At long last a comprehensive tool in English for a better understanding of the most basic terms in Aristotle's philosophy. A careful comparison of the original Greek, medieval and renaissance Latin translations and a reappraisal of English usage make the work a definitive source for the precise grasp of what has been the historical Aristotle as far as the documents permit one to judge. -- provided by the publisher.

Aristotle describes human happiness as a life of virtuous activity in Book One of the Nicomachean Ethics but as a life of contemplative activity and a life of ethically virtuous activity in Book Ten. In which kind of life does Aristotle ultimately believe that happiness consists? The answer lies in the role of philosophical wisdom within ethically virtuous activity. I argue that philosophical wisdom has a dual role: its exercise is the end of ethically virtuous activity and the (...) virtue by which that end is rationally apprehended. Just as ethically virtuous activity depends on the exercise of philosophical wisdom in this dual way, so human happiness can be understood as a single life of virtuous activity whose end is the exercise of philosophical wisdom in contemplative activity. The exercise of philosophical wisdom will include ethically virtuous activity as an end that includes what is desired for its sake. (shrink)

The article begins with Aristotle’s discussion of phronēsis for ethical life, only to discover the absence of a universal dimension. This issue of parochialism as opposed to a kind of universalism is a structural element of this paper. Secondly, Heidegger’s ontological interpretation of phronēsis creatively transforms phronēsis to highlight a tension between ethics and fundamental ontology—a tension overcome in the paper’s third section devoted to Ricoeur. Thus, Ricoeur’s post-critical phronēsis is shown to possess a universal dimension while disclosing ontologically. (...) Phronēsis responds to the need for universalization to overcome the parochial limitation but also incorporates an ontological disclosive power. Ricoeur’s post-critical phronēsis is a plural, collective, and public argumentation. Phronēsis is inventive and productive in resolving conflicts between legitimate universal claims or demands and is ontological.blabla. (shrink)

At first sight it might seem that John Locke had about as much to do with the romantic agony as his Whig patricians with working-class radicalism, yet the dialectic of history plays with the logic of ideas, in epistemology and social philosophy alike, to elicit conclusions unexpected by those who enuntiated the premisses. Mr. Tuveson’s careful argument traces the cult, and in some cases the fine frenzy, of communing with the ‘natural sublime’ through the special faculties of moral sense and (...) imagination back to its roots in an empiricism which held that the reason reaches to our impressions of reality rather than to reality itself: as has happened before and since the defects of a dominantly subjective cognition were supplemented from elsewhere. He could have gone back earlier, yet as Aristotle had been ‘the Philosopher’ for the medieval schoolmen so was Locke for the literary men of the eighteenth-century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reading Aristotle with Thomas Aquinas: His Commentaries on Aristotle’s Major Works by Leo J. EldersEfrem Jindráček O.P.Reading Aristotle with Thomas Aquinas: His Commentaries on Aristotle’s Major Works. By Leo J. Elders. Edited by JÖrgen Vijgen. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023. Pp. xi + 560. $75.00 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-8132-3579-0.The prolific Thomistic scholar Jörgen Vijgen has edited a new book (...) by the well-known and recently deceased Thomistic Dutch philosopher, university [End Page 718] professor, and religious priest Leo J. Elders, S.V.D. (1926–2019). According to the bookplate, the book is based on the French original Aristote et Thomas d’Aquin (Paris, 2018), but according to the editor’s preface it is the original English version: “while originally written in English, a French translation appeared already in 2018” (vii). In any case, this is a very precise and interesting panoramic presentation of all twelve of Thomas’s commentaries on Aristotle’s books. The presentations are arranged not according to the chronological sequence of Thomas’s writing, but rather according to the order in which we usually arrange the treatises of Aristotle (i.e., from On Interpretation to Politics). The text is based on Elders’s lecturing activities in Houston in the 1980s, which he himself revised and added to towards the end of his life. It is also obviously a thematic follow-up to several of his articles continuously published on the subject (“Saint Thomas d’Aquin et Aristote,” Revue Thomiste 88 [1988]: 357–76; “St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary of Aristoteles’s Physics,” Doctor Angelicus 7 [2007]: 17–51; “The Aristotelian Commentaries of St. Thomas Aquinas,” The Review of Metaphysics 63 [2009]: 29–53).The author has, of course, chosen the best existing Latin editions of Thomas’s texts (Leonine and Marietti), but for the sake of easier editing and citation he has kept the numbering of the paragraphs according to the Marietti edition. Each chapter devoted to one of Thomas’s commentaries has almost the same structure (the presentation of Aristotelian text, Thomas’s intention and commentary according to uniform books, concluding remarks). The book concludes with an extremely comprehensive bibliography (511–25), index of names (527–31) and a subject index (533–36).Elders articulates the basic philosophical question that drives this work in the preface: “if they [Thomas’s commentaries] contained Thomas’s own philosophy and if they were a reliable presentation of Aristotle’s thought, or, on the contrary, if they deformed it in some place by introducing some of Thomas’s Christian faith and theology” (ix). After the analysis of Thomas’s twelve commentaries, Elders arrived at the conclusion that “the commentaries are a masterful and faithful presentation of Aristotle’s thought and of that of Thomas himself. Thomas’s Christian faith does not falsify or alternate the text, but give occasionally an outlook at what lies behind philosophical thought” (ibid.).In the Introduction (1–13), Elders discusses the objections of other contemporary scholars (É. Gilson, J. Owens, M. D. Jordan, H. V. Jaffa) who have reached different positions, even with the help of texts that are, on the contrary, close to the author’s view (D.-M. Chenu, C. Kaczor, F. del Punta). And not only that: “In order to trace the relatively few texts where Thomas disagrees with certain doctrine of Aristotle or completes certain statements, my method is to go through each chapter of the different commentaries and to note where Thomas makes observations and advances a different explanation. In order to do so, it seemed best to present a summary of the contents of the different chapters of each treatise, noting those places where Thomas makes [End Page 719] corrections and additions, or brings in sentences expressing truths of the Christian faith” (13).In order to examine Elders’s analytical reading of Thomas’s commentaries, we will consider three representative chapters: namely, his treatment of Thomas’s commentaries on Peri hermeneias (14–58), Meteorologica (205–32), and Metaphysics (311–400). These three commentaries are unequal in several respects: not all were completed by Thomas himself, and not all... (shrink)

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Introduction. In the opening passages of his De interpretatione, Aristotle provides a simple summary of how he thinks language relates to the mind and the mind to reality, a sketch which has often been called his "semantic triangle." He writes.

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories (...) and On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:318 BOOK REVIEWS ture. But when it comes to love, " we should measure the love of different persons according to the different kinds of union." Thomas underscores what Outka calls the " inclusive " conception of universal love. God is to be loved as the supreme good, as the source of all happiness; the neighbor is loved as sharing in the happiness we receive from God. Charity (...) eviscerates neither our natural inclination for happiness nor our natural associations with others. Rather, it " commands each act of other sorts of friendship " in relation to our friendship with God. Charity is inherently prudential and thus an account of " special relations,'' which Werpehowski and others address, is incorporated into the discussion of charity. Of course one might make the same objection against Thomas's appropriation of Aristotle that I have leveled against the appropriation of modern notions. But Aristotle is not so much a secular rival of Christianity as he is a philosopher of human nature. A return to Christian Aristotelianism is suggested by Kierkegaard's dictum that we have forgotten what it means to be Christian because we have forgotten what it means to be human. THOMAS s. HIBBS Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA The Trinity: An Analysis of St. Thomas Aquinas' Expositio of the "De Trinitate" of Boethius. By DOUGLAS C. HALL. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 33. Leiden/New York: Brill, 1992. Pp. vi + 131. $40 (cloth). Aquinas's expositio of the De Trinitate of Boethius is an admirable paradigm of profound analysis and interpretive genius. Adhering closely to a literal reading of the short sexpartite Boethian tractate, but breaking off his analysis (for reasons unknown) just before the end of section two where Boethius begins his ex professo treatment of the Trinity, Aquinas ends up mainly plumbing the depth of Boethius's prefatory remarks about the epistemological status of theology, and thus in six questions (comprising 24 articles) constructs the most extensive treatment in all his works of the nature and method of theology. Little wonder, then, that Leo Elders titles his introduction to the expositio of Aquinas Faith and Science (Rome, 1974) or that Armand Maurer names his two volume translation of it Faith, Reason and Theology and The Division and Methods of the Sciences (Toronto, 198687 ). In Thomas's commentary, only the fourth article of question three treats the doctrine of the Trinity directly, though the four articles of BOOK REVIEWS 319 question four also discuss the cause of plurality, a crucial topic for trinitarian theology. I was mildly surprised, then, that Douglas Hall gives the title The Trinity to what professes to offer a " careful textual analysis and criticism " (112) of the methods and contents of Aquinas's commentary. In this slender book of four chapters, Hall inserts, between a short introduction and a conclusion, a second chapter on all five of Boethius's tractates and a third on Aquinas's commentary on the De Trinitate. He has some interesting things to say about the dating and contents of the Boethian works, and also makes some good points about Thomas's commentary, especially as regards questions five and six. But the title is a misnomer, for Hall skips over lightly the five articles mentioned above where Aquinas treats trinitarian issues, devoting only three pages to them. Hall's main concern, like Aquinas's, is theological methodology and epistemology. Hall attempts a rather Hegelian, dialectical appraisal of Aquinaswhich stresses Aquinas's reconstruction of Boethius by highlighting their common methodological theme of agnosia-and links it with an integrative approach which grounds itself in " a transcendental reading of Aquinas, while retaining themes from participationist and analogical literature" (112). The first chapter discusses the participationist, analogical, and transcendental strains of contemporary Thomism, and evinces a certain predilection for Rahner (his influence is also evident on pages 50, 58, 92-95). In sum, Hall combines a Rahnerian and dialectical reading of Aquinas. Due to his presupposition, however, he frequently does not engage Aquinas on his own grounds but burdens him with false problems and dubious theses as he seeks to sort out Aquinas's " dialectical tensions." Often the result is a rather gratuitous reading encumbered with unsubstantiated non sequiturs that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A RHETORIC OF MOTIVES: THOMAS ON OBLIGATION AS RATIONAL PERSUASION THOMAS s. HIBBS Thomas Aquinas College Santa Paula, California 'TIHE PROMINENCE of moral obligation in modern hies is l'ooted in an early modern claim, which reached uition in Kant, concerning the primacy of the right ov;er the good.1 Although Kant was not the first to make such a claim, his texts have had the most palpable (...) influence on modern moral discourse.2 Many contemporary moral philosophers, however, have!attempted to discredit the Kantian p11oject.3 In so doing, they often advance wlternative views 1 In his highly influential work, John Rawls comments on the importance of the g-0od and the right in contemporary moral philosophy, "The two main concepts of ethics are those of the right and the good.... The structure Df an ethical theory is... largely determined by how it defines and connects these two basic notions," A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 24. 2 There are numerous precursors of Kant, both in the nascent rationalism of early modern science and -0£ late scholasticism and in the project of the "rationalization" of human life characteristic of classical Protestant moral thought. It was Nietzsche, of course, who saw Kant as a most heinous example of secularized Christianity. On the "rationalization" of the moral life in Protestantism, see Max Weber, Die protestantisohe Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, in Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Religionssoziologie, Volume l (TU.bingen: Mohr, 1920), pp. 17-206. Given the convergence of these discursive fields in early modern thought and society, one might be inclined to see Kant as providing the theoretical foundations for the common moral consciousness. a I am thinking -0f Philippa Foot, "Virtues and Vices," and "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives," in Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 1-18, 157-173; Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) and " Ought and Moral Obligation," in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 293 ~94 THOMAS S. HIBBS characteristic of pre-modern moral philosophy, particularly of rthe 1 writings of Aristotle and Aquill!as. While consensus appears to have exnnerated Aristotle of the taint of Kantianism, the status of Tihomas's moral philosophy is still uncertain in the minds of many.4 Thomas's1 moral iphilosophy is, I believe, pre-modern. Throughout his writings he maintains the primaicy of the good ovier rthe right, the exact inverse of the Kantian position. By modern standards, Thomas's conception of obligation,seems impov;erished, almost naive. He devotes no independent treatise, or.for that matter no single quaestio, to the question of mom1l obligation. Francisco Suarez, one of Thomas's early modern oommenta.tors, found the latter's view to be muddled and unworkable. While Sua11ez criticizes Thomas's view, he fails to note that he 1and Thomas do not sha11e the same universe of discourse. What Suarez is after-a " theory of obligation "--is not extant in Thomas's texts. In fact, Suarez contributes to the deontological turn in the history of ethics. He pp. 114-123; Peter Geach, "Good and Evil," in Theories of Ethics, edited by Philippa Foot (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 64-73; Elizabeth Anscombe, "Modern Moral Philosophy" in her Oolleoted Philosophical Papers. Volume 3, l!Jthios, Religion and Politios (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), pp. 26-42; Alasdair Macintyre, "Hume on 'Is' and 'Ought'," in Against the Self-Images of the Age (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), pp. 109·129. While all are critical of Kant, none of these writers advocates a straightforward return to Aristotle or Thomas. Williams, in fact, is sceptical about the viability of Aristotelianism. This litany, moreover, of Kantian critics is not intended to give the impression that there is a consensus on the failure of Kant's project. There are formidable contemporary representatives of the Kantian school. See, for instance, William Frankena, Thinking About Morality (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980); Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1970); and Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: The University of Chicago... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Plotinus and the Augustine on the Mid-Rank of the Soul: Navigating Two Worlds by Joseph TorchiaThomas ClemmonsTORCHIA, Joseph. Plotinus and the Augustine on the Mid-Rank of the Soul: Navigating Two Worlds. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2023. vii + 237 pp. Cloth, $105.00For nearly four decades, Joseph Torchia, O.P., has written extensively on Augustine and Plotinus. He has produced numerous scholarly articles on both Augustine and Plotinus, as well (...) as monographs on Augustine’s understanding of creatio ex nihilo and tolma in Plotinus. This volume on the mid-rank of the soul in Plotinus and Augustine is the fruit of this life-long study.The major premise of Torchia’s study is the profound relation, even continuity, between Hellenistic philosophy, especially Neoplatonism, and early Christian thought. The Hellenistic view of an ordered universe, which extends from the material and physical to the spiritual and noetic, [End Page 730] places the human in a middle place. This view is exposited most clearly by Plotinus and shared, though with qualifications, by early Christians, especially St. Augustine. Torchia asserts that we are able to see this shared legacy and continuity between philosophers such as Plotinus and Augustine in “their respective anthropological and psychological theories.”The book is divided into halves; the first on Plotinus and the second on Augustine. Torchia’s discussion of Plotinus’s philosophy narrows and deepens through five chapters, from a general outline of the Alexandrian’s system to a heightened focus on the journey of the soul, as imaged through the figure of Odysseus. Torchia rightly notes the inconsistent depiction of the descent of soul(s), especially of individual souls as both in a sense “fallen” and “sent.” This tension is in part resolved through Plotinus’s emphasis on the middle place of the soul and the harmony of all the parts within the unity of the whole.The chapters on Plotinus are excellent. Torchia shows how Plotinus integrates concepts from Aristotle, especially his De anima, and qualifies the spiritualized philosophy of Plato. What we get, then, is Plotinus as a highly original philosopher, whose insights deserve closer examination. For example, Torchia glosses the Plotinian dictum, “we are soul,” to examine what is meant by “we” and “soul.” Far from leading to a dismissive view of the body and individuality (as is often stated about Plotinus), Torchia emphasizes that the middle state of the soul is the condition of soul. The lower soul, or the composite (per Torchia), cannot be simply lopped off. To do so, the unity of soul would be destroyed. Torchia thus presents a Plotinus profoundly concerned with humanity in its entirety—our affections, body, thoughts, and individuality. This is why Plotinus and Torchia land on the image of Odysseus as the journeyman to depict human existence.In the final five chapters, the book turns exclusively to Augustine. Torchia outlines the profound difference between Augustine and Plotinus as regards the ontological distinction between God as creator and the human. Because of this distinction, Torchia observes that the mid-rank of the soul takes on a more profound “existential significance.” This existential significance is witnessed in Augustine’s emphasis on free will and the “weight of love,” which, according to Torchia, shows affinities with Plotinus but also departs from the determinism and necessity of the descent of soul(s) in the Alexandrian’s system.The final chapter of the book examines Augustine’s understanding of the two cities, of God and of man. Torchia asserts that the middle-rank of the soul provides the philosophical undercurrent to Augustine’s conception of the City of God. The City of God is not exclusively a spiritual reality. Rather, much as with the middle-rank of the soul, the City of God is both “here” and “there.” The permixta of the Church as an intermediate state is “analogous to the mid-rank status of the rational soul.” For Augustine, both the individual and the Church journey, like Plotinus’s Odysseus, on the stormy seas. [End Page 731]In this book, Torchia has provided a thorough and insightful reading of Plotinus. He highlights the inherent rational optimism of Plotinus as well as the goodness... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:102 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY historical circumstances a suprahistorical, eternal significance, and that a historian or interpreter of a philosophy will do it justice only if he grasps this lasting truth and content, in addition to comparing it with the opinions of other earlier or later thinkers. One cannot see how a thinker who considered Plato as valid while treating him and others historically could have arrived at a different (...) conclusion. But it is a position admirably expressed that would deserve greater attention and a wider following among the present practitioners of the history of philosophy. Hoffmann's method and style in this, as in most of his other writings, deserve the highest praise, for he combines simplicity with density. His manner of expression reflects his commitment to truth (a commitment curiously omitted by many contemporary existentialists), and the integrity of his character: Hoffmann was one of the few German scholars who made no concessions to Nazism because he was a faithful representative of that German tradition which was incompatible with Nazism: classical humanism in its scholarly, literary and educational meaning, philosophical idealism, and liberal protestantism. Guided by Plato, Kant and Goethe, Hoffmann was untouched by the Romantic and nationalistic strands of German thought. His work transmits to us the precious heritage of a life completely devoted to philosophy and to scholarship, and of an important period in the history of German thought. He omits many things which we have learned in the last few years, or which we may still learn through future studies. Yet he can teach us many important things that are too easily forgotten in our present discussions: the role of Platonism in the history of philosophy and of the sciences, and the fundamental impact of ancient philosophy upon early Christian, medieval and modern thought. It is a heritage which we should try to enlarge, if we can, but also strive to preserve, and to keep alive. PAUL OSKARKRISTELLER Columbia University Studies in Epicurus and Aristotle. By Philip Merlan. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz [Klassisch-Philologische Studien, Heft 22], 1960. Pp. viii + 112. P1. 4. DM 12.--) Ever since the publication in 1936 of Bignone's L'Aristotele perduto e la formazione filosofica di Epicuro there have been attempts to define the exact nature of the debt which Epicurus owes to the Peripatos. In this collection of essays, the author of From Platonism to Neoplatonism turns his keen powers of analysis upon a number of specific problems deriving from Plato's Laws and carrying us via Aristotle's Metaphysics and Ethics to Epicurus's theology and beyond. In the first chapter, "Hedone in Epicurus and Aristotle," the author takes us on a generous stroll through hedonist materials, BOOK REVIEWS 103 including an ode by Schiller, to explore the precise meaning of the term hedone. More especially he is concerned to show how close the Epicurean understanding of the term is to that of Aristotle in at least some of his writings, notably Protrepticus and Nic. Eth. H and Met. A. The results of this investigation may be stated in the author's own words: Whether it occurs in Epicurus or in Aristotle, the term hedone can mean anything between gross sensual "pleasure" and entirely spiritual "joy." And on the whole it seems preferable to speak of the philosophy of Epicurus as a philosophy of joy rather than of pleasure. As far as Aristotle is concerned, it seems more appropriate to say that his Changeless Changer (or Changeless Changers) live a life that is filled with joy rather than pleasure, and that his hedonism is ultimately rooted in that of Eudoxus. Chapter 2, "How Many Kinds of Divinities Did Epicurus Recognize?," argues from the theory of the existence of indiscernible non-identicals (Cicero,4cademica 2.17.55; Philodemus De Pietate col. 80 = fr. 40 Us.) and from the theory of "isonomia," i.e., the balancing of one class of things by an equally large class of a different or opposite character (cf. C. Bailey, Greek Atomists, p. 461 ff.) that the Epicureans recognized two types of worshippables, as is indeed suggested by schol. Diog. Laert. 10.139: (I) the popular traditional divinities who are kar arithmon, i.e., severally unique, and... (shrink)

A small work On being and essence entered the discussion of that time on the concept of being, represented by Aristotle’s works and his Arabic interpreters Avicenna and Averroes . Thomas follows the Aristotelian realistic understanding of reality, but, as for its explanation, he signalizes a new understanding of being. It is clearly his own philosophical way, which enables him to enter independently into the conflict between the Augustinians and Averroists, i.e. against both sides. Thomas Aquinas’ conception (...) of being helps to read and understand his further philosophical works more profoundly. It is the metaphysics, which from the philosophical perspective becomes a philosophical basis of the interpretation of the real world as well as a starting point for the study of the Thomas’ thinking as a whole. (shrink)

At first glance, Aristotle’s Politics is a repository of dry, professorial lecture notes. Although the work contains the occasional literary reference or historical digression, analysis, argumentation, and socio-political taxonomies predominate. Beneath the surface of such prose, Pangle locates an Aristotle who seeks to involve the reader in dialogical exchange—much like as in a Platonic dialogue—by means of dialectical, rhetorical and literary devices. Pangle—a student of the political theorist Leo Strauss, a translator of Plato, Aristophanes and Sophocles, and the (...) author of books on modern political theorists such as Montesquieu, Locke, and the Federalist Papers—has written a study of the Politics informed not only by a close reading of the text, but also its relationship to modern republicanism, and the conflict between rationalism and religion. A previously published introduction presents what Pangle takes to be Aristotle’s rhetorical strategy in the Politics; it is followed by chapters organized around individual books in the Politics (a chapter each for Politics I, II, and III, and consolidated chapters for Politics IV-VI and VII-VIII—the last of which had been previously published in part). The text is followed by almost 50 pages of notes, notes in which Aquinas is cited as frequently (and sometimes more frequently) than contemporary Aristotle scholars like P. Simpson, R. Kraut, and E. Schütrumpf and Alfarabi is cited more frequently than F. Miller (although by far the most frequently cited authorities are the 19th century scholars F. Susemihl, R.D. Hicks, and above all, W. Newman). The book is clearly a mature work of scholarship, informed by extended reflection on Aristotle’s Politics and the subsequent western tradition of political theory and philological commentary which has responded to it. (shrink)

This collection of essays, presented to William Humbert Kane, O.P., founder of the Albertus Magnus Lyceum, has as its principle of unification the notion that the metaphysics and philosophy of nature of Aristotle, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas relate directly and importantly--and more than historically--to modern science in all of its aspects. The general reader will probably find that several of the articles illumine for him aspects of the Aristotelian philosophy as much as they do aspects of modern (...) science.--K. P. F. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 329 I find Farley's theory of tragic existence and divine compassion distressing and depressing. To sufferers, it says: "C'est la vie!" Put more learnedly, "created perfection is fragile, tragically structured.. •. And yet, without creation, divine eros remains merely potential, inarticulate. The fragility of creation and the nonabsolute power of God culminate in the tragedy and rupture of history" (p. 124). Thank God, I can now have (...) God,to blame. Of course, God is trying to repair the damage, but even God's efforts are ultimately vain since "absolute evil " will ever play havoc with history and since God himself is responsible for suffering. Furthermore, since the author does not offer any extensive discussion of the suffering and death of God.on the cross (she dismisses the idea: "The compassionate God is... to he distinguished from the benevolent but impotent deity who ' suffers with ' the world" [p. 112]), nor of the resurrection of Jesus as divine vindication of innocent suffering, nor of hope for a life beyond,· her tragic vision sheds no real light on the problem of suffering nor can it pro-.vide impetus for the struggle against evil or hope for victims-especially when demons whisper that life is futile, suffering meaningless, and the cosmos void. The book is repetitive (suffering: pp. 23-24, 30-31, 51-59, 115-119; tragic vision: pp. 31-37, 78-79, 98-99, 106-110, 124-125; compassion: pp. 37-39, 79-81, 92-94, 110-114, 114-119, 126-128). It is oracular ("theologians have been uncomfortable about directly attributing love to God " [p. 96], self-contradictory (it speaks of God's " aseity " and divine " relationship " in the same breath [p. 105]), and misleading in its use of sources (e.g. its appeal to Thomas for its peculiar understanding of analogical language about God [pp. 101-103]). Mercifully, the hook is brief. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. PETER c. PHAN Time, Freedom, and the Common Good. By CHARLES M. SHEROVER. New York: State University of New York Press, 1989. Pp. xiii+ 314. $59.50 (cloth) ; $19.95 (paper). Guided by the insights of traditional political philosophy and contemporary phenomenology and animated by 'the spirit of Tocqueville, Sherover's book is an attempt " to secure the foundations of a public philosophy adequate for our time" (p. xii). Like Tqcqueville, Sherover is preoccupied with the " universal appeal of freedom," with its com- 330 BOOK REVIEWS plications, its paradoxes, and especially its possibilities. Sherover faults liberalism for its simplistic conception of freedom and its " superficial view of the nature of human existence" (p. 8). In an attempt to find a more adequate account of human experience, Sherover appeals to three existential categories: sociality, temporality, and freedom. The project of the book, which moves from the establishment and articulation of these categories to :their practical application, is ambitious. Yet the argument is lucid and persuasive. Following Aristotle, Sherover argues for the primacy of the social in human life. He effectively argues not only that moral norms and linguistic practices are socially rooted phenomena, but also that " social membership is prior... to any notion of differentiating individuality " (p. 20). Social atomism is but a theoretical abstraction, and individualism is as incoherent as a private language. Sherover points out that the defense ·of the social nature of human existence has at least one negative result: it undermines political theories that are rooted in a radically individualistic conception of human nature. Yet the emphasis on sociality does play a positive role in Sherover's essay: it serves as an initial justification of the relevance of the idea of the common good to political discourse. The existential category of sociality surfaces, for instance, in Sherover's cogent account of rights, wherein he argues that particular rights should not be seen as innate and absolute. The claim that rights are innate renders unintelligible the prevalent notion of "newly dis· covered" rights (p. 79). Instead, particular rights are socially recog· nized, justifiable claims which cannot he isolated from the social and political context in which they are recognized and exercised. Particular r.ights come into being over time and in intimate connection with con· crete... (shrink)

Why, since happiness is so universally sought after, are so many people so miserable? The answer can be found by unpacking the wisdom of two of history's intellectual giants who set out to answer the question that has confounded man from time immemorial: What makes us happy? Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas existed sixteen centuries apart, yet each reached similar understandings about what makes a person happy and what makes him miserable. In these enlightening pages, Dr. Charles Nemeth synthesizes (...) the judgments of history's two greatest thinkers to present for you a life plan that inevitably leads to a happy human existence, whatever your ethnicity, religion, or citizenship. You will explore what it means to be happy and will come to understand the limitations of happiness. You'll learn how to live in accordance with your basic nature so that your inclinations will not conflict with that which makes you flourish. And you'll calibrate your compass so that you will be able to navigate your way into a state of life that makes you truly happy. Moreover, you'll discover why happiness is obtained through action and not mere desire and why wealth and fame do not -- and cannot -- buy happiness. You'll also learn why the body, despite providing avenues for sensory and intellectual pleasure, is incapable of providing true happiness. Strikingly, none of the suggestions in this book have ever been shown to be flawed. These timeless recommendations for a happy life never go out of favor and never change. Instead, they remain a constant, permanent, universal set of criteria on how to achieve a happy existence. You'll also learn: The benefits of moderation, sensibility, and equilibrium The source of ultimate happiness and the means to attain it The formula for fostering contentment -- what to strive for and what to avoid The essence of true goodness, happiness, and beauty Human excellence and different levels of happiness With this Rosetta stone of a book, you will find solutions to fortify your soul and bring you peace. You will be equipped with a new sense of direction, hope, and healing that will guide you closer to lasting happiness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Mahāyāna Theology of the Real Presence of Christ in the EucharistJohn P. KeenanMahāyāna theology is an approach to thinking about the Christian faith within the philosophical context of the great Mahāyāna Buddhist thinkers: philosophers of emptiness such as Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva, and Candrakīrti in the Mādhyamika tradition; and philosophers of consciousness such as Maitreya, Asaçga,Vasubandhu, Sthiramati, Paramārtha, and Hsūan-tsang in theYogācāra tradition. The advantage of employing Mahāyāna philosophy in (...) the doing of Christian theology is that this philosophical tradition developed with the dual purpose of supporting and encouraging faith and practice while eliminating absolutist claims for metaphysically fixed and unalterable ideas.Mahāyāna is deconstructive without any of the aloofness that modern French philosophers apparently feel they must adopt vis-à-vis theology and the Church. Just as Plato did for the Fathers of the early church and Aristotle did for Aquinas, Mahāyāna opens avenues of thought and questioning for contemporary theologians that will gift our cultures with the grace of new theological insight into the meaning of Christ's presence to and among human beings.And so I would like to do some theology here, demonstrating how a Mahāyāna thinker like myself might envisage the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.The Real Presence of ChristThe theology of the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist has had a long and fascinating development. For the first eight centuries, the issue did not arise with any doctrinal insistence.1 Christians were content to see Christ's presence in the performance of the Eucharistic rite as a medicine of immortality that would heal their souls and embody for them the reality of the risen Christ. It was only later, in the condemnation of the theologian Ratramnus2 and the development of the doctrine of transubstantiation, that the classical formulation took shape.3 That doctrine was expressed in philosophic terms that were then current, concepts that were accepted as clear and valid frameworks for thinking.Medieval theologians, especially the great St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth [End Page 89] century, had just rediscovered Aristotle and gloried in the subtle intricacies and vast overviews that this "new" learning provided them.4 They philosophized by seeking insight into and defining the very act of existence itself, discussing the "essences," or "substances" of things as the underlying realities that we encounter in our life and in our faith. In this view, Christ "subsists"—that is, he really exists—as the substance of the bread and wine in the Eucharist. This is the philosophic view that is stressed even today in the Roman Catholic Church. Modern Catholic theologian Bernard Cooke explains the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist as follows:Christ bespeaks in the action of the Mass the presence of his own risen body beneath the appearance of food and drink. He effects this by changing the inner reality (the "substance") of the bread and wine into his risen humanity. This is the unique change that the Church has for centuries called transubstantiation—the change of the substance of the bread into the substance of Christ's risen body. Before the transubstantiation in the Mass, the inner reality (the substance) of the bread and wine is what sustains the external appearances in existence. These appearances tell us of the presence of the inner reality of bread and wine (which itself is not visible). After the transubstantiation, the risen humanity of Christ is what sustains these external appearances in existence. Consequently, they now tell us of the presence of Christ.5The disputes about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist hinged precisely on this issue—what is the inner reality of the sacrament? Another scholar of these arguments, Francis Clarke, writes:All the Eucharistic controversies... hinge upon one question: What is the substance of the sacrament? "If we did once agree in that, the whole controversy [concerning the sacrifice] would soon be at an end," for the answer to that question decides "whether Christ's body be there offered indeed unto the heavenly Father by the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MARITAIN AS AN INTERPRETER OF AQUINAS ON THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUATION }UDE P. DOUGHERTY The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. I T HE MEDIEVAL problem of individuation is not the contemporary problem of "individuals" or "particulars" discussed by P. F. Strawson, J. W. Meiland, and others.1 In a certain sense the problem of individuation originates with Parmenides, but it is Plato's philosophy of science that bequeaths the problem to (...) Aristotle and to his medieval commentators. Its solution in Aquinas is not that of Aristotle, nor is it that of Scotus or Suarez. Aquinas will distinguish between the problem of individuation and what we may call the problem of "individuality" or the problem of "subsistence." The solution to both will draw upon many Aristotelian distinctions but will incorporate key elements of St. Thomas's own metaphysics, including the real distinction between essence and existence and his doctrine of participation. It is Maritain's appropriation of St. Thomas's metaphysics that enables him to produce a realistic philosophy of science, one that he offers as compatible with contemporary scientific enquiry. It also enables him to develop a theory of person and personality. But the story begins with Plato. Although Plato's theory of knowledge may appear fanciful to the modern reader, his analysis of scientific knowledge contains a basic set of observations whose truth remains uncontested even 1 Cf. P.F. Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (London: Methuen and Co., 1959); J.W. Meiland, Talking About Particulars (New York: Humanities Press, 1970); P. Butchvarov, Resemblance and Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966). 19 20 JUDE P. DOUGHERTY though his explanation be faulty. Plato saw clearly that science is of the universal. Things may be particular, but when we consider them as objects of enquiry, the intellect focuses upon the form taken as an exemplar. In Plato's explanation things belong to their various kinds by participating in incorporeal, eternal, and unchangeable archetypes. From a realist's vantage point the problem may be stated simply: Since things are singular, how is it that we intellectually apprehend them as universal? Aristotle's solution is well known and it is one adopted and amplified by St. Thomas. Universals are abstracted from singular things. No one would present Maritain as a medievalist, but, as an interpreter of Aquinas, he has wielded considerable influence in the United States and in Latin America. Many have come to St. Thomas under his tutelage. His knowledge of Aquinas is extensive and is drawn upon throughout his lifelong work, but perhaps nowhere more than in his philosophy of science and in his discussions of the person. The primary text for Thomas's doctrine of individuation is his commentary on Boethius's De Trinitate, where he discusses the division and methods of the sciences. Maritain's philosophy is indebted mainly to his reading of Thomistic texts, but he draws heavily, as well, on the works of his contemporaries, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange and Louis Geiger, and on those of the classic commentators on Thomas, Cajetan, Sylvester of Ferrara, and John of St. Thomas. Though employing St. Thomas, Maritain is always a man of the twentieth century. In books such as the Degrees of Knowledge, Science and Wisdom, Existence and the Existent, and A Preface to Metaphysics, his foe is always some contemporary exponent of a nominalist position.2 "Nominalists,'' he will say, "have a taste for the real, but no sense of being."3 Timeless 2 Degrees ofKnowledge [Les Degres du Savoir(l 932)], trans. G.B. Phelan, 4th ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959); Science and Wisdom [Science et Sagesse (1935)], trans. B. Wall (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940); Existence and the Existent [Court Traite de L:Existence et de L:Existant (1947)], trans. L. Galantiere and G.B. Phelan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1948); A Preface to Metaphysics [Sept Le~ons sur L'Etre et les Premieres Principes de la Raison Speculative (1934)], trans. B. Wall (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1939). 3 Degrees of Knowledge, 3. AN INTERPRETER OF AQUINAS 21 metaphysics, he will lament, no longer suits the modern intellect. "Three centuries of empirico-mathematics have so warped the intellect... (shrink)

Hominization theory speculates on the process and chronology of a human embryo’s ensoulment. Aristotle, a key ancient Greek thinker, presented his own hominization theory based on his hylemorphic metaphysics and pioneering researches in embryology. Thomas Aquinas, a medieval philosopher and theologian, built his Christian and Catholic hominization theory on the foundations laid down by Aristotle. The contemporary Roman Catholic Church, with its own prolife, anti-abortion and anticontraception agenda, modified the Aristotelian and Thomistic hominization theories by allegedly benchmarking (...) on recent developments in human embryology. This paper uses the archeological and genealogical methods, as developed by the French poststructuralist and postmodernist philosopher Michel Foucault, in reexamining these three hominization theories as discourses, in comparing and contrasting their epistemic contexts, and in peering into their respective genealogies. Contrary to common assumptions, these three hominization theories have very few elements in common and are actually divergent. The underpinning intention of this paper is to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the contemporary Roman Catholic Church’s hominization theory. (shrink)

This volume deals with the psychological, metaphysical and scientific ideas of two major and influential Aristotelian philosophers of the Italian Renaissance - Nicoletto Vernia (d. 1499) and Agostino Nifo (ca 1470-1538) - whose careers must be seen as inter-related. Both began by holding Averroes to be the true interpreter of Aristotle's thought, but were influenced by the work of humanists, such as Ermolao Barbaro, though to a different degree. Translations of the Greek commentators on Aristotle (Alexander of Aphrodisias, (...) Themistius and Simplicius) provided them with new material and new ways of understanding Aristotle - Nifo even put himself to learning Greek - and led them to abandon Averroes, especially as regards his views on the soul and intellect. Nevertheless, both Vernia and Nifo engaged seriously with the thought of medieval scholars such as Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and John of Jandun. Both also showed interest in their celebrated contemporary, Marsilio Ficino. (shrink)

The History of Psychology: Fundamental Questions provides significant excerpts from the philosophers, theologians, and scientists who contributed to the development of psychology. It also includes more recent works covering issues and ideas in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Extensively classroom-tested, this anthology addresses a comprehensive range of topics, yet is suitable for use as a core text or as a supplement in a single-semester course on the history of psychology. The History of Psychology offers selections from: · Aristotle · St. (...) Thomas Aquinas · Rene Descartes · John Locke · Immanuel Kant · Hermann Ebbinghaus · Charles Darwin · Margaret Floy Washburn · Wilhelm Wundt · Jean Piaget · B.F. Skinner · Noam Chomsky and many others. The readings encourage students to consider the foundations of psychology and the questions that led to its emergence as a distinct discipline. Going beyond the presentation and defense of a particular point of view, this collection gives students the opportunity to consider the fundamental questions of psychology. The book is organized into nine thematic sections that are presented chronologically. Each section includes works that cohere thematically to encourage discussion, highlight related topics, and stimulate the classic and more current debates within the field of psychology. Every reading is preceded by a brief biography of the author and a note about his or her range of interests and influence. Featuring original works from some of the most important figures in the history of psychology, The History of Psychology is ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses on history and systems in psychology and philosophy of psychology. (shrink)

Early on in the volume, Elders acknowledges the methodological difficulty of talking about the moral philosophy of Aquinas, given that St. Thomas is first of all a theologian. Yet, as a theologian in addressing moral issues, Thomas works within the framework of natural reason, much in the manner of Aristotle and the Stoics. Elders finds it impossible to render faithfully the ethics of Aquinas without delving into his philosophical anthropology, and even deeper into his metaphysics.

Part I: WHAT IS ETHICS? Plato: Socratic Morality: Crito. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part II: ETHICAL RELATIVISM VERSUS ETHICAL OBJECTIVISM. Herodotus: Custom is King. Thomas Aquinas: Objectivism: Natural Law. Ruth Benedict: A Defense of Ethical Relativism. Louis Pojman: A Critique of Ethical Relativism. Gilbert Harman: Moral Relativism Defended. Alan Gewirth: The Objective Status of Human Rights. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part III: MORALITY, SELF-INTEREST AND FUTURE SELVES. Plato: Why Be Moral? Richard Taylor: On the Socratic Dilemma. David Gauthier: Morality (...) and Advantage. Gregory Kavka: A Reconciliation Project. Derek Parfit: Later Selves and Moral Principles. Bernard Williams: Persons, Character, and Morality. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part IV: VALUE. Jeremy Bentham: Classical Hedonism. Robert Nozick: The Experience Machine. Richard Taylor: Value and the Origin of Right and Wrong. Friedrich Nietzsche: The Transvaluation of Values. Derek Parfit: What Makes Someone’s Life Go Best? Thomas Nagel: Value: The View from Nowhere. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part V: UTILITARIANISM AND CONSEQUENTIALISM. John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism. J.J.C. Smart: Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism. Kai Nielsen: Against Moral Conservatism. Bernard Williams: Against Utilitarianism. John Hospers: Rule-Utilitarianism. Robert Nozick: Side Constraints. Peter Singer: Famine, Affluence and Morality. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part VI: KANTIAN AND DEONTOLOGICAL SYSTEMS. Immanuel Kant: Foundation for the Metaphysic of Morals. W. D. Ross: What Makes Right Acts Right? Onora O’Neill: Kantian Formula of the End in Itself and World Hunger. Thomas Nagel: Moral Luck. Philippa Foot: Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives. Judith Jarvis Thomson: Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part VII: CONTRACTARIAN ETHICAL SYSTEMS. Thomas Hobbes: The Leviathan. David Gauthier: Why Contractarianism? John Rawls: Contractualism: Justice as Fairness. T.M. Scanlon: Contractualism and Utilitarianism. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part VIII: VIRTUE-BASED ETHICAL SYSTEMS. Aristotle: The Ethics of Virtue. Bernard Mayo: Virtue and the Moral Life. William Frankena: A Critique of Virtue-Based Ethics. Walter Schaller: Are Virtues No More than Dispositions to Obey Moral Rules? Alasdair MacIntyre: The Nature of the Virtues. Susan Wolf: Moral Saints. Louis P. Pojman: In Defense of Moral Saints. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part IX: THE FACT/VALUE PROBLEM: METAETHICS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. David Hume: On Reason and the Emotions: The Fact/Value Distinction. G. E. Moore: Non-Naturalism. A. J. Ayer: Emotivism. R. M. Hare: Prescriptivism: The Structure of Ethics and Morals. Geoffrey Warnock: The Object of Morality. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part X: MORAL REALISM AND THE CHALLENGE OF SKEPTICISM. J.L. Mackie: The Subjectivity of Values. Jonathan Harrison: A Critique of Mackie’s Error Theory. Gilbert Harman: Moral Nihilism. Nicholas Sturgeon: Moral Explanations. Bernard Williams: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Bruce Russell: Two Forms of Ethical Skepticism. Michael Smith: A Defense of Moral Realism. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part XI: RELIGION AND ETHICS. Plato: Morality and Religion. Immanuel Kant: God and Immortality as Necessary Postulates of Morality. George Mavrodes: Religious and the Queerness of Morality. Kai Nielson: Ethics Without God. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part XII: CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES TO CLASSICAL ETHICAL THEORY. Part A. Sociobiology and the Question of Moral Responsibility. Charles Darwin: Ethics and the Descent of Man. E.O.Wilson: Sociobiology and Ethics. Michael Ruse: Evolution and Ethics: The Sociobiological Approach. Elliot Sober: Prospects for an Evolutionary Ethics. J.L. Mackie: The Law of the Jungle, Evolution and Morality. Suggestions for Further Readingon Sociobiology. Part B. The Challenge of Determinism to Moral Responsibility and Desert. Galen Strawson: The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility. Louis Pojman: Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility:A Response to Galen Strawson. Richard Taylor: A Libertarian Defense of Free Will and Responsibility. Suggestions for Further Reading on Moral Responsibility. Glossary of Ethical Terms. (shrink)

Louis Pojman and Robert Westmoreland have compiled the best material on the subject of equality, ranging from classical works by Aristotle, Hobbes and Rousseau to contemporary works by John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, Michael Walzer, Harry Frankfurt, Bernard Williams and Robert Nozick; and including such topics as: the concept of equality; equal opportunity; Welfare egalitarianism; resources; equal human rights and complex equality.

As Sorcerer Supreme, Doctor Stephen Strange has had several occasions in which he had to deal with the concept of a personal God. Despite his lack of traditional faith, there are important instances in which Doctor Strange acknowledges the Creator God using expressions drawn from the Western monotheistic traditions. In his Metaphysics, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle presents the idea of God, or more specifically a god among the gods, who is responsible for the origin and operation of the (...) whole universe. A more helpful image of God can be found in the writing of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who formed a theological synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian revelation. According to Aquinas, the all‐good Creator of the universe is the author of the moral law. In the Chronicles of Narnia, author and English professor C. S. Lewis refers to the eternal law of God as the “deep magic” that comes from the “Emperor Beyond the Sea”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Divine Illumination: The History and Future of Augustine’s Theory of KnowledgeSteven P. MarroneLydia Schumacher. Divine Illumination: The History and Future of Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge. Challenges in Contemporary Theology. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Pp. xiii + 250. Cloth, $119.95.Lydia Schumacher has written an ambitious book. Among the many things she tries to accomplish in the volume, three stand out to this reviewer. First of all, she proposes to reexamine (...) Augustine’s theory of knowledge. She argues that Augustine’s philosophy is grounded in theology. For his theory of knowledge this means, by Schumacher’s reading, that the aim of cognition is to enable the human being to regain its original status as “image of God,” which latter state is manifested in knowing God and making God known. It is the mental, and by extension ethical, process of becoming God’s image that Schumacher says we should, in the Augustinian context, take the phrase ‘divine illumination’ to signify. For Augustine, Schumacher insists, this process is an entirely internal phenomenon constituted by a self-correcting series of intellectual reflections on the part of the mind. In holding to this view, Schumacher emphatically rejects the understanding, common in scholarship, that “divine illumination” for Augustine had to do with mental reference to what she labels an “extrinsic” standard such as the eternal ideas in God’s mind. [End Page 293]Second, Schumacher argues that the Augustinian project, epitomized in his theory of knowledge, was carried out by most of the thinkers of the Latin Middle Ages, particularly by Anselm and Thomas Aquinas. These latter two individuals are therefore divine illumi-nationists of the first order. What historians often designate as an Augustinian current, evident in the high Middle Ages among scholastics from the Franciscan Order, represented instead a deviation, a turn to an entirely novel theological-philosophical project. Here, mind’s work was conceived of as “the immediate and totalized knowledge of an individual essence.” And for this, recourse to an extrinsic standard filled the bill. Consequently, high-medieval Franciscans were the actual propounders of the theory of knowledge Schumacher tells us has wrongly been associated with divine illumination. Moreover, this Franciscan current of thought, once severed from its original theological underpinnings, provided the historical inspiration for modern philosophy, thereby acting as a kind of catalyst for the modernist philosophical problems—as Schumacher receives them—of rationalism and fideism, skepticism as well.Third, Schumacher sounds the call for a contemporary return to the authentic Augustinian project. By starting philosophy, as she claims Augustine did, with theological assumptions, she wants to fashion a “faith-based concept of knowledge” and with it, most importantly, to escape the modernist dilemma of the incompatibility of faith and reason. Grounding philosophy in theology—Christian theology, she maintains—will restore a lost integrity to our procedures of thinking, ultimately redeeming philosophy itself.How much of this program has Schumacher managed to achieve? Since this reviewer is marked out as the key spokesperson for the interpretation of both divine illumination and the history of medieval thought against which Schumacher inveighs, perhaps he should not be the one to answer the question. Still, the reader forewarned, I lay out my opinion. With regard to her first goal, Schumacher makes good on her promise to render Augustine as a theologian bent on working from his assumptions to designate a process whereby philosophy and mankind can be simultaneously restored. She is not so convincing in her attempt to equate this program with divine illumination. For Schumacher, the process of divine illumination is correlative to the idea of God as source of the mind’s power to act. Yet Augustine often plainly associates what he describes as illumination with turning to God and conceding his ideas an important role in the mental processes of judgment and concept formation. It is hard to see how one can honestly exclude this extrinsic element of what Augustine intended.Regarding her second goal, Schumacher does an excellent job of reminding us how Augustinian were almost all medieval scholastics, Thomas included, and warning us not to take the high-scholastic recourse to Aristotle as a sign of opposition to Augustinian modes of thought... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Arthur O. Lovejoy and the Challenge of Intellectual HistoryJohn Patrick DigginsMen and ideas advance by parricide, by which the children kill, if not their fathers, at least the beliefs of their fathers, and arrive at new beliefs.Sir Isaiah Berlin1I was supposed to wind up the study of mine, and become the Lovejoy of my generation—that's the silly talk of scholarly people.Saul Bellow2To become "the Lovejoy," with the implication that (...) each generation could only have one, was the ambition of Moses Herzog in Saul Bellow's novel, written a few years after he had won the Nobel Award for literature. Herzog presents the life of a professor who has as many sexual escapades and as much personal angst as he has scholarly interests, too unfocused to be another Lovejoy. Bellow's novel is full of letters to Nietzsche, Heidegger, and other modernist minds who brought Western intellectual life to a standstill, posing a lasting question mark about the possibilities of knowledge. Bellow taught in the program of the Committee on Social Thought at [End Page 181] the University of Chicago. His colleague and close friend Allan Bloom also taught in that program. But when Bloom wrote the best seller, The Closing of the American Mind, he cited Nietzsche and Heidegger as part of the "German disease" that did so much to subvert academic thought, supposedly turning students into zombies, walking air heads responding only to vacuous visual stimuli and mind-numbing music, with Rock n' Roll blasting through a Walkman and having the effect of a "masturbational fantasy."3While Bellow's epistolary novel interrogated modernist thinkers, Bloom's popular tract of the times cited many classical thinkers as a countervoice to the modernists—Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Hobbes, Kant, Lessing, Schiller, Locke, and Rousseau. Such minds also figured prominently in the works of Arthur O. Lovejoy. But the recitation of such names leaves the impression that Lovejoy concerned himself only with the main currents of European intellectual history. On the contrary, two of his most important and often neglected books are The Thirteen Pragmatisms and Reflections on Human Nature.4 There one finds profound meditations on two vital episodes in the history of ideas in America: the Enlightenment and the philosophy of pragmatism. Perry Miller, arguably America's greatest intellectual historian, skipped over the Enlightenment as he proceeded to study the Puritans and then the transcendentalists, and he never seemed to have much interest in the pragmatists.5 But what Lovejoy had to write on the Enlightenment and pragmatism is richly ironic.The pragmatists claimed to have liberated modern thought from the easy assumptions of the "Age of Reason," and today's poststructuralists charge that eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers deceived themselves in looking to the advent of knowledge as an answer to the presence of power. Lovejoy's books offer a different take entirely, making us aware that it is the modernist thinkers who may be deceiving themselves with the dubious promises of pragmatism and the arrogant conceits of poststructuralism and deconstruction, whose proponents claim to be the first "masters [End Page 182] of suspicion." In many of Lovejoy's works, nothing is resolved and everything is left suspended in a state of honest suspicion.Lovejoy was comfortable with contradiction, and hence more in tune with Augustine, who looked to the depths of human consciousness for spiritual knowledge, than with Aquinas, who believed evidence for God and human freedom could be found in reason alone. Nowhere is Lovejoy's affinity for the emotions of consciousness better seen than in his several essays on romanticism, both English, French, German, and even its origins in Chinese aesthetics and Confucian ethics. It was not reason and the notion of order and regulation that appealed to Lovejoy but the spontaneous promptings of nature springing forth without reflection or design. He delighted in quoting Voltaire against classicists and scholastics. "Worship God and practice justice—this is the sole religion of the Chinese literati.... O Thomas Aquinas, Scotus, Bonaventure, Francis, Dominic, Luther, Calvin, canons of Westminister, have you anything better? For four thousand years this religion, so simple and so noble, has endured in... (shrink)

This book is an investigation of the relationship between self and body in the Indian, Japanese, and Chinese philosophical traditions. The interplay between self and body is complex and manifold, touching on issues of epistemology, ontology, social philosophy, and axiology. The authors examine these issues and make relevant connections to the Western tradition. The authors' allow the Asian traditions to shed new light on some of the traditional mind-body issues addressed in the West.

Preface Phillip R. Sloan, Gerald McKenny, Kathleen Eggleson pp. xiii-xviii In November of 2009, the University of Notre Dame hosted the conference “Darwin in the Twenty-First Century: Nature, Humanity, and God.‘ Sponsored primarily by the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values at Notre Dame, and the Science, Theology, and the Ontological Quest project within the Vatican Pontifical... 1. Introduction: Restructuring an Interdisciplinary Dialogue Phillip R. Sloan pp. 1-32 Almost exactly fifty years before the Notre Dame conference, the (...) world’s largest centenary commemoration of Darwin’s legacy was held at nearby University of Chicago. This event, organized by a committee spearheaded by University of Chicago anthropologist Sol Tax, drew nearly 2,500 registrants. In attendance were the primary leaders... Part 1. Nature 2. Evolution through Developmental Change: How Alterations in Development Cause Evolutionary Changes in Anatomy Scott F. Gilbert pp. 35-60 For the past half-century, the mechanisms of evolution have been explained by the fusion of genetics and evolutionary biology called “the Modern Synthesis.‘ The tenets of the Modern Synthesis have been generally formulated as such: 1. There is genetic variation within the population. 2. There is competition... 3. The Evolution of Evolutionary Mechanisms: A New Perspective Stuart A. Newman pp. 61-89 The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, based on Charles Darwin’s concept of natural selection in conjunction with a genetic theory of inheritance in a population-based framework, has been, for more than six decades, the dominant scientific perspective for explaining the diversity of living organisms. In recent years, however, with the growth... 4. The Evolvability of Organic Forms: Possible, Likely, and Unlikely Change from the Perspective of Evolutionary Developmental Biology Alessandro Minelli pp. 90-115 Confronted with the extraordinary diversity of animal form, we can ask questions about function and adaptation. How does this animal move? How does it feed? How does it defend itself from its enemies? But we can also ask questions about development, reproduction, and heredity. What mechanisms produce these forms? How are these... 5. Accident, Adaptation, and Teleology in Aristotle and Darwinism David J. Depew pp. 116-143 Charles Darwin framed the Origin of Species to meet criteria for inductive science set out by John Herschel in his Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. Accordingly, he was distraught when he learned that Herschel, to whom he had sent a copy of his newly published book, was not... 6. The Game of Life Implies Both Teleonomy and Teleology Gennaro Auletta, Ivan Colagè, Paolo D’Ambrosio pp. 144-164 The present contribution is mainly aimed at suggesting the importance of teleonomy and teleology as explanatory mechanisms in biology in the light of recent achievements in the field, and at showing that they play an actual and relevant role in the realm of life. The issue of finality in biology still provokes lively debates in the... Part 2. Humanity 7. Humanity’s Origins Bernard Wood pp. 167-181 One of Charles Darwin’s many achievements is that he began the process of converting the Tree of Life from a religious metaphor into a biological reality. All types of living organisms, be they animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, or viruses, are at the end of twigs that reach the surface of the Tree of Life, and all the types of organisms... 8. Darwin’s Evolutionary Ethics: The Empirical and Normative Justifications Robert J. Richards pp. 182-200 In the increasingly secular atmosphere of the nineteenth century, intellectuals grew wary of the idea that nature had any moral authority. In an earlier age, one might have looked upon the dispositions of nature as divinely sanctioned, and thus one could call upon natural law to ground moral judgment. Certain behaviors, for instance, might have... 9. Crossing the Milvian Bridge: When Do Evolutionary Explanations of Belief Debunk Belief? Paul E. Griffiths, John S. Wilkins pp. 201-231 Two traditional targets for evolutionary skepticism are religion and morality. Evolutionary skeptical arguments against religious belief are continuous with earlier genetic arguments against religion, such as that implicit in David Hume’s Natural History of Religion. Evolutionary arguments are also... 10. Questioning the Zoological Gaze: Darwinian Epistemology and Anthropology Phillip R. Sloan pp. 232-266 This quotation from Darwin’s Descent of Man illuminates an under-explored issue in Darwin’s work---not the issue of evolutionary ethics itself, but the epistemology of experience assumed in his work, and the consequences of his application of this “zoological gaze‘ to human beings. I will term this epistemological stance in this chapter “natural historical... Part 3. God 11. Evolution and Catholic Faith John O’Callaghan pp. 269-298 To begin to examine the relation of orthodox Catholic Christian faith to evolutionary theory and the question of human origins, consider words of the fourth pope, St. Clement: Let us fix our gaze on the Father and Creator of the whole world, and let us hold on to his peace and blessings, his splendid and surpassing... 12. After Darwin, Aquinas: A Universe Created and Evolving William E. Carroll pp. 299-337 At the 2000 Jubilee Session for scientists, held at the Vatican in May of that year, Archbishop Józef Życiński offered an eloquent assessment of contemporary discourse on the relationship between the natural sciences and theology. He ended his address with the comment that what is needed today is a new Thomas Aquinas. I remember... 13. Evolutionary Theism and the Emergent Universe Józef Życiński pp. 338-354 The 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species has been celebrated in the context of an animated debate concerning both scientific and philosophical issues implied by the theory of evolution.1 One finds a deep diversity of attitudes, both methodological and semantic, in the current debates on evolutionary... 14. Beyond Separation or Synthesis: Christ and Evolution as Theodrama Celia Deane-Drummond pp. 355-380 The fervor with which popular discourse on science and religion has continued to bubble up in the anniversary year celebrating Darwin’s achievements shows that the publically perceived conflict between science and religion will not go away. Academic discussion on such matters is therefore not just peripheral to cultural concerns but takes... Part 4. Past and Future Prospects 15. Imagining a World without Darwin Peter J. Bowler pp. 383-403 What would have happened if Charles Darwin had not lived to write On the Origin of Species? Perhaps his bad health caused the early death he feared, or maybe he fell overboard while on the voyage of the Beagle. Would the world have still experienced the Darwinian Revolution under another name, or would the history of science, and... 16. What Future for Darwinism? Jean Gayon pp. 404-423 What future for Darwinism? I will propose some criteria for exploring this question in the domains of both evolutionary biology and the human sciences. Do not expect me to tell you where we will stand thirty years from now. It will be enough to identify a few general tendencies. For the sake of brevity, I will not devote a preamble to explain... Contributors pp. 424-430. (shrink)

The last thirty years has witnessed an explosion of scholarly books and articles on Locke which, claims Harpham, has "recast our most basic understanding of Locke as a historical actor and political theorist, the Two Treatises as a document, and liberalism as a coherent tradition of political discourse". The seven articles in this volume attempt to assess this "new scholarship," which is described as revisionist and historicist. This volume is now probably the best introduction to the "new scholarship." The introduction (...) by Edward Harpham, "Locke's Two Treatises in Perspective," and the bibliography provide a nice summary of key ideas, books, and articles. The essence of the new perspective is best stated by Richard Ascraft [[sic]] in "The Politics of Locke's Two Treatises of Government": "Locke's thought is thus both philosophically more conservative and politically more radical than we have hitherto supposed. In short, Locke is at once closer to Aristotle and Hooker and to the levelers and Sidney than the prevailing interpretations of his political thought maintain". Ashcraft attempts to separate Locke from the philosophy of Hobbes on such issues as resistance, toleration, justice and natural law, obligation; he directs his argument against Macpherson and Strauss, whose presences haunt the borders of the new scholarship. Eldon Eisenach, in his "Religion and Locke's Two Treatises of Government," interprets Locke's philosophy as marked by a deep skepticism regarding the reach of natural reason and informed by a "deep faith in the efficacy of biblical revelation" as the source of our moral and political duties. Eisenach comes close to dissenting from the new scholarship by wondering whether "Dunn and Ashcraft" are whistling in the dark concerning the coherence of Locke's "worldview"; but he closes ranks with the assertion that the Essay lays out a path to salvation. Eisenach concludes that Locke is not antireligious and secular, but a defender of biblical Christianity. The new scholarship must emphasize all the more a "spiritualist and assertively evangelical Locke". David Resnick, in "Rationality and the Two Treatises," attempts to recover the portrait of Locke as an antitraditionalist, committed to a critical rationalism. Resnick uses Weber's theory of rationality to render a consistent account of Locke's social analysis. Yet Resnick also insists that Locke's political philosophy is not self-interested and atomistic but is rooted in a fully Christian worldview: "Locke's deeply held theological convictions about the existence, benevolence and rationality of God ground his reasoning in a metaphysically stable framework". This religious assumption provides a basis for Locke's "rationality." But a new inconsistency is opened up by this resolution--a rationalism rooted in religious faith, by a philosopher who continually urged their distinction. Karen Iversen Vaughn, in "The Economic Background to Locke's Two Treatises of Government," attempts to correct the new scholarship's neglect of the economic premises of Locke's political philosophy; this neglect is part of an overreaction to Macpherson, but Vaughn offers a moderate economic interpretation of Locke. Vaughn shows the importance of rational self-interest in economic behavior, the necessity of political society to set conditions for economic pursuit: limit on sovereign power is an example of self-interest and evidence that "economic aspects of man's behavior permeated all aspects of life". Further, "civil society requires enforceable rules to contain the self-seeking actions of all men, so that life, liberty and property can be protected". Vaughn's essay opens the back door to the "self-interested" Locke of the "old scholarship." Ronald Hamowy, in "Cato's Letters, John Locke, and the Republican Paradigm," also seeks to redress the imbalance of the new scholarship, arguing that Locke's philosophy was not displaced by the civic humanist tradition and republican virtue. He offers a detailed analysis of Cato's Letters by John Tenchard and Thomas Gordon. Like Locke, "Cato" defines political authority in terms of inalienable rights. His analysis of liberty is strikingly Lockean, and not republican. Pocock's assessment of Locke's irrelevance to Whiggism and the American founding must be rejected. In the final essay, "Locke's Two Treatises and Contemporary Thought: Freedom, Community and the Liberal Tradition," Stephen L. Newman compares contemporary American libertarian and communitarian alternatives to the liberal welfare state. Newman offers a very trenchant criticism of libertarianism as decidedly non-Lockean by dint of its utter depoliticization of all behavior and its tendency to restore the execution of natural law to the private citizen and private groups. On the other hand, communitarianism fails to provide a sufficiently specific and robust notion of the common good, and more consistent writers like Walzer and Barber fall back not upon a teleological community, but autonomy mixed with participation. Locke's distinction of politics from economics, family, and social groups still provides the most workable and realistic account of politics available in the modern world; hence Newman concludes that libertarianism and communitarianism offer "impoverished" political theories. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:REDISCOVERING VIRTUE* SERVAIS PINCK.AERS, 0.P. L!universite de Fribourg Fribourg, Switzerland INTRODUCTION: THE DEBATE ABOUT VIRTUE VIRTUE is back. Especially in the United States, a widespread discussion about its role in moral theology has been initiated, a discussion modeled on Aristotle's Ethics, particularly as Aristotle's thought was developed in the Middle Ages by Thomas Aquinas. Accompanying this rediscovery of virtue is a criticism of modern ethical theories. (...) These theories, having broken with Aristotelian tradition, have led to a burgeoning of contradictory systems: a morality of obligation on the Kantian model; utilitarian morality; and a radical critique of morality by Nietzsche. Because of such divergences any discussion between moralists, especially where the foundations and principles of morality are involved, has up to the present seemed doomed to failure.1 •Translated by Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P. 1 The author who has contributed most to this discussion of virtue is undoubtedly Alasdair Macintyre in his three principal books: After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981; second edition, 1984); Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1988); Three Versions of Moral Inquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy, and 1radition (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1990). The Italian edition of the last book, Enciclopedia, Genealogia e 1radizione (Milan, 1993), includes a special introduction on Macintyre and a biography. I should also like to mention the article by Martha Nussbaum, "Virtue Revived," Times Literary Supplement 4657 Ouly 3, 1992): 9-11. See also a recent book by Andre Comte-Sponville, Petit traite des grands vertus (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995). This work is very interesting because it proposes to a wide readership a moral system drawn from Aristotle that is at the same time based entirely on modern philosophy. In my opinion the author unintentionally confirms the thesis of the incompatibility of modern ethical systems of obligation and the 361 362 SERVAIS PINCKAERS, O.P. In view of this ethical pluralism, certain philosophers have undertaken to set up ethical norms through reflection on justice, using the methods of discussion and decision prevalent in our democratic societies. The initiative has been designated as procedural ethics.2 In this rather chaotic situation, other writers have thought a return to Aristotelian ethics opportune-a move that would enable us to reconnect with the long tradition of virtue-based morality represented therein, while bringing it up to date. In fact, the introduction of the concept of virtue offers many opportunities for the shaping of a morality that takes the human person into account. Virtue is a dynamic human quality acquired through education and personal effort. It forms character and assures continuity in action. Furthermore, it is set within the framework of community and a strong tradition, to whose development it contributes. Teaching on virtue would seem to be a good corrective for excessive individualism. This is what the socalled "communitarian" trend has emphasized.3 The debate on virtue has also surfaced within traditional Catholic teaching. Since the first half of this century, under the inspiration of St. Thomas, several authors of moral theology textbooks have undertaken to reorganize special morality on the basis of the virtues rather than the ten commandments, as had been done since the seventeenth century.4 Admittedly, the change Aristotelian construct of the virtues held by Macintyre. With the moderns he rejects a natural foundation for morality, within man, and thus robs the virtues he treats of their deep roots. Virtue is not spontaneous; it remains voluntaristic. 2 To mention a few titles: K. 0. Apel, Transformation der Philosophie, 2 vols. (Frankfurt, 1981); Apel, Ethique de la discussion (Paris, 1994); J.M. Ferry, Philosophie de la communication (Paris, 1994); Jiirgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handeln, 2 vols. (Frankfurt, 1981); Habermas, Moralbewusstsein und kommunikativer Handeln (Frankfurt, 1983); John Rawls, A Theory ofJustice (Harvard, 1971). 3 See, for example: J. H. Joder, Jesus et le politique: La radicalite ethique de la croix (Lausanne, 1984); S. Hauerwas, The Peacable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, 1983); W. Reese-Schafer, Was ist Kommunitarismus? (Frankfurt, 1994); Charles Taylor, The Sources ofthe Self: The Making ofthe Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass., 1989... (shrink)

How can I know something? How can I convince someone of the rightness of my position? How does reality function? What is artistic creativity? What is the role of the state? It is well known that people from various cultures give dissimilar answers to such philosophical questions. After three decades in the cross-cultural study of ideas and values, Thomas Kasulis found that culture influences not only the answers to these questions, but often how one arrives at the answers. In (...) generalizing cultural difference, Kasulis identifies two kinds of orientation: intimacy and integrity. Both determine how we think about relations among people and among things, and each is reasonable, effective, and consistent. Yet the two are so incompatible in their basic assumptions that they cannot successfully engage each other. Cultural difference extends beyond nations. Cultural identities crystallize in relation to religion, occupation, race, gender, class. Rather than attempt to transcend cultural difference, Kasulis urges a deeper awareness of its roots by moving beyond mere cultural relativism toward a cultural bi-orientationality that will allow us to adapt ourselves to different cultural contexts as the situation demands. Wonderfully clear and unburdened by jargon, Intimacy or Integrity is accessible to readers from a variety of perspectives and backgrounds. By analyzing the synergy between thought and culture, it increases our understanding of cultural difference and guides us in developing strategies for dealing with orientations different from our own. (shrink)

In “Getting that Model T Back on the Road: Thomas Flint on Incarnation and Mereology,” William Hasker contends that the reasons I offered for being dissatisfied with Model T, a mereological model of the incarnation, are insufficient. I argue, though, that Hasker’s defense of Model T is inadequate; though Christians may not want to consign it to the junkyard, they should at least be open to trading it in for a better model.