International Philosophical Quarterly

In Truth in Aquinas, John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock attempt to render a “radically orthodox” reading of Aquinas that rejects an autonomous realm of natural reason unaided by faith. I argue that Milbank and Pickstock’s account fails as a reading of Aquinas and is problematic as a theory of the relationship between faith and reason. After sketching Milbank and Pickstock’s understanding of the relationship between faith and reason, I examine Aquinas’s doctrines of grace and divine naming in order to show how they resist Milbank and Pickstock’s attempt to do away with the distinct and autonomous category of natural reason. I then conclude by considering how Milbank and Pickstock’s failure to preserve the integrity and autonomy of natural reason ironically tends toward fideism whilesimultaneously threatening to deprive faith of its meaning.

In this essay I call attention to the fact that there is a work of art in Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art,” and yet almost no one talks about it: the C. F. Meyer poem “Roman Fountain.” This critical silence is all the more ironic, since (1) it is a self-sufficient artwork, and not just described or mentioned in the text; and (2) the poem’s fountain, as man-made spring, seems to speak to—if not speak of—Heidegger’s thesis concerning the Ur-sprung of the artwork itself. I argue that the poem illuminates a central problem or question concerning the status of art as mimesis, and I suggest that the reason why this poem tends to be overlooked amid the “obsessive” critical attention that it otherwise attracts can be found within the essay itself.

The first part of this paper deals with Mill’s influential criticism of the natural law tradition. According to Mill, this tradition is based on a mistaken conception of nature. This essay argues that Mill’s own view of nature is misconceived and that this misconception leads him to misrepresent the tradition itself. The second part deals with those modern philosophers who reject the natural law tradition but who nevertheless attempt to account for morality as being based on human nature. Certain criticisms are made of their views. The chief criticism is that their views are based on an idea of nature that is no different from Mill’s.

In human beings, choice and action require a cause of a different kind to link them. Otherwise a vicious regress breaks out. This is cause in the sense of end or purpose. It stands between choice and action, making a reciprocative causal triad. Yet apart from our projects, this triad obtains in nature too, and for the same reason. In reproduction, as in choice and action, means are activities that are directed to the replication of pre-existing patterns as ends. Further, when agents are taken not as active but as capable of certain activities, the latter are not means as in reproduction but themselves ends. In this sense, it can be said that persons have a natural end as persons, a thesis for which two arguments are proposed.

This paper argues that structural elements of Bonaventure’s illumination theory significantly parallel Kantian transcendental philosophy. The question of whetherand what elements of transcendental thought can be found in Bonaventure’s philosophy is potentially instructive both for understanding medieval influences on transcendental philosophy and for raising the philosophical question of why substantially similar premises and thought-patterns result in substantially different solutions. After defining what I mean by “transcendental philosophy” and justifying that definition I turn to Bonaventure’s illumination theory and highlight thought patterns parallel to Kantian transcendental philosophy that emerge in Bonaventure’s epistemology. Finally, I discuss how their differences help us to understand the variations in medieval and modern solutions to what is sometimes termed “the transcendental problem.”

Hegel presents two very different accounts of the initial categorization of essence in his Science of Logic and his later Encyclopedia Logic, thereby raising the question of whether this discrepancy undermines the univocal necessity of systematic logic. A close examination of these arguments reveals that the Science of Logic account captures a necessary ordering that is incompletely presented in the Encyclopedia. The details are provided for comprehending why the logic of essence must begin with a contrast of the essential and the unessential, how this reverts to illusory being (whose determining entails three successive forms of reflection), and why identity depends upon the transformation of refl ection from being positing to being external to being determining in character. Significantly, the self-developing nature of these logical developments calls into question the foundationalism entailed by any privileging of the categories of essence.

I argue on the basis of recent findings in neuroscience that consciousness is not a brain process, and then explore some alternative, non-reductive options concerning the metaphysical relationship between consciousness and the brain, such as weak and strong accounts of the emergence of consciousness and the constitution view of consciousness. I propose an Aristotelian account of the strong emergence of consciousness. This account motivates a wider ontology than reductive physicalism and makes reference to formal causation as a way explaining the causal power of consciousness. What is meant by formal causation, in thiscontext, is that consciousness has the causal power to organize or control neuronal activity. This notion of causation is elaborated and supported by recent findings in the neurosciences. An advantage of this empirically informed approach is that proponents of the irreducibility of consciousness no longer need to rely upon conceptually based arguments alone, but can build a case against reductive physicalism that has a significant empirical foundation.