Matthew Wennemann

Aquinas sometimes references “indeterminate dimensions” in his early discussions of material substances. His discussions of these dimensions are few and brief, and the notable absence of the term from his later work has left their status in his ontology a mystery and spawned a debate about whether he changed his mind. In this paper, I offer a new understanding of indeterminate dimensions, one which is coherent with Aquinas’s own words and has the advantage of explaining several puzzling features of these dimensions; then, I argue that some version of indeterminate dimensions remains a feature of his later understanding of material substances, but with a significant difference that results from a more important change of mind about the relationship between prime matter and substantial form. I conclude with a suggestion of how understanding this development in Aquinas’s thought sheds light on his mature view on individuation.

Among historians of philosophy, a long-standing tradition holds that Augustine invented the modern concept of ‘the will’. Against this tradition, recent scholarship has tended to conclude that the Augustinian term voluntas refers not to a faculty of the soul, but only a volition. I argue that the correct understanding of Augustine’s use of voluntas is a middle ground: Augustine uses the term equivocally, sometimes referring to an individual volition, sometimes referring to something more, namely, a source of willing in the soul. Proponents of the volition-only reading make a strong case for their view by showing that texts from the Augustinian corpus only make sense when voluntas is read as a volition; however, the same method of textual analysis can be used to defend the tradition of reading voluntas as a faculty. Ultimately, Augustine’s discussion of the nature of voluntas in De trinitate, his historical context, and his theological commitments suggest that neither reading alone sufficiently captures Augustine’s use of the term. At play in Augustine’s thought is a novel sense of the term voluntas which is neither inherited from ancient philosophy nor a familiar contemporary concept, but something transitional between the two: a proto-faculty of will.

In this paper, I argue that that three of Duns Scotus’s most controversial philosophical positions, namely, his doctrine of the univocity of the concept of being, his radical voluntarism, and his formal distinction between the soul and its powers, are related in the following way: The latter two depend upon the former, sometimes in obvious ways that Duns Scotus owns, and sometimes in ways that are not licensed by the doctrine of the univocity of the concept of being as Scotus himself claims to employ it. In particular, I argue that in Scotus’s development of his theory of freedom and his understanding of the powers of the soul, he makes inferences from God to creatures that the doctrine of the univocity of the concept of being does not allow and that, coupled with inferences that are licensed by that doctrine, result in circularity.

Experience of the sublime is most often discussed as a facet of the aesthetic experience of nature. In this paper, I argue that religious liturgy can be a source of sublimity and that experiences of the liturgically sublime are analogous to aesthetic experiences of nature and natural sublimity. Experiences of the liturgically sublime are not religious experiences, since the aesthetic experience of liturgy is not dependent upon any particular belief, such as belief in a deity, does not communicate specific information, and is fundamentally physical in its experience, since it is based upon sensory experiences of the physical environment. I conclude that, as aesthetic experiences of liturgy are similar in important ways to experiences of natural sublimity and can be fully appreciated by any attendant of a liturgy, so can anyone, regardless of belief set or religious background, experience and appreciate liturgical sublimity to the fullest degree.