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If there is any one author in the history of moral thought who has come to be associated with the idea of natural law, it is Saint Thomas Aquinas. Many things have been written about Aquinas's natural law teaching, and from many different perspectives. The aim of this book is to help see it from his own perspective. That is why the focus is metaphysical. Aquinas's whole moral doctrine is laden with metaphysics, and his natural law teaching especially so, because it is all about first principles. The book centers on how Aquinas thinks the first principles of practical reason, which for him are what make up natural law, function as laws. It is a controversial question, and the book engages a variety of readers of Aquinas, including Francisco Suarez, Jacques Maritain, prominent analytical philosophers, Straussians, and the initiators of the New Natural Law theory. Among the issues addressed are the relation between natural law and natural inclination, how far natural law depends on knowledge of human nature, what its obligatory force consists in, and, above all, how it is related to what for Aquinas is the first principle of all being, the divine will.
"Both Thomistic scholars and analytic philosophers interested in theories of human action and accountability will find this book a welcome addition to their libraries. Truly a substantive addition to both Thomistic scholarship and the ongoing analytic investigation into human action and responsible agency."—American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly "A first-rate book...Brock's lucid and illuminating analysis offers much of value to both intellectual historians and theologians, as well as philosophers."—Theological Studies"Brock's treatment of Aquinas's account of action exhibits a rare combination of rigor and learning. It is, no doubt, the best we have."—The Thomist
If Saint Thomas Aquinas was a great theologian, it is in no small part because he was a great philosopher. And he was a great philosopher because he was a great metaphysician. In the twentieth century, metaphysics was not much in vogue, among eithertheologians or even philosophers; but now it is making a comeback, and once the contours of Thomas's metaphysical vision are glimpsed, it looks like anything but a museum piece. It only needs some dusting off. Many are studying Thomas now for the answers that he might be able to give to current questions, but he is perhaps even more interesting for the questions that he can raise regarding current answers: about the physical world, about human life and knowledge, and (needless to say) about God. This book is aimed at helping those who are not experts in medieval thought to begin to enter into Thomas's philosophical point of view. Along the way, it brings out some aspects of his thought that are not often emphasised in the current literature, and it offers a reading of his teaching on the divine nature that goes rather against the drift of some prominent recent interpretations.
This work argues against the plausibility against proportionalism and its first proponents, namely Peter Knauer, Joseph Fuchs, Louis Janssens, and Richard McCormick. Examining the genealogy of the movement, it disputes a received history that depicts proportionalism as a recovery of Thomas Aquinas.
For decades we have witnessed the emergence of a media age of illusion that is based on the principles of physics—the multidimensionality, immateriality, and non-locality of the unified field of energy and information—as a virtual reality. As a result, a new paradigm shift has reframed the cognitive unconscious of individuals and collectives and generated a worldview in which mediated illusion prevails. Exploring the Collective Unconscious in a Digital Age investigates the cognitive significance of an altered mediated reality that appears to have all the dimensions of a dreamscape. This book presents the idea that if the digital media-sphere proves to be structurally and functionally analogous to a dreamscape, the Collective Unconscious researched by Carl Jung and the Cognitive Unconscious researched by George Lakoff are susceptible to research according to the parameters of hard science. This pivotal research-based publication is ideally designed for use by psychologists, theorists, researchers, and graduate-level students studying human cognition and the influence of the digital media revolution.