Introduction to Philosophy (Spring 2008)

Some resources for those interested in Aquinas himself or his Five Ways in particular:

* Scott David Foutz, An Examination of Thomas Aquinas’ Cosmological Arguments as found in the Five Ways.

* G. K. Chesterton’s St. Thomas Aquinas is still probably the most readable and enjoyable biographical introduction to Aquinas.

* Thomas Aquinas in English is a good resource for finding Aquinas’s texts, online or offline.

* You can also find out more about Aquinas at the SEP.

The Ethics Resource Center will soon be hosting another event:

"Plato and the Global Society"

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Eastview Campus, Building 8, Room 8500

7-9 pm

Presenter: Sherry Blum

As previously, students who attend, take notes, and have those notes in their portfolios when they turn them in at the end of term can have their participation in this event counted both toward their portfolio and their class participation.

The third reflection paper assignment is up on the reflection paper page. The due date, a soft deadline as usual, is two weeks from today.

Whoever moves away from a haughty heart to the opposite extreme so that he is exceedingly lowly in spirit is called pious; this is the measure of piety. If someone moves only to the mean and is humble, he is called wise; this is the measure of wisdom. The same applies to all the rest of the character traits. The pious of old used to direct their character traits from the middle way toward one of the two extremes; some character traits toward the last extreme, and some toward the first extreme."

Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, 1: Character Traits: 1.4-6.  Moses ben Maimon (1138-1204) is one of the great Jewish philosophers. You can read more about him at the SEP.

"Thus all men, both good ones and perverse, are the causes of both good and evil things, and through them it comes about that both goods and evils exist. For the good man doesn’t seem to be at variance with the evil one insofar as he does what’s good, but rather in that he does it well….Indeed it often happens that the same thing is done by different people in such a way that the one does it well and the other evilly, according to their intention. For instance, if two people hang some criminal, the one solely because he hates him but the other because he has to carry out this justice, this hanging is accordingly done justly by the latter, because it was done with the right intention, but unjustly by the former, because it was done not out of love of justice but out of fervor for hatred or wrath."

Peter Abelard, Dialogue Between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian (Dialogue 2). You can read more about Abelard (1079-1142) at the SEP. You can also read his autobiography, the Historia Calamitatum, at Medieval Sourcebook.

Boethius’s Consolation recently made the news, because the Pope discussed it in a recent catechesis. Those who are interested in this sort of thing can read a translation of the Pope’s lesson here.

"For philosophy is the love and pursuit of wisdom, and in some way friendship with it. It is not the pursuit of this wisdom indeed which is concerned with certain arts or with any artificial knowledge or theory, but of that wisdom which lacking in nothing is the enduring mind and alone the primeval principle of things. This love of wisdom is the illumination of the intelligent mind from that pure wisdom, and in a sense, its drawing back and calling to itself, so that it may seem, not only the pursuit of wisdom but also the pursuit of divinity, and the friendship with that pure mind. This wisdom then imposes the merit of its own divinity on every kind of soul and brings them back to the force and purity of their nature."

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, In Porphyrium Dialogi a Victorino Translati. You can read more about Boethius at the SEP.

"Do teachers hold that it is their thoughts that are perceived and grasped rather than the very disciplines they take themselves to pass on by speaking? After all, who is so foolishly curious as to send his son to school to learn what the teacher thinks? When the teachers have explained by means of words all the disciplines they profess to teach, even the disciplines of virtue and of wisdom, then those who are called ’students’ consider within thimselves whether truths have been stated. They do so by looking upon the inner Truth, according to their abilities. That is therefore the point at which they learn."

Augustine, The Teacher. You can find more about Augustine at the IEP and the SEP.