The Academic Sermons

Description

contains all St. Thomas's sermons, even the ones not even published in Latin yet!
Here are the sermons previously published in

1. Latin
2. bilingual English/Latin

These ones were delivered in vernacular Latin (Italian) and translated to Latin, but the academic sermons were delivered in Latin.

Reading St. Thomas's academic sermon on Pentecost (Hoogland PDF pp. 153ff.), I noticed the translator (PDF p. 170) cites I q. 73 a. 1 ad 3 in the context of the Holy Ghost's renewing the face of the earth, saying "the whole of salvation history is already prefigured in the six days of creation". St. Thomas writes:

nihil postmodum a Deo factum est totaliter novum, quin aliqualiter in operibus sex dierum praecesserit.

He also speaks of the possibility of new species of animals:

Species etiam novae, si quae apparent, praeextiterunt in quibusdam activis virtutibus

Even the incarnation the six days of creation!

Et similiter incarnationis opus [praecessit], quia, ut dicitur Philipp. II, filius Dei est in similitudinem hominum factus.

Veni, Sancte Spiritus. Fove quod est frigidum, etc.

6/7/19 8:37 PM:

Merci for "presenting it here completely afresh, from scratch"!

Just today I was praying San Francisco de Borja's "Litania Angelorum ex prima ſancti Thomæ parte aſſumpta" (PDF pp. 4-6 of his Summa Litanies), and this part summarizing the conclusions of I q. 58 a. 6-7 struck me:

O altissimi spiritus, in quibus est cognitio matutina, & vespertina, orate.
O rutilantes ut aurora, qui in Verbo plurima cognoscitis, orate.
O cælestes spiritus, qui vespertina cognitione res in propria natura cognoscitis, orate.
O vos, qui cognitionem matutinam, & vespertinam tanquam in finem sine impedimento reducitis, orate pro nobis.

St. Thomas explains this "morning" and "evening" cognition:

…hoc quod dicitur de cognitione matutina et vespertina in Angelis, introductum est ab Augustino [Gen. ad lit. iv, 22,31; De Civ. Dei xii, 7,20], qui sex dies in quibus Deus legitur fecisse cuncta, Gen. I, intelligi vult non hos usitatos dies qui solis circuitu peraguntur, cum sol quarto die factus legatur; sed unum diem, scilicet cognitionem angelicam sex rerum generibus praesentatam. …

Is this "cognitio sex rerum generibus" what you are describing?

Is it one "cognitio" or many types of "cognitiones"? (In a. 7 ad 1, he says "unitas diei [Genesis] accipitur secundum unitatem rei cognitae, quae tamen diversis cognitionibus cognosci potest.")

And why exactly was the "sol quarto die factus"?

Dominus vobiscum, fratres.

Merci for "presenting it here completely afresh, from scratch"!

Just today I was praying San Francisco de Borja's "Litania Angelorum ex prima ſancti Thomæ parte aſſumpta" (PDF pp. 4-6 of his Summa Litanies), and this part summarizing the conclusions of I q. 58 a. 6-7 struck me:

O altissimi spiritus, in quibus est cognitio matutina, & vespertina, orate.
O rutilantes ut aurora, qui in Verbo plurima cognoscitis, orate.
O cælestes spiritus, qui vespertina cognitione res in propria natura cognoscitis, orate.
O vos, qui cognitionem matutinam, & vespertinam tanquam in finem sine impedimento reducitis, orate pro nobis.

St. Thomas explains this "morning" and "evening" cognition:

…hoc quod dicitur de cognitione matutina et vespertina in Angelis, introductum est ab Augustino [Gen. ad lit. iv, 22,31; De Civ. Dei xii, 7,20], qui sex dies in quibus Deus legitur fecisse cuncta, Gen. I, intelligi vult non hos usitatos dies qui solis circuitu peraguntur, cum sol quarto die factus legatur; sed unum diem, scilicet cognitionem angelicam sex rerum generibus praesentatam. …

Is this "cognitio sex rerum generibus" what you are describing?

Is it one "cognitio" or many types of "cognitiones"? (In a. 7 ad 1, he says "unitas diei [Genesis] accipitur secundum unitatem rei cognitae, quae tamen diversis cognitionibus cognosci potest.")

And why exactly was the "sol quarto die factus"?

Dominus vobiscum, fratres.

6/7/19 2:40 AM:

Not to the least anti-realist, even less akin to Cartesianism. Simply biblical and therefore Catholic, i.e. based on a revealed view of both existence and knowledge consistent with reason.

The measure of realism is not established in how much one absolutizes the physical world, which, real as it is, is not in fact an absolute. For it need not be “absolute” to be ontologically real and have specific features irreducible to human perception. And asserting the reality of the physical world (according to basic realism, à la Planck and other absolutizers of physics) should not imply reducing the reality of the knowing intellect at work behind human perception. For, from a true realist standpoint, the latter is no less real than the physical world itself.

Thus, binary logic, with its single intrinsic negation, is not sufficient a tool to give a consistent account of ontological and epistemological realism, the two being neatly intertwined in Adam.

It is a simple fact of both existence (exto --> entis) and epistemology (cognitio --> distinctio), however overlooked on account of the influence of deep-rooted binary thinking, that the existing world, just as any act of intellectual discrimination, implies not merely two opposite categories, but essentially four.

Let us briefly illustrate (along lines I have laid out in emails from some years ago, I believe, but presenting it here completely afresh, from scratch):

How can a real observer (again, as real as is the observed world of his perception) distinguish two things or objects from each other? He necessarily needs in the same act to compare them and receive, in so doing, two distinct forms of information.

The first form of information is based upon the fact that the two real things/objects so observed by the real observer belong to the same set or universe. Therefore, a similarity connects both objects so compared in the act of being known as distinct from one another. The second form of information is predicated upon their actual distinction, to what makes them specifically irreducible to each other. In order to distinguish two such objects, one of them must therefore be identified (and named) XY, and the other YZ. The Y term represents the first form of information, that which pertains to the similarity connecting both objects; while X and Z represent the second form of information, that which pertains to what makes them specifically irreducible to each other.

Hence, we have (with K0123 standing for the real act of knowledge associated with the differentiated treatment of real world-based information):

K1 = XY and K2 = YZ

But the observer must also distinguish himself from the two objects of his own observation (less he falls into some Cartesian doubt about the reality of what he sees and knows, a typical symptom of twisted modern thinking I would not dream to promote). This implies the following two forms of concomitant information, controlling the double relation of similarity and distinction , which we denote XY ⇌ YZ:

K0 = XX and K3 = ZZ

The observer himself introduces the new information (XX) related to his ability (entirely connatural to his intellect) to recognize the similarity (Y) of the two objects he is distinguishing by knowing them one from the other (X and Z).

The X information in XX indicates that the observer’s irreducible real intellect to what it knows (along with the cognitive apparatus of its perception) does nevertheless belong to the same universe as XY and YZ. While the Z information in ZZ indicates that the irreducible nature of the objective real world to what is known of it by a real intellect does nevertheless belong to the same universe as ZY and YX (a reverse image of the same two objects).

Hence,

XX ⥓ XY ⇌ YZ ⥒ ZZ

And we can thus formalize the real intellect’s act of knowing the real world as follows:

XX ≡ K0 ≡ ~(K ∨ ~K)

XY ≡ K1 ≡ ~K

YZ ≡ K2 ≡ (K & ~K)

ZZ ≡ K3 ≡ K

The knowing real observer himself is epistemologically comprised in ~K and ~(K ∨ ~K).

There are three concomitant opened relations:

~K ⭤ (K & ~K)

K ⭤ (K & ~K)

~(K ∨ ~K) ⭤ ~K

And three concomitant closed relations:

K ⇹ ~K

K ⇹ ~(K ∨ ~K)

(K & ~K) ⇹ ~(K ∨ ~K)

Notice that all six relations, three opened and three closed, are happening together in the same act of knowledge (= the same act of distinguishing XX, XY, YZ, ZZ)! This is the power of this dynamical treatment of active epistemology (of actual knowledge taking place) based on the differentiation of information it necessarily involves. A = absolute objectivity versus ~A = relative subjectivity is a completely inadequate mutilation of the real act of knowledge. Realism is not served by superficial binarism. That is why many scientifically and philosophically-minded contemporaries reject it, thinking it to be a flawed oversimplification of what is the case (provided they still realize something is indeed the case). And they’d be right if that were all that it reduces to: “inside” versus “outside.”

But it doesn’t, as the fourfold logical view of reality I have just put forward demonstrates, being intrinsic to the general operation of differentiation—of existence itself, or of knowledge, as just illustrated. Notice also that it gives rise to not one (as in p versus ~p) but three distinct negations.

Descartes’ superficial “mind-body” distinction is entirely binary, which I have shown here to be a simplifying chimerical version of reality. But so is Planck’s absolutized objectivism of Nature (A) versus the subjective mind (~A). It fails the test of a more complex, and ultimately more accurate logical treatment of the act of knowledge, K0123, which is intrinsically quaternary, not binary.

I hope I have at least convinced you that it would be hard to convict me of some version of Cartesianism (even though I happen to be French, which is essentially irrelevant to the matter).

Verbum Dei vobiscum.