•  1130
    Estudios metafísicos: Selección de ensayos sobre Tomás de Aquino
    with David Torrijos-Castrillejo and Liliana B. Irizar
    Universidad Sergio Arboleda. 2017.
    Here you can download Torrijos' contribution to this book: the general Presentation and the Introduction to the second part.
  •  1027
    The "ratio omnipotentiae" in Aquinas
    Acta Philosophica 2 (1): 17-42. 1993.
    Aquinas says that omnipotence means power for everything possible, which is everything not self-contradictory. This view faces various objections; to many of them, it seems that one could respond more easily by saying that omnipotence is God's power for everything that is not self-contradictory for Him to do. But this is a weak answer, and Thomas's support for it is only apparent. A more satisfactory solution is found in a fundamental restriction on the term "power" that Thomas thinks necessar…Read more
  •  241
    Since Hume, there has been broad consensus that if the notion of the good has any intelligible foundation, it is not “ontological”, in the natures of things. Today however this view is being challenged. After a sketch of the positions of Kant and Hume, and a glance at some of the recent challenges, the paper examines a key element in Thomas Aquinas’s ontol- ogy of the good: the notion of nal causality. For Thomas nal causality presupposes formal and e cient causality. Hume’s denial of the inte…Read more
  •  124
    Size is not always a gauge of significance. The issue that I propose to address here centers on a single clause from the Summa theologiae. But it goes nearly to the heart of St Thomas's teaching on natural law. It concerns the way in which Thomas thinks the human mind comes to understand good and evil. The specific question raised by the clause is the role played in this process by what Thomas calls "natural inclination." This question leads to an even more basic one: what it is, for Thomas, tha…Read more
  •  116
    The general aim of this paper is simply to draw attention to a certain theme in St Thomas' psychology of human action, one not often treated at much length in discussions of Aquinas on action. This theme is his notion of usus , "use", as a stage or component in the accomplishment of a complete human act. I shall begin by indicating some possible reasons for the general disregard of the theme, and shall then briefly note some rather striking affirmations by Aquinas concerning use, affirmations wh…Read more
  •  109
    Can Atheism be Rational? A Reading of Thomas Aquinas
    Acta Philosophica: Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia 11 (2): 215-238. 2002.
    Does St Thomas Aquinas have anything to teach us on the subject of atheism? We might doubt it, even if we share his basic outlook. The reason would be the very fact that in his day there were so few who did not share it. It was, as they say, an age of faith. The profession of some sort of religious belief, indeed monotheism, was virtually universal, not just in Europe but in practically all of what Europeans then knew of the world. No doubt there were individual cases of "godlessness". The learn…Read more
  •  91
    On Whether Aquinas’s Ipsum Esse Is “Platonism”
    Review of Metaphysics 60 (2): 269-303. 2006.
    Enrico Berti and others hold that Aquinas’s notion of God as ipsum esse subsistens conflicts with Aristotle’s view that positing an Idea of being treats being as a genus and nullifies all differences. The paper first shows how one of Aquinas’s ways of distinguishing esse from essence supposes an intimate tie between a thing’s esse and its differentia. Then it argues that for Aquinas the (one) divine essence differs from the (manifold) “essence of esse.” God is his very esse. This somehow “co…Read more
  •  77
    Causality and Necessity in Thomas Aquinas
    Quaestio 2 (1): 217-240. 2002.
    The formulation is persuasive. Yet clearly it does assert a necessary connection between any occurrence and its antecedents. In order for a different result to occur, there has to be a corresponding difference in the antecedents. This means that from any determinate set of antecedents, a single determinate result must follow. It is a formula for determinism. Anscombe wants to caution us not to take what it says for granted
  •  55
    Focusing mainly on two passages from the Summa theologiae, the article first argues that, on Aquinas’s view, an individual substance, which is the proper subject of being, can and normally does have a certain multiplicity of acts of being . It is only “a certain” multiplicity because the substance has only one unqualified act of being, its substantial being, which belongs to it through its substantial form. The others are qualified acts of being, added on to the substantial being through acciden…Read more
  •  48
    St Thomas and the Eucharistic Conversion
    The Thomist 65 (4): 529-565. 2001.
    Aquinas describes transubstantiation as a “conversion” of one substance into another. Yet he denies any common substrate underlying the succession of substances. Germain Grisez finds this unintelligible. The article's thesis is that Aquinas saw and resolved the basic issue contained in Grisez's objection. The key text stresses a “nature of being” common to the two substances. This nature, it is argued, is univocal. As such it constitutes a continuous object of signification that is both ne…Read more
  •  46
    Practical Truth and Its First Principles in the Theory of Grisez, Boyle, and Finnis
    The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 15 (2): 303-329. 2015.
    This article offers an exposition and critical discussion of the account of the truth of practical reason in the natural-law theory of Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, and John Finnis. The exposition rests mainly on an article published by these authors in 1987. There they argue that “true” is said of theoretical and practical knowledge in radically diverse senses. They also distinguish, within practical knowledge, between two kinds of truth, practical and moral. This distinction is tied to their u…Read more
  •  19
    Five Proofs of the Existence of God (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 72 (2). 2018.
  •  16
    "Both Thomistic scholars and analytic philosophers interested in theories of human action and accountability will find this book a welcome addition to their libraries. Truly a substantive addition to both Thomistic scholarship and the ongoing analytic investigation into human action and responsible agency."—American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly "A first-rate book...Brock's lucid and illuminating analysis offers much of value to both intellectual historians and theologians, as well as philoso…Read more
  •  7
    Five Proofs of the Existence of God by Edward Feser
    Review of Metaphysics 72 (2): 380-382. 2018.
  •  4
    If there is any one author in the history of moral thought who has come to be associated with the idea of natural law, it is Saint Thomas Aquinas. Many things have been written about Aquinas's natural law teaching, and from many different perspectives. The aim of this book is to help see it from his own perspective. That is why the focus is metaphysical. Aquinas's whole moral doctrine is laden with metaphysics, and his natural law teaching especially so, because it is all about first principles.…Read more
  •  4
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Causality of Prayer and the Execution of Predestination in Thomas AquinasStephen L. BrockIntroduction: The Question of the Reasonableness of Petitionary PrayerIn a lucid and witty essay published in 1945, C. S. Lewis addressed a common objection to the practice of petitionary prayer.1 This practice is not confined to Christianity, of course, but at least in relation to the Christian conception of the deity, it can seem to make li…Read more
  •  2
    If Saint Thomas Aquinas was a great theologian, it is in no small part because he was a great philosopher. And he was a great philosopher because he was a great metaphysician. In the twentieth century, metaphysics was not much in vogue, among either theologians or even philosophers; but now it is making a comeback, and once the contours of Thomas's metaphysical vision are glimpsed, it looks like anything but a museum piece. It only needs some dusting off. Many are studying Thomas now for the ans…Read more
  • Moral and Politics in the Middle Ages (review)
    Acta Philosophica 2 (1). 1993.
  • A. Kenny, Aquinas on Mind (review)
    Acta Philosophica 4 (1). 1995.
  • Review (review)
    The Thomist 66 311-315. 2002.
  • R. McInerny, Aquinas and Analogy (review)
    Acta Philosophica 7 (1). 1998.