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This collection of essays is a compilation of the thought and work of W. Norris Clarke, S.J., a philosopher inspired by the Thomistic tradition, who in 45 years of teaching and writing has delved into many of the central problems of perennial philosophy and made a significant contribution to the ongoing history of American Thomism. The essays presented here reflect an internal unity-each essay deliberately building on the positions put forth in the preceding ones-as they progress systematically through the themes of metaphysics and philosophy of God. Clarke begins with an overall survey of what in Aquinas's metaphysics is most relevant for today, and then suggests the most fruitful starting ...
When it is taught today, metaphysics is often presented as a fragmented view of philosophy that ignores the fundamental issues of its classical precedents. Eschewing these postmodern approaches, W. Norris Clarke finds an integrated vision of reality in the wisdom of Aquinas and here offers a contemporary version of systematic metaphysics in the Thomistic tradition. The One and the Many presents metaphysics as an integrated whole which draws on Aquinas' themes, structure, and insight without attempting to summarize his work. Although its primary inspiration is the philosophy of St. Thomas himself, it also takes into account significant contributions not only of later philosophers but also of those developments in modern science that have philosophical bearing, from the Big Bang to evolution.
These are the Aquinas Lectures for 1993 given at Marquette University by Jesuit priest W. Norris Clarke. There is an Introduction, two main sections, and ten chapters, including "The Meaning of Person" and "The Problem of Evil".
W. Norris Clarke's metaphysics of the universe as a journey rests on six major positions: the unrestricted dynamism of the mind, the primacy of the act of existence, the participation structure of reality, and the person, considered as both the starting point of philosophy and the source of the categories needed for a flexible contemporary metaphysics. Reflecting on his conscious life and the universe around him, the finite person mounts by a two-fold path to its Infinite source, who, though immutable in His natural being, is mutable in the intentional being of His personal knowledge and love. The personal God is the efficient cause from whom the universe comes and the final cause to whom it...
W. Norris Clarke has chosen the fifteen essays in this collection, five of which appear here for the first time, as the most significant of the more than seventy he has written over the course of a long career. Clarke is known for his development of a Thomistic personalism. To be a person, according to Saint Thomas, is to take conscious self-possession of one's own being, to be master of oneself. But our incarnate mode of being human involves living in a body whose life unfolds across time, and is inevitably dispersed across time. If we wish to know fully who we are, we need to assimilate and integrate this dispersal, so that our lives become a coherent story. In addition to the existentialist thought of Etienne Gilson and others, Clarke draws on the Neoplatonic dimension of participation. Existence as act and participation have been the central pillars of his metaphysical thought, especially in its unique manifestation in the human person. The essays collected here cover a wide range of philosophical, ethical, religious, and aesthetic topics. Through them sounds a very personal voice, one that has inspired generations of students and scholars.
This book is a revised and expanded edition of three lectures delivered by the author as the centerpiece of a symposium on the philosophy of God at Wake Forest University in 1979. Long out of print, in its new edition it should be a valuable resource for scholars and teachers of the philosophy of religion.The first two lectures, after a critique of the incompleteness of St. Thomas Aquinas's famous Five Ways of arguing for the existence of God, explores two lesser-known resources of Aquinas's philosophical ascent of the mind to God. The first is the unrestricted dynamism of the human spirit, both intellect and will, reaching toward the fullness of being as both true (i.e., intelligible) and good. The second is the strictly metaphysical ascent to God from finite to infinite, in the line of Aquinas's later, more Neoplatonically inspired, metaphysics of participation.The third lecture is a critique of Whitehead's process philosophy. It asks: Is process philosophy compatible with Christian theism? This article is heavily revised from its earlier version, distinguishing Aquinas more sharply and critically from Whitehead than in the first edition.
Crosby unfolds the mystery of personal uniqueness, shedding new light on the unrepeatability of each human person.
French philosopher Maurice Blondel had a tremendous impact on both philosophy and religion over the first half of the twentieth century. He was at once a postmodern critical philosopher and a devout traditional Catholic, trying not only to reconcile these two seemingly disparate factors in his own mind, but also to prove to others that the two must go together. / In the first critical examination of the philosopher’s life Oliva Blanchette tells the story of Blondel’s stormy life confronting an Academy dismissive of religion and a Religion uncomfortable with rational philosophy. This book not only follows his biographical history, but also presents his systematic philosophy, from the beginning of his journey to the culmination found in Philosophical Exigencies of Christianity, the book for which he signed the publishing contract the day before he died. / Maurice Blondel is part of the Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought series, edited by David L. Schindler.
Norris Clarke has chosen the fifteen articles in this collection, five of which appear here for the first time, as the most significant of the more than seventy articles he has written over the course of a long career. Father Clarke is known for his development of a Thomistic personalism. To be a person, according to St. Thomas, is to take conscious self-possession of ones own being, to be master of oneself. But our incarnate human mode of being necessarily involves living in a body whose life unfolds across time, and whose life is therefore inevitably dispersed across time. If we wish to know in full self-consciousness who we are, we need to assimilate and integrate this dispersal, so that our lives become a coherent story. The essays collected here cover a wide range of philosophical, ethical, religious, and aesthetic topics. Through them sounds a very personal voice, one that has inspired generations of students.
Nothing within the world has the power to make the world continue; yet it is intrinsic to the temporal world that it does continue, and does not exist merely instantaneously. On this basis, the author renews St. Thomas's way of conceiving God as the immediate principle of existence, but doesthis de novo, never drawing upon any authority, but working within the exigencies of contemporary general philosophy. The philosophy of religion is for him never a separate discipline but the fruit of a proper working through of the inter-related problems of the philosophy of mind and action,epistemology, and logical theory with the correlative restructuring of metaphysics.