Thomas Aquinas on the Passions

Robert Miner (Baylor University) has sent along word that this book, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions, has appeared. Published by Cambridge University Press, the book is a study of questions 22-48 of the Prima secundae of Thomas’s Summa theologiae—you know, the questions that everyone skips over on the way from questions 6-21 on the way to question 94, article 2!

Here’s a scrape from the CUP website (link to book):

The Summa Theologiae is Thomas Aquinas’ undisputed masterwork, and it includes his thoughts on the elemental forces in human life. Feelings such as love, hatred, pleasure, pain, hope and despair were described by Aquinas as ‘passions’, representing the different ways in which happiness could be affected. But what causes the passions? What impact do they have on the person who suffers them? Can they be shaped and reshaped in order to better promote human flourishing? The aim of this book is to provide a better understanding of Aquinas’ account of the passions. It identifies the Aristotelian influences that lie at the heart of the Summa Theologiae, and it enters into a dialogue with contemporary thinking about the nature of emotion. The study argues that Aquinas’ work is still important today, and shows why for Aquinas both the understanding and attainment of happiness requires prolonged reflection on the passions.

Part I. The Passions in General

1. The sensitive appetite

2. The definition of passion

3. The activation of passion

4. The morality of the passions

Part II. Particular Passions: The Concupiscible Passions

 5. Love

 6. Hatred and concupiscence

 7. Pleasure

 8. Sorrow

Part III. Particular Passions: The Irascible Passions

9. Hope and despair

10. Fear

11. Daring

12. Anger

 Epilogue: the passions, the virtues, and happiness

 Many happy sales (and reviews!), Robert!

Update on 2009-09-23 09:55 by Mark Johnson

Oh, you can also read a nice on-line excerpt from the book (link).

Got Summa?

Now and then one needs to blow off a little steam, and such was the case for me today, as I worked on the site and, generally satisfied with things, played a bit. In this case “playing” meant trying some ideas out with Photoshop CS4 and CafePress, where I had created a few “products” some years back, but never took things seriously.

But today was different, because I’d fallen in love with the humor of the phrase “Got Summa?,” a take-off from the ever-pliable meme that goes back to the famous “Got Milk?” campaign of many years back. So I came up with the following, which is now available on Thomistica.net’s CafePress store:

At the very least, it’s good for a grin. But of course, if you actually bought one (or ten, because they’ll make great Christmas gifts for your favorite Thomists), I’d be most grateful.

Style change and other updates to the site

If you've come by the site in the past day or so you'll have noticed that things were in flux, as I changed the site's formatting and color themes, as well as rearranged things. Sorry for any confusion and, on occasion, total breakdown—at one point I had made a single change and the whole site's content disappeared!

The color change was much-needed, as the previous color scheme and layout (3 column) made things hard to read and to navigate. I knew the overall effect was too dark when a visitor asked "why the Darth Vader mode?" I hope that the new look will be much lighter and more navigable.

I've added some photos that Jörgen Vijgen took this past summer, switched to a two-column layout, and restructured the main menu bar. Other changes will come as I'm able to find out what will, and what won't, break the site. Some general notes:

• Wallpaper: I'm working on some wallpaper that works better with increasingly common widescreen monitors (i.e., 16x9 format, as distinct from the 4x3 that the current wallpapers are set to).
• Traffic notes: almost 40% of the site's visitors still use Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6.0! People! Please upgrade your browser. Most new sites are using updated website-coding techniques (e.g., CSS 3), and you'll be left on the outside. Besides, Firefox and Safari and wonderful.
• I've created a "Support" menu item—tongue-in-check, that—that houses some link lists, book recommendations, and will be the main location for translations I've done in the past.
• The donation, Cafepress.com, and Squarespace links on the side column are a sign of the economic realities of running (and funding) the site.

More real news posts should follow in short order, now that I've got the site looking more organized. Thanks to all for their suggestions.

Streamed discussion on Aquinas on BBC Radio

With thanks to James South, Chair of Marquette's Philosophy Department, here is a link to a 45-minute long, streamed discussion on Aquinas, from BBC Radio 4. The discussion is led by Melvyn Bragg, and includes Martin Palmer, John Haldane and Annabel Brett. Here is a scrape from the BBC's website:

Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, works and enduring influence of the medieval philosopher and theologian St Thomas Aquinas with Martin Palmer, John Haldane and Annabel Brett.

St Thomas Aquinas' ideas remain at the heart of the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church today and inform philosophical debates on human rights, natural law and what constitutes a 'just war'.

Martin Palmer is Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture; John Haldane is Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews; Annabel Brett is Lecturer in History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

Here is a direct link to the streamed discussion.

A downloadable Italian translation of the entire Summa theologiae

Wow. Here’s a link to a downloadable copy of the entire Summa theologiae in Italian, a labor of love by Tito Centi and Angelo Belloni (link to zip file; note: 30 MB).

A scrape from their site:

Il P. Tito Centi, del Convento di S. Domenico di Fiesole, che per ben 28 anni si è accollato quasi per intero la “gioiosa fatica”di tradurre, annotare, introdurre, correggere, redigere l’edizione italiana della Somma Teologica, mentre prende atto con piacere che le nuove edizioni italiane riproducono praticamente la sua, avendo ormai raggiunto la venerabile età di 94 anni ha espresso il desiderio che il frutto delle sue immani fatiche diventi, attraverso la rete informatica internet maggiormente accessibile al grande pubblico senza oneri di sorta. Il sottoscritto si è messo semplicemente a sua disposizione perché tale desiderio diventasse realtà. (P. Angelo Zelio Belloni o.p. – Fiesole)

N.B. Questa edizione integrale on-line non riproduce semplicemente quella pubblicata negli anni 1949-1975 a Firenze, ma è stata radicalmente rivista e modificata soprattutto nelle introduzioni, nella struttura e nei contenuti con apporti originali. Ci scusiamo per eventuali imperfezioni dovute alla trascrizione elettronica di alcune parti e alla dimensione consistente dell’intero documento.

AVVERTENZA: Il testo qui pubblicato é tutelato dai diritti di copyright. E’ consentito l’utilizzo solo per uso privato e personale. E’ quindi assolutamente vietata la riproduzione a fini commerciali con qualsiasi mezzo effettuata nonché la sua diffusione sullo spazio web senza una preventiva autorizzazione da parte nostra.

A mother lode of texts

Are you looking for the a scanned edition of, let's say, Aegidius Romanus' Quodlibeta (Lovanii: Typis Hieronymi Nempaei, 1646) or Durandus a Sancto Porciano's In IV libros Sententiarum (Venezia: Ex Typographia Guerraea, 1571) or—even better—Johannes Capreolus's entire Defensiones theologiae? This is the place to find them (link). Do this quickly, as texts have a tendency to dissappear…

Visit Jörgen’s site (www.thomisme.org)

Don't forget to pay Jörgen Vijgen's website a visit (http://www.thomisme.org). Like Thomistica.net, his site is devoted to Thomism, with a particular focus on the work of Fr Leo Elders, often with on-line PDFs to articles Fr Elders has written. More recently Jörgen has placed on-line texts written by Romanus Cessario, OP.

La Commission léonine à Paris: An Interview with Pawel Krupa, OP

Via Jörgen Vijgen (again!), a link to an interview with Fr Pawel Krupa, OP, of the Leonine Commission (with audio).

A Report on the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas 2009

With thanks to Jörgen Vijgen, who was in attendance, a report on the 2009 meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas:

Report on the IX Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, 19-21 June 2009

At their seat in the 16^th century villa Casina Pio IV in Vatican City the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas held their annual Plenary Session on June 19-21, 2009. Since its reform by the motu proprio Inter Munera Academiarum, issued by Pope John Paul II, the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, founded by Pope Leo XIII on October 15, 1879, organizes each year its plenary session on a single topic. In previous years topics such as ‘Truth’, ‘Goodness’, and ‘Natural Law’ were treated. To mark the end of the Pauline Year, this year’s topic was fittingly entitled “Saint-Thomas’s Interpretation of Saint-Paul’s Doctrines”.

The newly appointed president Lluis Clavell of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross had organized an intensive program to which some 30 members took part among which were Stephen Brock, Romanus Cessario O.P., Joseph Di Noia O.P., Kevin Flannery S.J., the papal theologian Wojciech Giertych O.P., Russell Hittinger, Charles Morerod O.P., Robert Wielockx, Horst Seidl, Card. Georges Cottier O.P., Leo Elders S.V.D. and Enrique Alarcon.

Continuing with the tradition of previous years, the Academy had also invited experts from outside the Academy to speak on the topic at hand. This year’s speakers were Michael Waldstein (Ave Maria University) and Reinhard Hütter (Duke University).

The program was as follows:

Friday

1. Reinhard Hütter: “In hope he believed against hope” (Romans 4:18). Faith and Hope, two Pauline motifs as interpreted by Aquinas: an approach to the encyclical letter of Pope Benedict XVI, “Spe Salvi”
2. Joseph Di Noia O.P.: Christ brings freedom from sin and death: Thomas’s Understanding of Romans 5, 12-21, on Original Sin

Saturday

1. Mons. Inos Biffi, La figura di Cristo nel commento di Tommaso alla Lettera agli Ebrei
2. Pedro Rodriguez, El ‘sacrum ministerium’ en los comentários de Santo Tomás al ‘Corpus Paulinum’
3. Mons. Fernando Ocariz, ‘L’adozione filiale e il mistero di Cristo nel Commento di San Tommaso alla Lettera ai Romani
4. Leo Elders S.V.D., Thomas’s comments on the Letters of St. Paul to the Philippians and the Colossians
5. Robert Wielockx, Au sujet du commentaire de S. Thomas sur le ‘Corpus Paulinum’ : critique littéraire et aperçus exégétiques

Sunday

1. Michael Waldstein, The Spousal Logic of Justification : St. Thomas and Luther on Paul’s Key Topic Statement Romans, 1:17
2. Ricardo Ferrara, La dottrina della grazia nel Commento alla Lettera ai Romani
3. Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, Grace as “new creation”

Needless to say that with these 45 min.-lectures and 30 min.-discussions, which seldom sufficed to treat all the questions, it was an in-depth three days- study of St. Thomas and St. Paul. (The Roman sun, the Vatican Gardens, Saint-Peter’s Basilica, Santa Sabina, the diners and the private trips to the abbeys of Monte Cassino and Fossanova and the village of Aquino however brought it all back in balance.)

Readers who were present at the conference on Aquinas’s Commentary on Romans in February of this year at Ave Maria University (Naples, Florida) might be interested to hear that ecumenical explorations came up more than once during the discussions. We’re looking forward to the final versions of all these papers to be published in the next issue of Doctor Communis.

(NOTE: Jörgen took pictures of the trips south, which I’ll post very soon).

Father Victor Brezik, CSB: 1913-2009

This is terribly, terribly late (since I received this death notice in June), but it should be noted (from Thomas Osborne and Ed Houser of University of St. Thomas in Houston):

University of St. Thomas Remembers Father Victor Brezik, CSB

Philosopher, theologian, visionary and cornerstone of the institution – the University of St. Thomas said goodbye to Rev. Victor Brezik, CSB. He died the morning of Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at the age of 96.

A Funeral Mass will be held at 10 a.m. Monday, June 22 at St. Anne’s Catholic Church, 2140 Westheimer Rd. A viewing is scheduled from 1:30-3:30 p.m. Thursday, June 18 in the Chapel of St. Basil on the UST campus, and a Wake Service will be held at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, June 21 on campus in the Chapel of St. Basil.

Fr. Brezik, who joined the UST faculty in 1954, was the University’s oldest living scholar. Adopting the personal motto, “Dare to do whatever you can,” from his favorite philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas, Fr. Brezik’s philosophical attitude and vision stretched the imaginations and inspired generations of students and colleagues. In addition to his many contributions to the University, Fr. Brezik co-founded the University of St. Thomas’ Center for Thomistic Studies. In 1975 Fr. Brezik teamed up with Houston Philanthropist Hugh Roy Marshall, ‘74, to renew interest in the teachings of the medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas.

In creating the Center for Thomistic Studies, Fr. Brezik and Marshall, who earned a degree in philosophy, established the only doctoral program at the University and the only graduate philosophy program in the United States uniquely focused on the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas.

“The Center for Thomistic Studies, where the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas could be brought to bear on the problems of the contemporary world, was Fr. Brezik’s great dream and he never stopped working for it,” said Dr. Mary Catherine Sommers, Center for Thomistic Studies director. “He taught the Center’s first graduate students and, when he retired, continued to write on philosophical and theological issues into the last year of his life. He met each new class of graduate students and attended colloquia and departmental parties up until a few months before his death. Our last conversation, just days ago was not about him, his health or the pain he was suffering, but about the future of the Center and the work it does for the University and for the Church. He was ‘Texas tough,’ physically, mentally and spiritually.”

Born in Hallettsville, Texas on May 2, 1913, Fr. Brezik attended St. Thomas High School in Houston, and graduated in the class of 1931. He went on to join the Basilian order in 1932, and was ordained as a priest in 1940. He studied in Toronto and received his Licentiate in Mediaeval Studies in 1943 at the Pontifical Institute, center of the North American Renaissance in Thomistic philosophy, and his doctorate in 1944. Fr. Brezik returned to Houston in 1954 to join the faculty at the University of St. Thomas. He was named Basilian Superior in 1955.

At UST, he served as a professor of philosophy from 1954 to 1986, and his service to the University continued until his resignation from the board of directors in 2005. He served on the board of directors for a total of 24 years, from 1969-1979, and from 1992 to 2005. The University bestowed on Fr. Brezik an honorary doctorate at the 1989 Commencement Ceremony. Fr. Brezik and Marshall were honored with the Order of St. Thomas Award at the 2008 St. Thomas Aquinas Lecture, held on Jan. 31. The award is presented each year to persons who have testified to the value of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas in their writings, teachings philanthropy and way of life.

The Reverend Victor Brezik, CSB, Endowed Scholarship for graduate students in philosophy at the Center for Thomistic Studies was established on March 26, 1999 by the Basilian Fathers of Toronto. The scholarship/fellowship is awarded to students at University of St. Thomas who are accepted for regular admission into the graduate program of the Center for Thomistic Studies and who meet all scholarship academic requirements.  Gifts in memory of Fr. Brezik can be made to the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas. Checks can be mailed to University of St. Thomas, Institutional Advancement, 3800 Montrose Blvd., Houston, TX 77006.

Fr. Patrick Braden, CSB, and Fr. Brezik both joined the UST faculty in 1954. Fr. Braden recalled many shared adventures including long cross-country drives in a restored Mercedes Benz to see Basilian Fathers in Toronto, and another road trip to visit East Coast Ivy League Universities and locations of historical interest. Braden also remembered Fr. Brezik as an avid sports fan. A former athlete on the St. Thomas High School football and baseball teams, Fr. Braden said that even late in life, Fr Brezik closely followed the St. Thomas high school baseball and football teams.

“Serving on the board of directors for many years, Fr. Brezik provided the University with wise counsel in a variety of areas,” Fr. Braden said. “His writings in philosophy and his sermons have been an inspiration to many of us.”

Read more of Fr. Brezik’s writings:

One Hundred Years of Thomism Aeterni Patris and Afterwards A Symposium

The Role of Faith in University Education

Remembering Ninety Five Years: A Partial Synopsis Is it Possible to Fulfill the Law of Charity

The Academic Mall and the University Academic Program

An interview with Adriano Oliva, OP, president of the Leonine Commission

Eek! It’s just embarrassing, how behind I am with my posts on the site! Almost a year ago we here at Marquette University had the honor of the presence of Adriano Oliva, OP, head of the Leonine Commission, who had come stateside to participate in the SIEPM conference at Notre Dame, and in our Aquinas and the Arabs conference here at Marquette.

Fr Oliva graciously agreed to do an interview with me about the work of the Commission, and about how our Project (link) might be of use to the efforts of the Leonine Commission. We chose to do the interview in Italian (apologies for my occasionally “airport Italian”—it was a long week), which may prove to be a challenge for some viewers. But Fr Oliva speaks so carefully that I suspect many will get the gist of what he is saying (I’d be thrilled if any visitors had the time and inclination to do a translation [contact me]). One particular highlight: Fr Oliva gives an update on the status of the work of the Commission.

Our audio/visual people here at Marquette worked hard to produce the video, which is hosted on our media server (QuickTime required). So, with apologies for my tardiness, happy viewing.

PS: when they tell you that the camera adds 10 lbs, they lie: it adds 20—and I’ve gone on a diet.

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.