•  40
    Ens Primum Cognitum in Thomas Aquinas and the Tradition presents a reading of Thomas Aquinas' claim that "being" is the first object of the human intellect. Blending the insights of both the early Thomistic tradition (c.1380--1637AD) and the Leonine Thomistic revival (1879--present), Brian Kemple examines how this claim of Aquinas has been traditionally understood, and what is lacking in that understanding. While the recent tradition has emphasized the primacy of the real (so-called ens reale) i…Read more
  •  27
    Interview with Brian Kemple
    with William Passarini and Tim Troutman
    Listen to the interview with Brian Kemple... and learn to appreciate the diachronic trajectory of semiotics. *** Live interview with Brian Kemple, Executive Director of the Lyceum Institute, to discuss the legacy and influence of John Deely (1942-2017), the thinker most responsible for developing semiotics into the 21st century. This interview, conducted by William Passarini (Mansarda Acesa) and Tim Troutman (Lyceum Institute), is part of the preliminary activities of the 2022 International Open…Read more
  •  26
    Many contemporary explanations of conscious human experience, relying either upon neuroscience or appealing to a spiritual soul, fail to provide a complete and coherent theory. These explanations, the author argues, fall short because the underlying explanatory constituent for all experience are not entities, such as the brain or a spiritual soul, but rather relation and the unique way in which human beings form relations. This alternative frontier is developed through examining the phenomenolog…Read more
  •  18
    The Preeminent Necessity of Prudence
    Studia Gilsoniana 6 (4). 2017.
    Thomas Aquinas holds not only that prudence, the virtue of right practical reasoning, is necessary for living well, but emphatically asserts that it “is the virtue most necessary to human life.” This essay argues that the force of Thomas’ assertion should not be understood as simply contradicting the objection—that “it seems that prudence is not a virtue necessary to living a good life”—with vigor, but rather, as we intend to show, that although all the moral virtues are necessary for the good l…Read more
  •  12
    The Consolation of a Christian
    International Philosophical Quarterly 58 (4): 423-435. 2018.
    If the desire to see God in Himself belongs to human nature, but the attainment of that vision can be affected only by supernatural grace, how is it that this desire remaining unfulfilled is not a frustration of the nature? How is it that nature is aiming at a good in vain, at an object that it cannot achieve? Even though the elicited natural desire to see God is not fulfilled in this life, and even though there is no demonstrative proof that can be provided by natural reason alone of its being …Read more
  •  11
    While there is an absence of treatises devoted to the question of ens ut primum cognitum, there is no shortage of brief and implicit treatments; indeed, nearly every Thomist of the past seven centuries seems to have at least something to say about the notion that being is the first of our intellectual conceptions. Most recent Thomist thinkers—including Gilson—assume this ens to be nothing other than the ens reale of things entitatively considered, operating as they do out of a framework within w…Read more
  •  8
    Ugobi-Onyemere, Mary Christine, IHM. The Knowledge of the First Principles in Saint Thomas Aquinas (review)
    Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 29 (1-2): 212-214. 2017.
  •  7
    The Resolution of Interpretations. Thomism, Semiotics, and Phenomenology in Dialogue
    Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 79 (1-2): 659-692. 2023.
    More than ever do people seem entrenched in their intellectual positions despite a dearth of concerted and honest reflection upon them. This obstinacy presents a moral and rhetorical challenge—attempting persuasion through naked rational argumentation alone will prove fruitless. But we should not discount the role of the intellect in the fixation of even the least-reflectively formed beliefs. From the perspective of cognition, this fixation is proximately the result of interpretation. In the lan…Read more
  •  5
    The Nature of the Human Person: Metaphysics and Bioethics by Jason T. Eberl (review)
    The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 22 (3): 571-574. 2022.
  •  2
    The Consolation of a Christian
    International Philosophical Quarterly 58 (4): 423-435. 2018.
    If the desire to see God in Himself belongs to human nature, but the attainment of that vision can be affected only by supernatural grace, how is it that this desire remaining unfulfilled is not a frustration of the nature? How is it that nature is aiming at a good in vain, at an object that it cannot achieve? Even though the elicited natural desire to see God is not fulfilled in this life, and even though there is no demonstrative proof that can be provided by natural reason alone of its being …Read more