When I entered into the relationship of S. Gould’s essays, I found an authentic world dotted with suggestive contradictions. They go through their pages elk, worms, orchids, dinosaurs, and even pigs, pandas … and Mickey Mouse; notes on art, typography, cinematography, politics … He likes to go constantly to the work of Darwin but to put it on his part, discovering aspects of his genius to integrate them into his own system through skilful interpretations.
Achever Clausewitz, the last great work of René Girard, is the most recent fruit of the interdisciplinary ambition of the creator of the mimetic theory, who disembarks in the political arena convinced that the laws and theories of the political can be subsumed into the great universal legality and timeless of mimetic anthropology. To undertake the effort, Girard offers us in this long interview a re-reading of the work of Carl Von Clausewitz, the great contemporary military strategist of Napoleon, who wanted to make war, it is said, “the continuation of politics by other means “
Part I of this article starts by approaching the idea of the constituent power of the people, typical of liberal constitutionalism, as posited by Sieyès and received by the political and legal system currently in force in the West. Then comes a demonstration of the unviability of the concept that proposes that someone could be entitled to social or political command without exercising it (as postulated by the so-called “sovereignty of the people”): as a matter of fact, social and political command is a form of legal power essentially linked to the performance of a duty, and therefore the holder of that power will be the person who (legitimately) exercises command; some remarks on the so called sovereignty “in the State” and on the real sovereignty of the State; and finally a suggestion in favor of a realistic view of the causal role of consensus at the constitutional level. Part II aims to give a systematic answer to the question of the constituent power. Firstly, the two terms that make up the locution are analyzed (i. e., “political power” and “constitution”). Then it is made clear that the constituent power is one of the functions of political power. Consequently, it is concluded that the principle of the constituent power of the people (or the nation) has no foundations in objective reality. Part III focuses on the modern counterrevolutionary assumptions concerning the constitution (as posited by Joseph de Maistre) and demonstrates how questionable are the grounds –particularly for a thomist philosophy- from which a critical thesis against the reality and legitimacy of constituent power can be made by such position
This brief essay attempts to show Julian Marias´ perspective on feelings education following the traces of his most direct philosophical influences: Ortega and Unamuno. It emphasizes the significance that Julian Marias gives to this topic, as this area of education is considered as a modulation of the vital instalation or, as he says in spanish, a modulation of the “temple”. The keys of this proposal are displayed and synthesized, and among them should be specially considered concepts as friendship or love, this last one are understood by Marias as donation to the others
This study is an open and critical approach that aims to shed some light on the Theory of Law reviewing some of the effects which the influence of sociological positivism has had, and the consequent alteration on its scientific object. Under a crosscutting approach to politics, the article will discuss the scope of this transformation in the context of the current legal culture, based on the preference the interrelationship between the legal system and the modern State gets. The aforesaid contrasts with justice as the fundamental problem of Law in its classical sense
Most written work (books) of Antonio Millán-Puelles is twenty titles. In this paper we determine what are some glitches were excluded and his unit is investigated. Titles grouped by subject, it seems clear that Millán-Puelles provides a foundation to enter their work in two capital books: Fundamentos de filosofía and Léxico filosófico. The rest of the books revolve around anthropology and ethics, and metaphysics. Regarding the former, the key work is La estructura de la subjetividad and ethics, La libre afirmación de nuestro ser. As for the latter Teoría del objeto puro. All other whirl around these. Thus it is clear that Milan-Puelles gets an original and unique synthesis between Aristotelian-Thomistic realist philosophy and the phenomenological and existentialist philosophies
In Cornelio Fabro’s thinking, the notion of value is investigated from different points of view. It is considered in the “dialectics” of moral value, in essential axiological requirements, and in its metaphysical underpinnings. His perspective is radically different from any Kantian or immanentist “philosophy of values”. The upshot is the philosophical stand according to which knowing, acting and being are intrinsically axiological. Hence, no axiological neutrality is possible or real, in any field. This is an original aspect of Fabro’s thought –which has been so far overlooked– but which is certainly interesting, particularly in the reals of morality, law, and politics
This lecture, given by Francisco Canals Vidal on the day the Universitat Abat Oliba CEU awarded him the degree of Doctor Honoris causa, in 2005, suggests core themes and lines of reflection in order to draw the attention on the doctrinal synthesis of saint Thomas Aquinas, unknown to many thomists, as well. In effect, Aquinas synthesizes dimensions of reality which have been constituted in unity by the divine creative action. Even more, since saint Thomas is a “Christian philosopher” it is not convenient to split his synthetic ability between human natural being and activity, and the constitutives of man’s elevation to the supernatural order of divine filiation and its consummation in the eternal beatitude to which all supernatural and gratuitous gifts given by the divine generosity are ordered. Nevertheless, all these dimensions, assumed with unilateral exclusiveness, have given way in human thought to inadequate options among antithetic stances, which ended up postulating in post-Kantian modernity the dialectics of the opposites as the factor of movement and life of human thought
The catalog of publications related to the Thomism of the past year in any of the languages of the Iberian Peninsula continues here: Castilian, Galician-Portuguese, Catalan or Basque. In the following list, 111 bibliographical references are added.
Last July, the II International Congress of Tomista Philosophy took place, organized by the Center for Tomistic Studies of the Santo Tomás University of Santiago, Chile. As part of the events, the first volume of the Latin-Castilian bilingual edition of the Commentary on Psalms was presented. First, Professor Enrique Alarcón, editor of the Latin text and author of the Introduction, intervened. Professor Carlos A. Casanova spoke later, responsible for the Spanish version and the text notes. We then offer the presentation of Professor Casanova and the text of Professor Alarcón’s Introduction.
The study of the Divine Essence has a central moment in the determination of the metaphysical constituive of God. This paper aims to offer some reflections of the proximity of the formulas Ipsum Esse Subsistens and Nóesis noéseos nóesis. That God is pure Understanding is not, for most of the Thomists, a mere operating attribute, but something particularly identified with Ens a se. To understand better this proximity, a shallow examination of the relationship between thinking and being in Thomism is proposed, so it will be exposed that the philosophy of St. Thomas is as “ontological” as “noetic”, ie, it adjusts with particular accurate the couple being and logos
Self-knowledge has been considered in some great philosophical systems as the first and necessary fundament of human knowledge and science, but the path that was supposed to get opened in that way encountered soon unsurpassable barriers, because the very possibility of such self-knowledge was questioned by the philosophies that followed. Instead, in an aristotelian and thomist way of thinking, the self cannot be the first thing known, and yet, there would be no knowledge in general without some kind of original knowledge of the self. In this paper we try to illuminate the problems involved in this issue in the perspective opened by Francisco Canals and the reading of some key texts of St. Thomas Aquinas
The topic of the intellectual knowledge of particulars is one of the most controversial of Thomas Aquinas’ theory of knowledge, because he asserts that the material individual cannot be object of the intellect, but it is known per se only through the senses. However, we intend to demonstrate in this paper, that the position of Aquinas is far richer: Even if material individual is not known “directe et per se” by the intellect, it is known “indirecte et per quandam reflexionem”. In his various works, Aquinas explains this topic holding the same doctrine but with a variety of nuances. We discover that there are different kinds of reflection of the intellect on the singular, and that we need to use concepts like “continuatio” and “applicatio” to understand their meaning. We also discover that differences between simple apprehension and judgment are significant on the intellectual knowledge of particulars
The philosophical explanation of reality constitutes an attempt to discover the causes of the existence of everything that is. The aspect of inquiries thus described makes philosophy the fundamental body of knowledge, but at the same time it makes it the most difficult body of knowledge to formulate in a univocal way. The apprehension in one objective denotation of “everything that is” becomes a rather large difficulty in the precise establishment of investigative postulates and in the determination of the proper object of philosophy. Therefore in the current of realistic philosophy, an appeal is postulated to a method of knowledge that will be adequate to the real ways in which things exist. To this purpose, we should rely on spontaneous pre-scientific knowledge in which things are apprehended in the fundamental way of existence as “that which is.” On this basis, the object of philosophy is formulated, and a realistic method of philosophical knowledge based on the relational way that being exists is formulated
In this paper I am going to focus on describing the character and role of the cognitive acts whereby we apprehend the existence of beings. In the first point, I take note of the main difficulties connected with explaining man’s knowing of the existence of beings. In the next step, I present a specific description of the existential judgment as the fundamental cognitive act in which the intellect apprehends the existence of known things. I will base my discussion of this basic cognitive act on the interpretation of the Polish philosopher M. A. Krąpiec, who in comparison with other authors has most systematically and exhaustively formulated this question. The next element in the presentation will be an analysis of the structure and content of the existential judgment in which I will remark on the presence and role of the existential factor of known being in the act of knowledge. I will conclude the paper by emphasizing the basic function of the existential judgment in all metaphysical knowledge, which in light of the analyses that have been made turns out to be nothing other than the explicit expression of what in actu confuse is already contained in the first cognitive act. Above all, I note that the discovery of the role of the existential judgment in human knowledge provides a rational justification for realism of knowledge, and thereby it refutes the grounds for sceptical, agnostic, and relativistic positions in epistemology
The reflection on the meaning of the term “nature” is particularly important in the context of knowledge on natural beings and this topic maintains a distinctive relevance to the present day.
This contribution only attempts to clarify the meaning of the term nature in the works of Thomas Aquinas, and to particularly explain the two fundamental meanings proposed in the Summa Theologiae: nature as essence and nature as a whole of material things. It will then seek to analyse how Aquinas describes the presence of phenomenon as it happens by chance within the context of the natural order. This also serves as an illustration of the usefulness of a correct comprehension of what natural can mean
A detailed exposition of Aristotle on complementary understanding and demonstration, which have its origin in two different faculties that are intelligence and reason, is presented. Then, some consequences arising from the Aristotelian approach about the relationship between philosophy and science or between reason and faith are discussed. Finally, the thought of Thomas Aquinas regarding the intellectual faculties is exposed in close comparison with Aristotle, concluding that only theological faith can lead reason to its fulfilment
Truth and certitude are two different requirements of knowledge in strict sense. Such duality gives rise to the problem of justification: how to validate our assessment of what is true and what is not. Several texts of Thomas Aquinas give valuable clues for an answer. These indications clarify the relationship between truth and certainty in the light of the modal dimension of knowledge, and its dependence on the metaphysical structure of being
The present note has arisen in response to the review of the book Metaphysics of intelligibility and self-consciousness in Thomas Aquinas, written by David Torrijos Castrillejo, and published in issue 148 of this magazine.
The present text of St. Thomas is a brief response to a case of conscience about the purchase on credit, divided into four issues and addressed to him by a brother in the Dominican order, Santiago de Viterbo.
