The Witherspoon Institute's Fifth Thomistic Institute

This in, from Matthew O’Brien of the University of Texas:

The Thomistic Seminar is the Witherspoon Institute’s fifth-annual, week-long, intensive program for graduate students in philosophy. The seminar is devoted to exploring the intersection between analytic philosophy and the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition.

This year’s seminar, entitled “Aesthetics and Morality: Thomistic and Contemporary Philosophical Approaches,” will examine the relationship between aesthetics and morality, particularly with respect to the social aspects of human life. It will take place August 15 - 21, 2010 in Princeton, New Jersey.

Recent years have seen intense philosophical work on the nature and content of morality; addressing issues in normative ethics, moral theory and metaethics. There has also been a growth of serious work on nature and value of the arts, and on the role of the aesthetic as a constituent of human well-being. The seminar will draw together some of these themes and issues, bringing to bear both contemporary ideas and aspects of the theories of value and practice to be found in the writings of Aquinas.

It has been increasingly common to see Aquinas cited or discussed by contemporary moral philosophers outside the Thomistic tradition, such as Philippa Foot, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Rawls, Thomas Scanlon, Michael Thompson, and David Wiggins, but to date aestheticians in the analytical tradition have neglected ideas and figures from the pre-Kantian period. Yet there is in Aquinas the makings of theories of beauty, art and normative aesthetics that are of intrinsic interest and which also suggest ways in which aesthetics and ethics might be interwoven in a general account of value and practice, both personal and social.

Faculty

John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy, University of St. Andrews
Thomas Hibbs, Professor of Ethics and Culture, Baylor University
Anthony O’Hear, Professor of Philosophy, University of Buckingham
Candace Vogler, Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago

Past student participants in the seminar have hailed from top-tier graduate philosophy programs in North America and Europe. Past faculty participants have included Nicholas Rescher (Pittsburgh), Michael Gorman (Catholic University), John Haldane (St. Andrews), Candace Vogler (Chicago), John O’Callaghan (Notre Dame), Robert Koons (UT, Austin), Gavin Lawrence (UCLA), Mark Murphy (Georgetown), David Solomon (Notre Dame), Alexander Pruss (Baylor), David Oderberg (Reading), Gyula Klima (Fordham), Anselm Mueller (Trier), Jeff McDonough (Harvard) and Thomas Pink (King’s College, London).

Seminar Participants

This seminar is open to graduate students in philosophy. Applications from students in other disciplines (e.g. theology, political theory, and art history), who nonetheless have a background in philosophy, will also be considered.

Seminar Facilities

This seminar will take place on the campus of the Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. Seminar participants will be provided with room and board for the duration of the seminar.

Visit http://www.winst.org/ethics_and_university/seminars/philosophy/index.php for application information. The application deadline has been extended to April 15, 2010.

PAST and Doctor Communis

Here is some news on the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas.

The Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas (PAST) will hold its X Plenary Session in the Vatican on 18-20 June 2010 on the topic The Human Animal: Procreation, Education and the Foundations of Society. The speakers will include Kevin Flannery SJ, John Haldane, Reinhard Hütter and John O’Callaghan.

For more on the Pontifical Academy, follow this link to their new website.

As a follow-up on our report on last year’s Plenary Session (see here), we have acquired the proceedings of the sessions of 2009 and 2008.

Doctor Communis 2009: Saint-Thomas’s Interpretation of Saint Paul’s Doctrines

• Rodríguez, Pedro: Del año paulino al año sacerdotal (20-22)
• Martínez García, Enrique: In memoriam Francisco Canals Vidal (23-25)
• Cordero Lanza DiMontezemolo, Andrea: L’anno paolino ed i programmi svolti nella Basilica di San Paolo fuori le Mura (26-38)
• Hütter, Reinhard: “In hope he believed against hope” (Romans 4:18) (39-59)
• DiNoia, Joseph A.: Christ brings freedom from sin and death (60-75)
• Biffi, Inos: Aspetti della figura di Cristo nel commento di Tommaso alla Lettera agli Ebrei (76-91)
• Rodríguez, Pedro: El “sacrum ministerium” en los comentarios de Santo Tomás al “Corpus paulinum” (92-113)
• Ocáriz, Fernando: L’adozione filiale e il mistero di Cristo (114-130)
• Elders, Leo J.: The “Lecturae” of St. Thomas Aquinas of the Letters of the Apostle Paul to the Philippians and Colossians (131-149)
• Wielockx, Robert: Au sujet du commentaire de saint Thomas sur le “Corpus paulinum” (150-184)
• Waldstein, Michael: The spousal logic of justification (185-197)
• Ferrara, Ricardo: “Gratia secundum se”. La dottrina della grazia nel commento alla Lettera ai Romani (198-218)
• Sánchez Sorondo, Marcello: Grace as “new creation” (219-236)

Doctor Communis 2008: The “Praeambula Fidei” and the New Apologetics

• Zdybicka, Zofia J., Commemorazione di Mieczysław Albert Krąpiec, O.P.(18-20)
• Levada, William J., The importance of a new apologetics (21-28)
• McInerny, Ralph M., Newman and natural religion (29-37)
• Wippel, John F., Philosophy and the preambles of faith in Thomas Aquinas (38-61)
• Brock, Stephen L., Realistic practical truth (62-75)
• Glendon, Mary A., Apologetics in the public square (78-86)
• Morerod, Charles, Le nouvel athéisme évolutionniste et les praeambula fidei (87-112)
• Cottier, Georges, Scientisme et apologétique (113-124)
• Biffi, Inos, Per una nuova coscienza della centralità di Cristo nella cultura contemporanea (125-135)
• Bruguès, Jean L., Moral convictions and evangelical ethics (136-144)
• Livi, Antonio, La teologia di oggi ha bisogno di una nuova interpretazione filosofica della dottrina tommasiana dei “praeambula fidei” (151-175)
• Galeazzi, Umberto, La razionalità dei tommasiani “praeambula fidei” el il fideismo di K. Barth, convergente con i neopositivisti (176-200)
• Seidl, Horst, Apologetic theology as fruit of the encounter between Christian faith and metaphysics (201-208)

Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine 2010 in Wyoming

This in, from Peter Kwasniewski:

The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, founded by John Mortensen (recent recipient of a pontifical award), Jeremy Holmes, and Peter Kwasniewski, will be conducting its third annual Summer Program from May 24th to July 16th, 2010, in the town of Lander, Wyoming.  The theme of this summer is “Man on Pilgrimage to God: The Prima Secundae of the Summa theologiae.”  Serious students of Catholic theology: consider joining us as we plumb the depths of the Angelic Doctor’s most profound general treatment of moral theology, including the ultimate end of human life, the definition of the moral act in all its components, the concupiscible and irascible passions of the soul, the structure of the virtues both natural and supernatural, the goal of heroic sanctity put forth in the beatitudes, the gracious gifts of the Holy Spirit, law in its magnificent range of analogous forms (human, natural, eternal, revealed), and supernatural grace, the very foundation of specifically Christian morals.  In this eight-week summer program we will read nearly every treatise in the Prima Secundae — a rare and enviable opportunity to see the whole domain of morality as the Church’s greatest theologian conceived it.

For details, visit our website.

Journée Thomas d’Aquin for 2009 (December 5 2009)

In from Adriano Oliva, OP, praeses of the Leonine Commission, the announcement for this winter’s “Journée Thomas d’Aquin” in Paris. Dedicated to the memory of Louis-Jacques Bataillon, OP, the program is heavy on medieval preaching and the contributions of Fr Bataillon:

• Gilbert DAHAN (Paris) : Exégèse et prédication au moyen âge
• Nicole BÉRIOU (Lyon) : Le Père Bataillon et les « maîtres de la Parole » : des sermons de Thomas d’Aquin à l’histoire de la prédication médiévale
• Concetta LUNA (Pise) : Le Père Bataillon et le renouveau des études médiévales
• G. BERCEVILLE, M. BORGO, I. COSTA, R. IMBACH, A. OLIVA: Présentation de quelques ouvrages de philosophie et de théologie médiévales

A lovely PDF of the conference program, with details and notification of the new location for the conference, can be found here.

Upcoming ACPA Conference in New Orleans (November 13-15, 2009)

The American Catholic Philosophical Association’s (ACPA) upcoming conference in New Orleans is chock-full of fascinating papers and discussion, too many and too detailed to list here, save to say that philosophers from Aristotle to Aquinas, Scotus to Rawls are considered, debated, and resourced. Courtesy of Ed Houser of the Center for Thomistic Studies in Houston, however, are the programs for the conference in DOC (addendum) and PDF format.

Summer NEH Seminar on Free Will in Medieval Jewish Philosophy

From Jonathan Jacobs (Colgate University [Faculty Page]):

I want to bring to your attention a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar taking place in 2010. The topic is “Free Will and Human Perfection in Medieval Jewish Philosophy.” I will be directing the five-week seminar, beginning on June 27 and concluding on July 31. I invite you to apply to be a participant. There will be a total of sixteen participants, which may include up to two graduate students. It is not necessary to be a specialist in the seminar’s topical area or even to be in the discipline of Philosophy. Our main aim is to have an engaged, energetic group, exploring the issues in depth. This should help the participants to develop their own scholarship and curricular plans. Applicants may come from Philosophy, Religious Studies, Medieval Studies, Theology, Jewish Studies, and other areas. The focus will be on philosophical topics and texts but the treatment of them should prove to be valuable and interesting to scholar/teachers in many fields.

Jonathan Jacobs, Richard J. and Jean Head Professor of Philosophy,
Director, Center for the Arts &
Humanities, Colgate University

See the attachment for more.

Thomism and Anti-Thomism in the Middle Ages

The universities of Paris and Freiburg-Germany have initiated an exciting and ambitious new research-project entitled ‘Thomism and Anti-Thomism in the Middle Ages’. The project, directed by Ruedi Imbach and Maarten Hoenen, will focus its attention on medieval and Renaissance-interpretations of Aquinas and continues the results published in two thematic fasciculi of the Revue Thomiste 2008.

A first conference is scheduled for January 28-30 in Freiburg on “German Thomism 13^th-14^th Century.”

While Paris will focus on the 13^th-14^th Century, Freiburg will investigate the 15^th Century. The project in Paris includes among others an investigation of the authenticity of the opuscula De principio individuationis, De natura materiae, De natura accidentis, De natura generis, De instantibus, De quattuor opposites, an edition of the Metaphysics-commentary by Humbertus de Prulliaco (†1298), a partial edition of the Summa by Nicholas of Strassbourg and investigations on Dietrich of Freiberg.

The German section envisages a edition of the Tractatus ostendens concordiam Thomae Aquinatis et Alberti Magni by Gerardus de Monte, dating from 1456, an investigation of the Concordantiae-literature esp. Peter of Bergamo and the publication of a Companion to Renaissance Thomism to appear at Brill (Leiden) as the first volume of a new series on Thomism.

Full descriptions (in French and German) of the project can be found on its website.

Aquinas and the Arabs Session at Kalamazoo

Next Spring's medieval conference at Kalamazoo, MI, will have one session reserved for the theme of "Aquinas and the Arabs," sponsored by the Aquinas and the Arabs International Working Group (led by Marquette's University's Richard Taylor [link to site]). He will have a paper on the following, "Natural Epistemology in Aquinas's Earliest Major Work: the Roles of Avicenna and Averroes" (description scraped from an e-mail from Taylor):

This short presentation is focused on the roles of Avicenna and Averroes in the account of natural human knowing in Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Particular attention is given to the accounts at In 2 Sent. d. 3, q. 3, a. 1 (sol.: in intellectu vero humano similitudo rei intellectae est aliud a substantia intellectus, et est sicut forma ejus; unde ex intellectu et similitudine rei efficitur unum completum, quod est intellectus in actu intelligens; et hujus similitudo est accepta a re) and at In 2 Sent. d. 17, q. 2, a. 1 (sol.: anima habet uirtutem per quam facit species sensibiles esse intelligibiles actu, que est intellectus agens, et habet uirtutem per quam est in potentia ut efficiatur in actu determinate cognitionis a specie rei sensibilis facta intelligibili in actu; et hec uirtus uel potentia dicitur intellectus possibilis. Et harum duarum uirtutum operationes sequitur omne nostrum intelligere, tam principiorum quam conclusionum) and the sources for these teachings in Avicenna's De Anima and Metaphysics and in Averroes' Long Commentary on the De Anima. The paper indicates precisely how Aquinas cobbled together his understanding of the process of human apprehension of intelligibles from selected texts and teachings from these thinkers of the Arabic / Islamic tradition.

Call for papers on Aquinas at Kalamazoo 2010

R.E. Houser of the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St Thomas (Houston, TX), in conjunction with John F. Boyle of the University of St Thomas (St. Paul, MN), have released their annual call for papers for sessions at Kalamazoo, 2010, where there will be six sessions in total devoted to Aquinas. Papers on all features of Aquinas's doctrine are welcome, but the proposals for papers are due on September 13^th. More can be found in this handout (PDF/DOC).

Boston Colloquy in Historical Theology for Summer 2009

By way of Boyd Taylor Coolman, the line-up for this summer's Boston Colloquy in Historical Theology, which will run Friday and Saturday, July 31-August 1, 2009.

Patristic

• Robert Wilken, University of Virginia, "The Nature of Historical Theology"
• Charles Stang, Harvard Divinity School, "Pseudo-Dionysius"
• Steven Hildebrand, Franciscan University of Steubenville, "Basil the Great's Trinitarian Theology"
• Ute Possekel, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox, "Ephrem the Syrian"

Medieval

• Stephen F. Brown, Boston College, "University Sermons on Lombard's Sentences"
• Paul Rorem, Princeton Theological Seminary, "Hugh of St. Victor"
• Giulio Silano, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, "Gratian and the Theologians"

More information can be found on the organization's website.

Upcoming conference: Renewing the Face of the Earth: The Church and the Order of Creation (St. Paul, MN)

From the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity (at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota), comes a call for papers (PDF) for their conference, “Renewing the Face of the Earth: The Church and the Order of Creation,” to be held in St. Paul on October 29-31, 2009. Here is the announcement:

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

It would be an understatement to say that the natural environment is a current topic of concern in contemporary culture. And yet, though many may share in the concern, little work has been done to arrive at a common framework for considering possible solutions.

While a myriad of practical proposals have been aired in the public sector, this conference emerges from the conviction that more fundamental theological questions lie at the heart of the concern for our care of the earth, questions which the Catholic intellectual tradition is uniquely equipped to address: What is responsible stewardship? What is the meaning, value and destiny of created goods? How does one situate the dignity of the human person vis a vis created things? And are there distinctive Catholic features to any authentic response?

The aim of the conference is to consider the significance of grasping anew the Catholic theological and philosophical principles which may be drawn upon to illuminate the problem o f the environment. We invite papers that bring the wisdom of our own intellectual heritage, especially that of St. Thomas Aquinas, to articulate an adequate vision of responsible stewardship, one that is coherent, meaningful and faithful.

The conference will be held at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in St. Paul, Minnesota. Paper proposals should be sent to Dr. Deborah Savage at pdsavage@stthomas.edu by June 1, 2009.

As the announcement indicates, there is a certain forefronting of the doctrine of Aquinas. The conference’s website is here.

The Leonine Commission and Marquette

Commission léonine – Bibliothèque du Saulchoir/«Aquinas and the Arabs Project» Marquette University (Paris – Milwaukee)

Séminaire de recherche sur «Thomas d'Aquin et ses sources arabes» (PDF)

27 mars 2009

• Richard C. TAYLOR (Marquette University, Milwaukee): The Role of Arabic / Islamic Philosophy in Thomas Aquinas's Conception of the Beatific Vision in his Commentary on the Sentences IV, d.49, q.2, a.1.
• Jean-Baptiste BRENET (Université de Paris X – Nanterre): L'image requise. Averroès et Thomas d'Aquin lecteurs de De anima 431a16-17.
• Rollen E. HOUSER (University of St. Thomas, Houston): How Br. Thomas Introduces the Principles of Avicennian Metaphysics into Sacra doctrina: In I Sent. d. 8, q.1.

28 mars 2009

• Cristina CERAMI (CNRS, UMR 7219, Paris): Physique et Métaphysique: l'ordo scientiarum chez Averroès et Thomas d'Aquin.
• Isabelle MOULIN (Université de Lyon): The Question of the Status of Secondary Causes in Three Commentaries on Peter Lombard's Sentences: Albert the Great, Bonaventura, and Thomas Aquinas.
• David B. TWETTEN (Marquette University, Milwaukee): Aquinas' Early Appropriation of Averroes: The Contra Gentiles' Reading of the Physics.

Les séances auront lieu à la Bibliothèque du Saulchoir, Salle Saint Thomas, 43bis rue de la Glacière, Paris XIIIe (entrée libre). Ceux qui souhaitent prendre le repas sur place (15 Euro), devraient s'inscrire avant le 20 mars, en écrivant à : aoliva@commissio-leonina.org.