Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Aquinas and Thomism

  • Edith Stein: Faith, Reason, and Method: Theocentric or Egocentric?

    August 9th is the feast day of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross in the Catholic liturgy.  She is better known to philosophers as Edith Stein (1891-1942), brilliant Jewish student of and assistant to Edmund Husserl, philosopher, Roman Catholic convert, Carmelite nun, victim of the Holocaust at Auschwitz, and saint of the Roman Catholic Church.…

  • Thomism and Husserlian Phenomenology: Combinable?

    Over the phone the other night, Steven Nemes told me that his project is to synthesize Thomism and phenomenology. I expressed some skepticism. Here are my reasons. Part I: Methodological Incompatibility Essential to Thomism is the belief that the existence of God can be proven a posteriori by human reason unaided by divine revelation.  Thus…

  • More on “God + World = God”

    The thesis under examination as expressed by Diogenes Allen: "The world plus God is not more than God alone. God less the world is not less than God alone." Is this a defensible position?  Let's consider both sides of the question. A. First, a crisp little argument against the view. Consider two possible scenarios.  In the…

  • An Atheological Argument from the Evil of Radical Skepticism

    Bradley Schneider sends this argument of his devising: Premise 1: If God exists, God has the power to eliminate/overcome/defeat any evil in reality without creating more evil (i.e., God and evil can coexist but God should prevail over evil in the end). Premise 2: Radical skepticism about the world is an evil (NOT that radical…

  • World + God = God? The Aporetics of the God-World ‘Relation’ (2020 Version)

    This from a reader: I just started reading Philosophy for Understanding Theology by Diogenes Allen. The first chapter is devoted to the doctrine of creation.  These two sentences jumped out at me: "The world plus God is not more than God alone. God less the world is not less than God alone." Do you agree? How would…

  • Summa Theologica, Q. 19, Art. 3: Whether Whatever God Wills He Wills Necessarily

    This is the question we have been discussing. Let us now see if the answer Thomas gives is satisfactory.  The question is not whether, necessarily, whatever God wills, he wills.  The answer to that is obvious and in the affirmative. The question is whether whatever God wills, he wills necessarily. If so, then God's willing…

  • Intentionality in Thomas and Husserl

    My Serbian correspondent Milosz sent me a reference to an article in which we read: What attracted these Catholics to Husserl was his theory of intentionality—the notion that human consciousness is always consciousness “of” something. This appealed to Catholics because it appeared to open a way beyond the idealism of modern philosophy since Kant, which…

  • Frederick D. Wilhelmsen

    I am presently re-reading The Paradoxical Structure of Existence (University of Dallas Press, 1970) in preparation for the existence chapter of my metaphilosophy book.  Wilhelmsen's book is sloppy in the manner of the 20th century Thomists before the analytic bunch emerged, but rich,  historically informed, and fascinating.  Poking around on the 'Net for Wilhelmsen materials,…

  • Why Did Thomas Aquinas Leave his Summa Theologiae Unfinished?

    Burnout or visio mystica?

  • Conceiving the Afterlife: Life 2.0 or Beatific Vision?

    This weekend I had the pleasure of a visit from Dale Tuggy, noted philosopher of religion.  We discussed a number of topics at table and on trail including imago dei, the nature of forgiveness, the role of Platonism in Christianity, and death and afterlife.  His position on the latter topic I would characterize as 'Life…

  • Kenny, Geach, and the Perils of Reading Frege into Aquinas

    Here at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.

  • Possible Worlds Again: Thomist versus ‘Analyst’

    Fr. Matthew Kirby by e-mail: By the way, in thinking about my comments on the [your] SEP entry I realised that I had used the term "possible worlds" in an idiosyncratic way, one non-standard within the analytical school, applying a Thomist twist to it. Unlike standard usage, I do not include a hypothetical transcendent First…

  • More on the Hypostatic Union

    I am very impressed with Thomas Joseph White, OP, The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology, The Catholic University of America Press, 2017, xiv + 534 pp. It deserves to be called magisterial, the work of a magister, a master.  I am presently working through Chapter One, "The Ontology of the Hypostatic Union." White and…

  • Thomas Joseph White on the Hypostatic Union: Questions

    Vito Caiati writes,  I am struggling, in particular, to understand what [Thomas Joseph] White is proposing with regard to the hypostatic union on pages 82-84 [of The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology, The Catholic University of America Press, 2017].  He follows Aquinas in affirming “a substantial union of God and man. . .…

  • Would Heaven be Boring?

    Maybe not. (HT: V. Vohanka) Related: Conceiving the Afterlife: Life 2.0 or Beatific Vision? My post concludes as follows: But if the afterlife is not Life 2.0  and is something like the visio beata  of Thomas Aquinas, wouldn't it be boring 'as hell'?  Well, it might well be hell for something who was looking forward to black-eyed…