It is not very frequent that outstanding works appear, books that excel with force over the abundant general mediocrity and that become indispensable in any good library worth their salt. But occasionally it happens. The recent beginning of the publication of the Complete Works of Francisco Canals Vidal is one of these cases.
On October 12, 1974, Cardinal K. Wojtyla coincided with Prof. A. Millán-Puelles in a cycle of conferences organized in Rome. While exchanging a few words, the then archbishop of Kraków took from his briefcase the Italian translation (in Marietti) of Millán-Puelles’s structure of subjectivity, and told the Spanish philosopher that both followed similar philosophical paths.
Speaking of reason and faith in the Year of Faith, arranged by Benedict XVI, is something entirely logical. To do so also in the light of St. Thomas Aquinas, on the day of his feast, is also very appropriate, since the Church proposes it as a model of the correct way of understanding the harmonious relationship that must exist between reason and faith (for example, Fides et ratio, 43-44). Following St. Thomas, it must be said that faith and reason can be spoken in multiple ways. That is, it is an analogous term that is predicated of many realities, ordered among themselves. By faith one can understand, in the first place, the object of faith, expressed in statements that must be believed; second, the act of faith, that is, the assent by which we accept these statements as true; and, finally, the habit of faith, that is, the virtue by which our intelligence is inclined to such an act with respect to that object.
In this paper we argues that the existentialism of Kierkegaard, for his rejection of idealism, is closer to nominalism, but without incurring it. His position is not classified within the classical realism, because rather than attend to act of human being, he describes his existence, his future, his biography. So his thinking is in an intermediate position between these movements of philosophy
Throughout this article we offer an analytic research of the different meanings that Thomas Hobbes gave to the term nature in the first book of his masterpiece: Leviathan. Finding up to eight different meanings for that word and its morphologic derivatives, gives us an idea of the importance of such a concept in the work and the thinking of the author. Finally, we point out a possible way to construe all those meanings synthetically, which may be used to approach the grounds of Thomas Hobbes’ contribution to western Philosophy
This article intends to answer the question of how Thomas Aquinas can define the ultimate human happiness as an operation of the intellect, even though the intellect does not make us morally good. First of all, the article explains why Aquinas considers happiness essentially as an act of the intellect. Secondly, it contests the interpretation that happiness understood as an intellectual act is only achievable in a life after death. Furthermore, it argues that this primacy of intellect in no way diminishes the value of the practical and moral life, by showing how and why the moral goodness is necessary to achieve happiness.
This article shows the moral implications that the current aesthetic values’ inversion has in human life and in its perfective dynamism. One of the attitudes belonging to modern or “faustian” man is the substitution of contemplation by productive action, which becomes demiurgic, this is to say builder of a new man. Two are the moral causes of this absolutization of poietic praxis: acedia, sadness that man tries to evade through the most agitated activity; and pride, through which one denies submission to any end. The consequences are resentment towards the individual man with his limitations, and the transmutation of truth, good and beauty. To face this attitude, man has to start by recognizing his order to happiness and his contingency. From this metaphysical humbleness the affirmation and contemplation of truth as well as good and beauty in reality, mainly of man as the image of God, will reappear. The outcome is an ordered human life, also in the practical activity, where the communication of life among friends and between man and God comes first
After Aristotle’s death his philosophical legacy was soon forgotten to be returned only after three centuries due to the new edition started to be produced first by Tyrannion and then accomplished by Andronicus of Rhodes. The works of the Stagyrite were subjected to a procedure typical of Hellenistic culture called commentary; they were written not only in Hellenistic circles, but also over the course of time in Syrian, Arab, and Latin circles. In this article I try to analyse the four ways of approaching Aristotle’s philosophy: 1) it is a coherent whole; 2) there is a unity between Plato and Aristotle in favour of Plato (ancient Neo-Platonism); 3) Aristotle’s philosophy is a part of a Neo-Platonic system (Arab commentators); 4) autonomous, Christian or Neo-Platonic? controversies between Christian commentators. Saint Thomas Aquinas can be an example of a commentator who tried to keep a distance to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, as a work to be explained and not to be artificially Christianized
The 2012-2013 academic year was the seventy-fourth in the history of the Balmesiana Foundation, coinciding with the Year of Faith proclaimed by S.S. Benedict XVI and with the happy election of S.S. Francisco; and from its journey will be left for the memory significant events that should be remembered.
Se cumplen este año los ciento treinta años del nacimiento y los 50 del fallecimiento del psiquiatra y filósofo austríaco Rudolf Allers (1883-1963). Este autor, que en su momento se hizo conocido para el público de habla española por el libro del filósofo francés Louis Jugnet, Rudolf Allers o el Anti-Freud, es hoy casi completamente desconocido para el público general, incluidos psicólogos y psiquiatras. No obstante lo cual, sus méritos propios y su lugar en la historia de la psicología y de la psicoterapia hacen que merezca la pena recordar algunas de sus ideas, en este doble aniversario. De él dijo su antiguo discípulo Viktor Frankl, creemos que justamente, que “ha anticipado la psicoterapia del futuro”.
The theme that has occupied our attention in this warm day of tomistic studies, Being and person, which embraces from the Holy Trinity to us men, passing through the angels, is enormous, very rich. From the hand of the Angelic, we have been able to explore it from the theological and philosophical points of view, glimpsing, albeit fleetingly, its psychological, ethical and juridical derivations. I would give of itself for a congress; but we, led by the teacher Enrique Martinez and urged by the brevity of the time that everyone harasses, we had the audacity to compress it in one and very intense day.
Aquinas frequently (forty times) refers to boethian definition of person: rationalis naturae individua substantia. He uses such notion in trinitarian, christological and anthropological contexts. We find this definition in relationship with main faith principles about Trinity and Incarnation, depending on the Magisterium of Lateranense IV and the great christological councils. The use of boethian definition may be count among the preambula fidei and it is relevant both for theology and philosophy
The last answer to the importance of the problem of “person” has not done anything but increasing since 1900. Personalism scope has moved beyond the limits of the classical subjects and include today the inner core of the person, its “manipulability”, along with biotechnologies, neuroscience and cybernetic sciences while materialist and determinist thesis are being spread out. Personalism duty in modernity as well as in post-modernity becomes decisive, as for its responsibility to contribute to mend the fractures of the modern era. Among the former ones, there is the gnoseological fracture between mind and world under the sign of an intense dualism; the fracture between science and wisdom together with the primacy of the first one; the fracture between human being and God due to the denial of Transcendence or the conflict of the principle of created or uncreated liberty; and the anthropological fracture between substantial or functional idea of the person that includes the radical theme of soul-body nexus which is the object of our work
Thomas Aquinas’s ontology of the person is based on being. More particularly, the notion of person as subsistens distinctum introduces anthropology within the ontology of the created spirit. Aquinas’s anthropology discovers existence achieving form. Forma dat esse means the fundamental principle of an ontology of the person which puts a special emphasis on the intellectual principle of human behaviour, the unity of the human being, the personal character of the body, the spirituality of the intellect and will and love as communication of the human being
The foundation of the interpersonal communication in which human life consists is the person, this is to say, the subsistent in an intellectual nature. Supported by a metaphysical and theological tradition, chiefly represented by saint Thomas Aquinas, Francisco Canals discusses positions -that may be called “relationist”- that in order to affirm the interpersonal relations, end up denying the substantivity of the subject who communicates himself. In Canals’ thought, instead, the foundation of interpersonal communication is nothing but the person inasmuch subsistent in an intellectual nature. And, because of her subsistence, the person communicates her vital perfection through the language of the spirit in the family, in friendship and in society
When introducing the definition of person given by Boethius, Aquinas says that the name “person” is proper to the first substance of a rational nature, for individual subsistence occurs in it in a more perfect way. He supports this assertion by the fact that persons have dominion over their own actions. Having dominion over one´s actions entails spiritual powers’ capability to return upon themselves. Spiritual substances’ return upon themselves is complete since they are able to know their own essence. Supported by Proclus and by the De causis, Aquinas states that the basis for this operative reflection is a substantial reflection, which is nothing but the intimate mode of subsistence of spiritual beings. This reflective mode of subsistence is a kind of formal infinity. Therefore, being a person implies an infinite perfection. Ultimately, the paper shows that Aquinas sometimes calls “memory” this reflective mode of subsistence, hence being a person entails the constitutive self-presence of the mind, by which persons recall themselves
The present study analyzes the three great interptretations of Thomistic doctrine on the ontological constituency of the person, developed by Thomists from the 20th century on. For the followers of the gaetanistic tradition, like Martain, the person is formally based on the mode of subsistence, that constitutes the spiritual nature in subjectivity. For the followers of the transcendental Thomism, like Lotz, the personal being is primarily founded on the reditio completa of the created spirit. For the masters of the intentive Thomism, like Fabro or Forment, the person results fundamentally from the possession of an act of participated being owened by an essence that transcends matter. In conclusion, first we propose a structualy judgement on these three positions, secondly a judgement of veritability
The catalog of Hispanic publications related to Thomism that began last year continues here. The same criteria are followed: the publications collected are those written in each of the languages born in ancient Hispania: Spanish, Portuguese and Galician, Catalan and Basque. As Thomist studies understand those inspired by this doctrine, either by following it or by answering it. Each item is presented complete, avoiding the discomfort of cross-references. And publications are included that, without being monographically of Thomistic theme, contain pages of particular interest in this regard.
The recent discovery of the Higgs boson, an entity predicted theoretically since the 60s of the twentieth century, has revived the old controversy about the power of mathematics and the methodology and purpose of the sciences.
