by Revista Espíritu | 168-2024
Aristotle’s Politics is an incomplete set of teaching materials used by the genius of Stagira in the various courses he taught throughout his life in Athens and also in other cities such as Asos and Mytilene. The transmission of the Aristotelian corpus has bequeathed us eight books, of which St. Thomas Aquinas completed the commentary on the first two and left the commentary incomplete about halfway through the third book.
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Salvador González offers us a volume about the iconography of the Virgin Mary with a broad basis in theological literature. In previous works, this scholar has dealt with the Christian literature on Mary while studying Marian iconography, making him one of the most authoritative authors in this field. In the present work, among the different defining features of this female figure, the focus is on that of “mediator”.
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“For a man to grow in wisdom, it is necessary for him to hear willingly, because wisdom is so profound that no man is sufficient by himself to contemplate. […] We must hear not only from one, but from many […]. But where should you seek wisdom, and from whom? […] First from the teacher, or from those who are wisest, as it is said in Deut 32:7: question your father…, that is, the teacher, for, just as your father begot you physically, the teacher begot you spiritually, …and he will tell you; question the elders…, that is, the wise men, … and they will tell you”. In these words, taken from the collatio of the sermon Puer Iesus of St. Thomas, we can appreciate the raison d’être and profound intention of this work that comes with joy to our hands.
by Revista Espíritu | 168-2024
The 2023-2024 academic year was the eighty-fifth in the history of Fundación Balmesiana -now the “Fundación Institución Balmesiana”- and the twenty-first in the history of Instituto Santo Tomás.
by Revista Espíritu | 168-2024
St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that baptism could have eliminated not only sin but also the primitive effects of sin, such as suffering, sickness, moral struggle and death, “because the gift of Christ is more powerful than the sin of Adam.” So why doesn’t baptism restore us to something like Eden? He holds to Aristotle’s insight that, just as we do not crown the strongest athlete, but the athlete who trains and wins, so we do not identify happiness simply with having virtue, but with realizing and living virtue.
by Revista Espíritu | 168-2024
In order to confront the intellectualist interpretation that has often been offered of the Thomistic doctrine of the ultimate end of man, it is useful to pay attention to a little-studied concept of his master Albert the Great, that of “affective science”. This article will analyze this Albertine concept, which can be applied to both Metaphysics and Theology, paying special attention to the role of love in the operation that constitutes the ultimate end of man, namely, the contemplative act.
by Revista Espíritu | 168-2024
Benedict XVI teaches that the current crisis of faith would originate from the replacement of Christian hope in the kingdom of God with worldly hope in the kingdom of man.
In the language of Thomas Aquinas, this process of despair involves aversion (aversio) from the formal object of Christian hope and conversion (conversio) towards created goods.
This conversion –which seeks the reestablishment of earthly pa- radise– is eventually caused by the loss of faith but is immediately caused by the vice of acedia.
To this connection drawn up by Saint Thomas, we must add the role that the German Pontiff attributes to suffering in the origin of theological despair.
by Revista Espíritu | 168-2024
According to a statement by Thomas Aquinas in his Commentary on De caelo, the study of philosophy does not consist in knowing the opinions of men, but rather in penetrating the truth of things.
An absolute interpretation of this idea would undoub- tedly lead to a distorted image of its author: a medieval master indifferent to the history of thought, who maintains that direct access to the real is the only way for philosophy to reach its goal.
Our work attempts to specify the way in which Thomas integrates the opinions of men within a traditional conception of philosophical knowledge, whose main intention is to know veritas rerum.
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Aquinas holds that soul and body are substantially united as form and matter, following Aristotle.
At the same time, he asserts that the human soul is subsistent.
This position has been criticized as incoherent.
Some argue that St. Thomas is an in- consistent materialist, for the internal logic of hylomorphism should have led him away from dualistic theses.
Others, like Swinburne, claim that Aquinas is a substantial dua- list, whose thesis would be very close to that of Descartes.
We respond to these two positions by showing that the thomistic answer is coherent and realistic.
by Revista Espíritu | 168-2024
This is an exegesis of the texts of saint Thomas Aquinas on the objectively challenging issue of the relations between ecclesiastical power and temporal power in po- litical society, above all in Christian society.
The article aims to analyse Aquinas’ thought within the history of Catholic doctrine on the subject, therefore allusions will be made to medieval hierocratic positions and to a few positions and texts linked to the thesis of potestas indirecta and to contemporary times.
by Revista Espíritu | 168-2024
This work exposes three theses on the concept of idea that, from the “rosmi- nian platonism” of Giuseppe Buroni, can be maintained as genuine from saint Thomas.
The first is that the esse commune has an ideal existence, namely, it exists in the mind of God. The second is that the idea of being is not a mental act or product, but the na- tural object of intelligence; it has its seat in eternity and, from the augustinian–thomist perspective, corresponds to rationes.
The third thesis, more problematic, is the constant distinction between the ideal plane, which corresponds to being, and that of the real, which corresponds to entities.
by Revista Espíritu | 168-2024
The year was 1256. The chancellor of the University of Paris, Heimericus, had ordered a young bachelor sententiary to prepare to receive the “licentia docendi” or doctorate, which was to incorporate him with full rights into the cloister of the university.
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‘Theistic evolution’… for many the title may seem an oxymoron in linking theism with evolution. Indeed, since its emergence in the 19th century, the theory of evolution has often been presented as being in conflict with belief in God, and this idea still seems to be alive and well. Mariusz Tabaczek, however, shows in this book how they can be perfectly compatible, and therefore prudently points out in the general conclusion that ‘if true, evolution does not oppose or contradict the classical philosophical and theological view of reality proper to Aristotelian-Thomistic thought’.
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The work by Lucas Prieto Sánchez La conservación del universo según santo Tomás de Aquino responds perfectly to what its title indicates, and constitutes an important and up-to-date contribution on this subject in the extensive bibliography on the Angelic doctor. It is an issue that has not always been given sufficient attention, as it has been hidden behind others, which has sometimes contributed to its disfigurement. The present study, some of whose contributions have already been published in the form of articles, allows us to enter into the depth of this subject. We present below the main contents of the book under review, which corresponds to the author’s doctoral thesis, supervised by Fr Bonino op, at the Angelicum.
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‘It is intended to be a brief handbook, suitable for both specialists and students. An attempt has been made to provide an orderly summary of a subject which, until now, has lacked a complete overview of the whole. There were very valuable studies on various parts (…) However, an overview with perspective was lacking’. These words, written by the author in the introduction to the book under review, perfectly summarise both the purpose and the result of this work.
by Revista Espíritu | 167-2024
Mother Marie de l’Assomption op (Émilie d’Arvieu), a Dominican of the Holy Spirit born in 1974, has published two extensive works, which form a unit, on nature and grace in Saint Thomas. They are Nature et grâce chez saint Thomas d’Aquin, L’homme capable de Dieu (Paris, Parole et Silence, 2021) [=NG1] and De la grâce à la béatitude, Nature et grâce chez saint Thomas d’Aquin II. Nouvelles perspectives (Paris, Parole et Silence, 2022) [=NG2]. These are two voluminous volumes of 858 and 828 pages, corresponding respectively to his civil (the first) and canonical (the second) doctoral theses.
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The aim of this contribution is to provide an updated account of the main trends of Thomism in the analytical field, hoping for greater attention to the origins of the interest in Aquinas on the part of English-speaking philosophers. After having introduced the term “Analytical Thomism” and having analyzed the main strands that can be traced back to it, I will focus on the figure of the Dominican Herbert McCabe, who was among the first to propose comparing the thought of Aquinas to that of Wittgenstein. The final proposal envisages replacing the too generic term of “Analytic Thomism”, replacing it with the more precise ones of “Geachian-Fregean Thomism”, “Wittgensteinian Thomism” and “Grammatical Thomism”.
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The paper focuses on the ontology of Greek and Latin Fathers of the Church with the aim of reshaping the relation between the tradition of the commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories and Aquinas’ conception on the relationships within the Trinity, as well as of establishing possible dependences. In particular, a closer proximity with the Eastern tradition than the Augustinian heritage can be acknowledged. In the end, I will put forward a number of hypotheses concerning the role of the works by Gregory of Nazianzus and John of Damascus, that are available in Latin translation.
by Revista Espíritu | 167-2024
In Joseph Maréchal’s thought, the overcoming of the Kantian critique relies on the Absolute to justify the value of knowledge. In particular, it is in judgement – as the affirmation of the principle of identity and non-contradiction – that the being of the immediate content of thought is revealed and the Absolute is implied as the condition of objective knowledge. This attention to the relationship between the first principles of being and the “a priori synthesis” dimension of knowledge is also found in the metaphysical School of Milan. In both perspectives, philosophical modernity has contributed to the revival and rigorization of the classical transcendental.
by Revista Espíritu | 167-2024
Gustavo Bontadini retrieved the reasons to adfirm of transcendence and creation within a philosophical context that was profoundly shaped by Kant’s Transcendental Dialectic. The first aim of my paper is to reconstruct Bontadini’s reading of the Critique of Pure Reason (KrV), which he considered as an exemplary case of gnoseological naturalism. Secondly, it highlights the passages of KrV, in which Kant problematically introduces the different aspects of the noumenon and of the relation of this latter with empirical reality. Finally, it shows that Bontadini’s philosophy values the relevant concern of Kantian critique of metaphysics, that is to avoid to apply to positive noumenon the categories that govern the experience. Thus, while attempting to determinate the transcendent reality without empirically categorizing it, classical metaphysics, in Bontadini’s thought, becomes more essential and rigorous.
