Papers by John O'Callaghan
While many 20th-century fads in philosophy and theology have come and gone, McInerny's faith ... more While many 20th-century fads in philosophy and theology have come and gone, McInerny's faith in Aristotelian-Thomism was boldly prophetic. His defenses of natural theology and law helped to create dialogue between theists and non-theists, and to provide a philosophical basis for Catholic theology.
University of St. Thomas law journal, 2005
A hilarious scene in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited portrays the politician Rex Mottram, Jul... more A hilarious scene in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited portrays the politician Rex Mottram, Julia Marchmain's dim but powerful and sexually exhilarating suitor, taking instruction in the faith from a Catholic priest in order to marry Julia. The priest wants to find out whether Rex understands the doctrine of papal infallibility. The priest presents him with a hypothetical: "Supposing the Pope looked up and saw a cloud and said, 'It's going to rain,' would that be bound to happen?" Rex responds, HOh, yes, Fathee" To which the priest responds, "But supposing it didn't?" Rex is surprised by the difficulty, and pauses, apparently deep in thought, as he tries to face it. Then inspiration hits: "I suppose it would be sort of raining spiritually, only we were too sinful to see it."J Later Rex charges the priest with "holding back" on him the deeper mysteries of the faith. He knows a very pious Catholic who has told him of the sacred monkeys that inhabit the Vatican, as well as the need to sleep with one's feet pointing east so that one can walk to heaven if one dies in the night. Julia's little sister Cordelia had been playing a joke on Rex when she told him these things. Waugh, of course, was not attempting to ridicule the teaching on papal infallibility. He was sending up the general cultural ignorance of Englishmen on the nature of papal infallibility, an ignorance portrayed as comparable to the stupid social prejudices against Catholics who cannot see the absurdity of such claims like sacred monkeys living in the Vatican, and walking one's way to heaven. No need even to mention tunnels between the convents and the rectories. Rex Mottram stands in for William Gladstone, the nineteenthcentury prime minister of England, who, upon the proclamation of papal infallibility at Vatican I, had charged that no Roman Catholic could any
Human Vision, Visual Processing, and Digital Display
A linear systems model has been developed for determining resolution capabilities provided by any... more A linear systems model has been developed for determining resolution capabilities provided by any shadow mask (SM) CRT-observer configuration. A square wave model is used to simulate both the sampling of the SM and the spatial phase difference between the displayed image and the SM holes. Due to the spatial phase differences for a selected SM CRT-observer configuration, distributions of calculated modulation depths are obtained. This analysis supports the notion that to meaningfully specify and measure the resolution of SM CRTs, characteristic of the luminance profiles prior to SM sampling must be obtained. To this end efficient measurement techniques were developed that provide accurate modulation depth values of the unsampled luminance profiles from the sampled luminance profiles obtained at the CRT surface.
Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2004
This "philosophical study of Summa Theologiae Ia 75-89" on human nature has three parts... more This "philosophical study of Summa Theologiae Ia 75-89" on human nature has three parts, Essential Features, Capacities, and Functions. Spread across these parts are twelve chapters that include such standard topics as Body and Soul, Immateriality of Soul, Unity of Body and Soul, ...
Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2004
This "philosophical study of Summa Theologiae Ia 75-89" on human nature has three parts... more This "philosophical study of Summa Theologiae Ia 75-89" on human nature has three parts, Essential Features, Capacities, and Functions. Spread across these parts are twelve chapters that include such standard topics as Body and Soul, Immateriality of Soul, Unity of Body and Soul, ...
If you were to take a look at the contemporary philosophical discussion of mercy, you would find ... more If you were to take a look at the contemporary philosophical discussion of mercy, you would find that by and large it is associated with discussions of justice, particularly retributive justice-the punishment of wrongdoers. It is also seen to be somewhat suspect and unjust, since mercy seems to be an arbitrary exercise of power and so interferes with and calls into question equal justice under the law; not to mention that it is often argued that any role for compassion in the exercise of mercy compounds the injustice of mercy because it relies upon the arbitrary compassionate character of the judge or ruler that a malefactor might happen in the luck of the draw to stand before in judgment.
Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Memory, 2017
This chapter will focus on two aspects of Aquinas’ treatment of memory: its sources, primarily in... more This chapter will focus on two aspects of Aquinas’ treatment of memory: its sources, primarily in Aristotle and Ibn Sina, and the distinctive position he takes on intellectual memory that he draws in partial opposition to Ibn Sina. Memory in the proper sense involves a corporeal faculty for the retention of temporally indexed sensible forms – temporally indexed particular sense information employed teleologically in the life of perfect animals. Sense memory is memory per se, while intellectual memory, a habitual state of knowledge in the incorporeal faculty of intellect, is only memory per accidens. The chapter will proceed in two stages, considering sense memory first and then intellectual memory. There are several important settings for understanding Aquinas’ account of memory –
primarily his Commentary on Aristotle’s On Memory and Recollection, and his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, but also his development of his general account of the powers of the soul in the Summa Contra Gentiles, the Summa Theologiae, and the Disputed Questions on the Soul. Thematically, he works out his account in his dispute with Ibn Sina on the correct interpretation of Aristotle on the intellect, particularly on intellectual memory, but also his discussion of the human as an image of God, engaging Augustine’s theory of mind from the latter’s De Trinity. So Aquinas’ positions on memory, sensory and intellectual, provide a striking instance of the interplay of philosophical and theological concerns in his thought.
The Virtuous Life: Thomas Aquinas on the Theological Nature of Moral Virtues , 2017
Beyond the Self: Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Culture, 2019
Theology Needs Philosophy, 2016
Darwin in the Twenty-First Century, 2015
To begin to examine the relation of orthodox Catholic Christian faith to evolutionary theory and ... more To begin to examine the relation of orthodox Catholic Christian faith to evolutionary theory and the question of human origins, consider words of the fourth pope, St. Clement:
Tradition as the Future of Innovation, 2015
It is useful to consider the Greek philosophical concept of anamnesis or memory in relation to th... more It is useful to consider the Greek philosophical concept of anamnesis or memory in relation to the work of Thomas Aquinas and Friederich Nietzsche in pursuing the topic “Tradition and Innovation”. They provide two exemplary but opposed examples against which to consider the role of “tradition” in philosophical thought. First I analyze the concept tradition itself as it functions in Philosophy against the background of its history. Such analysis reveals different ways in which “tradition” may be approached by the contemporary philosopher- -it may be understood to be a a kind of object consisting in a body of doctrines passively received or rejected by the philosopher considering “a tradition”. On the other hand, it may be understood to be the active expression of the philosophical engagement of philosophers of the past with the objects of philosophy, communicating their insights to another. The difference between the active and the passive in describing “tradition” raises the question of how a contemporary philosopher ought to engage a tradition – actively or passively. With this dichotomy in mind, I proceed to look at Thomas Aquinas and Friederich Nietzsche, to consider the ways in which they may be understood to engage philosophical tradition, whether actively or passively. In particular I employ Nietzsche's distinctions between “historical men” to ask in what sense Aquinas is or is not subject to Nietzsche's classifications. I also employ the Greek notion of Anamnesis as philosophical method to consider the ways in which Aquinas and Nietzsche differ in their respective approaches to tradition as having a role within the philosophical enterprise.
Jaarboek Thomas Instituut te Utrecht (continued as European Journal for the Study of Thomas Aquinas (2019 - ...) , 2013
This article considers Aquinas’s discussion of Misericordia (Mercy) as a natural virtue, in order... more This article considers Aquinas’s discussion of Misericordia (Mercy) as a natural virtue, in order to show how he departs radically from the philosophical traditions he engages while discussing it, even as he argues for its character as a natural virtue and seeks to see his discussion in continuity with those philosophical traditions. I will proceed first by introducing briefly the tension between theological and natural virtues in relation to Misericordia. Second, I will look selectively at the Greek and Roman background of Aquinas’s discussion of Misericordia, particularly the sources he replies upon, Aristotle, Seneca, and Cicero, and then finally proceed to Aquinas’s discussion proper to see the ways it presupposes but also critically and significantly departs from the ancient discussion. In giving a practical analogue in the discussion of Misericordia to the speculative truths considered in the first article of the first question, Aquinas enacts what he had argued in article four of that first question, namely that Sacra Doctrina is both a speculative and a practical science.
Finding A Common Thread: Reading Great Texts from Homer to O'Connor, 2013
On reading Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals in light of Augustine's discussion of the Imago... more On reading Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals in light of Augustine's discussion of the Imago Dei and lethe versus anamnesis.
American Catholic Philosophical Review, 2010
This article is a reply by the author to John Deely's book review "How to Go Nowhere with Languag... more This article is a reply by the author to John Deely's book review "How to Go Nowhere with Language: Remarks on John O'Callaghan, Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn" (ACPQ vol. 82, no. 2). Its main topics are: (i) Deely's view that, for Aquinas, the concept is distinct from the act of understanding, (ii) John of St. Thomas's use of mirror images as a metaphor for how concepts work in cognition, and (iii) the sign relation posited by Aristotle that stands between words and concepts of the mind.
The Review of Metaphysics, 2008
Proceedings of The American Experiment: Religious Freedom Conference, 2008
What I propose to do here is to look at Plato’s “band of thieves argument,” and the difficulty ab... more What I propose to do here is to look at Plato’s “band of thieves argument,” and the difficulty about justice that I think it raises, a difficulty that Plato himself does not explicitly raise, but may have wanted to intimate. Prima facie he uses the argument to defend justice; Socrates’s listeners show every sign of being convinced by it, and no doubt countless readers of the dia- logue since have been convinced by it as far as it goes. I, on the other hand, think it is a failed argument about justice, and I suspect Plato knew that it was. I will discuss its failure, and turn to a distinction drawn by Aristotle that distinguishes thieves from citizens in order to address its failure. Finally, in light of the appeal to Aristotle, I will turn to a similar discussion in Aquinas, which both relies upon but also differs from Aristotle, in order to say a few things about the difficult and often negative choices we face in the electoral politics of our modern democracies.
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Papers by John O'Callaghan
primarily his Commentary on Aristotle’s On Memory and Recollection, and his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, but also his development of his general account of the powers of the soul in the Summa Contra Gentiles, the Summa Theologiae, and the Disputed Questions on the Soul. Thematically, he works out his account in his dispute with Ibn Sina on the correct interpretation of Aristotle on the intellect, particularly on intellectual memory, but also his discussion of the human as an image of God, engaging Augustine’s theory of mind from the latter’s De Trinity. So Aquinas’ positions on memory, sensory and intellectual, provide a striking instance of the interplay of philosophical and theological concerns in his thought.
primarily his Commentary on Aristotle’s On Memory and Recollection, and his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, but also his development of his general account of the powers of the soul in the Summa Contra Gentiles, the Summa Theologiae, and the Disputed Questions on the Soul. Thematically, he works out his account in his dispute with Ibn Sina on the correct interpretation of Aristotle on the intellect, particularly on intellectual memory, but also his discussion of the human as an image of God, engaging Augustine’s theory of mind from the latter’s De Trinity. So Aquinas’ positions on memory, sensory and intellectual, provide a striking instance of the interplay of philosophical and theological concerns in his thought.