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21Aquinas on the Nature of LyingNew Blackfriars 104 (1114): 613-627. 2023.Aquinas's views about the morality of lying are well known and often discussed by commentators. But his views about the nature of lying have yet to receive the attention they deserve. In this article, I take some of the first steps necessary to correct this state of affairs by clarifying and offering a limited defense of the account of lying that Aquinas presents in in his Summa Theologiae—more specifically, in that portion of it known as the treatise on truth (Part 2-2, Questions 109–113).
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934A Theistic Argument Against Platonism (and in Support of Truthmakers and Divine Simplicity)Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 2 357-386. 2006.Predication is an indisputable part of our linguistic behavior. By contrast, the metaphysics of predication has been a matter of dispute ever since antiquity. According to Plato—or at least Platonism, the view that goes by Plato’s name in contemporary philosophy—the truths expressed by predications such as “Socrates is wise” are true because there is a subject of predication (e.g., Socrates), there is an abstract property or universal (e.g., wisdom), and the subject exemplifies the property.1 Th…Read more
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376Understanding the TrinityLogos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 8 (1): 145-157. 2005.The doctrine of the Trinity poses a deep and difficult problem. On the one hand, it says that there are three distinct Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and that each of these Persons “is God”. On the other hand, it says that there is one and only one God. So it appears to involve a contradiction. It seems to say that there is exactly one divine being, and also that there is more than one. How are we to make sense of this?
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15Aquinas on the Problem of UniversalsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (3): 715-735. 2015.
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1341Material Constitution and the TrinityFaith and Philosophy 22 (1): 57-76. 2005.The Christian doctrine of the Trinity poses a serious philosophical problem. On the one hand, it seems to imply that there is exactly one divine being; on the other hand, it seems to imply that there are three. There is another well-known philosophical problem that presents us with a similar sort of tension: the problem of material constitution. We argue in this paper that a relatively neglected solution to the problem of material constitution can be developed into a novel solution to the proble…Read more
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142The God of Eth and the God of EarthThink 5 (14): 33-38. 2007.Stephen Law has recently argued (Think, Vol 5, Issue 9), using a dialogue set on the fictional planet Eth, that traditional belief in God is 'silly'. Bergmann and Brower argue that theists on Earth should not be convinced.
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792Thomas Williams, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus (review)Philosophical Review 115 (2): 259-262. 2006.
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91Aquinas on the Individuation of SubstancesOxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 5 (1). 2017.Aquinas has much to say about individuation over the course of his career. Although certain aspects of his views appear to undergo development, there is one aspect that remains constant throughout—namely, his commitment to assigning both prime matter and quantity an essential role in the individuation of substances. This paper examines the vexed issue of how either prime matter or quantity, as Aquinas understands them, could have any role to play in this context. In the course of doing so, the a…Read more
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619Platonism about Goodness—Anselm’s Proof in the MonologionTheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology 3 (2): 1-28. 2019.In the opening chapter of the Monologion, Anselm offers an intriguing proof for the existence of a Platonic form of goodness. This proof is extremely interesting, both in itself and for its place in the broader argument for God’s existence that Anselm develops in the Monologion as a whole. Even so, it has yet to receive the scholarly attention that it deserves. My aim in this article is to begin correcting this state of affairs by examining Anslem’s proof in some detail. In particular, I aim to …Read more
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13Thomas Williams, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus (review)Philosophical Review 115 (2): 259-262. 2006.
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808Relations Without Polyadic Properties: Albert the Great On the Nature and Ontological Status of RelationsArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 83 (3): 225-257. 2001.I think it would be fair to say that, until about 1900, philosophers were generally reluctant to admit the existence of what are nowadays called polyadic properties.1 It is important to recognize, however, that this reluctance on the part of pre-twentieth-century philosophers did not prevent them from theorizing about relations. On the contrary, philosophers from the ancient through the modern period have had much to say about both the nature and the ontological status of relations. In this pape…Read more
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Medieval Theories of Relations Before Aquinas: "Categories" Commentaries, A.D. 510--1250Dissertation, The University of Iowa. 1996.There is a long and rich tradition of thinking about relations, stemming from ancient Greek philosophy and running through the Middle Ages, which has been guided by the intuition that relations reduce to the monadic properties of related things. Despite the prominence of this tradition in the history of philosophy, and despite the stature of philosophers whose support it claims, reductive approaches to relations are now widely rejected on the basis of advances in twentieth-century logic. This di…Read more
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315MatterIn Robert Audi (ed.), Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 3rd Edition, Cambridge University Press. 2015.
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299Paul V. Spade (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ockham (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 38 (4): 588-589. 2000.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Cambridge Companion to OckhamJeffrey E. BrowerPaul Vincent Spade, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Ockham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xii + 400. Cloth, $54.95.Contemporary analytic philosophers have always been among the most enthusiastic audiences for the volumes in the Cambridge Companion series. And of all the great philosophers of the Middle Ages, perhaps none has appealed more to their sen…Read more
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1013Aquinas on Mental Representation: Concepts and IntentionalityPhilosophical Review 117 (2): 193-243. 2008.This essay explores some of the central aspects of Aquinas's account of mental representation, focusing in particular on his views about the intentionality of concepts (or intelligible species). It begins by demonstrating the need for a new interpretation of his account, showing in particular that the standard interpretations all face insurmountable textual difficulties. It then develops the needed alternative and explains how it avoids the sorts of problems plaguing the standard interpretations…Read more
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661Aquinas’s Metaphysics of Modality: A Reply to LeftowModern Schoolman 83 (3): 201-212. 2005.Brian Leftow sets out to provide us with an account of Aquinas’s metaphysics of modality. Drawing on some important recent work, which is surely close to the spirit (if not quite the letter) of Aquinas’s thought, he frames his discussion in terms of “truthmakers”: what is it that makes true claims about possibility and necessity—that is to say, what serves as their ontological ground or ultimate metaphysical explanation? Leftow’s main thesis is that, for Aquinas, all true modal claims are made t…Read more
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1113The Cambridge Companion to Abelard (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2004.Peter Abelard is one of the greatest philosophers of the medieval period. Although best known for his views about universals and his dramatic love affair with Heloise, he made a number of important contributions in metaphysics, logic, philosophy of language, mind and cognition, philosophical theology, ethics, and literature. The essays in this volume survey the entire range of Abelard's thought, and examine his overall achievement in its intellectual and historical context. They also trace Abela…Read more
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2315Matter, form, and individuationIn Brian Davies & Eleonore Stump (eds.), The Oxford handbook of Aquinas, Oxford University Press. pp. 85-103. 2011.Few notions are more central to Aquinas’s thought than those of matter and form. Although he invokes these notions in a number of different contexts, and puts them to a number of different uses, he always assumes that in their primary or basic sense they are correlative both with each other and with the notion of a “hylomorphic compound”—that is, a compound of matter (hyle) and form (morphe). Thus, matter is an entity that can have form, form is an entity that can be had by matter, and a hylomor…Read more
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3128Simplicity and aseityIn Thomas P. Flint & Michael Rea (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophical theology, Oxford University Press. pp. 105-28. 2008.There is a traditional theistic doctrine, known as the doctrine of divine simplicity, according to which God is an absolutely simple being, completely devoid of any metaphysical complexity. On the standard understanding of this doctrine—as epitomized in the work of philosophers such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas—there are no distinctions to be drawn between God and his nature, goodness, power, or wisdom. On the contrary, God is identical with each of these things, along with anything else th…Read more
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751Abelard's Theory of Relations: Reductionism and the Aristotelian TraditionReview of Metaphysics 51 (3): 605-631. 1998.
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198Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World: Change, Hylomorphism, and Material ObjectsOxford University Press. 2014.Jeffrey E. Brower presents and explains the hylomorphic conception of the material world developed by Thomas Aquinas, according to which material objects are composed of both matter and form. In addition to presenting and explaining Aquinas's views, Brower seeks wherever possible to bring them into dialogue with the best recent literature on related topics. Along the way, he highlights the contribution that Aquinas's views make to a host of contemporary metaphysical debates, including the natur…Read more
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439Anselm on EthicsIn Brian Davies & Brian Leftow (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, Cambridge University Press. pp. 222-56. 2004.There is a real question about whether Anselm developed anything like a systematic ethical theory.1 Indeed, scholars have sometimes suggested that his treatment of ethical matters consists in little more than recapitulation of ethical principles implicit in Scripture or transmitted to him by Christian thinkers such as Augustine and Boethius.2 The truth of the matter, however, is quite the opposite. Although it is easy to overlook the systematic nature of Anselm’s ethical theorizing, as well as i…Read more
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524The Problem with Social Trinitarianism: A Reply to WierengaFaith and Philosophy 21 (3): 295-303. 2004.In a recent article, Edward Wierenga defends a version of Social Trinitarianism according to which the Persons of the Trinity form a unique society of really distinct divine beings, each of whom has its own exemplification of divinity. In this paper, I call attention to several philosophical and theological difficulties with Wierenga’s account, as well as to a problem that such difficulties pose for Social Trinitarianism generally. I then briefly suggest what I take to be a more promising approa…Read more
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1938Making Sense of Divine SimplicityFaith and Philosophy 25 (1): 3-30. 2008.According to the doctrine of divine simplicity, God is an absolutely simple being lacking any distinct metaphysical parts, properties, or constituents. Although this doctrine was once an essential part of traditional philosophical theology, it is now widely rejected as incoherent. In this paper, I develop an interpretation of the doctrine designed to resolve contemporary concerns about its coherence, as well as to show precisely what is required to make sense of divine simplicity.
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46John Haldane (ed.), Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in the Thomistic and Analytical Traditions (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003 (3). 2003.
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Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
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Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |