by Revista Espíritu | 151-2016
This article proposes an analysis of the understanding of friendship in the ecclesial context as an expression of charity that unites the members of the Church and introduces a specific project of ecclesial life. The caritatis amicitia establishes the coordinates of life ad intra of the Church. In the first part of the article will be described the elements of friendship, especially important for the ecclesial friendship as communicatio, benevolentia (benefecientia) and this form of expression of unity that Thomas calls the consensus Ecclesiae. In the second part, we will explore the expressions of ecclesial friendship that becomes visible in attitudes (such as empathy, consolation, confidence) and fraternal language (the famous question of fraternal correction). All of this factors conduces to a kind of “ecclesial perichoresis”, following the example of the Trinity.
by Revista Espíritu | 151-2016
One of the overarching motivations for the modern turn from theocentrism to anthropocentrism was the attempt to achieve the full realization of human subjectivity and, indeed, sovereignty. Yet the dialectic between a gnostic angelism and a materialistic animalism that necessarily ensues from isolating the human being from its transcendent origin and end destroys what the anthropocentric turn set out to achieve. In his expansive philosophy and theology of participation and deification Aquinas has a lesson of surpassing contemporary significance to offer: The genuine realization of subjectivity comes about only in what is best called a self-less self-realization in the twofold participation of the human being in the origin and end of all things (1) qua rational creature through intellect and will in the First Truth and Sovereign Good and (2) qua created dynamic image in the conformation with the divine exemplar in an everlasting union of vision and love with the Triune God. The former is the creaturely condition of the possibility for the latter and the latter is the surpassing fulfillment of the former. The quasi-ontological foundation for this self-less self-realization in the union with God is sanctifying grace and its inchoative realization are operations of the infused habitus of charity.
by Revista Espíritu | 151-2016
This paper reflects on the concept of the person through the notions of love and relationship. It seeks dialogue with contemporary philosophies of personalistic court and with origins in the nineteenth-century idealism, to cope with some relevant mistakes. 1. Against the claim that a personal life is dumped in the love of others, a vital and ethically acceptable sense of self-love is defended. 2. The alternative substance-relationship is approached and the boethian concept of person as rational livelihood is reaffirmed towards the idea of the person as a relationship. 3. It is discussed the meaning of the statement that the person is “end in itself “, which some authors understands in the sense of an absolute autonomy of man.
by Revista Espíritu | 151-2016
Refer to a kindly Law, in our immediate sociopolitical situation, it may seem ironic, an antithetical relationship or even an idle question. This is due to the disaffection produced by the legal system for the society and for the concrete citizen. If this disaffection of contemporary society to the legal system is increasingly clear and growing, it is therefore very important to delve into the underlying causes of this problem. This paper briefly explores the real possibility of a friendly Law according to the intrinsic sociability of the human nature.
by Revista Espíritu | 151-2016
The political philosophy of St. Thomas integrates the inclination to the “union” or “friendship” in a more perfect vocation, which is the result of the virtue of Charity. In the Thomistic corpus, Charity is the superior supernatural virtue, the form of any other virtue. But, also charity means friendship. This intimate connection or identity between charity and friendship, highlights its social and political importance. From this new supernatural dimension, the Aristotelian-Roman conception of justice will be perfected by Charity and its fruits, such as peace and the virtue of mercy. Only under this perspective, life arises in the political community and the unity desired by humans ensues.
by Revista Espíritu | 151-2016
The experience of beauty is placed at the beginning of the understanding of the truth and loving the good: it is in some sense the principle of these actions. At the source of the diversity of human experience, we find its essential unity, which is the unity of the object, experienced as beauty. In the later stages of personal experience, the beauty manifests itself as a source of persistent relationships between cognitive and appetitive acts. The original experience of beauty consists of a primary contemplation of being and of love as complacency (complacentia). In the final part of the article, it is considered love as a principle dynamising the appetition, and also the dynamics of the relationship between love and cognition.
by Revista Espíritu | 151-2016
In the Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, saint Thomas affirms that the soul always understands itself and God in an indeterminate way and that an indeterminate love follows this knowledge. To comprehend these affirmations in coherence with the rest of Aquinas’ philosophy, the sentence has to be read in line with what has been affirmed in De Veritate, q. 10, a. 8: distinguishing between an existential knowledge and an essential knowledge. The knowledge that the soul always has of itself and of God is in the order of the act of being not of the essence and that’s why this indeterminate character doesn’t entail potentiality.
by Revista Espíritu | 151-2016
Haecker and Hildebrand refer to “feeling” or “heart” as a new faculty different from will, whose existence should ensue from the existence of a spiritual affectivity. Neither the ancient pagan philosophy nor Christian thought, including saint Augustine and saint Thomas would have succeeded in recognizing this faculty. This paper seeks to show the fault of these statements with respect to Aquinas. Thus, it is noticed the linkage between the notions of affection and appetite elicited; the notion of passion is differentiated from that of affection; it is demonstrated the existence -in Thomas Aquinas-, of a spiritual affection and even the use of the word “heart” to refer to it. It is shown the close and complex relationship between spiritual and sensitive affection in Thomas Aquinas, who by the concept of “redundantia” makes “one heart”
from both species of affection.
by Revista Espíritu | 151-2016
This paper discusses the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas on the natural appetite attributed to all beings, including those lacking knowledge, in the framework of his finalist conception of nature. The purpose of the study is to clarify the epistemological status of Aquinas’ theses, and in particular, to what extent is the philosophical thesis of natural appetite based on data of experience, and in what sense is it a necessary truth, or is it based on Thomistic metaphysics of the good.
by Revista Espíritu | 154-2017
The 2016-2017 academic year was the seventy-eighth in the history of the Balmesiana Foundation, and the fourteenth in Instituto Santo Tomás, and it will be remembered for significant events, some of them are offered in the present public communication.
by Revista Espíritu | 154-2017
Continuing the repertoire started four years ago, in this issue of Espíritu we collect the Hispanic Thomistic bibliography of 2016.
by Revista Espíritu | 154-2017
Contemporary explanations in Psychology of Emotions lack reference to the Aristotelian notion of nature. Subsequently, from this stance it is impossible to understand emotions as tendencies. This and some other deficiencies of contemporary Psychology, such as the confusion between emotion and cognition, are rooted in its Cartesian basis in this field. The present article will try to revalue the concept of nature as key to formally distinguish different psychological operations and to understand their dynamism and proper order in human beings.
by Revista Espíritu | 154-2017
The present study analyzes the Thomistic doctrine concerning the foundations of art and beauty and the relationship between beauty and goodness.
Although a complete artistic theory is not found in Thomistic intents, several texts of Thomas Aquinas give valuable clues for an organic theory of art aimed to beauty and good.
Reference to nature is crucial for the production of an authentic human art, as can be seen in various examples from the past.
The following section discusses some of the implications derived from the Thomist position or, on the contrary, from a relativistic conception of the same.
Finally, it explains the usefulness of Thomas’ thinking for a renewed artistic realism.
by Revista Espíritu | 154-2017
In this article we intend to study the persistence and consequences of Gnostic thought about the concept of God, nature and cosmos. Gnosis has an enormous corrosive potential of the philosophical categories because it is a titanic attempt to reconfigure the world considered radically insufficient and that arises from the attempt to match the pneumatic nature and the outside world. This study will focus on three main areas of the Gnostic revolution, following the three concepts mentioned above: theological modernism, post-humanism and gender studies.
by Revista Espíritu | 154-2017
In this article, I will try to read Aristotle’s brilliant affirmation, “all men by nature desire to know”, from theperspective of Saint Thomas’ metaphysics of the being. Specifically, I will try to highlight the relationship between being and operation underscored by Cajetano in defining understanding as “quoddam esse”. Continuing with the thought of Francisco Canals, I will point out that, in justifying the desire to know from the metaphysics of St. Thomas, the very notion of cognoscent nature itself requires being rethought.
by Revista Espíritu | 154-2017
Modern philosophy has made of the opposition between nature and freedom one of the central points of anthropology and ethics, but Thomas Aquinas’ position is very different. This author considers that nature and will not only are not opposed, but the former is preserved and elevated in the latter. Natural and voluntary are only opposed when “natural” is taken in a precisive sense. The voluntary and the natural have in common the proceeding of interiority, unlike the violent. They differ in that the natural is spoken of in a precisive sense when the entity is directed to an end that it does not know as such, while the voluntary supposes the knowledge of the end. The will itself has an act per modum naturae, which is the appetite for human goods. These are the acts of voluntas ut natura, which differs from voluntas ut ratio. Finally, even realities that depend on the deliberate will are called “natural” insofar as through them are acted inclinations inchoated in the natural will, and terminated by the deliberate will.
by Revista Espíritu | 154-2017
The permanent question today in the social sciences and in the socio-political philosophy is the reconciliation between the natural and the philosophical or with the cultural, the historical, the social, the moral. However, in today’s world there is a tendency to minimize and even obstinately deny the reality of “nature” and especially “human nature”, because it begins to be inconvenient. First, a current picture of the most significant negations of the concept of nature will be traced to the explicit answer found in Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.
by Revista Espíritu | 154-2017
This study analyzes the notion of order in Thomas Aquinas’ texts. The natural order is different from the mathematical one, and is related to contingency, multiplicity, graduality. Such a notion of order is not in contradiction with the reality of chance, but confirms it. In fact, chance is perceivable since it is a lower degree of order. If it were total disorder, chance could not be perceived.
Chance can only be explained in theological perspective. For St. Thomas, Providence requires chance. For God nothing is casual, but for human beings chance is the space of human freedom and God’s gifts.
by Revista Espíritu | Uncategorized
Contenido
by Revista Espíritu | 128-2003
Educare es un término latino que proviene, a su vez, del verbo duco, ducis, ducere, que significa “conducir”. Al mismo tiempo, educare está formado por el prefijo “e” que es un término que señala procedencia (en palabras que comienzan con vocal se le
añade una equis, “ex”) y que significa literalmente “sacar”, “hacer salir”. De manera que, ya desde la definición nominal, educare significa “sacar lo que hay ahí”, “conducirlo”, “llevarlo a su término”. Ahora bien, si a lo que está ahí, que es el ser humano, es preciso conducirlo y llevarlo a su fin propio, digamos sin más, su esencia, educare denota un proceso, un dinamismo, un movimiento. Y esto ya expresa y manifiesta el carácter dinámico del proceso educativo, por lo tanto, algo que, para ser tal, no debe
detenerse. En otros términos, educar es un movimiento que no se detiene; lo cual implica que el ser humano, mientras vive esta vida temporal, no termina de educarse y, mejor dicho, siempre tiene que estar en ese movimiento que se llama educación.
