Introduction

I have recently started my masters degree in philosophy at the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas. "Blogging" offers, as many have discovered, an avenue to reflect on one's thoughts, while providing an accessible way to communicate those thoughts to their peers. This particular forum will be a place for me to recapitulate and reflect on my course lectures and texts. In addition to the general themes of each of the courses I will be working on papers for each course which will require more specific research. I hope to also contribute to this blog my notes on at least one of research papers.

This semester I am taking three courses.

1) "Avicenna's the Metaphysics of the Healing and its influence on Thomas Aquinas"

Avicenna was one of the most important Islamic philosophers to commentate on the works of Aristotle. Earlier on in Thomas's studies the whole of Aristotle still had not become readily available nor in good translations. Aquinas's metaphysics curriculum at Naples would have consisted mostly in Avicenna's "The Metaphysics of the Healing" which is certainly an Aristotelian metaphysics, but is not strictly speaking the thought of Aristotle. Rather it is a philosophical development to the Aristotelian tradition. A development that would have an influence on later Aristotelian commentators like Averroes, Albert the Great, and most especially, Saint Thomas Aquinas. Of course Aquinas would pursue direct studies of the majority of Aristotle's actual treatises later in his life. A direct study that brought about his own perspicuous commentaries of the Philosopher.

This course has as its primary end to gloss the whole of Avicenna's "Metaphysics of the Healing." This in turn will be correlated to particular nuances in Aquinas's own metaphysics that are rather particular to himself, which show no explicit source in Aristotle but seem quite clearly to be found within Avicenna.

As of now I have not yet settle on a paper topic. As of now I am considering either a modest investigation into Avicenna's doctrine of being or Avicenna's solution to the problem of Universals, since I take these two problems to be the key issues of metaphysics. Perhaps as the course develops I shall find something else of interest.


2) "Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles Books I & II" (Aquinas's philosophy of God)
The Summa Theologica is very succinct and does not develop the many philosophical principles it employs because it takes for granted one has a deep background in philosophy. The Summa Contra Gentiles develops a number of these principles and arguments considerably more and does not appeal to the authority of Sacred texts until book IV. So the first book and part of the second are essentially an summation of Aquinas's Natural Theology or Philosophy of God.

St. Thomas Aquinas died on March 7th, 1274 at the Cistercian Abbey of Fossanova. The dating of Fr. Weisheipl places the early parts of the Summa Contra Gentiles around 1258/9-1261. Its completion is more debatable. So Aquinas is in his mid-thirties while composing the Summa Contra Gentiles, it is about fifteen years before his death, and it is approximately five years before he began to write his Summa Theologica. It is also before he had completed or even began any of his Commentaries on the works of Aristotle. There are a number of works that he had completed at this point, most notably, his writings on the Sentences of Peter Lombard completed in Paris (1252-56) as a prerequisite for receiving his Masters in theology. Also of note is his commentary on Boethius's De Trinitate and the first of his Disputed Questions, of note is De Veritate (On Truth). Also the two short treatises on natural philosophy and metaphysics, accordingly titled, On the Principles of Nature and On Being and Essence. Both works are reminiscent of two notable sections in Avicenna's own corpus.

So these are the major sources of Aquinas to draw on when approaching the text of the Summa Contra Gentiles. Any "developmental hypothesis" would have to be able to trace elements in the former works to "developments" in the later works like the Summa Contra Gentiles. At this point in time I believe my on course paper will be directed towards the topics found in Book I chapters 29-36, often referred to as "God Talk." "God Talk" is essentially an investigation into the metaphysical order and relationship between created beings and uncreated Being; especially in justifying epistemologically how it is that we are able to assert things/attributes/properties/etc. truthfully about God. In other words, how can we "talk about God," and then assert that our "talk about God" actually constitutes a demonstrative science, that has God as its subject.

Without a philosophical justification that resolves both the metaphysical and epistemological objections, natural theology or philosophy of God is unable to even get off the ground. The two indispensable "tools" at the disposal of the metaphysician are via negativa (way of negation) or apophatic theology and analogy. Hence, "God Talk" is primarily a daunting inquiry into the nature of the analogy of being. This topic necessarily entails providing a satisfying account of Thomas's own doctrine of analogy (a subject I've wanted to splash through for some time). So a paper on this subject will nicely serve two purposes.


3) "Aquinas on Human Nature from Summa Theologica I.75-90"

This class is going to be mostly concerned with Aquinas's philosophy of mind and epistemology, with a few minor focuses on the ontology of the human soul as the substantial principle of the body. This is probably going to be the primary area of my studies, at least for the next year or so. The class is being taught by Dr. John Deely, who is one of the few Thomists I know of who is very interested in semiotics and its synthesis with Thomism, especially in lieu of John of St. Thomas. This approach has some insightful things to say about agent intellect, abstraction, relation, and intentionality. Some of these challenges, on a prima facie examination, I believe must be rejected in light of traditional Thomistic theses. Thomistic theses that I hold, not because they are Thomistic, but because I happen to think they are true. Which is why I think Thomism to be true. Nevertheless these challenges have already really forced me to develop my own insightful objections and rebuttals. And it is refreshing always to realize one is not simply regurgitating nominal axioms, but has grasped the real thing, and is able make real application.

My paper in this class is more restrained. It's thesis must revolve around the question of whether human beings are better defined as a "semiotic animal," and whether this would be more suitable for the new postmodern understanding of mankind. This definition is to supplant the modern's res cogitive and the ancient and medieval's rational animal.

Since my greatest aptitude is in the areas of philosophy of mind and epistemology I have focus more on this courses paper at the current date. I already have working sub-theses to the major thesis: No, "semiotic animal" is not at all a suitable differentia for human beings, because it undermines the specified difference between a rational soul and an intellectual substance, namely reason (which is discursive) and intellection (which is unitative). While I have not yet completed my research into the primary texts asserting the "semiotic animal" thesis, my suspicion is that its reformulation of the human soul (which is capable of unnaturally subsisting and operating without the body) entails an accidental and not substantial difference between the human soul and the angelic substance. This is clearer if one understands that the "semiotic thesis" also (I believe) takes angels to be semiotic substances, and since the human soul is able to exist without the body, it would then be on this account a semiotic substance. Even if there is still a substantial specific difference here, it is certainly a muddling of the line of demarcation.

I have a number of other sub-theses, most importantly is a rebuttal to the semiotic thesis's objection to abstraction and agent intellect. This will involve a thorough account of Aquinas's understanding of the inner senses and their ordering and preparation of the phantasm for the agent intellect. The unfortunately neglected inner sense faculty called the "cogitative power" shall illuminate and avail a number of solutions to the semiotic thesis's objections.

Here then is the outline of my next semester and the possible topics I shall be considering on this blog.

I only hope that by my studies I can to some degree imitate the office of the wise man, which Aquinas, in quoting Aristotle, asserts that "it belongs to the wise man to know order." (SCG I.1.i.)

To that end may, "my mouth meditate truth, and my lips hate impiety" - Proverbs 8:7