New volume in the Leonine Edition

The long awaited volume in the Leonine Edition, containing the sermons of St. Thomas and prepared by the late Fr. Louis-Jacques Bataillon OP, will be presented during a two-day conference at Le Saulchoir in Paris on 5-6 december 2013. The website of the Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques has the program.

The publisher of the Leonine Edition, Cerf, now has a 50% discount on the previous printed volumes of the Leonine Edition.

ACPA Meeting “Aristotle Now and Then” (November 1-3, 2013)

The conference schedule is now online for the 2013 annual meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. The conference, hosted by Marian University and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), will meet in Indianapolis and the theme this year is “Aristotle Now and Then”. Registration information is here. The conference has expanded its offerings, and there many satellite sessions on a variety of topics.

ACPA Meeting "Philosophy in the Abrahamic Traditions" (November 2-4, 2012)

The conference schedule is now online for the 2012 annual meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. The conference, hosted by Loyola Marymount University, will meet in Los Angeles and the theme this year is “Philosophy in the Abrahamic Traditions”. Registration information is here.

Call for Papers: International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 9-12, 2013)

The call for papers is out for the 48^th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI. This year’s conference will be held May 9-12^th, 2013. In addition to the many planned sessions on the thought of Thomas Aquinas, there are several sessions on philosophical and theological topics, including those on Boethius, Scotus, Cusanus, and the medieval Aristotelian tradition. The submission deadline for paper proposals is September 15^th, 2013. 

International Thomistic Philosophy Conference in Chile

This July 4-6 the Universidad Santo Tomás in Santiago, Chile is hosting the “1st International Congress on Thomistic Philosophy,” which is taking as its topic: “The Person: Divine, Angelic, Human.” The gathering will be held at the university’s main campus in Santiago.

Here is the list of invited speakers:

Eleonore Stump, University of Saint Louis

Eudaldo Forment, Universitat de Barcelona

Lluis Clavell, President of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas

Tomás Melendo, Universidad de Málaga

Enrique Alarcón, Universidad de Navarra

John Knasas, University of Saint Thomas (Houston)

Antonio Amado, Universidad de los Andes

Juan Antonio Widow, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez

Félix Adolfo Lamas, Universidad Católica Argentina

Fernando Moreno, Universidad Gabriela Mistral

Vincenzo Benetollo, O.P., President of the Società Internazionale Tommaso d’Aquino (SITA)

The deadline for proposals for contributions is May 31. They can be sent to cet@santotomas.cl.

You can find out more information about the congress — in Spanish, Italian, and English — online at the congress’s webpage.

2012 ACPA Meeting Call for Papers: Philosophy in the Abrahamic Traditions

The next meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association will be November 2-4, 2012 in Los Angeles, hosted by Loyola Marymount University. The theme of the conference is “Philosophy in the Abrahamic Traditions”:

Classical and Post-Classical Philosophy in the Greek tradition played powerful roles in the formation of philosophical, scientific and theological thought produced in the religious and cultural milieux of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The scriptures, theologies and fundamental concerns of these Abrahamic religious traditions have reciprocally enriched the development of both religious thought and secular philosophy and science, by prompting ethical, metaphysical and epistemological questions that have continued to challenge philosophers from the time of Philo up to the present day. While political conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries have led to a public emphasis on distinctions and differences among these faiths, the history of philosophy shows over the centuries that thinkers of each tradition share in the common purpose of seeking to reconcile the principles and insights of their beliefs with the truths of secular natural reason. Through argument and counter argument philosophers and theologians have engaged their peers and predecessors inside and outside their own faith traditions, in order to advance to more and more sophisticated and penetrating analyses of faith principles, philosophy, and truth. For our 2012 meeting I propose that we take the occasion to enter into the same sorts of engagements within and across specific historical and religious boundaries, without topical restriction, so that we may come to better understand the richness of our own tradition and the commonalities of thinkers of the religions of the Abrahamic traditions.

Papers in any area of philosophy are also considered. The deadline for electronic paper submissions has been extended to April 12, 2012. The conference website is here, and paper submission guidelines are here.

American Catholic Philosophical Association Annual Meeting on “Science, Reason and Religion” (October 28-30, 2011)

This year the ACPA meeting will be in St. Louis, on the theme “Science, Reason and Religion,” hosted by St. Louis University. The conference program and satellite session schedule are now online. The Aquinas Medal will be awarded to Jorge J. E. Gracia, who will present “Does Philosophy Have a Role to Play in Contemporary Society? The Challenges of Science and Culture.” The four plenary speakers are: 

• John Cottingham, “Confronting the Cosmos: Scientific Rationality and Human Understanding.”
• Michael Ruse, “Making Room for Faith: Does Science Have Limits?”
• John F. Haught, “Darwin, Faith and Critical Intelligence.”
• Dominic J. Balestra, “Galileo’s Legacy: Getting the Relationship In-Between Scientism and Literalism Right.” 

As usual, there will be several talks on the philosophical thought of Aquinas in the program and satellite sessions. Registration information for the conference can be found here.

Gilles Emery, OP, to speak at Lumen Christi Institute (UChicago)

Fr Gilles Emery, OP, is a guest this spring of the Lumen Christi Institute at the University of Chicago, where he will be giving two public talks, listed below: 

Wednesday, April 27, 4:30pm
“The Dignity of Being a Substance”
Swift Hall, Common Room
1025 East 58th Street, Chicago IL (link)

Thursday, April 28, 7:00pm
“A Carnal Love of Concepts or a Work of Mercy? The Intellectual Life and the Dominican Vocation”
Social Sciences 122
1126 East 59th Street, Chicago IL (link)

More on the 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, MI May 12-15, 2011)

I previously noted the high number of presentations on Aquinas for this year’s Congress. I should have mentioned also the wide range of Thomistic topics. Here are the papers directly on Aquinas or the history of Thomism:

Thursday, May 12

• Romans and the Summa: Exploring the Scriptural Foundations of Aquinas’s Question on Merit (I–II.114.1–3) (Charles Raith, Honors College, Baylor Univ.)
• The Changing Identification of a Methodological Prius in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae (Richard Nicholas)
• Analogical Science in Aquinas’s Five Ways (Alexander W. Hall, Clayton State Univ.)
• Job in the Sentences Commentaries of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas (Franklin T. Harkins, Fordham Univ.)
• Natural Law and Human Nature from Augustine and Aquinas to Francisco de Vitoria and Villegaignon: Adams Rib, Cannibalism, and Otherness (Toy-Fung Tung, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY)
• Moral Subjectivity as the Basis of Self-Cognition in Thomas Aquinas’s Thought (Magdalena Plotka, Univ. Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego w Warszawie)
• Aquinas on the Role of Bishops in the Mendicant Controversy (Hui Hui, Peking Univ.)
• Aquinas on Natural Law and Virtue Ethics (Melissa Moschella, Princeton Univ.)
• The Distention of “Mens” and the Unity of Consciousness in Augustine and Aquinas (Therese Scarpelli Cory, Seattle Univ.)
• Augustine, Thomas, and the Memory of Things Sensed (Jamie Spiering, Benedictine College)
• Thomistic Self-Knowledge and Avicennian Medicine (Kevin White, Catholic Univ. of America)

Friday, May 13

• The Doctrine of Transcendentals and Aquinas’s De veritate: A Comparative Analysis of Lawrence Dewan and Jan Aertsen (Nathan R. Strunk, Boston Univ.)
• On Aquinas’s Incorporation of Boethius’s Account of Being and Goodness (Tyler D. Huismann, Univ. of Michigan–Ann Arbor)
• Revisiting Owens’s Interpretations of Individuation in Aquinas (Gaston LeNotre, Catholic Univ. of America)
• Exoteric Sexism: Aristotle and Aquinas on Generation and Delayed Hominization (Samuel Condic, Univ. of St. Thomas, Houston)
• Love for Animals: Singer and Aquinas (Steve Jensen, Center for Thomistic Studies)
• Modernity, Tradition, and Society: Thomism and the Early Twentieth Century in the United States (Markus Faltermeier, Ludwig-Maximilians-Univ. München)
• Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Gregory of Palamas on the Simplicity of God (James Carey, St. John’s College)
• Thomas Aquinas on the Will’s Self-Motion (Thomas M. Osborne, Jr., Center for Thomistic Studies)
• Divine Causality and Human Freedom in Actions Caused by Grace (John Rziha, Benedictine College)

Saturday, May 14

• Aquinas and Rhetoric (Jennifer Constantine-Jackson, Univ. of Toronto)
• Saint Thomas and the Rabbis (Luis Cortest, Univ. of Oklahoma)
• Friar Thomas, the Apostle, and the Philosopher (Eric M. Johnston, Seton Hall Univ.)
• Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Rational Astrology (Scott Hendrix, Carroll Univ.)
• Divine Predilection and the Hierarchy of Created Natures (Francis Murphy, Univ. of Oxford)
• Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Proofs from Motion in Summa contra gentiles 1.13: Their Nature and the Function of the Nominal Definition (Michael G. Sirilla, Franciscan Univ. of Steubenville)
• Analogy and Relation (Steven A. Long, Ave Maria Univ.)
• Of Schoolrooms and Manuscripts: Seeing Aquinas’s Roman Commentary in Its Dominican Context (M. Michele Mulchahey, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies)
• Thomas’s Students and Precursors to His Lectura romana (Robert Barry, Providence College)
• The Holy Spirit as Divine Impulse: Aquinas’s Account of the Eternal Procession of Love in the Lectura romana (Paul Shields, Ave Maria Univ.)

Sunday, May 15

• Truth, Existence, and Aquinas’ Theory of Adequation (R. J. Matava, Georgetown Univ.)
• Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent on a Substance as the Immediate Principle of Its Operations (Simona Vucu, Univ. of Toronto)
• Thomas Aquinas, Godfrey of Fontaines, and Henry of Ghent on the Soul’s Relationship to Its Powers (Adam Wood, Fordham Univ.)

A full schedule of papers is here.

Fordham's upcoming conference: the metaphysics of Aquinas and its modern interpreters

Fordham University’s Center for Medieval Studies is holding its 31st Annual Conference on Saturday, March 26 - Sunday, March 27, 2011, entitled “The Metaphysics of Aquinas and Its Modern Interpreters: Theological and Philosophical Perspectives.” I wrote about this conference and its call for papers last fall. The people already scheduled at the time, and now those who have joined them by having their papers included, form a veritable who’s who of contemporary North-American Thomistic scholarship. Here’s a recent description:

The Conference seeks to capitalize on the pluralism of Thomistic studies by inviting papers from a wide range of areas within the disciplines of philosophy and theology. Conference organizers welcome papers that may approach the topic from various branches of philosophy (such as the philosophy of religion, ontology, or natural theology), or various fields of theology, such as historical, fundamental, or systematic theology (including such areas as Trinitarian theology, Christology, or theological anthropology). Conference organizers also seek a representative variety of approaches to Aquinas and to Thomism, including those of the Dominican commentators, Transcendental Thomism, Existential Thomism, analytic philosophy, and postmodernism.

The Conference will include a special strand of sessions on what many regard as one of the central problems in the contemporary retrieval of Aquinas’s thought, namely, how to account for the mind’s knowledge of being qua being, or as this issue is often referred to, the discovery of the being of metaphysics.

The conference’s website sports more details about lodging and location, plus a listing of all the scheduled papers plus a handy PDF abstract for most of the papers.

International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, MI May 12-15, 2011)

When I heard the 2011 International Congress on Medieval Studies was shrinking to offer fewer sessions, I wondered how this change would affect the number of presentations on medieval philosophy and theology. To my surprise, this year’s offerings include a stunning number of talks on Aquinas: 33 on my count. Other presentations can be found on a wide range of medieval thinkers, including Scotus, Durandus, Henry of Ghent, Godfrey of Fontaines, Gerson, Boethius, Cusanus, Anselm, Bonaventure, Giles of Rome, Grosseteste, and Augustine. And, as I mentioned previously, the always-informative annual session “How to Get Published: Advice from Editors and Insiders” should not be missed.