Michael Gorman

The dissertation is a critical study of Thomas Aquinas's views on the hypostatic union. It examines the Latin texts of all of Thomas's major discussions of this topic. In the first chapter, the concepts of nature and person are discussed, and it is argued that these concepts, as Thomas understood them, led to a very problematic position in an early quodlibetal disputation. In the second chapter, the concepts of union-in-person and union-in-nature are discussed, and this permits a better understanding of how the concepts of person and nature are meant to be used than was available in the first chapter. The third chapter deepens the reflection on the hypostatic union by contrasting this relation with other kinds of relations and especially by explaining what Thomas means by denying that the hypostatic union is accidental. The fourth chapter returns to the difficulty brought out in chapter one and locates it in a tension between traditional modes of speech and the technical Thomistic use of the word natura. The fifth chapter discusses the controverted issues surrounding Thomas's understanding of Christ's metaphysical unity. Throughout the dissertation, secondary literature is discussed as appropriate

Aquinas accepts the harmony of faith and reason, but he does not think that such harmony is always easily arrived at. After making some background points about his views on faith, reason, philosophy, and theology, I explore two cases drawn from his Christology. In the first, philosophical thinking influences how we understand revelation; in the second, theological thinking influences how we understand a topic normally thought of as part of philosophy. In both cases, harmony is not pre-given but instead arrived at only through a process of adjustment.

Tim Crane has recently defended the view that all intentional states have objects, even when these objects do not exist. In this note I first set forth some crucial elements of Crane’s view: his reasons for accepting intentional objects, his rejection of certain ways of thinking about them, and his distinction between the ‘substantial’ and the ‘schematic’ notion of an object. I then argue that while Crane’s account successfully explains what intentional objects are not, it leaves unexplained how it could make sense to say that intentional objects need not exist. Finally I propose that we can do justice to Crane’s reasons for talking about intentional objects by re‐interpreting talk about intentional objects as talk about the truth‐ or satisfaction‐conditions of intentional states.

Anyone who tries to understand categories soon runs into the problem of giving an account of the unity of a category. Call this the “unity problem.” In this essay, I describe a distinctive and under-studied version of the unity problem and discuss how it might be solved. First, I describe various versions of the unity problem. Second, I focus on one version and argue that it is best dealt with by thinking of at least some categories as “norm-constituted,” in a sense that I try to make clear. Third, I discuss some objections to my proposal. Fourth, I compare norm -constituted categories to categories that are normative in a different sense. Fifth, I briefly discuss the possibility of grounding the normativity of norm-constituted categories. Finally, I raise a few questions for further research.

A modified version of Michael Gorman's comments on Peter King’s paper at the 2004 Henle Conference.  Above all, an account of Augustine’s purposes in discussing Neoplatonism in Confessions VII, showing why Augustine does not tell us certain things we wish he would. In my commentary I will address the following topics: (i) what it means to speak of the philosophically interesting points in Augustine; (ii) whether Confessions VII is really about the Trinity; (iii) Augustine‘s intentions in Confessions VII; (iv) King‘s hypostatic interpretation‖;(v) Christology.

The paper takes up a traditional view that has also been a part of some recent analytic metaphysics, namely, the view that substance is to be understood in terms of independence. Taking as my point of departure some recent remarks by Kit Fine, I propose reviving the Aristotelian-scholastic idea that the sense in which substances are independent is that they are non-inherent, and I do so by developing a broad notion of inherence that is more usable in the context of contemporary analytic metaphysics than the traditional notion is. I end by showing how non-inherence, while necessary for being a substance, cannot be taken as sufficient without some qualifying remarks

According to authoritative Christian teaching, Jesus Christ is a single person existing in two natures, divinity and humanity. In attempting to understand this claim, the high-scholastic theologians often asked whether there was more than one existence in Christ. John Duns Scotus answers the question with a clear and strongly-formulated yes, and Thomists have sometimes suspected that his answer leads in a heretical direction. But before we can ask whether Scotus‘s answer is acceptable or not, we have to come to a clear understanding of what his answer is. And before we can ask what his answer is, we have to come to a clear understanding of what question or questions he is trying to answer. In this paper I begin by explaining that the question about Christ‘s existence is ambiguous, i.e., that there are actually two questions hidden behind one formulation. Next I look at Scotus‘s writings on the topic in order to determine which question he is really trying to answer, and I argue that he is trying to answer both of them, even though he does not make this clear. Third, I provide an initial look at the answers that he gives. Fourth, I explain why these answers might seem problematic, especially from a Thomistic perspective. Fifth, I explain Scotus‘s answers in more detail and show that they are not problematic in the way that some Thomists have held. Indeed, at least some of Scotus‘s ideas are the very same ideas that Thomas spells out in one of his works.

Metaphysicians have not always been sufficiently attentive to the problem of dependence. Those who have paid attention to it have disagreed over what depends on what: do minds depend on brains, or vice versa? accidents on substances? creatures on God? Even less attention, however, has been paid to the question of what dependence actually is; usually, some answer to this question is taken for granted, and consideration is given only to the subsequent questions of which things depend on which. The present paper discusses what dependence is, not for its own sake, but, rather, as a case study concerning the question of form in metaphysical inquiry. Distinguishing logical from metaphysical form, one can say that certain difficulties in twentieth-century theories of dependence can be traced to the error of trying to answer a metaphysical question by making use of logical form instead of metaphysical form. The paper will proceed in three steps. First, it will discuss the leading twentieth-century theory of dependence, point out the difficulties with that theory, and make explicit the presuppositions about form that give rise to those difficulties. Second, the paper will show how those difficulties can be avoided by using a properly metaphysical form to understand dependence. Finally, the paper will reflect on the implications for metaphysical inquiry that can be drawn from the difference between the two approaches.

According to the orthodox Christian belief expressed most famously at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Jesus Christ is one person who is both divine and human. Not surprisingly, many have wondered at this, for it seems impossible for one person to have both divine and human characteristics. There are different versions of this difficulty, which correspond to different human and divine characteristics. In this article, I will defend traditional Christology against an argument that bases itself on one particular difficulty. The argument contends that Christ's omniscience and non-omniscience mean that he cannot be one person; it contends, in short, that Chalcedon is self-undermining. I will begin by making some preliminary remarks. In the second section of the paper, I will show that the anti-Chalcedonian argument cannot simply be avoided or ignored. In the third section, I will examine the argument itself.

The lives of persons are valuable, but are all humans persons? Some humans—the immature, the damaged, and the defective—are not capable, here and now, of engaging in the rational activities characteristic of persons, and for this reason, one might call their personhood into question. A standard way of defendingit is by appeal to potentiality: we know they are persons because we know they have the potentiality to engage in rational activities. In this paper I develop acomplementary strategy based on normativity. We know that the humans in question are persons because we know that lacking the here-and-now ability to engage in rational activities is—for them, unlike for tulips or kittens—a falling-short of some norm. Their personhood, in other words, is established on the basis of their being subject to the norm of having those here-and-now capacities.

Thomas Aquinas considers the distinction between nature and person indispensable for Christology. Failure to appreciate this distinction is, he thinks, the root of Christological heresy. Surprisingly, however, Thomas gives us little help in understanding how the distinction is to be used. Nor have his commentators discussed the matter adequately. As I shall try to show, Thomas has a variety of uses for this distinction, some more helpful than others. I will first explain the person-nature distinction as Thomas conceives it, and then I will discuss three ways in which he uses it.