Lindsay Cleveland

Jeffrey Brower argues that Aquinas’s hylomorphic account of change entails a distinction between “property” possession and “property” characterization. Given that and Brower’s assumption that Aquinas’s fundamental hylomorphic compounds are material substances and accidental unities, it follows that material substances are not characterized by the accidents they possess. In order to avoid that counterintuitive consequence, Brower stipulates a form of derivative property characterization and a numerical sameness without identity relation, which together enable him to affirm that material substances are derivatively characterized by the accidents they possess. I argue that, by affirming a plausible alternative to Brower’s account of Aquinas’s fundamental hylomorphic compounds, we can maintain that accidents characterize material substances in the primary sense without having to affirm the real existence of accidental unities or Brower’s objectionable numerical sameness without identity relation.

I defend a broadly Aristotelian account of the virtue of magnanimity against the objection that Aristotelian magnanimity is an expression of the vice of pride and so cannot be a virtue. I identify the essential features of magnanimity on Aristotle’s account and argue that Aquinas preserves these essential features while identifying additional necessary conditions of the virtue of magnanimity that illuminate the virtue and show it to be incompatible with pride. I also show where two other attempts to defend Aquinas’s development of Aristotelian magnanimity against the pride objection fail.

Jeffrey Brower argues that Aquinas’s hylomorphic account of change entails a distinction between “property” possession and “property” characterization. Given that and Brower’s assumption that Aquinas’s fundamental hylomorphic compounds are material substances and accidental unities, it follows that material substances are not characterized by the accidents they possess. In order to avoid that counterintuitive consequence, Brower stipulates a form of derivative property characterization and a numerical sameness without identity relation, which together enable him to affirm that material substances are derivatively characterized by the accidents they possess. I argue that, by affirming a plausible alternative to Brower’s account of Aquinas’s fundamental hylomorphic compounds, we can maintain that accidents characterize material substances in the primary sense without having to affirm the real existence of accidental unities or Brower’s objectionable numerical sameness without identity relation.

Chapter one serves as an introduction to the whole dissertation. In it I explain why I think philosophers should pursue a systematic, pluralist account of contemporary property roles and consider Thomistic explanations of such roles. I also summarize in more detail the chapters that make up this dissertation. In chapter two I explain the metaphysical and semantic roles that properties are thought to play and briefly introduce the main contemporary accounts of properties in terms of which property roles they address and which they have trouble explaining. In chapter three I consider one contemporary view of properties, namely robust Platonism regarding properties, which is explanatorily powerful but which has some objectionable features. I address one such feature that is of interest to theists. I show the failure of a recent attempt to reconcile robust Platonism regarding God’s attributes with the classical theist views that God is ultimate in the explanation of all reality and that God does not depend on anything distinct from Himself for His existing or His intrinsic attributes. I argue further that there seems to be no other possible way to reconcile them. In chapter four, which is a brief interlude, I clarify some important differences between the account of the divine ideas on one type of theistic Platonism that I critique in chapter three and the accounts given by Augustine and by Aquinas. In chapter five I disambiguate some of the various uses of property terms in contemporary Aquinas scholarship and resolve one substantive disagreement regarding what for Aquinas should be regarded as ‘properties’. Then I critique and modify some features of Jeffrey Brower’s reconstruction of Aquinas’s account of the same-species relation and use the modifications in my own account, which yields a distinctive explanation of the metaphysical property role of accounting for the substantive similarities between things. In chapter six I lay some groundwork for a Thomistic account of the metaphysical property roles of accounting for the characteristics and metaphysical constitution of individual things. I do so by critiquing and modifying Brower’s account of Aquinas’s hylomorphism as a unique type of substratum theory.

Eleonore Stump insightfully develops Aquinas’s theodicy to account for a significant source of human suffering, namely the undermining of desires of the heart. Stump argues that what justifies God in allowing such suffering are benefits made available to the sufferer through her suffering that can defeat the suffering by contributing to the fulfillment of her heart’s desires. We summarize Stump’s arguments for why such suffering requires defeat and how it is defeated. We identify three problems with Stump’s account of how such suffering is defeated and offer solutions to each. We defend and strengthen Stump’s response to the hardest cases for her view, and explain what her view demands of God.