A March of 2021 “Statement from Pro-Life Catholic Scholars on the Moral Acceptability of Receiving COVID-19 Vaccines,” released by the Ethics and Public Policy Center argued that in accepting one of the Covid vaccines that had recently become available, one would not be “in any way endorsing or con­tributing to the practice of abortion, or . . . in any way showing disrespect for the remains of an unborn human being.” That statement received criticism from some opponents of abortion. Here, I raise six questions about the claims or implications of the “Statement” in order to defend it in its main assertions, correct it in some minor matters, and extend its analysis as needed.

Richard Kraut argues that Neo-Aristotelian ethics should include a com­mitment to “diluted hedonism,” according to which the exercise of a developed life-capacity is good for S only if and partly because S enjoys it. I argue that the Neo-Aristotelian should reject diluted hedonism for two reasons: first, it compro­mises the generality and elegance of the initial developmentalist account; second, it leads to mistaken evaluations of some of the most important and ennobling capacities and activities in human life. Finally, I argue that a more plausible ac­count of the place of pleasure in the good life derives from Aristotle’s discussion in book X of the Nicomachean Ethics: pleasure is a supervenient good that signifies the value of the underlying capacity and activity, but it is not a necessary condition for their goodness.

It is generally accepted that truth is a norm of belief and that, whatever else this might mean, it implies that a person is obligated to believe a proposition only if it is true. Yet this seems to conflict with the norms by which friends form beliefs about each other. For instance, if friends are required to practice interpretive charity in the formation of their beliefs about each other, obligations to believe propositions that are false might arise. In this paper, I assume that there is some such obligation of interpretive charity, and I investigate whether it may be reconciled with the truth-norm. I take for my starting point an account of interpretive charity from the work of Dietrich von Hildebrand, which I develop by critical retrieval of related works by Max Scheler and Gabriel Marcel. The paper concludes that Marcel’s thought on fidelity and reflection is best suited to complete von Hildebrand’s account in such a way as to achieve the sought-after reconciliation of the norms of truth and friendship

In his article “What Do We Think With?” Peter Geach develops an argument for the non-materiality of thinking. Given that basic thinking activity is not clockable in physical time, whereas basic material or bodily activity is so clockable, it follows that basic thinking activity is non-material. Peter Dillard’s attack on this temporality proof takes “thoughts” in the proof to refer to non-occurrent states. The present note shows this reading to be mistaken and so rectifies a misunderstanding of Geach’s argument. It takes no stand on the question of whether the argument succeeds.

On the standard interpretation of Metaphysics IX, Aristotle proceeds from the original sense of δύναμις and ἐνέργεια to an ontological conception of these terms. This should raise the question of what is not ontological about the former and what is ontological about the latter. To address these questions I discuss the commentaries by Heidegger and Menn, which alone come close to addressing these issues. But their readings cannot neatly distinguish between the two senses of δύναμις and ἐνέργεια that we find in the Aristotelian text, thus compelling us to seek a better way of clarifying the standard interpretation, which I argue can be more precisely understood in the following way: δύναμις and ἐνέργεια in their customary meaning cannot be considered ontological in the sense that they have a particular locus among the categories, which is what sets them apart from their newer, ontological meaning. I conclude therefore that the text of Metaphysics IX can be understood as proceeding from an intracategorial conception of δύναμις and ἐνέργεια toward a transcategorial conception of these terms.

The role of certitude in our mental lives is, to put it mildly, controver­sial. Many current epistemologists (including epistemologists of religion) eschew certitude altogether. Given his emphasis on certitude, some have maintained that John Henry Newman was an infallibilist about knowledge. In this paper, we argue that a careful examination of his thought (especially as seen in the Grammar of Assent) reveals that he was an epistemic fallibilist. We first clarify what we mean by fallibilism and infallibilism. Second, we explain why some have read Newman as an infallibilist. Third, we offer two arguments that Newman is at least a fallibilist in a weak sense. In particular, the paradox he seeks to resolve in the Grammar and his dispute with John Locke both indicate that he is at least a weak fallibilist. We close with a consideration of whether Newman is a fallibilist in a much stronger sense as well.

Extending Alvin Plantinga’s model of warranted belief to the beliefs of groups as a whole, I argue that if the dogmatic beliefs of the Catholic Church are true, they are also warranted. Catholic dogmas are warranted because they meet the three conditions of my model: they are formed (1) by ministers functioning properly (2) in accordance with a design plan that is oriented towards truth and reliable (3) in a social environment sufficiently similar to that for which they were designed. I show that according to Catholic doctrine the authoritative spokespersons of the Church—ecumenical councils and popes—meet these conditions when defining dogmas. I also respond to the objection that the warrant of Catholic dogmas is defeated by the plurality of non-Catholic Christian sects that deny Catholic dogmas.

In this paper I deal with the issues in Second Scholasticism of the nature, genesis and creatability of perfect vital acts of cognition and appetition in vital powers. I present the theories of Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), Raffaele Aversa (1589–1657), and Bartolomeo Mastri (1602–1673) together with Bonaventura Belluto (1603–1676). I show that while for Aversa these acts are action-like items merely emanating from the soul and vital powers and as such cannot be produced from the outside, even by God, for Mastri and Belluto they are absolute qualities proceeding from their principles by efficient causation proper, which is a kind of procession that can be replaced by God. I argue that Suárez’s position attempts to steer a middle ground between these two theories.

This article is a contribution to the field of study that Jacques Maritain once described as “metaphysical Axiomatics.” I discuss Aquinas’s use of the metaphysical principle “omne agens agit sibi simile,” focusing on perhaps the most manifest instance of this principle, namely, univocal generation. It is well known that Aquinas holds what could be called a “static” or “formal” view of likeness between God and creatures: creatures are like God because they share in certain exemplar perfections that preexist in God. My focus instead is on an efficient likeness to God, which reflects a foundational truth about reality for Aquinas: all creatures produce something like themselves through their operations, in imitation of God, who does so on a more fundamental level. My discussion will also clarify Aquinas’s derivation of the principle of similitude from a prior metaphysical principle, “every agent acts insofar as it is in act.”

This article examines the reception of Robert Grosseteste by John Duns Scotus on two related questions in epistemology. The first concerns the need of phantasms for cognition, and the second concerns divine illumination. The study first examines Scotus’s Questions on the De Anima with comparison to Grosseteste’s Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, a text Scotus cites specifically. It is argued that Grosseteste is the main influence behind Scotus’s opinion that the need for phantasms is not proper to human nature as such. The second part shows how Scotus disagrees with Grosseteste on a related question. Grosseteste retains a version of divine illumination with a qualified need for phantasms, whereas Scotus maintains the strict necessity of phantasms in this life and rejects illumination. The two parts of this study taken together indicate that Scotus saw Grosseteste as an authority but also felt free to ignore him where the two disagreed.

Robert Grosseteste delivered his inaugural sermon, Dictum 19, in 1229/1230. Like many inaugural sermons, Dictum 19 praises Scripture, its divine author, and the study of the sacred text. Grosseteste’s sermon, however, is unique in that its author had an extensive background in the natural sciences. I propose that his understanding of the nature of light influences his understanding of Scripture in Dictum 19. Specifically, Scripture, like light, gives form to others, creating a hierarchy of bodies which mediate this form. Grosseteste’s thought influenced Saint Bonaventure, who delivered his inaugural sermon Omnium artifex docuit me sapientia at his 1254 inception. Like Grosseteste, Bonaventure’s understanding of the nature of Scripture is based in part on his light metaphysics. I conclude that, for both Grosseteste and Bonaventure, their use of light as an analogy for Scripture is rooted not only in traditional theological metaphors but also in their metaphysics of light.

This study provides the historical background to, and analysis and translations of, two seminal texts from the medieval Islamic world concerning the univocity of being/existence and a theory of “ambiguous predication” (tashkīk), which is similar to the Thomistic theory of analogy. The disputants are Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (1149–1210), who defended a theory of the univocity of being, and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (1201–1274), who defended the theory of ambiguous predication. While the purported issue is whether a quiddity can cause its own existence, the debate extends further. Rāzī draws on several arguments that “existence” must be predicated univocally of God and creature and then concludes that, given the univocity of “existence,” God cannot be simple, but is a composite of the divine quiddity and distinct attributes. In contrast, Ṭūsī denies that “existence” is said univocally of God and creature and rather is predicated ambiguously/analogously, and then defends divine simplicity.

In an effort to refute Avicenna’s real distinction between essence and existence, Averroes argues for an Instantiation Analysis of existence which thinks of existence not as an accidental addition to an essence, but rather as the recognition that there is an instance in extramental reality which matches a concept in the mind of a knower. In this study, I argue that Averroes’s Instantiation Analysis fails to refute Avicenna’s real distinction by showing that Avicenna himself endorses the Instantiation Analysis and, in fact, makes use of it to motivate his real distinction. To show this, I review several texts where Avicenna makes the puzzling claim that substances are found to be in subjects. These texts reveal how Avicenna discovers the real distinction with Aristotle’s help—not, as Averroes relates, against the view of Aristotle.

This article will examine the religious phenomenology of Max Scheler as it is found in his essay on repentance. In outlining Scheler’s understanding of repentance, I shall note his attempt at defining the phenomenon, as well as the presuppositions to and outcomes of this religious act. With this foundation laid, I shall then offer two critiques. First, Scheler’s rendering of repentance limps in not accounting for the cyclical and repeatable nature of repentance, to which human experience and Scheler’s own broader philosophy attest. Second, Scheler’s essay does not consider the role of other persons both in leading one to repentance and in completing the process. As with the first critique, both human experience and Scheler’s own personalist philosophy testify to the necessary role of other persons. These lacunae detract from the otherwise rich phenomenological account.

Contemporary philosophers of religion usually depict God as a responsible moral agent with virtues and obligations. This picture seems to be incompatible with the metaphysically perfect being of classical theism. In this paper I will defend the claim, based on a reading of Thomas Aquinas’s thought, that there is no such incompatibility. I will present Aquinas’s arguments that show that we can attribute to God not only moral goodness in general, but also some moral virtues in a strict sense, such as justice and mercy. I will show why for Aquinas we can say that God has moral duties toward Himself and toward creatures. I will explain how for Aquinas God’s moral duties are not absolute, but conditionally necessitated. Finally, I will show how on Aquinas’s view there is no contradiction in saying that every act of God is, simultaneously, an act of justice and a supererogatory act of mercy.

In this paper, I argue that the dominant contemporary accounts of forgiving do not capture what forgiving most centrally is. I spend the first parts of the paper trying to elucidate what it is that these accounts miss about forgiving, and to explain why I think they miss it. I spend the latter parts of the paper suggesting an alternative, which I call “the charity account.” This account draws much of its theoretical framing from the work of Thomas Aquinas, presenting forgiving as something importantly volitional and essentially loving.

Among those who adopt Aristotle’s definition of the human person as a rational animal, Patrick Lee and Germain Grisez argue that whole brain death is the death of the human person. Even if a living organism remains, it is no longer a human person. They argue this because they define natural kinds by their radical capacities (the capacity to act or the capacity to develop a further capacity). A human person is therefore a being with a capacity for rational acts, and an individual having suffered whole brain death no longer has any such capacity. I present two objections to the radical capacities argument: first, that it fails in defining natural kinds, and second, that it misrepresents Aristotle. Aristotle defines natural kinds not by their capacities but by their functions. A brain-dead individual, I argue, is still a rational animal, but an unhealthy one that is unable to function.

From experience, we know that some cognitive processes are effortless and automatic (or nearly automatic), while others are hard and deliberate. Dual process (DP) accounts of human cognition explain these differences by positing two qualitatively distinct types of cognitive processes within the human mind—types that cannot be reduced to each other. Because DP constructs are bound to show up in discourse on human cognition, decision-making, morality, and character formation, moral philosophers should take DP accounts seriously. Here, I provide an overview of the current state of DP accounts—their basic tenets, major concepts, and the various models of the DP framework—and note some of its more salient criticisms from the psychological research community. Finally, I show that DP accounts’ commitment to a real qualitative distinction between rational and non-rational human behavior puts them at odds with a Thomistic/Aristotelian view of practical rationality.

One of the major contemporary challenges to Thomistic moral psychology is that it is incompatible with the most up-to-date psychological science. Here Thomistic psychology is in good company, targeted along with most virtue-ethical views by philosophical Situationism, which uses replicated psychological studies to suggest that our behaviors are best explained by situational pressures rather than by stable traits (like virtues and vices). In this essay we explain how this body of psychological research poses a much deeper threat to Thomistic moral psychology in particular. For Thomistic moral psychology includes descriptive claims about causal connections between certain cognitive processes and behaviors, even independent of whether those processes emerge from habits like virtues. Psychological studies of correlations between these can provide evidence against those causal claims. We offer a new programmatic response to this deeper challenge: empirical studies are relevant only if they investigate behaviors under intentional descriptions, such that the correlations discovered are between cognition and what Aquinas calls human acts. Psychological research on aggression already emphasizes correlations between cognition and intentional behavior, or human acts, and so is positioned to shed light on how well Thomistic moral psychology fits with empirical data. Surprisingly, Aquinas’s views have quite a lot in common with a leading model of aggression, the social information processing (SIP) model. We close by suggesting how we might examine claims of Thomistic moral psychology from an empirical perspective further using research on social information processing and aggression.

In this study, I outline a heuristic for Thomist philosophical anthropology. In the first part, I introduce the major heuristics employed by Aquinas to establish the objects, operations, powers, and nature of his anthropology. I then identity major lacunae in his anthropology. In the second part, I show how an integrated approach to commonsense, experiential, experimental, and metaphysical psychologies can fill these lacunae and contribute to the enquiries of a contemporary Thomist philosophical anthropology.

Consider the advice for growth in virtue from the Christian Moral Wisdom tradition and contemporary psychology. What is the relation between the outputs of these sources? We present some of the common moral wisdom from the Christian tradition, spelling out the nuance and justification given for the suggestions. We next canvas contemporary psychological findings to discover the evidential relation they bear toward such advice. Although numerous psychological studies might be provided as evidence, we have chosen literatures we believe are most relevant, primarily from personality, social, and positive psychology. Is current evidence set against these old exhortations? Moreover, if contemporary psychology does support Christian Moral Wisdom, does it support it for the same reasons as given by the proponents of Christian Moral Wisdom? We conclude that contemporary psychology does generally support ancient Christian Moral Wisdom in the instances we discuss but with some important caveats or conditions.

In this article, I discuss ethical lessons we can learn from the stories and beliefs of moral exemplars—and how these insights can complement and extend the knowledge we gain through theoretical study. First, exemplars teach us psychological lessons about the way in which virtue is developed and expressed: e.g., about role modeling and post-traumatic growth. Second, they teach us philosophical lessons about the nature of virtue itself and of particular ethical virtues: e.g., about how virtuous people deliberate and how they perceive the mean of virtue. Third, exemplars’ stories teach us personal lessons about our own lives and character: e.g., about how far we are from acting or even thinking like virtuous people—and how much better our lives would be if we were genuinely virtuous. I conclude by discussing an ethical puzzle moral exemplars have not helped me solve: apparent disunity of the virtues.

An exciting trend in virtue ethics is its engagement with empirical psychology. Virtue theorists have connected virtue to various constructs in empirical psychology. The strategy of grounding virtue in the psychological theory of habit, however, has yet to be fully explored. Recent decades of psychological research have shown that habits are an indispensable feature of human life, and virtues and habits have a number of similarities. In this paper, we consider whether virtues are psychological habits (i.e., habits as understood by the field of psychology). After some background to frame the interaction between the two disciplines, we explain the predominant account of habit in psychology, which we call “standard psychological habit,” in the next section. We then consider Servais Pinckaers’s objections that virtue cannot be a habit and conclude that standard psychological habits cannot be virtues. Finally, we argue that another psychological account of habits, goal-directed habits, withstand Pinckaers’s objections and provide a promising construct for understanding virtue.

Although it is common in the Catholic moral tradition to hear punishment spoken of as “just” and demanded by reason, it is remarkably difficult to say why reason demands that malefactors suffer or to articulate what is rendered to whom in punishment. The present essay seeks to fill this lacuna by examining Aquinas’s treatment of punishment. After examining several themes found in his work, the paper will conclude that the conceptual key to the reasonableness of punishment is to be found in the norm that demands contrapassum and that this norm is immediately derived from the same moral insight as the Golden Rule. Thus, the paper concludes, the notion of retribution is intimately and inextricably bound up in insights that are foundational to any coherent Christian ethics.

Formal abstraction is a key instrument Aquinas employs to secure the possibility of mathematics conceived as a theoretical Aristotelian science. In this concept, mathematics investigates quantitative beings, which are grasped by means of formal abstraction in their necessary, universal, and changeless properties. Based on this, the paper divides into two main parts. In the first part (section II) I explicate Aquinas’s conception of (formal) abstraction against the background of the Aristotelian theory of science and mathematics. In the second part (section III) I present and critically assess the problems associated with formal abstraction in mathematics. With all due respect to Aquinas’s genius, I find his conception of formal abstraction (as well as mathematics) unsatisfactory and list the main reasons for its failure in the conclusion.

Anscombe ends her seminal 1958 essay “Modern Moral Philosophy” with a presentation of five characters, each answering an ancient (and contemporary) question as to “whether one might ever need to commit injustice, or whether it won’t be the best thing to do?” Her fifth character is the execrated consequentialist who “shows a corrupt mind.” But who are the first four characters? Do they “show a mind”? And what precisely is the significance (if any) of her presenting those five just then? In this paper, we interpret Anscombe’s essay with an eye to making sense of her character presentation. We argue that the first four characters can be seen to embody the chief negative and positive doctrines of the essay and to thereby represent and charter a pluralistic school of anti-consequentialist ethics. The upshot is something exegetically interesting yet of broader philosophical importance.

Modern commentators recognize the irony of Aristotle’s Categories becoming a central text for Platonic schools. For similar reasons, these commentators would perhaps be surprised to see Aquinas’s In VII Metaphysics, where he apparently identifies the secondary substance of Aristotle’s Categories with a false Platonic sense of “substance” as if, for Aristotle, only Platonists would say secondary substances are substances. This passage in Aquinas’s commentary has led Mgr. Wippel to claim that, for Aquinas, secondary substance and essence are not the same thing and that Aristotle’s notion of essence is absent from the Categories. This paper—by closely analyzing the apparently contradictory divisions of “substance” in Aquinas’s In V and VII Metaphysics—shows that essence and secondary substance are not altogether distinct for Aquinas. Moreover, when the Categories is viewed by Aquinas as a work of logic, it is found largely to cut across the disputes between Platonism and Aristotelianism.

The classical Confucian philosopher Xunzi proposed a naturalistic virtue ethics account of ritual: rituals are practices that channel human emotion and desire so that one develops virtues. In this paper I show that William of Auxerre’s Summa de Officiis Ecclesiasticis can be understood as presenting a similar account of ritual. William places great emphasis on the emotional power of the liturgy, which makes participants like the blessed in heaven by developing virtue. In other words, he has a virtue ethics of ritual closely aligned with that of Xunzi. Xunzi’s writings on ritual illuminate and enrich one’s reading of the Summa de Officiis. But unlike Xunzi, William is not a naturalist with regard to ritual: although much of William’s language about the causal power of liturgy can be explained in Xunzian terms, Christian liturgy has an irreducible supernatural element.

Through this paper we seek to deal with the question of whether God is capable of enjoying aesthetic beauty. First of all, we will consider whether this beauty has meaning for God by contrasting Maritain’s and Hildebrand’s thoughts. This will lead us to expose the fundamental distinctions drawn by both authors regarding beauty, and to study more carefully the relationship between aesthetic beauty and the senses. Subsequently, we will present four criticisms of the assertion, inferred from Maritain’s thought, that aesthetic beauty has no meaning for God. Examining these criticisms will involve recognizing the fundamental distinction between transcendental beauty and aesthetic beauty, which cannot be understood just as something grounded in transcendental beauty. Finally, partially restoring Maritain’s theses, we will acknowledge the aporia present in the relationship between aesthetic beauty and God and we will discuss possible solutions to it.

Attitudes towards the fourth way differ from incredulity and embarrassment to seeing it as a profound demonstration of God’s existence. Aside from general treatments on all the five ways, the fourth way has received little by way of direct commentary in comparison to the other better known (and arguably better appreciated) ways. In this article I seek to present Aquinas’s fourth way as a way to God which makes use of his general and more familiar metaphysical reasoning. This serves to give the reading of the fourth way as a profound argument for God’s existence, and also to integrate it with the other four ways given the common metaphysical backdrop.

Paul Macdonald recently argued that a consistent Thomist must hold, against Aquinas, that non-human animals have direct rights. I show that his arguments fail and that, on the contrary, the impossibility of brute animals having rights flows directly from the very essence of justice itself as it is understood by Aquinas.

I present the strict definition of intended effects and pose two questions for its critics: (1) Apart from rationalizing moral intuitions about the craniotomy and other controversial cases, why classify an effect as intended if it does not explain the action? (2) What definition of intended effects can people use to guide their actions? These questions show that broad definitions of intended effects have no basis in action theory and are too vague to guide people’s actions. I suggest that broad definitions seem plausible because people confuse what someone intends and what someone is responsible for causing.

Linda Zagzebski’s exemplarist moral theory takes as its foundation “exemplars of goodness identified directly by the emotion of admiration.” This paper’s basic question is whether Zagzebski’s trust in the emotion of admiration is well-founded. In other words, do we have good reason to trust that those we admire on conscientious reflection warrant our admiration, such that we will not be led astray? The paper’s thesis is that Zagzebski’s theory would be stronger with a more fully developed account of conscience. The paper outlines and discusses Zagzebski’s theory, articulates the epistemic challenge that the theory confronts, and proposes a sketch of an account of conscience that supplements Zagzebski’s account of conscientiousness.

Bonaventure’s Sentence Commentary provides the most comprehensive set of trinitarian arguments to date. This article focuses on just one of them, the one from beatitude. Roughly, beatitude can be thought of as God’s enjoyment of his own, supreme goodness. After a brief rationale of Bonaventure’s speculative project, I assay the concept of beatitude and exposit his four-stage argument. Bonaventure reasons: (i) for a single supreme substance; (ii) for at least two divine persons; (iii) against the possibility for an infinite number of divine persons; (iv) for at least three, and against the possibility of four (or more) divine persons. I show how this line of reasoning is significantly more complex than Bonaventure’s terse summaries initially indicate. My main goal is to explicate the four steps and unpack their main support. Along the way I attend to the argument’s sources, logical progression, and I respond to several concerns.

The Heideggerian critique of onto-theology has attained a semi-canonical status for continental philosophy of religion. But is the critique itself sound, and does it actually result in a richer philosophical and theological discourse concerning God? In this paper, I argue that Heidegger’s onto-theological critique suffers from serious difficulties. First (section II) I examine the critique, summarizing and condensing the critique in its essentials. I use Westphal’s fourfold criteria as a way of giving it some precision, while presenting it in relative independence from Heidegger’s own account of Being. In section III, I examine the results of non-onto-theological discourse on God post-Heidegger, suggesting, using the examples of John Caputo and Richard Kearney, that Heidegger’s onto-theological critique has not inspired a less problematic religious discourse. In the fourth and final section, I question the legitimacy of the critique itself. While Heidegger’s critique of onto-theology has the seemingly admirable goal of rendering our discourse about God less instrumental and idolatrous, a careful analysis of the criteria themselves reveals that onto-theology either misinterprets natural theological discourse on God or subjects it to impossible requirements.

Jean-Luc Marion proposes what he calls the “phenomenology of givenness” (phénoménologie de la donation) as the true “first philosophy.” In this paper I consider his critique of previous first philosophies and his argument for the phenomenology of givenness as their replacement. I note several problems with the phenomenology of givenness and conclude that it does not seem ready yet to assume the title of “first philosophy.”

This paper argues that Heidegger’s description of death as a phenomenon of life opens a path to immortality different from the classical arguments. In the first part, I will explain why, for Heidegger, the account of immortality must start from a phenomenology of death, and I will analyze the characteristics of Being-towards-death. Then, I will discuss the relationship between immortality and death’s revelation of Being. Finally, I will examine the Christian background of Heidegger’s conception of death and immortality, and I will address some objections.

While all phenomenologists aim to grasp the “things themselves,” they disagree about the best method for doing this and about what the “things themselves” are. Many metaphysicians, especially Catholic realists, reject phenomenology altogether. I show that many phenomenological methods are useful for reaching the goals of both phenomenology and realist metaphysics. First, I present a history of phenomenological methods, including those used by Scheler, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Marion, Kearney, Rocha, and others. Next, I consider two sets of challenges raised to some of these methods. Finally, I outline how to join these methods with each other and with the methods of realist metaphysics, ultimately arriving at an aesthetic method, inspired by the work of von Balthasar, for considering fundamental phenomena.

Phenomenologists turn to Augustine to remedy the neglect of life, love, and language in the Cartesian cogito: (1) concerning life, Edmund Husserl appropriates Augustine’s analysis of distentio animi, Edith Stein of vivo, and Hannah Arendt of initium; (2) concerning love, Max Scheler appropriates Augustine’s analysis of ordo amoris, Martin Heidegger of curare, and Dietrich von Hildebrand of affectiones; (3) concerning language, Ludwig Wittgenstein appropriates Augustine’s analysis of ostendere, Hans-Georg Gadamer of verbum cordis, and Jean-Luc Marion of confessio. Phenomenology’s non-Cartesian Augustinianism can tell us something about phenomenology, namely that it is engaged in the project of recontextualizing the cogito, and something about Augustine, namely how radically different his project is than Descartes’s. Phenomenology presents an Augustine that is well positioned for the debates of our times concerning mind and world, desire and the human person, and language and embodiment.

Stein claims that Husserl’s transcendental idealism makes it impossible to clarify the transcendence of the world because it posits that consciousness constitutes being. Inspired by Aquinas, Stein counters that making thinking the measure of being deprives what is of its epistemological and ontological independence from and primacy over what thinks. She contends that this approach inverts the natural relationship between the mind and the world. Given the complicated relationship between them, however, the question is whether Stein’s argument that Husserl lacked an adequate understanding of and appreciation for the phenomenon of transcendence is sound. In fact, Husserl’s treatments of “limit problems of phenomenology” in his manuscripts from 1908 to 1937, which were only recently published in Husserliana XLII (2014), show that he undertook extensive investigations of metaphysical, metaethical, and religious and theological questions. Tragically, Stein was prevented from gaining an even remotely complete picture of Husserl’s work. In this paper, therefore, I examine Stein’s critique of Husserl’s transcendental idealism in light of the fuller evidence.

In his essay, I examine the nature of sacred time, focusing primarily though not exclusively on two aspects of sacred time: that it is “set aside” from use and that in this time human beings can be in union and communion with and in God. I argue that chronological, “clock” time and Heideggerian “datable” (in-order-to) time are incapable of being directly consecrated as sacred time. In order to understand sacred time, I investigate the Fall and how this results in an essentially instrumentalist understanding of the world and time, which has its ultimate motive in the drive for human self-sufficiency. Only against this backdrop can one properly understand the nature (physis) of human temporality and historicity with respect to sacred time as set apart from use and as that time we spend and thus share with Christ, thereby coming into union and communion with God.

I defend the view that charity in interpretation is both an epistemic and a moral virtue. In the first part, I examine Donald Davidson’s version of his principle of charity and question his ascription of beliefs by raising a phenomenological objection: beliefs themselves, before being ascribed, need to be interpreted when interpreters and the subjects they try to understand do not share the same cultural and historical background. In the second section, I examine the notion of epistemic virtue as discussed in virtue epistemology and question whether an epistemic virtue can be completely separated from a moral virtue. In the third section, I show how Gregory the Great, Father of the Church and Pope in the 6th century, understands the virtue of charity in interpretation not as a motivation (in a causal process of interpretation, as in virtue epistemology) but as an attraction to the good (in a teleological process) so that the interpreter is not only a technician producing an interpretation (following a “principle” of charity, as in Davidson) but a moral agent acting in a community.

This paper looks to make a small contribution to the critical engagement between philosophical Thomism and phenomenology, inspired by the recent work of the German phenomenologist and hermeneutic thinker Günter Figal. My suggestion is that Figal’s proposal for a broad-based hermeneutical philosophy rooted in a renewed realism concerning things in their externality and “objectivity” provides great potential for a renewed encounter with Thomist realism. The paper takes up this issue through a brief examination of some of the more problematic idealistic features of Kantian and Husserlian thought, before turning to consider how these aspects of the tradition are reframed within Figal’s phenomenological realism. The Thomist position concerning the relation between things and their understanding (including the complex matter of the verbum mentis) is then raised, drawing both on Aquinas’s own texts and the interpretations of Jacques Maritain. Some striking emerging affinities between this tradition and Figal’s hermeneutic phenomenology are noted.

“Experiencing others” in this paper stands for apprehending fellow human beings insofar as they express themselves and thus are or have been—on some level—alive and conscious. Contemporary scholars have increasingly paid attention to phenomenological approaches to explaining this phenomenon, whether under the rubric of knowing other minds, intersubjectivity, or empathy. In this connection, Max Scheler’s studies of sympathy and Edith Stein’s dissertation on empathy have stood out. Yet scholars often treat their views in tandem, paying little attention to their differences. This neglect is unfortunate since their disagreement harbors—at least prima facie—two radically different points of departure for understanding how we experience one another. The main objective of this paper is to identify their disagreement and to probe the possibility and necessity of resolving it.

Suárez’s theory of analogy is commonly considered problematic, insomuch as it attempts to combine the assertion of perfect unity and precision of the concept of being with the insistence that it is not univocal but analogical. In this article I first attempt to identify the precise nature of the problem in Suárez’s account (critically evaluating some older and recent approaches) and then propose an interpretation of Suárez’s notion of analogy according to which what Suárez calls “analogy” is basically the same thing as Scotus’s essential order (sans the formal distinction). I suggest that Suárez’s distancing from Scotus is often merely verbal, and that much of the confusing aspect of his doctrine stems from his idiosyncratic terminology. In corroboration of my interpretation I adduce the assessment of Suárez by the Scotist B. Mastri, and I provide some broader context to clarify Suárez’s relation to other theories of analogy, medieval and post-medieval.

This paper outlines the views of two 17th century thinkers (Thomas Jackson and John Locke) on the question of the metaphysics of resurrection. I show that Jackson and Locke each depart from central 17th century Scholastic convictions regarding resurrection and philosophical anthropology (convictions laid out in section II). Each holds that matter or material continuity is not a plausible principle of diachronic individuation for living bodies such as human beings. Despite their rejection of the traditional view, they each provide a defence of the possibility of a personal afterlife. I outline these (quite different) defences in sections III–IV. I then argue (section V) that it is likely either that Locke had read Jackson on the issue of resurrection or that the two were influenced by a common source. I argue that matter might provide a suitable principle of diachronic individuation in both everyday cases of living bodies and in the case of resurrection.

St. Thomas Aquinas treats penance as both a sacrament and a virtue. In either form, penance’s principal human act is contrition—a willed sorrow for one’s sins and an intention to avoid future sins. A look at Aquinas’s understanding of penitential contrition reveals a complex interplay of the different objects of love, the gift of fear, and finally friendship with God. This article offers an analysis of Aquinas’s accounts of penance and contrition with respect to these key elements. I argue that contrition performs a fundamental role in countering, restoring, and safeguarding a proper ordering of love and attainment of the ultimate good of union with God. In short, contrition is the act that directly counters the interior disorder wrought by sin and provides an ongoing counter to the threat of additional disorder. Sin’s disorder is the aversion to God and conversion to self, while contrition involves the aversion to self and a conversion to God.

I raise a difficulty for Thomas’s views on the passions I call the instrumentalizing problem: Can well-ordered passions contribute to good human activity beyond merely expressing or rendering more effective the independent work of intellect and will? If not, does that not raise the risk that we are merely handicapped angels? I develop a response by examining Thomas’s discussion of the filiae luxuriae, intellectual and volitional flaws arising from lust. I draw on Thomas’s understanding of one filia, blindness of mind, to help sketch an account of the good habits it opposes: the acquired virtue I term attentiveness and the corresponding Spiritual gift of understanding. These good habits, I argue, render their bearers responsive to natural and supernatural reasons that guide them in the conduct of life. By partly constituting these habits, well-ordered passion makes an indispensable contribution to human activity at its best.

I argue that Plato held a kinds of reality theory, not a degrees of reality theory, and that this position solves otherwise intractable problems about the Forms, notably the Third Man critique. These problems stem from the fact that Plato applied the same predicate bothto a Form (ness) and to its participants. Section I shows that this creates serious difficulties for the Forms, whether the predicate is taken in the same sense or in totally different senses. Section II presents the evidence that Plato had a third way of applying that predicate (namely, by analogy) which obviates those problems. Finally, section III explains how predication by analogy requires a kinds of reality theory, but is incompatible with a degrees of reality theory. Thus, Plato’s kinds of reality theory validates the third way of predication discussed in section II, which in turn solves the problems enumerated in section I.

Scholars strive, in their treatment of Stein’s work, to express both a phenomenological concept of the human person, characterized by conscious and free spiritual activity, and a metaphysical concept of the person, seen as an individual essence unfolding throughout life. In Stein’s work, the two concepts are not simply juxtaposed, nor is there a shift from one to the other. Stein integrates her phenomenological research into a metaphysical framework. In the present contribution, I endeavor to show that Stein’s interpretation of Husserl’s concept of constitution focuses on the question of whether this constitution is to be understood realistically or idealistically and on the question of the constituting subject. I shall argue that Stein’s interpretation of constitution is closely linked to the lived experience she calls already in her early writings “self-discovery” and “awakening.”

I first argue that, contrary to many atheistic philosophers, there is good reason to think the typical theistic philosopher’s retaining of her theism when faced with the Problem of Evil (PoE) is comparatively epistemically upstanding even if both atheism is true and the typical theistic philosopher has no serious criticism of the atheist’s premises in the PoE argument. However, I then argue that, contrary to many theistic philosophers, even if theism is true, the typical theistic philosopher has no good non-theistic reasons for rejecting any of the atheist’s premises, and she has good non-theistic reasons in favor of the atheist’s premises. In that respect, it’s extremely difficult for the theistic philosopher to respond to the PoE in an informative, non-question-begging way. I close by considering whether theistic philosophers should reject my second thesis.Thanks to Patrick Shirreff, Toomas Lott, the Rutgers Center for the Philosophy of Religion group, and two referees for their excellent comments.1

The goal of this paper is to analyze the response of John Duns Scotus to Godfrey of Fontaines’s argument against Henry of Ghent’s theory of the will’s self-motion. Godfrey’s argument is that, if the object is assumed to be causa sine qua non and the efficient causality is totally attributed to the will in the act of volition, it would also follow that not only the will’s motion but every motion in nature, such as, for example, the igniting of wood, is a self-motion. In this paper, I will explain that Scotus’s refutation of this argument in Reportatio II, d. 25 is based on his reflection upon the general possibility of self-motion as well as upon the indeterminacy of the will’s act. In doing so, I will show that the development of Scotus’s theory of the will’s motion is closely related to his universalized theory of self-motion.

Two recent studies by Joseph Torchia and Paul Griffiths show the importance of Augustine’s critique of the vice of curiositas to contemporary life and thought. Superficially, it might seem that Augustine condemned curiosity because it “seeks to find out whatever it wishes without restriction of any kind.” Though profoundly influenced by Augustine, Bernard Lonergan praised intellectual curiosity precisely insofar as it is motivated by an unrestricted desire to know, rather than by less noble motives. Drawing upon the researches of Torchia and Griffiths, this article endeavors to show that Augustine does not simply equate curiositas with an unrestricted desire to know, and that the virtue of intellectual curiosity as Lonergan understood it is in fact endorsed by Augustine by means of its relationship to the virtue of studiositas. This more nuanced view of the virtues and vices of intellect can provide guidance for contemporary intellectual pursuits, both how to pursue and not to pursue knowledge.

In this article, I show how it is possible, working from a Thomistic perspective, to affirm the existence of animal rights. To start, I show how it is possible to ascribe indirect rights to animals—in particular, the indirect right to not be treated cruelly by us. Then, I show how it is possible to ascribe some direct rights to animals using the same reasoning that Aquinas offers in defending the claim that animals have indirect rights. Next, I draw on elements of Aquinas’s metaphysical worldview in order to buttress the claim that animals have direct rights. I then respond to an attempt to ground the ethical treatment of animals, but not direct rights for animals, in natural law. In conclusion, I affirm that it is permissible to use animals to further the human good so long as in doing so we respect the direct rights that they possess.

Thomas Williams has argued that the doctrine of univocity (the thesis that God and creatures can be predicated of univocally) is true and salutary. Such a claim is frequently contested, particularly in regard to the property—if there be any such—of existence or being. Inspired by the thought of Francisco Suárez, I outline a way of understanding the thesis of the analogy of being that avoids the criticisms levelled by Williams and others against analogy. I further suggest that the metaphysically committed version of univocal predication favoured by many analytic philosophers of religion causes difficulties for the practice of perfect being theology, which is often taken to play an important role in the construction of kataphatic philosophical theologies. My exposition of the analogy of being is, I suggest, better fitted to the practice of perfect being theology and, thus, salutary for the practice of Christian natural theology.

Aquinas teaches that the acquired moral virtues associated with the civil life are to be differentiated from the gratuitous moral virtues associated with the spiritual life. An interpretation of Aquinas will benefit from situating his various remarks on the moral virtues within the context of his teaching regarding how Christian persons develop in virtue over time. In this account, Aquinas makes a distinction between the moral virtues exercised in this life (in via) and in heaven (in patria), as well as between three stages of the Christian moral life in via (active, intermediate, and contemplative). I argue that Aquinas indicates that for Christian persons the acquired moral virtues are retained in the active life in via, but not in patria. Further, claims that Aquinas makes regarding the relationship between the contemplative moral virtues and the active moral virtues provide an analogy for understanding how infused charity might relate to the acquired moral virtues.

I first argue that, contrary to many atheistic philosophers, there is good reason to think the typical theistic philosopher’s retaining of her theism when faced with the Problem of Evil (PoE) is comparatively epistemically upstanding even if both atheism is true and the typical theistic philosopher has no serious criticism of the atheist’s premises in the PoE argument. However, I then argue that, contrary to many theistic philosophers, even if theism is true, the typical theistic philosopher has no good non-theistic reasons for rejecting any of the atheist’s premises, and she has good non-theistic reasons in favor of the atheist’s premises. In that respect, it’s extremely difficult for the theistic philosopher to respond to the PoE in an informative, non-question-begging way. I close by considering whether theistic philosophers should reject my second thesis.

The scholarly consensus is that Thomas Aquinas’s views about individuation changed over time. The consensus states that he wavered in his opinion about whether determinate dimensions or indeterminate dimensions serve in the individuation of corporeal substances. I argue that this consensus is mistaken. I focus on early texts of Thomas to argue that he relies on different types of dimensions to answer different problems of individuation. Determinate dimensions resolve a problem in the order of perfection, and indeterminate dimensions resolve a problem in the order of generation. I explain texts that answer the problem of individuation in the order of perfection according to questions about universals, cognition, and science. I then explain texts that answer the problem of individuation in the order of generation. My conclusion argues that, despite abandoning the language, Thomas continues later in his career to rely on indeterminate dimensions to resolve the problem of individuation in the order of generation.

The problem of human unity lies at the heart of Edith Stein’s investigation of the structure of human nature in her mature works. By examining her resolution of this problem in Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person and Endliches und ewiges Sein, I show how Stein incorporates two teachings of Thomistic anthropology—namely, the rational soul as principle both of substantial unity and of bodily formation—while reinterpreting the meaning of these teachings through performing a fresh phenomenological investigation. Although this investigation leads Stein to propose a conceptually different explanation of human unity and bodily formation than that given by Aquinas, I argue that this difference should not be understood as if Stein and Aquinas stand squarely opposed on these important anthropological questions, but rather that Stein’s proposal lies in decisive continuity with the received teachings of Aquinas even while it represents an expanded conception of these teachings that also includes some contrast and disagreement.

In an article that appeared in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Kody Cooper argued that “to be a Hobbesian is to be prolife.” In this essay, I will provide an argument that rebuts Cooper’s prolife interpretation of Hobbes. First, I will argue that Cooper has, without argument, committed an equivocation between a person’s personal identity and his or her organism. Resolving this ambiguity would allow for an interpretation of Hobbes that can consistently reject the notion that the life of a person “begins at conception.” Second, I will show that Cooper fails to take into account the significant costs that are placed upon prospective mothers and is therefore not able to judge whether or not aborting a fetus is within a mother’s enlightened self-interest. Third, I will, contrary to Cooper, show why it may be acceptable for a Hobbesian sovereign to construct a legal regime that is permissive of abortion.

It’s strange that sleep doesn’t come up more when we think of virtue. In this paper, I argue that there is a virtue concerned with sleep, which I call “somnience,” and I develop an account of this virtue. My account of somnience builds on the virtue tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas and recent research about the nature of sleep. In the first section I argue that there is a need for such a virtue. Next, I argue that somnience is a form of temperance. Third, I show how somnience connects to a number of other virtues, which helps us fill out the nature of the virtue. Finally, I argue that sleep also relates to virtue by aiding virtue formation.

William of Ockham is often thought to be the medieval progenitor of divine command theory (hereafter DCT). This paper contends that the origin of a thoroughgoing and fully reductive DCT position is perhaps more appropriately laid at the feet of Andrew of Neufchateau. We begin with a brief recapitulation of an interpretive dispute surrounding Ockham in order to highlight how there is enough ambiguity in his work about the metaphysical foundations of morality to warrant suspicion about whether he actually stands at the origin of DCT. We then show how all such ambiguity is jettisoned in the work of Andrew, who explicitly rejects a position similar to one plausibly attributable to Ockham and also articulates a fully reductive DCT.

Hope is important in Thomas Aquinas’s account of the emotions: it is one of the four primary emotions and the first of the irascible emotions. Yet his account of hope as a movement of the sensory appetite toward a future possible good that is arduous to attain appears to be overly restrictive, for people often hope for things that are not cognized as arduous (e.g., when I hope for fine weather on my wedding day, that a professional athlete remains in good health, or that an experimental medicine is effective). This paper examines Aquinas’s reasons for limiting hope to arduous goods.

In “Defending Adam After Darwin,” Nicanor Austriaco, OP, mounts a noteworthy defense of monogenism, part of which turns on the relationship between abstract thought and language. At a certain point, he turns to a passage from Aquinas’s Commentary on John to support two claims which he affirms without qualification: namely, that the capacity for forming abstract concepts corresponding to the quiddities of things presupposes the capacity for language and that we grasp concepts through words. In addition, he asserts that Aquinas is talking about abstraction in this passage. I argue that these three claims are based on a misreading of Aquinas. I then show that Aquinas would agree with the qualified claim that the formation of certain concepts presupposes the usage of words. I also show that Aquinas might accept with qualification the notion that the capacity for forming abstract concepts presupposes the capacity for language: namely, by way of disposition.

Is there a punishment for violating the natural law? This important question has been neglected in the scholarship on Thomistic natural law theory. I show that there is a three-fold punishment proper to the natural law; the remorse of conscience, the inability to be a friend to oneself, and the inability to be a friend to another work in concert to provide a natural penalty for moral wrongdoing. In order to establish these points, I first analyze sources of St. Thomas Aquinas’s natural law theory by discussing St. Augustine’s notion of law and fundamental ideas in Aristotle’s political philosophy. Next, I show how Aquinas unites aspects of Augustinian and Aristotelian thought in his treatment of natural law and thereby provides a framework for answering our question. Finally, I turn to Plato’s Gorgias and to Aristotle’s discussion of self-love in order to integrate these ideas with Aquinas’s natural law theory.

In this article, I present two virtually unknown sixteenth-century views of human freedom, that is, the views of Bartolomaeus de Usingen (1465–1532) and Jodocus Trutfetter (1460–1519) on the one hand and John Mair (1470–1550) on the other. Their views serve as a natural context and partial background to the more famous debate on human freedom between Martin Luther (1483–1556) and Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536) from 1524–1526. Usingen and Trutfetter were Luther’s philosophy teachers in Erfurt. In a passage from Book III of John Mair’s commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics from 1530, he seems to defend a view of human freedom by which we can will evil for the sake of evil. Very few thinkers in the history of philosophy have defended such a view. The most famous medieval thinker to do so is William Ockham (1288–1347). To illustrate how radical this view is, I place him in the historical context of such thinkers as Plato, Augustine, Buridan, and Descartes.

This essay argues that Robert Grosseteste’s Latin translation of Aristotle’s passage on natural justice was philosophically determinant for its medieval reception. By altering the passage, Grosseteste allowed for a reconciliation of prima facie opposing views on natural law, namely: On one hand, the Ciceronian-Stoic and Augustinian-Neoplatonic idea that natural law is primarily immutable; and on the other, Aristotle’s claim that all things that are naturally just are subject to change. Focusing on Albert the Great’s first commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, and on Thomas Aquinas’s Sententia libri ethicorum, the paper shows that several distinctions made by these authors, which account for a restricted description of how naturally just things can change, were allowed and suggested by Grosseteste’s alterations of the passage.

In her mature thought, Edith Stein presents a philosophy that is positively Christian and specifically Catholic. The rationale behind her presentation rests upon three interplaying factors: the nature of philosophy; the nature and state of finite creatures in relation to God; and the meaning of being a Christian. Stein maintains that given the essential imperfection and natural limitation of philosophy as a human science, philosophy lies interiorly open for its elevation and completion through its supplementation by the supernatural contents of Revelation, yet in such a way that it retains its proper philosophical character precisely as determined by its specific object domain appropriately investigated. In this paper, I critically examine this provocative proposal of Stein by setting it in contrast to “the Thomistic solution” of Jacques Maritain, upon which Stein’s solution to the question foundationally relies, and thereby intend to manifest its basic significance while simultaneously assessing its philosophical validity.

Newman’s constant preoccupation with “connectedness” leads him to explore and to insist upon the importance of the relationship between the “notional” and the “real,” and therefore of that between theology and philosophy, on the one hand, and spirituality (in the sense of lived spiritual experience) and morality or ethics, on the other. This paper explores Newman’s expression of these ideas, firstly in his sermons and theological writings, and finally in the more philosophical context of the Grammar of Assent.

Newman’s view of the heart corresponds with the recent Catechism of the Catholic Church. His motto, Cor ad cor loquitur, exhibits his central religious preoccupation. There are three factors involved in religious existence: intellectual apprehension, emotional realization, and moral action. The center, located in the heart, is typically considered secondary: clear conception and moral action are all that is required. For Newman, this is truncated religion, for religion has its deepest root in the heart. Here is where he considers conscience. Like taste and common sense, it is an intellectual virtue; but unlike the former, it is always emotional. It is a privileged place of relation to God, the Supreme Judge. A peculiar set of emotional matters cluster around this relation. It plays in relation to the work of intellect as theology in relation to devotion. This exhibits an instance of the larger relation between notional and real assent. The latter deals with concrete matters and is a relation of “the whole person.” Its aim is to realize what we already accept. That may occur organically through experience, but it can also be invoked meditatively in solitude. Imagination is the chief vehicle of that realization.

In this article I explain various points of contact between Newman and the Catholic philosophical tradition. I begin with Newman’s personalism as it is found in the Grammar of Assent, especially in the distinction between notional and real assent, and in the distinction between formal and informal inference. Then I proceed to Newman’s personalism as it is found in his teaching on conscience and on doctrinal development. I then consider Newman as proto-phenomenologist and also as an Augustinian thinker. Finally, I discuss Newman’s teaching on moral and intellectual virtue in The Idea of a University. If I had to pick one utterance of Newman that epitomizes his philosophical thought in a way that engages Catholic philosophers, I would pick the motto of the Grammar of Assent: “Non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum tuum.”

John Henry Newman’s philosophical reflection on the nature of faith and its relation to evidence is fascinating, complex, and slightly misleading; yet it shows constructive promise. In particular, I argue that his broader construal of reason should concomitantly play out in a broader construal of evidence. Accordingly, I show how Newman’s distinction between different modes of reasoning informs his understanding of the relationship between faith and evidence. I conclude with three areas that deserve further epistemological attention and development: namely, a more expansive construal of evidence in light of Newman’s broader account of reason, a more constructive understanding of the relationship between his cumulative, though informal, approach and natural theology, and whether his account of faith and evidence operates with a kind of phenomenal conservatism.

John Henry Newman starts the second half of the Grammar of Assent by laying out a “paradox,” and he announces that the purpose of the following chapters of the book is to resolve it. Surprisingly, recent scholarship has tended not to question the nature of this paradox. In this paper, I argue that we should understand Newman’s paradox to be a kind of skeptical paradox that arises when we accept “Lockean rationalism.” I then show how Newman deals with the paradox. One of the upshots of this reading is that “naturalism” plays a smaller role in Newman’s anti-skepticism than previous commentators have suggested. Another is that we should understand Newman to be a kind of infallibilist.

Despite Newman’s negligible direct familiarity with the works and thought of John Duns Scotus, there has been recent discussion of affinities between the two along a range of philosophical approaches and sensibilities. These notes introduce the thesis that both Scotus and Newman share a disposition to appeal to aesthetic rationality when it comes to asserting certain basic truths critical to Christian understanding. Recent Scotus studies have demonstrated the deep and pervasive presence of the aesthetic dimension in Duns Scotus’s thought. In the latter half of this paper I argue for the importance of aesthetic rationality in understanding Newman’s illative sense, which is perhaps his most important contribution to philosophical thought.

While working on various medieval philosophers, I have noticed an affinity between their remarks on the reasonableness of accepting propositions that are not matters of proof and strict deduction and St. John Henry Newman’s remarks that we accept unconditionally and rightly everyday ordinary propositions without calibrating them to demonstrable arguments. In particular, Cardinal Matthew of Aquasparta and Blessed John Duns Scotus both claim there is a sense in which assent to everyday propositions is tantamount to knowledge (scientia), even though there is no adequate argumentation or demonstrative reasoning compelling us to assent to such propositions. Newman’s distinction between notional and real apprehension of propositions, notional and real assents, and his insistence on the existence of real assents to propositions that are not necessarily proved, or in some cases provable, seem, at first glance, a case parallel to that of the medieval philosophers we have mentioned.

Recent authors, emphasizing Newman’s distaste for natural theology—especially William Paley’s design argument—have urged us to follow Newman’s lead and reject design arguments. But I argue that Newman’s own argument for God’s existence (his argument from conscience) fails without a supplementary design argument or similar reason to think our faculties are truth-oriented. In other words, Newman appears to need the kind of argument he explicitly rejects. Finding Newman’s rejection of natural theology to stem primarily from factors other than worries about cogency, however, I further argue that there is little reason not to pursue design arguments in order to save the argument from conscience.

Aquinas implies that there is a single end of man, which can be known by reason from the moment of discretion and without the aid of revelation. This raises the problems: What is this end? How is it known? And how are the several natural, human goods related to this one end? The essay argues, first, that the naturally known end of man is the operation of virtue rather than God; second, that the virtue in question is, in the first place, moral rather than intellectual; third, that the sub-rational goods, though naturally desired, are ultimately valuable as instrumental means to further goods; and finally, that there is, for Aquinas, a fundamental paradox at the heart of man’s moral experience, and that the axiology developed in the essay can help us to appreciate this paradox. It will also argue, in passing, that Aquinas’s axiology bears the clear mark of Cicero’s moderate Stoicism.

It is widely believed today that John Duns Scotus’s doctrine of the univocity of being ushered in various deleterious philosophical and theological consequences that resulted in the negative features of modernity. Included in this common opinion, but not examined, is the belief that by affirming univocity Scotus thereby also denied the analogy of being (analogia entis). The present essay challenges this belief by recovering Scotus’s true position on analogy, namely that it obtains in the order of the real, and that complex concepts of creatures are analogically related to complex concepts of God. Scotus’s doctrine is then compared to the later Scotist tradition. The common opinion of the Scotist school from the fourteenth century onward followed Scotus’s position on analogy and considerably expanded upon his scattered remarks.

It is often assumed that the essence of a natural kind is complex, being such as to include (or to wholly consist of) multiple fundamental properties. For instance, perhaps the essence of the kind “electron” includes both negative charge and a precise rest mass, where neither of these is derivable from the other, nor derivable from some other foundational property. This assumption raises the ‘unity problem’: how to explain what unifies or holds together these properties. One important answer is developed by David Oderberg. His model draws on insights from both analytic metaphysics and the Scholastic tradition. I provide a summary of his solution to the unity problem and point to a potential worry it faces. I conclude by adverting to an alternative solution that would still fit within Oderberg’s overall system.

What is the highest good? In the ethics of René Descartes, we can distinguish between at least seven different answers to this question: (a) God; (b) the sum of all the different goods that “we either possess . . . or have the power to acquire” (CSMK, 324/AT 5, 82); (c) free will; (d) virtue; (e) love of God; (f) wisdom; and (g) supernatural beatitude. In this paper, I argue that each of these answers, in Descartes’s view, provides the correct particular conception, relative to a distinct sense or concept of the highest good. Just as there are seven different conceptions of the highest good, according to Descartes, there are thus also seven different senses or concepts of the highest good.