•  56
    This paper argues that the role of nature in Aquinas’s account of virtue, action and law does not require the kind of adherence to Aristotle’s ‘metaphysical biology’ that is refuted by Darwin because of the way Aquinas transforms nature as applied to a rational being and as an analogy to elucidate virtue, habit and law. Aquinas’s grounding of ethics and law in the notion of nature is also not a kind of intuitionism designed to answer all moral questions and stop all ethical debates but a model w…Read more
  •  51
    Thomas Aquinas’ Double Metaphysics of Simplicity and Infinity
    International Philosophical Quarterly 33 (3): 297-317. 1993.
  •  43
    Aquinas & Sartre: On freedom, personal identity, and the possibility of happiness (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 49 (1): 130-131. 2011.
    This well-written volume consists of paired chapters on human being, understanding, freedom, and happiness on Aquinas and Sartre. Stephen Wang's project is to use Sartre to reveal the more "radical" aspects of Aquinas's thought and to use Aquinas to "unlock the meaning" of Sartre's more radical claims . There is a great deal that is fresh and illuminating in this rapprochement between two thinkers most would not join together. Because the aim is to bring the thinkers into conversation, Wang avoi…Read more
  •  42
    Anselm on Human Finitude: A Dialogue with Existentialism
    Saint Anselm Journal 10 (1). 2014.
    The paper discusses Anselm's account of human finitude and freedom through his discussion of what it means to receive what we have from God in De casu diaboli. The essay argues that Anselm is considering the same issue as Jean Paul Sartre in his account of receiving a gift as incompatible with freedom. De casu diaboli takes up this same question, asking about how the finite will can be free, which requires that it have something per se, when there is nothing, as St. Paul asserted in Romans, that…Read more
  •  41
    The rhetoric of prayer and argument in Anselm
    Philosophy and Rhetoric 38 (4): 355-378. 2005.
  •  34
    Seeing Double
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 83 (3): 389-420. 2009.
    This essay focuses on three interpretations of Aquinas influenced by Continental philosophy, those of John Caputo, Jean-Luc Marion, and John Milbank/Catherine Pickstock. The essay considers the well-worn question, whether Aquinas is an onto-theologian in Heidegger’s sense, but looks more broadly at the point of contact common to these interpretations: Aquinas’s relationship to modernity.As Continental thought has put into question the nature of philosophy through a critical look at modern philos…Read more
  •  33
    Literary forms of medieval philosophy
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.
  •  32
    This essay will focus on analogies drawn from Aristotle’s account of natural motion and change which Thomas Aquinas uses to construct responses and explanations of free choice and its characteristic act, i.e. creation for God, and acts of virtue for human beings. Though these analogies to natural change recur throughout the Thomistic corpus, my analysis will focus on their use in the Summa Theologiae, where they consistently bear the weight of Aquinas’s account of the divine and human will and t…Read more
  •  26
  •  21
    Abelard in Four Dimensions: A Twelfth-Century Philosopher in His Context and Ours by John Marenbon (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 53 (3): 547-548. 2015.
  •  20
    Boethius's In Ciceronis Topica (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 45 (1): 152-153. 1991.
    This companion volume to Stump's earlier translation of Boethius's De topicis differentiis contains Stump's translation of Boethius's lengthy commentary on Cicero's Topica, extensive explanatory notes, and a short, basic explanation of ancient and medieval notions of the categories and predicables. Much of this volume depends on the earlier one; most of the introduction on Boethius is repeated from the earlier work, and many of the explanatory notes refer the reader to the earlier volume. Though…Read more
  •  19
    The paper examines the different uses of and responses to Aristotle’s account of science in the first wave of interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of science and works in natural science and metaphysics in the early 13th century in Roger Bacon and Albert the Great. The author argues that Bacon reduces all the disciplines to mathematics as the most scientific discipline, even as he argues that experimentum is at the center of scientific evidence and conclusions. Albert the Great, by contrast, giv…Read more
  •  18
    While the history of Western philosophy as a whole can be seen as the appropriation by philosophers of the discourse of truth from the poets and makers of myth, of the replacement of the narrative form by the 'properly philosophical' form of argument, it is an appropriation that also takes place within medieval thought, particularly in the construction of theology as a legitimate academic discipline. Whether that appropriation constitutes progress or loss was as much debated in the Middle Ages a…Read more
  •  17
    Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word
    The Catholic University of America Press. 2012.
    Eileen C. Sweeney. gap between what faith believes and what reason understands, is also expressed in the attempt to think “that than which none greater can be thought.” For to think it is to reach God via a single, long extension of the mind ...
  •  17
    This interdisciplinary study offers an interpretation of the major logical, philosophical/theological and poetic writings of Boethius, Abelard and Alan of Lille. The author examines their theories of language and the ways in which they explore how words illuminate things, how the mind comprehends God and how the individual reaches beatitude.
  •  12
    The Moral Gap (review)
    Faith and Philosophy 17 (2): 260-267. 2000.
  •  10
    Seeing Double
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 83 (3): 389-420. 2009.
    This essay focuses on three interpretations of Aquinas influenced by Continental philosophy, those of John Caputo, Jean-Luc Marion, and John Milbank/Catherine Pickstock. The essay considers the well-worn question, whether Aquinas is an onto-theologian in Heidegger’s sense, but looks more broadly at the point of contact common to these interpretations: Aquinas’s relationship to modernity.As Continental thought has put into question the nature of philosophy through a critical look at modern philos…Read more
  •  10
    What Is a Person? Realities, Constructs, Illusions by John M. Rist
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 59 (2): 345-346. 2021.
    John Rist's What Is a Person? is a scholarly, rich, and trenchant study of the history of the concept of personhood in Western thought. However, its sharp critique of modern and postmodern accounts of personhood, though thought-provoking, also uses jarringly polemical language, which further undermines the book's flawed overall argument. The first section, "Constructing the Mainline Tradition," carefully mines ancient and medieval sources, tracing with nuance and complexity the different threads…Read more
  •  9
    In this essay, I offer an interpretation of Abelard's Historia Calamitatum and letters exchanged with Heloise, arguing that both are informed by the attempt to look below the surfaces of language, self, and action to a reality beneath and to achieve authenticity, by which I mean coherence between surface and depth. This reading shows an emerging sense of self and self-knowledge based on the relationship between external act and internal intention. While using traditional medieval narrative forms…Read more