New Blackfriars, Volume 102, Issue 1101, Page 772-794, September 2021.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nature as Guide: Wittgenstein and the Renewal of Moral Theology by David Goodill, O.PCajetan Cuddy and O.P.Nature as Guide: Wittgenstein and the Renewal of Moral Theology. By David Goodill, O.P. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022. Pp. xiii-319. $75.00. (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-8132-3445-8.Nature as Guide is an intriguing reevaluation of the philosophical legacy of Ludwig Wittgenstein in the light of Thomistic moral theology after the Second (...) Vatican Council. Goodill helpfully lays out his fundamental argument in the book’s introduction: Wittgenstein can help the philosopher to reconcile the “modern dichotomy between nature and reason,” and the theologian to reevaluate “the associated oppositions typical of modern thought, such as that between moral agency and natural agency or between grace and nature” (2). The author is overt in his appreciation for Fergus Kerr’s 1997 monograph Theology after Wittgenstein. Nonetheless, Nature as Guide is unique insofar as it focuses on specifically moral theological issues in a moment of theological “renewal”—one in which we can recognize “the restoration of metaphysics to the center of theological debate” (12).The first four chapters of Nature as Guide consider Wittgenstein in relation to themes associated with classical philosophy. Goodill’s “objective in the first part of the book is to construct a dialogue between Wittgenstein and the metaphysical tradition which illuminates both conversation partners” (38). This initial part of the book culminates in an account of human nature that serves as the foundation for the moral theological inquiry that follows in the second part (the fifth through the eighth chapters).In the first chapter (“What Lies Hidden: Wittgenstein, Metaphysics, and Moral Theology”), Goodill introduces Wittgenstein’s “philosophical practice”—specifically his “insistence on grounding philosophical enquiry in everyday thinking” that effectively “connects him to the [metaphysical] tradition that begins with Plato and Aristotle” (16). Goodill is perceptive and nuanced in his analysis of Wittgenstein’s texts. He recognizes that “it would be wrong to treat [Wittgenstein] as an unproblematic inheritor of this tradition” (37). Nonetheless, he wants his readers to appreciate the careful balance between theory and praxis maintained in Wittgenstein’s thought vis-à-vis the priorities of classical philosophy. To this end, he examines G. E. M. Anscombe’s account of how Wittgenstein helped her to overcome the “trap” of phenomenalism.In the second chapter (“Nature, Logic, and Grammar”), Goodill attends to the progress of key tenets in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. He identifies as “the guiding theme” of this narrative “the development of Wittgenstein’s understanding of the relationship between the meaning and the application of linguistic expressions” (40–41). Specifically, he suggests that Wittgenstein’s “mistake” in the Tractatus (51) can be reduced a fundamental point: the erroneous presupposition that there is “one general notion of clarity which is required in all contexts. It was precisely this requirement which Wittgenstein came later to reject in the Investigations” (52). Indeed, between the Tractatus [End Page 703] and the Investigations Wittgenstein abandoned his efforts to establish a “forced unity” of language through “the general form of the proposition”—turning, instead, to “our actual linguistic practices” (85). The whole of human life, thus, “provides the unity of our grammar” (ibid.). Nonetheless, Goodill also points out that Wittgenstein does not reject “the central insight” of the Tractatus, namely, “that meaning is internal to our forms of representation” (59). This immanence remains throughout the Tractatus and the Investigations.The third chapter (“Grammar, Teleology, and Understanding”), summarizes objections to Goodill’s proposal that Wittgenstein can be read in continuity with the metaphysical tradition. William Charlton “argues that in the absence of a teleological conception of nature Wittgenstein’s account of language collapses into pragmatism” (88-89). Rush Rhee “accuses Wittgenstein of being misled by his analogy between language and games to neglect the basis of our linguistic practices in the human search for universal understanding” (89). In brief, both “Charlton and Rhee argue that a much richer conception of our natural human capacities and reactions is required than that provided by Wittgenstein”—and they do so in a complementary way (103). Although Goodill does not believe that their objections stand above... (shrink)

Author endorses the study by Gaven Kerr, O.P., for the way it shows the centrality of Aquinas’ metaphysics of creation: showcasing the ‘real distinction’ between esse and essentia, followed by Aquinas’ unique treatment of each, as well as a deep consideration of esse tantum. At the end he states the ‘proof’ which Gaven Kerr has articulated so deftly reflects the manner in which the Creator ‘appears’ in creation, thereby ‘showing’ what cannot be ‘said’.

In this volume twenty-three major scholars comment on and critically evaluate In Search of a Universal Ethic, the 2009 document written by the International Theological Commission (ITC) of the Catholic Church. That historic document represents an official Church contribution both to a more adequate understanding of a universal ethic and to Catholicism s own tradition of reflection on natural law. The essays in this book reflect the ITC document s complementary emphases of dialogue across traditions (universal ethic) and reflection on (...) broadly applicable ethical guidance within the Christian tradition (natural law). Among other things, the document situates the natural law ethical tradition within the larger search for a universal ethic. Along with its insightful essays, Searching for a Universal Ethic offers — for the first time in published form — the Vatican s official English translation of In Search of a Universal Ethic. Contributors: John Berkman Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P. David Burrell, C.S.C. Lisa Sowle Cahill Joseph E. Capizzi David Cloutier Anver M. Emon Robert P. George Sherif Girgis Jennifer A. Herdt Russell Hittinger M. Cathleen Kaveny Anthony J. Kelly, C.Ss.R. Fergus Kerr, O.P. Steven A. Long William C. Mattison III Gilbert Meilaender Livio Melina Michael S. Northcott David Novak Jean Porter Martin Rhonheimer Tracey Rowland. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Trinity by Thomas Joseph White, O.P.:A Model of Living ThomismSerge-Thomas Bonino O.P."The human being naturally seeks wisdom." From the very first line of the magisterial work we are dealing with, Fr. Thomas Joseph White's 2022 The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God, it is all about wisdom. Wisdom was already at the heart of a previous work by Fr. White devoted to the natural (...) theology of St. Thomas, his 2009 Wisdom in the Face of Modernity. Wisdom is more than the accumulation of information or the juxtaposition of knowledge. It is an eminent form of knowledge that, on the one hand, involves the person of the thinker in all its dimensions, intellectual, emotional, existential, and on the other, seeks to understand its object in the light of the most fundamental causes, which are simultaneously the most enlightening and explanatory principles because they are the most universal. The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God is undoubtedly a work of wisdom. Fr. White grasps the entire Christian mystery from its Trinitarian source, since, as we shall see, the entire Mystery (in the Pauline sense of the economy of salvation in Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the Father's benevolent purpose) is at the same time rooted in the eternal mystery of the triune God and makes it known to us as it unfolds its truth and saving power in time.But the sapiential nature of the object studied has some effect on the form of the work itself. Indeed, if Fr. White were not Rector Magnificent of the Angelicum, he would be a magnificent architect, because he possesses a sense of order to the highest degree and knows how to introduce unity in diversity. The presentation of The Trinity is perfectly structured, and therefore very [End Page 461] clear and didactic. Among many other factors that create its unity, I was especially interested in the highlighting of what the philosopher André de Muralt calls "structures of thought": similarities of proportionality between the ways in which authors from even very different theological epochs have treated a problem.1 I am thinking for instance of how Fr. White shows the strong structural similarities between contemporary Trinitarian theologies and the three types of medieval Trinitarian theology (the Franciscan, the Thomist, and the Nominalist). "My claim here is that the modern Trinitarian tradition tends to reproduce various elements of the medieval traditions, … albeit in creative and unexpected ways" (399). So it is a conceptually well-unified work, and where there is unity, there is being, goodness and beauty.The introduction, as I said, is placed under the sign of wisdom. Fr. White takes up there the neo-Scholastic theme of the "three wisdoms": philosophical wisdom, theological wisdom, and mystical wisdom.2 The book's perspective is explicitly that of theological wisdom, as a scientific form of the intelligence of faith, but (we shall return to this point in connection with the place given to philosophy) it puts into practice in an exemplary manner the collaboration, without confusion or separation, between the three wisdoms.3My purpose, of course, is not, nor can it be, to "summarize" the contents of a book of more than seven hundred pages, which manages to be both a comprehensive handbook for higher theological education and a true personal theological essay. I will therefore limit myself to highlighting three partial but significant aspects.(1) The first is the explicit and overt Thomistic character of the book (see 6–7). The Trinity is in fact a vibrant plea in favor of the relevance of the theology of St. Thomas, as indicated by the very last sentence:The Church today can and should still have recourse to the theology of Thomas Aquinas, and to the living Thomistic tradition, as a privileged means of interpreting and advancing her own understanding of the mystery of God.(690) [End Page 462]The Trinity is the demonstration in actu exercito of the truth of this concluding statement. I therefore propose to reflect, in the first part of my paper, on the nature of Fr. White's Thomism, which depends, as we... (shrink)

New Blackfriars, Volume 102, Issue 1101, Page 677-693, September 2021.

Zur Zeit des Hl. Thomas von Aquin war es nicht leicht andere Religionen zu verstehen. Besonders auch deswegen nicht, weil die Verbreitung der Religion mit Macht und Krieg verbunden war. Aber gerade Thomas hat die sogenannte „Heidnische Lehre“ des Aristoteles in das Christentum eingeführt. In den Augen vieler orthodoxen Christen war dies ein unverzeihlicher Fehler. Mit dieser Lehre ist auch das Naturrecht (moralisch natürliche Gesetz) in die katholische Theologie eingeführt worden. Aber die Aristotelische Wiedereinführung (wenn nicht Revolution) in die christliche (...) Philosophie ist bis heute nicht ohne Hindernisse geschehen. Chesterton meint, dass Thomas korrigiert Platon mit Aristoteles, der die Dinge so genommen hat, wie er sie vorgefunden hat. Thomas nimmt die Dinge so, wie sie Gott geschaff en hat. Trotz allem ist es sehr wertvoll zu denken, dass die Wahrheit und der Glaube nicht im Widerspruch stehen können, und alles was die Wissenschaft ans Licht der Welt bringt, kann nicht im Widerspruch gegenüber dem Glauben sein. In den Werken des Hl. Thomas ist immer die Welt der positiven Schöpfung gegenwärtig. In dieser Arbeit möchten wir die Bedingungen der Zeit des Dialogs mit dem Islam und dem Judentum als Hintergrund für die Zusammenfassung der Summa contra Gentiles analysieren nach den Gedanken von M.-D. Chenu, O. H. Pesch, J. Weisheipl, K. G. Chesterton und anderen, die uns ein Bild über die nicht einfache aber trotzdem erreichbare Begegnung mit anderen Religionen zeigen und auch die Gefahr aufzeigen, die sich in einer nicht konsequenten Philosophie birgt. (shrink)

This text predicts that the 21st century will see great steps forward in biotechnology, producing controversial ethical debates relating to the use of this technology. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it addresses key issues in bioethics, such as medicine, nursing, law and administration.

OBJECTIVE: This article describes a method for investigating attitudes towards prioritisation in medicine. SETTING: University of Kuopio, Finland. DESIGN: The method consisted of a set of 24 paired scenarios, which were imaginary patient cases, each containing three different ethical indicators randomly selected from a list of indicators (for example, child, rich patient, severe disease etc.). The scenarios were grouped into 12 random pairs and the procedure was repeated four times, resulting in 12 scenario pairs arranged randomly in five different sets. (...) SURVEY: This method was tested with four groups of subjects (n = 8, n = 47, n = 104 and n = 36). RESULTS: Children and patients with a severe disease were prioritised in all groups. The aged, patients with a mild disease and patients with a self-acquired disease were negatively prioritised in all groups. Poor or rich patients were prioritised in some groups but negatively prioritised in others. CONCLUSIONS: The validity and reliability of this method are good and it is suitable for investigating attitudes towards medical prioritisation. (shrink)

During the Soviet-German war, the Soviet upper party leadership of the USSR decided to unify state religious policy, leading the movement to unite various Protestant organizations into a single governing spiritual center of the six churches. The secular atheist power sought to fully subdue all religious movements in the USSR in order to establish full control over the believing population of the Soviet Union and the spiritual sphere of life of Soviet citizens. Not all believers liked this prospect, and they (...) tried to resist this "unbelievers" pressure. (shrink)

This book addresses the mid-rank of the soul theme as it emerges in Plotinus and Augustine in the context of their respective interpretations of universal order. They both use the journey metaphor to describe the soul’s progress through the turbulent “sea” of earthly existence.

Bounded PAC substructures of models of stable theory T are generalizations of bounded PAC fields and bounded PAC beautiful pairs generalize Poizat's beautiful pairs. Both notions were introduced in the authors Ph.D. thesis. In this paper, we prove that under the assumption that the PAC property is first order for T, the theory of any bounded PAC structure is simple. Moreover, if the PAC property is first order for T and T does not have the finite cover property, then the (...) theory of any bounded PAC beautiful pair is simple. We, also, give a characterization of dividing in both cases. (shrink)

At the end of the Middle Ages, the friar Dominican Peter Schwarz wrote The shield of the Thomists. It is a handly book of philosophy in which he presents the main thesis of thomist school, between them is the theory of active intellect.

The twentieth century was a period of prolonged crisis of spirituality in the Soviet Union. The atheist state used all possible and impossible levers of various influences on religious associations and ordinary believers. Since the assertion of the Soviet authorities, an open war has been declared against any manifestation of religion. There were real battles: with their ideological fronts, offensives and retreats, the whole system of operations developed and the tactical plan in line with the party-approved strategy. The result of (...) such disputes between the state and its believing citizens has been the church crises, schisms, and even the elimination of entire denominations. The most violent was the struggle against religious organizations disloyal to the Soviet authorities. It should be noted that even external loyalty did not save religious associations from the onslaught of anti-Sovietism. (shrink)

The relevance of the research topic is that various approaches are analyzed on the essence of globalization, which is represented as an objective, qualitatively new process of internationalization and integration of all fields of activity of the modern civilizational structure. Analysis of the literature. The works of A. Appadarui, Z. Bauman, U. Beck, Z. Bzezhinski, F. Braudel, I. Wallerstein, E. Giddens, P. Drucker, M. Castells, T. Levitt, I. Tirikyan, K. Waite, F. Fernandez-Armestro, S. Huntington. In the post-Soviet space, the ideas (...) of globalization were developed in the works of V. Inozemtsev, V. Stepin, A. Chumakov, P. Vodopyanova, V. Voronkova, O. Punchenko, A. Zelenkova, C. Kirvel, A. Lazarevich, V. Nikitenko, A. Sosnin, A.Utkin and many others. The aim of the article is to concretize the concept of “globalization”, and also through the analysis of tectonic shifts in the world sociological system, to represent the main socio-political, cultural and civilizational dimensions of this concept. Research objectives - in the context of the stated goal, the essence of the social dynamics of a globalizing world is revealed. Research Methodology. The methodology is based on an integrated approach, due to its interdisciplinary nature. The result of the study. Sociodynamics is revealed as the process of its deployment in time and space in conjunction with the social organization of social organization, as well as with social changes and upheavals affecting the progressive course of its development. The contradictory nature of globalization has been proved, its brilliance and poverty are revealed with specific examples. The whole range of problems of globalization as a multidimensional phenomenon is actualized. The reasons that prevented the implementation of the concept of Western ideologists about building a unipolar world and the creation of a single governing body under the auspices of the United States are revealed. Sociodynamics of the global world, in the context of the goal set, is reflected through the prism of the financial and economic dimension; through the formation of frontiers, fraught with the charge of aggravation, instability, risks, dynamic chaos. Conclusions. The mechanisms of regulation of the emerging chaos in social relations - threats, sanctions, crisis fluctuations, the use of “soft power”, conflicts, etc. are substantiated. Such dimensions of sociodynamics as environmental and demographic are described, the negativity of their development at the present stage is revealed. (shrink)

Evaluating the role and opportunities of state correction of the functions of religious organizations, it must be recognized that the state is not able to administratively change those trends and forms of activity that express the social purpose of religious associations and organizations.

Andrey Bely was an important member of the Russian symbolist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This essay presents a summary of the development of his ideas regarding the origins of image and symbol in poetic language. For Bely language organizes chaos. The poet finds images in the internal world of dreams. Music has an organizing power beyond that of language, which language attempts to imitate. Under the influence of Vladimir Solovyov he looked to the union of (...) Divine Wisdom or Sophia with the Eternal Logos as the principle behind symbolic images. Later, under the spell of Rudolf Steiner, he found the source of inspiration in the eternal dwelling of the Logos from which the human ego descends into flesh. The task of the poet is to recover the memory of the time before he left the realm of the Logos and to return to that realm by participating in Christ's ascent to the Cross. The autobiographical novel Kotik Letaev gives an account of recovering memory from before birth and the need to be joined with Christ crucified. (shrink)

This book explores the role of Aristotelian concepts, principles, and themes in Thomas Aquinas's theology. Each of the ten essays investigates the significance of Aquinas's theological reception of Aristotle in a central theological domain: the Trinity, the angels, soul and body, the Mosaic law, grace, charity, justice, contemplation and action, Christ, and the sacraments. In general, the essays focus on the Summa theologiae, but some range more widely in Aquinas's corpus. Readers will become acquainted with Aquinas's theological uses of the (...) great Aristotelian themes, such as act and potency, God as pure act, substance and accidents, power and generation, change and motion, fourfold causality, form and matter, hylomorphic anthropology, the structure of intellection, the relationship between knowledge and will, happiness and friendship, habits and virtues, contemplation and action, politics and justice, the best form of government, and private property and the common good. (shrink)