Aquinas on Knowledge, Truth, and Wisdom: 10th Annual Summer Philosophy Workshop

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This talk was delivered on June 24, 2021.

For information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:
Michael Gorman is a graduate of St. Michael's College in the University of Toronto (B.A., Christianity and Culture, 1987), The Catholic University of America (Ph.L., Philosophy, 1989), the State University of New York at Buffalo (Ph.D., Philosophy, 1993), and Boston College (Ph.D., Theology, 1997).  After serving as assistant professor of Catholic Studies at Saint Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia from 1997 to 1999, he joined the faculty of the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America, where he has taught ever since.

A fellow of The Catholic University's Institute for Human Ecology, he has also been an Alexander von Humboldt fellow (Leipzig 2004), a Fulbright fellow (Cologne 2008), and a scholar in the Templeton Foundation's Working Group "Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life" (2015-2017).

He works primarily on metaphysics, especially the metaphysics of essence, substance, and normativity, and on applications of metaphysics in areas such as theory of mind, Christology, action theory, and ethics.  He is the author of Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union (Cambridge, 2017) and over thirty scholarly articles. He is particularly interested in how analytic philosophy and medieval philosophy can be brought together in a way that is historically accurate and philosophically fruitful.

Thomistic Science and the Knowledge Of Principles | Prof. Michael Gorman

This talk was given on June 24th, 2021 at the 10th Annual Aquinas Philosophy Workshop, on Knowledge, Truth, and Wisdom in Aquinas.

For information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the Speaker:

Fr. James Dominic Brent, O.P. was born and raised in Michigan. He pursued his undergraduate and graduate studies in Philosophy, and completed his doctorate in Philosophy at Saint Louis University on the epistemic status of Christian beliefs according to Saint Thomas Aquinas. He has articles in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Natural Theology, in the Oxford Handbook of Thomas Aquinas on “God’s Knowledge and Will”, and an article forthcoming on “Thomas Aquinas” in the Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology. He earned his STL from the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, and was ordained a priest in the same year. He taught in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America from 2010- 2014, and spent the year of 2014-2015 doing full time itinerant preaching on college campuses across the United States.

Modes of Knowledge: Apprehension, Judgment, Reasoning | Fr. James Brent, O.P.

This talk was given on June 25, 2021 as part of the 10th Annual Aquinas Philosophy Workshop, "Knowledge, Truth, and Wisdom in Aquinas." The handout for the talk can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/phksp393

For information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the Speaker:
Edward Feser is Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California.  He has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.  He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California at Santa Barbara, an M.A. in religion from the Claremont Graduate School, and a B.A. in philosophy and religious studies from the California State University at Fullerton.

Called by National Review “one of the best contemporary writers on philosophy,” Feser is the author of On Nozick, Philosophy of Mind, Locke, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, Aquinas, Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction, Neo-Scholastic Essays, Five Proofs of the Existence of God, and Aristotle's Revenge, the co-author of By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment, and the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Hayek and Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics.  He is also the author of many academic articles.  His primary academic research interests are in metaphysics, natural theology, the philosophy of mind, and moral and political philosophy.

Feser also writes on politics and culture, from a conservative point of view; and on religion, from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective.  In this connection, his work has appeared in such publications as The American, The American Conservative, The American Mind, Catholic Herald, Catholic World Report, City Journal, The Claremont Review of Books, Crisis, First Things, Liberty, National Review, New Oxford Review, Public Discourse, Reason, TCS Daily, and the Times Literary Supplement.

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and six children.

Truth as Transcendental: Ontological Foundations | Dr. Edward Feser

This lecture was delivered at the University of Arizona on September 14, 2021. The handout can be found at https://tinyurl.com/4tj4vebb.

For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:
Gregory T. Doolan received his B.A. in political theory from Georgetown University in 1993 and his Ph.D. in philosophy from The Catholic University of America in 2003. He taught philosophy at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. from 2004–05 and joined the faculty of the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America in 2005. Dr. Doolan’s research interest is in the area of Aquinas’s metaphysics; in recent years, his focus has been on Aquinas’s account of the Aristotelian categories of being. A native of Philadelphia, Dr. Doolan currently lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and three children.

Why Should We Believe God Exists? | Prof. Gregory Doolan

This talk was given on June 25th, 2021 at the 10th Annual Aquinas Philosophy Workshop, on Knowledge, Truth, and Wisdom in Aquinas.

For information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:
Sister Anna Wray is a native of Connecticut and a member of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia.  Sister received her phD in philosophy from The Catholic University of America, having written her dissertation on Aristotle’s account of the activity of contemplation. Sister is on faculty in CUA's School of Philosophy.

What Is Intellect? | Sr. Anna Wray, O.P

This talk was given on June 26th, 2021 at the 10th Annual Aquinas Philosophy Workshop: Knowledge, Truth, and Wisdom in Aquinas. The handout can be found at https://tinyurl.com/yv5by7f5

For information on upcoming Thomistic Institute events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:
Robert C. (“Rob”) Koons is a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has taught for 33 years. M. A. Oxford, Ph.D. UCLA. He is the author or co-author of four books, including: Realism Regained (Oxford University Press, 2000), and The Atlas of Reality: A Comprehensive Guide to Metaphysics, with Timothy H. Pickavance (Wiley-Blackwell, 2017). He is the co-editor (with George Bealer) of The Waning of Materialism (Oxford University Press, 2010), and co-editor (with Nicholas Teh and William Simpson) of Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science (Routledge, 2018). He has been working recently on an Aristotelian interpretation of quantum theory, on defending and articulating Thomism in contemporary terms, and on arguments for classical theism.

On the Union of the Knower with the Known | Prof. Robert Koons

This talk was given on June 26th, 2021 at the 10th Annual Aquinas Philosophy Workshop: Knowledge, Truth, and Wisdom in Aquinas.

For information on upcoming Thomistic Institute events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:

Fr. James Dominic Brent, O.P. was born and raised in Michigan. He pursued his undergraduate and graduate studies in Philosophy, and completed his doctorate in Philosophy at Saint Louis University on the epistemic status of Christian beliefs according to Saint Thomas Aquinas. He has articles in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Natural Theology, in the Oxford Handbook of Thomas Aquinas on “God’s Knowledge and Will”, and on “Thomas Aquinas” in the Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology. He earned his STL from the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception. He taught in the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America from 2010-2014, and spent the year of 2014-2015 doing full-time itinerant preaching on college campuses across the United States. Since then, he has been an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Dominican House of Studies.

How Do We Know Essences? Sense Knowledge and Abstraction | Fr. James Brent, O.P.

This talk was given on September 20, 2021 at Vanderbilt University.

For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:
Sister Jane Dominic Laurel, O.P., is a member of the Saint Cecilia Congregation of Dominican Sisters of Nashville, TN. Currently, she teaches Theology at Aquinas College in Nashville and assists with the theological formation of the newest members of the religious congregation. She studied theology at the Angelicum (The Pontifical University of St. Thomas) in Rome, Italy.

What Can an Adulteress Teach Us about Happiness? | Sr. Jane Dominic Laurel, O.P.

Introduction to Metaphysics Part One: Form and Matter; Substance and Accidents | Fr. T.J. White

Introduction to Metaphysics Part Two: Transcendentals and the Existence of God | Fr. T.J. White

This lecture was given during a conference on Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers at Ave Maria University, that was held January 26-27, 2018, entitled: "What is Beauty? Is God Beautiful?" This event was hosted by the Aquinas Center and the Thomistic Institute.

What Is Beauty? Is God Beautiful? | Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP

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On the Union of the Knower with the Known | Prof. Robert Koons

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