Gloria Frost

My book recovers Thomas Aquinas’s novel and intriguing perspective.  on causal powers and efficient causation. In addition to contemporary appeal, Aquinas’s perspective on causal powers and causation is significant for understanding his broader thought, as well as the trajectory of historical thinking about causation from the late medieval to the early modern period.  Along with reconstructing Aquinas's views on key philosophical questions, I examine later medieval critiques of his positions.

This paper explores medieval Aristotelian perspectives on the phenomenon which we refer to today as a “congenital disability,” i.e. a disability present at or before birth. It was common in the Middle Ages to view congenital disabilities as caused by parental sexual sin or the mother’s misuse of her imagination during pregnancy. In contrast with these views, medieval Aristotelians explained congenital impairments in terms of failures of natural causes. Albert the Great, in particular, developed a detailed taxonomy of types of birth defects and their natural causes within the Aristotelian framework of the four causes. In addition to being relevant to the history of medicine and disability studies, medieval Aristotelian explanations of congenital disabilities are significant for the history of philosophy as such. In the early modern period, the reality of congenital disabilities provided an important battleground for those who sought to overturn the Aristotelian philosophy of nature. Early modern mechanists, such as Francis Bacon and John Locke, claimed that those born with impairments were evidence against the Aristotelian hylomorphic conception of nature. The birth of an organism which appeared to be lacking the features which normally belong to member of its species (e.g. a child born blind or cognitively impaired) was supposed to show that there were no substantial forms in material substances. The paper will discuss how medieval Aristotelians would have approached this challenge, as well as their position that  human beings born with severe impairments are fully human and have equal moral status.

This paper reconstructs and analyzes Thomas Aquinas’s intriguing views on transeunt causal activity.  Aquinas’s views on this topic have been the subject of an interpretive debate spanning from the 15th century up until the present.  In his Physics commentary, Aquinas defends the Aristotelian positions that (i) the actualization of an agent’s active potential is the motion which it causes in its patient and (ii) action and passion are the same motion.  Yet, in other texts, Aquinas claims that (iii) action differs from passion and (iv) “action is in the agent” as subject.  This paper proposes a solution for how to reconcile Aquinas’s varying claims about what transeunt causal activity is in reality.  In addition to advancing understanding of Aquinas’s views on causal activity, the paper also offers insights into more general topics in his thought, such as the relationship between actualities and accidents and the nature of extrinsic accidents.

The relationship between divine and created causality was widely discussed in medieval and early modern philosophy. Contemporary scholars of these discussions typically stake out three possible positions: occasionalism, concurrentism, and mere-conservationism. It is regularly claimed that virtually no medieval thinker adopted the final view which denies that God is an immediate active cause of creaturely actions. The main aim of this paper is to further understanding of the medieval causality debate, and particularly the mere-conservationist position, by analyzing Peter John Olivi’s neglected defense of it. The paper also includes discussion of Thomas Aquinas’s arguments for concurrentism and an analysis of whether Olivi’s objections refute his position.

This is a guest post which Bob Pasnau invited me to write on his blog 'In Medias Phil.'  It notes some factors which prospective graduate students may want to consider when choosing between programs in medieval philosophy.
http://inmediasphil.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/pgr-medieval-3/