Detailed Syllabus

 


Aquinas in Context Fall 2017


Profs. Andrea Robiglio and Richard Taylor


Detailed Course Syllabus


As a general prescription, students should focus their study first on primary sources and make secondary sources just that, secondary.


Dropbox link


(1) 28 September 2017: Philosophy and Religion through the issues of (i) Creation and Eternity of the World and (ii) the Nature and Structure of the Human Mind

(1.1) St. Augustine (see Varia 2); (1.2) St. Anselm, on Philosophy and Religion, Reason and Revelation

(1.3) Details of the course structure and syllabus


As we proceed with the short student presentations starting with the second class meeting and continuing with those that follow, we will be asking each group of presenters four questions before opening the discussion to questions from the class:

1) Where in the work is the text studied situated and why is it in the location?

2) What is the intention or purpose of the author?

3) How does the author proceed? Are there coherent or ordered parts to the author’s reasoning?

4) Is the author successful in achieving the intention or purpose?


(2) 5 October 2017: Aquinas on the Method and Structure of Philosophy and Religion, Reason and Revelation

(2.1) Summa contra gentiles Book 1, chapters 1-8:

http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles1.htm

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5k092nNV0s&feature=youtu.be

(2.2) Summa theologiae, prima pars, question 1, articles 1-8:

http://dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/FP/FP001.html#FPQ1OUTP1

Another very valuable translation by Fred Freddosa is available at

https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/Part%201/st1-ques01.pdf

Available secondary sources:

Ann Giletti, “Gentiles and Jews: Common Ground and Authorities in the Misson of Ramon Martí’s Pugio fidei” in Religious Language in Situations of Contact, ed. Görge Hasselhoff and Knut Strünkel, in press. See Dropbox link.

Ann Giletti, “An Arsenal of Arguments. Arabic Philosophy at the Service of Christian Polemics in Ramón Martí’s Pugio fidei,” Mapping Knowledge. Cross-Pollination in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Ch. Burnett & Pedto Mantas-España (CNERU (Cordoba Near Eastern Research Unit) – The Warburg Institute (London) – Oriens Academic, 2014). See Dropbox link.


Martin Stünkel (University of Bochum, Germany), in press

“Philosophy and Theology,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

“Aquinas: Philosophical Theology,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy



(3) 12 October 2017: Creation and the Eternity of the World

(3.1) Selections from the Commentary on the Gospel of John by Thomas Aquinas

(3.2) Contextualizing the Issue of the Creation and Eternity of the World with excerpts from Aristotle, Avicenna and Averroes. For texts and video lectures, see  https://www.dropbox.com/s/gqd1fzw5yfqseo1/Aristotle%2C%20Avicenna%2C%20Averroes%20on%20the%20eternity%20and%20creation%20of%20the%20world.pdf?dl=0

Reading:

∙ Avicenna, Metaphysics, Book 1, ch.4-7; Book 8, ch. 5-7; (Book 6 recommended) Book 9, ch. 1-3 in Avicenna. The Metaphysics of the Healing, M. E. Marmura, tr. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2005)

Secondary sources

∙ Acar, Rahim, “Creation: Avicenna’s metaphysical account,” in Creation and the God of Abraham, D. B. Burrell, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 77-90.

Additional video lecture: Kalam fi mahd al-khair / Liber de causis

Additional recommended readings on Toledo and Dropbox:

R. E. Houser, “Avicenna, Aliqui, and Thomas Aquinas’s Doctrine of Creation,” RTPM 80 (2013). See Dropbox link.

  1. T.Noone, “The Originality of St. Thomas’s Position on the Philosophers and Creation, The Thomist 60 (1996) 275-300. See Dropbox link.

R. Taylor, “Primary and Secondary Causality,” The Routledge Companion to Islamic Philosophy, Richard C. Taylor & Luis X. López-Farjet, eds. (London & New York: Routledge, 2015) pp. 225-235. See Dropbox link.


For this class and the next, students interested in issues related to creation in the Arabic tradition of Plotinian thought may find the following valuable.

I also recommend the two articles by Michael Chase in the Dropbox and on Toledo.

• Video 6a (2011) is on the Arabic Plotiniana Arabica which presents a transformation of the Neoplatonic thought of Plotinus into a new doctrine of being in which the One, the First, God, is presented as Pure Being and the Creator of all things.

• Video 6b (2011) is on the Arabic Kalām fī maḥḍ al-khair (“Discourse on the Pure Good,”  known in the Latin tradition as the Liber de causis, “Book of Causes”) which is a treatise on creation and primary causality concerning higher entities such as celestial intellects, souls and bodies. The doctrine of the Kalām fī maḥḍ al-khair is derivative on that of the Plotiniana Arabica but with emphasis on the way in which God can be the only true Creator and somehow intimately present to each and every being created by him even through a causality is comes about through intermediary beings. While the Plotiniana Arabica was not available to Aquinas, the Kalām fī maḥḍ al-khair in Latin translation was carefully studied and often cited by Aquinas in his discussions of the metaphysics of God and creatures. Also the mature Aquinas found the Kalām fī maḥḍ al-khair important enough to write a detailed commentary on it in 1272 CE just two years before the end of his life (1274 CE).


Students interested in the metaphysics of creation in Avicenna may also want to consult “2017 - Ibn Sīnā - Avicenna on Creation Handout” in the Dropbox and on Toledo.


For a PDF with selections on creation by Aquinas in his Commentary on the Sentences, Summa Contra Gentiles and Summa theologiae, see “Aquinas Texts on Creation from Sentences, SCG & ST.pdf” in the Dropbox and on Toledo.


(4) 19 October 2017: The Troubles with Eternity.

(4.1.) Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, Book 2, chapters 19-24 See Toledo or Dropbox link.

(4.2.) The arguments of the De aeternitate mundi of Aquinas. See Toledo or Dropbox link or http://dhspriory.org/thomas/DeEternitateMundi.htm

Additional recommended readings:

Peter Adamson, “Eternity in Medieval Philosophy,” in Eternity. A History, Y.Y. Melamud, ed. (Oxford: OUPress, 2016) See Toledo or Dropbox link.

Edward C. Halper: “Maimonides on the Creation of the World” (2013)

Kenneth Seeskin, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2017)

K. Seeskin, “Maimonides and Aquinas on Creation,” Medioevo 23 (1997). See Toledo or Dropbox.

L. X. López-Farjeat, “Avicenna's Influence on Aquinas' Early Doctrine of Creation in In II Sent. D. 1, Q. 1, A. 2,” RTMP 79 (2012). See Toledo or Dropbox link.

S. Baldner, book review in The Thomist 57 (1993), a good model for writing book reviews and also interesting for reflections on theological and philosophical reasoning. See Toledo or Dropbox link.


An interesting comment by Pasquale Porro in his Thomas Aquinas. A Historical and Philosophical Profile (English 2016), p.93:

“Since what is first in intention is last in execution, it is always true that the species is produced through the generation of individuals (as the species “man” is not created except inasmuch as this man is created). Nevertheless, it is true that both the lexicon and the fundamental structure of Greco-Arab philosophy are transported here into foreign territory, namely, that of creationism. These philosophical influences, however, are not a sort of residuum of which Thomas was not able to free himself. Until his last writings (the De aeternitate mundi is an optimal example), Thomas displays an unchanged preference for a metaphysical vision of the universe inspired mostly by the essential coordinates of the Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, and Arab peripatetic traditions (overlapping the first two). Attention to singularity and to persons will be found in another area—in morals and the theology of grace. That Thomas’s metaphysics gives absolute priority to existing individuals is for the most part an invention of twentieth-century Thomism.”


Porro also considers two of Aquinas’s late works written in Paris, On the Unity of the Intellect (1270) and On the Eternity of the World (1271) to be “Interventions in Contemporary Debates.” Porro, p. 371.


(5) 26 October 2017:  Reason and Religion in Averroes

(5.1) Averroes and his thought in context. Read Taylor, “Averroes: Religious Dialectic and Aristotelian Philosophical Thought,” in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor, eds., pp.180-200. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005);

also required:

al-Farabi, “The Book of Religion,” extract from Alfarabi. The Political Writings v. II Political Regime and Summary of Plato's Laws, tr Butterworth (2015). See Toledo and Dropbox.

Recommended: al-Farabi, Attainment of Happiness. Extract from al-Farabi Philosophy of Plato & Aristotle.  Mahdi trans rev ed 2001. See Toledo and Dropbox.

and study these two videos

  1. (a)video lecture on al-Farabi, The Attainment of Happiness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKzDamIpZdU&feature=youtu.be

(b) introduction to Averroes at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo5ZlDnzgXs&feature=youtu.be

(5.2) The first half of Averroes, Faṣl al-maqal or “The Book of the Distinction of Discourse and the Establishment of the Connection between the Religious Law and Philosophy” (a.k.a The Decisive Treatise) Chapter 1-3, pp. 1-11. For the translation, see

http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ir/fasl.htm;

Read the translation and also Taylor, “Averroes on the Sharī‘ah of the Philosophers” (2012). See Toledo and Dropbox.

and study video on the Faṣl al-maqal at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx7ZufqKC4Y&feature=youtu.be


  1. (6)NO CLASS 2 November 2017:

READ ON YOUR OWN:

Reason and Religion in Averroes, continued  Rest of Fasl al-Maqal, Averroes to end.

and study video on the Faṣl al-maqal at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx7ZufqKC4Y&feature=youtu.be

Reason and Religion in Averroes, continued

Recommended secondary sources:

Richard C. Taylor, "Ibn Rushd/Averroes and 'Islamic Rationalism', Medieval Encounters 15 (2009) 225-235. See Toledo or Dropbox.

Muhsin Mahdi, “Remarks on Averroes’ Decisive Treatise” in Islamic Theology and Philosophy: Studies in Honor of George F. Hourani (1984). See Toledo or Dropbox link.


(7) 9 November 2017: On Mind and Understanding

Required reading: De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas (On the Unity of the Intellect Against the Averroists) First Part (ch. 1-3)

See http://dhspriory.org/thomas/DeUnitateIntellectus.htm.

(7.1)  Aquinas Chapters 1-2

(7.2) Chapter 3

Additional recommended reading:

For an account of the understanding of knowledge acquisition and human intellect in Averroes, see R. C. Taylor, “Averroes on the Attainment of Knowledge,” forthcoming in The Philosophy of Knowledge: A History (Bloomsbury 2018). See Dropbox link here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/w0pjwnaf9o24t3d/2017%20-%20Taylor%2C%20Averroes%20on%20the%20Attainment%20of%20Knowledge%20%28forthcoming%202018%29.pdf?dl=0.


(8) 16 November 2017: On Mind and Understanding, continued

No class. Complete reading De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas,

Part Two (ch. 4-5). See http://dhspriory.org/thomas/DeUnitateIntellectus.htm.



(9) 23 November 2017: Aquinas Against the Radical Rationalists.

(9.1) Aquinas, Sermon ‘Attendite’ Preached 26 July 1271 at Paris;

(9.2) Aquinas, Letter to Bernard, abbot of Monte Cassino

For texts, see Toledo or https://www.dropbox.com/sh/960g3tgo11obvai/AACNwtELAgn9UvzGsOt2aVGha?dl=0.

Additional recommended readings:

  1. A.Robiglio, “Breaking the Great Chain of Being. A Note on the Paris Condemnations of 1277, Thomas Aquinas and the Proper Subject of Metaphysics” 2004

R.C. Taylor, “Intellect as Intrinsic Formal Cause in the  Soul According to Aquinas and Averroes” 2009



(10) 30 November 2017: Modern reflections on Aquinas

(10.1) E. Gilson, “Faith and Reason, the Object of Philosophy”, from Le Thomisme available at http://www.u.arizona.edu/~aversa/scholastic/gilson/.

(10.2) A. Plantinga, “Religion and Epistemology” (The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy 8, ed. E. Craig, London – New York: Routledge, 1998, pp. 209-218). See Toledo or Dropbox link.

Additional recommended reading:

James Swindal, “Faith and Reason, “ Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (This is an extensive descriptive survey for the most part on Christian thought but with only a very brief mention of the issue in the philosophers of Islam and Judaism.)


  1. (11)7 December: Students’ presentations

TBA


  1. (12)14 December: Students’ presentations

TBA


  1. (13)21 December: Students’ presentations

TBA



Assigned Texts

Assigned texts can be found on Toledo. Some are also available via this link: Click HERE.



Course Grading:


Short presentation: 10%

Term report (less than 1000 words):  20%

Course paper (4000 words): 70%