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61. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 1
Deane-Peter Baker Abortion and Civil Disobedience
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Many believe strongly that states, even democratic states, commit serious moral harm by adopting policies that allow elective abortions. What avenues are available to citizens of those states who oppose such policies? In this paper I contest Nicholas Dixon’s claim that there is only a very limited scope for acts of civil disobedience in response to pro-abortion state policy. While acknowledging that a state policy of not allowing elective abortions imposes significant burdens on pregnant women, I contend that a consistent political liberalism—committed to the idea of state neutrality—must recognize the validity of significant, even invasive, civil disobedience in response to states that follow a policy of allowing elective abortions.
62. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 1
Clare Carlisle Spinoza On Eternal Life
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This article argues that Spinoza’s account of the eternity of the mind in Part V of the Ethics offers a re-interpretation of the Christian doctrine of eternal life. While Spinoza rejects the orthodox Christian teaching belief in personal immortality and the resurrection of the body, he presents an alternative account of human eternity that retains certain key characteristics of the Johannine doctrine of eternal life, especially as this is articulated in the First Letter of John. The article shows how Spinoza’s account of human eternity reflects two key principles of his philosophy: the ideal of union with God, and the possibility of the human being’s ontological transformation through this union.
63. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 1
Patrick J. Connolly Henry of Ghent’s Argument for Divine Illumination Reconsidered
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In this paper I offer a new approach to Henry of Ghent’s argument for divine illumination. Normally, Henry is criticized for adhering to a theory of divine illumination and failing to accept rediscovered Aristotelian approaches to cognition and epistemology. I argue that these critiques are mistaken. On my view, Henry was a proponent of Aristotelianism. But Henry discovered a tension between Aristotle’s views on teleology and the nature of knowledge, on the one hand, and various components of the Christian worldview, on the other. I argue that Henry’s adherence to a theory of divine illumination was an attempt to preserve various components of the Aristotelian system, not an attempt to reject Aristotelianism.
64. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 1
Jamie Anne Spiering “What is Freedom?”: An Instance of the Silence of St. Thomas
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Josef Pieper wrote about “the silence of St. Thomas”—faced with some of philosophy’s toughest questions, Thomas does not give “a textbook reply.” In this paper, I note an instance of such silence: Thomas gives no dogmatic, unequivocal answer to the question “What is freedom?” and this omission seems to have been deliberate. While his predecessors and contemporaries (such as Albert the Great and Henry of Ghent) discussed the definition of freedom formally, Thomas does not do so, nor does he offer a precise account of libertas. Why would Thomas avoid this debate? An answer is necessarily tentative, but I argue that Thomas wanted to simplify his treatment of the power of choice. In addition, he may be convinced that freedom is best understood as instantiated within a nature or its powers, making any abstract consideration fundamentally unfruitful.
65. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 1
Rogelio Rovira On the Manifold Meaning of Value according to Dietrich von Hildebrand and the Need for a Logic of the Concept of Value
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Hildebrand’s basic contribution to phenomenological axiology can be summarized as follows: the concept of value is, in one sense, narrower than most phenomenologists have suggested; but, in another sense, is broader than any phenomenologist has believed necessary to defend. According to Hildebrand, the name of “value” can only be properly applied to “the intrinsically important.” But the intrinsically important has to be described phenomenologically both in its pure qualitative content and in its relation to being. Thus, four kinds of specifically distinct values appear: (1) the qualitative values; (2) the ontological values; (3) the values of perfection or technical values; and (4) the formal value of “being something.” Hildebrand’s contribution poses a difficult question which he himself does not deal with: what unity do these several meanings of value have? The mere indication of the problem suggests any solution requires a rigorous logic of the concept of value.
66. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 1
Brandon Dahm Distinguishing Desire and Parts of Happiness: A Response to Germain Grisez
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Germain Grisez has recently argued that Aquinas’s claim that God alone is our ultimate end is incompatible with other claims central to Aquinas’s account of happiness. Two of these arguments take their point of departure from Aquinas’s distinction between essential perfections and perfections of well-being. I argue that both of these arguments fail. The first, which argues that the distinction is incompatible with the beatific vision being perfect fulfillment, fails because it neglects a distinction between essential and accidental perfectibility. In the second, Grisez argues that Aquinas’s distinction between types of happiness is incompatible with his claim that the beatific vision satisfies all desire. I argue that Aquinas makes a distinction between two types of desire that rebuts the objection. I conclude by explaining how clarifying these distinctions in perfectibility and desire allows for a more nuanced account of the happiness of the separated, beatified soul.
67. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 1
William E. Tullius Renewal and Tradition: Phenomenology as “Faith Seeking Understanding” in the Work of Edmund Husserl
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This paper seeks to understand the place of phenomenology within the Christian philosophical tradition. Contrary to common conceptions of phenomenology, and in spite of Husserl’s own description of phenomenology as an “a-theistic” project, this paper will attempt to interpret the complex relationship of Husserl’s understanding of phenomenology to the religious tradition ultimately as a function of that very tradition. In so doing, this paper will explore the philosophical concept of “vocation” in Husserl’s usage, its application to the intended role of phenomenology as an agent of moral and religious “renewal,” and the role played by the concept of tradition in Husserl’s thought, which demands explicit reflection on Husserl’s own relation to the tradition. This will allow the possibility of re-envisioning the overall sense of phenomenological discussion and its place within the tradition of philosophy, particularly in the relation of Husserlian phenomenology to the Anselmian project of “faith seeking understanding.”
68. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 2
Paul Symington The Analogical Logic of Discovery and the Aristotelian Epistemic Principle: A Semantic Foundation for Divine Naming in Aquinas
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In this paper, I focus on the important semantic components involved in analogy in hopes of providing an epistemic ground for predicating names of God analogously. To this task, I address a semantic/epistemic problem, which concludes that the doctrine of analogy lacks epistemological grounding insofar as it presupposes a prior understanding of God in order to sufficiently alter a given concept to be proportionate to God. In hopes of avoiding this conclusion, I introduce Aquinas’s specifically semantic aspects that follow after the real distinction between a thing’s esse and its essence or form in the context of analogy and show that the ratio of a term can be altered in a way proportionate to a consideration of the mode of being of God.
69. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 2
Hans Feichtinger “Nothing Rash Must Be Said”: Augustine on Pythagoras
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Augustine comments on Pythagoras in many of his works. The early dialogues can speak very positively about the ancient philosopher; later, Augustine’s remarks become more nuanced. Still, he always reserves a certain respect for Pythagoras, which is significant as Pythagoras was a symbolic figure in Neoplatonic attempts to provide a philosophical understanding of Greco-Roman religion. Despite the differences between Christian and Pythagorean theology (understood as philosophical way of speaking about God), Augustine underlines those traits in Pythagoras’s thinking that distinguish him from other philosophical and popular views on questions of religion and “natural theology.” In accordance with his own Christian concept of the need for mediation and grace, Augustine appreciates in particular Pythagoras’s humility, best expressed in not calling himself “wise” but rather a “philosopher.” Augustine’s views on Pythagoras, while evolving, always remain balanced and provide a good example of how he relates to pre-Christian philosophers in general.
70. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 2
Lynda Gaudemard Disposition and Latent Teleology in Descartes’s Philosophy
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Most contemporary metaphysicians think that a teleological approach to mereological composition and the whole-part relation should be ignored because it is an obsolete view of the world. In this paper, I discuss Descartes’s conception of individuation and composition of material objects such as stones, machines, and human bodies. Despite the fact that Descartes officially rejected ends from his philosophy of matter, I argue, against some scholars, that to appeal to the notion of disposition was a way for him to maintain teleological reference within a mechanistic conception of nature. Through a study of Descartes’s texts, I also want to make clear why it might be difficult to entirely ignore teleological notions, when one wants to account for composition and unity of material objects.
71. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 2
Matthew Schaeffer The Thick-Esse /Thin-Essence View in Thomistic Personalism
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The thick-esse /thin-essence view asserts that esse—the act of existing—constitutes all of the ontological positivity, perfection, and intelligibility of a being, while essence is simply an internal limitation or mode of the esse of a being. In this paper I (i) explain why Fr. W. Norris Clarke’s Thomistic personalism relies on the thick-esse /thin-essence view; (ii) acknowledge three objections to the thick-esse /thin-essence view; (iii) reply to these objections; and (iv) provide a positive argument (or case) for the thick-esse /thin-essence view. I conclude that Clarke’s reliance on a thick-esse /thin-essence view does not militate against his Thomistic personalism; on the contrary, it militates in its favor. In order to reach this conclusion, though, I make it clear that the details of Clarke’s thick-esse /thin-essence view must be modified to fall in line with the details of William E. Carlo’s thick-esse /thin-essence view.
72. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 2
Michael Barnwell The Problem with Aquinas’s Original Discovery
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Jacques Maritain asserted that Aquinas’s explanation of sin’s origin is “one of the most original of his philosophical discoveries.” In this explanation, Aquinas traces the origin of sin back to the will’s defect of failing to consider or use the rule of divine law. To succeed, Aquinas must show how this defect is both voluntarily caused by the agent and non-culpable despite its serving as the origin for sin. (If it were culpable, a non-explanatory regress would ensue.) Aquinas’s “original” solution hinges on his claim that the will is not always morally obligated to consider or use the rule. When Aquinas’s texts are closely examined, it becomes apparent that his explanation admits of two different interpretations. In this paper, both interpretations are scrutinized and found to be problematic. Despite its originality and courage in addressing what many consider inexplicable (namely, sin), Aquinas’s attempt seems not to be a successful discovery.
73. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 2
Samuel Kahn Is the Final Chapter of the Metaphysics of Morals also the Final Chapter of the Practical Postulates?
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In this paper I trace the arc of Kant’s critical stance on the belief in God, beginning with the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and culminating in the final chapter of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). I argue that toward the end of his life, Kant changed his views on two important topics. First, despite his stinging criticism of it in the Critique of Pure Reason, by the time of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant seems to endorse the physico-theological argument. Second, some time around the publication of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant seems to move away from the argument for the practical postulates.
74. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 2
Patrick Toner On Departing Hominization
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It is a matter of dispute whether St. Thomas Aquinas accepted the doctrine of “departing hominization.” Departing hominization is the view that in the process of human death, the rational soul departs first, leaving a mere animal ensouled by a sensitive soul, and then the sensitive soul departs, leaving a corpse. This would be a surprising thing for St. Thomas to believe, but he does appear to endorse the view in at least one place. I argue that he does not, in fact, accept departing hominization, and explain how the recalcitrant text should be understood.
75. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 3
John Zeis Introduction
76. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 3
Heidi M. Giebel On Why and How Intention Matters
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While our common sense seems to tell us that intention matters to ethical evaluation, there is considerable disagreement among ethicists regarding why and how it matters. In this article I argue that intention matters to act evaluation in much the way that the principle of double effect (PDE) implies. First, I identify five propositions—one epistemological and four ethical—that the proponent of PDE holds regarding the ethical relevance of intention. Second, I give two general arguments for the ethical relevance of intention. Third, I offer preliminary arguments for each of the five propositions outlined in the first section. Together, these general and more specific arguments are meant to place the burden of proof on one denying intention’s relevance to act evaluation. Fourth and finally, then, I show that recent critiques of PDE and of the ethical relevance of intention fail to carry that burden of proof.
77. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 3
Joseph Boyle Intention, Permissibility, and the Structure of Agency
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The core of the double effect rule supposes the existence of a kind of impermissible action whose impermissibility is determined by its including the intention of a bad result. How can the reality of actions having this tight connection between intending bad results and impermissibility be justified? None of the obvious justifications is promising. But the conditions of human agency provide a justification for the centrality of intention within the impermissible actions double effect addresses. The human power to avoid intentional actions is robust, but not the power to avoid unintended bad results. Supposing there is a normative case for indefeasible prohibitions (which the rule does not establish but needs if it is to have application), limiting them to intentional actions is warranted, since the prohibition can be complied with. But when unintended bad results are not avoidable, such a prohibition would demand the impossible.
78. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 3
Joseph Shaw Death and Other Harms: Intention and the Problem of Closeness
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This paper considers the problem of closeness in the ethical use of intention. In section I, attempts inspired by Anscombe to use a “coarse grained” understanding of intention, to deal with certain difficult cases, are rejected. In section II it is argued that the difficult cases can be addressed using other moral principles. In section III a more detailed account of intention is set out, analysing intention as a reason for action, and in section IV two paradoxes apparently created by this account are addressed: on the contrast between intentions and intentional action, and the difference between killing a group of people together or individually. In section V another set of cases is considered, to test how this account of intention handles the intention of harm. Section VI considers the objection that an agent may cause what is a harm without intending it as a harm.
79. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 3
Jean Porter Choice, Causality, and Relation: Aquinas’s Analysis of the Moral Act and the Doctrine of Double Effect
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The traditional distinction between the agent’s intention and the effects which she merely permits would seem to allow for a re-description of the act in terms of the agent’s overall good aims. This paper argues that Aquinas understands the relation between the agent’s choice and her overall intention in a different and more persuasive way. His analysis of the object and the end of the act is complicated, but once the relevant distinctions have been sorted out, it is apparent that he does not hold that a particular action can be described, or much less morally evaluated, in terms of the agent’s overall good intentions. On the contrary, he insists that the object of the agent’s immediate choice is always morally relevant, and can be morally decisive for assessing the overall value of the act.
80. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 3
Lawrence Masek In Defense of a Minimalist, Agent-Based Principle of Double Effect
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Many philosophers assume that the principle of double effect (PDE) is meant to cover trolley cases. In fact, trolley cases come from PDE’s critics, not its defenders. When philosophers stretch PDE to explain intuitions about trolley cases, they define intended effects too broadly. More importantly, trolley cases make poor illustrations of PDE because they focus attention away from the agent and onto the victim. When philosophers lose sight of the agent, some intuitions that fit PDE survive, but the rational basis of these intuitions collapses. I avoid these problems by defending a minimalist, agent-based version of PDE. My version is minimalist because I do not try to turn PDE into a complete checklist that explains intuitions about every case. It is agent-based because I consider the agent’s perspective to define intentions and to make moral judgments.