Aquinas's Understanding Research Articles

Toward a Thomistic Theory of Attention

Abstract: Drawing on contemporary research in philosophy and psychology, this is the first study to provide a systematic treatment of attention in the writings of Aquinas. How cognitive agents direct their attention, whether freely or as necessitated by objects, was for him an important topic of investigation. In doing so, he developed a rich vocabulary around the theme of attention. Aquinas understands attention to be a feature of finite cognitive agents—animals, humans, and angels—whose mental activity proceeds piecemeal. For such agents, and in contrast to God, cognition is necessarily selective. Aquinas variously speaks of attention as a capacity, an activity, and an outcome. Qua capacity, attention is a finite resource that gets used up in the process of being deployed. Qua activity , attention is mental prioritizing—foregrounding some items while backgrounding others. Qua outcome , attention is the result of this prioritization, the precise angle under which an item is taken up to be known. Each of these three aspects are examined in successive sections of the article. In general, for Aquinas, attention is the priority structuring that ensures the unity of an individual’s cognitive life as it unfolds in time. Aquinas’s main source for this reflection was St. Augustine. Hence, in its first part, this paper examines how Augustine thematized the topic of attention.

The Virtue of Humility: Interpreting the Summa Theologiae’s ‘Minimalist Approach’

Abstract This paper argues, in response to scholarly criticism, that Thomas Aquinas’s account of the virtue of humility in the Summa Theologiae does not undermine the importance of humility in the Christian moral life. While the Summa’s classification of humility as a ‘potential part’ of temperance, which results from Thomas’s reliance on classical sources, has been blamed for this work’s perceived belittling of humility, an understanding of the Summa’s overall scope and Aquinas’s system of organizing virtues therein helps demonstrate that this categorization does not imply a lesser significance of humility either than other virtues in the Summa or than humility as treated in his Bible commentaries. Furthermore, even if the Summa’s structure creates limited space for an extensive discourse on humility, the establishment of humility’s reciprocity with magnanimity and absolute contradiction of pride leave no doubts as to the magnitude of this virtue. Thus, the ‘humble’ portrayal of humility in the Summa not only adequately but aptly expresses this uniquely Christian virtue, capturing the way it disposes human beings to ‘creaturely’ reverence before the Creator, and invites a more holistic understanding of Aquinas’s virtue ranking in the Secunda Secundae.

Nobilior Modus Est: The Importance of Music in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas

Abstract This paper presents a reading of Aquinas’ treatment of the value of music in religious teaching and preaching about God that reinterprets his claim in ST II-II, q. 91, a.2 that language is of ‘a more noble kind’ than music. Through an understanding of Aquinas’ writings on ‘contemplation’ a more complex and thorough treatment of music can be outlined. Far from simply presenting an argument for the superiority of language over music for the purpose of gaining religious understanding, this paper argues that Aquinas’ wider literary corpus on the subject of contemplation provides both implicit and explicit support for the parallel value music and language.

Divine and Human Providence: Philosophical, Psychological and Theological Approaches

Divine and Human Providence: Philosophical, Psychological and Theological Approaches

The Christian Structure of Politics: On the De Regno of Thomas Aquinas by William McCormick

Reviewed by: The Christian Structure of Politics: On the De Regno of Thomas Aquinas by William McCormick D. C. Schindler McCORMICK, William. The Christian Structure of Politics: On the De Regno of Thomas Aquinas. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022. xiii + 272 pp. Cloth, $75.00 Challenging general assumptions that, because of its genre as a letter to a king in the speculum principis tradition, Aquinas's De Regno is a minor source for Aquinas's political theory in comparison to the political passages from the Summa and Sentence Commentary, William McCormick, S.J. presents a new interpretation of this somewhat neglected text. Though there exist a few classic articles comparing Aquinas's thought in this letter and elsewhere, and substantial introductions to the De Regno in editions by Eschmann (1949) and Dondaine (1979), The Christian Structure of Politics is the first book-length study of Aquinas's letter to the king of Cyprus. In this respect, the volume makes a very welcome contribution to our understanding of Aquinas's understanding of political order, bringing out a dimension of his thought—its awareness of history and its pedagogical sensitivity—not so apparent in Aquinas's other writings. The book is very much what it presents itself as being, namely, a "close reading" of the text, following the letter's two parts (the second of which [End Page 150] Aquinas left unfinished) paragraph by paragraph, considering various interpretative possibilities and suspending judgment—the words "might" and "perhaps" are no doubt two of the most frequent in the book—until more evidence comes into view, and working up to general principles only at the end. McCormick thus eschews substantial engagement with theoretical issues that would form the backdrop to the discussion (for example, the relation between nature and grace, and between practical and theoretical reason), opting instead to focus on a more immediate engagement with what is presented in the text itself. He also does not make more than passing comments on Aquinas's better-known formulations on political matters from the Summa or Sentences Commentary. On the other hand, the "close reading" does not keep McCormick from discerning a general order in Aquinas's letter, which he divides up thematically according to a proposed schema. His approach shows a sensitivity to the historical context in which Aquinas was writing, even if particular details about Aquinas's addressee and the occasion of composition remain uncertain, but his aim is not simply to produce a historical study. Instead, as the book's title itself already indicates, he investigates the De Regno in order to show that the text offers fundamental principles for a distinctively Christian approach to politics, and thus can shed light even on our contemporary situation. The book is divided into five basic chapters, in addition to a substantial introduction and brief conclusion. The first four chapters follow the order of the De Regno, though the basic lines of division are McCormick's own interpretative proposal. Chapter 1 treats the letter's prooemium and the first two chapters of part one (I.1-2) under the title "The Aristotelian State of Nature," showing that, contrary to ideas found in a certain current of Christian thought, political order is fully natural to man and not simply a practical response to violence. Chapter 2, "The Augustinian Earthly City," treating I.3-6, complements the natural character of politics with the realistic acknowledgment of man's fallen nature. While some commentators have worried that the discussion of tyranny in these and subsequent chapters of the De Regno eclipses the positive account of politics given rather schematically at the start, and so diminishes the interest the text might hold for the political philosopher, McCormick argues that the engagement with the tyrant, and the disorder he generates, represents an essential dimension of Aquinas's political vision. Indeed, one of the principal theses of The Christian Structure of Politics is that Aquinas manages to integrate Aristotelian and Augustinian perspectives in an unusually illuminating way: Christian revelation, which introduces the eschatological horizon and foregrounds the historical narrative of sin and redemption, does not supplant but instead grounds and deepens the integrity of politics and...

Metaphysics between Experience and Transcendence: Thomas Aquinas on Metaphysics as a Science by Rudi A. te Velde

Reviewed by: Metaphysics between Experience and Transcendence: Thomas Aquinas on Metaphysics as a Science by Rudi A. te Velde O.P. Philip-Neri Reese VELDE, Rudi A. te. Metaphysics between Experience and Transcendence: Thomas Aquinas on Metaphysics as a Science. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2021. vii + 246 pp. 38,00€ In the opening chapter of Metaphysics 4, Aristotle states not only that there is a science of being as being and its per se properties but also that it is the task of the metaphysician to investigate the principles and causes of such being. Does this mean that metaphysics comes in two parts—namely, an ontology that investigates being and its properties, followed by a theology that investigates the first principle of being? Or does it mean that the very investigation into being and its properties involves an investigation into the first principle of being—that is, that ontology in some sense is theology? The central purpose of Rudi A. te Velde's newest book is to show that, at least for Thomas Aquinas and those who would follow him, the answer is emphatically the latter: Thomistic metaphysics is essentially the resolutio, or tracing-back, of common being (ens commune) to divine being (ens divinum). This process of resolution situates Aquinas's metaphysics "between experience and transcendence." Unlike natural philosophy, metaphysics is not focused on reality as it is given to us in and through sensory experience. Unlike Christian theology, metaphysics is not focused on God as revealed to us in and through supernatural faith. Rather, it is focused on what both of these—experience and transcendence—presuppose, namely, the fundamental truth that all of reality comes from, and points back to, God as its principle and source. For te Velde, Aquinas's metaphysics is etiology or, as he puts it, "the science of presuppositions." Chapter 1 offers the reader a synoptic view of the basic outlines and contours of Aquinas's metaphysics, both positively and negatively. Positively, te Velde points out that Aquinas understands metaphysics to be an Aristotelian science, that is, a discipline unified around its subject. For the properties of a subject are what we aim to demonstrate when we engage in Aristotelian science, and its principles are what we appeal to when doing so. Negatively, te Velde contrasts Aquinas's view of metaphysics with that of his contemporary, Siger of Brabant, and that of our contemporary, John Haldane. Unlike the former, Aquinas's metaphysics takes common being, which is participated and created (and so does not include God), as its subject. Unlike the latter, Aquinas's [End Page 162] metaphysics is unified by the intelligibility of being in light of its principles. In chapters 2 through 5, te Velde focuses in on particular themes that are of central importance to Aquinas's account of metaphysics. Chapter 2 examines the role of separatio in distinguishing metaphysics from physics and mathematics. Where physics considers things that require matter both to be and to be understood, and mathematics considers things that require matter to be but not to be understood, metaphysics considers things that require matter neither to be nor to be understood. It does so by means of a judgment of separation—a judgment that something (for example, substance, form, and so on) can be without matter. Chapter 3 turns to the topic of resolutio, wherein the mind moves "from the concrete particular to its intelligible ground." Aquinas's metaphysics is marked by a twofold resolution: one in which being and its attributes are grasped as the intrinsic principles of all things, and a second in which God and separate substances are grasped as the extrinsic principles of all things. Chapter 4 then investigates the notion of transcendentality, which arises in the first of those two resolutive processes—for insofar as being and its attributes are common to all things, they are not limited to just one of the ten categories (that is, they are transcendental). Nevertheless, the way in which predicates like "one," "true," and "good" cut across the categories that divide common being is different from the way that they cut across the divide between God and creatures. This difference ushers in chapter 5's discussion...

Hierarchies of basic goods and sins according to Aquinas’ natural law theory

Aquinas’ natural law theory contains a set of basic goods, such as survival, reproduction and the pursuit of truth. However, whether and how there is a hierarchical relationship among these goods remains disputed. Given the importance of Aquinas’ natural law theory for Christianity and the philosophy of law, this issue merits a closer investigation. By carefully examining various modern scholars’ theories and Aquinas’ texts, it is demonstrated that according to Aquinas, firstly, there are hierarchies of basic goods and sins; secondly, these hierarchies are horizontal and vertical according to the order of participation and the dignity of substances, respectively.Contribution: This research reconsiders the modern debate over Aquinas’ hierarchical theory of basic goods and provides a more authentic understanding of Aquinas’ own view, which can be applied to his theory of sin. Aquinas’ natural law theory can hence be clarified in a more profound way.

Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation by Rik Van Nieuwenhove, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021, pp. viii + 220, £65.00, hbk

Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation by Rik Van Nieuwenhove, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021, pp. viii + 220, £65.00, hbk

Quo Vadis?On the role of just peacewithinjust war

AbstractThis article contributes to the debate about the future of just war thinking, which has been challenged by the emerging school of just peace. Just peace thinkers hope that by foregrounding nonviolent means just war reasoning will become obsolete. Recently, the German Catholic Bishops have argued that the traditional understanding of just war contributed to their predecessors' silence on the Second World War. Grounded in just peace thinking, their argument implies that had the new framework been in place at the time, it would have been easier for their predecessors to oppose Hitler's war. In this article, I defend traditional just war thinking as encountered in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. For Aquinas, just war thinking was part of an encompassing ethics of war and peace. In fact, peace was the primary goal. Grounded in Aquinas's understanding of virtue, I argue that there is a place for just peace scholarship within the just war framework. The tools of nonviolence should be seen as an important complement to the justifiable use of armed force.

Saint Thomas Aquinas’ Theology and His Commentary on the Book of Psalms

This is a brief commentary of the Spanish bilingual edition of Aquinas’ Commentary to the Book of Psalms, by Carlos Casanova and Enrique Alarcón, with the outstanding introductions to each of its four volumes. It deals with the relevance of Biblical studies for the understanding of Aquinas’ theological work, the hermeneutical tools used by Aquinas when commenting the Book of Psalms, the contemporary representatives of the school of Biblical Thomism and the main lessons a reader could draw from Aquinas’ reading of the Book of Psalms.

Aquinas, Contemplation, and Theology

AbstractJonathan Lear's account of Aristotle and the human person as a systematic understander can shed light on how Thomas Aquinas sees the passage from contemplation of worldly things to the contemplation of the divine essence. In grasping the essences of mundane particulars, the systematic understander ‘spiritualizes’ them, and simultaneously comes to grasp both self and God. This account of contemplation can further help illuminate Aquinas's understanding of the nature of the theological task as an exercise of systematic understanding of the particulars from which the scriptural narrative of signs and examples is constructed. Finally, the theologian's own path as a systematic understander is retraced for his or her students in sharing the fruits of contemplation through teaching.

Assent to Faith, Theology and Scientia in Aquinas

AbstractThis paper revisits Aquinas's understanding of theology as a science based on a participation in the divine scientia. Our modern presuppositions (in terms of “autonomous” reason and philosophy as a discipline utterly separate from theology) often appear to render Aquinas's claims implausible. In this contribution it is argued that (a) all sciences are fiduciary in the broad sense (with the exception of those that rely on principles per se nota) and (b) that first principles can only be accepted or rejected, but not refuted or demonstrated within the relevant discipline. From this, two conclusions can be drawn: first, despite its reliance on revelation theology's case is, therefore, not as peculiar as modern readers might initially assume: every discipline operates with key assumptions it simply accepts. Secondly, given the role of first principles, to characterise Aquinas's account of the assent of faith as fideist or voluntarist is beside the point, for you can only accept or reject first principles. The contribution ends by suggesting that assent to the articles of faith is not an extraneous acquiescence in assertions of divine authority either, as a reading of the first question of the Secunda Secundae makes clear. Indeed, the paper hints that we should not read the first question of the Prima Pars without engaging with the first questions of the Secunda Secundae.

On the Final Definition of the Sophist: Sophist 265A10–268D5

Aquinas's doctrine of creatures as participants of esse in relation to God as ipsum esse is structurally parallel to Proclus's triadic schema of participating, participated, and unparticipated terms. For Proclus, a multiplicity of participated terms are diminished relative to their unparticipated monad in that each is confined to its participant. Since all things exist by participating one, unparticipated one itself is the first principle of all things. For Aquinas, all things exist by participating esse, and the esse of each is contracted to its participant. Hence unparticipated esse itself is the first principle. In both Proclus and Aquinas, therefore, we must "take away" all things, as participants of one or esse, from the first principle, leaving no thought whatever that grasps the first itself. Aquinas's understanding of creation as the posteriority of all things as participants of esse to God as ipsum esse is thus altogether Platonic and Procline in character.

Lessened by Addition: Procession by Diminution in Proclus and Aquinas

Aquinas's doctrine of creatures as participants of esse in relation to God as ipsum esse is structurally parallel to Proclus's triadic schema of participating, participated, and unparticipated terms. For Proclus, a multiplicity of participated terms are diminished relative to their unparticipated monad in that each is confined to its participant. Since all things exist by participating one, unparticipated one itself is the first principle of all things. For Aquinas, all things exist by participating esse, and the esse of each is contracted to its participant. Hence unparticipated esse itself is the first principle. In both Proclus and Aquinas, therefore, we must "take away" all things, as participants of one or esse, from the first principle, leaving no thought whatever that grasps the first itself. Aquinas's understanding of creation as the posteriority of all things as participants of esse to God as ipsum esse is thus altogether Platonic and Procline in character.

Happiness as the constitutive principle of action in Thomas Aquinas

Constitutivism locates the ground of practical normativity in features constitutive of rational agency and rests on the concept of a constitutive norm – a norm that is internal to a thing such that it both defines and measures it. In this essay, I argue that Aquinas understands happiness as the constitutive principle of human action, since happiness is the end that both defines and measures it. Turning to the thought of Aquinas opens up new possibilities for constitutivism by showing how the constitutive principle of action can be the ground of a practical realism in ethics.

The Human Body as an Instrumental Cause of Actions in the Writings of Thomas Aquinas

The Human Body as an Instrumental Cause of Actions in the Writings of Thomas Aquinas John Rziha Flowing from its Greek and Judeo-Christian roots, the idea that humans are composed of a body and a soul has been a mainstay of Western thought. Yet, how the soul and body are related has been the subject of much debate going back at least as far as Plato and Aristotle. In modern times, the relation between the body and soul is widely disputed, with many people completely rejecting the existence of the soul (known in philosophical circles as materialists or physicalists).1 Although the materialist rejection of the soul is often based on deep philosophical assumptions, some contemporary materialists believe that the findings of modern neuroscience disprove the existence of the soul (or at least make speaking about a soul irrelevant).2 They note that thoughts, feelings, and even love [End Page 1203] can be measured though physiological changes in the body. For example, electroencephalography (EEG) can measure brain waves, and by studying this and other forms of biofeedback, scientists can tell a lot about what a person is thinking and feeling. From these scientific advances a materialist might argue that modern neurobiology, endocrinology, and psychology can explain all the actions formally attributed to the soul. Furthermore, these actions can be mapped to different functions and parts of the brain and body with the conclusion that there is no integrated self (or soul) underlying actions such as thought or free choice.3 These scientific discoveries might be a challenge to someone who believes the body and soul to be two distinct substances (similar to Descartes).4 However, a person with a proper hylomorphic understanding of the relation between the body and soul, should not be troubled by these scientific findings. In fact, not only do these scientific findings not disprove the existence of the soul (or make it irrelevant), those with a proper understanding of the relation between the body and the soul would expect science to discover that the body causes human actions. This article will examine Thomas Aquinas's understanding of the body as the instrumental cause of actions in order to help explain both the role of the soul and the body within human actions. This essay is not meant to convince the materialist that a soul exists, but it should show that it is quite rational to both believe the findings of modern neuroscience and hold that the human soul [End Page 1204] exists. In order to make these points I will explain four essential aspects of Thomas's understanding of primary and instrumental causality and directly apply these concepts to the particular case of the relation between the body and the soul. This essay is only meant to introduce these ideas and hopefully stimulate other philosophers and theologians to work on this topic to apply it more thoroughly to contemporary debates. As is well-documented, Thomas speaks of the soul as the form of the body. This is the hylopmorphic view of the relation between the body and soul.5 What is less well-documented is that Thomas further explains the interactions between the body and soul by speaking of the soul as the primary cause and the body as the instrumental cause. In his commentary on De anima, Thomas comments on the following words of Aristotle: "For all natural bodies are instruments of the soul: whether of animals or of plants, they exist as for the sake of the soul." In his commentary on the passage Thomas states: "For it is evident that all such bodies are, as it were, instruments of the 'soul'—not only of animals' souls but of the plant soul as well."6 The language of the body as an instrumental cause comes from Aristotle, and Thomas will continue to use it throughout his corpus.7 Although the term instrumental cause can also refer to animal and plant bodies, the present article will be solely concerned with human bodies and souls. To better understand what Thomas means when he says the body is the instrument of the soul, I will give some general background information on the Thomistic concepts of...

Aquinas and the Problem of No Best World

AbstractThomas Aquinas is often mentioned in the debate regarding whether God must create a best possible world. Contemporary philosophers usually place Aquinas alongside philosophers who also believe that there can be no best possible world. However, contemporary philosophers have been inconsistent in their understanding of Aquinas’ position. Some have placed him in the same category as Gottfried Leibniz, agreeing that God must create one best possible world.

Divine Simplicity and the Grammar of God-talk: Comments on Hughes, Tapp, and Schärtl

Different opinions about the simplicity of God may be connected with different understandings of how abstract terms are used to name the properties which are affirmed of a being. If these terms are taken to signify parts of that being, this being is not a simple one. Thomas Aquinas, who attributes essence, existence and perfections to God, nevertheless thinks that these are not different parts of God. When essence, existence and perfections are attributed to God, they all denominate the same, the Being of the first cause. For Aquinas, this is a consequence of his way of introducing the language about God by basing it upon the philosophical ways leading to God as first cause. Awareness of this connection between Divine attributes and the arguments for God’s existence is crucial for an adequate understanding of Aquinas’ position.

El «derecho» como objeto de la Justicia. Breve comentario al artículo 1 de la "Quaestio 57" de la "Secunda Secundae" de la "Summa Theologiae" de Santo Tomás de Aquino: «Utrum ius sit obiectum iustitiae»

The legal philosophy of Thomas Aquinas has two essential moments: his theory of the laws, and his theory of right and justice. His Summa Theologiae can be understood as a great treatise on God and His decisions, i.e. His acts of creation of the world and of the rational creature. The global account of Aquinas becomes apparent in a set of decisions: general decisions (laws) and concrete decisions (judicial decisions). The virtue of justice must inspire all of them. However, the “real just” only can be seen in the particular decision; that is the reason why Aquinas understands “the right” (“ius”) as “the just” (“iustum”) or “the just thing” (“res iusta”). ?For what do just laws serve if the definite decisions are unjust?

The Concept of «Right» and the Focal Point of Juridicity in Debate between Villey, Tierney, Finnis and Hervada

The article revisits and seeks to clarify and provide with new perspectives the debate between the theoretical approaches of four authors – Michel Villey, Brian Tierney, John Finnis and Javier Hervada – in their accounts of the contemporary formulation of the concept of “ius”. Although all authors analyzed in the paper share common thomistic roots in their respective argumentations on the essential meaning and content of the concept of “right”, they still differ in their accounts with regard to the understanding of Aquinas’s classical juridical realism, the relation between “law” and “right” and the role of subjective rights in history and in today’s juridical discourse. The paper seeks to highlight how such comparative perspective reveals not only the contrasts in the theoretical accounts of these authors with regard to the structural “locus” of the focal point of juridicity, but also renders manifest certain perspectives of integration of each approach with contributions achieved by the other interlocutors of the debate.