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articles
1. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
Edward M. Engelmann Expressive Causality and the Ontological Integrity of Nature
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This essay seeks to ground the ontological integrity of natural things by examining the dialectic between substantial form, which is the “being-in-itself ”of substances, and second acts, the “being-toward-others” of substances. It is found that a new category of causality needs to be established, that of “expressivecausality.” The effects of expressive causality—second acts—are expressions of their substantial form, their cause. It is determined that second acts are sufficientconditions for substantial form, while substantial form itself is a necessary condition for its second acts. This implies that substantial form is ontologically priorto its second acts, which are proper attributes. These proper attributes are distinct from yet essentially connected with substantial form, and can never exhaust thecontent of the form.
2. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
David Scott Resemblance as a Principle of Representation in Descartes’ Philosophy
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I argue that Descartes takes true representation by means of concepts (or clear and distinct ideas) to involve resemblance between those concepts andtheir extra-mental objects. On the basis of analysis of a wide range of important Cartesian texts, I contend we must attribute to Descartes a doctrine of conceptualor intellectual resemblance, according to which ideas or concepts represent objects by resembling them. This doctrine of resemblance entails a further doctrine of property-sharing which, though inherently problematic for Cartesian ontology generally, is nonetheless supported by Descartes’ use of the scholastic distinctionbetween formal and objective reality.
3. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
Virgil Martin Nemoianu The Insufficiency of the Many Gods Objection to Pascal’s Wager
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Perhaps the best known criticism of Pascal’s wager is the many Gods objection. As so often with anglophone criticisms of Pascal, the many Gods objectiontypically treats the wager in isolation from the rest of Pascal’s thought. In this case, the truncated reading has issued in the view that Pascal was indifferent toor ignorant of the possibility that Gods other than the one described by Catholic theology might exist. This view is false. Even a cursory glance beyond the wagerfragment reveals that Pascal considers a number of religious and philosophical positions and argues that, given the nature and needs of the human being, onlya God of a specific description could count as God for the human being and, so, be the object of the wager. This essay sketches Pascal’s view to show that the many Gods objection is not sufficient to address his argument meaningfully.
4. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
Lloyd Strickland Leibniz’s Philosophy of Purgatory
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As a lifelong Lutheran who resisted numerous attempts by Catholic acquaintances to convert him, one might reasonably expect Leibniz to have followedthe orthodox Lutheran line on disputed doctrinal issues, and thus held amongst other things that the doctrine of purgatory was false. Yet there is strong evidencethat Leibniz personally accepted the doctrine of purgatory. After examining this evidence, I determine how Leibniz sought to justify his endorsement of purgatoryand explain how his endorsement sits alongside his frequent rehearsal of familiar Protestant arguments against the doctrine. I then examine some of Leibniz’s other theological and philosophical commitments, including those on the afterlife, in order to tentatively tease out further details of the form of purgatory that wonhis approval. In considering these issues, I aim to make clear the extent to which Leibniz’s philosophical thinking underpins and shapes his theological beliefs.
5. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
Thomas L. Gwozdz Young and Restless: Jacques Maritain and Henri Bergson
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This article argues that Maritain’s philosophy of human intellection was more indebted to Bergson’s views on the centrality of intuition, metaphysics, andthe instrumental character of scientific reason, than some of Maritain’s published criticisms of Bergson might lead one to believe. Toward the end of his life Maritain spoke of twentieth-century Thomism’s debt to Bergson.
6. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
Marie Cabaud Meaney Simone Weil and René Girard: Violence and the Sacred
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Religion in the perverted form of idolatry/ideology is at the root of violence for Simone Weil and René Girard. For Girard, “mimetic desire” expresses the idolization of another and ultimately of the self: when the individual’s expectations of achieving autonomy through another remain unfulfilled, he seeksa scapegoat. For Weil, everyone is subject to “force” as recipient or perpetrator of violence which is catalyzed by ideology, a form of idolatry. While Weil focuseson the idolatry of ideas, both writers agree that the subject’s desire for absolute autonomy is the source of idolatry and violence. Furthermore, both presupposesuffering as the individual’s driving force, seeking relief in idols or scapegoats; accepting this suffering by imitating Christ is the solution, freeing one from selfish,idolatrous desires.
7. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
Neil Delaney What Romance Could Not Be
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This essay makes a number of distinctions between the motives of love and of duty, and argues that ideally they act in concert so as to generate constancy in loving relations. The essay revolves around a case in which a husband or wife is tempted to infidelity. It is argued that resistance to the temptation is optimally grounded in love for the spouse rather than simply in a duty to resist initiated perhaps through promise or vow. This is not, however, to undermine altogether the significance of promises of this sort; it is rather to put a proper emphasis on the sentiment of love as an effective spring to action and to suggest that the sentiment itself ideally brings a past promise or vow of fidelity into present relief in a choice situation.
8. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
Angela McKay Knobel Two Theories of Christian Virtue
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In this paper, I examine two different ways of understanding Aquinas’s account of the infused and acquired virtues. I argue that one of these ways, at least asit is commonly described, is unable to accommodate one of Aquinas’s most central claims about the difference between the infused and acquired virtues.
discussion
9. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
John Zeis Response to Anderson
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In a recent article in this journal, Robert Anderson criticizes my position in the Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 2004, whereinI argued for the justification of certain kinds of actions even though they involve the killing of innocents. He does not adequately assess the salient features of thekinds of cases I was defending, and he ignores my use of Philippa Foot’s distinction between the demands of justice and charity in characterizing the morally relevant principles involved in such cases. I argued that the actions involving the killing of the innocent as a side effect in such cases is not the kind of killing which justice prohibits because in such cases there is both no one who is killed unjustly and yet there are lives which charity clearly demands that we save. In this paper, I respond to Anderson’s criticism of my 2004 paper.
book reviews
10. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
Edward M. Engelmann Parmenides and the History of Dialectic: Three Essays
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11. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
John F. X. Knasas The Philosophical Approach to God: A New Thomistic Approach
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12. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
Sonja Zuba Is There a Sabbath for Thought?: Between Religion and Philosophy
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13. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
Roderick M. Stewart Social Ontology: Recasting Political Philosophy through a Phenomenology of Whoness
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14. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
Mathew Lu God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition
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15. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
John Tutuska Aquinas: A New Introduction
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16. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
Bernie J. Canteñs Knowledge of God
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17. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 84 > Issue: 3
Books Received
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