Lawrence Dewan, O.P’s, Aquinas Lecture at Marquette

My mentor in Toronto, Lawrence Dewan, OP, recently gave the 71^st annual Aquinas Lecture here at Marquette University (25 February 2007). The lecture, entitled St. Thomas and Form as Something Divine in Things, has already been published by Marquette University Press. Here’s the blurb from their page:

The 2007 Aquinas Lecture, St. Thomas and Form as Something Divine in Things, was delivered on Sunday, February 25, 2007, by the Reverend Lawrence Dewan, O.P., Professor of Philosophy at Dominican University College, Ottawa, and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, University of Ottawa.

Lawrence Dewan was born in North Bay, Ontario, Canada, studied philosophy at St. Michael’s College of the University of Toronto, and received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto in 1967. His Ph.D. Dissertation, begun under Étienne Gilson and completed under Rev. Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R., is entitled “The Doctrine of Being of John Capreolus: A Contribution to the History of the Notion of Esse.” After teaching in several universities, he joined the Dominican Order in 1973, received an M.A. in Theology from the Dominican University College, and was ordained in 1976.

Since 1974 Fr. Dewan has been a member of the faculty of Dominican University College, where he also served as Vice-President from 1984-1990. He has been Visiting Professor of Philosophy in the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies and the University of Toronto, from 1983-1989; in the School of Philosophy of the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., from 1990-1997; and in 2005 at the International Theological Institute, Gaming, Austria. In 2003 he was Lokuang Chair in Philosophy at the Institute of Scholastic Philosophy, Fu Jen Catholic University, Taipei, Republic of China.

Among other honors, Fr. Dewan has been President of the Canadian Jacques Maritain Association from 1988-1995, and President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, 1992-1993. In 1998 he was named Master of Sacred Theology by the Dominican Order. He was elected a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas in 1999.

In addition to his volume, Form and Being: Studies in Thomistic Metaphysics, and a forthcoming companion volume in ethics, Fr. Dewan has published over a hundred papers in the history of philosophy, metaphysics, natural theology, epistemology, and ethics. Among the titles are: “St. Thomas, Metaphysics, and Formal Causality,” “St. Thomas, Joseph Owens, and Existence,” “The Individual as a Mode of Being According to Thomas Aquinas,” “OBIECTUM: Notes on the Invention of a Word,” “St. Thomas and Pre-Conceptual Knowledge,” “St. Albert, the Sensibles, and Spiritual Being,” “Distinctiveness of St. Thomas’ Third Way,” “St. Thomas and the Divine Names.”

The lecture can be purchased for $15.00 from the MU Press website.

Metaphysical Themes 2.0

More than twenty years ago Fr. John Wippel compiled his articles into the volume Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1984), which served as the go-to source in English for the main features of Thomas's metaphysical teaching until his later The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000). Catholic University of America Press is now announcing that Fr Wippel has collected articles subsequent to those in his Metaphysical Themes I into a new volume, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas II. The contents of the volume—officially published today— are as follows:

1. The Possibility of a Christian Philosophy: A Thomistic Perspective
2. The Latin Avicenna as a Source for Thomas Aquinas's Metaphysics
3. Truth in Thomas Aquinas
4. Thomas Aquinas and the Axiom: "What is Received is Received According to the Mode of the Receiver"
5. Thomas Aquinas and the Axiom that Unreceived Act is Unlimited
6. Thomas Aquinas on Our Knowledge of God and the Axiom that Every Agent Produces Something Like Itself
7. Thomas Aquinas on Creatures as Causes of esse
8. Thomas Aquinas on Demonstrating God's Omnipotence
9. Thomas Aquinas on God's Freedom to Create or Not
10. Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics
11. Platonism and Aristotelianism in Aquinas

CUA Press has kindly provided a PDF file with further details about the book.

Get your Quaracchi editions of Franciscan writers

At a conference at Ave Maria University in Florida earlier this month Bruce Marshall informed me that the famous Quaracchi editions of Franciscan authors can be purchased on-line, and for a reasonable price. This would include the works of St. Bonaventure, the Summa fratris Alexandri, the Vatican edition of the works of Scotus, and other franciscana.

On Remigius of Florence

The Academic Press of the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) has just published this exciting work by Anto Gavric, a Dominican from Croatia. The author is also preparing the critical edition of Remigius’ De modis rerum which will appear in the prestigious series Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis. On his website you can find more on the author. Most exciting from an international perspective is the fact that he hosts this website focusing on Thomas Aquinas in Croatia.

Here is the text from the website of the editor in Fribourg:

Redécouvrant l’histoire du thomisme, le XXe siècle est marqué entre autres par un effort considérable de situer l’oeuvre et la doctrine de Thomas d’Aquin dans leur contexte historique propre, notamment par des études portant sur les premiers disciples de Thomas d’Aquin. Rémi de Florence est un témoin important pour notre connaissance de la transmission de la doctrine de Thomas d’Aquin et de son enseignement dans les studia dominicains en Italie, notamment à Florence. Notre travail met en évidence certains aspects de la doctrine thomasienne qui émergent du traité De modis rerum, considéré comme un traité de métaphysique. L’apport de Rémi de Florence devient incontournable pour la terminologie et l’histoire de la doctrine des transcendantaux. Le De modis rerum doit être sans conteste considéré comme le premier traité systématique sur les transcendantaux ou au moins être placé parmi les premiers. Il intègre dans ses réflexions philosophiques, logico-grammaticales, théologiques, de façon particulièrement remarquable, des recherches portant sur les multiples acceptions, divisions et définitions de termes. Le De modis rerum montre aussi que la question de Dieu a passionné les débats philosophiques médiévaux. En outre, on peut observer un troisième aspect de la pensée de Rémi, lorsqu’il évoque l’esse morale ou plus encore l’esse civile. Cet aspect s’avère d’une grande importance, car la philosophie politique apparaît comme une préoccupation très significative de la pensée du dominicain florentin: elle montre son intérêt pour l’actualité ainsi que son engagement actif dans la vie publique de son temps. Ces divers critères permettent de cerner la diversité de la pensée de Rémi de Florence ainsi que la spécificité de la philosophie médiévale.

354 pages, broché,
Fr. 64.- / EUR 39.50
ISBN 978-2-8271-1016-2

New book on the notion of ‘science’ in the 13th century

I love SISMEL, and the wide variety of things they publish. Their most recent newsletter announced a book on the notion of science in the 13^th century, based on commentaries on the Posterior Analytics, written by Amos Corbini. Of course there is a discussion of Aquinas. Here is the information:

Amos Corbini, La teoria della scienza nel XIII secolo. I commenti agli Analitici Secondi

Pagine/Pages : XX-347
Legatura/Binding : Brossura/Paperback
ISBN : 88-8450-222-5
Prezzo/Price : € 57,00

Il saggio prende in esame i commenti duecenteschi agli Analitici secondi, a partire da quello di Roberto Grossatesta che negli anni Trenta del secolo diede inizio alla tradizione esegetica: sono considerati sia i testi già noti (Grossatesta, Riccardo Rufo di Cornovaglia, Alberto Magno, Tommaso d'Aquino, Egidio Romano, Walter Burley), sia quelli in fase di studio o di edizione (Roberto Kilwardby, Rodolfo il Bretone), sia quelli inediti (Gerardo di Nogent, Giacomo di Douai, Simone di Faversham), ricostruendo un quadro completo e mai prima presentato. L'esposizione, che è organizzata intorno ai grandi temi della teoria scientifica aristotelica e tiene conto anche dei più recenti studi, corredata di un apparato di indici per una più agevole consultazione, permette di valutare le idee sulla conoscenza scientifica formatesi nella prima fase della recezione del testo aristotelico e pone le basi di un percorso di ricerca destinato ad essere completato con ulteriori indagini riguardanti i secoli successivi.

Blackfriars’ translation of the Summa to be republished

Thanks to Steve Perisho of Seattle Pacific University for this. Cambridge University Press will be republishing the whole 61 volume run of the Blackfriars edition of the Summa theologiae in paperback form this February (2007). This handy translation, begun in the 1960s and completed in the 1970s, had the singular merit of being a facing-page translation, with the Latin text of the Summa on the left-hand page, and the English translation being on the right-hand side. The division of the work into 61 volumes also meant each volume was compact and portable. It also sported interpretive notes at the bottom of the pages, as well as appendices of articles that helped one situate a given tractate in its doctrinal or historical context.

The only "issue" with the translations was that the whole series was done by many people (all skilled, of course). But if the Italian adage holds—traduttore traditore (the translator also betrays)—then the variety of hidden interpretations in the series is multiplied exponentially. That said, one always has recourse to the Latin text on the opposite page. Here's the blurb from the CUP website:

Summa Theologiae. The complete paperback set
60 volumes, plus one index volume

The Summa Theologiae ranks among the greatest documents of the Christian Church, and is a landmark of medieval western thought. It is regularly consulted by scholars of theology, philosophy and a range of related academic disciplines. This paperback reissue of the classic Latin/English edition first published by the English Dominicans in the 1960s and 1970s has been undertaken in response to regular requests from around the world. The original text is unchanged, except for the correction of a small number of typographical errors. The parallel English and Latin texts can be used successfully by anybody with a basic knowledge of Latin, while the presence of the Latin text allowed the translators a degree of freedom in adapting their English version for modern readers. Each volume contains a glossary of technical terms and is designed to be complete in itself to serve for private study or as a course text.

The cost of the whole series is $1800.00 USD, far above the purchase-range for individual scholars, but a good investment for college and university libraries. I cannot tell from the website whether individual volumes can be purchased. I'll look into this, and post a follow-up.

Update on 2007-01-27 19:01 by Mark Johnson

Well, that was quick. If you look at the comments associated with this post you’ll see that individual volumes can be purchased (at $35.00 a volume).

Peter Lombard's Sentences, Book 1, now in translation

The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto has just published Book 1 of Peter Lombard’s Libri sententiarum in English translation by Giulio Silano. Here is the blurb:

PETER LOMBARD
The Sentences – Book 1: The Mystery of the Trinity
Mediaeval Sources in Translation 42. St Michael’s College Mediaeval Translations. 2007. • lviii, 278 pp.
ISBN 13: 978–0–88844–292–5 (ISBN 10: 0–88844–292–0) • $39.95

This volume makes available for the first time in English a full translation of Book 1 of Peter Lombard’s Sentences, the work that would win the greatest teacher of the twelfth century a place in Dante’s Paradise and would continue to excite generations of students well beyond the Middle Ages.

You can see a PDF ad for the book, download a PDF order form for it, or learn more about it and PIMS’s website.

Thomas and the Mendicant Controversies: a new printing of English translations

A somewhat self-serving post. Over on my personal web site I have a post about a forthcoming book that contains hard-to-find English translations of Thomas’s three works devoted to the mendicant controversies at the University of Paris (from 1256-1271). I did not do the translations, but did write a general overview of the controversies and short introductions to each work (i.e., Contra impugnantes dei cultum et religionem [1256], De perfectione spiritualis vitae [1269-1270], and Contra doctrinam retrahentium a religione, [1271-1272]).

Intellect et imagination dans la philosophie médiéval: a new book from Brepols

The people at Brepols Publishing have produced the acta of the SIEPM conference held in Porto in 2002 (which reminds me; I've got to get my application into the SIEPM!). Here is the blurb from that Brepols sent out as an e-mail:

Le XI^ème Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale de la Société Internationale pour l'Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale (S.I.E.P.M..) s'est déroulé à Porto (Portugal), du 26 au 30 août 2002, sous le thème général: Intellect et Imagination dans la Philosophie Médiévale. A partir des héritages platonicien, aristotélicien, stoïcien, ou néo-platonicien (dans leurs variantes grecques, latines, arabes, juives), la conceptualisation et la problématisation de l'imagination et de l'intellect, ou même des facultés de l'âme en général, apparaissaient comme une ouverture possible pour aborder les principaux points de la pensée médiévale. Les Actes du congrès montrent que « imagination » et « intellect » sont porteurs d'une richesse philosophique extraordinaire dans l'économie de la philosophie médiévale et de la constitution de ses spécificités historiques. Dans sa signification la plus large, la théorisation de ces deux facultés de l'âme permet de dédoubler le débat en au moins six grands domaines: — la relation avec le sensible, où la fantaisie/l'imagination joue le rôle de médiation dans la perception du monde et dans la constitution de la connaissance ; — la réflexion sur l'acte de connaître et la découverte de soi en tant que sujet de pensée ; — la position dans la nature, dans le cosmos, et dans le temps de celui qui pense et qui connaît par les sens externes, internes et par l'intellect ; — la recherche d'un fondement pour la connaissance et l'action, par la possibilité du dépassement de la distante proximité du transcendant, de l'absolu, de la vérité et du bien ; — la réalisation de la félicité en tant qu'objectif ultime, de même que la découverte d'une tendance au dépassement actif ou mystique de toutes les limites naturelles et des facultés de l'âme ; — la constitution de théories de l'image, sensible ou intellectuelle, et de ses fonctions. Les 3 volumes d'Actes incluent les 16 leçons plénières et 112 communications, ainsi que les index correspondants (manuscrits ; noms anciens et médiévaux ; noms modernes ; auteurs).

The full, multi-lingual title , and other information for the book, is as follows: Intellect et imagination dans la philosophie médiévale - Intellect and Imagination in Medieval Philosophy - Intelecto e imaginaçao na filosofia medieval, edité par Cândida Pacheco et José Francisco Meirinhos (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 3 vols., xliv + 2009 p., 160 x 240 mm, 2006, RPM 11, ISBN 978-2-503-51818-3, EUR 130.

CUA Press publishes collection of Lawrence Dewan, OP's articles

The Catholic University of America Press has published a collection of Lawrence Dewan, OP’s articles, all of them dealing with metaphysics. Form and Being: Studies in Thomistic Metaphysics is volum 45 in the CUA Press series “Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy.”

Once again they have provided me with a PDF announcement of the publication, along with contact information. Here is a description of the book, from the PDF announcement:

Written over a period of twenty-five years, they range from an overall conception of the primary philosophical wisdom, to such particular subjects as the conception of substance in an evolutionary context; the natural seed of intellectual knowledge within the human being; the principle of causality; the immortality of the soul; and the real distinction between particular form and the act of being, crucial for our understanding of reality as created.

The method combines close readings of and reflections on the texts of Thomas Aquinas and other relevant thinkers. Because the essays were written largely in response to the work of several prominent twentieth-century metaphysicians, they regularly offer alternative views on fundamental issues.

The distinctive contribution of this volume is its focus on the role of form among the various items in the ontological analysis. The most prominent Thomistic metaphysicians in the twentieth century laid great stress on the role of the act of being. Dewan’s essays present what is essentially the same picture, but in a way that emphasizes the continuity between Christian philosophers and their predecessors in ancient Greece.

The volume contains thirteen of Dewan’s most significant pieces on metaphyics. Here is the table of contents:

CONTENTS:

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Abbreviations

1. What is Metaphysics?
2. What Does It Mean to Study Being “as Being”?
3. St. Thomas and the Seed of Metaphysics
4. St. Thomas, Physics, and the Principle of Metaphysics
5. St. Thomas and the Principle of Causality
6. St. Thomas and Analogy: The Logician and the Metaphysician
7. The Importance of Substance
8. St. Thomas, Metaphysics, and Formal Causality
9. St. Thomas, Metaphysical Procedure, and the Formal Cause
10. St. Thomas, Form, and Incorruptibility
11. St. Thomas and the Distinction between Form and Esse in Caused Things
12. Nature as a Metaphysical Object
13. The Individual as a Mode of Being according to Thomas Aquinas

Bibliography
Index of Names
Index of Topics

What else has Fr Dewan published during his career? How about 110 items? Here is a downloadable version of his Curriculum vitae, which one can consult to find other articles of interest. A collection of his articles on ethical matters is in the works.

Ralph McInerny's new book

Ralph McInerny has a new book coming out from CUA Press: Praeambula fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers. The folks at CUA Press were kind enough to provide me with a PDF file press release of the thing. Here is some material from the release:

The praeambula fidei (“preambles of faith”) are regarded by Thomas Aquinas as the culmination of philosophy: natural theology, the highest knowledge of God that is possible on philosophical grounds alone. The natural home for such considerations is the Metaphysics of Aristotle and Thomas’s commentary on that work. Yet Thomas’s view has been cast into doubt, with philosophers and theologians alike attempting to drive a wedge between Aquinas and Aristotle. In this book, renowned philosopher Ralph McInerny sets out to review what Thomas meant by the phrase and to defend a robust understanding of Thomas’s teaching on the subject.

After setting forth different attitudes toward proofs of God’s existence and outlining the difference between belief and knowledge, McInerny examines the texts in which Thomas uses and explains the phrase “preambles of faith.” He then turns his attention to the work of eminent twentieth-century Thomists and chronicles their abandonment of the preambles. He draws a contrast between this form of Thomism and that of the classical Dominican commentators, notably Cajetan, arguing that part of the abandonment of the notion of the preambles as philosophical involves a misreading and misrepresentation of Cajetan.

McInerny concludes with a positive rereading of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Aquinas’s use thereof. In the end, the book argues for a return to the notion of Aristotelico-Thomism—Thomistic philosophy as the organic development of the thought of Aristotle.

Table of Contents:

Preface

PART I: The Preambles of Faith

1. Introduction

PART II: The Erosion of the Doctrine

Prologue
2. Gilson’s Attack on Cajetan
3. De Lubac and Cajetan
4. Christian Philosophy
5. The Chenu Case
6. The Alleged Forgetfulness of Esse

PART III: Thomism and Philosophical Theology

Prologue
7. The Presuppostions of Metaphysics
8. The Science We Are Seeking
9. The Metaphysics as a Literary Whole
10. Methodological Interlude
11. The Book of Wisdom
12. Sed Contra
13. Aristotelian Existentialism and Thomistic Essentialism

Selected Bibliography

Index

For more information, contact Beth Benevides, Marketing Manager, (202) 319-5052 or e-mail benevides@cua.edu.