Thomas Aquinas (Philosophy)

The aim is to understand Aquinas’s assertion that true, good and beautiful are “transcendentals” that are “convertible with being”. That is, that everything that exists is necessarily true, good and beautiful. How does that relate to the obvious fact that there are bad and ugly things? Following Pseudo-Dionysius, Aquinas has a theory of "perfection" as completion of a thing's essential nature.

This study argues that Aquinas’ account of tyranny grants citizens a surprisingly wide ambit for resistance to tyrants but that such actions demand a tall order for even the most virtuous citizens: knowledge of the hierarchy of ends in politics and the prudence to apply it under the pressure of a tyrannical government. We consider sections of the Summa Theologiae and De Regno, Aquinas’ most sustained discussion of tyranny, to demonstrate the theoretical illumination that the former provides of the latter. De Regno, we argue, presents a negative teaching of the best regime and citizen, one in which citizens are shown the need for their own virtue in discerning the roots of tyranny and their remedy. With the Summa, we show how such prudential decisions fit within the orders of charity and piety: the citizen must come to see love of country as intrinsically ordered to love of family and God. Ultimately, Aquinas’ resistance theory rests on a hierarchy of ends for civil government that orders both ruler and citizen to God.

This paper examines the methodology employed by Thomas Aquinas in his two derivations of the categories, or sufficientiae. In these accounts, he shows the distinctiveness of the ten Aristotelian categories as modes of being (modi essendi) through an analysis of modes of predication (modi praedicandi).  The paper considers why Aquinas sees this logical method of predication (via praedicationis) to be an appropriate tool for the metaphysician.  Similarities between Aquinas’s and Albert’s sufficientiae are shown to clarify Aquinas’s methodology. In particular, the paper examines how both thinkers employ modes of denominative predication and modes of opposition to derive the categories.  The paper not only reveals Aquinas’s full methodology in his sufficientiae, but it also provides further insight into how he uses logical methods in general in his metaphysical investigations.

For students of Thomas Aquinas, Cornelio Fabro is well known for his thorough examinations of Thomas’s doctrine of participation. Less well known, however, is Fabro’s occasional reference to a doppia, or double, participation of the creature in the divine: one for its essence, the other for its act of existing (esse). In this paper, I examine these references to “double participation” by looking at another, related, doubling explicitly affirmed by Thomas Aquinas: double exemplarism. From his earliest writings, Thomas draws a distinction between two kinds of divine exemplarism, one of the divine ideas and the other of the divine nature. As I show, despite affirming this double exemplarism—or, more precisely, because of the way he affirms it—Thomas presents only a single line of what Fabro would term “transcendental participation.” Moreover, as I argue  Fabro himself in fact follows Thomas on this point, a reading that can be strengthened through a careful consideration of what Thomas’s doctrine of double exemplarism entails.

Abstract. The article focuses upon the popular devotion for la Santa Muerte that emerged in Mexico and is gaining a rapid increase in notoriety in the country and abroad. The first sections reconstruct in detail its protean manifestations, as well as the interpretations contained in extant scholarly investigations but also in popular Mexican press and other texts. The final section, adopting a fine-grained, theological-epistemological viewpoint argues that la Santa’s interventions in human affairs, essential to explain her popularity, although usually described as “miracles” can be better understood as paros - a term employed by devotees in order to define the end of a situation, usually unpleasant or unfavourable.  It is also argued that a careful examination of such paros provides us with deeper insights into the devotions’ success and resiliency.

Fast alle Menschen reden dann und wann über Gott und die Welt. Aber wie ist eine reale Beziehung zwischen Gott und der Welt denkbar, wenn Gott im strengen Sinn unbegreiflich sein soll? Thomas von Aquin (1225-1274) und Peter Knauer (*1935) schlagen originelle Lösungen für dieses Problem vor. Beide greifen dabei auf die aristotelische Definition der Relation als „das worauf hin“ (τò πρός τι) zurück. Ich halte die Beschreibung des Gott-Welt-Verhältnisses in Knauers relationaler Ontologie für kohärenter, klarer und deshalb für pastoral hilfreicher als die thomanische, etwas ausfransende aber theologisch erstaunlich einflussreiche Darstellung.

Qui n’a jamais parlé sur le monde et le bon Dieu ? Or, comment est-il possible de penser une relation entre Dieu et le monde, si Dieu est absolument incompréhensible ? Saint Thomas d’Aquin (1225-1274) et Peter Knauer (*1935) proposent des pistes pour une réponse à cette question. J’estime plus cohérente et pastoralement utile la description de la relation entre Dieu et le monde dans l’ontologie relationnelle proposée de Knauer. Là où Thomas paraît avoir cédé au paradoxe d’une relation de raison entre Dieu et le monde qui, selon ses propres mots, n’est pas une relation réelle, Knauer va jusqu’au bout du problème logique pour proposer une approche théologique qui est sans pareil. 

Every now and then, soon or late in our lives, we might talk or think about God and the world. However, it is far from evident to claim a true relationship between God and the world if God is to be considered as beyond any kind of understanding. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and Peter Knauer (*1935) suggest different ways how to approach the problem. I argue that Knauer’s concept of a real relation between God and the world is more coherent and therefore more convincing than the one Aquinas proposes, even though he might not interpret Aquinas accordingly. Going logically straight to the very end of the problem, Knauer suggests a solution that revolutionizes theology.

paperback and epub: https://wipfandstock.com/the-philosophy-of-saint-thomas-aquinas.html
hardcover: https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Saint-Thomas-Aquinas/dp/1498279783/
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Saint-Thomas-Aquinas-Sketch-ebook/dp/B0195PIIWW/

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 emphasized 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.
  The excerpt that can be downloaded is used with Permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers.  Softcover and epub versions are available from their webpage.  Amazon has a kindle version.

Abstrak
"tiap-tiap orang adalah filsuf"
Soetiksno

Tugas ini diminta oleh dosen pengasuh mata kuliah FILSAFAT HUKUM untuk diajukan sebagai salah satu syarat pemenuhan program mata kuliah paska sarjana pada Semester I di UNPAZ. Materi yang mengabungkan untuk menanalisa kesamaan antara Lex Divina dan Lex naturalis dalam pemikiran Thomas Aquinas Sebagaimana diketahui pada jam pertengahan terutama periode tahun 1225 hingga 1275, Thomas Aguinas adalah seorang filsuf yang Berjaya dikala itu, pemikiran pemikirannya mengenai hukum naturalis. Disebutkan pada jaman itu, pemikiran bahwa Lex Aeterna atau hukumyang abadi dan berasal dari hanya rasio Tuhan pada jaman sebelumya dikembangkan oleh Aguinas dengan lebih mendalam bahwa hukum abadi (Lex aeterna) yang awalnya hanya berasal dari rasio Allah itu sebenarnya juga beasal dari rasio manusia. Ini menurut filsuf-filsuf aliran naturalis ini dicontohkan dengan manusia dapat merasakan, dan dari merasakan ini manusia memahani apa itu rasa keadilan yang hingga kini dituntut sebagai tujuan utama pengaturan sebuah hukum positivism atau menurut Thomas Aguinas adalah hukum alam naturalis

This outline includes the complete text of Book V of the Aristotle's Metaphysics, both the Greek and an English translation. The Translation is a modification of W.D. Ross's translation, as revised by Jonathan Barnes. The detailed structure imposed on the text is taken from St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, trans. and introd. by John P. Rowan, preface

I this article I tackle a series of questions related to beauty and aesthetic perception in Aquinas. Many of these questions orbit what we should make of Aquinas's claim "Pulchra enim dicuntur quae visa placent" (ST I.5.4ad1)

In the first part, I focus on beauty in Aquinas. A surprising amount of literature has been written on Aquinas's relatively scattered remarks about beauty. Drawing upon this erudite literature, I note some important hermeneutical worries about approaching these various remarks and present a summary of Aquinas's view that beauty pertains to what exhibits claritas and proportio. Perhaps the most controversial topic in this literature concerns the transcendental status of beauty in Aquinas. Again, I address some exegetical concerns about the nature of this question, and try to articulate a non-anachronistic version of the question. I then examine Jan Aertsen's well-known criticisms of exponents of the view that beauty is a transcendental for Aquinas. I demonstrate that Aertsen’s objections and arguments are not persuasive, are far from decisive, and were adequately anticipated and resolved by the interpretations of Umberto Eco and others. Indeed, it is Aertsen who has failed to address adequately the cogent interpretations of his predecessors, who rightly defend the thesis that beauty is a transcendental in Aquinas.

Transcendental beauty pertains to beauty as it is in itself (quoad se), but aesthetic beauty pertains to instances of transcendental beauty as it is manifest to us humans (i.e., quoad nos). In the second part of the essay I focus in on a specific kind of aesthetic experience, namely, that of aesthetic perception, and I look to the importance of Aquinas's doctrine of per accidens sensation by the cogitative power and intellect for understanding beauty as a per accidens sensible grasped by aesthetic perception. I then turn to investigate the way in which aesthetic perception, a cognitive operation, involves a form of pleasure, an appetitive operation.

I conclude with some speculative remarks on the importance of aesthetic virtues and cultivating an aesthetics of everyday life.

Thomas Aquinas is most renowned for his so-called "Five Ways" developed in the pursuit of determining and demonstrating the existence of God. The Five Ways originally revolve around the principles of natural theology, which is the basis of the cluster of arguments Thomas Aquinas presents within the five mainline arguments. These five arguments constitute only an introduction to a rigorous project in natural theology. In order to understand his work on natural theology, it is important that we define and appreciate the nature and scope of natural theology within the proper context of his arguments. In principle, natural theology is such that is purely and properly philosophical and hence it does not make use of appeals to religious authority in order to establish a basis for truth.  Thomas Aquinas' work on natural theology, which reflects Aristotelian metaphysics, runs through thousands of tightly argued passages and assigns a new dimension to the subsequent work on theology within the Catholic Church.

According to Thomas Aquinas, it belongs to metaphysics to study separate substances—not as its subject matter, but rather as the principles or causes of its subject, which is ens commune, or Being-in-general. In considering Thomas’s metaphysical account of separate substances, scholars have understandably focused much of their attention on God, in particular examining Thomas’s arguments for the existence of God. Significantly less attention has been paid to his arguments for the existence of those other separate substances, which he calls “angels.” Not surprisingly, what little attention that has been paid to these arguments has focused on their philosophical strength.  The general consensus among scholars is that these arguments are not in fact demonstrative, a view with which I am sympathetic.  A more basic question concerns what Thomas himself considers the strength of his own arguments to be. It is this interpretive question that I consider in this paper, concluding that he does consider at least some of his arguments to be demonstrative. As I show, the answer to this question is of interest not only from an historical standpoint, but also from a philosophical one. For it reveals some fundamental aspects of Thomas’s metaphysical views regarding the structure of the universe.

According to Thomas Aquinas, God's essence is unparticipated and unparticipable. Yet at times, he presents 'esse subsistens', which is the divine essence, as somehow participated. This paper considers Aquinas's account of what such participation entails. It examines this question in light of a distinction he draws between three modes of participation, and it concludes that he sees God as participated according to the third of these: the manner in which an effect participates in its cause. In the course of its investigation of this mode of participation, the paper also sheds further light on Aquinas's account of participation in 'esse' taken as the intrinsic 'actus essendi' of an individual created being as well 'esse' taken as 'esse commune': the common notion of created 'actus essendi'.

Comenzamos, introduciéndonos en el
modo específico del conocimiento propio de las acciones humanas en cuanto humanas, a partir de los presupuestos que corresponden a la teoría del conocimiento en general, sobre la base del pensamiento y de los textos de Santo Tomás de Aquino. Continuamos con el análisis de las doctrinas de dos grandes filósofos modernos: Kant y Hegel, cuyas síntesis son ininteligibles sin una referencia a la situación del conocimiento respecto de la vida moral. Esto es así explícitamente en el filósofo de Königsberg. Es menos manifiesto, pero no menos real, en Hegel. Nuestra exposición no es meramente
descriptiva. Es especulativa, e implica un juicio crítico sobre la doctrina de los autores. Esperamos que sea útil especialmente para quienes se introducen en el estudio filosófico universitario.

This chapter is a defense of Aquinas's perverted faculty argument against lying. Aquinas, following Augustine, held that lying is a misuse of speech.  In lying the liar is using assertions contrary to their purpose.  Many object to Aquinas's reasoning here on two grounds: a) language has other purposes; b) it is not always wrong to use things for other than their natural purpose.  I argue here that Aquinas's argument, if properly understood, withstands all the objections.  His argument against lying stands, even if only defeasibly so.

I'm sorry to keep updating this translation, but new finds and new sources call for a new interpretation of the Greek text. As one uncovers Scholarios' sources his real genius comes to life. He reported that his Byzantine and Italian students of Logic and Philosophy in Constantinople were confused by his terminology. Well, I am a case in point. Until Bonaventure and Francis Meyronnes were discovered to be the basis of his metaphysics, nobody was able to agree if Scholarios was Thomist, Scotist, or Palamite. Now that his sources are made clear, we see  in a provisional English translation of Scholarius' mini-polemic against Thomism  (1445) his early departure and disappointment from Florence (June 1439). Features of this work:
(1.) It is a commentary within a commentary on Aquinas by the Thomist, Armandus of Bellovisu, whom Scholarius translated
(2.) It shows Scholarius' justification of Palamas by recourse to Francis Meyronnes who boldly held for a "real distinction" between God's persons, attributes, and essence.
(3.) Translated lines from Bonaventure's 'Qaestiones disputatae de mysterio Trinitatis'
(4.) It is the announcement of a program to write a full fledged treatise on this subject realized in the 1450s
(5.) It is a testimony to Scholarius' fully Palamite pedigree as a simply more subtle and cognizant historian of Latin Scholasticism and its semantics than early 20th century neo-Thomistis, who evaluated this work. Scholarius breaks intellectual moulds of categorizing Byzantine theology as somehow unable to confront the 'awesome' and 'frightening' Latin logic, as it was called, by John Eugenicus after Florence (c. 1440).

NB- I have made a selection of 'energy' or 'attribute' or activity or operation based upon the Scholastic origin of the translation or source that I could detect or the Palamite one. Energy is simply meant to be more ambiguous and can contain any of the translations above.

If you think you know Byzantine logic...Think again!

The paper argues that Thomas Aquinas's characterization of God as ipsum esse subsistens is not to be taken to mean that the divine nature is nothing other than the nature of esse or that God is the platonic idea of being.  In general, there is no such thing as an esse (actus essendi) that is not the actuality of some form or nature.  Thomas's God is not esse without form; He is an esse that is identical with His form.  Nor is He merely a subsistent version of universal esse; instead of saying that He is esse itself, subsisting, a more accurate rendering of Thomas would be to say that He is AN esse itself, subsisting (even if in fact He is the only one).  Moreover, the divine esse is beyond esse itself.  This is because it is not only the perfection signified by the term 'esse' but also all other perfections, in a form that transcends each of them and even all of them together, since it is also utterly simple.  On JSTOR http://www.jstor.org/stable/20130777.

(Spanish abstract, below) In this book, I study the problem of 'mental representation' in St. Thomas Aquinas' philosphy. After a long historical first chapter, when I try to show the most important  positions in the History of philosophy about this subject, I study the contemporary discussion between the interpreters of st. Thomas' thought. I find three main lines of interpretations, then, in the next three chapters, I discuss each of them from st. Thomas' texts, searching a textual-metaphysical-antropological understanding of the question. Besides, I try briefly to give some links between st. Thomas' philosophy and the contemporary philosophy of mind // En este libro, estudio el problema de las representaciones mentales en santo Tomás de Aquino. En primer lugar, intento mostrar las principales posiciones con respecto al problema de las representaciones mentales en la historia de la filosofía. Después, entrando en el tema de la tesis de lleno, parto de la discusión entre los intérpretes de santo Tomás, encontrando tres líneas principales de interpretación. Cada una de ellas genera un nuevo capítulo, donde discuto las diversas posiciones e intento someramente dar algunos puntos de contacto entre santo Tomás y la filosofía de la mente actual.

"In the beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God; and the Word was God." So begins the Gospel according to St. John. And according to venerable scholastic and neo-scholastic traditions of commentary, so also is planted the seed for the centerpiece of St. Thomas's philosophical account of how the faculty of intellect functions in understanding, by the produc- tion of a verbum menUs. In this paper I intend to challenge that interpretation of St. Thomas. I intend to argue that rather than being a philosophical doc- trine, the verbum mentis is a properly theological topic. I will proceed by describing the general structure of what I want to call the traditional verbum mentis interpretation, mentioning along the way several of its more promi- nent advocates. I will then address that interpretation with the goal of showing that it mistakenly makes a theological doctrine into a philosophical doctrine. I will argue that the verbum mentis is no part at all of St. Thomas's philosophical account of cognition. The problem occurs precisely when it is divorced from its properly theological setting, and erected into a philosophical thesis. Here I cannot consider properly the philosophical difficulties that I think are also associated with this picture of the mind; I will only approach it from the perspective of the interpretation of St. Thomas's thought. But, from that perspective, I think the discussion displays St. Thomas's subtle respect for the use of philosophy within theology-a use that does not make philosophy say what it has no need to say.

Di sini dirampungkan empat refleksi filosofis yang mengacu pada pemikiran St Thomas Aquinas tentang PENGENALAN AKAN TUHAN, KEBAHAGIAAN, IMORTALITAS, KEINDAHAN. Empat tema besar ini amat erat kaitannya dengan Filsafat maupun Teologi menurut Aquinas.

Before addressing the morality of lying, one must start with an account of what constitutes a lie. This is important in order for one to see which speech acts fall under the condemnation of lying and which do not. Just as an incorrect definition of murder may free the guilty (or unjustly condemn the innocent), so too an incorrect definition of lying has moral implications.
There has been much discussion in the literature in the last few decades concerning what constitutes a lie. Many different definitions have been proposed. For the sake of greater clarity, I begin with a broad division of definitions of lying into what I call the moral and non-moral definitions of lying (each of which has further subdivisions). The moral definitions of lying include moral terms such as “right,” “undue,” “unreasonable,” or “wrong” within the definition. Non-moral definitions, by contrast, include no moral terms either explicitly or implicitly. Non-moral definitions are overwhelmingly the more widely accepted view, both among philosophers and the common man. Nevertheless, it is important to treat the moral definitions, which would, if correct, have a significant impact on the debate over the morality of lying.

Wilfrid Sellars’s engagement with Thomism in “Being and Being Known” is examined, specifically for his reformulation of the thesis that the mind in its mental acts is in some sense identical in form to the object known. Bor- rowing the notion of “isomorphism” from modern set theory, Sellars describes an identity of form between mind and world that is non-intentional in the “Realm of the Real,” while confining all questions of meaning and truth to the “Realm of the Intentional.” John McDowell’s response to Sellars’s reformulation is then examined. McDowell is critical of Sellars’s “blind spot” on the normativity of truth, and argues for the embedding of the intentional in the Realm of the Real under the guise of truth. This paper notes difficulties with both authors’ discus- sions. Both authors are misled in their discussions of Aquinas by an overemphasis upon the “mental word” as described by Peter Geach. In addition it is proposed that Sellars’s notion of “isomorphisms” has the additional problem of adequately distinguishing various types of mental statements as neural states in the Realm of the Real. The paper concludes by arguing for a deep affinity between McDowell and Aquinas on the normativity of truth.

Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches that the proper cause of love in creatures is goodness that is conformable to the appetite insofar as it is known and apprehended, but he teaches elsewhere that the goodness of creatures is in turn caused by God’s love. My purpose in this paper is to manifest more precisely the cause of love according to the mind of the Angelic Doctor and to ask whether it is goodness or else God’s love that is the cause of our love. Thus, in the first part I will show how the goodness of things is the cause of our love, and then in the second part how God’s love is the cause of the goodness of things, so as to conclude that ultimately God’s love is the cause of our love. I will rely on various texts of Aquinas, most notably his treatises on love and goodness in his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, his questions on the same in his Summa Theologiae, Summa Contra Gentiles and Disputed Questions, as well as texts from his commentary on the Divine Names of Dionysius.

This paper presents a Thomistic analysis of addiction that incorporates scientific, philosophical and theological features of addiction. I will argue first, that a Thomistic hylomorphic anthropology provides a cogent explanation of the causal interactions between human action and neuroplasticity. I employ Karol Wojtyła’s account of self-determination to further clarify the kind of neuroplasticity involved in addiction. Next, I will elucidate how a Thomistic anthropology can accommodate, without reductionism, both the neurophysiological and psychological elements of addiction, and finally, I will make clear how Thomism can provide an ethics and theology of grace that can be integrated with these ontological and scientific considerations into a holistic theory of addiction.

This paper presents a philosophical argument for divine providence by Aquinas. I suggest that upon returning to Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics to prepare his commentaries on these texts, Aquinas recognized that his stock argument from natural teleology to divine providence (the fifth way and its versions) needed to be filled out. Arguments from natural teleology can prove that God’s
providence extends to what happens for the most part, but they cannot show that God’s providence also includes what happens for the least part. In order to prove the latter, Aquinas claims that one must argue from a higher science, which he then does with all characteristic clarity. This paper presents this argument, discusses what this means for his previous arguments from teleology, and discusses the argument’s relevance to the contemporary discussion about creation and evolution.

What does it mean to be an embodied thinker of abstract concepts?  Does embodiment shape the character and quality of our understanding of universals such as 'dog' and 'beauty', and would a non-embodied mind understand such concepts differently?  I examine these questions through the lens of Thomas Aquinas’s remarks on the differences between embodied (human) intellects and non-embodied (angelic) intellects. In Aquinas, I argue, the difference between embodied and non-embodied intellection of extramental realities is rooted in the fact that embodied and non-embodied intellects grasp different kinds of universals by means of different kinds of intelligible species (intellectual likenesses), which elicit in them different “modes” of understanding. By spelling out what exactly it means to be an embodied knower, on Aquinas’s account, I argue, we can also shed new light on his mysterious claim that the embodied intellect “turns to phantasms”—the imagination’s likenesses of individuals—in its acts of understanding.

For Kant, Aristotle’s categories are arbitrary but brilliant and they don’t ultimately correspond to extramental reality. For Aquinas, however, they are rational divisions of extramental and real being. In this perennial and ongoing dispute the various positions seem to dissolve upon delving into the particulars of any one category. If, however, the categories are divisions of extra-mental being, it should be possible to offer plausible accounts of particular categories. I offer Aquinas’s unstudied derivation of the particular category quality as a test case to see how one could hold, and how Aquinas did hold, to a realism about Aristotle’s categories at a highly specific level. Although Aristotle divides quality into four species and some further subspecies, unlike Aquinas, he offers no reasons for these divisions. For Aquinas each accident is a particular mode of existing, i.e., it is a particular way that an accident exists in a substance. In the case of quality, this mode of existing follows substantial form and its real extramental causes or effects further divide it into four species. Aquinas’s account is both compelling and original, inspired by Aristotle but also un-Aristotelian. The paper concludes by comparing Aquinas’s account of quality with the best extant account of Aristotle’s quality, namely, Paul Studtmann’s.

Sommario: 1. Il problema del punto di partenza. 2. I valori come princìpi pratici. 3. I valori fondamentali come princìpi pratici fondamentali. 4. Conoscenza e riconoscimento dei valori. 5. Fondamentalità (irriducibilità, apertura), premoralità e pluralità. 6. Incommensurabilità e mancanza di gerarchia. 7. Pluralità, libertà e proporzionalismo. 8. Critica: il numero e l’identificazione esatta come aspetti secondari.

Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice provides a dramatic setting for thinking about the relationship of mercy to justice, a topic of great concern to contemporary ethical and political thought. Traditionally classified as among Shakespeare’s comedies, the play can also be analyzed as a tragedy in which Shylock is the protagonist. The tragedy is driven by the relatively weak conception of mercy in relationship to justice that informs Portia’s famous soliloquy “the quality of mercy . . . .” The mercy she praises is closely related to the stoic conception of mercy that Seneca urges upon Nero, a mercy that is bound within the confines of justice. Examining Aquinas’ discussion of misericordia in relation to justice and forgiveness provides a more robust conception of mercy that is closely associated with friendship, particularly the friendship Aquinas argues is owed by all human beings to all human beings. This concept of mercy can rightly be said to be a mercy beyond justice, a mercy that justice strives to attain.

RESUMEN: Nos preocupa indagar sobre la sujecibilidad del apetito sensible. Para esto, primeramente, distinguiremos el alma como forma del alma como motor, para luego introducirnos en esta última temática. En seguida de esto pasaremos al tratamiento más específico de la sujecibilidad en sí del apetito sensible. Aquí consideraremos primeramente la organicidad del sujeto. Se hará necesario considerar al corazón como el órgano propio y  luego las soluciones tomistas actuales al problema que consideran al sistema nervioso central como el sujeto más apropiado y adecuado. En toda nuestra investigación subyacerá una opción de filosofía realista, pues nuestra fuente será principalmente Tomás de Aquino, sobre todo en sus obras Sobre el movimiento del corazón y las Cuestiones disputadas Sobre el alma, en especial los artículos 8 y 9. Asimismo, queremos decir que la presente investigación no se agota desde una filosofía tomista ni desde un planteo exclusivamente filosófico. Por el contrario, creemos que abre caminos para plantear problemáticas interdisciplinarias con la Psicología Cognitiva, la Biología y la Medicina. Pero también creemos que excede la consideración metafísico-antropológica para alcanzar cuestiones que hacen referencia a una Filosofía de la Mente (o Neurociencia).

Aquinas thinks that if we want to understand causal interactions between material substances, we cannot focus exclusively on agents and their active powers. In his view, there are also passive potencies which enable material substances to be acted upon. He claims that for every type of active potency, there is a corresponding passive potency. This article aims to clarify Aquinas's views about the passive potencies of material substances. It recovers his thinking on three key questions: First, what is the basis or source of a material substance's passive potentialities? Put otherwise, what constituents of material substances explain why they have capabilities for being acted upon? Second, how are a material substance's passive potencies identified and distinguished from one another? Lastly, are passive potencies for undergoing action the same as a substance's potencies for existing in determinate ways? For example, is a pot of water's potentiality for being heated the same as its potentiality to be hot?