St. Thomas Aquinas and Final Causation in The Violent Bear it Away

Providence and Science in a World of Contingency: Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics of Divine Action

PROVIDENCE AND SCIENCE IN A WORLD OF CONTINGENCY: Thomas Aquinas' Metaphysics of Divine Action by Ignacio Silva. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2022. 170 pages. Paperback; $52.95. ISBN: 9781032002781. *Ignacio Silva (DPhil, Oxford) is an Argentinian theologian who specializes in the dialogue between science and theology. This book is a proposal for fellow scholars and others to reconsider the contribution of Thomas Aquinas's metaphysics as a means of resolving the question of divine action in the light of science. Although Aquinas is the thirteenth century's most famous friar and Catholicism's most renowned theological authority alongside Augustine, he is often viewed today as contributing few insights as regards an allegedly "modern" argument. *Silva argues that Aquinas supplies a way of getting beyond two mistaken views held by people today: (1) on the one hand, that God needs the natural world to be fundamentally open to outside influence; and (2) on the other hand, that God causes things to exist in a way that is similar to the way other natural causes cause things to occur. *Silva's goal is to get beyond the current situation in which "many today find it necessary to search for a lack of natural causation so as to find a space for God to act" (p. 139). According to this way of thinking, God's actions are only localized occasions, hence the school of thought known as occasionalism. Conversely, another tendency is for believers to argue that God's powers are self-restricted in order to account for natural powers. The latter point of view is sometimes stipulated in terms of the biblical concept of kenosis ("Christ ... emptied himself," Phil. 2:7). *Silva's main point concerns a correct notion of causation such that we not restrict divine providence to an inadequate understanding of causation: "the idea of requiring insufficient causation for God to act depends on a deterministic notion of causation that, ultimately, renders God to act as a cause among causes" (p. 49). Silva holds that much causation is subject to chance contingencies. Thus, Silva's strategy is to think of causation in the context of potency and act. This allows a fresh and fuller way of dealing with the four parameters of divine providence: God's omnipotence, God's involvement with nature, nature's autonomy, and the success of science. The scope of the inquiry is enormous and Silva's handling of the thought of Thomas Aquinas is, unsurprisingly, difficult, yet hugely beneficial. *On the one hand, readers must be prepared for a dense tutorial in accounts of causality, powers, natures, and other metaphysical categories in order to appreciate the argument of this book. On the other hand, the argument over the relationship between God as the creating cause of the world and the secondary causes that act to create other effects in the world, is startlingly simple. It is best understood as a form of instrumental causality according to Silva. It is analogized (as so much of Aquinas's theology is) as follows: "The knife is moved by the man to cut, and to do it in such a manner. Without the man's power, the knife could not cut, but without the edge of the knife, the man could not cut in this manner ... the effect is both produced completely by God and by the natural agent ... (p. 129)." *Thus, without God, nature would not have the necessary powers to cause the effects it possesses. Without those natural efficient causes, God's power could not be effective. There is no split between divine and natural causation in any given effect; both are completely causal of any given effect. It is analogically helpful, although Silva does not discuss this idea, to invoke here the Incarnation of Jesus Christ: he is both fully divine and fully human, not half of each. *God acts in three ways: through creation itself, through natural (secondary) causes, and through three types of miracles--although, sadly, the latter do not receive much attention in this book. But the threefold action of God is intended to counter, on the one hand, the view that causality is always deterministic and, on the other hand, that God's action in the universe endangers nature's autonomy. *For some readers, the most difficult aspect of the argument will be the presentation of natural entities' powers of operation in terms of the four Aristotelian causes. The key is to think of causation in context. From Aristotle, change is a key feature of contingency. Change is organized into potency and act, essence and accident. These categories explain how causation results in real life. Moreover, theologically speaking, for Aquinas, "affirming that natural things do not operate, and that it is only God who does, diminishes the divine power" (p. 98, quoting the Summa contra Gentiles III, c 69). This is the counterintuitive power of the Thomist position. It opposes the view that attributes all natural causes to God's intervention. Holding that view would mean, in the end, that God actually does not create anything apart from God. But for God to create a world means to distinguish something apart from God and to allow contingency to exist in the spatio-temporal realm. The key point about the distinction between the eternal and the temporal realms is to ask why God creates in this way. Silva casually mentions that "God acts through natural causes because of the immensity of his goodness ..." (p. 101). So, it is not a matter of metaphysical necessity that lies behind the Thomist view, it is God's goodness that is the key. *The position that created natural things are themselves creative needs to be exactingly well laid out; otherwise this position will be perceived as a way of extracting God from the world altogether. Here, Silva stipulates that "God's causality penetrates most intimately the causality of created natural things," while God upholds the creation "in its being" (p. 99). This is uncontroversial, but the provision for miracles is bound to raise questions about why God would act in this way. What Silva could have used are some examples of why some philosophers dissent from Aquinas on miracles, with responses to those dissents. *Silva covers an enormous amount of reflection on the notion of causality, including some original and highly potent insights. He claims that final causality is the "cause of the efficient cause in terms of its causality" (p. 71). This relationship, as well as the relationship between the material and formal cause, as first demarcated by Aristotle, is laid out in dense, logical prose. The book ends with some subtle yet significant comments on the differences between Aquinas's views and those of twentieth-century thinkers such as Austin Farrer, who referred to Aquinas in proposing a double agency account of creation while resorting to fideism. Farrer refused to suggest any explanation for the causal joint between God's creation and the world's operation. This analysis is original and should have been given more prominence. There is, indeed, a great deal of difference between fulsome and evasive double agency accounts of created causality; however, Silva ignores almost completely the medieval development of the theorem of the "supernatural," which came about because of the theoretical stance taken by Philip the Chancellor (d. 1236). This lapse is not critical, but it does exemplify the lack of a historical dimension to the book's argument. *Another quandary concerns the book's form of exposition. It is largely descriptive. While its argument details Aquinas's metaphysics of causal relations and the universe's created dependency on God, it lacks a dialectical edge. Although the argument is sufficiently sound, it is in need of an engagement with the open theists and others who would contest the account of divine power that Thomas Aquinas developed. There are quite a few references to other contemporary positions on providence and causality, especially in the final chapter. The names of William Carroll, Robert Russell, and Michael Dodds appear, but there could have been a more probing engagement of these contemporary voices. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics is treated in the light of the proposed view of moderate determinism in contrast to the non-interventionist, objective (NIODA) view of divine action in Robert Russell. Here, I'm unsure whether NIODA has been properly interpreted. Although I think Silva's position is correct, is Russell's understanding of God's causality really reducible to natural causality as Silva contends? The textual citations for this allegation are not convincing. *Finally, despite what I take to be a largely satisfying account of God's creative action, the issue of evil and theodicy are not dealt with in this book. Aquinas makes contingency (and accidents in general) central for the notion of creation. Silva sees contingency as a sign of the perfection of divine providence, but this contradiction (between created contingency and the fact of natural "evil") is a real difficulty for God's involvement with evil or deficient effects in creation. Regardless, altogether this is a provocative, dense volume that could easily have been double the length if key problems had received more comprehensive treatment. *Reviewed by Paul Allen, Academic Dean, Corpus Christi College, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1J7.

Reviewed by: Demonstration and Scientific Knowledge in William of Ockham: A Translation of Summa Logicae III-II: De Syllogismo Demonstrativo, and Selections from the Prologue to the Ordinatio Alexander W. Hall John Lee Longeway , translator. Demonstration and Scientific Knowledge in William of Ockham: A Translation of Summa Logicae III-II: De Syllogismo Demonstrativo, and Selections from the Prologue to the Ordinatio. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Pp. xx + 432. Cloth, $58.00. William of Ockham never delivered his promised exposition of Posterior Analytics. In its place, we have Summa Logicae (SL) III–II, and the Prologue to his Ordinatio. Longeway's [End Page 170] literal translations append writings on the Posterior Analytics by several medieval thinkers and are preceded by a 140-page discussion of medieval science, beginning with Robert Grosseteste and proceeding through Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus, among others. Longeway also provides indices of proper names and citations, an analytic table of contents, a glossary, and tables detailing various thinkers' views on matters pertaining to demonstration. Excepting references to the SL, the tables lack citation, and here, as in other instances, the absence of an index of subjects is felt. Longeway's translation of SL III–II makes three deviations from Gál and Brown's critical edition (St. Bonaventure, 1974). The first two lack support in the apparatus. At chapter 3, l. 21, Longeway reads 'si' for 'sed', which is not required to preserve Ockham's point that a hypothetical syllogism's major premise need not commit one to an attribute's existence. At chapter 5, l. 24, Longeway replaces 'quin' with 'quia', which is unnecessary if 'quin' is rendered 'in fact'. Third, Longeway deletes 'non' at chapter 34, l. 36, relying on Marc of Benevento's error-prone 1508 edition, an emendation required by the sense of the text. But these emendations are minor and Longeway's translation is excellent. Longeway views Ockham as the "founder of European empiricism" (1), and notes his relevance to contemporary issues surrounding the Posterior Analytics, sketching current literature. Longeway supports this with a careful reading of the Latin commentary tradition prior to Ockham. Grosseteste, for example, holds that proof in natural science requires that we grasp real natures, but insists on a role for observation and experimentation, moving toward an Ockhamist epistemology that denies that we can deduce an attribute's inherence through analysis of its subject (32). Albert believes that proof in natural science emerges from attributes' definitions, thus accounting for inherence through factors extrinsic to the subject. Aquinas's understanding of proof resembles Grosseteste's inasmuch as Aquinas believes demonstration emerges from a subject's definition, with the important difference that Aquinas does not share Grosseteste's insistence that the definition reference final causality—a belief emerging from Grosseteste's Platonist conviction that exemplars in the divine mind seek to reproduce themselves in matter. Instead, Longeway notes, Aquinas relies on definition in terms of efficient causality (69). This judgment requires qualification, for Aquinas states that an attribute's inherence instances the second type of belonging per se, viewing the subject as the material cause of inherence (Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, I.10, ll. 51 ff.). Again on the issue of belonging per se, Longeway claims Aquinas ascribes the fourth type "to an efficient causal connection between subject and predicate" (2), though Aquinas states that this mode of belonging takes in all four Aristotelian causes (ibid., I.10, ll. 122 ff.). Moreover, Longeway believes Aquinas uses the second type of per se belonging in the major premise of scientific demonstrations (147), whereas Aquinas actually states that this premise proposes the fourth (Ibid., I.13, ll. 60 ff.)—which does not rule out its instancing the second type, the fourth comprising the others. Scotus's distinction between experiential (per experientiam) and analytic (per se nota) scientific knowledge (scientia) (Ord. I, d. 3, pars 1, q. 4, n. 228) challenges the claim that Ockam founds European empiricism. Experiential scientia must occasionally rely on the principle that like causes generally produce like effects (ibid., n. 235), resting content with mere probability (ibid., n. 237). Scotus deems this the lowest degree of scientia (ibid...

The distinction between actus humanus and actus hominis is the best-known distinction in Thomas Aquinas’ theory of action. A human action (actus humanus) is a special case of an act of a human being (actus hominis). Several acts of our intellect and will form a human action and thereby put it from the realm of pure natural happenings (genus naturae) into the moral realm (genus moris). The paper at hand shows the character and main parameters of Thomas Aquinas’ action theory, especially in the Summa theologiae I-II, quaestiones 6-17. Moreover, it presents Thomas Aquinas’ central idea of what is the essence of a human action. The analysis especially makes use of the element of command (imperium) It shows that, according to Aquinas, acting consists in the intellectually comprehensible self-disclosure of a person and therefore builds the basis for the moral evaluation of human actions.

Reviewed by: Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, & William of Ockhamby Thomas M. Osborne Jamie Spiering Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, & William of Ockham. By T homasM. O sborne J r. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014. Pp. xxv + 250. $59.95 (cloth), $34.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8132-2178-6 (cloth), 978-0-8132-2874-7 (paper). The editors at The Catholic University of America Press chose the cover art for this book with real insight. A painting (circa 1500) shows several dozen clearly rendered men and women engaged in the business of living. Among them are a dentist pulling teeth, a nun praying while another gathers hay, two men in a brawl, and a lady reading, while Christ looks down from heaven upon them all. It is this collection of actions—the good, the bad, and the possibly indifferent—that Thomas Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham, each in his own way, worked to systematize. These three diverse efforts at systematization are the subject of Osborne's book on human action. Just as the painter was careful to draw each small character in detail, so too Osborne is careful with all the relevant details of the five areas of action theory he chooses to elaborate: the causes of human action, the role of practical reasoning in choice, the stages of action, the specification of moral action, and the supernatural and moral worth of action. The first (and longest) chapter, on the causes of human acts, reflects upon how the three figures differ regarding the root of freedom, whether the known object is the cause of the human act, and the relationship between freedom and the good. Aquinas sees reason as the root of freedom, while Scotus and Ockham do not. Aquinas sees the known object as a final cause, while for Scotus and Ockham it is a partial efficient cause. The chapter ends with a short disquisition on the inadequacy of characterizing the contrast as simply that between intellectualism and voluntarism. The second chapter, on practical reason and the practical syllogism, is largely a presentation of three elaborations of Aristotle's account of the practical syllogism in the Nicomachean Ethics. As Osborne notes, Aristotle's account gave rise to a number of questions, such as whether the conclusion of such reasoning was the action itself, and whether the premises for such [End Page 292]reasoning were of a different character than theoretical premises. The chapter presents a number of rather technical attempts to resolve these and other questions. Osborne is to be praised for pointing out in medieval action theory the role of Aristotle's ideas and the overall importance of prudence and practical reasoning. At the same time, though, this chapter is less interesting than the previous one, since it is more difficult to see how any of these theories leads to any significant difference for humans who are thinking about their own actions. Different theories about the root of freedom will lead to very different overall views of human life. But is distinguishing—or not distinguishing—different degrees of practical reason going to have a wider impact? Osborne himself is largely interested in how these theories about practical reasoning are the result of the causal theories he discussed in the first chapter: he identifies a trend of separating nature from will and an increasing emphasis on the will's activity. The third chapter, on the stages of the act, involves a similar mass of detail. Osborne threads his way through the multitudinous stages of the act in Aquinas (including remarks on the historical background of stages such as "consent") and the much simpler versions provided by Scotus and Ockham. As with the previous chapter, to Osborne the significance of this complex maze lies in the fact that it reflects the causal theories elaborated in chapter 1: Scotus and Ockham do not incorporate natural inclination into their understanding of the will's stages, and for them intellect and will act in separate stages, while for Aquinas they cannot be separated. Chapter 4, on the evaluation and specification of the human act, presents a topic that is perhaps...

James M. Edie APPEARANCE AND REALITY: AN ESSAY ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE THEATER IN The Unity of Philosophical Experience, Etienne Gilson suggests that the history of philosophy is to the philosopher what the laboratory is to the scientist. By working through the history of philosophy we find that all philosophical doctrines necessarily and ideally work themselves out to their ultimate conclusions. By studying the history of ideas we get an insight into what philosophy truly is. I wish to propose that within the broad area of contemporary philosophical interest which is called the "Theory of Action" the philosopher can use the artificial presentation of acting in the theater as a laboratory in which he can experiment on and exhibit his deeper philosophical concerns. By studying "playing" and "acting" we will discover the deeper insights which will enable us to understand human "action" in general. There is an important distinction in the philosophy of language— which we will see later on also applies to the philosophy of action—between what are called, following Nelson Goodman, "autographic" and "allographic" works of art. An autographic work of art is one like a piece of sculpture, a temple, or a painting, which has one continuous historical existence from the moment of its creation to the moment of its ultimate destruction or disappearance. With the Venus de Milo, or the Victory of Samothrace, or the Mona Lisa you either have the authentic "autograph" or you do not. Allographic works of art, on the other hand, are those which, like symphonies or plays or works of literature, depend for their existence on a notational system which is characterized by all of the properties of the ideality of language. That is, allographic works of art, thanks to their linguistic structure, share the characteristics of ideality, repeatability, and sameness of content each time they are performed. This is above all true of works of art which are primarily meant to be performed in the present and therefore to repeat at various moments in historical time the same meaning. This 4 Philosophy and Literature possibility of indefinite repetition gives us the very notion of a literary "text." The ontological status of the meaning of such a text is very different from that of an "autograph." We will be returning to this distinction and its implications later on. For now we are concerned with the theory of action, keeping in mind that we intend to use it in an examination of writings ofplaywrights, who, like Pirandello, Sartre, Brecht, Anouilh, Genet, and others, not only exemplify in their plays but develop and hold theories of acting. In philosophy, the generalized theory of action begins with the ancient distinction made by Aristotle between immanent and transitive actions, the former being mental and volitional acts which emanate from the subject and remain in the subject as perfections of the subject, whereas the latter are activities which any being can exercise on another: in the manner in which billiard balls strike one another or men build houses and train horses. This ancient distinction culminated in Thomas Aquinas' theory of "the human act," a theory which distinguishes specifically human acts from all others. Man can perform many actions which are not distinctively "human," such as belching, twitching, copulating , and so on. For an act to be distinctively "human" it must involve deliberate intention and at least some foreknowledge of the consequences of the act. It is on this distinction that the later Lutheran, Kantian, Jamesian, and manycontemporary theories of"the free act" arebased. Aspecifically human free-act involves moral and sometimes legal responsibility for the consequences of the action, and is one that is done deliberately, and for which one is held accountable. Such a theory of human action would seem at first glance to have nothing to do with the theater. It is precisely this which would seem to distinguish acting in the real world from the kind of acting that is presented to us in the theater. For example, the world of Sartre, as it has been given to us in his major novels and plays, has a special ontological status different from our mundane world of perception, which we can never...

Revisiting the Catholic Literary Imagination Douglas Robillard Jr. (bio) Jeana DelRosso. Writing Catholic Women: Contemporary International Catholic Girlhood Narratives. New York: Palgrave, 2005. x + 203 pp. Farrell O’Gorman. Peculiar Crossroads: Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and Catholic Vision in Postwar Southern Fiction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2004. ix + 259 pp. Susan Srigley. Flannery O’Connor’s Sacramental Art. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 2005. xii + 195 pp. During the last fifteen years we have seen some renewal of interest in the subject of Catholicism and literature. Since the publication of Arnold Sparr's 1990 study, To Promote, Defend, and Redeem: The Catholic Literary Revival and the Cultural Transformation of American Catholicism, 1920–60, Joseph Pearce, Ross Labrie, and others have published books on the influence of Catholicism on film, art, and literature.1 Much of the current scholarship examines what Sparr terms the post-World War II "Catholic literary revival" (xi). This development was sparked by European thinkers such as Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, and others who brought the theology and aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas into the twentieth century. At the time, there was considerable interest in contemporary Catholic authors such as [End Page 174] Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. In the same period, Allen Tate and his wife, the novelist Caroline Gordon, converted to Catholicism under Maritain's personal influence and actively sought to promote an American Catholic literature. They also acted as mentors for two younger Catholic Southern writers, Flannery O'Connor and a convert, Walker Percy. In time, this literary trend ended. O'Connor died in 1964. Percy continued publishing into the 1980s. However, in many ways, Gene Kellogg's 1970 study, The Vital Tradition: The Catholic Novel in a Period of Convergence both summarized and brought an end to this period. Some of the questions posed during the Catholic literary revival have resurfaced. What is meant by the term, "Catholic literature"? Is there a distinct Catholic literature rooted in a definable aesthetic? What are the features of the Catholic literary imagination? How is the Church itself portrayed in literature? Three recent books examine the influence Catholicism exercises over the literary imagination. In its own way, each attempts to answer the questions posed above. Two studies deal specifically with Flannery O'Connor: Susan Srigley's Flannery O'Connor's Sacramental Art and Farrell O'Gorman's Peculiar Crossroads: Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and Catholic Vision in Postwar Southern Fiction. Srigley locates the origins of O'Connor's aesthetics in Thomism and Catholic doctrine. She takes a deliberately restricted view of her subject, limiting her discussion to only three of O'Connor's works: the novels Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away, and a single short story, "Revelation." Peculiar Crossroads divides its discussion between O'Connor and Walker Percy and examines biographical as well as literary and theological affinities between the authors. Like Srigley, he identifies Thomist thought as an important influence on O'Connor's aesthetics. In addition, he presents a fascinating account of the literary and theological interactions of O'Connor and Percy with Tate and Gordon. The third book, Jeana DelRosso's Writing Catholic Women: Contemporary International Catholic Girlhood Narratives, is an investigation of contemporary Catholic women's literature across cultural and ethnic lines, touching only briefly and peripherally on O'Connor. Instead, DelRosso is concerned with the broad question of how women writers of diverse ethnic and national origins "challenge and embrace" the Roman Catholic Church in their fiction and autobiographical narratives (5). Srigley and O'Gorman agree on the importance of Jacques Maritain's Art and Scholasticism to the development of O'Connor's aesthetic. O'Gorman calls the book "the essential starting point in any discussion of O'Connor's and Percy's commitment to realism and an important source for their understanding of art's moral function" [End Page 175] (109–10). Srigley sees O'Connor's theology and art coming together in an "ethic of responsibility" toward others (10). "My concern is to demonstrate how O'Connor's ethics are inextricably linked to her role as a storyteller and how her moral vision is played out in the drama of her fiction" writes...

Stephen L. BROCK: Action and Conduct. Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action, T & T Clark, Edimburg, 1998.

Reviewed by: Thomas Aquinas on Persuasion: Action, Ends, and Natural Rhetoric by Jeffrey Maciejewski Giuseppe Butera Thomas Aquinas on Persuasion: Action, Ends, and Natural Rhetoric. By Jeffrey Maciejewski. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2014. Pp. vii + 111. $70.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-7391-7128-8. Aristotle defined man as a rational and political animal. In this creative appropriation of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, Jeffrey Maciejewski argues that man is also a rhetorical animal. There is in each one of us a natural inclination to use persuasive modes of thought and speech, and this moves us [End Page 154] to reason about ends and to act in pursuit of them. More pointedly (and radically), Maciejewski argues that all discursive reasoning is, by its very nature, rhetorical. To understand how radical this thesis is, it is important to understand that ancient thinkers limited rhetoric to the social dimension of human discourse. On this view, "if our nature, as social animals, is defined by a coming together to form cities, to establish laws, and to discover arts, it is a coming together made possible by a rhetorically motivated faculty of discourse, a seemingly innate power of persuading each other, a power that is necessary to bring about social cohesion" (1-2). Maciejewski has no objection to this view as far as it goes. But this standard perspective is problematic: it does not go far enough. For on Maciejewski's view, the very essence of discursive thought is teleological, directed towards action. This by itself is enough to make all discursive thought (practical and speculative: see chap. 2) rhetorical, since as Maciejewski puts it, "the proximate end of rhetoric is to precipitate action" (16). From ancient times, thinkers such as the Greek Isocrates and the Roman Cicero have noted the necessity of rhetoric for the maintenance and flourishing of human society. As Cicero put it, "many cities have been established, many wars extinguished, many most enduring alliances and most holy friendships have been cemented by deliberate wisdom much assisted and facilitated by eloquence" (2, quoting De inventione). Nature, it seems, has outfitted us with the ability to engage in persuasive discourse. If asked how nature has done this, Maciejewski claims that none of the ancients has an answer. It is in attempting to answer this question himself , through creative appropriation of Aquinas's views, that he arrives at the conclusion that "the discourse Aquinas refers to [in his discussion of the discursive movement of the intellect] … is persuasive; that is, it is rhetorical insofar as it is a form of discourse that precipitates movement" (8). Underlining its essential rootedness in human nature, Maciejewski gives this "discursive action of the intellect" the name "natural rhetoric" (ibid.). At the risk of oversimplification, Maciejewski seems to be saying that the social use of rhetoric is an end (the end) that determines the nature of human discourse at every level. All of our thinking is social in this respect because all of it is directed toward persuading ourselves or others to act: "So it is that the good for man—as it is constituted individually and as it is apprehended socially—what enables us to live with one other [sic] well, is dependent on a form of naturally occurring rhetorical abilities, a form of persuasion that is characteristically human, that is natural in the richest sense, that is natural rhetoric" (106-7). Maciejewski's argument spans four chapters. In the first, he develops the notion of a natural rhetoric, making use of Aristotelian essentialism and Thomistic action theory to conclude that we have, by nature, the ability to develop "the basic goods of prudence, justice, and sociability" thanks to "a [End Page 155] mechanism [i.e., natural rhetoric] by which action is constituted" and directed to these goods as to their natural ends (28). In the remaining chapters, Maciejewski elaborates the notion of natural rhetoric by applying it to the study of the act of understanding, defective action, and the formation of the moral virtues, all with a view to explaining "why it is we have been given [the] uniquely human capacity" of persuasion (104). In attempting to assess the success of Maciejewski's...

This study offers theoretical explanations and distinctions associated with the phenomenon of conscience in social work. It uses the perspective of Roman-Catholic theology, or more precisely of the Roman-Catholic Church. It briefly reflects on an anthropology of conscience and then contemplates the essence of conscience and its relationship to the truth. In the reflection on the contradiction between Christian and secularized morality (given by the renowned Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar 1905-1988), it shows the importance of conscience in the value inconsistencies of the attitudes of today’s world. Finally, based on the impulses of the apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis Amoris laetitia (2016), it reflects on practical impulses concerning the place and importance of conscience in social work.

Comments on Aristotelian ethics and its history since Thomas Aquinas. The author presents his thesis that Aristotelian ethics limits itself to the topic of the affective conditions of practical reason. He suggests that Thomas Aquinas later provides answers to Aristotle's theory of action.

Reviewed by: Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy by Tobias Hoffmann Julie Fox-Horton Middle Ages, angels, free will, intellectualism, voluntarism, fallibility, agency, psychology, theology tobias hoffmann. Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xiv + 292. In Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy, Tobias Hoffmann thoroughly examines the height of the free will debate and the influence of Aristotle's action theory on theologians central to the dispute in the Latin West between the 1220s and the 1320s. The reception of Aristotle at this time caused a shift in the debate from a theologically centered reflection on the relationship between free will and sin, to a philosophical query exploring "how free agency is rooted in the powers of the soul" (1). Organized into three sections, Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy serves as an encyclopedia of medieval theologians and philosophical thinkers in the Latin West entrenched in the debate of free will as the theoretical evolution unfolds. Hoffmann's methodology for evaluating each thinker's position on the topic consists in looking at three fundamental components: their presuppositions of free will and the question of controlling one's actions, the agency of choice, and the discourse of outright evil. In Part I, "Free Will," Hoffmann begins with a brief introduction to the essential theories of free will before Aristotelian action theory entered the debate. Discussing Augustine's struggle over the issue of free will and then moving on to Peter Lombard's treatment of the issue in his Sentences, or [End Page 438] Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, which had a profound influence on theology for some time as "a principal reference text in the formation of Catholic theologians from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries," Hoffmann moves quickly on to the ideological shift (20). Beginning in the 1220s, two influential texts circulated among theologians, John of Damascus's De fide orthodoxa and portions of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, at which point Aristotle became the "principal authority in philosophy," and influential in the free will debate (22). Once medieval theologians began to reflect on Aristotle's ideas on the mechanics of decision-making, traditional notions that once focused on "the relation between free decision, sin, and grace" shifted, in what Hoffmann refers to as a psychological turn, to a "psychological foundation of free decision in reason and will" (31). During the early phases of the psychological turn in the free will debate, scholars like Thomas Aquinas—particularly through his ideas of "the will as a rational appetite" and his discourse on the relation of the intellect and will—created a divide among thinkers, characterized as either intellectualism or voluntarism (42). For voluntarism, Hoffmann points to several medieval thinkers but focuses on Henry of Ghent and his voluntarist conceptions of free will that both align with and deviate from Aquinas. Hoffmann then turns to thinkers whose theories lean toward intellectualism, focusing on Godfrey of Fontaines and his use of principles of metaphysics to address the cause of free will. During the first two decades of the fourteenth century, the free will debate evolved even further with theologians like John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, who either refined or radicalized free will theories (119). In Part II, "Whence Evil?", a theme central to medieval theologians and the debate of free will is evaluated—the origin of evil. As a premise on the origin of evil, Hoffmann turns to Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius. For Augustine, the question of the origin of evil developed from "a thorough reflection about the fall of angels" (163). In comparison, Augustine argued, according to Hoffman, "an evil will ultimately lacks an explanation," (169) while Pseudo-Dionysius argued, "evil cannot be a final cause" (173). The unifying principle for both thinkers is the belief that "evil does not have an efficient cause" (173). From Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius Hoffmann explores deeper the cause of evil according to other thinkers, such as Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Lombard, William of Auxerre, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and John Duns Scotus. After a lengthy analysis of the influence on and the contributions of these...

376 BOOK REVIEWS As should be evident by now, the volume contains a mixture of misunderstandings of Plantinga and Wolterstorff (for example, Veatch fails to see that Plantinga is a foundationalist, though of a consciously different stripe from Thomas and Locke), with some legitimate and telling challenges to Reformed epistemology (what is the relation between grounds and evidence, and precisely what justifies someone in taking a belief as basic). Separating the two is not always easy, hut where it can he done, there will be value in the resulting dialogue for both Reformed thinkers and Thomists. Augsburg College Minneapolis, Minnesota BRUCE R. REICHENBACH Thomas von Aquin: Werk and Wirkung im Licht neuerer Forschung. Ed. by ALBERT ZIMMERMANN AND CLEMENS KOPP. Miscellanea mediaevelia, 19. New York and Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 1988. Pp. xi +507. DM 252. The hienniel Koelner Mediaevistentagung sponsored hy the ThomasInstitut in Cologne has focused in the past on themes as diverse as metaphysics or ontology, the fate of Judaism and the Moslem presence in Western mediaeval thought, or controversies at the University of Paris and stages in the development of the University of Cologne. In 1986 the symposium was devoted to the discussion of Thomas Aquinas. The lectures which were then read and discussed, so diverse in theme and methodology, have been supplemented by studies submitted in written form only, in order to form the volume now presented in the series Miscellaneous mediaevalia. In one of the few truly theological contributions, the Dominican Paulus Engelhardt (Bottrop) attempts to discover in Thomas's writings a basic structure characteristic of both thought and belief. " The incarnation of the Word and Human Desire for Truth" (l-12) denote the two converging movements. The productive discontent and selfdissatisfaction of the desiderium naturale visionis Dei, as illustrated hy Thomas's reflections on the pre-theological forms of angustia (e.g. at SCG, III, 4,3), point toward that essential tension between hope and despair, where the gospel itself can first be heard. A somewhat different , perhaps even contradictory, position is presented by the accomplished mediaeval scholar, Ludwig Hoedl (Bochum): "Philosophical Ethics and Moral Theology in Thomas' Summa" (23-42). Aquinas's main contribution is defined as a synthesis of teachings on virtue, law, BOOK REVIEWS 377 and grace which grants significant autonomy to philosophical ethics. The sense of insufficiency does not seem quite as present, the need for grace not quite as pressing as in Engelhardt's interpretation. The editor of the volume, Albert Zimmermann, summarizes the results of a dissertation by one of his assistants at the Thomas-Institut, Ivana Znidar: "Thomas' Thoughts on Defectus Naturalis and Timor" (43-52) points to structures and experiences of self-deficiency, which are not simply the result of sin but underlie the possibility of sin, virtue, grace, and even glory, e.g. in the permanence of timor filialis in patria. Without the same far-reaching systematic intention shown by Engelhardt, the material presented here does seem to confirm the interpretation offered in the earlier article. With an impressive sense of the current problematic and the controversies of Aristotelian scholarship, Ralph Mclnerny (Notre Dame) seeks points of agreement between two alternative models of " Action Theory in St. Thomas Aquinas" (13-22). Practical reason is viewed both as the search for means to ends (ST, I-II, q. 1-17) and as the quasi-syllogistic mediation of principles (the rule, natural law, or precept ) to derivative conclusions and consequences (an instance, an example , or some other way of applying the general rule to particular action), seen e.g. at ST, I-II, q. 90-108. The variety of possible means and the transcendence of the final goal correspond to the merely general character of the principles, which are strictly definitive for. a concrete action only in the negative case of a prohibition. The theme common to the first contributions resurfaces here: the constitutive imperfection of earthly existence, even in its successful, virtuous form, as a basic motif of Thomas's thought in comparison to Aristotle. David E. Luscombe (Sheffield) discusses the diverse influence of Pseudo-Dionysius in "St. Thomas and Conceptions of Hierarchy in the Thirteenth Century" (261-277). The political and ecclesiological disputes of...

The Thomist 74 (2010): 237-82 THE MORAL ACT IN ST. THOMAS: A FRESH LOOK KEVIN F. KEISER Aquinas College Nashville, Tennessee Even a child makes himself known by his acts, whether what he does is pure and right. (Prov 20:11) DESPITE ALL PROTESTATIONS for and attempts at renewal, moral theology today is lacking in clarity, thus serving to confuse souls more than guide them. While human acts are very contingent things that never come close to permitting the certitude of other disciplines,1 it" would be a mistake to use this as an excuse for not expecting clarity from the specialists in moral matters. We should not repeat Descartes's mistake of confounding absolute certitude (which moral matters cannot always have) with clarity. Nor should we shrink from seeking what certitude can be had.2 One area that seems to be suffering from such a lack of clarity has to do with the so-called three sources of morality, and in particular how these are presented in the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas. Much has been said, for instan"ce, about the "moral object" by many who would consider themselves to be faithful commentators of St. Thomas on this point. And yet the conclusions reach no consensus, and cover a spectrum that certainly pushes the limits of Catholic orthopraxis. For example, various conceptions of the moral object by self-professed commentators 1 St. Thomas Aquinas, I Ethic.,lect. 3 (Marietti ed., 32). 2 Ibid. (Marietti ed., 36): "And therefore the well-disciplined student must neither seek greater certitude, nor be content with lesser certitude than may be fitting to the thing which is being treated." 237 238 KEVIN F. KEISER on St. Thomas have aided the conclusion that masturbation may be permissible if it is done to procure semen for a fertility test3 (even though pollution for medicinal purposes has been specifically forbidden by the Holy Office);4 infantile craniotomies are possibly licit;5 speech signifying the false is not considered lying if we can safely assume that "the communicative community" has broken down;6 and last but not least, the sin against nature is seen as legitimate if it is done to prevent AIDS, not children7 (also despite magisterial statements declaring the use of a condom an intrinsic evil).8 How are such views purportedly based in St. Thomas? What is the source of the confusion? Every Catholic who has had any interest in moral matters is familiar with the teaching that "the object, the intention, and the circumstances make up the 'sources,' or constitutive elements, of the morality of human acts."9 Yet when one goes to questions 18 to 20 of the Prima Secundae, often matters seem to be quite complicated and confusing. Is the moral object a thing or an act? Is the specification from the object most important, or is it the specification from the end? Do circumstances change the species or do they not? Do circumstances and intention factor in at all, or is it the object alone that specifies the will? A first reading of these 3 Martin Rhonheimer, "Intentional Actions and the Meaning of the Object: A Reply to Richard McCormick," The Thomist 59 (1995): 296. 4 DS 3684. On fertility testing, see also Pope Pius XII, Address Vous nous avez to participants of the Second World Congress on fertility and sterility (19 May 1956), available on the Vatican website (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/speeches/1956/documents/ hf_p-xii_spe_19560519_vous-nous-avez_it.html [accessed 1May2009]). 5 John Finnis, Germain Grisez, and Joseph Boyle, '"Direct' and 'Indirect': A Reply to Critics of Our Action Theory," The Thomist 65 (2001): 21-33. 6 Benedict Guevin, "When a Lie Is Not a Lie: The Importance of Ethical Context," The Thomist 66 (2002): 273; for a different argument with practically the same conclusion, see Alexander Pruss, "Lyingand SpeakingYour Interlocutor's Language,"The Thomist 63 (1999): 445. 7 Martin Rhonheimer, "The Truth About Condoms," The Tablet (10 July 2004): 10-11; Benedict Guevin, O.S.B., and Martin Rhonheimer, "On the Use of Condoms to Prevent Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome," National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 5 (2005): 4048 . 8 DS 2795. 9 Catechism of the...

It is dangerous to show man too clearly how much he resembles beast, without at same time showing him his greatness. It is also dangerous to allow him too clear a vision of his greatness without his baseness. It is even more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both. --Blaise Pascal Christianity is a humanism, else it is misunderstood. On other hand, secular humanism is absolute antithesis of gospel. --John Milbank, summarizing views of Henri de Lubac, S.J. It is not too much of a stretch to argue that American culture has been bombarded by dangers laid out here by Pascal and de Lubac. The so-called new atheists insist that we are no more than product of our genes and environment, while transhumanists devote themselves to deification of humanity through technology. Whether one is a scientific materialist or a New-Age spiritualist, only verboten thing is to believe that God made us, is outside of us, calls us to obedience, loves us, and died and rose to save us. With each new insistence that humanity is end of meaning and source of religion, gospel of Jesus Christ recedes into background, reduced to a mere symbol of our deepest desires. But one sign that gospel endures is ongoing appeal of O'Connor. Though her entire oeuvre fits easily into one volume, it continues to stimulate substantial critical interest, including numerous books, articles, and a dedicated journal. There are many reasons for this, of course, but one of them must be that O'Connor represents something readers need that is very different from despair of new atheists and presumption of transhumanists. O'Connor's hope was in Christ, and she believed that human beings were created to glorify him. She thus flatly refused to separate nature from grace; as Ralph Wood argues in this issue, her work unites them in a radically surprising way (36). She was committed to telling stories that insist that God's love for his creation, his validation of humanity's goodness, was literally incarnated in Christ. What is of great value to rest of us who share her convictions is that her stories are wicked good--at once laugh-out-loud funny and profound. This special issue of Christianity and Literature is both a testimony to O'Connor's well-deserved reputation and a commitment to its continuation. Collectively, essays focus on distinctiveness of O'Connor's Christian vision, illustrating how she sought to avoid dangers described by Pascal and de Lubac. They each point to O'Connor's agreement with St. Thomas Aquinas that human beings have been created with a desire for something outside of themselves, a desire for bonum universale, whole good. Although that complete good is found only in God, it is suggested everywhere in creation. What men and women can possess of happiness on earth is limited by our vision of that good. As Josef Pieper explains, the fulfillment of existence takes place in manner in which we become aware of reality; whole energy of our being is ultimately directed toward attainment of insight (58). That O'Connor was fundamentally interested in exploring this question of insight--sight into good of creation--is reflected in how each of these essayists concern themselves, in some way, with O'Connor's novella The Violent Bear it Away. The novella enacts a battle between secular vision of Rayber and audacious supernatural vision of protagonist Francis Tarwater and his great uncle, Mason Tarwater. And since battle is for nothing less than dignity of most vulnerable members of humanity--a dignity that is under siege in twenty-first century--it is worth paying attention to. In Flannery O'Connor, Benedict XVI, and Divine Eros,' Ralph Wood argues that O'Connor's work can be seen through main ideas of proponents of la nouvelle theologie to share interesting similarities with ideas of current pope, Benedict XVI. …