Compositions representing the Heavenly Liturgy - the liturgy that is presided over by Christ in heaven, of which the earthly liturgy is a reflection - first appear around the beginning of the fourteenth century in the decoration of Byzantine domes. Most scholars argue that such scenes depict an ancient concept, almost as old as liturgical exegesis itself. I contend that this view is based on a flawed reading of liturgical commentaries, of the biblical texts from which the (...) commentaries draw inspiration, and of the Divine Liturgy itself. I argue that the scene of the Heavenly Liturgy represents both an exegetical stream independent of texts and an understanding of the eucharistic liturgy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that existed in visual form in tandem with traditional textual interpretations of the rite. The scene, devised by painters and their patrons, therefore constitutes a concurrent exegetical tradition that both derived from the commentaries and deviated from them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:I Am Food: The Mass in Planetary PerspectiveMaria Reis HabitoI Am Food: The Mass in Planetary Perspective. By Roger Corless. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004. 104 pp.In this timely reprint of I Am Food: The Mass in Planetary Perspective (originally published by Crossroad in 1981), the late Roger Corless demonstrates the potential for spiritual and intellectual creativity contained within a stance of dual religious belonging. Corless passed (...) away in January 2007, but this book remains as a way for us to know him and to appreciate, as he did, the possibilities for spiritual revitalization and transformation that may be generated at the intersection and interpenetration of Christian and Buddhist traditions.Corless was raised as a Protestant but as a teenager became deeply engaged with the study of world religions and claimed Buddhism in particular as his own. Eventually he would become a scholar of Chinese Buddhism and a practitioner within the Gelugpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. At the same time, however, that the young Corless was being drawn to Buddhism, his connection to his Christian faith was also deepening; his profound experiences of the loving power of God could not be denied even if Christianity's theism could not be easily reconciled with Buddhism's doctrine of emptiness. Instead of leaving one religion for the other, he deepened his engagement with both. He did not seek to synthesize or reconcile Christianity and Buddhism but rather held these traditions together in a dynamic, creative tension and lived each one fully in its turn. When asked about his religious affiliation, Corless would respond playfully that he was "a Buddhist on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, a Christian on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturday, and a Gaia worshipper on Sundays." In I Am Food, however, Corless shows us that on some Sundays, specifically at the celebration of the Mass, he was both Christian and Buddhist at the same time. The great contribution of this book is in its offering of a fresh and transformative approach to the Mass through the application of the symbolic structures of Tibetan Buddhist mandala visualization as a template for active participation in the communion ritual. [End Page 161]Corless's focus in this book is the ritual of the Mass as celebrated within the Roman Catholic tradition. His conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism occurred much to his "own surprise," prompted by his discovery in Catholicism of "a curious growing center which had great power and potential." This center "brought together many insights which I had picked up from other religions, and moved them to a new synthesis. This synthesis was concentrated in the oddly named 'Mass' " (p. 13). I Am Food offers a scholarly and personal meditation on the meaning, symbolism, and power contained in this central ritual of Catholicism. This project is signaled in the grammatically awkward but intriguing title of the book's first chapter, "Why Is the Mass?" Corless knows that many routine churchgoers never think or dare to ask this question, and the few who do ask it rarely find satisfactory answers. His book seeks to encourage such questioning among those who are in search of a personal religious experience "away from the dullness of minimalist routine" (p. 34). His very lively, humorous, and slightly irreverent style is intended to take the boredom out of the Mass, providing a very personal and original guide to it, different from the series of "excellent, but ultimately claustrophobic, devotional books on 'the spiritual meaning of the Mass'" (p. 13).Among Christian writings that were influential for his understanding of the Mass, Corless names The Mass in Slow Motion (1948) by Ronald Knox, which attempts to describe the inner meaning of the Mass, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's Hymn of the Universe (1965), which describes a vision of the world as sacrament and celebrates Mass as a cosmic event. While Teilhard de Chardin inspires Corless's "planetary perspective" on the Mass, Nicholas Casabilas's A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy (1978) sharpens the focus on "the mystical significance of each and every act of the priest and people" (p. 13).Corless argues that what makes the Mass seem stifling is the notion of... (shrink)

Two central accounts of human cognition emerge over the course of the Middle Ages: the theory of divine illumination and an Aristotelian theory centered on abstraction from sense data. Typically, these two accounts are seen as competing views of the origins of human knowledge; theories of divine illumination focus on God’s direct intervention in our epistemic lives, whereas Aristotelian theories generally claim that our knowledge derives primarily (or even entirely) from sense perception. In this paper, I address an (...) early attempt to reconcile these two accounts—namely, Robert Grosseteste’s commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics—and I argue that Grosseteste’s efforts to bring Aristotle’s account of human cognition into harmony with a theory of divine illumination proves both philosophically interesting and largely successful. Grosseteste’s claim that God does not directly illumine our intellects in this life opens his theory to the worry that Grosseteste leaves the divine out of his theory of divine illumination in the CPA. Steven Marrone, for example, holds that Grosseteste’s Aristotelian focus in this work causes him to abandon the theory of divine illumination he advocated in the earlier De veritate in favor of a modified theory of “human” illumination. I argue in contrast that Grosseteste does give God a role in human knowledge in the CPA—a role that allows human beings to remain largely responsible for the acquisition of knowledge while still requiring God’s illumination for actual cognition. In short, I conclude that, although human bodies interfere with God’s direct illumination of our intellects, God nevertheless plays a crucial ideogenic role in human cognition by illuminating the objects of our intellection and making them intelligible to us. (shrink)

This book is a translation of a key commentary on the Book of Changes, or Yijing, perhaps the most broadly influential text of classical China. The Yijing first appeared as a divination text in Zhou-dynasty China and later became a work of cosmology, philosophy, and political theory as commentators supplied it with new meanings. While many English translations of the Yijing itself exist, none are paired with a historical commentary as thorough and methodical as that written by the (...) Confucian scholar Cheng Yi, who turned the original text into a coherent work of political theory. (shrink)

Nikolaos Kavasilas was a notable lay theologian of the Greek Orthodox Church. He is regarded as one of the most profound Byzantine theologians of the fourteenth century and one of the foremost Marian theologians in the Greek patristic tradition. He was an original exponent of anthropocentric Mariology and Christocentric theology. A prolific author renowned for his liturgical and sacramental writings, but also concerned with social and political issues. He lived in a period of political strife and theological controversy. He was (...) a younger contemporary of Gregorios Palamas, a close friend of Demetrius Cydones and an advisor to the Emperor John VI Cantacuzenus. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas's classic Treatise on Divine Law is brought to life in this illuminating line-by-line commentary, which acts as a sequel to Budziszewski's Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law. In this new work, Budziszewski reinvestigates the theory of divine law in Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, exploring questions concerning faith and reason, natural law and revelation, the organization of human society, and the ultimate destiny of human life. This interdisciplinary text includes thorough explanations, applications to life, and (...) ancillary discussions that open up Aquinas's dense body of work, which tends to demand a great deal from readers. More than a half-century has passed since the last commentary on Thomas Aquinas's view of these matters. Budziszewski fills this gap with his consideration of not only the medieval text under examination, but also its immediate relevance to contemporary thought and issues of the modern world. (shrink)

This book attempts to collect Heidegger’s scattered and often very puzzling observations about the holy, divinity, God, and the gods in order to make them a coherent statement. The first three chapters present clearly and soundly the by now familiar material of Heidegger’s attempt, first, to lay the foundation of metaphysics, then, to overcome metaphysics altogether. Chapter 4 draws the conclusion that Heidegger stands in opposition to any metaphysical account of God and that theology, if it is possible at all, (...) must be nonmetaphysical. Chapter 5 argues that Heidegger’s approach to God, centered primarily in the account of the Geviert, is mythical rather than metaphysical, though it does not recommend that we in the twentieth century simply adopt the Homeric or Hesiodic myths. The heart of the book is Chapter 6, in which Perotti analyzes the Hölderlin commentaries. On this basis he claims that, for Heidegger, any word about God’s coming—for we live after the flight of the gods-must come from the poets. Thinking dwells in subordination to poetry, and its role is to cultivate and preserve the poet’s words. On the question of God for Heidegger, according to Perotti, there is nothing to do but wait—for the poets to speak. Perotti’s text is quite brief and, in the opening chapters, covers familiar ground. He makes no use of Phaenomenologie und Theologie. Unfortunately, he often quotes the Lohner translation of the Letter on Humanism, although he always supplies the German. On p. 27, 1934 is mentioned where 1943 is intended. There is ample footnoting, a bibliography, and an index.—J.D.C. (shrink)

Proclus' commentary on the dialogue Timaeus by Plato, written in the fifth century AD, is arguably the most important commentary on a text of Plato, offering unparalleled insights into eight centuries of Platonic interpretation. It has had an enormous influence on subsequent Plato scholarship. This edition nevertheless offers the first new translation of the work for nearly two centuries, building on significant recent advances in scholarship by Neoplatonic commentators. It will provide an invaluable record of early interpretations of (...) Plato's dialogue, while also presenting Proclus' own views on the meaning and significance of Platonic philosophy. The book presents Proclus' unrepentant account of a multitude of divinities involved with the creation of mortal life, the supreme creator's delegation to them of the creation of human life, and the manner in which they took the immortal life principle from him and wove it together with our mortal parts to produce human beings. (shrink)

Boethius represents one of the most important milestones in Christian reflection about fate and providence, especially considering that he takes into account Proclus’ contributions to these questions. For this reason, The Consolation of philosophy is considered a crucial work for the development of this topic. However, Boethius also exposes his ideas in his commentary on the book that constitutes one of the oldest and most relevant texts on the problem of future contingents, namely Aristotle’s De interpretatione. Although St. Thomas (...) refers to Boethius many times in his systematic works and even devotes two commentaries to two of his theological opuscules, it is of special interest that both authors composed a commentary on the abovementioned work by Aristotle. The commentary of Saint Thomas does not interpret the whole book, but it does study the pages about future contingents in dialogue with Boethius. We will study such texts in our presentation. They constitute one of the greatest contributions of Aquinas to the problem of necessity and contingency and therefore to the vexata quaestio of divine intervention in the world and particularly in human free will. Not only Augustin but also Aristotle (read by Boethius) and Nemesius of Emesa will be decisive in Aquinas’ perception of this matter. (shrink)

This series offers central philosophical treatises of Aquinas in new, state-of-the-art translations distinguished by their accuracy and use of clear and nontechnical modern vocabulary. Annotation and commentary accessible to undergraduates make the series an ideal vehicle for the study of Aquinas by readers approaching him from a variety of backgrounds and interests.

The article is devoted to the philosophical views of Swami Vivekananda, reflected in his commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. The text under study is one of the few Indian commentaries on the Yoga Sutras translated into Russian. The object of the study is a widespread translation of the commentary, made and published by Ya. K. Popov in 1906. The popularity of yoga as a health-improving practice increases interest in its spiritual component, therefore, the study of Vivekananda's (...) commentary on the Yoga Sutras seems to be an urgent task. The purpose of this article is to analyze Vivekananda's commentary for the authenticity of the transmission of the content of the ancient text and the reflection of the teachings of the Bengali thinker. Since Vivekananda's commentary on the Yoga Sutras has not been studied by domestic orientalists, and has not received comprehensive coverage in foreign studies, the results of his analysis contain scientific novelty. Using the hermeneutical method, it is revealed that the philosopher forms a commentary on the ancient text mainly to demonstrate the basics of his teaching. Vivekananda's work expresses his Orient-centric position, as well as the author's beliefs in accordance with the provisions of yoga to his contemporary science. Since the philosopher's views are in line with Advaita Vedanta, the ontological foundations of yoga are interpreted by him according to this philosophical school. The commentary of the late XIX century anticipates modern ideas of the healing potential of yoga and the superiority of experienced knowledge of the Divine, and also demonstrates the predictive talent of the Bengali thinker. (shrink)

The gods that guard the poles have been assigned the function of assembling the separate and unifying the manifold members of the whole, while those appointed to the axes keep the circuits in everlasting revolution around and around. And if I may add my own conceit, the centers and poles of all the spheres symbolize the wry-necked gods by imitating the mysterious union and synthesis which they effect; the axes represent the connectors of all the cosmic orders … and the (...) very spheres are likenesses of the perfecting divinities … 1 Proclus’s Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements contains one of the most important discussions of the nature of mathematical objects and preserves a wealth of historical information about mathematics from antiquity. However, large sections of the text have been neglected by scholars since the text’s first publication in the sixteenth century. Proclus expounds at length on correspondences between mathematical objects and the gods. At times he uses the language of “theurgy,” the ritual practices that later Neoplatonists insisted were necessary for the human soul to ascend to the intelligibles. The contention of this article is that the Commentary, taken as a whole, concerns the practice of “inner theurgy,” mental rituals used by advanced students to raise the soul beyond its assigned bounds. This practice can be traced back to Plotinus and the very beginnings of Neoplatonism; however, the particular methods presented by Proclus are his own development. This interpretation of the Commentary is supported by Proclus’s works Commentary on the Parmenides and Platonic Theology. Parts of the Commentary that have been studied carefully by modern scholars, especially the theory of the mathematical phantasia or imagination, will be shown to be crucial elements in Proclus’s theory and practice of inner theurgy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:716 BOOK REVIEWS phies for each section (20 in all); (2) the summaries of major conclusions at the end of many chapters; (2) the explanations of how one body of texts (or its traditions) has been re-read (i.e., re-worked) by later texts; and (4) how one body of texts (e.g., the Psalms), provides for understanding a certain perspective other parts of the Old Testament (e.g., the Pentateuch). Some shortcomings (...) are evident. He relies heavily on the prophets for guiding insights, while law, priesthood, temple, and blessing play minor roles. Is this really faithful to the canonical shape of the Old Testament in its pre-Christian witness~ I find particularly inadequate the treatment of purity laws (p. 86) and priestly roles (pp. 150-53), and suspect the author needs to apply a hermeneutics of suspicion to his own Protestant presuppositions! In a similar way, the decalogue gets extended attention because Childs sees its theology as relevant to modern questions of violence, war, etc.; but he never seriously wrestles with those counter-passages whose theology encourages a divine warrior or a conquest motif. A similar problem arises when he ends the book with the theme of "Life under Promise." This is a judicious choice for the summarizing theme of the Old Testament and includes treatment of judgment versus salvation,.eschatology, messianic hope, the promise of the land, and eternal life. But it lacks any reference to liturgy and temple as symbols of hope, the book of the law, or the commandments of Torah, and no mention at all of the " blessing " theology of P that informs the whole Old Testament from Genesis 1 onwards. Clearly Childs has begun an important project, but much more clarity and balance is still needed in his continuing work during the years ahead. Washington Theological Union Silver Spring, Maryland LAWRENCE BOADT, C.S.P. Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish and Christian Perspectives. Edited by TAMAR RUDAVSKY. Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1985. Pp. ix + 299. $54 (cloth). Since this book originated from revised papers and commentaries presented at a conference (held at the Ohio State University on March 3 and 4, 1982.), it is not surprising to find that the completed edition displays wide variety both in its subject matter and in the quality of the chapters. The chapters reflect the quality of papers very often presented at conferences -some are excellent, others are not. In addition, some chapters deal BOOK REVIEWS 717 with problems and solutions which help significantly to advance medieval scholarship, while the problems and solutions raised in other chapters do. not add much to medieval research; indeed, some chapters seem to present arguments lacking both in plausibility and in an understanding of the dominant spirit of medieval thought. The book is divided into three specific parts which deal with Islamic, Jewish, and Christian authors respectively, and the chapters in each part are arranged in historical order. There is also an introduction and an extensive bibliography. In chapter 1, Calvin Normore gives a helpful, but tediously written, introduction and overview of the logical and epistemological problems which were involved in medieval discussions of divine omniscience and omnipotence. Chapter 2 focuses upon Boethius's account of the nature of contingency, and adopts a view which i;e:fl.ects a misunderstanding both of Boethius and of the theological spirit of medieval thought in general. Ignoring sage comments from Richard Sorabji (see p. 49, footnote 68), Norman Kretzmann argues that for Boethius free human choice is the source of all contingency. How the Christian, Boethius, could so badly confuse human choice with divine choice, Kretzmann fails to explain. Chapters 3-6 constitute Part Two of the text and contain some of the most scholarly research in the book. In chapters 3 and 4, Josef Van Ess, rightly noting the juridical foundations of Mu'tazilite thought, examines wrongdoing and divine omnipotence in the fragmentary work of Abu Ishaq An-Nazzam. His discussion is particularly helpful in its treatment of the Islamic understanding of God as not physei agathos, but good merely by doing what is good. This understanding is a necessary element for any sound grasp... (shrink)

Makes Schelling’s dialogue Bruno readily accessible to the English-language reader, with valuable commentary on the work itself, which details Schelling’s account of his differences from Fichte.

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. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Adam Smith and the History of the Invisible HandPeter HarrisonFew phrases in the history of ideas have attracted as much attention as Smith’s “invisible hand,” and there is a large body of secondary literature devoted to it. In spite of this there is no consensus on what Smith might have intended when he used this expression, or on what role it played in Smith’s thought. Estimates of its significance (...) range from the laudatory—“one of the great ideas of history,” to the dismissive—“an ironic joke.”1 Commentators are also divided on whether Smith’s “invisible hand” has teleological or providential connotations, or whether it is simply a rhetorical device. John Kenneth Galbraith declared that we do a grave disservice to Smith if we insist on understanding his invisible hand as a kind of “spiritual force.”2 Spenser J. Pack maintained that the invisible hand was “a rhetorical device which Smith made up, and knew he made up” and certainly “not [End Page 29] a theological underpinning for Smith’s social and/or economic theory.”3 Others have adopted the opposite view. Jacob Viner contended that Smith’s economic theory becomes unintelligible if “the invisible hand” is evacuated of its theological significance.4 For David A. Martin, Smith’s use of the phrase pointed to the foundational role played by divine wisdom in Smith’s thought, while for Andy Denis, “the invisible hand concept in Smith was entirely and unambiguously theological.”5Surprisingly, given this situation, a systematic study of the uses of the expression before Smith has yet to be made.6 Indeed, it is not unusual to find claims that Smith invented the expression himself, or that it was primarily owing to his influence that the phrase first became widespread.7 Those who have made perfunctory efforts at a history of the phrase generally point to a few scattered literary references with a view either to judging them irrelevant to Smith’s oeuvre, or to suggesting that Smith’s (admittedly meagre) uses of the phrase are empty metaphors. This paper seeks to remedy this deficiency, offering a history of “the invisible hand” with a particular focus on the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. What clearly emerges from this survey is that the concept was relatively common by the time Smith came to use it. Moreover, while “invisible hand” was used in a variety of contexts, by far the most common involved reference to God’s [End Page 30] oversight of human history and to his control of the operations of nature. Almost certainly, then, when readers encountered the phrase in Smith, they would have understood it as referring to God’s unseen agency in political economy. Whether Smith was himself committed to such a view is more difficult to determine, but the history of the expression and the contexts in which it appears in Smith’s writings offer some support for providentialist readings.Hidden and Invisible HandsThe expression “invisible hand” was not commonly used before the seventeenth century. It does not occur in classical literature (although some have suggested that the phrase may be found in Ovid).8 Neither does it appear in the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament.9 The earliest reference that I have found occurs in a Greek liturgy which invokes God’s “invisible right hand which is full of blessing.”10 The liturgy was used by the Alexandrian Church and its origins date back (probably) to the second century. However, [End Page 31] the expression is relatively rare in subsequent patristic and medieval writings. In one of his Old Testament commentaries, Alexandrian Church father Origen (185–254 ce) attributed the Israelites’ defeat of the Amalekites, recorded in Exodus 17, to the agency of God’s hidden hand.11 Some later sources made reference to the work of a “hidden” or “invisible” hand of God in restoring individuals to health. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 ce) thus spoke of the hidden hand of God which heals and makes whole.12 A medieval source refers similarly to a wound being healed by the touch of an invisible hand.13 French Benedictine Petrus Cellensis (1115–83 ce) alluded to the action... (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article presents two letters from the Glaswegian theologian John Simson (1667–1740) to his former student Archibald Campbell (1691–1756), professor of ecclesiastical history at St. Andrews as of 1733. After Simson’s condemnation for heresy in 1727–1728, Simson was in regular contact with Campbell, who also came to be scrutinised by a Committee for Purity of Doctrine in 1735–1736. The two letters by Simson address Campbell’s claim that without the support of divine revelation, natural reason is unable to discover (...) any essential religious truths. Campbell presented this claim as directed against the Deists, but was accused by conservatively orthodox theologians of undermining the tenet of postlapsarian mankind’s inexcusability. In his letters, Simson argues for a stronger conception of natural reason – however not to protect inexcusability, but to argue for God’s goodness. In different ways, Simson and Campbell may thus both be seen to make elbow room for justification by works, and to encourage religious tolerance. (shrink)

An unprecedented recollection -- A purportedly anonymous rhetorical flourish -- The major interruption in a minor key -- A taciturn commentary by the actual author -- An inconclusive word from the present reader.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Apocalypse of Wisdom: Louis Bouyer's Theological Recovery of the Cosmos by Keith LemnaAaron WilliamsThe Apocalypse of Wisdom: Louis Bouyer's Theological Recovery of the Cosmos by Keith Lemna (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico, 2019), xxx + 488 pp.Keith Lemna has done the theological world a great service. In The Apocalypse of Wisdom: Louis Bouyer's Theological Recovery of the Cosmos, he offers the English-speaking world for the first time a monograph (...) on the thought of the Oratorian Louis Bouyer. Bouyer is undoubtedly one of the theological giants of the twentieth century. Born in Paris in 1913, he was ordained a Lutheran pastor in 1936. After only three years as a Lutheran clergyman, he was received into the Catholic Church at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Wandrille. Then ordained as an Oratorian priest in 1944, he taught from 1946 to 1962 at the Institut Catholique de Paris and abroad for the three decades following.1 He is most well-known for his work on the liturgy both before and after the Second Vatican Council. With fifty books to his name, including a nine-part synthesis on Christian doctrine, the breadth of his theological vision and work is astounding. In France he is considered one of the four preeminent theologians of the post-World War II era, and his theological contemporaries in Europe, such as Hans Urs von Balthasar and Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI, always held the Oratorian in high regard.2 Yet, in the English-speaking world, much of his work has gone without comment.3 Thankfully, into the void steps this excellent work by Lemna. [End Page 1353]Anyone familiar with the Bouyerian corpus knows the challenge of approaching it. With its vast array of subject matter, ranging from biblical to liturgical to historical to spiritual to speculative theology, one wonders whether there is any one thread woven throughout the varied strands, a single theme around which the whole sprawling corpus can be understood. In fact, there is, and Lemna has deftly identified it. For Bouyer, the fundamental question of theology is the world's relation to God.4 The structure of the first six books of his nine-part treatise on systematic theology attest to the priority of the question with the first three works addressing the question of the world, or the economy of creation and salvation, and the latter three works addressing the question of God, or theology properly speaking: the doctrine of the Trinitarian God. Interestingly, though Bouyer's work on theological cosmology, Cosmos, is the third book in the series, it was, in fact, the last of the six to be written. In this sense, as Lemna points out, "Cosmos is a capstone monograph... summarizing in important ways the decisive first six volumes" (xiv). Theological cosmology fully illuminates the God–world relation as Bouyer sees it, and since this relation sits at the heart of his thought, Cosmos is for Bouyer both his "most personal, as well as most speculative work" and indeed, "opens up the meaning of his other writings" beyond the dogmatic sphere (25). One could, then, scarcely choose a better entry point into the wide theological world of this "mind with a very special character," as Joseph Ratzinger saw him.5The Apocalypse of Wisdom is an expansive commentary on Bouyer's cosmology at the heart of which is a liturgical, even nuptial, vision of the whole of creation known and loved in the mind of God from all eternity, as the uncreated Wisdom of God. In creation God freely gives existence to the world ex nihilo, so that it might return to him in a liturgical song of praise and thanksgiving, as the Bride of his eternal Son, the eschatological and cosmic Church, created wisdom now made glorious and radiant through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. As Lemna puts it, "Bouyer shows that cosmology should be a pursuit of wisdom, but that Wisdom is ultimately a gift revealed or uncovered by means of apokalypsis in the re-creative interventions of the divine Word and Holy Spirit in history" (xvii). The wisdom of man seeking a unified vision of the whole of reality [End... (shrink)

_Makes Schelling’s dialogue Bruno readily accessible to the English-language reader, with valuable commentary on the work itself, which details Schelling’s account of his differences from Fichte._.

The commentary on Plato's Republic by Proclus (d. 485 CE), which takes the form of a series of essays, is the only sustained treatment of the dialogue to survive from antiquity. This three-volume edition presents the first complete English translation of Proclus' text, together with a general introduction that argues for the unity of Proclus' Commentary and orients the reader to the use that the Neoplatonists made of Plato's Republic in their educational program. Each volume is completed by (...) a Greek word index and an English-Greek glossary that will help non-specialists to track the occurrence of key terms throughout the translated text. The first volume of the edition presents Proclus' essays on the point and purpose of Plato's dialogue, the arguments against Thrasymachus in Book I, the rules for correct poetic depictions of the divine, a series of problems about the status of poetry across all Plato's works, and finally an essay arguing for the fundamental agreement of Plato's philosophy with the divine wisdom of Homer which is, in Proclus' view, allegorically communicated through his poems. (shrink)

Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. By Carol Meyers.Wives, Harlots and Concubines. By Alice L. Laffey.Jonah. A Psycho‐Religious Approach to the Prophet. By Andre LaCocque and Pierre‐Emmanuel Lacocque.The Temptation and the Passion: The Markan Soteriology, Second Edition. By Ernest Best.Theios Aner and the Markan Miracle Traditions: A Critique of the ‘Theios Aner’Concept as an Interpretative Background of the Miracle Traditions used by Mark. By Barry Blackburn.The Shepherd Discourse of John 10 and its Context: Studies by Members of the Johannine (...) Writings Seminar. Edited with introduction by Johannes Beutler, S.J., and Robert T. Fortna.The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. By Harold W. Attridge, edited by Helmut Koester.Structure and Message of the Epistle to the Hebrews. By Albert Vanhoye, translated by James Swetnam.Religious Pluralism and Unbelief: Studies Critical and Comparative. Edited by Ian Hamnett.7he Uniqueness of Christ in the 7heocentric Model of the Christian Theology of World Religions: An Elaboration and Evaluation of the Position ofJohn Hick. By Gregory H. Carruthers.The Jewish Roots of Christian Liturgy. Edited by Eugene J. Fisher.Women, Religion and Sexuuliry: Studies on the Impact of Religious Teachings on Women. Edited by Jeanne Becher.In Whose Image? God and Gender. By Jann Aldredge Clanton.Women Towards Priesthood: Ministerial Politics and Feminist Praxis. By Jacqueline Field‐Bibb.Afrer Eve: Women, Theology and the Christian Tradition. Edited by J. Martin Soskice.Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian. By Thomas F. Torrance.Theology und Dialogue: Essay in Conversation with George Lindbeck. Edited by Bruce D. Marshall.From Theology to Social Theory: Juan Luis Segundo and the Theology of Liberation. By Marsha Aileen Hewitt.Liberation Theology at the Crossroads: Democracy or Revolution. By Paul E. Sigmund.Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic. By Hans Kung.Marxism, Moralig and Social Justice. By R. G. Peffer.The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists. By Peter P. Nicholson.The Political Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott. By Paul Franco.Divine Action. By Keith Ward.Free Willand the Christian Faith. By W. S. Anglin.Tracrurian Semantics: Finding Sense in Wirrgetisrein's ‘Tractatus’. By Peter Carruthers.The Metaphyics of the ‘Tracratus’. By Peter Carruthers.Realism with a Human Face. By Hilary Putnam.Explanation and its Limits. Edited by Dudley Knowles.Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of Courage. By Lee H. Yearly.Hobbes. By Richard Tuck.Freedom and the End of Reason: On the Moral Foundation of Kant's Critical Philosophy. By Richard L. Velkley.Reason in Religion: The Foundarions of Hegel's Philosophy of Religion. By Walter Jaeschke.International Kierkegaard Commentary, VoL 13: The Corsair Affair. Edited by Robert L. Perkins.Ssren Kierkegaard: ‘Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses’. Edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.Lonergan Workshop, Volume 6. Edited by Fred Lawrence.Holy City, Holy Places: Christian Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Fourth Century. By P. W. L. Walker.Politics, Poetics and Hermeneutics in Milton s Prose. Edited by David Loewenstein and James Grantham Turner.Beauty and Holiness: The Dialogue between Aesthetics and Religion. By James Alfred Martin.Science Deified & Science Defied: The Historical Significance of Science in Western Culture. Volume 2: From the Earl? Modern Age through the Romantic Era ca. 1640 to ca. 1820. By Richard Olson.The Vatican and Zionism: Conflict in the Holy Land, 1895‐1925. By Sergio I. Minerbi.The Social Dimensions of Sectarianism: Sects and New Religious Movements Contemporary Society. By Bryan Wilson.Confessor between East and West: A Portrait of Ukrainian Cardinal Josyf Slipyj. By Jaroslav Pelikan. (shrink)

Plotinus was much exercised by Plato's doctrines of the soul. In this treatise, at chapter 1 line 27, he talks of "the divine Plato, who has said in many places in his works many noble things about the soul and its arrival here, so that we can hope for some clarity from him. So what does the philosopher say? It is clear that he does not always speak with sufficient consistency for us to make out his intentions with any (...) ease." The issue in this treatise is one that has puzzled students of Plato from ancient to modern times—and is indeed a popular topic for undergraduate essays even today: Why should the philosopher, who has ascended through a long and painful process of dialectic to "assimilation to the divine," ever descend back into the body? Plotinus himself is said by Porphyry to have attained such a state of other-worldly transcendence on at least four occasions during his lifetime, so this was a very real and personal issue for him. In this treatise we see him grappling with it. (shrink)

Plotinus was much exercised by Plato's doctrines of the soul. In this treatise, at chapter 1 line 27, he talks of "the divine Plato, who has said in many places in his works many noble things about the soul and its arrival here, so that we can hope for some clarity from him. So what does the philosopher say? It is clear that he does not always speak with sufficient consistency for us to make out his intentions with any (...) ease." The issue in this treatise is one that has puzzled students of Plato from ancient to modern times—and is indeed a popular topic for undergraduate essays even today: Why should the philosopher, who has ascended through a long and painful process of dialectic to "assimilation to the divine," ever descend back into the body? Plotinus himself is said by Porphyry to have attained such a state of other-worldly transcendence on at least four occasions during his lifetime, so this was a very real and personal issue for him. In this treatise we see him grappling with it. (shrink)

This commentary on Nicholas Pappas’s paper, “Telling Good Love from Bad in Plato’s Phaedrus,” reflects on a number of Pappas’s thoughtful observations and interpretations of features woven into the drama of the discussion. However, unlike Pappas, who refrains from claiming that divinely inspired human love can be discerned by turning to the earthly, this commentary suggests that Pappas’s contrasts of wings which conceal versus wings which elevate, of left and right, and my added contrast of traditional Greek mythology (...) versus Platonic mythology, lay the groundwork to discern the divine in the earthly, and to distinguish concomitantly bad from good human love. Additionally, the commentary discusses how Plato’s use of collection and division is used to distinguish good and bad human love. (shrink)

Essays on a Science of Mythology is a cooperative work between C. Kerényi, who has been called "the most psychological of mythologists," and C. G. Jung, who has been called "the most mythological of psychologists." Kerényi contributes an essay on the Divine Child and one on the Kore, together with a substantial introduction and conclusion. Jung contributes a psychological commentary on each essay. Both men hoped, through their collaboration, to elevate the study of mythology to the status of (...) a science.In "The Primordial Child in Primordial Times" Kerényi treats the child-God as an enduring and significant figure in Greek, Norse, Finnish, Etruscan, and Judeo-Christian mythology. He discusses the Kore as Athena, Artemis, Hecate, and Demeter-Persephone, the mother-daughter of the Eleusinian mysteries. Jung speaks of the Divine Child and the Maiden as living psychological realities that provide continuing meaning in people's lives.The investigations of C. Kerényi are continued in a later study, Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 523 Aristotle's Theology: A Commentary on Book A of the Metaphysics. By Leo Elders. (Assen, The Netherlands: Royal VanGorcum Ltd., 1972) In 1961 Leo Elders published a book under the title Aristotle's Theory o] the One with the subtitle "A Commentary on Book X of the Metaphysics." Five years later he published Aristotle's Cosmology, subtitled "A Commentary on the De Caelo." Continuing his " (...) class='Hi'>commentary " approach to Aristotle's works, he returns in the present work to the Metaphysics, restricting himself in this case to an examination of Book Lambda. The author is convinced that the "central doctrine of the Book is the conception of an unmoved Mover, who is unchangeable and eternal; his being is subsistent thinking; he is the final cause of all movement and the Good desired by the cosmos" (p. 1). In addition to a detailed commentary on each of the ten chapters of Book Lambda, the book contains seven introductory chapters which discuss the relation of Aristotle's theology to that of his Greek predecessors, particularly Plato, and attempts to solve such problems as the date and structure of Metaphysics Lambda and its place in the Aristotelian corpus. The author believes Metaphysics Lambda to be a collection of short studies which belong to mature Aristotelianism but do not form a coherent treatise. Because the eighth chapter asserts a multiplicity of Unmoved Movers, which runs counter to the position taken in the rest of the book, Elders takes the position that the eighth chapter is a short essay by one of Aristotle's collaborators or students which was inserted into the book by a later editor. One of the significant difficulties with the book is that the author reads a number of anachronistic ideas back into Greek philosophy. He assumes that we all know, especially the author himself, what "theology" means to the Greeks and that whatever its meaning it is not only continuous with the Christian conception of theology but can best be understood with the aid of the Christian approach to theology. Is it not best to regard the Unmoved Mover simply as the Perfect Scientist or Perfect Knower, the final cause of those who desire knowledge? Of course, it is true that Aristotle refers to the Unmoved Mover as divine (theos)----what,after all, deserves the designation "divine" except that which is perfect and eternal, and the final goal of man's intellectual activity? As the author states in the Preface that "one of the leading thoughts of the commentary is that there is a real continuity between Academic theories and Aristotle's doctrine of the Unmoved Mover" he devotes considerable attention to various aspects of Plato's thought. Here he frequently succumbs to the temptation to read a number of Neoplatonic, Pythagorean, and even Christian ideas into the Greek philosopher, and fails to distinguish Plato from "the Platonists" mentioned by Aristotle (el. pp. 276, 291, and 292). Such passages as Metaphysics 1090b20-24 and 1090b31 ft. do not necessarily refer to Plato himself but could easily mean some unidentified members of his school. In the introductory chapters especially, Elders attributes to Plato a number of theories which derive from other sources, frequently with little or no direct textual justification for so doing. For instance, he says that "a great number of texts indicate that Plato made the One a principle beyond being, and thus beyond thinking" (p. 16). His only corroborating evidence is that this is "implicitly contained in the famous text of Rep. 509B" (footnote 7, p. 16). Earlier he has said that "Plato developed a theory of principles according to which all essences are connected with the supreme principle, which, in his later years, Plato called the One" (pp. 8-9). Again, the only textual evidence he mentions is several passages from the Republic, which have at best a tenuous connection with such a theory and which were certainly not written during Plato's "later years." The book also suffers from a number of organizational problems. In an attempt to bring together the opinions of other scholars on the issues at hand, the author continually mixes up secondary literature and interpretations with the problems he poses... (shrink)

An analysis of how Mitterand came to power in France and how political power seduced the French Left and became a simulacrum. First published in French in 1985, The Divine Left is Jean Baudrillard's chronicle of French political life from 1977 to 1984. It offers the closest thing to political analysis to be found from a thinker who has too often been regarded as apolitical. Gathering texts that originally appeared as newspaper commentary on François Mitterand's rise to power (...) as France's first Socialist president and the Socialist Party's fraught alliance with the French Communist Party, The Divine Left in essence presents Baudrillard's theory of the simulacrum as it operates in the political sphere. In France, the Left, and even the ultra-Left, had been seduced by power. This scenario—dissected by Baudrillard with deadpan humor and an almost chilling nonchalance—produced a Socialist Party that devoted itself to rallying the market economy and introducing neoliberalism, and replaced an intellectual class with the media stars and hyper-professionals of the spectacle. Starting from the elections of 1977, Baudrillard analyzes—in “real time,” as it were—how the Left's taking of power had in fact been an enaction of not just its own death throes, but those of power itself. The Divine Left outlines a simulation of politics that offers discomfiting parallels to our political world today, a trajectory that has only grown more apparent in recent years: the desire and intention to fail. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 76–81 Comments on Eugene Thacker’s “Cosmic Pessimism” Nicola Masciandaro Anything you look forward to will destroy you, as it already has. —Vernon Howard In pessimism, the first axiom is a long, low, funereal sigh. The cosmicity of the sigh resides in its profound negative singularity. Moving via endless auto-releasement, it achieves the remote. “ Oltre la spera che piú larga gira / passa ’l sospiro ch’esce del mio core ” [Beyond the sphere that circles widest / penetrates (...) the sigh that issues from my heart]. 1 The axiomatic sigh of the pessimist is in a way the pure word of philosophy, a thought that thinks without you, speaks where you are not. The live pneumatic form of the soul’s eventual exit from the dead body’s mouth, the sigh restores consciousness to the funeral of being, to the passing away that is existence. Pessimism speaks in piercing aphorisms because first it sighs. “Beyond the sphere passeth the arrow of our sigh. Hafiz! Silence.” 2 … pessimism is guilty of that most inexcusable of Occidental crimes—the crime of not pretending it’s for real. To the pessimist, the ‘real’ world—the world on whose behalf we are expected to wake up in the morning—is a ceaseless index of its own unreality. The pessimist’s day is not an illumined space for the advancement of experience and action, but a permanently and inescapably reflective zone, the vast interior of a mirror where each thing is only insofar as it is, at best, a false image of itself. Within this speculative situation, inside the doubleness of the mirror, pessimism splits into two paths, false and true, one that tries to fix pessimism (establish a relation with the mirror) and decides in favor of the apparent real, and another that totally falls for pessimism (enters the mirror) and communes with the greater reality of the unreal. These two paths are distinguished by their relation to pessimism’s guilt vis-à-vis the world’s reality-project. The first form, that which remains pessimism for the world and puts on a smiling face, stays guilty to itself (i.e. unconscious) and thus turns hypocritical, becoming at once the pessimism of the commoner who really just wants things to be better for himself and the pessimism of the elite who wants to critically refashion reality in his own image. The general form of this worldly, hypocritical pessimism is the impulse to ‘make the world a better place’, which is the global mask under which the world is diurnally made worse. The second form, that which follows pessimism away from the world and ceases to put on a smiling face, refuses guiltiness as itself theessential Occidental mode of pretense and turns honest, becoming at once the intelligent pessimism required of all ordinary action and the radical pessimism necessary for self-knowledge: seeing that no one is capable of doing good. The general form of this universal, honest pessimism is the impulse not to worry, to give up and embrace dereliction, which is the only real way the world is actually improved. Where worldly pessimism is the engine productive of interminably warring secular and sacred religions (good-projects), universal pessimism strives hopelessly for the paradise of a supremely instantiated pessimus: things are getting so bad that there is no longer any time for them to get worse; things are so constantly-instantly worst that this is BEST. Cosmic pessimism is the mode of universal pessimism which can yet discourse with the world, which has not chosen silence and can spread the inconceivably BAD NEWS in an orderly form ( kosmos ) that the world can understand (if it wanted to). … the result of a confusion between the world and a statement about the world. That is what the world is (the result of a confusion between the world and a statement about the world). … a generalized misanthropy without the anthropos. Pessimism crystallizes around this futility—it is its amor fati , rendered as musical form. Pessimism’s love of fate is a blind love, a love of the blindness of being human in a cosmos conceived around the human’s eclipse, a heavy levitation in the contradictory space between the inescapability of its having been and the impossibility of its will-be. Pessimism’s song of futility is a sensible way of loving fate, with a minimum of eros, by means of a kind of matrimonial love of the fatal. As music, pessimism stays open to the irreparable and the inexorable without the binding of affirmation, in the apparent absence of the radical, infinitely surplus will that absolute amor fati seems to require. Crying, laughing, sleeping—what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent? “Unless a man aspires to the impossible, the possible that he achieves will scarcely be worth the trouble of his achieving it. We should aspire to the impossible, to absolute and infinite perfection [….] The apocatastasis is more than a mystical dream: it is a norm of action, it is a beacon for high deeds [….] For true charity is a species of invasion [….] It is not charity to rock and lull our fellow men to sleep in the inertia and heaviness of matter, but rather to arouse them to anguish and torment of spirit.” 3 … the impossibility of ever adequately accounting for one’s relationship to thought. “The paroxysm of interior experience leads you to regions where danger is absolute, because life which self-consciously actualizes its roots in experience can only negate itself [….] There are no arguments [….] On the heights of despair, the passion for the absurd is the only thing that can still throw a demonic light on chaos [….] I live because the mountains do not laugh and the worms do not sing .” 4 It took three attempts before she was fully decapitated, all the while she continued, perhaps miraculously, to sing. According to the earliest account of Cecilia’s martyrdom, the beheading turns out worse. After not severing her head in three strokes, “the cruel executioner left her half dead” (seminecem eam cruentus carnifex dereliquit). 5 Cecilia’s effortlessly powerful endurance of the three strokes—a fitting icon for pessimism as an art of dereliction—demonstrates the “passivity and absence of effort [….] in which divine transcendence is dissolved.” 6 There’s a ghost that grows inside of me, damaged in the making, and there’s a hunt sprung from necessity, elliptical and drowned. Where the moving quiet of our insomnia offers up each thought, there’s a luminous field of grey inertia, and obsidian dreams burnt all the way down. Like words from a pre-waking dream. There is no reason to think that they are not. NOTES 1. Dante Alighieri. Vita Nuova . ed. and trans. Dino S. Cervigni and Edward Vasta. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 1995. 41:10. 2. Hafiz of Shiraz. The Divan . trans. H. Wilberforce Clarke. London: Octagon Press. 1974. 10.9. 3. Miguel de Unamuno. The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations . trans. Anthony Kerrigan. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1972. 305-6. 4. E.M. Cioran. On the Heights of Despair . trans. Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1992. 9-10. 5. Giacomo Laderchi. S. Caeciliae Virg[inis] et Mart[yris] Acta. . . Rome. 1723. 38. 6. Georges Bataille. On Nietzsche . trans. Bruce Boone. London: Continuum. 2004. 135. See Nicola Masciandaro. “ Half Dead: Parsing Cecilia .” A Commentary on Eugene Thacker’s "Cosmic Pessimism" Gary J. Shipley Pessimism is the refusal to seek distraction, the refusal to remodel failure into a platform for further (doomed) possibilities, the refusal of comfort, the acceptance of the sickness of healthy bodies, the cup of life overflowing with cold vomit. If, as Ligotti suggests when discussing Invasion of the Body Snatchers , 1 humans prefer the anxieties of their familiar human lives to the contentment of an alien one, then the pessimist, we could argue, represents some perverted combination of the two, preferring (presuming he has a choice) the defamiliarization of human life to the contentment of its unquestioned mundanity. The quasi-religious state of mind that Wittgenstein would mention on occasion, that of “feeling absolutely safe,” 2 is a state the pessimist could only imagine being approximated by death, or perhaps some annihilative opiate-induced stupor. This Wittgensteinian commingling of certainty and faith looks every bit the futile gesture, a mere rephrasing of collapse or partial collapse. The only certainty open to the pessimist is that of the toxic formula of life itself—a formula known and lacuna-free. Certainty, far from being the gateway to deliverance, becomes the definitive impediment; and the possibility of salvation, as long as it remains, becomes crucially reliant on postulations of ignorance, epistemic gaps, a perennial incompleteness: “the perfect safety of wooed death […] the warm bath of physical dissolution, the universal unknown engulfing the miniscule unknown.” 3 The height of Leibniz’s Panglossian insanity nurtured the idea that our knowing everything—via the universal calculus—could be accurately described a triumph, as opposed to a nightmare in which our every futility is laid bare. Stagnancy and boredom are perhaps two of the greatest ills of Western civilisation, and the most potent pessimism tells you that you’re stuck with both. The most we can hope for, by way of salvation, is to throw open our despair to the unknown. The fact that Schopenhauer’s pessimism stopped short of morality and allowed him to play the flute, as Nietzsche complained, highlights the predicament of a man who despite having adorned nothingness with a smiling face still found himself alive. The demand here is that it be felt: a cross-contamination of intellect and emotion. The safety net of numerous parentheses makes for a failed philosophy, rather than a philosophy of failure. Depressives make bad pessimists, because, unless they choose to die, living will always infect them with necessities of hope, forcing them to find something, anything (all the various “as ifs”) to make existence tolerable. For as Cioran observed, while “[d]epressions pay attention to life, they are the eyes of the devil, poisoned arrows which wound mortally any zest and love of life. Without them we know little, but with them, we cannot live.” 4 And even when cured of our depressions we’ll find ourselves consumed, eaten alive by the hyper-clinical (borderline autistic) mania that replaces them: a predicament captured all too clearly in the microscriptual fictions of Robert Walser, where spectral men and women stifle their depressive madness with protective comas of detail, their failed assimilations buried beneath thick crusts of remote data. Like Beckett’s Malone their stories may have ended, but cruelly their lives have not. Pessimism is an extraneous burden (a purposeless weight) that makes everything else harder to carry, while at the same time scooping it out and making it lighter. If pessimism had a sound it would be the harsh non-noise of tinnitus—the way that every person would hear themselves if they refused their distractions long enough to listen: a lungless scream from the extrasolar nothing of the self. The music of pessimism—if indeed we can imagine such a thing—is the reverberating echo of the world’s last sound, conjectured but never heard, audible only in its being listened for. The one consolation of this hollow paradox of audibility being, that “he will be least afraid of becoming nothing in death who has recognized that he is already nothing now.” 5 The pessimist suffers a derangement of the real, a labyrinthitis at the nucleus of his being: he’s the stumbling ghost relentlessly surprised that others can see him. If Cioran’s refusal is manifested in sleep (when even saying ‘no’ is too much of a commitment), then Pessoa’s resides in the dreams inside that sleep. Pessoa chooses to exploit the fact that he’s being “lived by some murmuring non-entity both shadowy and muddied” 6 by growing more voids to live him. His is a Gnostic breed of sleep, “sleeping as if the universe were a mistake,” 7 a sleep that dreams through Thacker’s cosmic pessimism (“a pessimism of the world-without-us.”, “the unhuman orientation of deep space and deep time” 8 ), through the critical error of there being anything at all when there could be nothing. The metaphysical pessimist is someone who, however well life treats them, still desires to wake from it, as from the poisonous air of a bad dream. Pessimism is a paradox of age, being simultaneously young and old; its youth residing in a refusal to accept the authority of existence (its rich history, its inherent beneficence), a refusal to “get over” the horror of what it sees with its perpetually fresh eyes, and its maturity in the unceremonious disposal of the philosophical playthings (those futile architectures) of adolescence. As Thacker remarks: “Pessimism abjures all pretenses towards system—towards the purity of analysis and the dignity of critique.” 9 A sentiment shared with Pessoa, who duly categorizes those that choose to enact this futile struggle: “The creators of metaphysical systems and of psychological explanations are still in the primary stage of suffering.” 10 If the pessimist has shared a womb with anyone, it’s with the mystic and not the philosopher. As Schopenhauer tells us: “The mystic is opposed to the philosopher by the fact that he begins from within, whereas the philosopher begins from without. […] But nothing of this is communicable except the assertions that we have to accept on his word; consequently he is unable to convince.” 11 The crucial difference between the mystic and the pessimist is not the latter’s impassivity and defeatism, but his unwillingness/inability to contain in any way the spread of his voracious analyticity, his denial of incompleteness, his exhaustive devotion to failure. The truth of our predicament, though heard, is destined to remain unprocessed. Like the revelations of B.S. Johnson’s Haakon (“We rot and there’s nothing that can stop it / Can’t you feel the shaking horror of that?” 12 ) the pessimist’s truths are somehow too obvious to listen to, as if something inside us were saying, “Of course, but haven’t we gotten over that?” Pessimism is simple and ugly, and has no desire to make itself more complex or more attractive. The true moral pessimist knows that the Utilitarian’s accounts will always be in the red. He can see that for all his computational containments, his only honest path is a negative one, and that such a path has but one logical destination: that of wholesale human oblivion. Thacker notes how at the core of pessimism lies the notion of “the worst,” through which death is demoted by the all-pervasive suffering of a life that easily eclipses its threat. And so with doom made preferable to gloom, death begins to glint with promise, “like beauty passing through a nightmare.” 13 But even among pessimists suicide is, for the most part, thought to be an error. Schopenhauer, for instance, regarded suicide a mistake grounded in some fundamentally naïve disappointment or other. Pessoa too thought suicide an onerous escape tactic: “To die is to become completely other. That’s why suicide is a cowardice: it’s to surrender ourselves completely to life.” 14 There is a call here to be accepting of and creative with the puppetry of your being, an insistence that it’s somehow a blunder to attempt to hide in death from the horrors you find inlife. 15 Tied up with this perseverance is the slippery notion of the good death, for maybe, as Blanchot warns, suicide is rarely something we can hope to get right, for the simple reason that “you cannot make of death an object of the will.” 16 “Even in cases where the entire corpus of an author is pessimistic, the project always seems incomplete,” 17 and this is not simply because the project itself belies something yet to be disclosed, but because the project itself is a thing waiting. It waits on a cure it knows will not come, but for which it cannot do anything (as long as it continues to do anything) but wait. NOTES 1. See Thomas Ligotti. The Conspiracy Against the Human Race . New York: Hippocampus Press. 2010. 91. 2. Ludwig Wittgenstein. “A Lecture on Ethics.” Philosophical Review . (74) 1. 1965. 8. 3. Vladimir Nabokov. Pale Fire . New York: Vintage. 1989. 221. 4. E. M. Cioran. The Book of Delusions . trans. Camelia Elias. Hyperion. 5.1. (2010): 75. 5. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation. vol. 2 . trans. E .F J. Payne. New York: Dover. 1966. 609. 6. Eugene Thacker. “Cosmic Pessimism.” continent. . 2.2 (2012): 67. 7. Fernando Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet . trans. Richard Zenith. London: Penguin. 2002. 35. 8. Eugene Thacker. “Cosmic Pessimism.” continent. . 2.2 (2012): 68. 9. Ibid. 73. 10. Fernando Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet . trans. Richard Zenith. London: Penguin. 2002. 341. 11. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation. vol. 2 . trans. E .F J. Payne. New York: Dover. 1966. 610-11. 12. B.S Johnson. “You’re Human Like the Rest of Them.” in Jonathan Coe. Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson . London: Picador. 2004. 177. 13. Fernando Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet . trans. Richard Zenith. London: Penguin. 2002. 415. 14. Ibid. 199. 15. “Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem.” Anne Sexton. No Evil Star: Selected Essays, Interviews and Prose . ed. Steven Gould Axelrod. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1985. 92. 16. Maurice Blanchot. The Space of Literature . trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1989. 105. 17. Eugene Thacker. “Cosmic Pessimism.” continent. . 2.2 (2012): 75. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:An Exposition of The Divine Names, The Book of Blessed Dionysius by Thomas AquinasMichael J. Rubin, Elizabeth C. Shaw, and Staff*AQUINAS, Thomas. An Exposition of The Divine Names, The Book of Blessed Dionysius. Translated and edited with an introduction by Michael A. Augros. Merrimack, N.H.: Thomas More College Press, 2021. xxv + 549 pp. Cloth, $65.00The profound influence that Pseudo-Dionysius had on Aquinas’s thought, especially in (...) his metaphysics of participation and his apophatic theology, has been known for some time now, thanks to the excellent work of such scholars as Fran O’Rourke. One would therefore think that Aquinas’s Exposition of the Divine Names (his only commentary on the works of Pseudo-Dionysius) would have been translated a lot sooner. This delay is assuredly due not just to the difficulty of translating this work but also to a certain embarrassment felt by Thomists over Aquinas’s sincere belief that the “Dionysius” who wrote the Divine Names was the Areopagite whose conversion at the teaching of St. Paul is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. That the author calling himself “Dionysius” was in fact a theologian writing in the fifth or sixth centuries has been well established by modern scholarship. Hence, Thomists may have felt tempted to discount or at least pass over the influence of this author on Aquinas since it is discomfiting to think that the Church’s greatest theologian accorded such authority to an imposter.Michael Augros tackles these concerns head-on in the excellent introduction to his new translation of the Divine Names commentary. First, Augros points out that in past centuries a pseudonym was usually not an act of forgery but, rather, a way of concealing the author’s identity, which an early Christian theologian might well decide to do either out of humility or out of a desire “to avoid provoking certain prejudices” in those who disagreed with him in contemporary theological disputes. Moreover, it is likely that the work was never intended for the general public (who could easily mistake the pseudonym as genuine) but, rather, was written for those “already initiated in a particular Neoplatonic school of Christian theology,” who would recognize the author as being “one of their own” but without knowing his precise identity. Finally, in taking the particular name of “Dionysius,” the author of the Divine Names was indicating his intention for the work: Just as the biblical Dionysius was a Greek philosopher who converted to Christianity, so the works of Pseudo-Dionysius [End Page 345] are an attempt to reconcile Greek philosophy with the Christian faith.It therefore seems likely, as Augros observes, that Aquinas would still have accorded a great deal of respect to the Divine Names even if he had learned the truth of the author’s identity. The work would not have had the same deuterocanonical authority for him that comes with being written by a direct disciple of St. Paul himself, but “the inherent cogency, coherence, and beauty” of Pseudo-Dionysius’s theology would have been the same. Hence, Pseudo-Dionysius would surely have earned from Aquinas the “docile attitude” appropriate “for a philosopher and theologian of the first order, such as Boethius.”That Aquinas was right to see the author of the Divine Names as a master philosopher and theologian becomes evident when one dives into the text itself, in which Aquinas sees a truly dazzling order, both externally and internally. According to Aquinas, the Divine Names discusses those truths about God of which there are intelligible likenesses in creatures, such as goodness or wisdom, whereas the truths about God of which there are sensible likenesses (for example, “when God is called a lion, or a rock”) are treated by Pseudo-Dionysius in The Symbolic Theology; meanwhile, in the lost or fictional work The Divine Characteristics, Dionysius claims to have treated those truths about God (such as the Trinity) that cannot be known through any likenesses in creatures.Aquinas finds a still more intricate order within the Divine Names itself. Since this work is dedicated to “the divine names by which the processions of God to creatures are manifested,” the plan of the work... (shrink)

First published in French in 1985, _The Divine Left_ is Jean Baudrillard's chronicle of French political life from 1977 to 1984. It offers the closest thing to political analysis to be found from a thinker who has too often been regarded as apolitical. Gathering texts that originally appeared as newspaper commentary on François Mitterand's rise to power as France's first Socialist president and the Socialist Party's fraught alliance with the French Communist Party, The Divine Left in essence (...) presents Baudrillard's theory of the simulacrum as it operates in the political sphere. In France, the Left, and even the ultra-Left, had been seduced by power. This scenario -- dissected by Baudrillard with deadpan humor and an almost chilling nonchalance -- produced a Socialist Party that devoted itself to rallying the market economy and introducing neoliberalism, and replaced an intellectual class with the media stars and hyper-professionals of the spectacle. Starting from the elections of 1977, Baudrillard analyzes -- in "real time," as it were -- how the Left's taking of power had in fact been an enaction of not just its own death throes, but those of power itself. The Divine Left outlines a simulation of politics that offers discomfiting parallels to our political world today, a trajectory that has only grown more apparent in recent years: the desire and intention to fail. (shrink)

The Physics is a most remarkable work, and profoundly influenced Medieval Philosophers. Thomas Aquinas wrote a detailed, impressive commentary. This essay studies in particular the composition of the Physics as Thomas saw it, his thorough study of Aristotle’s way of arguing and the important distinction he made between disputative arguments, which are only partially true, and arguments which determine the truth. Aristotle frequently uses proofs which are wrong when one considers the proper nature of bodies, but possible considering their (...) common nature. Thomas accepts proofs in the field of physics but discards those related to a certain mathematization of nature. Aristotle holds the unlimited possibility of movements becoming faster or slower, but according to Aquinas he is considering things in general : when we consider specific bodies there is a fastest movement. Thomas speaks of a way of reading a text which is according the intention of Aristotle, and proposes an understanding of particular texts based on the general doctrine of the Stagirite. Sometimes he goes beyond the text, as when defending the unity of time as dependent on the unity of the First Mover. The essay shows that in the commentary a coherent philosophy of nature shaping up. In some places Aquinas brings in God’s causality: nature is nothing else but the plan of divine art, placed within things. The study of nature shows that there is a first principle of the whole nature which is above everything, sc. God who gives being to things. (shrink)

This short comment on Professor Sauvé Meyer’s paper attempts to draw attention to two issues that influence our understanding of Divine responsibility in the Timaeus. The first concerns the question of the literalness of the argument. If there is no creation, per much of the ancient tradition of commentators on the Timaeus, then there can be no divine responsibility. The second is the Timaeus’ account of the origin of non-human animals. Since they come from ‘fallen humans,’ and since (...) they are necessary in order for the Demiurgic creation to be complete or perfect, in some sense they, and the fall of humans, must be part of the divine plan. (shrink)

Brandt addresses what has been called an “embarrassment” in Socratic studies: in the Crito, Socrates claims that he is only persuaded to act on the basis of propositions that appear to him to be best upon rational examination (45b). However, in several other dialogues, Socrates appears to contradict himself: He obeys the commands of his supernatural daimonion, thereby suggesting that divine command - something that is not the product of human reasoning - can also persuade Socrates to act. Herein (...) lies the apparent conflict: If Socrates is the paragon of rationality, why would he unreflectively obey the commands of his daimonion, an extra rational source? After exposing the weaknesses in arguments from the recent scholarship on this issue, Brandt undertakes the formidable task of proposing an alternative way of understanding Socrates as the “ideal rational agent.” While Brandt’s project is admirable and creative, I argue that parts of it are inconsistent with essential theses of Socratic philosophy. I address four issues that concern me. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Note on Thomas and the Divine MercyMark JohnsonA PUZZLING THING about the topic of the divine mercy as presented in the early part of the Prima pars, especially in light of the detailed commentaries presented by Cessario and Cuddy, 1 is how relatively little Thomas speaks about it. Pope Francis devoted the entire 2016 year to a Jubilee of Mercy. The Catholic Theological Society of America (...) followed suit by devoting its 2016 conference to the topic. Yet Thomas does not devote a single Scholastic question to it in the Summa. The topic of the divine names gets question 13 (12 articles), the divine knowledge gets question 14 (16 articles), and the divine will gets question 19 (12 articles). Our anchor text, question 21, is a four-article-long question that emerges from the larger issue of God’s will in itself (absolute). Yet the question is not about the divine mercy on its own, but is rather about features or properties of the divine act of love, a topic to which the whole of question 20 is devoted. God’s justice and mercy are considered in question 21 as quasi-virtues that perfect the divine act of love (question 20), which in turn is the proper act of God’s will (question 19).2 The divine will of question 19 [End Page 355] is Halley’s Comet, and mercy is the tail of dust trailing in its wake. When God’s mercy does appear it seems to vie with God’s justice for our attention.Cessario and Cuddy help us understand why this is, both with their two-part structure and with the sources they employ, the commentators. My focus here will be on the original text in its own light, before the varnish of the commentators. Thomas’s original is a dense chiaroscuro, which both raises questions and offers opportunities.First, while Thomas is still well within the consideration of the divine being and action (STh I, qq. 3–26), he is sensitive to our human understanding. For us humans an element of suffering seems to be built into any consideration of mercy. It is the first hurdle that needs to be jumped in question 21, article 3; objection 1 frets about mercy because it is a subset, a species, of sorrow—and that cannot be in God. In the body of the article, Thomas alludes to sorrow via a consideration of the quid nominis of mercy. The term misericordia means having a miserum cor, a heart afflicted by the sufferings of another. Thomas dismisses this right away; in the body of the article he says “being saddened at the misery of another does not befit God” (tristari... de miseria alterius non competit Deo). He does not say more. Similarly, in addressing the first objection he notes that the objection was invoking mercy as a kind of “being affected by suffering” (obiectio illa procedit de misericordia, quantum ad passionis affectum). Again, he gives no further commentary.3 [End Page 356]With the concern about God’s “co-suffering” with us dispatched, Thomas addresses a second objection, the satisfying of which will allow for the existence and procedure of the next article (a. 4). The objection focuses upon the divine justice and worries that mercy seems to mean some kind of “loosening up” of the divine justice (relaxatio iustitiae), in which God seems to act contrary to himself, to his utterances or dictates (dicta sua). Thomas addresses this concern head-on; there is no loss or relaxation of the divine justice, but rather a fulfilling and indeed exceeding of the dictates of divine justice. An example both explains and foreshadows: the man who owes someone a hundred dollars but who fulfills the debt when he pays him two hundred dollars of his own money, has both met the demands of justice and acted with liberality and mercy. He has acted above and beyond justice (supra iustitiam operando). 4 Remembering that objection 2 had included a concern about acting against one’s own self and dictates, Thomas adds that remitting an offense made against oneself by another—he may have had peccatum originale originans in mind—has the... (shrink)

A commentary on the Symposium as a challenge and a gift to Athens. I begin with a reflection on three dates: 416 bce, the date of Agathon’s victory party, c. 400, the approximate date of Apollodorus’ retelling of the party, and c. 375, the approximate date of the ‘publication’ of the dialogue, and I argue that Plato reminds his contemporary Athens both of its great poetic and legal and scientific traditions and of the historical fact that the way late (...) fourth century Athens appropriated them in some way led to the city’s demise at the turn of the century; thus the dialogue is Plato’s challenge to his contemporary Athens to recognize and overcome its flawed relation to its cultural resources. Heard in this way, the key moments are Aristophanes’ implied critique of Pausanias and Eryximachus and Socrates’ implied critique of Aristophanes and Agathon. Proceeding by a close reading, I argue that Plato exposes, for those moved to rise to his challenge, the failure of his great predecessors to conceive the divine in a way that, worthy of the height and otherness divinity requires, can provide substantive orientation for the burgeoning new reason that animates the city’s culture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Spiritual Experience and Psychopathology”Roland Littlewood (bio)Keywordsreligion, innovation, psychosis, culture, diagnosisThis is an ambiguous though clinically valuable paper. Jackson and Fulford suggest that the distinction between their two categories, spiritual experience and mental illness, is conventional, yet their emphasis on issues of correct practice from the medical perspective threatens to return both into distinct ontological categories, albeit with a shared phenomenology. I do not understand why any (...) single instance must either be pathological or spiritual, except through clinical and clerical demands for clarity and order.Mental illness and spirituality are not two distinct natural phenomena “out there,” existing independently of human volition. They are both social—cultural if one prefers—ascriptions. Neither has some substantive core whose elucidation through psychophysiological, phenomenological or ultrahuman procedures could enable us to define its essence and thus differentiate it from the other. Neither experience is a self-evident datum. Both are easily susceptible to critiques, either that they do not exist as natural categories, or else that they should more properly be described as something else—as the workings out of social exclusion in the case of mental illness, as cosmological understanding or mass hysteria in the case of spirituality. Neither, I would suggest, can be specified by physiology or ultrahuman interventions respectively, but rather through shared cultural meanings which in turn are experientially validated by the biosocial phenomena themselves. It is not that we need to exclude the possibility of concurrences in brain states, but rather that these cannot specify the meaning and experience of the phenomena.Note that I emphasize “experienced through cultural meanings,” not “influenced by” culture: I do not accept that psychophysiology can have any existence independent of the social world through which it occurs. The psychiatrists’ form/content distinction, an optimistic proxy for nature/culture (Birnbaum 1923; Schneider 1928) may remain a convenient heuristic device, but it has a curious, perhaps doubtful, intellectual history (see the Endnote following).Cross-cultural comparisons argue that local idioms which we might approximate to current Western notions of mental illness and religion are quite varied. And the validity of particular instances of both “spiritual experience” and “psychopathology” may be contested in any society. While the social consequences of a pattern may determine the approbation accorded to a pattern such that patterns recalling chronic schizophrenia [End Page 67] are regarded as a deficit (and here I agree with James [1902] and the two authors), they are not necessarily aligned to categories of physical illness, but may be seen as a spiritual failure or obstruction. Unsuccessful or inappropriate shamanic practice among Amerindian and circumpolar societies is the classic instance (Eliade 1964). Within Western societies, demonic possession may be read by doctors as mental illness. (It is just as much a “spiritual experience”: why introduce the religionist’s distinctions between different types of ultrahuman agency? Compare Maslow on “peak” experiences. The terms “spiritual” and “religious world view” are naturalized idioms of late Christianity rather than cross-culturally valid terms [Tambiah 1990].) But also the converse (Koch 1972). And this depends on our professional interests. Clearly, psychiatrists prefer to perceive the world in a psychopathological idiom, while religious enthusiasts and clergy may favor divine intercession or demonic possession; and a Christian psychiatry not surprisingly may claim to act as arbiter (Sims 1991). Any specific instance may be perceived differently by individuals in accordance with their interests and affiliations.The paper’s terminology—“spiritual psychotic experience,” “genuine spiritual experience”—is confusing in that it does imply realist, not conventional claims (cf. Endnote 1, Jackson and Fulford). It is not necessary. A less laden idiom—such as “statistically or normatively unusual brain states and their experiential correlates” (Littlewood 1993, 257)—may be just too unwieldy for repetition, but I would propose that at this level of detail we need rather four categories depending or not on concordance with (i) something close to psychiatry’s recognition of a major mental illness, and (ii) something like an anthropological notion of religious or spiritual experience (cf. Littlewood 1991):[Table 1]PsychosisReligious ExperiencePresentAbsentPresentABAbsentCDSo Jackson and Fulford’s three cases fall into group “A” if the PSE was scored... (shrink)

This article argues that ministerial priesthood, rather than being ontologically comprehended, should be ethically articulated. The ‘character’ of priesthood is to be ‘for‐the‐other.’ Following a thought of Emmanuel Levinas on the ‘liturgical orientation of work,’ we argue that — Priesthood is essentially liturgical, in the sense of a movement out of oneself towards the other which never returns to the self. This movement is at one and the same time on orientation towards God, as divine other, and the other (...) person. This ‘liturgical’ orientation of the self is seen and celebrated in the sacred liturgy of the Church with which the life and ministry of the priest is intimately associated. In this sense, the liturgy of the Church is not only an expression of what the Church is, but also, as an expression of the ethical subjectivity of the self which is ‘the‐Other‐in‐me,’ a celebration of who I am. — Priesthood is essentially eucharistic. In the commemoration of the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, the ethical and ecclesial structure of subjectivity, is recalled and realised in the words ‘for you ’ and ‘for all .’ — Priesthood is self‐sacrificial. If living eucharistically is living ‘for you ’ and ‘for all ,’ then this finds its extreme expression in the sacrifice of oneself for‐the‐other in suffering and death. This involves substitution which, as Levinas says, ‘is indispensable to the comprehension of subjectivity.’. (shrink)

For Thomas Aquinas, the Book of Job is the authoritative teaching concerning divine providence. In his Literal Exposition on Job, Aquinas offers a line-by-line commentary on the scriptural text. He analyzes the text not only by way of cross-references within the Book of Job and to other parts of Scripture, but also by appeal to the writings of Aristotle, the Church Fathers, and other Christian Aristotelians. Anthony Damico's translation is more literal than literary, preferring to render the Latin (...) words wherever possible by their obvious English derivatives. Martin Yaffe provides an extensive interpretive essay, bibliography, and indexes of citations. (shrink)

If Place Spirituality is considered as an attachment experience to a geographic place or an “object,” for Muslims this concept can be explained by the sharia or Islamic law. However, in the highest level of experience as a Muslim, one may attach to God everywhere and at all times, without consideration of any place, time, or object. This experience can clearly be understood with the explanation of the three levels for Muslims: sharia or “conceptual knowledge,” tariqa or “experiential knowledge,” and (...) ma’rifa or “divine spiritual experiences” or “spiritual consciousness”. At the first and second levels, one may have a Place Spirituality, while at the third level the understanding of and connection to God might be enhanced, and the experience to connect to God can be everywhere, all the time. (shrink)

In the treatise On the Change of Names (part of his magnum opus, the Allegorical Commentary), Philo of Alexandria brings his figurative exegesis of the Abraham cycle to its fruition. Taking a cue from Platonist interpreters of Homer's Odyssey, Philo reads Moses's story of Abraham as an account of the soul's progress and perfection. Responding to contemporary critics, who mocked Genesis 17 as uninspired, Philo finds instead a hidden philosophical reflection on the ineffability of the transcendent God, the transformation (...) of souls which recognize their mortal nothingness, the possibility of human faith enabled by peerless faithfulness of God, and the fruit of moral perfection: joy divine, prefigured in the birth of Isaac. (shrink)

In response to Timaeus’ invocation of the gods at Timaeus 27c1-d4, Proclus discusses, in his commentary on the text, the value of prayer. Heralding the fact that prayer marks the soul’s epistrophe or return to its causative principle, Proclus proceeds to exonerate those who invoke and pray to the gods, arguing that prayer enacts the emergence of human freedom in the determined world. He argues that since the gods are not only our superior causes but also the ones who (...) have wisely granted self-motion to human souls, we possess the freedom to acknowledge the role of providence or to remain, as Proclus describes, entrapped in the realm of Fate. In other words, human beings must decide (boulesis) to become what they are in the simple act of revering the gods, i.e. reverting to or knowing their divine cause. To pray is not to ask for things to be otherwise, but to pray is to fulfill providence freely, to become self-moved and self-knowing, therein becoming like and returning to our divine origins. Proclus concludes that this is the peculiar form of prayer for the philosopher as the philosophical life is dependent upon our will and the decisive commitment to articulating and communing with the highest metaphysical principles. Accordingly, for Proclus, Timaeus, in illustrating the order and providential nature of things in his “likely story,” frees himself from the trappings of fate, praying decisively and silently throughout his entire endeavor. (shrink)

The Gita is a central text in Hindu traditions, and commentaries on it express a range of philosophical-theological positions. Two of the most significant commentaries are by Sankara, the founder of the Advaita or Non-Dualist system of Vedic thought and by Ramanuja, the founder of the Visistadvaita or Qualified Non-Dualist system. Their commentaries offer rich resources for the conceptualization and understanding of divine reality, the human self, being, the relationship between God and human, and the moral psychology of action (...) and devotion. This book approaches their commentaries through a study of the interaction between the abstract atman (self) and the richer conception of the human person. While closely reading the Sanskrit commentaries, Ram-Prasad develops reconstructions of each philosophical-theological system, drawing relevant and illuminating comparisons with contemporary Christian theology and Western philosophy. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas wrote a text later known as Quaestio de attributis and ordered it inserted in a precise location of his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard more than a decade after composing this work. Aquinas assigned exceptional importance to this text, in which he confronts the debate on the issue of the divine attributes that swept the most important centres of learning in 13th Century Europe and examines the answers given to the problem by the representatives (...) of the four mainstream schools of his time: the Greek mystic Dionysius Areopagita, the Latin Saint Anselm of Canterbury, the Jewish rabbi Moses Maimonides and the Muslim philosopher Ibn Sina. This in-depth study of Thomas Aquinas’ Quaestio de attributis (In I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3) binds together the findings of previous research on the unique history of this text by reconstructing the historical circumstances surrounding its composition, shows that the Quaestio contains Aquinas’ final answer to the dispute on the divine attributes, and thoroughly examines his interpretation of Maimonides’ position on the issue of the knowledge of God by analysing this and other texts related to it chronologically and doctrinally. The examination of the Quaestio reveals the background of Thomas Aquinas’ renewed interest in Maimonides’ position on the issue and brings to light elements of Aquinas’ interpretation that are absent from his earlier references to Maimonides. Moreover, the chronological and doctrinal connection of the Quaestio de attributis to other Thomistic works with explicit references to Maimonides enables a reconstruction of his comprehensive approach to Maimonides’ teaching on the possibility and extent of the knowledge of God in the Guide of the Perplexed and highlights the place of Maimonides’ philosophical teachings in Thomas’ own thought in issues like "Being" as the proper name of God, the multiplicity of the divine names, the beatific vision in the afterlife, the causes that prevent the instruction of the multitude in divine matters and the role of faith and prophecy in the acquisition of the true knowledge of God in this life. The last chapter examines the reasons behind Aquinas’ silencing of Maimonides’ name when introducing his Five Ways for the knowledge of the existence of God, in spite of the evident relation between these and Maimonides’ Four Speculations. The study is completed with an extensive appendix that includes the text of the Quaestio de attributis with an English translation and the critical edition of several chapters of the 13th Century Latin translation of the Guide of the Perplexed known as Dux neutrorum. (shrink)