Kruse’s work, endowed with an interdisciplinary approach, tries to put the postwar poetry of Dámaso Alonso in dialogue with the mystical tradition. Thus, he achieves a novel rereading of the Madrid poet from his reception of the mystique and the Golden Age, with special attention to San Juan de la Cruz and Luis de Góngora.
We are pleased to present this book, which constitutes a biography of Pablo López Castellote, which includes, in addition to his life history, a compendium of his ideas on Christian education. A work, therefore, necessary and useful that is endorsed for having obtained the Joan Profitós pedagogical essay award in the 2016 edition that annually calls the foundation of the Escuela Pía of Catalonia.
Petrus Calo, one of the first biographers of Saint Thomas, tells that being just five years old our Dominican “asked his teacher anxiously and frequently: what is God?”. This question would accompany and, somehow, shape his whole life. Making this same question his own and from the hand of Saint Thomas, Rudi te Velde undertakes, in the work that we review, an investigation that seeks to deepen the truth about God. Although it is not a “recent” work, we find it interesting to comment on it because of the repercussion it has had and because it constitutes an habitual reference for those who study the De Deo uno treatise on Saint Thomas.
Heller was a jurist and political scientist (Teschen, 1891- Madrid, 1933), Austrian -of Jewish origin-, volunteer of the Emperor in the Great War and ordinary Professor in Frankfurt, a socialist militant, although faced with Marxism, owner of a rich baggage philosophical, who developed a theory that underlined the reality of social life; the intrinsic value of the state organization; the irreducibility of politics to law and the economy; the political nature of law and the legal nature of politics; and especially the centrality of the independence of the State in the international order.
“We have a habit of summarizing [the metaphysics of Saint Thomas] with the metaphysical expression of being, thus contrasting it with a metaphysics of the good or the one […]. But if we take into account the order of the act that divides the entity, it would be better to speak of a metaphysics of being and operation ”
The right of parents to educate their children has been discussed since ancient times. Thus, for example, Plato clearly subordinated parental education to the State, denying parents the right to choose their children’s teachers: “Parents will not be able to send their children to these teachers … because they belong less to their parents than to the city”.
On the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the encyclical Humanae Vitae I share the reflection to which the title of this Symposium invites us. I will consider the framework in which I understand that we must place this encyclical, the background and context in which it was published, and the social nature of the principles it supports.
The destruction of ethics today is achieved by considering it as human creation, by reducing its study to the human sciences (psychology, sociology) and by the principle that all interest (be it individual, be it social) is egoism. Moral experience is incompatible with this approach. Morality is part of the ontological structure of free human action. The denial of morality involves the destruction of man.
Wisdom and prudence (practical wisdom) are two intellectual virtues that have their subject in the rational faculty. These virtues are distinguished by their mastery and exercise. To ask which of them is superior is to try to answer the question about whether or not theoretical activity is inferior to practical activity. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and evaluate the arguments that Thomas Aquinas gives to solve this question.
Here, I examine the place of human friendship in moral life from the standpoint of Aristotle’s and Thomas Aquinas’ ethical conceptions. I focus especially on the question of friendship’s relationship to happiness as the ultimate goal. Friends are necessary for people, not only because of some desire or weakness, or just as an aid to better carry out the contemplative activity of which a happy life consists; but rather, as objects of contemplation in themselves. Through friends we can attain self-knowledge while at the same time taking pleasure in their existence and virtuous life.
This paper demonstrates the underlying assumptions of Germain Grisez’s critique of the perverted faculty argument. In the first place, it establishes what formulations of the principle Grisez considered in his criticism (those of Father Henry Davis) and what his arguments are. Afterward it establishes his assumptions: (a) a latent ethical logicism; (b) a pragmatist conception of choice and the good; (c) a mistaken metaphysics of being, the good and the theoretical and practical principles. It underlines John Dewey’s influence. Lastly, it defends the classical formulation of the perverted faculty argument and even its rendition by Father Davis.
The Aristotelian moral tradition affirms that the virtues are connected, which also implies that the moral character is a unit in which there is organization and hierarchy. Moral vices, on the other hand, are considered in this tradition to be essentially unconnected. However, especially in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, there is a certain connection between some vices. This connection can be considered in two ways: either by attending to the individual and his own inclinations, a perspective which cannot be the object of science; or by attending to the connection between the objects of the appetitive inclinations, which is a consideration that attends to connections per se between moral vices and which, therefore, can be the object of science. Of this second type Aquinas’ consideration of the capital vices.
The article seeks to explore the meaning and function of ordo rationis within Thomas Aquinas’ moral doctrine. Abundant and converging signs invite to recognize such notion, being a general principle that structures the Thomistic ethics in its totality. Conversely, the device of ordo rationis develops a rich heuristic function, since it allows a detailed and homogeneous understanding of numerous major themes of Thomistic ethics, including: the configuration of human acts and their moral specification, the classification of virtues on the basis of their mode of regulation, and the articulation of the precepts of the natural law in relation to virtuous excellence.
S. Pinckaers asked rhetorically: is St. Thomas’ moral doctrine Christian? The question was justified by the common accusation that Aquinas’ moral theology was more Aristotelian than evangelical. Such an accusation responds to a superficial reading of the doctrine of St. Thomas. The present article tries to show the supernaturality of one of the structuring elements of St. Thomas’ moral theology, the Evangelical Law or New Law. We can see its supernaturality in its interior nature due to the grace of the Holy Spirit, as well as in its content and motive of charity. On the other hand, this supernaturality is also evident when we see how Saint Thomas grasped it from the Holy Scripture, especially in one of its most decisive points: the interior character of the knowledge proper to the New Law.
In choice, Thomas Aquinas assigns an order of causality between the intellect and the will. Hence there arises a problem of interpretation, insofar as only the causality of the intellect is frequently affirmed. The article first addresses the theme of the moral object, considering “object” as a freely chosen behavior, a choice, according to the Summa Theologiae I-II and parallel texts. Then the relation of the object to the end is presented. Finally, the article discusses elective dynamism in actions, underlining the balance that must exist between the will and the intellect to be morally qualifiable.
