Summaries & Keywords

Fr. Michael Nnamdi Konye, “Gilson on Dogmatism,” Studia Gilsoniana 5:2 (April–June 2016): 307–326:

SUMMARY: The article aims at uncovering reasons why philosophy may become conducive to dogmatism which inevitably leads to the failure of philosophy. In the light of Gilson’s considerations contained in his The Unity of Philosophical Experience, the author concludes that philosophy is always exposed to the influence of dogmatism when it is done from a non-philosophical standpoint. For each time when the engagement in the philosophical enterprise is driven by non-philosophical needs, it is usually the case that the goal of philosophy is misconstrued as merely that of providing an instrumental ontology to non-philosophical areas of knowledge. To avoid such mistakes as logicism, theologism or psychologism, philosophy must recover its proper object that is the real world of persons and things, and its proper method that is metaphysics.

KEYWORDS: philosophy, dogmatism, skepticism, scholasticism, Étienne Gilson, Peter Abelard, Al-Ghazali, William of Ockham.

Sister Lucia Marie Siemering, O.P., “Capital Grace of the Word Incarnate According to Saint Thomas Aquinas,” Studia Gilsoniana 5:2 (April–June 2016): 327–343:

SUMMARY: The doctrine of capital grace was developed during the Scholastic period and bears on many areas of theology including ecclesiology, Christology, sacraments, and Trinitarian theology with regard to the missions of the Word and the Holy Spirit. Viewed from a Christological standpoint, capital grace sheds light on how Christ in his human nature can be said to be a source of grace to the members of the Church. Following his contemporaries, the young Thomas Aquinas espoused a view in which Christ is a meritorious, ministerial, and dispositive cause of grace according to his human nature, and an efficient cause according to his divinity. After a deeper reading of John Damascene’s treatment of Christ’s humanity being an instrument of his divinity, Thomas was able to articulate a view in which Christ’s human nature is an instrumental efficient cause of grace. This view undergirds Aquinas’s strong conception of Christ as one acting person in two natures.

KEYWORDS: Jesus Christ, capital grace, habitual grace, instrumental efficient causality, human nature, divine nature.

Wojciech Ziółkowski, “Józef Tischner’s Conception of Aesthetic Tragedy: Enchantment and Seduction,” Studia Gilsoniana 5:2 (April–June 2016): 345–363:

SUMMARY: The article analyzes essential factors for Józef Tischner’s conception of aesthetic tragedy, namely enchantment and sedution. For Tischner, the aesthetic tragedy takes place in the realm of interpersonal relations. The article describes the discoverer of the beauty as the one who becomes aware of that he cannot appropriate the beauty discovered; nevertheless, he still hopes that there must be a form of persuasion able to convince the beauty to be his possession voluntarily. According to Tischner, the way in which the enchanted and the beauty discovered by him seek to possess each other is the relation of seduction. Seduction, however, by its nature is a paradoxical phenomenon; for it is always associated with the consciousness of a renouncement which is to come. The fact that the artist and his work are doomed to part shows that the aesthetic tragedy is a drama not only of the work, but also of the artist; it is their mutual tragedy which stems from an illusory hope for the overcoming of the irremovable necessity of parting. The act of seduction undertaken in hope for having each other as a property becomes the reason of a parting for participating subjects, a parting which—according to Tischner—is announced in drama as the bane of man.

KEYWORDS: Józef Tischner, aesthetics, tragedy, enchantment, sedution, art, man, woman.

Fr. Tomasz Duma, “Personalism in the Lublin School of Philosophy (Card. Karol Wojtyła, Fr. Mieczysław A. Krąpiec),” Studia Gilsoniana 5:2 (April–June 2016): 365–390:

SUMMARY: The article presents the conception of personalism and the understanding of human person developed by two Polish philosophers: Karol Wojtyła and Mieczysław A. Krąpiec, the framers and the main representatives of the Lublin School of Philosophy. The author comes to the following conclusions: (1) Wojtyła’s and Krąpiec’s conception of personalism comes from experience and seeks verification in experience; it does not accept any a priori explanations or theses, though it does not shy away from drawing upon different branches of knowledge in its attempts to broaden experience, being aware that not everything is given to immediate experiential perception; (2) Wojtyła’s and Krąpiec’s personalism wants to draw on the whole philosophical tradition, taking into account, at the same time, the findings of different sciences of man or humanities which broaden the experience of man or contribute something to the interpretation of experience; (3) bringing together genetic empiricism and methodical rationalism, Wojtyła and Krąpiec are able to avoid radicalism in the explanation of man, making a successful attempt to join in a complementary way these aspects of personal human being which carry some opposition; (4) Wojtyła’s and Krąpiec’s conception of person does not bear any traces of antagonism since it is not directed against anyone; in the light of this conception every human person has a character of the honest good which is the unconditional good, that is the highest and the ultimate good not competing with the value of anything else; (5) Wojtyła and Krąpiec prove that the conception of human person lies at the basis of understanding society, culture, ethics, law, politics, economy, art, and even religion.

KEYWORDS: Lublin School of Philosophy, Karol Wojtyła, Mieczysław Krąpiec, personalism, philosophy, metaphysics, person, man, experience, nature, culture.

Mieczysław A. Krąpiec, O.P., Andrzej Maryniarczyk, S.D.B., “Metaphysics in the Lublin Philosophical School,” trans. Hugh McDonald, Studia Gilsoniana 5:2 (April–June 2016): 391–427:

SUMMARY: The article is aimed at presenting the way in which metaphysics is understood and cultivated in the Lublin Philosophical School, Poland. It includes such topics as: the definition of metaphysics, metaphysical cognition (its object and the method for singling it out), ways of metaphysical demonstration and rational justification, and the relation of metaphysics to other domains of philosophy. In the light of the information delivered, it can be concluded that metaphysics in the Lublin Philosophical School is understood as a way of knowing in which the reason employs the universal laws of being and thought and strives to discover the first and singular factors or causes that render free of contradiction that which exists and which is given to us in a germinal way in the empirical intuition of the material world.

KEYWORDS: Lublin Philosophical School, metaphysics, philosophy, cognition, object, being, method, demonstration, justification, reason, cause, separation, reality, world.

Andrzej Maryniarczyk, S.D.B., “On the Transcendental Properties of Real Beings,” trans. Hugh McDonald, Studia Gilsoniana 5:2 (April–June 2016): 429–444:

SUMMARY: The article analyzes the metaphysical approach to the rational cognition of the world of persons and things. It shows the way in which metaphysicians reveal the essential and universal properties of the world and the laws that govern their being. Among these properties, the most important are as follows: to be a thing (that is, to have a concretely determined essence), to be one (that is, to be non-contradictory in itself), to be separate or distinct (that is, to be sovereign in being), and also to be a vehicle of truth, good, and beauty. Among the laws of being, in turn, the article indicates the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction, the law of the excluded middle, the law of the reason of being, the law of finality, and the law of perfection. These laws primarily show the source and foundation of the rational order.

KEYWORDS: Lublin Philosophical School, transcendental, metaphysics, being, reality, world.