Thomas Hobbes insisted that he had set forth the "true and only moral philosophy" and that he was the founder of civil science. Yet, the character of Hobbes's moral and political theory and its role in his civil doctrines has been the subject of much controversy. In this dissertation I defend an interpretation as a properly natural law theorist in his accounts of the foundations of moral philosophy and civil science, morality, commonwealth, and positive law. I juxtapose Hobbes's thought to the Aristotelian-Thomistic natural law tradition and argue that Hobbes's novelty flows chiefly from his doctrine of the human good. / text

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2004. / Thesis directed by Alfred Freddoso for the Department of Philosophy. "April 2004." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 200-204).

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In the past years, the relevance of Thomas Aquinas's theory of cognition for contemporary debates on epistemology has been widely discussed. That theory claims that mind and world are formally identical and that this relationship overcomes various problems associated with scepticism concerning mental representation. The proposal, however, is grounded on the idea that the world can act on the mind through a relation of formal causation. This thesis attempts to develop a Thomistic theory of formal causation which may be suitable for a realist account of mental representation and which may meet the requirements prompted by current discussions. The suggested view is grounded on Aquinas's metaphysics, according to which the world is constituted of substances. The claim that change is possible since substances are hylomorphically constituted (viz., metaphysically composed of form and matter) is defended. Aquinas's claim that some substances have forms which may act independently of matter is also supported. The paradigmatic examples are human souls, i.e. the forms of human beings, whose higher cognitive capacity, i.e. thinking, can be in principle carried on without the need of any material organ. A Thomistic theory of causation is subsequently proposed. It is argued that hylomorphism explains the distinction among four species of causes (material, formal, final and efficient). Aquinas's attempt to explain causal relations conditionally is developed along the lines suggested by John Mackie's INUS conditional analysis. Jaegwon Kim's implementation of Mackie's proposal through an object-based metaphysics of events is then adapted to the hylomorphical account of substances. On these grounds, a theory of formal causation can be proposed and applied to Aquinas's theory of mental representation. The ensuing proposal is offered not in the spirit of historical exegesis but as a substantive philosophical account and it is Thomistic only in the broad sense that it is built on Aquinas's metaphysics and is consistent with his claims on causation.

The subject of the sacraments was chosen for this thesis because it was believed that the sacraments should be fully understood and should be placed at the centre of the work and worship of the Church, if the Church is to fulfil its role as the body of Christ in the world today. From studying the work of the reformers it became obvious that the word and the sacraments do not hold the place in the reformed Churches which they were intended to by Calvin and the early Scottish reformers. Pref., p. 1.

The paper investigates Gyula Klima’s reconstruction of Aquinas argument for the immateriality of the intellect by the concept of human thought and its success to avoid the Content Fallacy. This fallacy, which is coined by Robert Pasnau, describes an illicit inference from a description of the nature of a thought, to what a thought represents, its content. The focus will be on a debate between Klima and Pasnau in Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics, but also on Adam Wood’s critique of Klima. The paper concludes that if Klima is interpreted correctly, the argument is valid and Klima’s reconstruction of Aquinas argument does not fall victim to the Content Fallacy.

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This dissertation explores the moral and spiritual role of the self-assessing emotions of shame and pride in the works of Abu Hamid al-Ghazālī (c. 1058-1111) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). In my analysis of their ethical and religious views on these topics, I demonstrate their great debt to Aristotle’s treatment and his ethics and moral psychology more broadly. Nevertheless, I also point to ways in which they adapted Aristotle’s views on shame and pride to their religious commitments. Aristotle understood shame as an emotion that, while praiseworthy, cannot be considered a virtue in the full sense since it presupposes wrongdoing. The virtuous do nothing wrong and, therefore, have nothing of which to feel ashamed. Pride or, more precisely great-souledness, is for Aristotle “the crown of the virtues,” since to be great-souled is to be great in every virtue and to think oneself worthy of great honor. By contrast, both al-Ghazālī and Aquinas describe shame not only as a praiseworthy emotion but also as a religious virtue. That is, as an emotion felt before God, shame is a good disposition of the soul that results in good actions. Furthermore, they described pride as a sinful emotion and trait of the vicious.   I argue that the dissimilarities between al-Ghazālī and Aquinas’s views and those of Aristotle on these self-assessing emotions result from their different metaphysical frameworks. More specifically, I argue that the three main metaphysical frameworks sustaining their respective views of shame as a virtue and pride as a vice are 1) a Big God Theory; 2) a deflationary account of the self; and 3) acknowledgement of Theistic causal moral luck. By showing the link between metaphysical/religious frameworks and the valence of self-assessing emotions such as shame and pride, this dissertation contributes to contemporary discussions on the influence of religion on moral commitments in general and on views on moral emotions, more specifically. It also points to ways of understanding shame as a virtue within a Western secular society. Properly defined, the virtue of shame speaks to a widely held intuition that accurate moral self-assessment, in both positive and negative senses, contributes significantly to a life of moral integrity. / 2024-11-07T00:00:00Z

Thesis advisor: Jeremy D. Wilkins / This dissertation draws upon the work of Thomas Aquinas and Bernard J. F. Lonergan in order to put forward an integrated theorem of the imago Trinitatis. The theorem of the imago Trinitatis, in Catholic theology, is a theorem about how human persons imitate and reflect the triune God. In Aquinas and Lonergan, the imago Trinitatis is identified with the intelligent emanations of word and love that occur within the human mind. But, according to Aquinas, the imago Trinitatis can be considered in two respects: first, as a likeness by analogy—that is, an analogical likeness—and, second, as a likeness by conformity between the human and the divine. The first two chapters explain each of these likenesses in Aquinas, and the next two chapters explain each of these likenesses in Lonergan. The final chapter of this dissertation proposes a complementary analogical likeness of the Trinity in humans: an analogical likeness based upon shared intentionality. It further explains how this likeness is related to the analogical likeness based upon intelligent emanation in Aquinas and Lonergan. In doing so, this dissertation defends an integrated conception of the analogical likeness of the Trinity in human beings, as it unites the analogical likeness based upon intelligible emanation occurring in the human mind and the analogical likeness based upon shared intentionality as interpersonal, coordinated activity. The imago Trinitatis, then, is at once personal and interpersonal, and the analogues for the Trinity in humans are both psychological and communal. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.