A Thomistic metaphysics of participation in being offers an account of rationality that is more complete and coherent than that of nonreductive physicalism. It is a reasoned understanding of how an embodied intellectual subject shares in being and intellectual life. This metaphysical framework supports an understanding of rationality as a participated power, and an essential property of human nature empowering persons to know reality and make choices accordingly. Human fulfilment in truth and love is a consequence of the grounding of (...) the transcendentals of truth and goodness in being. In contrast, nonreductive physicalism reduces rationality to processes and subjective experiences and can offer no priority between human material and spiritual fulfilment. Although a Thomistic metaphysics of participation in being has been effectively absent from Anglo-American hylomorphic philosophy of mind, this paper suggests it is time to reassess the benefits it offers. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se abordan algunos de los conceptos y principios más importantes de la obra de Cornelio Fabro, con el fin de ponderar el alcance, originalidad y consistencia de su posición especulativa respecto de la noción de libertad. En la primera parte, se presenta el itinerario intelectual y científico de Cornelio Fabro. En la segunda, se examina el fundamento metafísico y existencial de la libertad y se hace un recorrido filosófico por los autores más representativos de la modernidad (...) que intervienen en su pensamiento. En la tercera, se realizan algunas consideraciones finales que delimitan los puntos centrales desarrollados en el trabajo. (shrink)

ABSTRACTA number of contemporary authors have argued that Aquinas’s understanding of God is ontotheological. In this paper, I consider the charge as it is formulated by Kevin Hart in his influential book The Trespass of the Sign: Deconstruction, Theology, and Philosophy. Hart claims that three features of Aquinas’s approach to the divine make it ontotheological, namely that it privileges positive theology over negative theology, regards God as the ‘highest value’, and takes God to be the essence of beings. I argue (...) that these features are either not to be found in Aquinas’s thinking about God or that Hart misunderstands them. (shrink)

Although he is not always recognised as such, Søren Kierkegaard has been an important ally for Catholic theologians since the early twentieth century. I introduce for the first time in English the constructive theological features in the underexplored writings of the Italian Thomist, Cornelio Fabro. In the first section, I set the stage with Fabro’s historical context to show Fabro’s desire to negotiate his loyalty to the Thomist revival after Aeterni Patris and the claims of the modern world. In the (...) second, I focus on Fabro’s recovery of Kierkegaard’s writings as a way into understanding Fabro’s wider project of renewal in Catholic theology. Specifically, I draw upon Fabro’s treatment of Kierkegaard’s Mariology and Ecclesiology as two counter-intuitive examples of Catholic theological renewal. I conclude with some observations regarding how Fabro’s constructive theological contribution deepens and expands current understanding of ressourcement theology in the twentieth century. My aim is not just to narrate a vital moment in the history of Catholic engagement with Kierkegaard, but also to provide a representative entry point for Kierkegaard’s writings to continue to stimulate reform and renewal in contemporary Catholic theology in the wake of the ressourcement movement. (shrink)

Se examinan algunas cuestiones relacionadas con el devenir causal de los seres creados -en particular, los seres espirituales-, sobre la base de la noción metafísica de participación desarrollada por Tomás de Aquino. La aproximación parte de las exégesis y comentarios de Cornelio Fabro a las doctrinas tomistas. In the present paper, some issues related to the causal becoming of created beings -in particular, spiritual beings- will be examined, on the basis of the metaphysical notion of participation developed by Thomas Aquinas. (...) The approach starts from Cornelio Fabro's exegesis and comments to thomistic doctrines. (shrink)

This work represents a research on the nature of the causal efficiency of law, i.e. on how the political command is communicated by authority and received by those who must obey it. In the words of political philosophy of aristotelic tradition, it is the classical problem of the “government over free and equal men”, i.e., the problem of compatibility between political government and the freedom of human act and political rights. In the words of kantian practical philosophy, the problem consists (...) in the compatibility between individual’s moral autonomy and juridical system’s heteronomy, i.e. it consists in justifying the dominion of one man over another one, so that the citizen obeys the laws without any kind of submission to a will other than his own. The question requires particular attention to the problem of the nature of political bonds, as communication of political command is necessarily founded on what is common to the members of political society. The work is divided in two parts. The first one proposes a model of practical philosophy whose fundamental structure is common to all major political thinkers of modern times. This model consists in a “moral of obligation” founded on the opposition between law (must) and freedom (will), originated on nominalistic scholastic voluntarism. Within this structure, the problem assumes the form of a dilemma: if law comes from our own will (autonomy), then it becomes necessary to explain how it is possible to command over oneself; if law comes from a will other than our own, then it becomes necessary to explain the difference between law and mere force. In this context, the theories of Hobbes and Rousseau are studied as the theoretical matrix of modern political philosophy and as the two dialectical poles of this opposition. The conclusions derived from the study of these two thinkers are then applied to Kelsen and Kant respectively. The second part proposes a reconstruction of classical philosophy’s position about this problem, meaning by “classical” the tradition that begins with Plato, continues with Aristotle and reaches a new summit with Saint Thomas Aquinas. In this part of the work, a “classical” model of practical philosophy, common to these three authors, is presented. This model consists in an “order of loves”. Two fundamental theses are proposed. The first one is that law is a rational communicable order, whose efficacy is founded on participation of the act of “imperium” of authority in individual’s subjective “imperium” over his own acts. The second one is that the principle of this communication consists in “political concord”, i. e. a “useful friendship” about the ends of society, and that the concrete realization of this order in the citizen’s soul is political virtue, which is analogue to man’s virtue with the same platonic analogy that exists between man’s soul and the city or the State. (shrink)