Aquinas on necessity

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 72, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 371-403

  Macintosh, J J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY   (Canada)

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EID: 0041812137     PISSN: 10513558     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/acpq199872325     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. Charles Dickens, Bleak House, ch 49.
2. The general question concerning Aristotle's underlying modal logic is discussed in illuminating detail in J. van Rijen, Aspects of Aristotle's Logic of Modalities (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989).
3. In this paper I have made use of the following translations, sometimes with slight changes: Summa Theologica, trans. by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 5 vols. (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981, reprinting the revised 1920 ed. [1st ed. 1911]);
4. Summa Contra Gentiles (On the Truth of the Catholic Faith), 5 vols. (Garden City: Doubleday Image Books, 1955-57; references by book and chapter);
5. QD De Veritate (The Disputed Questions on Truth), 3 vols. (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1954);
6. QD de Potentia Dei (On the Power of God), trans. Lawrence Shapcote, 2 vols. (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1932; reprinted Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1952);
7. In Perihermeneias, trans. Christopher Martin in The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (London: Routledge, 1988);
8. Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, trans. John P. Rowan, 2 vols. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1961).
9. Unless otherwise noted, translations from Aristotle are from the revised Oxford translation of The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
10. See J. J. Macintosh, "Theological Question Begging," Dialogue, 30 (1991): 531-47,
11. and B. F. Chellas and Krister Segerberg, "Modal Logics With the Macintosh Rule," Journal of Philosophical Logic 23 (1994) 67-86.
12. E. A. Moody, Truth and Consequence in Mediaeval Logic (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1953), 86.
13. See Richard Sorabji, Necessity, Cause, and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle's Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980), especially Part IV, for a detailed discussion of Aristotle's senses of necessity
14. I have been helped in this exercise by the analytical entries for the various modal terms in R. J. Deferrari, M. I. Barry, and I. McGuiness, A Lexicon of St Thomas Aquinas (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1947).
15. See further, J. J. Macintosh, "Aquinas and Ockham on Time, Predestination and the Unexpected Examination," forthcoming, Franciscan Studies.
16. Boethius, The Consolations of Philosophy, 5.6.
17. Ordinatio I, Dist. 2, Pars 1, De Esse Dei et Eius Unitate, in Opera Omnia (Vatican: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1950), 2.178.
18. Ian Hacking, "All Kinds of Possibility," Philosophical Review, 84 (1975): 321-37, 322. The doctrine of ampliation, which allowed reference to possibilia, was also invoked to allow the range of the modal operators to be temporally extended or confined, as context required.
19. ST 1.46.2c. See further, J. J. Macintosh, "St Thomas and the Traversal of the Infinite," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 68 (1994): 157-77.
20. In "Aristotle's Natural Deduction System" (in J. Corcoran, ed., Ancient Logic and its Modem Interpretations, [Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974], 85-131), J. Corcoran argues for the strong thesis that within Aristotle's deductive system this notion of logical truth has hardly any role to play.
21. Scott MacDonald points out that this also holds for the 'self-evident' principles on which the demonstrative sciences are based ("Theory of Knowledge," in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, ed. Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993], 160-95, 178-79).
22. De Partibus Animalium, 649a1-4.
23. See W. Kneale, "Modality de dicto and de re" in E. Nagel, P. Suppes, A. Tarski, ed., Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), 622-33.
24. Necessity, Cause, and Blame, 223.
25. Calvin Normore, The Logic of Time and Modality in the Later Middle Ages: The Contribution of William of Ockham (unpublished PhD thesis, U. of Toronto, 1975, National Library of Canada No. TC35093), 211.
26. Normore notes that the various opposing arguments may be found in Gregory of Rimini, Super Primum et Secundum Sententiarium (Venice, 1522; reprinted St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1955), I d. 42-45 q 1.
27. Physics II.8, 198M7-20, 199al-8, 199a9-31. Translation by John Ackrill in Aristotle the Philosopher (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1981), 41.
28. Too many interesting articles and books have been written on this topic to allow explicit reference, but an exception should be made for Patterson Brown's "St. Thomas' Doctrine of Necessary Being" (The Philosophical Review, 73 (1964): 76-90, with its gently acerbic dismissal of the "muddle," "misunderstanding," and " misconstruction" to be found in the writings of various philosophers of repute who have discussed this issue.
29. Or so Aquinas explicitly claims (for example, at De Pot. 5.3, ST 1.10.5 ad 3, and elsewhere), but the consistency of his position has been called into question in James Ross's ingenious paper, "Aquinas on Annihilation," (in John F. Wippel, ed., Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, Vol. 17 [Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1987], 177-99).
30. Wallace Matson, The Existence of God (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965), 167-68.
31. In Perihermeneias, I.6.15, in Opera Philosophica II, ed. A. Gambatese and S. Brown (New York: St. Bonaventure, 1978), 422,
32. trans. M. Adams and N. Kretzmann, in William Ockham: Predestination, God's Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1969), 106.
33. ST 1.2.3 ad 2, ST 1-2.9.6. This is Aquinas's basic position, but the issue is complicated. See further Daniel Westerberg, "Did Aquinas Change his Mind about the Will?", The Thomist, 58 (1994) 41-60.
34. In Perih., I, 14.11, and see Aristotle, Metaphysics 1025a19-20.
35. For a discussion of the interrelations of these various possible notions of necessity in a slightly later context see Normore, The Logic of Time and Modality in the Later Middle Ages:, ch. 8, esp. 258-62.
36. For a fuller discussion of the argument, including a discussion of the various types of necessity involved, see Nicholas Denyer, "Time and Modality in Diodorus Cronus," Theoria, 47 (1981): 31-53.
37. See further Bas van Fraassen, The Scientific Image (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), esp. ch. 5, § 3, "Asymmetries of Explanation." Van Fraassen points out that Aristotle's treatment of explanation in Posterior Analytics 2:11 deals with some of the important points at issue.
38. Like Thomas, Maimonides in the previous century had held that temporal finitude and infinitude were alike indemonstrable, but suggested that "a belief in the creation of the world in time" was desirable, for "all the miracles become possible and the Law becomes possible, and all questions that may be asked on this subject, vanish." (The Guide to the Perplexed, trans. S. Pines [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963], bk. 2, ch. 25.)
39. See further J. J. Macintosh, "St Thomas on Angelic Time and Motion," The Thomist, 59 (1995): 547-75.
40. For Augustine, see Confessions, book XI, ch 13; for Leibniz see Leibniz's third letter to Clarke, § 6.
41. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly for a number of helpful suggestions concerning this paper.