Category: Aquinas and Thomism
-
Kenny, Geach, and the Perils of Reading Frege Back Into Aquinas
London Ed has informed me of the passing of Peter Geach. May he find the Unchanging Light that he sought through his long and productive life of truth-seeking in these shadowlands. One honors a thinker best by thinking his thoughts, sympathetically, but critically. Here is one of my attempts. Others referenced below. ………… I have…
-
Is Hegel the Protestant Aquinas?
Howard Kainz writes, It’s a good question. Hegel and Aquinas are certainly comparable in the sense that they treated a wide variety of topics in philosophy and theology, and unified and organized them. Another similarity resides in the prominence of theology in their writings – but with the following caveat: Whereas, in the scholastic approach…
-
Defending the Distinctio Realis Against Anthony Kenny
This post defends the real distinction between essence and existence. For some background, see Geach on the Real Distinction I. In Aquinas on Being (Oxford 2002, p. 45), Anthony Kenny writes, "Peter's continuing to exist is the very same thing as Peter's continuing to possess his essence; if he ceases to exist, he ceases to…
-
Doctor Communis
Is Thomism the 'default position' among scholastics? I suggested as much and bolstered my assertion by adverting to the fact that Aquinas is sometimes referred to as doctor communis, Common Doctor. It was then claimed by someone, one of the Czech scholastics, I think, that this appellation was made up by Thomists to refer to and promote…
-
A God Who Doesn’t Say All He Knows
Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, Pontifical Institute, 1952, p. 177: "God knows essences, but He says existences, and He does not say all that He knows." Here are the makings of a good examination question for a course in Thomism: What is the Frenchman driving at? Unpack the Gilsonian bon mot.
-
Garrigou-Lagrange on Thomas on the Divine Persons as Subsistent Relations
What follows is the whole of Chapter 16 of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange's Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought. My critical comments are in blue. Chapter 16: The Divine Persons Person in general is a being which has intelligence and freedom. Its classic definition was given by Boethius: Person is an individual subject with an intellectual nature.…
-
Gilson and the Avicennian-Thomistic Common Natures Argument
Chapter III of Etienne Gilson's Being and Some Philosophers is highly relevant to my ongoing discussion of common natures. Gilson appears to endorse the classic argument for the doctrine of common natures in the following passage (for the larger context see here): Out of itself, animal is neither universal nor singular. Indeed, if, out of itself,…
-
Geach, Frege, Aquinas
Peter Geach uses the nonconstituent ontologist Frege to makes sense of the constituent ontologist Aquinas. It can't work. This post is a stub.
-
More on the Status of Thomistic Common Natures
This is proving to be a fascinating topic. Let's push on a bit further. Aquinas says that any given nature can be considered in three ways: in respect of the esse it has in concrete singulars; in respect of the esse it has in minds; absolutely, in the abstract, without reference to either mode of…
-
Lukáš Novák on Common Natures
The following is a comment by Dr. Novak on an earlier post about Stanislav Sousedik's Thomist theory of predication. That post has scrolled off into archival oblivion, so I reproduce the comment here and add some comments in blue. …………………. What is, for me, most striking about Bill's troubles with Sousedík's elaboration of the Thomistic…
-
Bare Particulars and Lukáš Novák’s Argument Against Them
In his contribution to the book I am reviewing, Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic (Ontos Verlag, 2012), Lukáš Novák mounts an Aristotelian argument against bare particulars. In this entry I will try to understand his argument. I will hereafter refer to Professor Novák as 'LN' to avoid the trouble of having to paste in the diacriticals…
-
Stanislav Sousedik’s “Towards a Thomistic Theory of Predication”
Enough of politics, back to some hard-core technical philosophy. If nothing else, the latter offers exquisite escapist pleasures not unlike those of chess. Of course I don't believe that technical philosophy is escapist; my point is a conditional one: if it is, its pleasures suffice to justify it as a form of recuperation from this all-too-oppressive world of…
-
Aquinas Meets Frege: Analysis of an Argument from De Ente et Essentia
The other day I expressed my reservations as to the coherence of the Thomistic notion of a common nature. Let's plunge a little deeper by considering the argument from Chapter 3 of Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence (tr. Robert T. Miller, emphasis added): The nature, however, or the essence thus understood can be considered in two…
-
Gyula Klima on Thomistic Common Natures: Some Questions
In his SEP article, The Medieval Problem of Universals, Gyula Klima offers the following explanation of the Thomistic doctrine of common natures: So, a common nature or essence according to its absolute consideration abstracts from all existence, both in the singulars and in the mind. Yet, and this is the important point, it is the…
-
Transitivity of Predication?
I dedicate this post to London Ed, who likes sophisms and scholastic arcana. Consider these two syllogistic arguments: A1. Man is an animal; Socrates is a man; ergo, Socrates is an animal.A2. Man is a species; Socrates is a man; ergo, Socrates is a species. The first argument is valid. On one way of accounting for its…