[essay] The Constitution of Culture

The truth of the common good, as what we rightly ought to seek in our cultural realities and, therefore, as the final cause of any political constitution, does not alone suffice to cause that cultural reality’s alignment.  We must instead recognize a more complex causal constitution.  It is just this causality that was acknowledged—though not well-enough explained—by Jacques Maritain in his Integral Humanism, and it is just this causality which we will take up to explain in this essay.… Read More [essay] The Constitution of Culture

[article] How To Be a Contemporary Thomist: The Case of Marshall McLuhan

The provocative nature of both the form and content, “medium” and “message,” of Marshall McLuhan’s scholarship on technological culture has attracted a wide array of McLuhan interpreters of diverse intentions. It is well known, however, that McLuhan considered himself a follower of the thirteenth century scholastic Thomas Aquinas; as he wrote…… Read More [article] How To Be a Contemporary Thomist: The Case of Marshall McLuhan

[review] Integralism

Catholic integralism, generally speaking, comprises a return to the past in order to move beyond the modern problem. In effect, its answer is to discard the political developments of modernity wholesale and return pick up where the Middle Ages left off. To many who do not hold this view, and who are not as familiar with the Integralist movement, such a suggestion appears strange to the point that this characterization may seem to be an uncharitable. To the contrary, however, it appears to us that the integralists themselves characterize the spirit of their philosophy in the same manner.… Read More [review] Integralism

[article] Was Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange a Personalist?

A Rapprochement Between the Individual-Person Distinction and the Primacy of the Common Good Contra Maritain’s Personalism[1] Taylor Patrick O’NeillAssistant Professor of TheologyMount Mercy UniversityCedar Rapids, IA ABSTRACT: This paper uses Garrigou-Lagrange in order to explore the wider question of a Thomistic response to personalism and the thought of Jacques Maritain. How ought Thomistic thinkers to… Read More [article] Was Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange a Personalist?

[article] Political Science and Realism

ABSTRACT: This article contrasts the pursuit of political science from a classically realist perspective versus a modernist one. We suggest that with the developments in modern philosophy and science, political science has stopped examining the common good itself, instead pursuing what is called a “value-free” analysis based on materialism, or a utopian ideal based on subjectivism. Neither path, however, arrives at the true good itself, as both approaches begin from a flawed set of metaphysical principles divorced from reality. Our proposal is that for political science to properly seek what is the actual common good, it must begin with a solid metaphysical foundation of true realism. To accomplish this, we shall look first to the foundation of political science with Aristotle, then, we shall examine what changed with the arrival of modernity. Finally, we will rely upon contemporary critics of political philosophy (Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and Jacques Maritain specifically) to account for the problems with political science in its current form, and consider how these problems may be addressed through a return to classical realism within political philosophy.… Read More [article] Political Science and Realism

[article] Interpretation and Traditions

ABSTRACT: My topic today develops some themes found or at least suggested in both Ens Primum Cognitum and The Intersection of Semiotics and Phenomenology but focuses on one in particular: namely, why people are so quick to develop and obstinate in maintaining bad intellectual positions—not in terms of the historical causes which have contributed to the state of bad thinking prevalent today, but in terms of the cognitive capacities themselves; that is, what happens in the person as cognitive agent when falsehoods are adopted and subsequently protected.… Read More [article] Interpretation and Traditions