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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Categories Argument For The Real Distinction Between Being And Essence: Avicenna, Aquinas, And Their Greek Sources, Nathaniel Taylor
The Categories Argument For The Real Distinction Between Being And Essence: Avicenna, Aquinas, And Their Greek Sources, Nathaniel Taylor
Dissertations (1934 -)
There is a distinctively Avicennian way of understanding the categories to be found in the works of Thomas Aquinas that vindicates Aquinas’s early argument for the distinction between being and essence. Two of the most important and influential Aquinas scholars in the twentieth century recognized the roots of this Avicennian way in Aquinas, but neither Etienne Gilson and Cornelio Fabro made good on their insights. In this dissertation, I trace this Avicennian way through its sources in the Greek commentators and demonstrate how it provides the necessary insight into the structure and nature of the categories that render Aquinas’s Genus …
Concerning Aristotelian Animal Essences, Damon Andrew Watson
Concerning Aristotelian Animal Essences, Damon Andrew Watson
Dissertations (1934 -)
In this dissertation I attempt to clarify Aristotle’s notion of essence. In particular, I focus on the essence of animal substances. When looking at Aristotle’s biological works and works like the Metaphysics it becomes perplexing how the accounts of animal essences in both are to constitute a unified view. In Parts of Animals the emphasis seems to be on definitions of animals that are rich enough to further explanatory aims. It is hard to see how such rich but messy definitions will be amenable to the strategies for a definition’s unity as are given in the Metaphysics. I argue that …
Re-Evaluating Augustinian Fatalism Through The Eastern And Western Distinction Between God's Essence And Energies, Stephen John Plecnik
Re-Evaluating Augustinian Fatalism Through The Eastern And Western Distinction Between God's Essence And Energies, Stephen John Plecnik
Dissertations (1934 -)
In this dissertation, I will examine the problem of theological fatalism in St. Augustine and, specifically, whether or not Augustine was philosophically justified in his belief that his views on divine grace and human freedom could be harmonized. As is well-known, beginning with his second response To Simplician (ca. 396) and continuing through his works against the semi-Pelagians (ca. 426-429), Augustine espoused the Pauline doctrine of all-inclusive grace: that the fallen will’s ability to accomplish the good is totally a function of God’s elective grace. What, then, does the fallen will do to work out its own salvation? There is …
Thomas Aquinas On The Apprehension Of Being: The Role Of Judgement In Light Of Thirteenth-Century Semantics, Rosa Vargas Della Casa
Thomas Aquinas On The Apprehension Of Being: The Role Of Judgement In Light Of Thirteenth-Century Semantics, Rosa Vargas Della Casa
Dissertations (1934 -)
Aquinas’ famous comments in his early Scriptum on the Sentences (In I Sent., d. 38, q. 1, a. 3) regarding the intellect’s apprehension of essence and esse have traditionally been interpreted as grounding Aquinas’ doctrine on the judgment of esse. For Aquinas, it appears, what the intellect apprehends in a simple concept is essence. Since esse, for him, is not an essence, it cannot, on the received view, be the object of conceptualization. Therefore, esse is grasped by the intellect only in judgment. The claim that no genuine concept of esse is possible, however, is inconsistent with Aquinas’ theory of …