Hart replies to Feser’s first reply here. Feser’s reply to Hart’s reply can be found by clicking on the second link in the above paragraph.
(This post also appears at our AMU philosophy department blog.)
]]>This is just a note to let you know that the global / international graduate course on Aquinas which Andrea Robiglio and I taught with Luis López-Farjeat in Fall 2012 using video lectures and weekly live video meetings has now been ‘published’ via the Marquette University Library e-Publications initiative See http://epublications.marquette.edu/phil_fac/267/.This includes course description, complete syllabus with required primary and secondary literature for each class meeting, optional recommended additional literature, bibliographical resources, special questions or issues, five translations from Arabic and Latin from the Liber de causis, Albert’s De homine, and Aquinas’s Commentary on the Sentences, and more. The syllabus has links for each week to the 13 hrs of video lectures.We are doing something similar but improved technically and pedagogically (we believe) for Fall 2013. See http://academic.mu.edu/taylorr/Aquinas_Fall_2013_MU_KUL/Course_Description.html, which is under development.
I posted on this study last week at the AMU philosophy department blog. Since I assume that we do not have the same traffic here as we do there I thought I would also put up a post here.
Among the questions that Bourget and Chalmers have tried to answer are the following: Are more philosophers theists or atheists? Are more physicalists or non-physicalists? Are the majority of philosophers deontologists, consequentialists, or virtue ethicists?
You can find a draft of the paper at PhilPapers.org. It is is titled “What Do Philosophers Believe?” The authors admit that it might be misleading to say that their work is a report on the beliefs of a representative group of all philosophers. Indeed, their paper might be more aptly called “What Do Analytic Philosophers Believe?” Bourget and Chalmers explain:
It should be acknowledged that this target group has a strong (although not exclusive) bias toward analytic or Anglocentric philosophy. As a consequence, the results of the survey are a much better guide to what analytic/Anglocentric philosophers (or at least philosophers in strong analytic/Anglocentric departments believe) believe than to what philosophers from other traditions believe. We conceived of the survey that way from the start, in part because that is where our own expertise lies. It is also not clear how much can be learned by requiring (for example) specialists in Anglocentric philosophy to answer questions drawn from Asian philosophy or vice versa. Furthermore, attempting full representation of philosophers worldwide from all traditions would require linguistic resources and contact details that were unavailable to us.
I suppose this narrow sampling is forgivable. With more funding and assistance they might have been able to do something more comprehensive. While I found the paper informative, a friend of mine, who read it at my suggestion (and who reads much more analytic philosophy than I do), told me that he found it uninformative. Oh well, you can judge for yourself.
]]>]]>Looking to accelerate your Latin and translate the work of memorization into ready comprehension? Learn to speak Latin as a foundation for more fluent reading ability by participating in the Summer Latin Intensive course at Ave Maria University this summer from Monday June 17th - Saturday July 6th, 2013.
The course uses a methodology tailored to teach Latin as a spoken language, reintroducing you to Classical Latin through the development of a spoken vocabulary, communicative exchange, and comprehension of simple narratives. Careful attention is given to detailed training in grammar, but the end result is a vastly improved ability to read Latin. The course runs three weeks with two excursions on Saturdays conducted entirely in Latin.
It is ideally suited to students who have already studied the language for one to three years, but who want to improve their reading skills dramatically through practice in the active use of Latin. Participants will be given the chance to develop their speaking and comprehension skills through formal classroom work and in settings outside of class, including field trips. Students are strongly encouraged to speak Latin exclusively with one another and with the instructor for the duration of the course. Discussion of complex grammatical points will occasionally require the use of English in the classroom, but only as need dictates.
While the course is suitable for college students and even advanced high-school students in their first three years of Latin, beginners are encouraged to contact us.
A Koine Greek course is also being offered by Dr. Christophe Rico, author of Polis, a textbook designed to teach Koine Greek as a spoken language. The Greek course is being offered Thursday June 13th - Wednesday July 3rd, 2013.
The deadline for registration for either course is June 1.
Visit http://classics.avemaria.edu/polis_greek_and_latin/ for more details or contact Dr. Bradley Ritter at bradley.ritter@avemaria.edu.
The Catholic University of America Press is pleased to announce that we are taking on the distribution functions for Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University.
Sapientia Press exists to foster the academic mission of Ave Maria University and produce scholarly books aimed at enhancing and promoting Catholic scholarship.
Please enjoy a special 20% discount on all Sapientia Press titles.
To order call 1-800-537-5487 or order online. Use code: CZ138 from May 1, 2013 - May 31, 2013
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The site seems to have been around since 2004 but it has only recently completed the project of translating Aquinas’s opera omnia. The translation of Aquinas’s commentary on the second book of the Sentences, for example, was completed in 2011.
Many of the translations have not appeared in French before (e.g., the complete commentary on the Sentences) and others are new French translations made especially for the site (e.g., De ente et essentia).
]]>The press release issued by CUA Press reads as follows:
]]>This spring CUA Press will become the distributer for titles published by Sapientia Press, the academic publishing house of Ave Maria University.
As a publisher of books aimed at enhancing and promoting Catholic scholarship, Sapientia Press and CUA Press have similar missions.
“We are delighted to take on the distribution functions for Sapientia Press. Their books —including titles by such well-known authors as Cardinal Avery Dulles and Alice von Hildebrand — show the same commitment to high-quality scholarship and are in the same subject areas as those of the CUA Press,” said Trevor Lipscombe, director of CUA Press.
“We look forward to disseminating Sapientia titles worldwide, enabling them to reach new audiences and thus increase their role in the New Evangelization.”
In explaining the advantages of partnering with other academic presses in this way, Brian Roach, marketing manager for CUA Press says, “we have a similar distribution agreement with two other presses — the American Maritain Association and the Institute for Psychological Sciences.
“With worldwide distribution and independent sales reps as well as a continually expanding presence in the digital space, CUA Press is well positioned to publicize and promote the valuable scholarship produced by these smaller presses, and give them entrée to markets that they would have trouble entering on their own.”
Created in 1939, CUA Press is Catholic University’s academic publishing house and a founding member of the Association of American University Presses. It publishes scholarly works and serious studies of general interest in history (ecclesiastical and secular), literature and languages, philosophy, political theory, and theology. The press publishes 40 new titles annually and is widely recognized for the publication of the Fathers of the Church series.
In his introductory notes Zorcolo says that his work builds upon the 1937 bibliography, also published in the Angelicum, put together by Pio Ramirez and students of studium generale of Le Saulchoir (which, I believe, was still in Belgium at that time).
Zorcolo divides the bibliography into four categories: (a) books (Zorcolo writes “Opere”), (b) articles, (c) book reviews, and (d) prefaces.
He also includes in the bibliography the known translations of Garrigou-Lagrange’s writings at that time.
The quality of the scan is somewhat poor but if you use the zoom function, you should be able to read it without trouble.
]]>Everybody is talking these days about what to do to reform the Roman curia. George Weigel has offered some suggestions of his own at First Things. One change he would like to make is to replace Italian — the common language of curialists — with English. Here are some excerpts from Weigel’s remarks:
Thus a first, specific suggestion for curial personnel reform: strict term limits, by which men and women of proven ability from all over the world would come to Rome to serve the universal Church for a maximum of ten years before returning to their local churches. Service in the Roman Curia would cease being a way to punch one’s ticket for higher ecclesiastical office; it would be a sacrifice.
Then there is language. It’s sometimes assumed that the majority of curialists will always be Italian, which means that Italian-language competence is essential to effective curial service. But why must the majority of curial workers be Italians? The U.N. draws its personnel from New York, Geneva, Vienna, and other locales from all over the world; English is the working language; why should the Roman Curia be different? Because it’s in Rome?
I included the first paragraph to give the background for the second. Here are some rambling thoughts on Weigel’s proposal…
Yes, it’s precisely because the curia is in Rome that the language should be Italian. It would be rather impractical for non-English, non-Italian speakers who come to work in the curia to have to learn both languages.
But why, you might ask, should they learn both? Why should they learn Italian if their work is to be conducted in English, as per the Weigel reform? Because they are in Rome and the inhabitants of Rome — I know this may come as a shock — speak Italian.
True, many Romans do speak English, but those who do speak it do not always speak it very well (or gladly). Also many of the signs in the Eternal City are not in English (e.g., senso unico), the newspapers are not in English, and, generally (and understandably) life in Rome is not lived in English.
Were the curia to adopt English as its official language (and its staff not trained in Italian), we would have every reason to believe that it would become a linguistic and cultural ghetto. The non-Italian speakers in the curia would assimilate to Italian life only with difficulty, which would likely contribute to a negative experience during their time there. Ten years in Rome with a minimal Italian vocabulary? Sounds dismal.
Furthermore, not knowing the local tongue, the apostolates these curial workers could undertake in the evenings and on the weekends would be quite limited.
There is also the perception of American cultural imperialism. Not all Europeans resent that the culture and language of the U.S. have been for many years slowly eroding native cultures of the Old World but many people do (and perhaps should). Undoubtedly, many people would likewise see (whether rightly or not) the curia’s adoption of English as its official language as just the latest outrage in the McDonaldization of Europe (and the globe). If respect for the curia is already low in Europe, this may lower it further. The McCuria?
So why not have the curial workers learn Italian along with English? I said a moment ago that it would be impractical. Two obvious problems on this front are the extra expense and the extra time spent learning a new language. The extra expense and time could easily be avoided — just keep Italian as the language of the curia.
But even if the curialists did learn Italian too, that would not necessarily erase the probable resentment that would arise over the fact that this body’s official language — this important body located in one of the great centers of Italian culture — is English.
Now, Weigel may say that I’m thinking too narrowly here. The Church’s horizon isn’t Rome, Italy, or Europe, but the world. Thus, he goes on:
[T]he Roman Curia exists to support the bishop of Rome in his mission as universal pastor of the Church and its personnel should reflect that global mission—as should its working language. It will take some time to change this, to be sure. But the first head of a curial department who insists on conducting the department’s business in the world language—English—will be doing the entire Church a big favor by modeling a different, more universalist approach to running the engine room.
First, rhetorically speaking, for an American to declare that English is the “world language” and, on this account, to urge a particular group to learn it, well, that’s just a bad move. Whether or not it’s true that English is the “world language,” Weigel will certainly come off as an arrogant Yankee to a lot of people (— I’m only talking about impressions, obviously not facts).
Second, is Weigel trying to drop a not-so-subtle hint to the Holy Father? I have heard — although I do not know this for a fact — that Jorge Bergoglio speaks very little English. Well, he better start learning if he wants to be able to communicate with the “new curia.”
Third, papal and curial documents are already regularly translated into English — and many other languages — although admittedly the Vatican could do a better job about getting all of the documents into the various languages spoken by Catholics and in a more timely manner.
Of course the Church has a universal mission. But the majority of the globe and the majority of Catholics do not speak English and perhaps never will. The most important communication that the curia has with the rest of the Church and the world are the many official documents the dicasteries publish. But, as I have just mentioned, these are already translated into many languages (but, again, there is inconsistency and a better job could be done with it). Should we now translate them only into English since it is the “world language”?
Do you want to speak to someone in the curia but you don’t speak Italian? Rome is full of interpreters. Would you prefer to speak to the person without an interpreter? If you plan to make this a regular habit, learn Italian.
If there are problems with the curia, the language isn’t one of them. But it could become one of them if English were made the official language, or so it seems to me. If Mr. Weigel wants affirmative action for non-Italians in the curia, fine. No problem there. But the non-Italians can learn Italian just as their predecessors.
Don’t get me wrong. I love English. It’s my mother tongue. But imposing it on the Roman curia as an integral part of a reform effort seems silly, not to mention deleterious. And don’t get me wrong about George Weigel either. He is an intelligent man, a faithful Catholic, and I agree with him on many things — but not this one.
(At the risk of seeming to adopt a double standard, I would say that Latin is not subject to all of the same considerations. It has a privilege of historical provenance that English does not and never will have. It will always, in some fashion, be “the Church’s language” even if it was never in the past nor will be in the future a “world language.”)
]]>Since our Xerox machines these days also double a massive scanners-to-PDF creators, I scanned the thing to PDF files, combined them into one PDF in Adobe Acrobat, cleaned up, rotated and deskewed the file, and saved it here on Thomistica.net.
This handout is a perfect tool for those who need to consult Italian texts in journals, etc., but don’t have the time to take a full course. Download the 8Mb file here.
A blessed Holy Week to all.
]]>January 28, the date of the transfer of Aquinas’s relics to the Dominican church in Toulouse in 1369, is the day on which his feast is observed in the so-called Ordinary Form of the Roman rite, i.e., the Mass according to the 1969 Missal.
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