•  21
    Synthesizing Aquinas and Newman on religion
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 86 (3): 173-198. 2019.
    In this paper I carry out a philosophical inquiry that yields an account of religion as a personal disposition. This exercise is also expository, since I take my bearings from two thinkers, Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman. Regarding Aquinas, this means delineating his treatment of the virtue of ‘religio’ in the ‘Summa theologiae’; regarding Newman, it means attending to his description of the experience of being religious in ‘Grammar of Assent’. The resulting account captures both the “obje…Read more
  •  227
    Truth: Studies of a Robust Presence by Kurt Pritzl, O.P (review)
    Quaestiones Disputatae 2 (1-2): 288-301. 2011.
  •  318
    In this article, I first show in what way Augustine's 'De doctrina Christiana' actually concerns liberal education, or at least includes it within its scope. Second, I articulate the new 'modus' of education, its new “mode” or “measure,” presented in 'De doctrina'. Third, I exemplify the modification of education by briefly considering Augustine’s treatment of rhetoric in Book IV of 'De doctrina'. Fourth and finally, I conclude with general remarks that attempt to situate the sort of education o…Read more
  •  42
    Synthesizing Aquinas and Newman on Religion
    International Journal of the Philosophy of Religion 1-26. 2019.
    In this paper I carry out a philosophical inquiry that yields an account of religion as a personal disposition. This exercise is expository, since I take my bearings from two thinkers, Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman. Regarding Aquinas, this means delineating his treatment of the virtue of 'religio' in the 'Summa theologiae'; regarding Newman, it means attending to his description of the experience of being religious in 'Grammar of Assent'. The resulting account captures both the “objective…Read more
  •  364
    Boethius and Stoicism
    In John Sellars (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition, . pp. 70-84. 2016.
    In this chapter from a collection on the Stoici tradition, I explore Boethius’s works chronologically in order to elucidate his overall evaluation of Stoicism as a philosophy. It turns out that Boethius offers a "mixed review"' of Stoicism. Beginning with references to the Stoics in his logical works and then turning to the 'Consolation', I delineate the intelligible contours of Stoicism as Boethius sees it, including the positive impetus Stoicism provides toward a philosophical apprehension of …Read more
  •  332
    An Erotic Pattern of Thinking in Anselm’s Proslogion
    Quaestiones Disputatae 2 (1-2): 126-145. 2011.
    Anselm’s 'Proslogion' is, as he says in its Preface, 'unum argumentum', a single line of reasoning, that builds toward the following: “that God is truly,” “that he is the highest good who needs no other,” and that he is the one “whom all things need so that they may be and may be well.” This paper attempts to shed light on how Anselm carries out the threefold task that he sets for himself and way in which his procedure brings unity to the work. Although I do not provide a full account of the uni…Read more
  • Thomas Aquinas on the Human Will and Freedom: Toward a Scientific Understanding
    Dissertation, The Catholic University of America. 2003.
    Thomas Aquinas's doctrine on the will manifests his profound insights into human nature. Recognizing our control over action, Aquinas grounds this phenomenon in the will, an appetitive capacity that underlies a human being's ability to act otherwise or not at all. This dissertation lays out Aquinas's teaching on the human will and freedom in a systematic way, using Aquinas's criteria for scientific understanding, outlined in his commentary on Aristotle's 'Posterior Analytics', as a framework for…Read more
  •  120
    Motivation and Agency (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 57 (4): 856-858. 2004.
    Why do we do what we do? Alfred Mele attempts to answer this question and related ones by drawing from the fields of action theory, philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, and even empirical psychology. The result is a book that is clearly written, shows a command of the contemporary literature in a number of fields, and attempts to offer rigorous solutions that nonetheless take into account commonsense opinions about these topics. Moreover, Mele organizes the book well and helps the reader to kee…Read more
  •  96
    Kreeft, Peter., Summa Philosophica (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 67 (1): 171-173. 2013.
  •  524
    In the Preface of his 'Proslogion', Anselm narrates its origin in a particular event in his life and delineates the argument of the work as a whole. In chapter 1, Anselm enacts a meditation that attempts to resolve the puzzle of his fallen-but-striving human existence. This paper argues that these opening sections of the 'Proslogion' are an indispensable preparation for understanding Anselm’s famous argument in chapters 2-4 as well as the remainder of the work, especially insofar as these sectio…Read more
  •  22
    Written for his brother Benedictine monks around 1077, Anselm's Proslogion is perhaps the best-known partially-read book of the Middle Ages. Many readers are familiar only with Anselm's well-known argument for God's existence in Chapters 2-4, which is often called the "ontological argument," a misleading appellation coined centuries later by Immanuel Kant. In this argument Anselm begins with the thought of "something than which nothing greater is able to be thought," and subsequently he leads th…Read more
  •  367
    Aristotle begins "On Interpretation" with an analysis of the existence of linguistic entities as both physical and meaningful. Two things have been lacking for a full appreciation of this analysis: a more literal translation of the passage and an ample understanding of the distinction between symbols and signs. In this article, therefore, I first offer a translation of this opening passage (16a1-9) that allows the import of Aristotle's thinking to strike the reader. Then I articulate the distinc…Read more
  •  764
    Stoicism as Anesthesia: Philosophy’s “Gentler Remedies” in Boethius’s Consolation
    International Philosophical Quarterly 51 (4): 501-519. 2011.
    Boethius first identifies Philosophy in the 'Consolation' as his 'medica', his “healer” or “physician.” Over the course of the dialogue Philosophy exercises her medical art systematically. In the second book Philosophy first gives Boethius “gentler remedies” that are preparatory for the “sharper medicines” that she administers later. This article shows that, philosophically speaking, Philosophy’s “gentler remedies” amount to persuading Boethius toward Stoicism, which functions as an anesthetic f…Read more
  •  179
    What is a power of the soul?: Aquinas' answer
    Sapientia 60 (218): 319-348. 2005.
    Does the soul have powers? If so, what general account can philosophy give of powers of the soul? One can broach some of Thomas Aquinas’s more obscure teachings concerning the soul and its powers, such as that the soul alone is the subject of some powers and that powers flow from the soul, by asking these broad questions. Many commentators have preferred, however, to focus on specific powers of the soul, which has resulted in detailed studies of, for example, the intellect and the will. Here…Read more
  •  124
    Anselm (review)
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84 (4): 835-839. 2010.
  •  473
    In this paper, the author spells out St. Bonaventure's magisterial teaching on the possibility of an eternal world, found in his 'Commentaria in II Sententiarum', d. 1, p. 1, a. 1, q. 2. The entirety of this 'quaestio' is treated at length in order to delineate its structure and indicate its reliance on both theological and philosophical premises. Hence, the twofold dependency of St. Bonaventure's position on Scripture and on arguments against an actual infinity is made clear. The author conc…Read more