Between Belief and Knowledge: Aquinas’s Commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate
2023 Fall MU & KUL Simple Index Course Webpages
Course Description and Syllabus, Part 1 of 2
Marquette University course Phil 6954 location: Raynor Library, 320A. Thursdays 9-11:40 am. Online access through Microsoft TEAMS membership.
Katholieke Univesiteit Leuven “Aquinas in Context” Thursdays 16h-19h. Location TBA
(Website portions in development)
This course will focus on the issues of belief and knowledge as well as method in philosophical and theological thought of Thomas Aquinas through the careful study of his early Commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate and other related and relevant selections from other works of the corpus. We will focus on the nature of the sciences and the division and distinction of the theoretical sciences. We will explore the nature of metaphysics, its subject, principles and goals or things sought in it. This includes divine science as well as the distinction of Religious Theology from Philosophical Theology. The nature of human knowing and whether, and if somehow, how natural reason can attain knowledge of divine science and the nature of God will also be considered. Can philosophical reasoning be properly used in the context of belief in a science of faith concerned with God? These are many more topics will be considered in our study of Aquinas’s Commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate and other writings. What we will find is that Latin translations of philosophical writings from the Classical Rationalist period of Philosophy in the Lands of Islam played an important role in Aquinas’s critical formation of his own teachings on these topics.
This course meets Thursdays 9-11:40 am in Milwaukee and 16h00-19h in Leuven. After the first four weeks at Marquette University (MU) devoted to an overview of the Aristotelian traditions and the thought of Aquinas, the course will link on 28 September with the “Thomas in Context” graduate course at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL) with Prof. Andrea Robiglio for an enriching experience of the international character of the study of medieval philosophy. We will then start with three meetings with lectures and discussion on the Arabic tradition and Aquinas introducing the topical focus of the course. Through collaborative study with students at the famous Institute of Philosophy at KUL and elsewhere, we will draw on philosophical sources, including those of the Arabic philosophical tradition, important for understanding the development of the thought of Aquinas. The classes which follow will have student team presentations as well as one full day focused of preparing and writing sophisticated philosophical papers. The class ends for MU students at the end of the first week of December. For KUL students it continues for 2-3 more weeks. Teaching and discussions will be in English. Translations of key texts from the Arabic and Latin traditions will be made available by the instructors as necessary. Students with some facility in Latin and/or Arabic will be encouraged to make use of their skills.
Note: For the benefit of all students, one full class will be devoted to explaining and demonstrating how to prepare professional philosophy articles and papers.
Instructors, Office Hours, and Grading:
Professor Taylor: AMU Cafeteria Tuesdays 9:30-11 and Marquette Hall 437 Tuesdays 11:30-1:00 and by appointment. KUL student should contact me via email to arrange to meet to discuss our course and philosophical issues by appointment using TEAMS. MU grading is based on two (2) Team Presentations (25%), Class Participation, including Notes* (25%), and the Final Course Professional Paper of 20-30 double spaced pages in Times New Roman 12 point font (50%).
Professor Robiglio: (forthcoming)
This course will fulfill MU requirements for CATH and HIST.
Note: For the benefit of all students, one full class will be devoted to explaining and demonstrating how to prepare professional philosophy articles and papers.
Student Class Presentations Starting 19 October: Assignments for Presenters and Other Students
Student Presenter teams of 2-3 students will be assigned to prepare presentations on texts and topics assigned by the instructors. Presentations will be made at class weekly followed by discussion and questions for an hour or a bit more.
(1) Instructions for Student Presenter teams:
From their research on the assigned texts and topic team presenters are to provide by Tuesday 11:59 pm US Central Time / 6h59 CET a handout of no more than 6 single spaced pages plus a 2 page bibliography. This is to be sent to the instructors via email and posted on TEAMS before the deadline.
On Thursday the Student Presenter team will make a summary oral presentation of 10-12 minutes (no more) which will be followed by comments by the instructors and then general discussion by the class.
(2) Instructions for Other Class Students: Other students in the class are to post two questions only on the texts, topic and Student team presentation on TEAMS no later than Wednesday 4:59 pm US Central Time / 23h59 CET. This is part of the MU student participation grade for the course. For KUL students it is a simple expectation for any serious student of philosophy. All students are expected to study the relevant primary texts and the handout provided by the presenters.
Format For Student Presentations: 9-9:15 (15 min) Profs Robiglio & Taylor: Framing Topics; 9:15-10:10 Presentation A;10:10-10:20 Break; 10:20-11:15 Presentation B; 11:15-11:40 Broader or Extended Discussion, then Preview for Next Class
*MU Students and Note Taking:
This course will be demanding in accord with the usual norms of graduate level professional study of philosophy. You should expect to do at least 10 hours of thoughtful class preparation study per week. MU students will be required to take notes and to send me an image with legible handwriting or a typed version of their notes by the end of the day. This will be explained in detail at the first class of the course. This is because recent post-pandemic experience has proven that a great many students do not know how to study and to take notes at the professional level of graduate study of philosophy. The end goal is to assist students in developing this valuable habit. Graduate study of philosophy is a quantum leap above undergraduate study. Even students coming to MU with an MA are not always strong in note taking and the composition of professional papers. I expect to work closely with students, particularly as they prepare their course final paper, so that we may all bring the course to a close with finely accomplished concluding research compositions.
Students unfamiliar with medieval philosophy and unfamiliar with the thought of Aristotle should make special efforts to study both before the beginning of this course. A valuable source for students is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy available online. For Aristotle, search for the work of Christopher Shields. Shields also has a valuable book on Aristotle. In addition to those, he has edited The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle which is available online via Marqcat, the Marquette University library system. Students unfamiliar with Aquinas should study The Philosophy of Aquinas by Shields and Robert Pasnau and Pasquali Porro’s Thomas Aquinas: a historical and philosophical profile. Both of these latter two books are available online through the Marquette University library.
MU Course Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able on their own to understand, interpret, and comment on the philosophical writing of Aristotle and Aquinas, as well as orient themselves in the technical terminology and grasp the meaning and structure of the debated issues, and to do so in some cases in the context of the Arabic philosophical tradition important to the development of the thought of Aquinas. This includes the development of these skills by students:
- identifying, summarizing, ‘reconstructing’ the arguments;
- engaging with sophisticated interpretations of problematic textual passages, making use of the primary and secondary sources and interpretive categories implied in them and looking for further conceptual paradigms to uncover the hidden assumptions of the reasoning;
- arguing analytically and historically for or against explanations of the debated issues as they have been presented in the literature;
- conceiving their own argumentative reflection and organizing it according to a concrete and intellectually insightful structure, expressing such an outline in a well-written and possibly elegant paper.
ATTENDANCE AND PARTICIPATION
See here for Marquette’s policies: http://bulletin.marquette.edu/undergrad/academicregulations/#attendance
Regular attendance is required. Please let me know in advance if you have to be absent. If your absence is required on short notice, speak with me about the reasons immediately following it and I may approve. Excessive absences may require removal from the course or a substantially lowered grade for Participation. If you are ill and unable to make it to class, you can attend via TEAMS even if you prefer to remain silent due to your illness. Note that classes are being recorded on TEAMS.
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
See here for Marquette’s policies: https://bulletin.marquette.edu/undergrad/academicregulations/
ACCOMMODATION OF DISABILITIES
See here for Marquette’s policies: http://bulletin.marquette.edu/undergra /personalresourcesandfacilities/#disabilityservices
For eager students seeking recommendations for Summer reading for this course, I suggested earlier in the year the following.
Primary texts we will focus on are: St Thomas Aquinas, Faith, Reason and Theology. Questions I-IV of his Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, tr. Armand Maurer, Toronto: PIMS, 1987
St Thomas Aquinas, The Division and Methods of the Sciences, Questions V and VI of his Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boetius, tr. Armand Maurer, Toronto: PIMS, 1986 (4th rev. ed.).
These translations are from the B. Decker edition, 1955; 1959.
Both of these translations are available online via the Marquette Library. See The Collected Works Of St. Thomas Aquinas, Charlottesville, Va.: InteLex Corporation, 1993.
A critical edition by the Commissio Leonina, Paris, is now available in Aquinas, Opera Omnia. v. 50. 1992.
On the philosophical focus of this year’s class, see:
Abierto Acerbi 2012, “Aquinas’s Commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate,” Review of Metaphysics 66 (2012), 317-338.
Ralph McInerny, Boethius and Aquinas, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012.
More general recommendations:
Pasquale Porro, Thomas Aquinas: a historical and philosophical profile. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016. This is available online or for download at the Marquette Library.
Ralph McInerny, Praeambula fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers (Washington, D.C.L Catholic University of America, 2006)
Introductory lectures on Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna: http://richardctaylor.info/introductory-lectures-on-the-metaphysics-of-avicenna/.
Five Lectures on Aquinas and the Arabic Tradition: http://richardctaylor.info/5-lectures-on-aquinas-and-the-arabic-tradition-2020/.