-
Buridan on the value of emotionsIn Spencer C. Johnston & Henrik Lagerlund (eds.), Interpreting Buridan: critical essays, Cambridge University Press. 2024.
-
10Aquinas's Summa Theologiae: Critical EssaysRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2005.Thomas Aquinas was first and foremost a Christian theologian. Yet he was also one of the greatest philosophers of the Middle Ages. Drawing on classical authors, and incorporating ideas from Jewish and Arab sources, he came to offer a rounded and lasting account of the origin of the universe and of the things to be found within it, especially human beings
-
21Justice, Passion, and Another’s Good: Aristotle Among the TheologiansIn Jan A. Aertsen, Kent Emery & Andreas Speer (eds.), Nach der Verurteilung von 1277 / After the Condemnation of 1277: Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts. Studien und Texte / Philosophy and Theology at the University of Paris in the Last Quarter of, De Gruyter. pp. 704-718. 2001.
-
50Allan B. Wolter, trans., "Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality" (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 27 (2): 303. 1989.
-
21A Treatise on God as First Principle (review)International Philosophical Quarterly 26 (3): 298-300. 1986.
-
28After MacIntyre: Critical Perspectives on the Work of Alasdair MacIntyrePhilosophical Quarterly 46 (185): 524-526. 1996.
-
Ch. 6. Losable virtue : Aquinas on character and willIn Tobias Hoffmann, Jörn Müller & Matthias Perkams (eds.), Aquinas and the Nicomachean Ethics, Cambridge University Press. 2013.
-
19Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth CenturyCatholic University of Amer Press. 1995.In Virtues of the Will, Bonnie Kent traces late thirteenth-century debates about the freedom of the will, moral weakness, and other issues that helped change the course of Western ethics. She argues that one cannot understand the controversies of the period or see Duns Scotus in perspective without paying due attention to his immediate predecessors: the influential secular master Henry of Ghent, Walter of Bruges, William de la Mare, Peter Olivi, and other Franciscans. Seemingly radical doctrines…Read more
-
8Speaking Theologically: The Concept of habitus in Peter Lombard and His FollowersIn Nicolas Faucher & Magali Roques (eds.), The Ontology, Psychology and Axiology of Habits (Habitus) in Medieval Philosophy, Springer. pp. 67-85. 2018.This essay examines the theological concept of a habitus, the problems it was intended to solve, and how it was developed by masters of Paris in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. I argue that Peter Lombard and Peter of Poitiers embraced the broad concept of a habitus they found in Augustine’s work: that by which something is done when there is a need. A habitus, then, did not have to be acquired by practice, and it might never be manifest in the agent’s behaviour, because the need…Read more
-
57Our inalienable ability to sin: Peter Olivi’s rejection of asymmetrical freedomBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (6): 1073-1092. 2017.From the time of Augustine to the late thirteenth century, leading Christian thinkers agreed that freedom requires the ability to make good choices, but not the ability to make bad ones. If freedom required the ability to sin, they reasoned, neither God nor the angels nor the blessed in heaven could be free. This essay examines the work of Peter Olivi, the first medieval philosopher known to reject the asymmetrical conception of freedom. Olivi argues that the ability to sin is essential to creat…Read more
-
49Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature (review)Philosophical Review 112 (1): 103-106. 2003.Despite its subtitle, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature is far more than a philosophical study of Summa theologiae, part 1, qq. 75-89. Not only does Robert Pasnau venture into topics never mentioned in this section of the Summa, he draws freely on Aquinas’s disputed questions, his commentaries on Aristotle’s works, and many other texts, including a wide range of works in both contemporary philosophy and the history of philosophy writ large. Anthony Kenny’s Aquinas on Mind focuses on the same questi…Read more
-
Moral growth and the unity of the virtuesIn David Carr & J. W. Steutel (eds.), Virtue Ethics and Moral Education, Routledge. pp. 109--124. 1999.
-
PART 4 107 Weakness and integrity 8 Moral growth and the unity of the virtues 109In David Carr & J. W. Steutel (eds.), Virtue Ethics and Moral Education, Routledge. 1999.
-
1The moral lifeIn Arthur Stephen McGrade (ed.), The Cambridge companion to medieval philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 231--253. 2003.
-
22Moral ProvincialismReligious Studies 30 (3). 1994.Suppose that I stand firmly in what Alasdair MacIntyre describes as the Thomistic tradition of moral enquiry. I try my best to recover a historical understanding of Aquinas's teachings, and I refuse to let my philosophical opponents set the terms of debate. Now suppose that you yourself are one of my opponents: a Buddhist, a Jew, a Muslim or perhaps a secular humanist. Finally, suppose that I have always found you a considerate neighbour, a friendly and responsible colleague, and a reliable cont…Read more
-
58The development of ethics: A historical and critical study. Volume I: From socrates to the reformation (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (4). 2009.‘ The Development of Ethics’ proves a rather misleading title for Terence Irwin’s latest book. He describes it more accurately as “a selective historical and critical study in the Socratic tradition, with special attention to Aristotelian naturalism, its formation, elaboration, criticism, and defence” . ‘Socratic’ refers to Irwin’s method: not merely describing “a collective Socratic inquiry” historically but also evaluating it and taking part in it . Unlike Alasdair MacIntyre and J. B. Schneewi…Read more
-
89Transitory vice: Thomas Aquinas on incontinenceJournal of the History of Philosophy 27 (2): 199-223. 1989.
-
331Evil in later medieval philosophyJournal of the History of Philosophy 45 (2): 177-205. 2007.This essay presents a critical review of recent literature on evil in medieval philosophy, as understood by thinkers from Anselm of Canterbury onward. "Evil" is taken to include not only serious, deliberate wrongdoing, but also everyday sins done from ignorance or passion. Special attention is paid to Aquinas's De Malo, Giles of Rome and the aftermath of the 1277 Condemnation, scholarly disputes about Scotus's teachings, and commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics by Walter Burley, Gerald Odonis,…Read more
-
21Review of Brian Harding, Augustine and Roman Virtue (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (7). 2009.
-
34Happiness and the Willing AgentProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 78 59-70. 2004.Contemporary philosophers who are concerned with the following three philosophical issues can learn much from Scotus: (1) the defense of agent-causal accounts of the will; (2) the search for common ground between ancient and Kantian ethics: and (3) the co-existence of free will and the capacity for sin in heaven.1) Free Will and Agent Causation: According to Scotus, the will moves itself to act, but does not cause itself. Human actions are done for reasons determinedby the agent; they are not re…Read more
-
70Augustine's ethicsIn Eleonore Stump & Norman Kretzmann (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, Cambridge University Press. pp. 205--233. 2001.
-
66Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy (review)Review of Metaphysics 39 (4): 783-784. 1986.The chapters of this volume originated as papers presented at the Ohio State University, March 3-4, 1982. Students of philosophy and theology should find the work interesting, both as an introduction to medieval thought and as a source of insights into issues still disputed.
-
41The Good Will According to Gerald Odonis, Duns Scotus, and William of OckhamFranciscan Studies 46 (1): 119-139. 1986.
-
9Happiness and the Willing AgentProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 78 59-70. 2004.Contemporary philosophers who are concerned with the following three philosophical issues can learn much from Scotus: (1) the defense of agent-causal accounts of the will; (2) the search for common ground between ancient and Kantian ethics: and (3) the co-existence of free will and the capacity for sin in heaven.1) Free Will and Agent Causation: According to Scotus, the will moves itself to act, but does not cause itself. Human actions are done for reasons determinedby the agent; they are not re…Read more
-
24Aristotle's Ethics, Situationist Psychology, and a Fourteenth-Century DebateHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 25 (2). 2008.
-
26Peter Lombard (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 (1): 140-142. 1996.14o JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34: X.JANUARY t996 method of reading the dialogues in an ascending order of philosophical importance need not be reflected completely or consistently in the tetralogical scheme. I pass over the account of Thrasyllus' logos-theory which Tarrant derives from an elusive section of Porphyry's commentary on Ptolemy's Harmonics in order to discuss the more important conclusions he draws in chapter 6, "The Neopythagorean Parmenides." By carefully sifting passage…Read more
-
37Emotion and peace of mind: From stoic agitation to Christian temptation. Richard Sorabji oxford: Oxford university press, 2000. Pp. XI, 499. (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (1). 2005.The last decade has witnessed a dramatic revival of interest in Hellenistic philosophy. No longer can one complain that scholars pitch their tents on Aristotelian turf and refuse to move beyond it. Indeed, the burgeoning literature on Hellenistic philosophy might now raise doubts about whether an author breaks any new ground. Sorabji's latest book analyzes many of the same texts and issues explored in Martha Nussbaum's The Therapy of Desire ; and he, too, argues that ancient philosophical therap…Read more
Irvine, California, United States of America