[2020 Summer] Aquinas’ Cosmological Vision

Seminar: Minds today are given over to a background cosmological nihilism: a nihilism denying the belief that there is purpose independent of our own volitional determination; a nihilism become the unquestioned rule of the day. In contrast is the cosmological vision of Thomas Aquinas: a vision which sees in the fundamental principles of the universe an ordered whole, giving governance to all its parts, and perfect in itself.

Quaestiones de Quodlibet – Prima Series, Q.1, A.1

How does the intellect differ from the senses?  Is it merely a difference of degree—a relatively hyperfunctional neurological processing that enables us to supersede the cognitive capacities of non-human animals?  Am “I” really nothing more than the firing of synapses in the brain, the concatenation of neurochemical exchanges?  Or is human knowledge something—different?  Unique?  Irreducible …

Quodlibet: Preview

The following is a preview selection (rough draft) of the forthcoming Quaestiones de Quodlibet, Prima Series, based upon the questions I received this past July/August.  This is the respondeo portion of q.1, "On Knowledge", a.1, "How does intellectual knowledge differ from sense knowledge?" I respond: We must distinguish the faculties and operations of sense perception and intellect. The …

Seminar: Retrieving Thomistic Psychology

[CPI Seminars] [CPI Lyceum Platform] Two momentous intellectual events occurred in 1879: Wilhelm Wundt founded the first formal laboratory for psychological research at the University of Leipzig, and Pope Saint Leo XIII released the encyclical Aeterni Patris, which exhorted the retrieval and teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Catholic universities.  The first, while a legitimate and …