God wills with respect to those things and those acts is not in turn to be explained by reference to the divine intellect, human nature, or anything else. This is the view that Scotus’s critics decry and his defenders disclaim. Thus, his critics have seized on these passages and accused Scotus of believing that the moral law depends simply on “the arbitrary will of God.” His most sympathetic interpreters, however, have devoted great ingenuity to showing that Scotus did not mean anything unpalatable by these statements.1 What the critics and defenders apparently have in common is the view that voluntarism is an implausible and even discreditable doctrine. Interpreters who read Scotus as a voluntarist intend thereby to damn his moral views; interpreters sympathetic to his moral views feel compelled to mitigate his voluntarism. I wish to argue for a different approach. I agree with his defenders that Scotus’s moral philosophy ought to be taken seriously. But I think the best way to take any philosopher’s view seriously is to let him speak for himself, not to decide in advance that he must not have held a view that we find implausible. Let me suggest an analogy that will make my position clearer. Very nearly everyone finds immaterialism implausible. (shrink)

Work on Scotus's moral psychology and action theory has been concerned almost exclusively with questions about the relationship between will and intellect and in particular about the freedom of the will itself. In this essay I broaden the scope of inquiry. For I contend that Scotus's views in moral psychology are best understood against the background of a long tradition of metaethical reflection on the relationship between being and goodness. In the first section of this essay, therefore, I sketch the (...) main lines of that tradition in medieval thinking and examine the novel and sometimes daring ways in which Scotus appropriated them. In the sections that follow I elaborate on three areas of Scotus's action theory, very broadly conceived, in which his modifications of the medieval metaethical tradition can be seen bearing philosophical fruit. Thus, in the second section I examine his account of the goodness of moral acts, in the third his understanding of the passive dispositions of both sensitive appetite and will, and in the fourth his account of the active power of will. (shrink)

Character formation is a central theme in Katherin Rogers’s Freedom and Self-Creation: Anselmian Libertarianism. According to Rogers, Anselm holds that the purpose of free choice is to afford creatures the possibility of creating their own characters through their free choices. I argue that Anselm has no doctrine of character formation. Accordingly, he does not hold the view of the purpose of free choice that Rogers attributes to him. Creatures cannot bring about justice in themselves, let alone increase it by their (...) own efforts; any moral progress is divine gift, not creaturely achievement. I offer an alternative account of the purpose of free choice. (shrink)

Notwithstanding considerable disagreement over certain details, writers on Plato’s theory of recollection are broadly in agreement regarding some of the main features. Setting aside for the moment those who doubt that Plato ever held any considered doctrine so well‐developed as to constitute a theory of recollection at all, we can find a substantial scholarly consensus in favor of the following account: In the Phaedo Plato argues that all human beings recollect the Forms. Such recollection is meant to account for the (...) formation of (at least certain) abstract concepts under which we classify particulars. Since all human beings engage in such conceptual thought to some degree, all human beings recollect; people could not even hold pre‐philosophical true opinions concerning such things as the good and the equal if they had not at least dimly recollected the Good or the Equal. Recollection is therefore not the exclusive prerogative of philosophers, although philosophers are the only ones who proceed beyond the initial shadowy recollection of the Forms and fully recover their knowledge.1 I have specified that this is the consensus about the Phaedo, since most scholars find a different doctrine in the Meno. Ackrill, Gallop, Gulley, and Bluck, for example, hold that the Meno is concerned with the knowledge of propositions and the Phaedo with the formation of concepts.2 Bostock finds that the Meno does not, but the Phaedo does, implicate recollection in.. (shrink)

Father Williams explains how the conscience is formed through our training and experiences and informed by the Holy Spirit, making it an essential tool for daily living. He uses familiar and surprising characters to illustrate the positive choices conscience can direct--and the disaster that results when a conscience is undeveloped or ignored. Questions he tackles include "Is it more important to be smart or good?""Is there a morally right thing to do in every situation?" and "Is the Christian moral life (...) an exciting adventure, or a necessary burden?" Rich, provocative, and practical for everyday decision making, KNOWING RIGHT FROM WRONG is a must-read for all who hunger for personal holiness. (shrink)

Aquinas opens the second part of the ST by arguing, in a series of careful steps, that there is one and only one ultimate end for all human actions. The placement of this argument is no accident, since the notion of an end is of fundamental importance not only in Aquinas’s theory of human action but in his accounts of practical reasoning, law, and the virtues. Yet the interpretation of Aquinas’s argument in ST 1a2ae, q.1, is a matter of considerable (...) controversy. I shall first follow the argument through its successive steps and then briefly consider three possible ways of understanding Aquinas’s claim that all human actions have exactly one ultimate end. Aquinas first argues that every human action is for the sake of some end. That is, every human action is purposive in some way; it is done for the sake of attaining some goal or realizing some desired state of affairs. To the obvious objection that we do things all the time without any purpose at all, Aquinas replies by distinguishing between a human action (actus humanus) and an action of a human being (actio hominis). Human actions, properly so called, are those that proceed from human beings in virtue of their distinguishing power, which is to be in control of their own actions (dominus suorum actuum) through reason and will. Anything else that a human being does can be called the action of a human being, but not (in the proper sense) a human action. Human actions, then, are those that are willed on the basis of rational deliberation. And since “the object of the will is an end and a good, it follows that all human actions are for the sake of an end.”1 What, precisely, is meant by the “end” of a human action? Aquinas tells us in a. 2 that an end is something cognized as good. It must be something cognized because otherwise we just have “natural appetite,” the sort of built-in directedness by which heavy objects are moved.. (shrink)

In this ambitious study, Alexander W. Hall examines the two preeminent figures of the golden age of natural theology: Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus. Hall is not so much concerned with retracing particular proofs of the existence of God and derivations of the divine attributes—well-worn paths in discussions of medieval natural theology—as with investigating the larger philosophical issues that are raised by the project of natural theology, such as the nature of scientia and demonstrative arguments, and accounts of (...) signification and the meaningfulness of theological discourse.Hall's opening chapter offers an overview of natural theology in the High Middle Ages, summarizing the conclusions he will defend at greater length over the course of the book. In chapter 2 Hall relies primarily on Aquinas's commentary on the Posterior Analytics to get clear on his account of scientia, or scientific knowledge. "For Aquinas," Hall writes,"paradigmatic scientia is the result of syllogistic reasoning . . . Syllogisms productive of scientia use either real or nominal definitions as their middle, and thus the conclusion tells us what belongs to the subject through itself or per se". (shrink)

The great medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas was Dominican regent master in theology at the University of Paris, where he presided over a series of questions - academic debates - on ethical topics. This volume offers translations of disputed questions on the nature of virtues in general, the fundamental or 'cardinal' virtues of practical wisdom, justice, courage, and temperateness, the divinely bestowed virtues of hope and charity, and the practical question of how, when and why one should rebuke a 'brother' (...) for wrongdoing. The introduction explains how Aquinas's theory of virtue fits into his ethics as a whole, and it illuminates Aquinas's views by explaining the institutional and intellectual context in which these disputed questions were debated. (shrink)

In this paper we offer a reconstruction of Anselm’s account of freedom that resolves various apparent inconsistencies. The linchpin of this account is the definition of freedom. Anselm argues that the power to preserve rectitude for its own sake requires the power to initiate an action of which the agent is the ultimate cause, but it does not always require that alternative possibilities be available to the agent. So while freedom is incompatible with coercion and external causal determination, an agent (...) can, under certain circumstances, act freely even though he cannot act otherwise than he does. (shrink)

T. J. Holopainen, Dialectic & Theology in the Eleventh Century. Leiden:E. J. Brill, 1996. vii+171pp. $78.

Review of Brian Dobell, Augustine's Intellectual Conversion.

Anselm on faith seeking understanding, "the reason of faith," and the Monologion and Proslogion arguments for the existence of God.

Every reader creates a personal version of what is read....This is often the very opposite of what might at first blush be expected: but on consideration it is exactly the way in which a writer of genius should — we perhaps suddenly realise — respond. It is, in short, creative rather than passively parallel, and a matter of unobtrusive decisive omissions followed by the flow of new matter, of demarcation rather than of imitation.

reflections on method in the historiography of philosophy.

So I present myself this morning not as an expert with wisdom to impart, but as a neophyte reflecting on his own practice with a view toward getting clearer on the vision of philosophical historiography that underlies it and thereby, perhaps, improving that practice. The paper will fall into two tenuously connected parts. The first part contains a general reflection on method that I wrote a few years back which has since been published in Czech but has not had any (...) circulation in the Anglophone world. I venture to repeat these observations here because I haven’t thought better of them in the meantime, though many of you, I feel sure, will think that I should have. The second part takes up a case study. Having just finished a book on Anselm, I wanted to talk about the current state of historiographical method in Anselm scholarship and see what lessons, if any, can be derived from what I’ve found in my journeys through the secondary literature. (shrink)

The paper argues against interpretations that appeal to divine justice and rationality in order to mitigate the apparent arbitrariness of Scotus's God with respect to creation.

Each volume in this series of companions to major philosophers contains specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars, together with a substantial bibliography, and will serve as a reference work for students and non-specialists. One aim of the series is to dispel the intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult and challenging thinker. John Duns Scotus was one of the three principal figures in medieval philosophy and theology, with an influence on modern (...) thought arguably even greater than that of Aquinas. The essays in this volume systematically survey the full range of Scotus' thought. They take care to explain the technical details of his writing in lucid terms and demonstrate the relevance of his work to contemporary philosophical debate. New readers will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Scotus currently available. (shrink)

Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) was the outstanding Christian philosopher and theologian of the eleventh century. He is best known for the celebrated “ontological argument” for the existence of God in chapter two of the Proslogion, but his contributions to philosophical theology (and indeed to philosophy more generally) go well beyond the ontological argument. In what follows I examine Anselm's theistic proofs, his conception of the divine nature, and his account of human freedom, sin, and redemption.

Ranging from his early treatises, the ’Monologion’ (a work written to show his monks how to meditate on the divine essence) and the ’Proslogion’ (best known for its advancement of the so-called ontological argument for the existence of God), to his three philosophical dialogues on metaphysical topics such as the relationship between freedom and sin, and late treatises on the Incarnation and salvation, this collection of Anselm’s essential writings will be of interest to students of the history of philosophy and (...) theology as well as to anyone interested in examining what Anselm calls "the reason of faith." (publisher). (shrink)

John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308) was one of the most important and influential philosophertheologians of the High Middle Ages. His brilliantly complex and nuanced thought, which earned him the nickname "the Subtle Doctor," left a mark on discussions of such disparate topics as the semantics of religious language, the problem of universals, divine illumination, and the nature of human freedom. This essay first lays out what is known about Scotus's life and the dating of his works. It then offers an overview (...) of some of his key positions in four main areas of philosophy: natural theology, metaphysics, the theory of knowledge, and ethics and moral psychology. (shrink)