Aristotle wrote in the Eudemian Ethics that “Socrates the elder thought that the end is to come to know virtue, and he pursued an investigation into the nature of justice and courage and each of the divisions of virtue.
Mn. Jordi Gayà Estelrich is, without a doubt, one of the most outstanding Lullists in existence today. He has a doctorate in theology from the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, and already in his dissertation he specialized in the question of Lull’s theory of correlatives.
In his early treatise De Ente et Essentia (1250-1256), Thomas Aquinas briefly sketches an argument for the existence of God that begins with the real distinction of essence and existence (esse) in the things of our experience. From there, the argument says that a cause is needed to explain the esse of said things, and that such a cause ultimately needs to be something whose essence is identical to its existence (aka. God).
The scholastic treatise De iustitia et iure of Domingo de Soto is one of the most important milestones in the history of juridical philosophy. In this work, in addition to considering justice and right (ius), our author tackles the subject of law from the very first pages. The purpose of this article is to analyze the definition that Soto makes of law (essentia legis), with the finality of applying it to the concrete juridical needs of his time, while demonstrating a homogeneous evolution and doctrinal continuity with respect to Thomas Aquinas.
The serious debate of the 16th century between the humanist and the scholastic sector is exposed here, on the need to go to the original sources of Sacred Scripture (Hebrew and Greek) in theological argumentation. The humanists disqualified scholastic theology for working on a translation of biblical texts (the “Vulgata” of Saint Jerome), and not on the sources. Cano defends the value of the “Vulgata” Bible, whose dogmatic authority was approved in Trent, arguing the underlying reasons for the matter. However, he also approves the convenience and usefulness of going to the original sources (as instruments), but not the absolute necessity. In fact, from here on, the self-respecting theologian must sufficiently know, and use in his theological work, the original biblical languages (Hebrew and Greek).
This paper approaches to the concept of voluntarism in the School of Salamanca. For this end, it is necessary study the origins of this concept, particularly in the Franciscan scholasticism, showing the implications it had in relation to the plenitudo potestatis, particularly with the use to the nominalism. In a second moment, it deals with how the Parisian masters of the XVth Century enter the path defined by William of Ockham, to later address the contribution of the authors from Salamanca, in direct reference to the problems of their time. Finally, some conclusions are presented on what would be more specific to said school and its evolution.
The harmonious conjunction between nature and grace constitutes one of the most delicate points of Catholic theology. The work of Domingo Soto, an important Dominican theologian of the 16th century, is an admirable effort to show, following the Tridentine magisterium, the possible configurations of both elements, bearing in mind the first creation, the sin of our first parents and redemption. In this paper we will analyze these diverse states or stable modes of being in relation to the ultimate end, relying on his work De natura et gratia.
The aim of this article is to analyze Francisco Suárez’s position regarding Peter’s power of government and his successors in the Third Part of the Defensio fidei. The author wrote this work to refute the oath of fidelity of James I and his apology. Doctor Eximio did a complete exposition of the Catholic doctrine of this institution, basing his study mainly on Sacred Scripture and the Fathers of the Church. The conclusions he reached turned out to be valid nowadays. .
Grotius’ interpretation of natural law as well as of human sociability places him in the long Aristotelian tradition. Grotius persistently discusses with the Scholastic thinkers, who had invoked since the Middle Ages the ‘hypothesis of the non-existent God’ and contractual logic to explain and illustrate both the validity of natural law and the relationship binding the ruler and the ruled together. Emphasizing the scholastic roots of Grotius’ philosophy, this paper sets out to examine both problems, i.e., the question of sociability and social contract and the nature and use of the ‘etiamsi daremus’ hypothesis.
This article seeks to interrogate the interpretation of Francisco Suárez as a voluntarist author. To do so, we will examine Suárez’s approach to legislative action, taking the concept of potentia or power, which will be analysed in the different normative orders in which it can be found. Thus, we will follow the demands of explanatory completeness that the Suarist system presupposes, devoting a section to the power of the people, another to the power of the political authority, and, finally, a section devoted to the question of divine power; whether divine omnipotence is over the order of reality, and whether God can command the absurd, or whether, rather, reason is to the last instance the soul of the law.
This article transcribes three unpublished manuscripts by Domingo Báñez. The first is a review on the opuscule by Chrysostom Javelli on predestination. Báñez believes that this writing is Pelagian and advances several arguments which he will later use against Luis de Molina and the Molinists. The second is the last preserved writing by Báñez: a letter to the Master General of the Dominicans where he mentions his hope of seeing an end to the dispute on grace and free will. The third is the account of Báñez’s death including his last words, in which he mentions the famous controversy de auxiliis.
No scholar of Thomas Aquinas questions the centrality that contemplation had in his life. “Homo magnae contemplationis et orationis”, maintained one of the witnesses in the process of canonization. Evidently, the theology of contemplation that Thomas developed early in his career is rooted in his own personal experience. However, this essential fact has not been taken advantage of by Thomist research in recent decades.
We are not dealing with a conventional book, but rather with the fruit of a great joint and interdisciplinary investigation on the relationship and influence of desire on personal growth.
Some time ago Gaven Kerr, an Irish Dominican Tertiary, published an admirable work on the proof of God’s existence as formulated in De ente et essentia, the early work of Thomas Aquinas (cf. Aquinas’s way to God. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Although little studied, this proof is perhaps one of the most solid metaphysically speaking, since it is based on the real composition of being and essence in every finite entity to go back by way of causality (and participation) to a first absolutely uncaused agent, that is to say , al esse subsistens.
Academic attention to the place of beauty within the Thomist edifice has been revived in the last century. Christopher Scott Sevier begins Aquinas on Beauty by pointing out that, despite revived interest, St. Thomas Aquinas’s thought about it has not been explored and expounded in systematic depth, evidenced by the few books devoted to beauty in Thomas exclusively.
The 2020-2021 academic year was the eighty-second in the history of the Balmesiana Foundation, and the eighteenth of Instituto Santo Tomás.
On Saturday, June 12, 2021, Fr. Pedro Suñer Puig, of the Society of Jesus, died in the early afternoon, at the age of 91, 72 years of religious life and 59 years of priesthood. That day the Immaculate Heart of Mary was commemorated, after the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The corpore insepulto funeral was held on Monday 21 in the chapel of the Borja Center of Sant Cugat, at the foot of the image of the Immaculate Conception, and was subsequently buried in the cemetery of the PP. Jesuits.
Since its beginnings, Polish history and culture is inherently intertwined with Christian religion, perhaps even more so than it is the case in many other European counters, where, in the current-day era, the processes of secularisation seem to have gotten further and developed quicker than in Poland.
The objective of this paper is to elucidate the content of the argument presented by the American philosopher William James (1842-1910) in his “Is Life Worthliving?”, a lecture given in 1895 at the Harvard Young Men’s Christian Association and published a few years later, in 1897, in the compilation entitled The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy [La voluntad de creer y otros ensayos en filosofía popular].
The researcher interested in the figure of Antonio Millán-Puelles needs to have a rigorous and agile bibliographic tool. The most recent was published in 2006 by J. Mª Garrido and J. J. Escandell, but it is now obsolete. The time that has passed since then and, in particular, the investigations derived from the preparation of the Complete Works of the Cadiz philosopher, have led to the discovery of some writings that did not appear in it, as well as to detect errors in that 2006 list.
