The following paper has two primary purposes. First it aims to articulate a theoretical proposition in general terms, namely, that every theory of doctrinal development presupposes a philosophy of history. The underlying significance of this proposition is that theories of doctrinal development are simultaneously narratives of the historical significance of the church’s pilgrimage through history, though that fact typically remains implicit in theories of doctrinal development. The second purpose is to illustrate the general proposition by analyzing a particularcase. I have therefore outlined some of the salient features of John Henry Cardinal Newman’s theory of doctrinal development and, using ideas from Eric Voegelin’s philosophy, show how it implies a philosophy of history.

Rosmini’s philosophy is a comprehensive effort toward the renovation of Christian thought in modern times. An intense discussion of the problem of knowledge led him to reformulate Augustine’s theory of illumination in terms of the ideal presence of universal being to the mind. Universal being is the lumen intellectus and our mind’s first object: it is implied in all our thoughts and makes them possible. Although devoid of reality, it shows remarkable features, such as infinity, necessity, and eternity. Without being God, it may be called “divine,” and confers a special value to intelligent creatures, whose dignity comes from their being enlightened by universal being. The “divine” is also the seal of God’s presence in nature. The present article supports the logic of this argument.

How exactly is accepting the bad side effects of good choices morally defensible? The best defense to date is by Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and Germain Grisez and relies on the claim that bad side effects are unavoidable. But are they? Three accounts of why bad side effects are unavoidable—one by John Zeis, a second by Boyle, Finnis, and Grisez jointly, and a third by Boyle independently—are examined and rejected. Next, an alternative proposal which suggests bad side effects are always avoidable is also examined and rejected. Finally, an adequate account of why bad side effects are unavoidable is presented and defended. This defense relies on certain facts about the goods which human agents ultimately find fulfilling and about human agents’ attempts to instantiate those goods through various projects.

This paper sets forth and advocates Bernard Lonergan’s understanding of Aquinas’s use of “intelligible emanations” as an analogy for processions in the Trinity. It argues that some of Lonergan’s views on consciousness, understanding, phronesis, and judgement are similar to views expressed in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method and John Henry Newman’s An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent.

Like any other product of human thought, a philosophical system is conditioned by the contingent circumstances of its origins, and especially by sense experience, the origin of all human cognition. Catholic philosophy, moreover, is conditioned by the doctrine of the Church. Because both sense experience and the Catholic faith are true to their respective objects, and because truth for one is truth for all, the conditioning of Catholic philosophy by its contingent origins does not entail a lack of universal validity. Such validity is in fact possessed by St. Thomas’s system, which is faithful both to Catholic doctrine and to the concrete facts of everyday experience.

This essay focuses on three interpretations of Aquinas influenced by Continental philosophy, those of John Caputo, Jean-Luc Marion, and John Milbank/Catherine Pickstock. The essay considers the well-worn question, whether Aquinas is an onto-theologian in Heidegger’s sense, but looks more broadly at the point of contact common to these interpretations: Aquinas’s relationship to modernity.As Continental thought has put into question the nature of philosophy through a critical look at modern philosophy—questioning its self-representation as progress and characterizing the present as post-modern—Aquinas is of interest to Continental thought in his anti-modernity. The author considers three issues: (1) What does Continental philosophy bring to the study of Aquinas missing from analytic approaches? (2) What is highlighted about Aquinas as he is seen by Caputo, Marion, and Milbank/Pickstock? (3) Can Aquinas escape both the limitations of modernism and the deconstruction of postmodernism, as some claim, and would he want to?

How should contemporary Thomistic theologians speak of providence and predestination? This essay suggests that St. Catherine of Siena’s approach to the doctrine provides a model for Thomistic theology today. After examining biblical teaching and the guidelines proposed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, I explore in some detail the positions of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Jacques Maritain, both of whom sought to overcome what they perceived to be difficulties in the Thomistic account of predestination. I conclude by proposing a retrieval of the perspective of St. Catherine of Siena.

Aquinas accepts that (i) some kinds of voluntary action are (qua voluntary) “basic,” not divisible into (non-fictional) further kinds; (ii) a concrete individual action may belong to more than one basic kind; (iii) the basic kinds to which it belongs are determined by the agent’s intentions qua performing the action; (iv) some intentions may stand to others as means to ends; (v) there can be concrete individual actions in which the agent’s intended means are disordered with respect to the ends; (vi) such actions are morally wrong; (vii) whether a given intention is disordered as means to a given end is determined solely by the natures of the agent and of the intended means or ends. Together, these propositions entail that, pace many analytic philosophers, concrete individual actions can have a moral wrongness that consists neither in expectation of disutility nor in violation of the pure logic of practical reason.

The oeuvre of Olivier-Thomas Venard, O.P. offers a sensitive delineation of the central role which Aquinas gives to language and its careful composition in pursuing his intellectual inquiry. By suggesting a way of aligning “medieval” modes of inquiry with “postmodern,” this study brings to light the inescapable role which the language of religious expression plays in Aquinas’s manner of leading us to understand recondite matters which he avows we are able at best to “imperfectly signify.” All of this contributes to the strategy of manuductio for which his work is celebrated, as well as accounting for the chiseled clarity of expression which continues to impresscommentators on his work and clearly distinguishes him from erstwhile peers. This manner of expression itself offers witness to that radical intellectual asceticism celebrated by Pierre Hadot: a benignly “postmodern” expression.

Neither Augustine nor Aquinas can accept a political order in which religious doctrine as such is barred from serving as an explicit basis of political, legal, and economic norms. Certain twentieth-century commentators indebted (wittingly or not) to Kantianism or to other Enlightenment ideologies ignored this fact, or minimized its importance. Aquinas was misread as a forerunner of modern liberal democracy; Augustine was portrayed, with equal injustice, as seeking to dissuade Christians from participation in the political arena. In reality, the political philosophy of each is consistent with a robust Christian presence in the public square, and is incompatible both with theocracy and with the modern secular state. A better understanding of the distance separating these philosopher-theologians from some of their prominent twentieth-century commentators may shed light on the history of the reception of Vatican II’s Gaudium et spes.

Aquinas’s analyses of akrasia can be divided into two: the discussions in his theological works and his Ethics commentary. The latter has sometimes been regarded as merely repetitive of Aristotle and unrepresentative of Aquinas’s own thoughts. As such, little attention has been paid to the specific, and sometimes significant, differences between the two treatments and to what those differences might mean. This paper remedies this situation by focusing on four such differences. I ultimately provide rationales for these differences, thereby arguing for the consistency of the two treatments and the importance of consulting Aquinas’s Ethics commentary to gain a full appreciation of his view of akrasia. Using this strategy, the paper concludes with a controversial suggestion regarding the structure of the weak akratic’s reasoning.

In this paper, I offer a theory of substance. There are three steps in the argument. First, I present and explain my definition of substance. Second, I argue that the definition yields the right results: that is, my definition rules that (among other things) events and universals, privations and piles of trash, are not substances, but at least some ordinary physical objects are. Third, I defend the definition by rebutting two obvious objections to it.

This article makes use of the thinking of both Max Scheler and Dietrich von Hildebrand in attempting properly to understand the nature of humility. The article examines how gratitude and truthfulness are both present, in an essentially integrated fashion, when a person exists in a humble state. Also addressed is the converse proposition, namely, that gratitude and truthfulness are absent in theperson who exists in a proud state and are replaced in that person by their respective opposites, ingratitude and mendacity. The article begins with a discussion of Scheler’s view of humility as gratitude, then investigates von Hildebrand’s notion that humility is truth. In presenting their ideas, the article identifies three distinct ways in which von Hildebrand’s analysis of humility in terms of truthfulnesscomplements and expands upon Scheler’s analysis of humility in terms of gratitude. These three distinct yet complementary ways are, respectively, ontological, psychological, and ethical in nature.

This paper examines the meaning of what Karol Wojtyła/John Paul II calls “The Law of the Gift,” namely, “Man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, can fully find himself only through a sincere gift of himself.” After explaining what it means to be “willed for itself,” I consider how “finding oneself only through a gift of self ” is justified. I then argue that in his theory of self-gift,Wojtyła/John Paul II espouses an “embodied” altruism. Two objections to Wojtyła/John Paul II’s account are also addressed: (1) the idea that finding fulfillment (moral goodness) through self-giving is incompatible with altruism and (2) that reciprocal self-giving is incompatible with altruism. I defend Wojtyła/John Paul II’s notion of self-giving against these objections in several ways, but focus on evidence for the compatibility of subjective enrichment and altruism.

This article is a reply by the author to John Deely’s book review “How to Go Nowhere with Language: Remarks on John O’Callaghan, Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn” (ACPQ vol. 82, no. 2). Its main topics are: (i) Deely’s view that, for Aquinas, the concept is distinct from the act of understanding, (ii) John of St. Thomas’s use of mirror images as a metaphor for how concepts work in cognition, and (iii) the sign relation posited by Aristotle that stands between words and concepts of the mind.

In this paper, I argue against John Crosby’s view that Aquinas does not have an account of the nature and role of subjectivity. I maintain that Aquinas’s notion of the love-based self-relation which is fully actualized in self-friendship is an account of subjectivity. I accept Crosby’s characterization of subjectivity as a foundational self-relation which constitutes interiority and is the foundation for experience and action. I proceed by showing how, for Aquinas, the relation of self-love automatically arises from human nature in virtue of amor. Dilectio then transforms the self-relation into a relation of self-consciousness, and finally amicitia adds the note of a stable habit that fully actualizes the self-relation. I show how the actualized self-relation constitutes interiority and is the basis for properly human experience and action.

In this article, I explore how orthodox Christian theology informs a philosophical understanding of the mind-world relationship. First, I contend that the Christian doctrine of creation entails that the world possesses an intrinsic rationality and intelligibility. I then go on to show how three different views of the mind-world relationship are compatible with this fact about the world: (a) realism, (b) idealism, and (c) fallibilism. I also delineate the strengths of each view, in terms of how well each view comports with other basic tenets of Christian orthodoxy. Finally, I show how fallibilism and idealism are incompatible with other important Catholic doctrines, which in turn leads me to recommend realism as the most viable position on the mind-world relationship for the Catholic philosopher to take.

This article by Johannes B. Lotz, S.J., never before translated into English, describes his contacts with Martin Heidegger. First it describes his arrival, along with Karl Rahner, S.J., to pursue doctoral studies in Freiburg im Breisgau and their first experiences with the famous professor. Lotz continues his narrative by mentioning times he met with Heidegger over the subsequent forty years up to the philosopher’s death. With Gustav Siewerth, Max Müller, Bernhard Welte, and Karl Rahner, Lotz belonged to a group of Catholic thinkers influenced—some more, some less—by Martin Heidegger. In Lotz’s view some of Heidegger’s ideas were already found in Aquinas, and a philosophy of Being needed to go beyond existential analysis into religion, revelation, and cultural criticism.