Catherine Peters

In this chapter, I examine the distinction drawn by Jacques Maritain between dianoetic and perinoetic intellection in light of the work of William Wallace. In dianoesis, “substantial natures are to some degree known in themselves, by signs” while in perinoesis “substances and their properties are known by signs and in signs.” Only in the former, then, does one reach the natures of things and thereby attain certain and ontological knowledge of them. Common to both Maritain and Wallace is their invocation of the Aristotelian theory of demonstration as outlined in the Posterior Analytics and employed in the Physics. The distinction between dianoesis and perinoesis is ultimately traced back to these Aristotelian sources, with particular concern for answering the questions an est and quid est. While accepting the distinction between dianoesis and perinoesis, Wallace criticizes Maritain’s limitation of science to perinoesis and reservation of dianoesis to philosophy. Standing behind this assignment, Wallace holds, is a tacit acceptance of a positivistic conception of science that rules out the possibility of reaching quidditative knowledge. The disagreement between Wallace and Maritain centers, then, on their understanding of science. If one follows Maritain in accepting science as positivistic then his allocation of dianoesis and perinoesis follows. But if one accepts Wallace’s view of science as dependent on and consonant with the Aristotelian tradition then it is able to attain dianoetic knowledge and Maritain’s sharp division must be tempered. Largely agreeing with Wallace, I hold that his account is nonetheless in need of continuation if the sciences—still largely tainted by positivism—are to return to their Aristotelian sources and thereby attain dianoesis. Accepting the distinction between dianoesis and perinoesis, I argue, need not entail Maritain’s division between science and philosophy but should rather lead the sciences to regain their sapiential dimension.

Avicenna maintains that all beings, insofar as they exist, are necessary: God alone is necessary in Himself, while creatures are necessary through another and remain radically dependent on an existential cause. This association of existence with necessity might appear to leave little room for gratitude, which seems most fittingly directed toward goods that need not exist. Moreover, Avicenna denies that the Necessary Existent acts for an end or receives recompense, including praise, because either would imply deficiency. After reconstructing these objections from the Metaphysics of the Healing, the chapter distinguishes the reception of gratitude from its rendering. Although God’s perfection precludes His receiving gratitude as recompense, creatures’ dependence upon Him provides strong grounds for offering it. Avicenna’s metaphysics thus supports existential gratitude when considered from the standpoint of creatures as beneficiaries rather than God as recipient.

The current practice of disability studies largely groups itself according to various “models” of disability, such as the “medical,” “social,” “identity,” and “minority.” While insightful, each is incomplete: some focus on the medical component of disability, others on its social implications, and yet others on its personal significance. The present chapter proposes an account of disability grounded in Thomistic anthropology. In this system, an individual is a human being insofar as he or she possesses a particular kind of essence or nature. Given this nature, a person has certain natural abilities that, if certain other requisite conditions are met, allow the person to perform typical operations. Disability – and the closely related term “impairment” – concerns inabilities to perform given activities and various consequent inequities that may arise. The “Thomistic model” proposed aims to incorporate insights from prevailing models of disability and, thus, to enrich contemporary disability studies through the application of Thomistic philosophy.

The majority of studies on ‘faith’ (fides) in the thought of Thomas Aquinas consider it in a religious or theological context: fides as the theological virtue by which one assents to the truths of divine revelation. The focus on theological faith is appropriate, given its central importance as a theological virtue, but this is not the only sense of fides that Thomas identifies. The present study investigates two non-theological senses formulated in his commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius: first, fides as the proximate cause of assenting to principles within a given science (‘epistemic faith’) and, second, fides as an indispensable element of society (‘societal faith’). These senses have been largely overlooked in secondary literature but, I argue, might help to dispel mischaracterizations of faith as fundamentally unreasonable.

Cura personalis is one of the distinctive characteristics of Jesuit education, but the precise meaning of this phrase can sometimes be difficult to discern. Often translated as “care or education of the whole person,” the expansiveness of its formulations can lead to an overlooking of what should be central: the care of a person in their full personhood and a reminder of the person’s ultimate end. To understand cura personalis in a way that retains its distinctive character, I propose a return to Ignatius of Loyola himself, focusing especially on the importance of the Incarnation. I maintain that the Incarnation is indispensable for understanding cura personalis and that it indicates certain practical applications.

This article examines Avicenna as the source of a distinction Thomas Aquinas employs repeatedly: the division of common principles into those common by causality and those common by predication. Although the distinction has roots in Aristotle, it is explicitly formulated by Avicenna, who uses it to clarify the principles proper to natural philosophy and metaphysics and to reserve demonstration of the First Mover to metaphysics. After considering its Aristotelian background and Avicenna’s account of the commonality of the four causes, the article traces Thomas’s adoption and expansion of the distinction in his commentary on the *Sentences*, *De veritate*, and his commentaries on Boethius’s *De trinitate* and Aristotle’s *Physics*. Thomas preserves Avicenna’s distinction while extending it to differentiate metaphysics from theology. This development illustrates both Avicenna’s refinement of Aristotelian thought and the importance of Avicennian philosophy for Thomas’s account of scientific principles.

Avicenna offers a novel definition of “nature” as a power in his Physics of the Healing. Some have seen in this redefinition a radical departure from Aristotle. James Weisheipl, for one, rejected Avicenna’s definition as a mistaken interpretation of Aristotle and as a position incompatible with Thomas Aquinas. In Weisheipl’s view, Avicenna reifies form into a kind of motor of the natural being, a conception earlier rejected by Thomas Aquinas in several works. In this study, I offer a Thomistic defense of Avicenna by investigating the definition of nature and its relation to matter and form.

In this study I examine the argument for the existence of God from finality formulated by St. Thomas Aquinas in the prologue to his commentary Super Evangelium Sancti Ioannis. Of particular interest is accounting for his characterization of this argument as the via efficacissima. I suggest two reasons for this appellation: first, philosophically, because this demonstrates the existence of God from the cause of causes and thus supplies intelligibility and explanation even for the via manifestior of efficient causality. Second, theologically, because its conclusion imparts an understanding of God as the Lord of Lords, by whose Divine Providence the world is ordered and governed. In this way, then, Thomas philosophically begins to explicate the theological implications of the Verbum of St. John’s Gospel.

This article reconsiders ableism within the framework of Catholic anthropology. Prevailing definitions sometimes treat normative concepts such as species-typical functioning as inherently discriminatory, thereby conflicting with the teleological account of human nature central to Catholic thought. Drawing on Thomas Aquinas and Church teaching, the article distinguishes personhood, impairment, and disability. Impairment is a privation of species-typical functioning, while disability encompasses the personal and social challenges consequent upon impairment. Neither diminishes personhood or the equal dignity grounded in the imago Dei. On this basis, ableism is defined as unjust discrimination against persons with disabilities on the basis of impairment or ability, including mistaken attitudes and failures to provide appropriate accommodations. This account preserves an objective understanding of human nature while unequivocally condemning discrimination. Properly defined, ableism identifies a failure of justice without requiring that impairments be construed as mere differences or that metaphysical judgments about functioning become judgments about personal worth.

The debates regarding sex and gender are substantial, pervasive, and fierce. A striking feature of these debates is a lack of clarity regarding terms, especially regarding “sex” and “gender.” While “sex” is often taken to indicate certain biological characteristics related to reproductive roles, proposed definitions of “gender” are varied, often involving a matrix of factors, behaviors, and identities. But these are not merely linguistic disagreements. Language conveys reality, and ideas about “sex” and “gender” have consequences for one’s view of reality. Drawing on Thomistic metaphysics, I argue for a realist view of sex and gender. This view is largely denied by contemporary gender theorists who adopt, instead, a fundamentally nominalist attitude towards both. In such nominalist accounts, “sex” and “gender” are reduced to names with little correspondence to sexual reality. The only counter to this contemporary nominalism, like all past iterations, is a return to reality.

This article defends the usefulness of dignity within Catholic bioethics against claims that the concept is reducible to autonomy or respect for persons (a claim made, for example, by Ruth Macklin in her essay “Dignity Is a Useless Concept"). Catholic teaching grounds dignity in the human person as made in the imago Dei: an individual substance of a rational nature whose value does not depend on the actual exercise of reason. This essential account includes infants and persons with cognitive impairments. Dignity cannot be reduced to autonomy, since autonomy may be misused and is not exercised by every human being, nor to socially conferred respect, which makes moral status vulnerable to exclusion. Properly understood, dignity unites the intrinsic value of each person with the teleological ordering of human life toward natural flourishing and beatitude. It is therefore not merely useful but indispensable to Catholic bioethics.

This article distinguishes descriptive and normative senses of “normal” and defends the indispensability of the latter for Catholic bioethics. Descriptive normality identifies what is common or statistically prevalent; normative normality identifies what accords with the nature and proper ends of the human person. Drawing especially on Thomas Aquinas, the article grounds normativity in a teleological anthropology according to which human powers are ordered toward characteristic operations and the person as a whole toward flourishing and beatitude. Although normative judgments have sometimes been misapplied, particularly in relation to disability, such misuse warrants reform rather than abandonment. Rejecting normativity obscures the distinction between what commonly occurs and what perfects human beings, weakens the conceptual basis for identifying impairment, and can undermine arguments for accommodation. A properly grounded normative account recognizes human variation and equal dignity while providing the standards necessary for evaluating health, disability, action, and human flourishing.

When considering the metaphysical preambles to faith, the existence of God is surely preeminent. While investigation of preambles is often a feature of the generally Christian and particularly Catholic entrée to theology, they also concern the other Abrahamic religions. The present study explores “necessary” and “possible” as metaphysical preambles in the thought of Avicenna. Though compelling, Avicenna’s account has not escaped criticism, most notably from Averroes, who rejected both these concepts and Avicenna’s subsequent argument for God, the Necessary Existent. Rejecting “necessary” and “possible” as metaphysical preambles can have far-reaching consequences, not only for the cogency of Avicennian metaphysics, but for any natural theology that seeks to employ these concepts. The present study, first, defends “necessary” and “possible” as formulated in the metaphysics of Avicenna. Second, it shows how these concepts serve as preambles to arguments for God. Third, it addresses and refutes Averroes’ criticisms.

This article examines essential and functional definitions of personhood and their implications for disability and abortion. Drawing on Thomistic anthropology, it distinguishes essence—what a being is—from function—what that being can do. Although essence and function are closely related, a person is properly defined essentially as an individual substance of a rational nature, not functionally by the present exercise or proximate capacity for rational activity. Functional definitions make personhood, and therefore moral status, dependent upon contested capacities such as sentience, cognition, autonomy, or viability. They consequently risk excluding human beings who lack, have not yet developed, or cannot exercise those functions, including persons with profound disabilities and the unborn. Functional descriptions may appropriately identify a person’s roles, abilities, or stages of development, but they cannot ground personhood itself. Because operation presupposes a being capable of operating, an essential definition best safeguards the equal and intrinsic moral status of all human persons.

Peter Geach claims in Good and Evil that there can never be “just good or bad, there is only being a good or bad so-and-so” and thereby denies that goodness can ever be used in a non-relative sense. Although his rejection of absolute goodness might initially seem to be a startling and mistaken departure from the Thomistic understanding, I argue that an examination of Thomas’s texts reveal a strong agreement between them, one grounded in a common rejection of univocal goodness. For both, “good” is relative to the nature of a being. To defend the relativity of goodness, I consider two objections: first, that relativizing goodness leads to subjectivism. Second, that divine goodness is absolute and non-relative. In answering these objections, I show that in both Thomas’s medieval and Geach’s modern accounts “good” is an analogical perfection relative to a nature. In this way, then, goodness is objectively relative.

The author seeks to show how participation serves as a focal point of a Thomistic personalist account of natural law. While Aquinas himself does not invoke the concept of person in his account of natural law, the author argues that participation can and should be understood as a personal act. According to her, justification for this interpretation is found in the commonality of rationality: that which both makes a substance to be a person and renders the participation of man in the eternal law to be a truly natural law.

The concept of nature (Gr. phúsis; Ar. ṭabīʿa) lies at the heart of classical physics. Seemingly small differences about nature can blossom into significant disagreements. The present study offers an exposition of certain neglected passages concerning ṭabīʿa in Ibn Sīnā’s al-Samāʿ al-ṭabīʿī(The Physics of the Healing). The pre­dominant view of ṭabīʿa is that it as an active principle, a concep­tion of nature that radically departs from Aristotle’s account of phúsis in Physics I-II. I dispute this interpretation by investigat­ing two neglected texts in the Physics of the Healing. First, these texts indicate that nature should be associated with matter and form (I, 6) and, second, they argue that failing to account for matter and form makes knowledge of nature incomplete (I, 9).

This study draws attention to the ordering of matter and form argued for in Aristotle’s Physics II, 8 (199a30–32). This argument for hylomorphic teleology relies on the presentation of nature earlier in Physics II, 1. In this way, it highlights the connections between chapter one’s account of nature as matter and form and chapter eight’s defense of final causality. Grounding final causality in the principles of nature reveals its central importance for Aristotle’s view of nature. To clarify the meaning of hylomorphic teleology I contrast my interpretation of Aristotle with that of Wolfgang Wieland regarding the scope and foundation of the final cause, countering his claim that chance and universal final causality are mutually exclusive. I contend that the presentation of teleology in chapter eight supports a diverse interpretation of the final cause, one that admits chance events while not sacrificing the intrinsic ordering of matter to form.