Abstract not available

Abstract not available

1. Aim of the Thesis. This thesis is concerned to investigate the schemata of metaphysical concepts, and the lines of philosophical argument, used by Thomas Aquinas in reaching conclusions about the nature of the change through which Christ becomes present in the sacrament of the Eucharist, and about the nature of this continuing presence. Although the object to which the thesis relates is provided by doctrinal and theological affirmations, the perspective within which the investigation takes place is that of the reflective rationality distinctive of philosophy. Put differently, the aim of the thesis is to examine the speculative rational work undertaken by Thomas Aquinas in the course of his discussion of issues relating to the change of bread and of wine into the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist - a discussion that Thomas introduces by first arguing to traditional Catholic belief about the outcome of this change. The examination engages with the reasonable explanatory power of the conceptual resources and the philosophical arguments drawn upon by the Angelic Doctor in his systematic study of the Eucharistic change, and of the implications of this change relative to the continuing presence of Christ in the Eucharist. 2. Scope of the Thesis. The parameters of the thesis are set by St Thomas’s discussions of Eucharistic change and presence that take place in part three, questions 75-77, of his Summa Theologiae, book four, chapters 60-68, of his Summa contra Gentiles, and book four, distinctions 10-11, of his Scriptum super Libris Sententiarum Petri Lombardi. Within these parameters are to be included contributions to the issues discussed by St Thomas made by Thomas de Vio Cajetan, Domingo Banez, and Silvester of Ferrara (Ferrariensis), major commentators on the work of Thomas. Extensive presentation, and scrutiny, of opposing arguments from Duns Scotus are also included. Following an introductory chapter concerned to situate, summarise, and indicate its principal assumptions, the thesis explores what is, for St Thomas, a major objection to affirming the substantially real presence of Christ in the Eucharist: such an affirmation is said to imply the ontological impossibility that Christ’s bodily reality is simultaneously present in more than one place. The response to this objection involves an analysis of the distinction between the primary and the secondary formal effects of dimensive quantity, and the use of this distinction to argue at some length that one and the same material thing may be simultaneously present in more than one place if the secondary formal effects of dimensive quantity that would spatially situate this thing in relation to its immediate surroundings are suspended. The thesis then considers three issues dealing with what becomes of the substance of the bread and of the wine at the Eucharistic consecration. In the first of these, Thomas rejects the claim that the substance of the bread and of the wine remains in existence on the altar, affirming that the bread and wine are changed at the level of substance into the body and blood of Christ. This position requires, and receives, sustained treatment of philosophical questions concerning ‘substance’, and change affecting the whole substance of a thing (within a hylomorphic understanding of material realities). Related problems of individuation, causal agency, and the logic of language that both signifies, and brings about, change, are considered. The second issue investigates the claim that the substance of the bread and of the wine is not changed after all into the body and blood of Christ but is either annihilated or changed into matter-in-an-earlier-state. This claim is rejected by St Thomas on philosophical grounds, and this section of the thesis engages critically with Cajetan on several points connected with Thomas’s arguments The third issue concerns, and affirms, the capacity of bread and wine to be changed substantially into the body and blood of Christ, at which point the thesis widens out to contrast a hylomorphic with a hylomeric account of matter, and to consider at some length Duns Scotus’s metaphysics of the Eucharist which oppose those of St Thomas. Chapter six of the thesis explores in some detail the responses of Cajetan and Ferrariensis to the challenges issued by Scotus, and the concluding chapter (chapter seven) provides an analysis of Thomistic ideas regarding three modes of the emergence of being: creation, natural change, transubstantiation. 3. Conclusions. The title asserts that the thesis is “an examination of the Thomistic metaphysics of the Eucharistic presence”. This examination endorses the following conclusions: 3.1 The schemata of metaphysical concepts employed by St Thomas (e.g. the concepts of substance, accident, esse, primary matter, substantial form, creation, natural change, obediential potentiality, primary/secondary formal effects of dimensive quantity), and his lines of philosophical argument, provide a clearly valid response to “the exigencies of the inquiring mind at work” in relation to the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In other words, their reasonable explanatory power is evidently to be affirmed. 3.2 Pari passu the thesis indicates something of what could be called ‘the mystery of matter’ – the inexhaustible depths and potentialities of matter that the inquiring mind confronts when exploring matter in the distinctive situation that is matter’s special dependence on the First Cause in the Eucharistic change (transubstantiation). 3.3 The thesis is an instance of philosophical work undertaken in the first decade of the 21st century, and within the socio-cultural context of this time. This socio-cultural ‘situatedness’, although vastly different from the socio-cultural ‘situatedness’ of Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Cajetan, Ferrariensis, and Banez, has created no culturally relative barrier - no ‘incommensurability’ - such as to prevent an understanding of the conceptual/argumentative activity in which these thinkers engaged some centuries ago. Human beings always and everwhere ‘fit into’ the same Universe through their abiding and ineluctably shared openness to being and its first principles.

I argue that, because fundamental scientific theories are attempts to tell us something about reality, we are required to take into account the metaphysical features of those theories. I claim that a guarded realism is the proper stance to take toward fundamental scientific theories: philosophically, one must guard against accepting every posit at face value. Laws of nature are one of the posits of fundamental scientific theories and, since they are part of the nomic, I argue that they cannot be eliminated from the ontology of the world. I consider whether the nomic can be reduced to the Humean base and argue that doing so leaves us with no metaphysical explanation for the regularities we observe. I agree with Galen Strawson that the world requires a metaphysically real glue to hold it together and argue that this glue is accounted for by reifying the nomic and not reducing any of the nomic concepts to the Humean base. I argue, against Helen Beebee, that a regularity theorist about laws of nature and causation makes the world out to be a world without reasons for the regularities, which is not acceptable. I consider the Best System Analysis of laws of nature in conjunction with Humean Supervenience and show that it is not able to account for objective chance in a metaphysically acceptable way. I then turn to Armstrong’s contingent relation among universals account of laws of nature and consider Bird’s ultimate argument against it. I argue that one way to overcome the argument is to allow that some universals have nontrivial modal character, which is an acceptable solution for the nomic realist. / October 2006

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-85).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1909. / "First part of an essay upon theology and metaphysics." Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Philosophy." Includes bibliographical references (p. 151-153).

Thèse--Universit́e de Paris.

Claims in the metaphysics of strong emergence, featuring autonomous and possibly reflexive downward causal capacity, methodologically require, though ultimately ignore, units of analysis qua unified wholes. I argue that this avoidance of mereological and wider metaphysical debates denies the metaphysics of emergence clarity and cohesion and urgent application to conceptions of structure and agency. In this thesis, using a refined, non-linear, irreproducible, non-ontologically reductionist open-system physicalism and empiricism, I show that claims in the metaphysics of emergence hastily assume first the integration and subsequently the individuation of objects that become the subject of these strong claims. These assumptions, I believe, are actually the cause for the insurmountable gap between pure ontological reduction on the one side, and pure ontological and irreducible property emergence on the other. Furthermore, in using this new physicalism in the context of strong emergence, the traditional boundary between ontology and epistemology—going far beyond the standard weak-strong divide in the emergence discourse—can no longer be respected. As such, the nature of emergent properties is critical to assessing the nature of objects qua wholes with respect to the conditions for their integration and individuation. The major contribution to the metaphysics of emergence that this thesis provides is the realisation that, when we assume all physical objects are open and porous, all claims for persisting, emergent wholes are necessarily based on physical assumptions of integration and individuation. Synthetically I offer a method for understanding the individuation of ‘quidditious’ objects via properties when such a physicalist framework is employed.

<p>Hildegard von Bingen, a visionary abbess living in the tumultuous 12th century, recorded and interpreted three very powerful visions pertaining to Christianity. This dissertation is limited to the first image of Hildegard&rsquo;s last vision called De Operatione Dei, the Works of God, a cosmological vision about creation. Hildegard named this image <i>On the Origin of Life. </i> </p><p> The thesis of this dissertation suggests the four main characters in the first image of Hildegard&rsquo;s cosmological vision&mdash;the two-headed and four-winged red figure named <i>Caritas</i> standing on the serpent-wrapped monster&mdash;correspond to the four stages of Jung&rsquo;s individuation&mdash;encounter with the shadow (serpent), encounter with the soulimage (monster as Adam), encounter with the god-image (Caritas), emergence of the Self (godhead). Each of these characters and stages represent a level in what has been called by perennial philosophy the Great Chain of Being. Hildegard&rsquo;s vision represents the unfolding of Spirit into matter. Jung&rsquo;s individuation process describes the soul&rsquo;s journey back towards Spirit. </p><p> This work starts by introducing the vision and Hildegard&rsquo;s interpretation. Next it moves to what other authors have written. Since the vision is about creation the interpretation starts with the literalists&rsquo; view of Genesis and moves to the mystical interpretations of Genesis. Other creation stories including a serpent and a goddess amplify the interpretation. Then, using Jungian and alchemical symbols the images of this iv vision are further elaborated. The research follows the logic of the axiom of Maria, from the uroboros, to the hermaphrodite, to the trinity and ending with the <i> marriage quaternio</i>&mdash;two pairs of hermaphrodites. Byington&rsquo;s symbolic elaboration process is used to interpret the dramatic action of the vision thereby bringing the vision back to life as Hildegard might have experienced it. Finally, the parallel between Hildegard&rsquo;s vision and Jung&rsquo;s individuation process is explained in detail. The work ends with Hildegard&rsquo;s interpretation of why god created the world showing how it aligns with the goal of individuation, and how both are critical for the life of the soul in the 21^st century. </p>