The subject of the book is very explicit in its title, nothing suggestive but completely clear and direct. Behold, the author expresses, to those who want to read these pages, that we are today in the world involved in a global sexual revolution.
Gilles Emery, disciple of Fr. Jean Pierre Torrell and Fr. François von Guten, belongs to a generation of thinkers in the French-speaking world who are renewing their approach to Saint Thomas as the true master of theology for our times
During 2017-2018 was the seventy-ninth in the history of Fundación Balmesiana, and the fifteenth of Instituto Santo Tomás, and its route will be for the good memory significant events worth remembering.
I have been invited by Pablo Sánchez Garrido to evoke in this space of the Summer University the person and work of Professor Sánchez de Muniaín
Continuing the repertoire started four years ago, in this issue of Espiritu we collect the Hispanic Thomistic bibliography of 2017.
Dreams have always been a puzzling, because obscure and irrational-connoted topic; this being the reason why they were neglected for so long by learned scholars. Kant is one of the first to investigate the hidden traits and potentialities of the dream, in his anthropological-aesthetic work. The objective of this article is therefore to show how, according to Kant, dreams are a connection, as well as a scission between human consciousness and unconsciousness, and this through the hybrid factor of the I’s capacity of imagination (Einbildungsfähigkeit); to demonstrate Kant’s explanation of the inverse formation of oneiric representations in one’s unconsciousness and their inherent and unique strength and influence on the human soul, and thereby to render explicit the philosopher’s singular view of dreams as “involuntary poetry”, as opposed and/or connected to conscious poetry.
In the present work significant documents of the Pius XII’s Magisterium on psychology and psychotherapy are revised and commented. The Magisterium is rich in anthropological and moral teaching, which have to serve to the catholic pscyhologist as foundation and guide in his/her academic –teaching and research– and psychotherapeutic activity, as well as to the faculties of psychology of the catholic universities, in order to offer an adequate training to their students
The aim of this article is to make a critical analysis of the ethical-humanistic foundations of the Esthetic Theory of J. M. Sánchez de Muniaín (1909-1981). Firstly, we study the Aristotelian-Thomistic root of the author in connection with the Spanish aesthetic tradition of Milá and Fontanals and Menéndez Pelayo. It is also examined, subsequently, the Muniaín’s “aesthetic humanism”. The aim of the Muniaín’s approach is not only to find a better conceptualization of Beauty, but also to reach a path or way to living it.
We examine Cajetan’s De nominum analogia (On the Analogy of Names) under the light of ancient mathematics to determine whether it adheres to the scientific criteria and discoveries set by the authorities upon which it claims to rest. We conclude it contains three fundamental errors: an incorrect distinction between the predicable genus and the subject genus; disdain for virtual quantity; and the reduction of analogy to a mere form of denomination, uprooting it from demonstrative reasoning, which is its original and proper place in science.
Culture revolves against nature when nature is misunderstood: when nature ceases to be the place of development of the possibilities of the human, to become the prison of freedom of action; when does nature cease to be a place of possibility to become a place of impossibility?; what kind of culture begins to be coined, in relation to nature, from that moment on? How did this affect the cultural activity called economy?
The anthropological principles of liberalism presuppose that an individual has a possessive character. It means that a person possesses only specified characteristics and attributes which define them from the outside but do not constitute their nature. The essence of what a person is remains entirely independent from specific choices.
Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between rational knowledge and affective knowledge. Explaining the structure of judgment through connaturality Thomas shows the relation between constitutive nature and human characteristics. Connaturality is achieved gradually as a result of a repetition of simple acts. This means that a person’s choices constitute human nature to some extent.
This article tries to show the link between political prudence and nature from an aristotelian-thomistic approach. Different ways in which political prudence finds in nature a master, guide or model, are developed. In order to underline the originality of aristotelian-thomistic position, some maquiavelian and kantiant passages are selected and commented in which it is shown how modern political thought not just forgot the classical concept of prudence but also devirtuated the concept of nature in its relationship with politics. On the other hand, the aristotelian and thomistic tradition allows setting various connections between the natural and the political-prudential orders. Three of them are here underlined: the consideration on the familiar, social, and political life; the application to the political reflection of the principle ‘art imitates nature’; the principle of political realism according to which politics does not create the men but brings them from nature. Lastly, several passages from De Regno confirm the sense in which nature can be qualified as an indirect master of political prudence.
This article is limited to the discussion of some aspects of the «natural inclination to know the truth about God». In the first place it encompasses the general concept of natural inclination, in order to indicate that: 1) is compatible with satisfaction and frustration; 2) is conscious. This is why Freud’s doctrine of the unconscious is criticized. Secondly, it analyzes the sense of the knowledge of God whose natural inclination refers to. Finally, it is reminded that, according to St. Thomas, the natural knowledge of God is complemented with the knowledge of God through faith. Therefore, the article challenges Mr. Küng’s approach.
The Thomistic doctrine of natural law has been questioned by both theology and philosophy: it has been accused of constituting a pagan alternative to evangelical morality, of falling into the naturalistic fallacy by deducing values from facts, of assuming a metaphysical perspective that is unsustainable in modern times, of appealing to the obsolete concept of “human nature”, of denying the autonomy of the moral subject. This paper attempts to critically examine these accusations, based on some recent studies which, although they often come from very distant horizons from Thomism, show the consistency and usefulness of this doctrine.
This article argues that Alasdair MacIntyre’s approach to the natural law theory is not relativistic. It also focuses on MacIntyre’s explanation of moral disagreement from the perspective of natural law, which makes his theory defensible according to the modern standards. Finally, it contrasts the traditional approach to natural law with new theories, preferring the former to the latter.
