This article argues that Su¨¢rez advocates for an institutionalist theory of law grounded in a ¡°principle of publicity.¡± According to this principle, all law, regardless of its nature, derives from a public power¡ªa sovereign authority that is both legislative and executive. For Su¨¢rez, no law exists unless it is instituted by a public power through a promulgation procedure. In this framework, the principle of publicity applies universally, encompassing civil, divine, canonical, natural, and international law, each enacted by a sovereign authority within its respective order. The universality of this principle, rooted in the existence of public authorities across all legal systems, underscores its foundational role in Su¨¢rez¡¯s theory and establishes publicity as a defining feature of all law.

Is the Church the only legitimate coercive legal authority or potestas for religion on this earth?¡ªand does she have the right to call on a Catholic state to assist as her agent or minister in the exercise of her legal authority, including through punitive state sanctions in defence of religious truth? The paper shows that this conception of the Church has been clearly taught by the Magisterium and embodied in canon law, and that Vatican II introduced no doctrinal correction to this teaching. Kevin Vallier objects that this teaching is unjust. But the justice of the teaching can be defended and explained, provided we abandon the modern philosophical conception of legal authority as essentially coordinative. We must return instead to the older and historically Catholic conception of coercive legal authority as educative, with the formation and even the direct coercion of belief as a central concern.

The present essay considers the metaphysical thought of the missionary Jesuit Miguel Vi?as. In particular, I focus on his doctrine of being and argue that his thinking is continuous with a strain of traditional Jesuit metaphysicians (viz., Su¨¢rez, Hurtado, and Arriaga) that resolves being in terms of an existential reference. I consider two important objections to my thesis. First, much of Vi?as¡¯s thinking unfolds in terms of possibility which is existentially indifferent. What is more, to the extent that he characterizes that possibility as ¡°intrinsic¡± to non-existent essences, he seems to betray the notion of a creation ex nihilo. Second, Vi?as makes the claim that a supertranscendental community holds between real being and beings of reason. But such a community is based upon extrinsic cognoscibility, not existence. I show that both objections fail to capture key elements of Vi?as¡¯s project, which remains faithful to the aforementioned Jesuit tradition. Vi?as thus serves as an important conduit through which the metaphysical thinking of the Old World was transmitted to the New.

Aquinas sometimes references ¡°indeterminate dimensions¡± in his early discussions of material substances. His discussions of these dimensions are few and brief, and the notable absence of the term from his later work has left their status in his ontology a mystery and spawned a debate about whether he changed his mind. In this paper, I offer a new understanding of indeterminate dimensions, one which is coherent with Aquinas¡¯s own words and has the advantage of explaining several puzzling features of these dimensions; then, I argue that some version of indeterminate dimensions remains a feature of his later understanding of material substances, but with a significant difference that results from a more important change of mind about the relationship between prime matter and substantial form. I conclude with a suggestion of how understanding this development in Aquinas¡¯s thought sheds light on his mature view on individuation.

¡°Heart¡± in a spiritual sense, beyond the physical organ, is ubiquitous in poetic and spiritual writings but strikingly absent in most accounts of philosophical anthropology, including much of the Thomistic tradition. By connecting elements from Scripture, Augustine, Aquinas, and Personalism and enriched by psychological and neurobiological scholarship, this article argues that ¡°heart¡± does indicate a specific notion regarding the human person, neither simply synonymous with ¡°soul¡± nor to be equated with any individual faculty. Recognizing relationality and integrality as first principles of reality prepares the metaphysical foundation for a view of the faculties and operations within the human person that, beyond isolated analyses, explores their interconnectedness and identifies the heart as the deep integral center of the person at which the various operations emerge, converge, and are integrated.

This article examines how and how far distributism is compatible with socialism and capitalism and how distributist political economy might enhance the holiness of society. After preliminaries on Christianity and political economy, I describe distributism in the light of Pope Leo XIII¡¯s encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) and suggest that distributism is incompatible with traditional socialism. After this I consider the potential compatibility of distributism and a version of capitalism, first indicating inadequacies in G. K. Chesterton¡¯s and Hilaire Belloc¡¯s understandings of capitalism. The article then argues that distributist capitalism is achievable if and because holiness in a life is often supported by wealth, but that wealth need not include productive property. A wealth-based conception of distribution that is fit for modern commercial society, which I call Distributism 2.0 (or ¡°distributalism¡±), emphasizes attending to God¡¯s will in the day-to-day decisions that together constitute the bulk of the life of any person or business.

In this paper I argue that distributism should be understood as part of a paradigm composed of other moral principles, such that living in accord with distributism requires and presupposes the practice of these moral principles. To support my argument, I use a criticism of distributism by Alexander Salter in his recent book The Political Economy of Distributism: Property, Liberty, and the Common Good to illustrate the paradigmatic nature of the difference between the distributist paradigm and that of economic liberalism. I then consider some other objections to distributism from its contemporary critics, showing how these criticisms make use of assumptions within economic liberalism that are not shared by the distributist paradigm.

In this essay I present two philosophical anthropologies, one of agency (homo sapiens) and one of passivity (homo patiens). For biological and sociological reasons, the former has dominated human self-understanding. Recent technology, culminating in generative AI, threatens to make a passive anthropology plausible. If this happens, whole swaths of people may outsource the activities that make up life and instead seek a passive existence as subjects of experiences. I discuss current cultural dynamics that make this option attractive. To avoid this, we need properly attuned affective powers, including a healthy sense of disgust. This forms the basis of my anthropological argument for a liberal education. In the age of AI, the liberal arts can no longer be justified via economic marketability. Instead, they will need to be valued for their formation of students into persons who can use leisure well and who feel a proper disgust for homo patiens.

Philosophers are increasingly interested in studying policing, often with an eye to reforming it or even abolishing it. In this paper, I bring together some of G. K. Chesterton¡¯s scattered remarks on the subject. I show that Chesterton anticipates many of the ideas current in the policing literature. Having tried to bring some order to these disparate comments, I then try to construct a preliminary philosophy of policing based on them. I connect Distributist thought to ideas in a recent book by Brandon del Pozo. The upshot, roughly, is that we should look to develop a robust form of community policing that reemphasizes the duties of ordinary citizens and thinks of the duties of professional police as mere extensions of them.

With fifty years of the Roe v. Wade decision teaching Americans that abortion is not only morally permissible but also a fundamental human right, present attempts to enact laws that restrict or prohibit abortion at the state and federal levels are likely to be futile. In this paper, I argue that the pro-life movement today may need to pivot away from focusing on legislation in the short term in order to address the deeper problems that mark the current American moral ethos. To this end, I first consider this ethos in light of the decline of a so-called ¡°Christendom culture.¡± In the next section, I point to the loss of political friendship as one aspect of the post-Christendom age. After sketching Aristotle¡¯s account of political friendship, I point to some deficiencies that are obstacles to political friendship today. Finally, I offer some modest suggestions for a pro-life strategy in the present ¡°Apostolic Missionary Age,¡± drawing lessons from G. K. Chesterton¡¯s distributism and Pope St. John Paul II¡¯s Veritatis splendor.

A fundamental tenet of G. K. Chesterton¡¯s distributism is his Principle of Domesticity, which holds that ¡°the ideal house, the happy family¡± is a human ideal, and that achieving some approximation to this is a human need. After clarifying what Chesterton means by ¡°home,¡± I examine his tendency to link home with property, and particularly with the family farm. His argument for this linkage turns on the relationship between farming and the goods of independence and integrity. Drawing on the work of Yves Simon, I show that this relationship is not as tight as Chesterton supposes, and that these goods can be otherwise secured. Thus, I argue, Chesterton overly restricts what can constitute a good home that fulfills our spiritual and social needs. I conclude by sketching a social vision that is less restrictive and more feasible than Chesterton¡¯s, but that I hope is still ¡°Chestertonian¡± and distributist in spirit.

Despite the obvious moral implications of how we pursue wealth, Aquinas¡¯s treatment of oeconomia (the art or science of household management) and its relation to the arts of wealth-getting or production has been widely set aside as an historically conditioned anomaly in his moral thinking. Modern socio-economic structures make it difficult to conceptualize Aquinas¡¯s understanding of the household in its ¡°economic¡± identity. For Aristotle and Aquinas, the work of wealth-getting has a natural and so intrinsic connection to the household precisely because the household is the context most conducive to pursuing wealth well, i.e., as ordered to the true flourishing of persons. That nature intends such a healthy arrangement, one at once conducive to the fulfillment of needs in the home and the cultivation of good moral dispositions in householders, is in accord with the principle, ¡°But nature neither leaves anything incomplete nor does anything in vain.¡±

In their writings on distributism, G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc offer many practical suggestions as to how we can work to bring about a more human economy. In this paper, I do two things. In the first part, I discuss four ways Chesterton and Belloc characterize distributism as a social doctrine. In the second and main part of the paper, I catalog the many ways that Chesterton and Belloc think we can, both individually and collectively, begin to act in defiance of capitalist and socialist economic tyranny and, having restored something of a more human economy in a region, protect it.

This article considers Avicenna¡¯s insistence on the disunity between the souls of humans, animals, and plants and the mixed elemental bodies in which they inhere. In particular, it looks at (1) why Avicenna rejects their unity and (2) why this rejection, pace some contemporary scholars, is compatible with the status of these souls as substances. I show that both points derive from the causal role that these souls and the elements play in the coming to be and passing away of mixed elemental bodies.

John Buridan¡¯s (c. 1300¨C1361) influential discussion on the possibility of knowledge concludes that divine deception does not undermine human knowledge. He holds that natural and moral knowledge need not be absolutely evident, but rather evident in a qualified sense. Buridan¡¯s response to this skeptical challenge is widely regarded as a milestone in the history of skeptical thought. While Buridan¡¯s account of how natural knowledge is possible has attracted considerable scholarly attention, his consideration of how moral knowledge is possible has largely been neglected. In this paper, I argue that Buridan¡¯s innovative approach suggests that correct moral decisions can be reached on the basis of practical wisdom, even under conditions of false or limited information.

Considering Socrates¡¯s claims that the philosopher practices for death and that there are different kinds of death, this essay proposes that the account of death (and of death¡¯s relation to the human person) offered in the Phaedo might be read as analogy for the relationship between refutation and the human mind. Through Socrates¡¯s words and actions in the face of death, Plato explores what it means to be refuted. This exploration offers evidence of Plato¡¯s interest in the experience of refutation and in refutation¡¯s place in the epistemological and ethical life of the soul. Through the paradigm of death, one comes to understand better what it means to hold and to give up beliefs that one takes or once took to be true.

This article examines the case for ¡°Pro-Life Feminism¡± via a close reading of the original argument for it offered by Sydney Callahan in 1986. Although Callahan¡¯s argument has received only positive treatment by pro-life academics, I argue that it fails to establish that opposition to abortion secures all aspects of the ¡°full social equality¡± she advocates. I conclude with some remarks about whether and to what extent feminism is compatible with opposition to abortion.

This essay focuses on two technical and difficult notions in the thought of Thomas Aquinas: the object of the intellect and self-knowledge. I argue that the object of the intellect determines the character and content of self-knowledge. Prosecuting this case requires disambiguating our everyday use of object from Thomas¡¯s technical sense of obiectum and unpacking Thomas¡¯s ambiguous use of one term, ¡°object of the intellect,¡± for multiple notions. For Thomas, self-knowledge occurs in virtue of the cognition of being (ens), and I show how the multiple senses of ¡°object of the intellect¡± relate to and determine self-knowledge as related to the cognition of being. Recognizing the determining influence of the object of the intellect on self-knowledge also provides an account of why human self-knowledge is a complicated, episodically actualized, and variegated affair.

Aquinas, following Aristotle, distinguishes between substances and their accidents: that is, between things and their attributes. He also distinguishes between proper accidents (also known as properties in Scholastic terminology) and accidental accidents, that is, between accidents that belong to a substance in virtue of what it is, and accidents that belong to it due to extrinsic factors. Aquinas says that a thing¡¯s proper accidents are caused by the thing¡¯s own essential principles. John Wippel interprets Aquinas as holding that a substance efficiently causes its own proper accidents. I argue that Aquinas is more plausibly read as holding that a substance formally causes its own proper accidents. Formal causality extends to more than just the informing of matter. Formal causality is a principle of determination: being a certain substance involves the determination of having certain proper accidents.

Brentano famously claimed that intentionality is one of the marks of the mental and that he found his concept of intentionality in the Middle Ages. It is now known that intentionality does not constitute a mark of the mental in medieval thought: scholars have shown that extra-mental things also display intentionality. In addition to this argument based on extra-mental things, I argue that some medieval theories do not present intentionality as a feature of all mental acts. Moreover, I argue that certain medieval theories differ in another way from Brentano¡¯s conception of intentionality: when presented with intentionally related objects (e.g., my past cognition of the rose), mental acts prove unable to focus freely on one or the other object (the act or the rose).

After Thomas Aquinas, it became standard to divide ¡°intentio¡± into first and second intentions (the distinction ultimately derives from Avicenna). Roughly, the distinction captures the intentionality of concepts like ¡°Socrates¡± or ¡°human being,¡± which are first intentions, versus concepts like ¡°species¡± or ¡°genus,¡± which are second intentions. Hervaeus Natalis (d. 1323) was the first to write an independent treatise on this distinction, and he also introduced and used the word ¡°intentionaliter¡± in a new way, as well as attempts a definition of the notion of intentionality, perhaps the first such attempt. His treatise is called De secundis intentionibus (On Second Intentions), and can only be described as a treatise on the philosophy of mind and about the problem of intentionality. In this article, I will place Hervaeus in relation to the debate on mental content between Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus, and show how he has the resources to define a concept of ¡°intentionality¡± as ¡°the mark of the mental.¡±

For Aquinas, a concept is about something only if it relates to the common nature of a particular being attended to through perception. Intentionality is fundamentally perceptual for Aquinas. Having argued this claim, I then give a novel account of perceptual intentionality in Aquinas, according to which the forms received by perceivers (¡°sensible species¡±) are the same particular forms as those in the perceived object. This is possible because accidental forms have two individuators: matter makes them particular and quantity makes them distinct. Aquinas¡¯s claim that sensible species are ¡°without matter¡± implies that, although they are distinct from the perceived qualities, they remain the same particular forms. This allows us to say that one has a distinct view of this particular object, which accounts for the intentionality of perception, and thus for the intentionality of concepts, as applied to what is perceived.

Our mental states are considered intentional in that they express a directedness toward something. Mental states include acts of thought and will, acts of consciousness, emotions, and possibly acts of sense perception. Did any medieval philosopher give a unified account of all these acts? In the Middle Ages, no author explicitly offers such an account. There is however one author, the Dominican Hervaeus Natalis (?1323), who explains intentionality in a way that allows us to extract from his texts the unified account we are searching for. The key to obtaining this account is to approach intentionality from the side of the thing that is intended. For if we are in relation to things, things, too, are in relation to us. Specifically, Hervaeus holds that intentionality designates a kind of relation, not however the relation ensuing from our directedness toward things (as we are accustomed to understanding it today), but the relation that things bear on us. This is a primitive and radical condition that specifically endows every mental state with intentional character.

For Peter John Olivi, intentional directedness can be modelled after the directedness of causal agents upon their patients. This paper articulates in what way Olivi takes intentional and causal directedness to be similar. It argues that his direct-realist theory of representation is motivated, not only by worries about a veil of species, but also by his more general views on the metaphysics of causation and action. While Olivi¡¯s language of powers ¡°reaching out¡± to their objects has sometimes been taken as evidence of a commitment to some variety of the extramission theory of perception, this paper argues that Olivi rejected extramission.

In this paper I ask what subjectivity is and why it reveals man as person, as Karol Wojtyla and others claim. First, I explain subjectivity, which I also call interiority, in terms of self-presence, which is a mode of relating to myself from within myself. I am present to myself as subject, not only as object. Only I can encounter myself in the intimacy of my self-presence; no other person can be present to me as I am to myself. Next, I further explore self-presence as weak or strong, calling strong self-presence recollected self-presence. Finally, I conclude by explaining how it is that recollected self-presence reveals man as person. Against the suspicion that this ¡°turn to the subject¡± opens the door to a bad subjectivism, I argue that it entirely coheres with the realism of Christian philosophy.

Stein, in an attempt to fortify the realist position she fears is not satisfactorily established by a ¡°moderate¡± Thomist view, champions the ¡°essential¡± as a distinct kind of finite being by which units-of-meaning are. This pushes up wrinkles elsewhere in her ontology, however¡ªparticularly in difficulties that arise regarding the relationship between such essential being and the eternal being of God. These difficulties are brought to a head in Stein¡¯s puzzling treatment of the divine ideas, which appear to have deep and conflicting affinities with both the essential and the eternal. This article analyzes Stein¡¯s contested consideration of the complex intersection of essential and eternal being in the divine ideas, unpacking her seemingly disparate assertions to bring to light a ¡°dual countenance¡± according to which the divine ideas can be identified with essential being in one sense and eternal being in another¡ªthereby maintaining intentional tension while resisting outright contradiction.

Scholars in recent decades have downplayed or completely denied that Evagrius Ponticus has a metaphysical system, instead suggesting that he merely borrows from various philosophies, particularly Stoicism, without a coherent system. In this paper, I propose a different perspective, arguing for a metaphysical and Platonic interpretation. I reconstruct Evagrius¡¯s metaphysics systematically, relate its fundamentals to the environment of the late antique Medio- and Neoplatonic tradition, and show that by establishing the principles and structures of being, Evagrius indeed reveals himself to be a metaphysician.

The present essay considers the doctrine of the analogia entis that the late Baroque Scholastic thinker Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza develops. Central to Hurtado¡¯s account is the notion of transcendence that he appropriates from Francisco Su¨¢rez¡¯s transcendental explication of being. Being¡¯s immanent containment within its own differences marked an important feature of Su¨¢rez¡¯s own teaching, but his was a teaching with which Hurtado was left fundamentally unsatisfied. For Hurtado, being¡¯s immanent transcendence makes it at once identical with itself but also, paradoxically, diverse from itself. Still, though he finds reason to maintain that the common concept of being is in fact analogical, there remain concepts that, as Hurtado sees it, are truly univocal with respect to substance and accidents as well as God and creatures. Hurtado stands on the cusp, as it were, of the transition from the Jesuit Scholastic preference for analogy to the eventual wide-spread adoption of univocity.

Ernst Bloch formulated problems of enormous philosophical and human relevance. He held that in our contemporary situation we have but two questions concerning the fundamental direction of our lives and history: we must choose, first, between hopeless nihilism and transcendent hope; and, second, between transcendent hope with transcendence and transcendent hope without transcendence. Bloch opted for the transcendent hope without transcendence and formulated a hard critique of hope with transcendence. Josef Pieper and Bernard Schumacher have offered a competent response to Bloch from the Catholic perspective. However, we offer here a little explored aspect of the problem by demonstrating that Bloch¡¯s metaphysical arguments do not consider that (a) a material reality necessarily has the concrete potentiality of dissolving, and (b) therefore, left to itself, it will dissolve necessarily in infinite time; and that (c) no effect can have a reality disproportionate to its cause, which is the reason why (d) no immortal reality can proceed from mortal reality without the intervention of a higher cause.

The essay examines Anselm¡¯s De libertate arbitrii and De casu diaboli, arguing that the points made about the will and free choice are mirrored in the questions and struggles of the student interlocutor in the dialogues. In contrast to Plato and Aristotle, who want to bring us to see that virtue is the path to happiness, Anselm wants to show that we have free choice and are responsible for not choosing rightly (i.e., choosing justice for its own sake), and that human beings are autonomous but also finite and flawed. For this kind of learning, not just reasoning but insight and self-examination are required, a process reflected in the very human will, willfulness, and weakness of the student as he engages with his teacher.

In this article, I examine two ways to approach Anselm¡¯s argument: as a logical demonstration and as a persuasive piece of reasoning¡ªone that notably persuaded Anselm himself. First, I follow Ermanno Bencivenga and argue that Anselm¡¯s argument is a logical illusion. The deduction is not simply invalid, nor is it simply unsound; instead, it appeals to two mutually inconsistent sets of assumptions, each of which is rationally defensible. Consequently, the argument emerges as either valid or sound, but not both simultaneously. I also argue that this peculiar piece of reasoning should not be classified as an ¡°ontological¡± argument. When interpreted as a persuasive piece of reasoning, the argument appeals to experience¡ªan experience of something alluded to by the phrase ¡°something than which nothing greater can be thought.¡± Here, the logical apparatus primarily serves to channel and refine contemplation on this experience.

According to the privation theory of evil, evil is nothing. In De casu diaboli Anselm¡¯s student-interlocutor raises three arguments meant to show that evil is in fact something: the argument from fear (if evil is nothing, there can be no reason to fear it), the argument from signification (if evil is nothing, ¡°evil¡± has no signification; if ¡°evil¡± has a signification, evil is not nothing), and the argument from causal efficacy (if evil is nothing, how can it enslave the soul to passion and cause it so much trouble?). I expound the account of language that Anselm uses to answer the argument from signification and the distinctions between justice and advantage and between positive and privative evils that he uses to answer the arguments from fear and from causal efficacy. I conclude that, by the time Anselm gets done with it, there is not much left of the privation theory.

Contemporary scholarship is divided over whether Anselm maintains a version of Eudaemonism. The debate centers on the question of whether the will for justice only moderates the will for happiness or, instead, provides a distinct end for which to act. Because of two key passages, various scholars hold that Anselm maintained elements of medieval Eudaemonism. In this article, I argue that Anselm separates morality from happiness, and I provide a sketch of his alternative view. First, I argue against some recent perspectives that Anselm maintained Eudaemonism. To do so, I provide a non-Eudaemonist reading of the two key passages and show how Eudaemonist readings are lacking in different respects. Second, I examine what this argument means for Anselm¡¯s understanding of happiness and moral obligation. While there are some Eudaemonist themes in Anselm¡¯s thinking, he flatly denies and revises aspects of the system.

In this article, the author explains some of the main ideas of his 2020 book on Anselm¡¯s Proslogion and responds to several criticisms raised by Richard Campbell and others in reviews of the book. Finally, the author qualifies his case for the view that ¡°that than which a greater cannot be thought¡± is Anselm¡¯s single argument by drawing attention to a problematic aspect in a key passage in Anselm¡¯s Responsio.

There are two competing models for how to understand Aquinas¡¯s hylomorphic theory of material substances: the Simple Model, according to which material substances are composed of prime matter and substantial form, and the Expanded Model, according to which material substances are composed of prime matter, substantial form, and all of their accidental forms. In this paper, I first explain the main differences between these two models and show how they situate Aquinas¡¯s theory of material substances in two different places within the contemporary debate on concrete particulars, highlighting several advantages that Aquinas¡¯s approach has over other varieties of substratum and bundle theory along the way. I then offer some reasons to think that the Expanded Model, as a theory of concrete particulars, is preferable. I argue that the Expanded Model avoids two major concerns for the Simple Model: the problem of extrinsicality, and the problem of too-many-possessors.

This article examines Richard Lynch¡¯s metaphysics and finds that he ultimately resolves his account of being in terms of essens¡ªthat which denotes the essential structure that a being (ens) has apart from existence. For Lynch, unlike many of his Jesuit contemporaries, existence is accidental to being. Yet, even if essens is distinct from existence, it is not altogether lacking being, but is accorded a certain kind of ¡°essential being,¡± which is identified with the possible. Lynch thus seems to re-appropriate an essentialist metaphysics that has antecedents in Avicenna and Henry of Ghent¡¯s notion of esse essentiae. More proximate to Lynch is the Jesuit thinker Francesco Albertini, who takes Henry¡¯s metaphysics and conveys it to Baroque Scholasticism. Lynch continues down that metaphysical path which, as we shall see, generated fierce controversy among late seventeenth-century Scholastics regarding the nature of creaturely possibility.

The argument from divine hiddenness (ADH) requires accepting that nonresistant nonbelief has existed or does exist. Yet some reasons for accepting nonresistant nonbelief are also reasons for accepting theistic-supporting and naturalism-falsifying evidentially compelling religious experiences (ECREs). Additionally, any reasons for rejecting ECREs can be used to reject nonresistant nonbelief, thus creating parity (at the very least) of epistemic warrant between the two claims. Consequently, accepting nonresistant nonbelief should lead to accepting ECREs. Accepting nonresistant nonbelief therefore indirectly threatens naturalism, atheism and even the ADH itself. To any reason that can be given for rejecting ECREs there corresponds a parallel reason for rejecting nonresistant nonbelief. So it is irrational to accept the ADH while refusing to accept ECREs. Yet the existence of ECREs contradicts the ADH¡¯s conclusion. So the ADH is self-defeating.

According to a standard interpretation of Aristotle, a material substance, like a dog, is a hylomorphic composite of matter and form, its ¡°essential¡± parts. Is such a composite some thing in addition to its essential parts as united? The moderate reductionist says ¡°no,¡± whereas the anti-reductionist says ¡°yes.¡± In this paper, I will clarify and defend Durand of St.-Pour?ain¡¯s surprisingly influential version of moderate reductionism, according to which hylomorphic composites are nothing over and above their essential parts and the union of those parts, where this union is explained by the presence of two modes: a mode of inherence on the side of form and a mode of substanding on the side of matter.

This article contains a case study of some innovative early fourteenth-century conceptions of the temporal structure of substantial change. An important tenet of thirteenth-century scholastic hylomorphism is that substantial change is an instantaneous process. In contrast, three early fourteenth-century Aristotelian commentators, first Walter Burley and then John Buridan and Albert of Saxony, progressively develop a view on which substantial change is linked to temporal duration. This process culminated, in Buridan and Albert of Saxony, with the explicit recognition of the temporally extended nature of some (if not most) instances of substantial change. This article sheds light on this neglected episode in the history of late medieval hylomorphism taking as its point of departure these commentators¡¯ discussions of the issue of minima naturalia, i.e., the issue of the lowest possible limit of any division of substantial forms coming about through the potentially infinite division of the matter they inform. In short: is there a piece of matter so small that no substantial form can possibly inhere in it?

This paper investigates the late medieval controversy over the causal role of substantial forms in the generation of new substances. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, when there were two basic positions in this debate (section II), an original position was defended by Walter Burley and Peter Auriol, according to which accidents alone¡ªby their own power¡ªcan generate substantial forms (section III). The paper presents how this view was received by the next generation of philosophers, i.e., around 1350 (section IV), and how, even though some of the initial theoretical motivations for this view were quickly abandoned, the view was still defended by several philosophers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (section V). It is finally shown that this theory, still discussed by Su¨¢rez and early modern scholastics, and despite being generally rejected, contributed in its own way to the evolution of hylomorphism in the late Middle Ages and, to a certain extent, its gradual decline (section VI).

It is often thought that Aristotelian hylomorphism was undermined in the early modern era by the external challenges that alternative atomist and corpuscularian matter theories posed. This narrative neglects the fact that hylomorphism was not one homogeneous theory but a fruitful, adaptable framework that enabled scholastic Aristotelianism to continuously transform itself from within and resolve new natural philosophical, metaphysical, and theological problems. I focus on the period of the Counter-Reformation and rise of Protestant scholastic metaphysics. During this time accounting for the individuation of substances within a hylomorphic framework consistent with Aristotle¡¯s texts, the doctrine of the Trinity, and Aristotelian physics became both urgent and more challenging. I show that Protestant scholastics who took up influential late sixteenth-century Jesuit accounts of individuation so altered the hylomorphic framework inherited from medieval philosophers that atomism appeared to at least one author as more consistent with Aristotle¡¯s metaphysical commitments.

In the late Middle Ages, there was an intense debate about the metaphysical status of artefacts, in particular about whether an artefact is a new thing over and above the natural things that make it up. Realists about artefacts argued for a positive reply. In this paper, I will examine the following objection against artefact realism raised by artefact nominalists: The making of artefacts involves nothing more than local motion of already existing natural things or their parts, and local motion by itself does not lead to the production of any new thing; therefore, the making of artefacts does not involve the production of any new thing. I will look at various attempts by realists to respond to this argument and offer one possible complication for the nominalist view.

This paper discusses two interrelated questions about ontological commitment in the thought of Gregory of Rimini (d. 1358), questions having to do with both hylomorphic composites of matter and substantial form, and with complexe significabilia that typically obtain in cases of substance¨Caccident composition. The first question is that of the existence of real relations: neither hylomorphic composites nor complexe significabilia require real relations tying their various co-located components together. The second is that of the reducibility of such wholes to the sum of their parts: neither hylomorphic composites nor complexe significabilia are anything other than their co-located parts. And all such items can be disunited merely by a divine volition, requiring nothing extramental added to the ontology, and no change in position.

In this paper, I focus on Paul of Venice¡¯s plurality of forms and souls, i.e., his ¡°two total souls¡± theory. I argue that this specific theory is a result of Paul¡¯s reception of various positions originating from fourteenth-century Parisian philosophers like John of Jandun, the Anonymous Patar, Nicole Oresme, John Duns Scotus, and Walter Burley. By receiving these positions and by making use of merely parts of their doctrines, Paul creates a theory of the hylomorphic compound that fits well within an Aristotelian framework of an Averroistic flavor. Although his position is not Averroistic in any strict sense, it mirrors quite well the growing interest in an Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle in Padua at his time. By looking at some of his successors, such as Gaetano da Thiene, Nicoletto Vernia, and Agostino Nifo, I show that Paul is on the borderline between a traditional, scholastic philosophical psychology or hylomorphism of Parisian origin and an Averroist reading of philosophical psychology or hylomorphism, which had its promoters in fifteenth-century Padua.

William de la Mare suggests in his Correctorium fratris Thomae that it is possible to read Aquinas as saying that the will is necessitated by the intellect. Early defenders of Aquinas thought that this was nonsense (a fictio). However, I analyze Aquinas¡¯s corpus and show that he has a consistent view of the relationship between the will and the intellect according to which the will is indeed necessitated by the intellect, not absolutely but conditionally: it is necessary that, if the intellect apprehends some object as good, then the will wills that object. However, I also argue that, although Aquinas is committed to the necessitation of the will by the intellect, it does not follow that the will lacks alternate possibilities.

What accounts for our pleasure in tragic art? In a widely-cited essay, Susan Feagin argues that this pleasure has moral roots; it arises when we discover ourselves to be the sort of people who respond sympathetically to another¡¯s suffering. Although critical of Feagin¡¯s particular solution to the tragedy paradox, I too believe that our pleasure in tragedy often has moral roots. I trace those roots differently, however, by placing the concept of virtue front and center. I argue that a noble pleasure arises when we perceive virtue in tragic characters and when we practice it ourselves as audience members. My account draws on insights from the history of philosophy, most notably Aquinas¡¯s conception of the virtues of charity and mercy in the Summa.

Aquinas famously argues that there exists a purely active intellective power¡ªi.e., the agent intellect¡ªin each human agent that is capable of ¡°abstracting¡± universals, including natures, from sensible phantasms. Robert Pasnau has worried, however, that Aquinas¡¯s thin account of how the agent intellect performs abstraction makes abstraction appear to be little short of ¡°magic.¡± In this paper I reply to Pasnau¡¯s objection by arguing for the necessity of expanding the standard account of Aquinas¡¯s theory to include the oft-neglected role of the so-called ¡°interior sense powers,¡± in particular memory and the cogitative power, in his epistemology. I argue that for Aquinas memory and the cogitative power, operat?ing in close cooperation with intellect, are responsible for bridging the ontological and epistemological divide between sensation of the singular and intellection of the universal by producing the pre-intellective, quasi-knowledge of experience (experimentum), which is propaedeutic to abstraction.

The foundation of natural law ethics is a set of basic human goods, such as life and health, knowledge, work and play, appreciation of beauty, friendship, and religion. A disputed question among natural law theorists is whether the basic goods are ¡°incommensurable.¡± But there is widespread ambiguity in the natural law literature about what incommensurability means, which makes it unclear how this disagreement should be understood and resolved. First, I clear up this ambiguity by distinguishing between incommensurability and incomparability. I show that proponents of New Natural Law Theory hold that basic goods are both incommensurable and incomparable, whereas proponents of Classical Natural Law Theory hold that basic goods are incommensurable but comparable. Second, I critique the leading New Natural Law arguments for the incomparability of basic goods. Throughout the article, I explain why value incommensurability is an essential feature of natural law ethics but value incomparability is not.

Su¨¢rez was probably the first theologian to propose a political understanding of the order of subordination among the demons. According to Aquinas, this subordination immediately reflects the natural differences in perfection between the demons. Su¨¢rez charged that a natural-based order of demonic subordination could not ground the capacity of the demons¡¯ ruler¡ªLucifer¡ªto use his power to impose civic obligations on fellow demons so as to pursue their joint evil goals. But can there be obligations ad malum? This paper explores a number of possible paths seemingly available to Su¨¢rez to defend his controversial view. I argue that the most promising interpretation of Su¨¢rez is one according to which the obligations created by Lucifer¡¯s commands are not obligations in conscience but rather what we may call ¡°non-moral obligations.¡±

This study concerns the theory of mystical knowledge advanced by the practically unknown seventeenth-century Carmelite author Philip of the Blessed Trinity in his work Summa Theologiae Mysticae. Philip introduces ¡°a new kind¡± of spiritual species representing the intellectibilia to describe how individuals are granted mystical knowledge, and in doing so distinguishes between three kinds of species. Philip¡¯s notion of mystical knowledge is closely related to the topic of contemplation and is profoundly influenced by The Interior Castle of St. Teresa of Avila. The analysis presented here, therefore, represents an original contribution to the ongoing scholarly study of species, (mystical) knowledge, and Teresian spirituality.

This article considers the relationship between John Buridan¡¯s natural philosophy and medicine. By examining some aspects of Buridan¡¯s description of the human body related to sensation, nutrition, and generation¡ªespecially as they were framed in the so-called ¡°controversy between philosophers and physicians¡±¡ªthis article shows that, though mostly faithful to Aristotelian doctrine, Buridan¡¯s theoretical biology relies to a large extent on medical ideas.

Historian of science Edward Grant believed that, by counting and classifying the uses of theological terms in commentaries on some of Aristotle¡¯s natural books, he could show that medieval natural philosophy had no theological agenda. But his broad-brush approach may not reveal differences in the way individual authors used theological terms. A census of such terms in the De anima commentaries of John Buridan and Nicole Oresme undertaken in this paper suggests that Buridan was more mindful of theological scrutiny of the Arts faculty than Oresme, perhaps because Buridan¡¯s career began when the effects of the Condemnation of 1277 were more strongly felt than they were a generation later when Oresme began to teach.

Is a human being something that is one per se, or are humans composed of two independent substances? Treating the soul as the form of an organic body seems to offer one way of addressing the difficulty. But the debates about the nature of the soul which began to emerge in the 1270s made this question problematic. This article considers Buridan¡¯s solution to the problem of how to unify what is corporeal and divisible on the one hand with what is incorporeal and indivisible on the other. Beginning with sensation, which concerns the unity of the sensitive soul and sense data, we turn to the act of thinking, where the intellective soul is united with the image or phantasm qua mover, leading to the realization that the unity of a human being is no longer self-evident. To solve the problem, Buridan takes up and transforms ways of thinking about the human soul inherited from older debates around Averroist psychology, such as the theory of two subjects and the conjunction of the sensible with the intelligible during cognitive activity.

In his commentary on Aristotle¡¯s Physics, John Buridan (c. 1300¨C1361) presents his well-known rejection of final causality. The main problem he sees with it is that it requires the cause to exist before the effect. Despite this, he retains the terminology of ends. This has led to some difficulty interpreting Buridan¡¯s view. In this article, I argue that one should not misunderstand Buridan¡¯s terminology and think that he still retains some use or explanatory function for final causal?ity in nature. To make this point, I look first at Buridan¡¯s text, but then also at three thinkers who discuss Buridan¡¯s view in detail: Albert of Saxony (d. 1390), Paul of Venice (d. 1429), and Luis Coronel (d. 1531). They all have a very clear idea of what Buridan¡¯s view was and understand that it entails a rejection of final causality, but they also all preserve his distinctive terminology. Paul of Venice especially discusses and criticizes Buridan¡¯s view in detail. Besides confirming my interpretation of the rejection of final causality, this study also shows that the view was extremely influential well into the sixteenth century and attributed to Buridan throughout two centuries.

What is an occurrent mental state? According to a common scholastic answer such a state is at least in part a quality of the mind. When I newly think about a machiatto, say, my mind acquires a new quality. However, according to a view discussed by John Buridan (who rejects it) and John of Mirecourt (who is condemned in 1347 for considering it ¡°plausible¡±), an occurrent mental state is not even in part a quality. After sketching some of the history of this position, I will present two common arguments against it¡ªthe argument from change and the argument from agency. I will then turn to Mirecourt¡¯s own position on the matter. Mirecourt, I show, in fact offers us two different theories about occurrent mental states. The first, which I call the conservation theory, accepts that mental states are in part qualities. However, a mental state is a quality together with an action on the side of the mind, namely, its conservation of a quality within itself. The second position, which I will call the pure-action theory, holds that an occurrent mental state is not even in part a quality; instead, it is an action the mind performs which is neither the production nor the conservation of a quality within itself. Mirecourt characterizes such pure actions as ¡°modes¡± of the mind, and it is this position which is condemned in 1347. In the final section, I turn to an objection that both Buridan and Mirecourt raise against the pure-action theory: if accidental states of the mind are mere modes of the mind, then why not suppose that all accidents are mere modes of the subjects which they qualify?

A March of 2021 ¡°Statement from Pro-Life Catholic Scholars on the Moral Acceptability of Receiving COVID-19 Vaccines,¡± released by the Ethics and Public Policy Center argued that in accepting one of the Covid vaccines that had recently become available, one would not be ¡°in any way endorsing or con?tributing to the practice of abortion, or . . . in any way showing disrespect for the remains of an unborn human being.¡± That statement received criticism from some opponents of abortion. Here, I raise six questions about the claims or implications of the ¡°Statement¡± in order to defend it in its main assertions, correct it in some minor matters, and extend its analysis as needed.

Richard Kraut argues that Neo-Aristotelian ethics should include a com?mitment to ¡°diluted hedonism,¡± according to which the exercise of a developed life-capacity is good for S only if and partly because S enjoys it. I argue that the Neo-Aristotelian should reject diluted hedonism for two reasons: first, it compro?mises the generality and elegance of the initial developmentalist account; second, it leads to mistaken evaluations of some of the most important and ennobling capacities and activities in human life. Finally, I argue that a more plausible ac?count of the place of pleasure in the good life derives from Aristotle¡¯s discussion in book X of the Nicomachean Ethics: pleasure is a supervenient good that signifies the value of the underlying capacity and activity, but it is not a necessary condition for their goodness.

It is generally accepted that truth is a norm of belief and that, whatever else this might mean, it implies that a person is obligated to believe a proposition only if it is true. Yet this seems to conflict with the norms by which friends form beliefs about each other. For instance, if friends are required to practice interpretive charity in the formation of their beliefs about each other, obligations to believe propositions that are false might arise. In this paper, I assume that there is some such obligation of interpretive charity, and I investigate whether it may be reconciled with the truth-norm. I take for my starting point an account of interpretive charity from the work of Dietrich von Hildebrand, which I develop by critical retrieval of related works by Max Scheler and Gabriel Marcel. The paper concludes that Marcel¡¯s thought on fidelity and reflection is best suited to complete von Hildebrand¡¯s account in such a way as to achieve the sought-after reconciliation of the norms of truth and friendship

In his article ¡°What Do We Think With?¡± Peter Geach develops an argument for the non-materiality of thinking. Given that basic thinking activity is not clockable in physical time, whereas basic material or bodily activity is so clockable, it follows that basic thinking activity is non-material. Peter Dillard¡¯s attack on this temporality proof takes ¡°thoughts¡± in the proof to refer to non-occurrent states. The present note shows this reading to be mistaken and so rectifies a misunderstanding of Geach¡¯s argument. It takes no stand on the question of whether the argument succeeds.

On the standard interpretation of Metaphysics IX, Aristotle proceeds from the original sense of ¦Ä?¦Í¦Á¦Ì¦É? and ?¦Í?¦Ñ¦Ã¦Å¦É¦Á to an ontological conception of these terms. This should raise the question of what is not ontological about the former and what is ontological about the latter. To address these questions I discuss the commentaries by Heidegger and Menn, which alone come close to addressing these issues. But their readings cannot neatly distinguish between the two senses of ¦Ä?¦Í¦Á¦Ì¦É? and ?¦Í?¦Ñ¦Ã¦Å¦É¦Á that we find in the Aristotelian text, thus compelling us to seek a better way of clarifying the standard interpretation, which I argue can be more precisely understood in the following way: ¦Ä?¦Í¦Á¦Ì¦É? and ?¦Í?¦Ñ¦Ã¦Å¦É¦Á in their customary meaning cannot be considered ontological in the sense that they have a particular locus among the categories, which is what sets them apart from their newer, ontological meaning. I conclude therefore that the text of Metaphysics IX can be understood as proceeding from an intracategorial conception of ¦Ä?¦Í¦Á¦Ì¦É? and ?¦Í?¦Ñ¦Ã¦Å¦É¦Á toward a transcategorial conception of these terms.

The role of certitude in our mental lives is, to put it mildly, controver?sial. Many current epistemologists (including epistemologists of religion) eschew certitude altogether. Given his emphasis on certitude, some have maintained that John Henry Newman was an infallibilist about knowledge. In this paper, we argue that a careful examination of his thought (especially as seen in the Grammar of Assent) reveals that he was an epistemic fallibilist. We first clarify what we mean by fallibilism and infallibilism. Second, we explain why some have read Newman as an infallibilist. Third, we offer two arguments that Newman is at least a fallibilist in a weak sense. In particular, the paradox he seeks to resolve in the Grammar and his dispute with John Locke both indicate that he is at least a weak fallibilist. We close with a consideration of whether Newman is a fallibilist in a much stronger sense as well.

Extending Alvin Plantinga¡¯s model of warranted belief to the beliefs of groups as a whole, I argue that if the dogmatic beliefs of the Catholic Church are true, they are also warranted. Catholic dogmas are warranted because they meet the three conditions of my model: they are formed (1) by ministers functioning properly (2) in accordance with a design plan that is oriented towards truth and reliable (3) in a social environment sufficiently similar to that for which they were designed. I show that according to Catholic doctrine the authoritative spokespersons of the Church¡ªecumenical councils and popes¡ªmeet these conditions when defining dogmas. I also respond to the objection that the warrant of Catholic dogmas is defeated by the plurality of non-Catholic Christian sects that deny Catholic dogmas.

In this paper I deal with the issues in Second Scholasticism of the nature, genesis and creatability of perfect vital acts of cognition and appetition in vital powers. I present the theories of Francisco Su¨¢rez (1548¨C1617), Raffaele Aversa (1589¨C1657), and Bartolomeo Mastri (1602¨C1673) together with Bonaventura Belluto (1603¨C1676). I show that while for Aversa these acts are action-like items merely emanating from the soul and vital powers and as such cannot be produced from the outside, even by God, for Mastri and Belluto they are absolute qualities proceeding from their principles by efficient causation proper, which is a kind of procession that can be replaced by God. I argue that Su¨¢rez¡¯s position attempts to steer a middle ground between these two theories.

This article is a contribution to the field of study that Jacques Maritain once described as ¡°metaphysical Axiomatics.¡± I discuss Aquinas¡¯s use of the metaphysical principle ¡°omne agens agit sibi simile,¡± focusing on perhaps the most manifest instance of this principle, namely, univocal generation. It is well known that Aquinas holds what could be called a ¡°static¡± or ¡°formal¡± view of likeness between God and creatures: creatures are like God because they share in certain exemplar perfections that preexist in God. My focus instead is on an efficient likeness to God, which reflects a foundational truth about reality for Aquinas: all creatures produce something like themselves through their operations, in imitation of God, who does so on a more fundamental level. My discussion will also clarify Aquinas¡¯s derivation of the principle of similitude from a prior metaphysical principle, ¡°every agent acts insofar as it is in act.¡±

This article examines the reception of Robert Grosseteste by John Duns Scotus on two related questions in epistemology. The first concerns the need of phantasms for cognition, and the second concerns divine illumination. The study first examines Scotus¡¯s Questions on the De Anima with comparison to Grosseteste¡¯s Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, a text Scotus cites specifically. It is argued that Grosseteste is the main influence behind Scotus¡¯s opinion that the need for phantasms is not proper to human nature as such. The second part shows how Scotus disagrees with Grosseteste on a related question. Grosseteste retains a version of divine illumination with a qualified need for phantasms, whereas Scotus maintains the strict necessity of phantasms in this life and rejects illumination. The two parts of this study taken together indicate that Scotus saw Grosseteste as an authority but also felt free to ignore him where the two disagreed.

Robert Grosseteste delivered his inaugural sermon, Dictum 19, in 1229/1230. Like many inaugural sermons, Dictum 19 praises Scripture, its divine author, and the study of the sacred text. Grosseteste¡¯s sermon, however, is unique in that its author had an extensive background in the natural sciences. I propose that his understanding of the nature of light influences his understanding of Scripture in Dictum 19. Specifically, Scripture, like light, gives form to others, creating a hierarchy of bodies which mediate this form. Grosseteste¡¯s thought influenced Saint Bonaventure, who delivered his inaugural sermon Omnium artifex docuit me sapientia at his 1254 inception. Like Grosseteste, Bonaventure¡¯s understanding of the nature of Scripture is based in part on his light metaphysics. I conclude that, for both Grosseteste and Bonaventure, their use of light as an analogy for Scripture is rooted not only in traditional theological metaphors but also in their metaphysics of light.

This study provides the historical background to, and analysis and translations of, two seminal texts from the medieval Islamic world concerning the univocity of being/existence and a theory of ¡°ambiguous predication¡± (tashk¨©k), which is similar to the Thomistic theory of analogy. The disputants are Fakhr al-D¨©n al-R¨¡z¨© (1149¨C1210), who defended a theory of the univocity of being, and Na?¨©r al-D¨©n al-?¨±s¨© (1201¨C1274), who defended the theory of ambiguous predication. While the purported issue is whether a quiddity can cause its own existence, the debate extends further. R¨¡z¨© draws on several arguments that ¡°existence¡± must be predicated univocally of God and creature and then concludes that, given the univocity of ¡°existence,¡± God cannot be simple, but is a composite of the divine quiddity and distinct attributes. In contrast, ?¨±s¨© denies that ¡°existence¡± is said univocally of God and creature and rather is predicated ambiguously/analogously, and then defends divine simplicity.

In an effort to refute Avicenna¡¯s real distinction between essence and existence, Averroes argues for an Instantiation Analysis of existence which thinks of existence not as an accidental addition to an essence, but rather as the recognition that there is an instance in extramental reality which matches a concept in the mind of a knower. In this study, I argue that Averroes¡¯s Instantiation Analysis fails to refute Avicenna¡¯s real distinction by showing that Avicenna himself endorses the Instantiation Analysis and, in fact, makes use of it to motivate his real distinction. To show this, I review several texts where Avicenna makes the puzzling claim that substances are found to be in subjects. These texts reveal how Avicenna discovers the real distinction with Aristotle¡¯s help¡ªnot, as Averroes relates, against the view of Aristotle.

This article will examine the religious phenomenology of Max Scheler as it is found in his essay on repentance. In outlining Scheler¡¯s understanding of repentance, I shall note his attempt at defining the phenomenon, as well as the presuppositions to and outcomes of this religious act. With this foundation laid, I shall then offer two critiques. First, Scheler¡¯s rendering of repentance limps in not accounting for the cyclical and repeatable nature of repentance, to which human experience and Scheler¡¯s own broader philosophy attest. Second, Scheler¡¯s essay does not consider the role of other persons both in leading one to repentance and in completing the process. As with the first critique, both human experience and Scheler¡¯s own personalist philosophy testify to the necessary role of other persons. These lacunae detract from the otherwise rich phenomenological account.

Contemporary philosophers of religion usually depict God as a responsible moral agent with virtues and obligations. This picture seems to be incompatible with the metaphysically perfect being of classical theism. In this paper I will defend the claim, based on a reading of Thomas Aquinas¡¯s thought, that there is no such incompatibility. I will present Aquinas¡¯s arguments that show that we can attribute to God not only moral goodness in general, but also some moral virtues in a strict sense, such as justice and mercy. I will show why for Aquinas we can say that God has moral duties toward Himself and toward creatures. I will explain how for Aquinas God¡¯s moral duties are not absolute, but conditionally necessitated. Finally, I will show how on Aquinas¡¯s view there is no contradiction in saying that every act of God is, simultaneously, an act of justice and a supererogatory act of mercy.

In this paper, I argue that the dominant contemporary accounts of forgiving do not capture what forgiving most centrally is. I spend the first parts of the paper trying to elucidate what it is that these accounts miss about forgiving, and to explain why I think they miss it. I spend the latter parts of the paper suggesting an alternative, which I call ¡°the charity account.¡± This account draws much of its theoretical framing from the work of Thomas Aquinas, presenting forgiving as something importantly volitional and essentially loving.

Among those who adopt Aristotle¡¯s definition of the human person as a rational animal, Patrick Lee and Germain Grisez argue that whole brain death is the death of the human person. Even if a living organism remains, it is no longer a human person. They argue this because they define natural kinds by their radical capacities (the capacity to act or the capacity to develop a further capacity). A human person is therefore a being with a capacity for rational acts, and an individual having suffered whole brain death no longer has any such capacity. I present two objections to the radical capacities argument: first, that it fails in defining natural kinds, and second, that it misrepresents Aristotle. Aristotle defines natural kinds not by their capacities but by their functions. A brain-dead individual, I argue, is still a rational animal, but an unhealthy one that is unable to function.

From experience, we know that some cognitive processes are effortless and automatic (or nearly automatic), while others are hard and deliberate. Dual process (DP) accounts of human cognition explain these differences by positing two qualitatively distinct types of cognitive processes within the human mind¡ªtypes that cannot be reduced to each other. Because DP constructs are bound to show up in discourse on human cognition, decision-making, morality, and character formation, moral philosophers should take DP accounts seriously. Here, I provide an overview of the current state of DP accounts¡ªtheir basic tenets, major concepts, and the various models of the DP framework¡ªand note some of its more salient criticisms from the psychological research community. Finally, I show that DP accounts¡¯ commitment to a real qualitative distinction between rational and non-rational human behavior puts them at odds with a Thomistic/Aristotelian view of practical rationality.

One of the major contemporary challenges to Thomistic moral psychology is that it is incompatible with the most up-to-date psychological science. Here Thomistic psychology is in good company, targeted along with most virtue-ethical views by philosophical Situationism, which uses replicated psychological studies to suggest that our behaviors are best explained by situational pressures rather than by stable traits (like virtues and vices). In this essay we explain how this body of psychological research poses a much deeper threat to Thomistic moral psychology in particular. For Thomistic moral psychology includes descriptive claims about causal connections between certain cognitive processes and behaviors, even independent of whether those processes emerge from habits like virtues. Psychological studies of correlations between these can provide evidence against those causal claims. We offer a new programmatic response to this deeper challenge: empirical studies are relevant only if they investigate behaviors under intentional descriptions, such that the correlations discovered are between cognition and what Aquinas calls human acts. Psychological research on aggression already emphasizes correlations between cognition and intentional behavior, or human acts, and so is positioned to shed light on how well Thomistic moral psychology fits with empirical data. Surprisingly, Aquinas¡¯s views have quite a lot in common with a leading model of aggression, the social information processing (SIP) model. We close by suggesting how we might examine claims of Thomistic moral psychology from an empirical perspective further using research on social information processing and aggression.

In this study, I outline a heuristic for Thomist philosophical anthropology. In the first part, I introduce the major heuristics employed by Aquinas to establish the objects, operations, powers, and nature of his anthropology. I then identity major lacunae in his anthropology. In the second part, I show how an integrated approach to commonsense, experiential, experimental, and metaphysical psychologies can fill these lacunae and contribute to the enquiries of a contemporary Thomist philosophical anthropology.

Consider the advice for growth in virtue from the Christian Moral Wisdom tradition and contemporary psychology. What is the relation between the outputs of these sources? We present some of the common moral wisdom from the Christian tradition, spelling out the nuance and justification given for the suggestions. We next canvas contemporary psychological findings to discover the evidential relation they bear toward such advice. Although numerous psychological studies might be provided as evidence, we have chosen literatures we believe are most relevant, primarily from personality, social, and positive psychology. Is current evidence set against these old exhortations? Moreover, if contemporary psychology does support Christian Moral Wisdom, does it support it for the same reasons as given by the proponents of Christian Moral Wisdom? We conclude that contemporary psychology does generally support ancient Christian Moral Wisdom in the instances we discuss but with some important caveats or conditions.

In this article, I discuss ethical lessons we can learn from the stories and beliefs of moral exemplars¡ªand how these insights can complement and extend the knowledge we gain through theoretical study. First, exemplars teach us psychological lessons about the way in which virtue is developed and expressed: e.g., about role modeling and post-traumatic growth. Second, they teach us philosophical lessons about the nature of virtue itself and of particular ethical virtues: e.g., about how virtuous people deliberate and how they perceive the mean of virtue. Third, exemplars¡¯ stories teach us personal lessons about our own lives and character: e.g., about how far we are from acting or even thinking like virtuous people¡ªand how much better our lives would be if we were genuinely virtuous. I conclude by discussing an ethical puzzle moral exemplars have not helped me solve: apparent disunity of the virtues.

An exciting trend in virtue ethics is its engagement with empirical psychology. Virtue theorists have connected virtue to various constructs in empirical psychology. The strategy of grounding virtue in the psychological theory of habit, however, has yet to be fully explored. Recent decades of psychological research have shown that habits are an indispensable feature of human life, and virtues and habits have a number of similarities. In this paper, we consider whether virtues are psychological habits (i.e., habits as understood by the field of psychology). After some background to frame the interaction between the two disciplines, we explain the predominant account of habit in psychology, which we call ¡°standard psychological habit,¡± in the next section. We then consider Servais Pinckaers¡¯s objections that virtue cannot be a habit and conclude that standard psychological habits cannot be virtues. Finally, we argue that another psychological account of habits, goal-directed habits, withstand Pinckaers¡¯s objections and provide a promising construct for understanding virtue.

Although it is common in the Catholic moral tradition to hear punishment spoken of as ¡°just¡± and demanded by reason, it is remarkably difficult to say why reason demands that malefactors suffer or to articulate what is rendered to whom in punishment. The present essay seeks to fill this lacuna by examining Aquinas¡¯s treatment of punishment. After examining several themes found in his work, the paper will conclude that the conceptual key to the reasonableness of punishment is to be found in the norm that demands contrapassum and that this norm is immediately derived from the same moral insight as the Golden Rule. Thus, the paper concludes, the notion of retribution is intimately and inextricably bound up in insights that are foundational to any coherent Christian ethics.

Formal abstraction is a key instrument Aquinas employs to secure the possibility of mathematics conceived as a theoretical Aristotelian science. In this concept, mathematics investigates quantitative beings, which are grasped by means of formal abstraction in their necessary, universal, and changeless properties. Based on this, the paper divides into two main parts. In the first part (section II) I explicate Aquinas¡¯s conception of (formal) abstraction against the background of the Aristotelian theory of science and mathematics. In the second part (section III) I present and critically assess the problems associated with formal abstraction in mathematics. With all due respect to Aquinas¡¯s genius, I find his conception of formal abstraction (as well as mathematics) unsatisfactory and list the main reasons for its failure in the conclusion.

Anscombe ends her seminal 1958 essay ¡°Modern Moral Philosophy¡± with a presentation of five characters, each answering an ancient (and contemporary) question as to ¡°whether one might ever need to commit injustice, or whether it won¡¯t be the best thing to do?¡± Her fifth character is the execrated consequentialist who ¡°shows a corrupt mind.¡± But who are the first four characters? Do they ¡°show a mind¡±? And what precisely is the significance (if any) of her presenting those five just then? In this paper, we interpret Anscombe¡¯s essay with an eye to making sense of her character presentation. We argue that the first four characters can be seen to embody the chief negative and positive doctrines of the essay and to thereby represent and charter a pluralistic school of anti-consequentialist ethics. The upshot is something exegetically interesting yet of broader philosophical importance.