8 October: ‘Risky Business’: Philosophy and Religion
Text Link and Alternate Text Link
Part 1 : Philosophy and Religion in the Islamic Classical Rationalist Tradition
MU-1 : Melady Elifritz & Seth Kreeger. Handout of absolutely not more than 6 pp. + 2 pp bibliography due Tuesday 5 pm US Central Time/ midnight Leuven. Thursday at class: 8-10 min. oral presentation followed by discussion.
Assignments : Video lecture by Richard Taylor Al-Farabi, The Attainment of Happiness.
Readings: Primary Texts
al-Farabi 2001, The Attainment of Happiness. Extract from al-Farabi Philosophy of Plato & Aristotle. Mahdi tr 1962 rev ed 2001
Readings: Secondary Texts
L. X. López-Farjeat, al-Farabi’s Philosophy of Society and Religion, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Recommended: Video lecture by Prof. Nadja Germann. Al-Farabi & the Emergence of Philosophy of Language & Islamic Thought
Readings:
Farabi 2001 Book of Religion Butterworth tr.
al-Farabi 2007, Directing Attention to the Way to Happiness
Th.-A. Druart, al-Farabi, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Galston 2019 The Origin of Primary Principles. The Role of Nature and Experience (al-Farabi)
================================
Part 2 : Aquinas on Presuppositions and the Praeambula Fidei / Preambles of Faith
Ralph McInerny, Praeambula fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers (Washington, D.C.L Catholic University of America, 2006), preface, p.9: “The locus of the praeambula fidei is in metaphysics as Thomas learned that culminating science from Aristotle. It is only when that metaphysics is correctly understood that the praeambula fidei can be correctly understood. Thomas added much to our understanding of these matters, but what he added to is what is found in Book Lambda of the Metaphysics and the presuppositions on which it depends.”
MU-2 : Josh Hinchie & Andrew Krema. Handout of absolutely not more than 6 pp. + 2 pp bibliography due Tuesday 5 pm US Central Time/ midnight Leuven. Thursday at class: 8-10 min. oral presentation followed by discussion.
Assigned readings: (i) McInerny, Praeambula fidei, Ch. 1 pp.3-33, Prologue to Part 3 (pp.159-169), and Ch. 13, 303-306; (ii) David Twetten 2019, “How Save Aquinas’ ‘Intellectus essentiae’ Argument for the Real Distinction between Essence and Esse,” Roczniki Filozoficzne (Annals of Philosophy) 57.4, p.129-43 corrected; (iii) Aquinas’s use of Avicenna in I Sent d.8, q.1, a.1 sol (see the last text at http://richardctaylor.info/aquinas-selections-from-his-commentary-on-the-sentences/
Recommended: McInerny, Praeambula fidei, Chapters 7, 8, 13; M. Dougherty, “Aquinas on the Self-Evidence of the Articles of Faith,” Heythrop Journal 46 (2005) 167-180; “Thomas Aquinas on the Manifold Senses of Self-Evidence,” Review of Metaphysics 59 (2006) 601-630.
http://richardctaylor.info/aquinas-selections-from-his-commentary-on-the-sentences/
Final item in the list of translations.
In 1 Sent. d. 8, q. 1, a. 1 Whether being (esse) is properly said of God.
Solution. I respond that it should be said that of all the other names “He who is” is the name of God proper in the highest degree. The reason for this can be fourfold: the first is taken from the text of the words of Jerome regarding the perfection of Divine being. For the perfect is that which has nothing outside it. Our being, however, has something of itself outside itself, for it lacks something which has already passed by for it and something which is yet to come. But in Divine being nothing has passed by nor is there anything to come. For this reason His whole being is perfect and on account of this being properly befits Him with reference to all other things. The second reason is taken from the words of the Damascene [lib. I Fid. orth., cap. IX] who says that “He who is” signifies indeterminate being and not what He is. [This is] because in this life we know of Him only that He is and not what He is, except through negation and we are able to name [something] only insofar as we know [it]. For this reason He is most properly named by us “He who is.” The third reason is taken from the words of Dionysius who says that among all the other divine participations of goodness such as to live, to understand and the like, it is first and [is] as a principle for all the others having in itself all the others mentioned united in a certain way. In this way God is also the Divine principle and all things are one in Him. The fourth reason can be taken from the words of Avicenna [tract. 8 Metaphysics, cap. 1] in the sense that, since in everything which is there can be considered its quiddity through which it subsists in a determinate nature and its being in virtue of which it is said of it that it is in act, then this name “thing” is imposed on the thing from its quiddity, [and] according to Avicenna [tract II Metaphysics, cap. 1] this name “who is” or “being” is imposed from its act of being. Since, however, it is the case that in any created being its essence differs from its being, that thing is properly denominated by its quiddity and not by the act of being, as human being by humanity. However, in God His very being is His quiddity. And for this reason the name taken from being names Him properly and is His proper name, just as the proper name of a human being which is taken from its quiddity.