• Aquinas on emotion's participation in reason
    Catholic University of America Press. 2019.
    The soul as a potential whole -- Fragmentation of the soul into parts -- The unification of the soul's parts -- Disorder in the potential whole -- Order in the potential whole -- Participating in reason -- Participation -- Powers and passions in Aquinas's sentences commentary -- Participation and virtue in Aquinas's sentences commentary -- Participation in reason in the De veritate -- Participating parts in late texts -- Participation and virtue in late texts -- Conclusion of part 2 -- The plaus…Read more
  •  1203
    Aquinas and Aristotelians on Whether the Soul is a Group of Powers
    History of Philosophy Quarterly 34 (2): 115-32. 2017.
    In the Aristotelian tradition, there are two broad answers to the basic question "What is soul?" On the one hand, the soul can be described by what it does. From this perspective, the soul seems to be composed of various different parts or powers (potentiae) that are the principles of its various actions. On the other hand, the soul seems to be something different, namely, the actual formal principle making embodied living substances to be the kinds of things that they are. Contemporary Aristote…Read more
  •  46
    Aquinas on Quality
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (1): 23-44. 2016.
    For Kant, Aristotle's categories are arbitrary but brilliant and they do not ultimately correspond to extramental reality. For Aquinas, however, they are rational divisions of extramental being. In this perennial and ongoing dispute, the various positions seem to dissolve upon delving into the particulars of any one category. If, however, the categories are divisions of extramental being, it should be possible to offer plausible accounts of particular categories. I offer Aquinas's unstudied deri…Read more
  •  583
    This paper presents a philosophical argument for divine providence by Aquinas. I suggest that upon returning to Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics to prepare his commentaries on these texts, Aquinas recognized that his stock argument from natural teleology to divine providence (the fifth way and its versions) needed to be filled out. Arguments from natural teleology can prove that God’s providence extends to what happens for the most part, but they cannot show that God’s providence also inclu…Read more
  •  22
    Ethics as a Work of Charity: Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue
    Augustinian Studies 46 (2): 261-265. 2014.