Update to Albert the Great Bibliography

All-around superman, Jörgen Vijgen, has updated his Albert the Great Bibliography, and has sent me an updated PDF of the same.

More Albert news to follow.

Got 24 theses?

Proh dolor! I’m collecting items for the eventual posting of another 10 reasons I am not a Thomist, and came across this item/issue this morning. As a student of Aquinas in the post-neo-scholastic period I of course knew about the existence of the famous “24 Thomistic theses,” asserted by Pius X in 1914 to be the central theses of the philosophical teaching of Aquinas, especially in the metaphysical realm. My teachers, Fr James Weisheipl and Lawrence Dewan—the former a member of River Forest Thomism, and the latter a clarification, he would argue, of the Toronto Existential Thomistic school—both had referred to the theses now and again, and how the philosophical system “Thomism” was thought to be staked-out by these discrete tenets. Neither required us to think that our learning would fail to be ad normas sancti Thomae, however, should we fail to memorize the theses.

Fine. But it dawned on me today, as I was hunting through various websites, that I’m not sure that I could enunciate even one of those theses! Materially I could, of course, in the sense that I could probably name this or that Thomistic philosophical teaching, and provide some explanation and that, as it happens, a doctrine I mention might be among the 24 theses. But formally speaking, if you were to ask me something like, “what are the ____ (give number here) essential theses of Thomistic metaphysics?” I’d swing and miss.

Not to worry. Today I found some handy resources, in the form of Hugh McDonald’s Latin-based list and translation of the theses, and another rendering of the theses with footnotes to places in Thomas’s works where the thesis is found or substantiated. So at least I know what the theses are now.

Failure to know them certainly does not make someone a non-Thomist, but since I try to know as much as I can about the history of Thomas’s teaching (and its antecedents), it’s clear that I’ve got to do more study on this part of the history of Thomism.

Bernard Lonergan website

One of our most esteemed colleagues here in the Theology Department at Marquette University is Fr Robert Doran, SJ, a student of Bernard Lonergan’s, and together with Frederick Crowe, SJ, an editor of Lonergan’s works. Since he came here he has been working away in an effort to get a website devoted to Lonergan launched, which would house all the digital content of Lonergan that exists (video clips, audio, PDF’s, on and on). Well, that’s been done, and the site is stunning. Take a look at http://www.bernardlonergan.com. All you need do is register on the site (it’s free and easy), and then you can have access to the digital content. Fr Doran has the ambition to make much of Lonergan’s most famous material—and material of direct interest to Thomists—available on the site.

Podcasts of Summa-readings

From Robert Pasnau (and here), who directs us to LibriVox, a website with readings from public domain books (at least PD book in the USA) which includes—wait for it!—a section of readings from the Summa theologiae! Currently you'll find there readings from Questions 1-26 of the Prima pars, in a variety of formats. The reader is Jim Ruddy, using the older English Dominicans translation. Now you can listen to the Summa while you go for a jog, wash the dishes, or mow the lawn.

Video from MacIntyre conference in Dublin

Last fall I posted about a conference to take place in Dublin, devoted to honoring the 80^th birthday of Alisdair MacIntyre. The conference has come and gone. But one of my students, who received a scholarship to attend and participate in the conference, pointed out to me that the conference’s website has a video of MacIntyre’s lecture, delivered at the conference: “On having survived the academic moral philosophy of the twentieth century.” This is surely worth the 50-minute investment of your time to watch. I embed the video below:

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Look what I found.

At a recent symposium I met up with a colleague, and promised him some information that I had stashed away in my office back at Marquette. One of my dear teachers, James A. Weisheipl, OP, had written a nice piece about the history of the Thomistic revival, and I assured my friend that this would be a good resource for a project he was working on.

Life is full of surprises.

I got back to Milwaukee, and went hunting through my “Weisheipl” folders in my office, and came across the piece in question. The article is a small pamphlet of a presentation he gave, as it happens, here in Milwaukee in 1965: “Thomism as a Perennial Philosophy” (PDF/online). But as I pulled the pamphlet out of the folder, out popped two pictures of Fr Weisheipl that I hadn’t seen for at least a decade!

My immediate reactions:

1. “Huh? What the heck are these?”
2. “OMG! I haven’t seen these…in like…forever!”
3. “Gosh, he was a handsome devil!”

You can be the judge, of course. I’m estimating that the picture on the left dates from the early 1960’s, while the one on the right dates from the early 1980’s—I remember Fr Weisheipl sending me off with a copy of the second picture, asking me to send it to Catholic University of America Press, for use on the dust jacket of his Nature and Motion in the Middle Ages (permalink/publisher).

La vita é bella. Every now and then life makes you smile—even if you still have tears in your eyes.

Scotus Bibliography on-line

Thomas Osborne of the University of St. Thomas (Houston, TX), pointed me recently to Tobias Hoffman’s marvelous bibliography on Duns Scotus, “Duns Scotus Bibliography: 1950 to the Present,” which you can download from his CUA web site. The bibliography would run to 224 printed pages, and lists primary bibliography (the editions and translations), and secondary bibliography in all the scholarly languages.

Wow.

Leonine Commission website posts article on Fr Bataillon

The people at the Leonine Commission’s website have posted a short article on the life of Fr Louis-Jacques Bataillon, OP, who passed away on February 13th. The article also features a piercing photo of Fr Bataillon in what appears to be the Leonine Commission’s library at Saint-Jacques.

Leonine Commission links on the Dominican History Lectures

The site mentioned in my previous post also has other links of interest to the Thomas-scholar, such as a link on John of Vercelli (who was Master General of the Dominicans during Thomas’s lifetime), on the Doors of Santa Sabina in Rome (where Thomas lived in the middle-1260’s), and a general introduction to Dominic and the Dominican Order.

But the site also sports two videos of direct interest to Thomas-scholars interested in the state of Thomas’s texts (and therefore interested in the Leonine Commission). The first video (just below) is of Fr Hinnebusch explaining the history and nature of the Commission.

Fr Pawel Krupa, OP, of the Leonine Commission also has a video about the Leonine Commission (actually, it’s an audio interview with some pictures). It’s in French.

Dominican History...online

Shhhh. Don’t mind me. I’m over here downloading like a thief!

My “enabler” in this furtive enterprise is Bruce Marshall of Southern Methodist University, who recently told me two things:

1. There’s a website devoted directly to Dominican history: http://dominicanhistory.blogspot.com.
2. That the Dominicans have made available audio recordings of 25 lectures on Dominican History that Fr John F. Hinnebusch, OP, gave in the year 1986. You can see the list of lectures on a the “Lectures in Dominican History” channel on blip.tv (link). Each lecture lasts about one hour, and don’t let the near-quarter century distance fool you; the quality of the sound is just fine.

I’ve promptly downloaded all 25 lectures for my computer, and I’ll try to outfit them so that I can toss them into an iPod or MP3 player (in downloaded form they are in MOV format, Apple’s QuickTime Movie format).

Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas at Toulouse

I spotted this video clip on YouTube this morning. Add one more item to my life’s “to-do” list: spend Thomas’s feast day (January 28) at l’église des Jacobins in Toulouse!

Brian Mullady’s website

Brian Mullady, OP, who authored the important book in the 1980's, The Meaning of the Term "Moral" in St. Thomas Aquinas (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticano, 1986) (permalink) has been busy on the pastoral side of things, and now has a website the lists his activities. It sports some YouTube videos dealing with nature and grace, as well as a link to a catalogue of his CD's and writings.