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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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.

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.

Converting to Squarespace 5.0 formats

After much delay I'm now finally moving the website to Squarespace's 5.0 formats (i.e., the fabled "three-column" look), and have changed the color-scheme. Things will be in flux with the general look of the site over the next few days, as I add new graphics and other formatting. Thanks for your patience.

New issue of Doctor Communis 2008

Father Leo Elders s.v.d. gave us the latest issue of Doctor Communis NS 10 (2008), the journal of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas (PAST), of which we reported earlier. The overall theme of the Plenary Session, held in 2007, was “The Encounter of Christianity and the Graeco-Roman Tradition.” Here are the contents:

• Enrico Berti, Il contributo della filosofia greca (pp. 20-31)
• Robert Wielockx, The Principle of the ’ Emergence’ in Boethius of Denmark and Henry of Ghent. The Greco-Roman Legacy at the Arts Faculty and the Faculty of Theology (pp. 32-60)
• Russell Hittinger, The Legal Renaissance of the 12th and 13th Centuries: Some Thomistic Notes (pp. 61-87)
• Lawrence Dewan O.P., St. Thomas Aquinas as an Example of the Importance of the Hellenistic Legacy (pp. 88-118)
• Ralph McInerny, Prams and Praeambula: The Wise and the Simplke )pp. 119-129)
• Luca F. Tuninetti, Il giudizio della fede e il giudizio della ragione in una epoca di opinioni (pp. 130-138)

This year’s plenary session will be held 19-21 June 2009 and will be fittingly devoted to Aquinas’s commentaries on the Pauline Letters. It will include papers by Reinhard Hütter, Michael Waldstein et alii.

The address of the PAST: Casina Pio IV, 00120 Città del Vaticano, Email: past@acdscience.va.

Back in Print: Cursus philosophicus - John of St. Thomas

As a follow-up of this post in 2007, we can now inform you that the Cursus Philosophicus by John of St. Thomas is back in print.

Johannes Poinsot [Ioannes a S. Thoma O. P. - João Poinsot] Cursus philosophicus Thomisticus. Nova editio a P. Beato Reiser O.S.B. (1929), Reimpressio revisa. 3 Bände. Rom 1948. Reprint: Hildesheim 2008. Introductory remarks by John Deely. Einleitende Bemerkungen von Martin Walter. LXIV/2348 Seiten Leinen

Here is the blurb from the publisher:

This reprint of the Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus in the critical edition prepared by B. Reiser OSB (2nd ed. 1948) makes available once again one of the most important works of Spanish baroque scholasticism. Johannes Poinsot (1589-1644) was described by Martin Grabmann as being “among the best guides to the intellectual world of Thomism”. The author’s aim in compiling this philosophical course was to explain philosophy according to St Thomas Aquinas and his interpretation of Aristotle. As well as this didactic aim, two other aspects of the Cursus deserve to be emphasised: first, Poinsot was one of the most important opponents in the contemporary discourse with Suarez and Vasquez and second, in recent years his achievements in the theory of semiotics and indeed in logic as a whole have been rediscovered.
The reprint will appeal to all students of St Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy and the history of Thomism or of logic in general. A bibliography of source material and of the major literature on Johannes Poinsot is appended as an aid to further study.

An extended bibliography, compiled by Marco Forlivesi, can be accessed here.

New Latin-English edition of the Summa Theologiae

Kevin F. Keiser has let me know about a project that he and his wife have been working on: a new, more handy edition of the Summa Theologiae in Latin and English. You can see the project at www.novantiqua.com (and also on Amazon).

The edition is mostly aimed at those who want to learn to read Aquinas' Latin, or at least want to have it ever present even if they cannot deal with it by itself. The idea for it was born from Keiser's teaching and tutoring experience, with various students asking whether such a thing existed. The first volume has appeared, covering Prima pars, qq. 1-64, and the second volume will be coming out very shortly.

Good luck with the project, Kevin.

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).