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Displaying: 61-80 of 2560 documents


session 5: virtue
61. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 93
M. T. Lu Is Piety a Natural Virtue?
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Notwithstanding Aristotle’s own relative silence on the matter, in this paper I argue that piety is a natural (not supernatural) virtue of the Aristotelian kind. I begin with St. Thomas’s discussion of the virtues of religion and piety in which he shows how they both involve a recognition of human contingency and our radically dependent nature. Building off of this Thomistic analysis, I offer both an account of Aristotelian virtue in general and a phenomenological analysis of piety in particular, in which I situate piety with respect to the other Aristotelian virtues. Finally, I close with a discussion of a few natural objections, including questions about the limits of natural reason as well as considering why Aristotle himself did not explicitly treat piety as a moral virtue.
session 6: esse in st. thomas aquinas
62. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 93
Elliot Polsky “In As Many Ways As Something Is Predicated . . . in That Many Ways Is Something Signified to Be”: The Logic behind Thomas Aquinas’s Predication Thesis, Esse Substantiale, and Esse in Rerum Natura
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Thomistic commentators agree that Thomas Aquinas at least nominally allows for “to be” (esse) to signify not only an act contrasted with essence in creatures, but also the essence itself of those creatures. Nevertheless, it is almost unheard of for any author to interpret Thomas’s use of the word “esse” as referring to essence. Against this tendency, this paper argues that Thomas’s In V Metaphysics argument that every predication signifies esse provides an important instance of Thomas using “esse” to signify essence. This reading of In V Metaphysics, which this paper defends against Gyula Klima’s alternative interpretation, suggests significant reinterpretations of Thomas’s technical terms “esse substantiale” and “esse in rerum natura” as well as Thomas’s use of “is,” both as a copula and as a principal predicate.
63. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 93
Jameson Cockerell Divine Esse Without Ontological Significance: Jean-Luc Marion’s Challenge to Aquinas
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In God Without Being, Jean-Luc Marion infamously argues that Thomas Aquinas is the progenitor of modern onto-theology and thus conceptual idolatry. Yet in 1995, Marion published an intensive study of Aquinas arguing he cannot be called an onto-theologian. Nevertheless, he reiterates a suspicion about the identification of God and Esse—in particular, how it has been understood by those following Aquinas. He ends with a challenge for Thomism as a living tradition: Divine Esse will not be onto-theological to the extent that it avoids ontological significance. We will argue that Aquinas would reject the exigency of speaking Divine Esse without ontological significance precisely because it is through it that he articulates God’s transcendence and incomprehensibility. Despite this opposition, there is a surprising and deeper complementarity to be seen: ontological significance for Aquinas carries its own veil of darkness which makes it more amenable to Marion’s demand than might be suspected.
session 7: aristotle and modern science
64. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 93
Timothy Kearns Substantial Form in Modern Physics and the Other Sciences—and a New Picture of the Cosmos
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Beginning from the apparent failure of Aristotelian natural philosophy in the last centuries, I propose key questions internal to that tradition, most importantly this: Are the central theses of Aristotelian natural philosophy true and do they continue to contribute to our knowledge of the natural world in light of modern discoveries in the sciences? In this paper, I answer this question affirmatively by drawing on the most general mathematical theory used in the sciences to study natural change. I propose an Aristotelian extension of that theory to include substantial change. With such an extension, it becomes possible to see the physical aspect of substantial form, the role that each natural thing plays in making the cosmos what it is. Understood this way, substantial form allows the cosmos itself to be seen in a new way, one that integrates modern scientific discoveries with an Aristotelian approach to nature.
session 8: a perennial philosophy of nature
65. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 93
Daniel D. De Haan Is Philosophy of Nature Irrelevant?
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I contend that the classical approach of Thomists to internecine Thomist debates about the requirements for initiating the enquiries of natural philosophy and metaphysics generates an epistemological crisis which this classical approach cannot overcome on its own terms. Furthermore, the failure of this classical approach to resolve these intractable debates has all too often distracted and stymied Thomists from contributing to the real enquiries of philosophy of nature. This explains, in part, why the most cogent and influential defenders of a return to Aristotelian ideas concerning nature and their relevance to modern science, has come from analytic philosophers unconcerned with these classical Thomist debates. But Thomism need not render itself irrelevant to the philosophy of nature; or so I argue in this essay. I first present a surview of how a classical interpretation of Aristotle’s division of theoretical sciences generated these debates about the relationship between the subjects of metaphysics and natural philosophy. I then argue neither Wippel’s ingenious efforts to secure the autonomy of metaphysics from natural philosophy nor the arguments for the existence of an immaterial being of the natural philosophy first proponents succeed. Hence, the intractable stalemate between these Thomists. Drawing upon the insights of Alasdair MacIntyre I argue for an alternative approach that overcomes this epistemological crisis and helps to secure the relevance of Thomism to the enquiries of philosophy of nature.
66. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 93
Marie I. George A Defense of the Distinction Between Plants and Animals
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Aristotle’s division of living things into three categories has been challenged of late as to the distinction between plants and animals on the grounds that plants too are sentient. I argue that the life activities that plants carry on go on in us without sentience and would not be carried on any better with sentience, and thus are reasonably thought to go in plants in a non-sentient manner. Complementing this expectation is the fact that research on the various movements of plants accounts for them without reference to sensation, but rather by specifying various physical causes. I also show that certain proponents of plant sentience engage in faulty reasoning, including the fallacy of the accident (e.g., the plant responds to something having a quality that a sentient being would sense; therefore it senses) and equivocation (e.g., plants sense different external cues; therefore they are sentient).
acpa report and minutes
67. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 93
Minutes of the 2019 Executive Council Meeting
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68. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 93
Secretary’s Report (2019)
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69. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 93
Treasurer’s Report (2019)
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70. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 93
Necrology (2019–2020)
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presidential address
71. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Francis J. Beckwith Faith, Reason, and the Liberal Order
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Claims of religious conscience that run counter to prevailing cultural trends are increasingly met with bewilderment and disbelief. The author argues that this should not surprise us given the ways in which the rational and liturgical status of religious beliefs and practices (especially those tightly tethered to the Christian faith) are widely misunderstood and misrepresented by jurists and legal philosophers. To make this point the author discusses some recent arguments found in court cases as well as in legal scholarship on religion. He encourages Catholic philosophers—who typically do not work in this area--to enter the fray by contributing to the jurisprudential literature that touches on issues of faith, reason, and religious liberty.
presentation of the aquinas medal
72. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Chad Engelland Introducing Robert E. Wood, 2018 Aquinas Medal Recipient
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aquinas medalist’s address
73. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Robert E. Wood The Undestructible Foundations of Human Existence
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plenary sessions
74. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Christopher Kaczor A Defense of Conscientious Objection in Health Care: A Reply to Recent Objections
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In this essay, I defend rights of conscientious objection against various objections raised on deontological grounds of rights and entitlements as well as on consequentialist, utilitarian grounds. Udo Schuklenk and Ricardo Smalling in their article, “Why Medical Professionals Have No Moral Claim to Conscientious Objection Accommodation in Liberal Democracies” raise various objections, including the Objection from the Rights of Patients, the Objection from Monopoly, the Objection from Religion, the Objection from Untestability, and the Objection from Inconsistency. This article also responds to the concern about “unconstrained conscientious objection.” It suggests that we can distinguish legitimate from illegitimate conscientious objection in part by means of distinguishing objection to particular kinds of procedures from objection to treating particular kinds of persons. Perhaps the most promising way of differentiating legitimate from illegitimate conscientious objection in healthcare is by means of the goal of the medical art understood as the promotion of health.
75. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
J. L. A. Garcia A Volitional Account of Racist Beliefs, Contamination, and Objects: Engaging Dr. Urquidez
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Prof. Alberto Urquidez, in an important recent article that appears in different form in his book, Redefining Racism, offers an informed, sustained, careful, multi-pronged, and sometimes original critique of the volitional analysis of racism (VAR), which I have proposed in a series of articles over the past two dozen years. Here I expand and improve VAR’s analysis of paternalistic racists and their beliefs, clarify its ‘infection’-model’s explanation of racism’s spread and variety, and lay out what it is for something to be ‘characteristically’ racist, an understanding that I then use to offer a unified account of the way in which both certain physical objects and certain abstract objects can properly be called racist. Identifying and engaging some presuppositions behind Urquidez’s social, political, and moral criticisms of VAR, I respond to complaints from him and others, showing that VAR’s content is neither politically conservative nor dependent on religious doctrine, and point out that race theory would in fact profit from taking more seriously and internalizing the Christian morality of most African-Americans.
76. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Meghan Sullivan Public Conversion, Private Reason, and Institutional Crisis
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Following the 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report, which detailed the sexual abuse of clergy members, many have questioned the value of personal institutional commitment to the Catholic Church, preferring instead more individualistic expressions of faith. Alongside the sex abuse crisis, the age of free information makes the Church’s epistemology appear antiquated. This article explores the individualistic versus community-based practice of Catholicism, drawing a distinction between private conversion versus public conversion. The article offers a defense of public conversion, arguing it explains the rationality of conversion and offers a solution to the problem of divine hiddenness. Using details from her own faith journey, Sullivan explores why God graces us with less perspicuous knowledge, causing subluminous conversions, as opposed to the more glaring, which leads to luminous conversions. Sullivan suggests that we obtain knowledge of God by loving one another, which takes place in the framework of the institutional Church. She subsequently uses this Church-making theodicy to offer five ideas about how we might engage the Church institutionally as Catholic philosophers.
session 1: epistemology
77. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Joshua Yanhan Lo The Road from ἔνδοξα to ἐπιστήμη: The Place of Dialectic in Aristotelian Epistemology
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The purpose of this paper is to argue for the necessity of dialectic in Aristotelian philosophy—dialectic defined as the art of arguing from probable opinions to contradictory conclusions (100a30; 101b4; 164b3–4). In particular, I will argue that dialectic is necessary for definition. In the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle identifies three principles of scientific demonstration: axioms, un-middled premises, and definitions. In showing the need for dialectic to define, I also show scientific knowledge’s dependence on dialectic.
78. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Fr. James Dominic Rooney, OP Believing the Incomprehensible God: Aquinas on Understanding God’s Testimony
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There has been recent epistemological interest as to whether knowledge is “transmitted” by testimony from the testifier to the hearer, where a hearer acquires knowledge “second-hand.” Yet there is a related area in epistemology of testimony which raises a distinct epistemological problem: the relation of understanding to testimony. In what follows, I am interested in one facet of this relation: whether/how a hearer can receive testimonial knowledge without fully understanding the content of the testimony? I use Thomas Aquinas to motivate a case where, in principle, the content of received testimony cannot be understood but nevertheless constitutes knowledge. Aquinas not only argues that we can receive testimonial knowledge without understanding the content of that testimony, but that we have duties to do so in certain cases.
session 2: philosophy and public life
79. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Scott J. Roniger Philosophy, Freedom, and Public Life: Plato’s Gorgias as a Protreptic
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I argue that one of the fundamental conflicts between Socrates and his interlocutors (Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles) in the Gorgias concerns the nature of human freedom. Against the increasingly grandiose and aggressive claims of his interlocutors, Socrates sees true freedom as requiring discipline in speech and deed. Plato has Socrates argue for a concept of human freedom that finds its fulfillment in happiness only by being channeled through the funnels of philosophy and justice. Central to this Platonic understanding of freedom is the role of eros and imitation. Socrates’s love of truth is the foundation for freedom because it motivates the search for a vision of the true good and therefore provides a formation in justice, creating the space for friendship in community life, that is, for civilization. By contrast, Callicles’s love of the dēmos is an extension of disordered self-love, impelling him to seek the means to placate the masses so that he can enlarge his appetites and continually fill them. Such love enslaves Callicles, corrupts political life, and vitiates the possibility of friendship. Finally, I connect these Platonic insights to central themes in Catholic Social Teaching.
80. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
David McPherson Humane Philosophy as Public Philosophy: A Path for Religious Engagement in Public Life
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Public philosophy is typically conceived as philosophical engagement with contemporary social and political issues in the public sphere. I argue that public philosophy should also aim to engage with existential issues that arise from the human condition. In other words, we should engage in “humane philosophy.” In the first section I fill out and show the attractions of this humane conception of philosophy by contrasting it with a rival scientistic conception. In the second section I demonstrate how the practice of humane philosophy is important for engaging with contemporary social and political issues and how it offers the best path for religious engagement with these issues. Contra John Rawls and other liberal political philosophers, I argue that public engagement with controversial issues such as abortion, assisted suicide, and genetic engineering requires engaging competing existential stances and I show how this can be done.