Thomas Ryan

This article joins others in assessing the role of Christ in the moral theology of Thomas Aquinas. It investigates one specific phrase in the Summa Theologiae in four stages. First, there are some foundational considerations of Aquinas's overall framework. Second, I examine the evidence supporting Aquinas's original description of Jesus as our ‘dearest friend’ and as further disclosed in the Tertia Pars, specifically in His Passion and in His role as Teacher. Third, this leads to a consideration of Jesus as ‘wisest’ as the Incarnate Word and Wisdom. Fourth, I probe this sapiential aspect further in terms of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, specifically, that of wisdom, and, in particular, as construed in recent work on the second person perspective and Joint Attention. By investigating this phrase of Aquinas, it emerges that its sapiential, soteriological and inter-personal character is illuminated further by its Christological and ecclesial dimensions.

This thesis analyses Nietzsche’s use of eros in The Gay Science through the concepts of passion and eternity. Nietzsche deploys the conceptual resources of the Hellenistic schools, particularly Stoicism and Epicureanism, to articulate an “affirmative” rival to the Platonic sublimation of eros. However, the Stoic and Epicurean therapies prove insufficient remedies for Platonism: in all three cases, Nietzsche diagnoses a pathological fear of transience. Throughout The Gay Science Nietzsche develops an anti-Platonic and, in the end, anti-Hellenistic philosophical therapy. Traditional readings of Nietzsche rightly emphasise his antagonism with Plato, but in doing so overlook the richness of his engagement with later philosophical thought of antiquity. Stoicism provides the starting point for Nietzsche’s attempt at an immanent affirmative ethics. Nietzsche comes to reject Stoic indifference as an evacuation of value from the world, but the terms of his rejection shed light on the criteria against which his develops his own ethics. Nietzsche’s appraisal of Epicureanism above Stoicism in The Gay Science shows that an intimate relationship with worldly goods is a necessary condition of joy, but the terms of this comparison also exposes the limits of both Hellenistic philosophies: neither is able to evoke and maintain an erotic attachment to life. A reading of Plato’s Symposium illuminates Nietzsche’s rejection of a metaphysical treatment of eros. The first three chapters of the thesis show the failure of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Platonism in forging a strong-enough attachment to what Nietzsche calls life. Chapter four explains Nietzsche’s revaluation of the passions by means of a conceptual history of Leidenschaft. Nietzsche’s praise of the Provençal troubadours, whose gaya scienza provides The Gay Science’s subtitle, demonstrates the possibility of a life-affirming eros. A recuperation of eros requires the renovation of the concept of eternity, which has hitherto functioned as an escape path from transience. Chapter five figures Nietzsche’s feud with the ancients in terms of this function of eternity in relation to the fear of death. Each of the three ancient conceptions arises from different refractions of a common fear of transience. The final chapter presents Nietzsche’s alternative, anti-Hellenistic ethics of eternity: a youthful and voluptuous art of living. This youthful sensibility must be specified in terms of the eternal recurrence, a conception of eternity developed by Nietzsche in a sustained dialogue with classical and Hellenistic ethical thought. I demonstrate that Nietzsche’s engagement with classical and Hellenistic thought feeds directly into the central doctrine of the eternal recurrence. By means of the attention paid to Nietzsche’s eternity, the thesis arrives at a richer understanding of Nietzsche’s middle-period ethics and of his relationship to antiquity.

Fleming, Daniel J; Ryan, Thomas Three recent phrases of Pope Francis warrant attention and guide this article. First, there is his call for 'witnesses of God's love' in his tribute to modern martyrs. The second is 'the pedagogy of grace' and the work of the Spirit explained in 'Amoris Laetitia'. Third, from the same document, we find his discussion of accompaniment in the process of moral discernment within the church. With these as guideposts and drawing on recent studies in moral philosophy and psychology, this article unfolds in five steps: setting the scene; witness in relation to moral understanding and intersubjectivity; intersubjectivity and conscience; a pedagogy of grace: Holy Spirit and nonbelievers; and a pedagogy of grace in relation to moral development.

European Vision and the South Pacific, first published in 1960, is the most acclaimed of all Bernard Smith’s many texts on art history and cultural theory. In conjunction with its 1992 companion-piece, Imagining the Pacific, and supported by collations of art and cartography from Cook’s and other voyages, this work also established his reputation as a major presence in Pacific-centred research. Likewise, the ongoing influence of European Vision and the South Pacific has seen Smith claimed as a foundational figure in post-colonial scholarship, as one who ‘anticipated’ aspects of Edward Said’s late-1970s analysis of orientalism. But while there are important parallels and overlaps in the thinking of this pair, their differences and divergences are at least as significant. Above all, Smith’s Pacific-centred writings need to be understood as the unique intellectual achievements they undeniably are

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist and Catholic Monks Talk about CelibacyThomas Ryan, CSPThe electronic sign at the Minneapolis–St. Paul airport was flashing "Orange Alert" as a dozen Buddhist monks arrived in their burnt orange robes from around the country for three days of dialogue on celibacy with a similar number of Catholic monastics come together from various monasteries at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. As he opened the October 26–29, 2006, meeting, Rev. William Skudlarek, executive director of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (MID), said, "You (Buddhists) have been at this for some five-to-seven hundred years longer than we have. We have something to learn."This was the second Monks in the West interreligious dialogue. The first took place in 2004 at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in northern California. On the Catholic side, the participants came from the Benedictine, Cistercian, and Camaldolese monasteries. On the Buddhist side, they came from the Theravada, Mahayana, and Tibetan traditions. Through the event, participants began the day with an hour of quiet sitting in meditation and joined the monastic community at St. John's for their rhythm of daily prayer.The first session dealt with theory, the "why" of celibacy. Buddhist participants explained that their teachings focus on seeing how suffering is created and cured. Attachments give rise to suffering, so advancement in the spiritual life requires letting go of one's attachments. Attachment to desires, among which are sexual desires, is a hindrance to spiritual progress. "Raging desire takes away choice, freedom," said Rev. Kusala Bhikshu, a Buddhist chaplain at UCLA, in his opening presentation. "The senses must be controlled in order to be free."Brother Gregory Perron from St. Procopius monastery in Indiana spoke of how monastic life demands a profound understanding and acceptance of solitude. "Celibacy is a tool," offered Perron, "a skillful means like intentional simplicity of life, by which our heart is burrowed out and the core of our being laid bare. By embracing it, the monk accepts the aloneness that characterizes every human being."In response to Buddhist reflections on the illusory nature of the body, Catholic participants pointed out Christianity's remarkably positive evaluation of the [End Page 143] body in the doctrines of the Incarnation, the bodily Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Both sides acknowledged balancing points of reference as well, such as, in Christianity, Paul's "Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (Rom 7:24). Though humankind ranks eighth from the bottom in Buddhism's thirty-two-realm cosmology, that level is the only one where spiritual growth can happen. Thus human form is in the end praised by the Buddha.In the second session, the participants moved from theory to practice. Rev. Jisho Perry from the Shasta Buddhist Abbey in California said that "the whole thrust of training is not to give in to desire that arises." He described the Buddhist method of accepting sexual feelings without either acting on them or repressing them, but just letting them pass through. "The right use of will is willingness, not willpower—the willingness to sit there and let that feeling pass through," he said.Fr. Skudlarek expressed appreciation for this Buddhist approach to transforming the sexual energy. "I never got a sense in our training of accepting the feeling with awareness and letting it pass without acting on it. You had to fight it! And the more you resisted, the stronger it got!"Rev. Heng Sure, who teaches at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, presented celibacy as the first step in a three-step process that goes from celibacy to stillness to insight. "It should not be seen just as a difficult adjunct to the spiritual path, but as essential to it," he said. The practice of meditation represents daily periods when the senses are stilled and not allowed to pursue sense objects. "Something happens to the energy in the stillness; the pressure goes away." In married life, he explained, spiritual practice is "partial and piecemeal," making celibacy a more effective means to move toward insight and the peace and happiness that flow from it. In the discussion, Benedictine Fr. Mark...