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21. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 2
Deborah Black Cognoscere Per Impressionem: Aquinas and the Avicennian Account of Knowing Separate Substances
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There are surprisingly few texts in which Avicenna discusses our knowledge of separate substances. The most extensive account occurs in Metaphysics 3.8, a text which was cited by Aquinas in a small number of works from relatively early in his academic career. Aquinas’s attitude to Avicenna’s account, which he dubbed knowledge per impressionem, is by no means uniform, even within a single work. Sometimes Avicenna is an adversary; sometimes he is an ally; still other times he is an innocent bystander. I explore the reasons for Aquinas’s shifting evaluation of Avicenna’s theory and show that Aquinas’s attitude depends in part upon whether the separate substance in question is God or the angels, and whether he is considering the soul as separated or embodied. Ultimately I argue that Aquinas’s abandonment of knowledge per impressionem reflects his general move away from any Avicennian influences that smack of dualism in his eyes.
22. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 2
Jules Janssens A Survey of Thomas’s Explicit Quotations of Avicenna in the Summa contra Gentiles
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Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa contra Gentiles, cites by name and quotes Avicenna seventeen times explicitly. A detailed examination of all these passages reveals that Thomas sometimes, although rarely—in fact, only with regard to the discussion of the divine attributes of truth and liberality—makes a positive assessment of Avicenna’s ideas. Much more often, Thomas is highly critical of the latter’s doctrines. It comes as no surprise that Thomas strongly opposes Avicenna’s theories of emanation and of knowledge acquisition by an illumination of the agent intellect. However, it is astonishing that he qualifies Avicenna as a “Platonist.” This understanding seems to result partly from Averroistic influences, partly from Thomas’s desire to make Avicenna’s system—in spite of the presence of obvious tensions in it—completely coherent, and partly from some (unwarranted) rewordings which fit better Thomas’s own system. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Avicenna was for Thomas a real “auctoritas.”
23. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 2
R. E. Houser Introducing the Principles of Avicennian Metaphysics into Sacra Doctrina: Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententiarum, Bk. 1, d. 8
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Aquinas’s theology, as presented in his Scriptum, is “scientific” in the Aristotelian sense of this term. Some of its arguments for conclusions are based on theology’s “proper” principles—the articles of faith—but many others are purely rational demonstrations. As the basis for his rational arguments in theology, and in particular his treatment of the divine essence in d. 8, he introduces philosophical principles, and offers dialectical arguments for them, which are thoroughly Avicennian. In order to understand Aquinas’s commentary on d. 8, then, it is not just helpful but necessary to see how he makes use of doctrines coming from the Metaphysics of Avicenna’s Book of Healing. So we look first at Aquinas’s source texts in Avicenna, and then at how he makes use of them in his commentary on the Sentences, Bk. 1, d. 8.
24. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 2
Luis Xavier López-Farjeat Avicenna and Thomas Aquinas on Natural Prophecy
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In De Veritate, question 12, article 3, Thomas Aquinas discusses whether prophecy is natural. Given that there he argues that prophecy is a divine gift (donum Dei), he seems to break away from the Muslim philosopher Avicenna, who holds a naturalistic explanation of this phenomenon. Certainly Avicenna explained prophecy in psychological and metaphysical terms, and was considered by some Christian theologians as proponent of a naturalistic view, thought to be incompatible with prophecy conceived as a divine and supernatural gift. In this paper I trace the origin of the discussion on whether prophecy is natural or supernatural, and then I recapitulate Avicenna’s understanding of this phenomenon in two short treatises, namely, the Epistle Concerning Dreams and On the Proof of Prophecies, and in the De anima and the Metaphysics of his major work The Book of Healing. Then I review Aquinas’s understanding of Avicenna’s view and his own conception of “natural prophecy” in order to show that, although when he argues for the divine origin of prophecy he distances himself from the Persian philosopher, he sees in his interpretation of Avicenna’s naturalistic doctrine a theory that could explain why some people sometimes attain knowledge of future events through a natural process different from divine prophecy. Finally, I discuss for what purpose Aquinas would have admitted this naturalistic view.
25. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 2
Daniel D. De Haan A Mereological Construal of the Primary Notions Being and Thing in Avicenna and Aquinas
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This study has two goals: first, to show that Avicenna’s account of being and thing significantly influenced Aquinas’s doctrine of the primary notions; second, to establish the value of adopting a mereological construal of these primary notions in the metaphysics of Avicenna and Aquinas. I begin with an explication of the mereological construal of the primary notions that casts these notions in terms of wholes and parts. Being and thing refer to the same entitative whole and have the same extension, but they are distinct in intension according to the different entitative parts they signify. Existence and essence constitute the two most fundamental entitative parts of every entitative whole. Being is taken to mean that which has existence, and thing signifies that which has essence. I then show how this mereological construal of the primary notions clarifies a number of texts in Avicenna and Aquinas. Finally, I address a few arguments against employing this mereological interpretation of the primary notions.
26. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 2
Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo The Dialectical Status of Religious Discourse in Averroes and Aquinas
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The oft-rehearsed, seldom-contested story of Aquinas’s account of sacra doctrina has him holding that revealed theology counts as a demonstrative science, along Aristotelian lines, because it is subaltern to God’s self-knowledge. This paper seeks to question this assessment of the matter by comparing Aquinas’s view to that of another great Aristotelian commentator, Averroes, who holds the contrary position, insofar as he considered religious discourse to be dialectical, and not scientific, in nature. The paper argues that, although both of these thinkers strive to present faithfully Aristotelian solutions to the problem of the epistemological status of religious discourse and in both accounts religious discourse somehow ends up being less than something naturally scientific, ultimately their approaches have widely divergent starting points and foundations that lead to distinctively different approaches and conclusions.
27. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 2
Olga L. Lizzini “A Mysterious Order of Possibles”: Some Remarks on Essentialism and on Beatrice Zedler’s Interpretation of Avicenna and Aquinas on Creation (al-Ilāhiyyāt, the Quaestiones de Potentia)
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Avicenna’s distinction between essence and existence was—and sometimes still is—read in the sense of a priority of essence. My analysis will focus on an important example of such a reading: Beatrice Zedler’s interpretation of one of the most important texts for Thomas’s discussion of Avicenna’s philosophy, the Quaestiones de Potentia. Independently of its consistency, Zedler’s interpretation gives me the opportunity to discuss Avicenna’s supposed “essentialism” (supposed also by Thomas Aquinas). My aim is to show that Avicenna is very well aware of the aporia that an essence existing independently of existence (and therefore “before” it) would represent. If essentialism is a risk of Avicenna’s metaphysics, this is not because of the essence-existence distinction. It is because of the ethical dimension that creation perforce implies (creation is good and brings into existence what is good), that Avicenna seems in fact to posit an “independent order of possibles” before God’s creative action.
28. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 2
Jon McGinnis The Eternity of the World: Proofs and Problems in Aristotle, Avicenna, and Aquinas
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This study looks at the position of two of the Middle Ages’ towering intellectual figures, Avicenna and Aquinas, and their arguments concerning the age of the cosmos. The primary focus is the nature of possibility and whether possibility is such that God can create it or such that its “existence” (shadowy though it might be) has some degree of independence from God’s creative act. It is shown how one’s answer to this initial question in turn has enormous ramifications on a number of other, core theological topics. These issues include one’s position concerning whether the cosmos necessarily existed infinitely into the past or may have been created at some finite point in the past; how one understands divine simplicity; what constitutes omnipotence; and even the place of rhetoric in theological and philosophical discussions.
29. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 2
Richard C. Taylor Introduction: Aquinas and the Arabic Philosophical Tradition
30. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 3
Michael Baur Lonergan and Hegel on Some Aspects of Knowing
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Twentieth-century Canadian philosopher Bernard J. F. Lonergan and nineteenth-century German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel regarded themselves as Aristotelian thinkers. As Aristotelians, both affirmed that human knowing is essentially a matter of knowing by identity: in the act of knowing, the knower and the known are formally identical. In spite of their common Aristotelian background and their common commitment to the idea that human knowing is knowing by identity, Lonergan and Hegel also differed on a number of crucial points. This essay discusses some key similarities and differences between Lonergan and Hegel on the issue knowing, in the hope that such a discussion might uncover a few possible avenues for further philosophical dialogue about these two important thinkers.
31. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 3
Andrew J. Jaeger Back to the Primitive: From Substantial Capacities to Prime Matter
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We often predicate capacities of substances in such a way so as to modify the way that they exist (e.g., the barbell has the capacity to bend). However, sometimes a capacity is not for the modification of a substance but for the existence of one. Moreover, we have reason to think that these capacities are just as real as other capacities. If that’s right, then the question arises: if these capacities (for the existence of substances) are real features in the world, what they are real features of? Part I argues that they can’t be capacities of substances, and so they must be capacities of some part of substances. Part II argues that they can’t be capacities of the substance’s integral/substantial parts. Part III argues that a possessor of such capacities would have to be a lot like prime matter in not being characterized by substantial forms.
32. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 3
Dries Deweer Mounier and Landsberg on the Person as Citizen: The Political Theory of the Early Esprit Movement
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This article sheds light on the political theory of the Esprit movement and its main theoreticians of the period 1931–1950, Emmanuel Mounier and Paul-Ludwig Landsberg. The Esprit movement saw the need for a personalist democracy, which is defined as a political system which fosters the individual human being’s ability to discover and realize their personal vocation. The sustainability of this type of democracy is not only dependent on a constitution based on checks and balances, but especially on a vigilant and active citizenry that rein in institutional political power. The personalists of Esprit remind us that politics concerns everyone. Mounier and Landsberg may have focused on the dark side of politics—the power play, oppression and pretence of democracy—but recognized that politics was necessary to build and safeguard a framework that centers on the development of human persons.
33. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 3
Anthony D. Traylor Vorhandenheit and Heidegger’s Predicament over Being-In-Itself
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For a number of years now, commentators have tried to make sense of Heidegger’s claim in § 43 of Being and Time that being is dependent on Dasein by interpreting this to mean that, for Heidegger, being is equivalent to Dasein’s “understanding” of being or the act of rendering beings “accessible.” I argue that such idealist readings fail and that a more plausible alternative is available. My interpretation centers on a phenomenological retrieval of the notion of Vorhandenheit or presence-at-hand as the unspoken presupposition of both Heidegger’s account of the being of entities independent of Dasein and that of the being of Dasein itself. I enlist key passages from Heidegger’s early lecture courses in support of my reading of Heidegger as not only a realist when it comes to beings but being as well.
34. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 3
Robert E. Wood The Notion of Being in Hegel and in Lonergan
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The notion of Being is central to Hegel as the beginning of the System and to Lonergan as what first arises in the mind. They both ask: how must the cosmos and human society be structured so that rational existence and flourishing are possible? Hegel claims to show the necessarily interlocking set of conditions. Logos-logic underpins the realms of Nature and Spirit that together limn the space of free individual existents. For Lonergan the notion of Being orients us toward the Whole of the proportionate universe, and toward the Transcendent Cause. Inquiry moves from things present to us in sensation to ever broader explanatory modes of things in relation to one another. Through insight, ways of construing the Whole are formed and reformed. Things, scientific systems, and social systems are not static but are on the move in the universe that has the form of emergent probability.
35. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 3
Daniel D. De Haan Perception and the Vis Cogitativa: A Thomistic Analysis of Aspectual, Actional, and Affectional Percepts
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This paper aims to establish some of the taxonomical groundwork required for developing a robust philosophy of perception on the basis of the Thomistic doctrine of the cogitative power (vis cogitativa). The formal object of the cogitative power will be divided into aspectual, actional, and affectional percepts. Accordingly, the paper contends that there is an internal sense power capable of a non-conceptual and pre-linguistic perceptual estimation of what some particular is, what could be done with respect to it, and what is to be done with respect to it. The argument begins with a synopsis of Thomas Aquinas’s philosophical anthropology. It then presents an extensive taxonomical analysis of three different kinds of cogitative percepts. This analysis is followed by a short exegetical defense of the threefold division of percepts. Finally, the essay concludes with a comparison of the Thomistic doctrine of the cogitative power with recent work in the philosophy of perception.
36. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 3
Mark D. Morelli Lonergan’s Reading of Hegel
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Lonergan is commonly read, sometimes favorably and sometimes unfavorably, through a Thomist lens. But the evidence suggests that Lonergan was interested in Hegel before he undertook his studies of Aquinas and that his interest in Hegel persisted throughout his intellectual career. Lonergan regarded Hegel’s absolute idealism as “the halfway house” on the way to his own critical realist position. His effort to establish his critical realism was informed and guided by a struggle with Hegel’s absolute idealist response to Kant’s Critical Philosophy. Lonergan scholars who hope to understand adequately Lonergan’s critical realist position would do well to give more serious attention to his early and perduring relationship to Hegel.
37. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 3
Roger Teichmann The Voluntary and the Involuntary: Themes from Anscombe
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More light is thrown on the voluntary/involuntary distinction by considerations concerning actual or possible reasons than by ones concerning possible-doing-otherwise (or possible prevention), or by ones concerning causal powers, of the agent or of mental states. An example of Anscombe’s of the “physiologically involuntary” shows how being voluntary under a description can be a matter, not of anything true at the time, but of the background circumstances, whose relevance can be seen in answers given by the agent to various “Why?” questions. The notion of possible prevention is relevant because of the way in which answers to “Why didn’t you prevent/stop that?” can reflect on a person’s general orientation of will. The sense in which someone’s actions themselves embody a weighing of practical reasons is discussed; as is the force and function of “It didn’t occur to me” as an explanation of not-doing (including not-preventing).
38. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 3
Martin J. De Nys Hegel and Lonergan on God (With a Nod to Kierkegaard)
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Hegel and Lonergan both make important contributions to the contemporary task of developing philosophical considerations of God within the context of a philosophy of religion. Hegel maintains that philosophy must both present knowledge of God as God is in godself, and present an account of God’s involvement with the human community. One accomplishes this two-sided task, Hegel believes, through the philosophical appropriation of the religious representation. If this appropriation is rightly understood, there is little in it to which Longern should object, and a great deal that he might endorse, given his own views about the relation between philosophy of religion and philosophy of God. At the same time, Lonergan would rightly object to what at times seems at least to be Hegel’s annulment of religious mystery, and the claim Hegel sometimes seems to make that the cognitive achievements of philosophy result in a sublation of the existential concerns of religion. Lonergan argues for positions that make possible important corrections of these problems.
39. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 4
Christopher Stephen Lutz Editor’s Preface
40. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 4
Stanley Hauerwas How I Think I Learned To Think Theologically
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Stanley Hauerwas draws upon the Aristotelian philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor to reflect upon his own approach to theology. Like MacIntyre and Taylor, Haurwas rejects the modern theoretical “position from nowhere” that demands “a ground that is unassailable.” Instead he approaches theology as an exercise of practical rationality that takes seriously the varied “presumptions that shape the character” of different individuals and communities. Hauerwas reflects on the practical nature of theology by surveying his own attempt to work as a theologian. This seemingly self-reflexive exercise, however, does not lead to an implicit or explicit embrace of the privileged first person singular. Rather Hauerwas uses this exercise to reflect on the political character of theology in so far as the particularity of any theologian—any singular “I”—simply doesn’t exist apart from the speech that makes her life and work both possible and intelligible. Attending to language and agency is another way to understand how the work of theology is at once practical and particular, meaning theology will always be political.