Francis Feingold

St. Patrick's Seminary & University
  •  512
    This paper seeks to defuse two claims. On the one hand, I confront the Hildebrandian claim that Thomism, by placing the principium of love in the needs and desires of the lover rather than in the beloved, denies the possibility of transcendent love; on the other, I seek to refute the Thomistic objection that Hildebrand lacks a sufficient understanding of nature and its inherent teleology. In order to accomplish this, a distinction must be made between different kinds of principium or “for-its-ow…Read more
  •  25
    Is the institution of private property part of the natural law? Leo XIII seems to say simply that it is, and many modern Catholic thinkers have followed suit. Aquinas presents a more nuanced view. On the one hand, he denies that the institution of private property is “natural” in the strict sense—unlike the ordering of physical goods to general human use. On the other hand, he maintains that private property does belong to the ius gentium, which is founded directly upon natural law in the strict…Read more
  •  11
    Graven Images: Substitutes for True Morality
    International Philosophical Quarterly 61 (4): 495-498. 2021.
  •  8
    Principium Versus Principiatum
    Quaestiones Disputatae 3 (2): 56-68. 2013.
  •  8
    Reasons of the Heart: The "Evidence" of Love in Pascal's Pensées
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. forthcoming.
    Pascal, in his Pensées, applies philosophy to a theological problem: reconciling (a) Christianity’s demand for absolute faith with both (b) the motives of credibility’s inability to justify absolute faith on their own and (c) the moral obligation to avoid superstition. This reconciliation hinges upon distinguishing two cognitive faculties: reason, and the heart. I will first discuss Pascal’s view of the difference between reason and the heart, and specifically how they each relate to evidence an…Read more
  •  3
    Morality & Situation Ethics by Dietrich Von Hildebrand
    Review of Metaphysics 73 (3): 637-639. 2020.