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9Hegel's theology or revelation thematisedCambridge Scholars Press. 2018.This book highlights Hegel's application of Absolute Idealism's logical truth, the basis of all mystical insight, to Christian orthodox confession. The systematic interpretation thus yielded illuminates the profound spirituality of this unitary sophia as (the) idea. The truth represented by spontaneous pictorial presentation, in Biblical or other proclamations at other times, is thereby further unveiled, understanding spiritual things spiritually. The book traces philosophy and theology through …Read more
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10Thomas Aquinas on virtue and human flourishingCambridge Scholars Press. 2018.Thomas Aquinas offers teleological systematisation of the habits needed for human flourishing. His metaphysical jurisprudence remodels ethics upon this, rather than on a moral precept. 'Eternal law' governing the world determines 'natural law', reflected in human legislation (a variety of the 'anthropic principle'). Finally, law, unwritten, is infused spirit as self-consciousness, 'universal of universals'. Acquired virtues elicit this, become effusion, represented in religion as gifts or graces…Read more
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5Thought and incarnation in HegelCambridge Scholars Press. 2020."God became man that man might become God. This thought, expressed in terms of a sharing of natures, human and divine, is to be found in the most ancient Christian liturgies and still in use, at the Offertory typically. This book shows how Hegel fleshes this thought out, shorn though of picture-language, in conscious or less-than-conscious continuity with this Biblical belief in the power to become the sons of God. This involves some stripping away of the false fleshliness cast over Hegels philo…Read more
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8Intentionality, Immateriality and Understanding in AquinasHeythrop Journal 30 (2): 151-159. 1989.
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52Morality as Right ReasonThe Monist 66 (1): 26-38. 1983.In this paper I wish firstly to argue that moral or practical reasoning is of a different type from theoretical reasoning and not merely an application of it. Secondly I offer some considerations as to why it is nonetheless genuine reasoning which can be right or wrong in the sense of true or false. Thirdly I discuss how in that case we can justify the first principles of practical reason and of the moral systems in which it issues.
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26JusticeAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 78 (4): 559-571. 2004.It is worthwhile to study Aquinas’s now classical treatment of the virtue of justice at the point where he distinguishes legal obligation, owed directly to the other, from moral obligations to give something to the other in virtue of what is due to oneself, one’s own decency of character (honestas). To fulfill these moral obligations is itself, on his view, a “legal” obligation to God. We might say it is directly owed to a proper order of decency requiring us at least quasi-legally, at second le…Read more
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13Classificatory expressions and matters of moral substancePhilosophical Papers 13 (1): 29-42. 1984.
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54The Resistance of Thomism to Analytical and Other PatronageThe Monist 80 (4): 611-618. 1997.Western intellectual history, viewed as the way things occurred, simultaneously or in a time sequence, requires interpretation even more substantively than does history in general. This is because as being a history of specifically intellectual activity it is a history of a type of activity that necessarily includes concurrent self-interpretation, as he who understands understands that he understands. There is, though, a sense in which all human activity is intellectual, as, for Aquinas, the int…Read more
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44Happiness and Transcendent HappinessReligious Studies 21 (3). 1985.In this paper I first point out that happiness might of its nature be unamenable to the calculating ‘plan of life’ approach, and argue that the incompatible model of a personal search, by no means implying ‘ontological subjectivity’ though, fits in more smoothly with the idea. Secondly, I discuss the arguments assembled by Aquinas for a view of this type. I argue thirdly that although we can show there is some one thing in which all happiness consists, whatever it may be it must be incompatible …Read more
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Joseph Pieper, Schriften zum PhilosophiebegriffInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 7 (3): 409-415. 1999.
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5Does Realism Make a Difference to Logic?The Monist 69 (2): 281-294. 1986.The ancient theory of an identity of some sort between subject and predicate is not merely out of fashion. Rejection of it is just about the cornerstone of the Fregean analysis of propositions in terms of argument and function.
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19Reality the Measure of Logic and Not Vice VersaInternational Philosophical Quarterly 28 (2): 185-192. 1988.
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3Duty and the divineNeue Zeitschrift für Systematicsche Theologie Und Religionsphilosophie 31 (1): 308-326. 1989.
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41The Interdependence of Semantics, Logic, and Metaphysics as Exemplified in the Aristotelian TraditionInternational Philosophical Quarterly 42 (1): 63-91. 2002.A general metaphysical account of logic, meaning, and reference that developed from the Greeks through the medievals and up into modem times can be called Aristotelian. “Copernican” claims (Kant, Frege), radically to replace this paradigm as quasi-“Ptolemaic,” actually participated in the prolonged decline of scholasticism, after Aquinas in particular. We need to recognize, or to remember, thepriority of being to truth and not to conflate them. We need to explicate the origin of thinking (abstra…Read more
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29JusticeAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 78 (4): 559-571. 2004.It is worthwhile to study Aquinas’s now classical treatment of the virtue of justice at the point where he distinguishes legal obligation, owed directly to the other, from moral obligations to give something to the other in virtue of what is due to oneself, one’s own decency of character (honestas). To fulfill these moral obligations is itself, on his view, a “legal” obligation to God. We might say it is directly owed to a proper order of decency requiring us at least quasi-legally, at second le…Read more
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58Does Realism Make a Difference to Logic?The Monist 69 (2): 281-294. 1986.The ancient theory of an identity of some sort between subject and predicate is not merely out of fashion. Rejection of it is just about the cornerstone of the Fregean analysis of propositions in terms of argument and function.
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15Education and How Not to Corrupt the YoungJournal of Applied Philosophy 3 (1): 127-132. 1986.ABSTRACT The paper has three parts. The first specifies a, notion of philosophy as both a critical discipline and a process of theoria independent of utilitarian or ideological commitment. The second part shows how philosophical paradigms can be ideologically exploited, often unwittingly, by the teacher in a way that sacrifices truth and clarity to utility. Three examples are given, viz. over‐simplification in science‐teaching of the Lockean primary/secondary qualities distinction, misuse of Wit…Read more
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University of MünsterPost-doctoral fellow
Münster, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion |
Meta-Ethics |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Religion |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |