“[I]n a sense Aquinas laid more stress than did the classical British empiricists on the part played by sense-perception in human cognition. For while not excluding introspection or reflection as a source of knowledge, he did not mention sense-perception and reflection as parallel sources of knowledge. He did not think that introspection or reflection is an initial source in the same sense in which sense-perception is. His point of view was that I become aware of my existence as a self through concrete acts of perceiving material things other than myself, inasmuch as I am concomitantly aware of these acts as mine. I do not enjoy a direct intuition of the self as such: I come to know myself only through acts directed towards things other than myself. I not only perceive a man, for example, but I am concomitantly aware that I perceive him, that the act of perception is my act. And this awareness involves the awareness of my existence as a self. ‘The soul is known by its acts. For a man perceives that he has a soul and lives and exists by the fact that he perceives that he senses and understands and performs other vital operations of this kind. . . . No one perceives that he understands except through the fact that he understands something, for to understand something is prior to understanding that one understands. And so the soul comes to the actual realization of its existence through the fact that it understands or perceives’ (De veritate, 10, 8).
“To prevent misunderstanding of this passage it should be added that Aquinas draws a distinction between my awareness of the existence of the self and my knowledge of the nature of the self. To know that I have a soul or that there is in me that by which I perceive, desire, and understand is one thing: to know the nature of the soul is another. For the latter knowledge deliberate reflection, ‘second’ reflection, is required; but the reflection by which one is aware of the self in a very general sense is not a deliberate reflection, and it is common to all human beings. It must not be confused therefore with philosophic reflection: it is automatic in the sense that I cannot perceive without an implicit awareness that I perceive. And the point is that my awareness that I perceive is dependent on my perceiving something. I can indeed reflect consciously and deliberately on my interior acts; but this presupposes a non-deliberate or automatic awareness of my outwardly-directed acts (of seeing, hearing, desiring, and so on) as mine. And this in turn presupposes the fundamental rôle of sense-experience or sense-perception. Aquinas believed that man does not consist of two juxtaposed substances, the operations of which are independent one of another, but that he is a unity, the soul being naturally united with a body. And because of the intimate union of soul and body the mind is naturally dependent on the senses for the acquisition of ideas and of knowledge.”
— from F. C. Copleston, Aquinas (Penguin Books, 1955)
Insights from St. Thomas’s biblical exegesis — Jason Paone explains how St. Thomas’s commentaries reveal the saint’s personality, his rhetorical flair, and the Christocentric vision that underlie all his work. (24 minutes)
Mary Hirschfeld argues that modern economics makes some fundamental assumptions about personhood, material goods, and God that prevent the development of a truly human understanding of economic life. (20 minutes)
Jonathan McIntosh claims that scholarship has tended to ignore the depth of St. Thomas Aquinas’s influence on J. R. R. Tolkien’s work. (28 minutes)
An embedded life — Following a move from one state to another, Gilbert Meilaender explores the tension between being simultaneously a sojourner and a body located in place and time. (30 minutes)
The need to recollect ourselves as whole persons — In this 2016 lecture, John F. Crosby explores key personalist insights found in the thinking of John Henry Newman and Romano Guardini. (60 minutes)
Mark Slouka explores the worldview of techno-visionaries who aim to create a new era of human evolution. (11 minutes)
“A sign of contradiction” — In this lecture, Daniel Gibbons compares and contrasts understandings of sacramental poetics proposed by Augustine, Aquinas, and Sydney. (36 minutes)
Nature’s intelligibility — In this lecture, Christopher Blum argues that scientists need to regain a full appreciation of nature’s intelligibility, as they are apt to lose sight of reality due to the reductionism produced by their theories. (31 minutes)
Submission to mathematical truth — In this lecture, Carlo Lancellotti argues that integration of the moral, cognitive, and aesthetic aspects of mathematics is needed in a robust liberal arts mathematics curriculum. (25 minutes)
Music, silence, and the order of Creation — In this lecture, Ken Myers explains how it is that our participation in harmonic beauty in music is a kind of participation in the life of God, in Whom all order and beauty coheres and is sustained. (61 minutes)
Cosmetic surgery and human perfectibility — Elizabeth Haiken examines the shift that occurred in 20th century America from a focus on developing character to a focus on developing “personality” and achieving physical perfection. (19 minutes)
Lilian Calles Barger shows the necessity and beauty of healthy embodiment and challenges gnostic ideas found in the church that particularly distort the experiences of women. (15 minutes)
Touch’d with a coal from heav’n — Daniel Ritchie finds in the poetry of William Cowper (1731–1800) an anticipation of Michael Polanyi’s epistemology
How we know the world — Daniel Ritchie argues that poet and hymnodist William Cowper was ahead of his time in critiquing the Enlightenment’s reductionist view of knowledge. (16 minutes)
William Cowper: Reconciling the Heart with the Head — Daniel E. Ritchie discusses the life and work of poet William Cowper (1731–1800), comparing his commitment to understanding reality through personal knowledge, intuition, and rigorous contemplation with the thought of Michael Polanyi. (43 minutes)
Daniel Ritchie describes how many of the figures he studies in his new book emphasize the significance of human experience, enculturation, and contingency to human knowledge. (21 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 162 — FEATURED GUESTS: Mark Noll, R. Jared Staudt, Paul Weston, William C. Hackett, Hans Boersma, and David Paul Baird
William C. Hackett discusses the relationships between philosophy and theology, and of both to the meaning embedded in myth. (29 minutes)
“A society of friends at work” — Political philosopher Andrew Willard Jones lays out a robust vision for a just society in which virtues are formed in an analogical manner through relational obedience and trust. (71 minutes)
Henry T. Edmondson, III talks about Flannery O’Connor’s understanding of political life, which was influenced by a range of thinkers including Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Eric Voegelin, and Russell Kirk. (19 minutes)
The artist’s commitment to truth — Fr. Damian Ference, author of Understanding the Hillbilly Thomist, explores the depths to which Flannery O’Connor was steeped in Thomistic philosophy. (18 minutes)
Flannery O’Connor and Thomistic philosophy — Fr. Damian Ference explores the depths to which Flannery O’Connor was steeped in Thomistic philosophy, as evidenced by her reading habits, letters, prayer journal, and, of course, essays and fiction. (48 minutes)
What does it mean to be a creature? — Canon-theologian Simon Oliver explains how and why the doctrine of Creation is cardinal and must frame all theology. (62 minutes)
The ecstasy of the act of knowing — Theologian Paul Griffiths situates our creaturely knowing within the framework of the relation between God and Creation
Conscience and its counterfeits — A 2014 lecture by theologian Reinhard Hütter examines “Freedom of Conscience as Freedom in the Truth: Conscience according to Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman.” (64 minutes)
Theologian Craig Bartholomew provides a biblically rich critique of the contemporary “crisis of place,” a disorienting condition caused by neglect of the meaning of our embodiment. (21 minutes)
A.I., power, control, & knowledge — Ken Myers shares some paragraphs from Langdon Winner‘s seminal book, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (1977) and from Roger Shattuck‘s Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography (1996). An interview with Shattuck is also presented. (31 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 158 — FEATURED GUESTS:
David Setran, Vigen Guroian, Michael Dominic Taylor, Thomas Pfau, Jason Paone, and Matthew Levering
Deconstructing the myths of modernity — In order to counter modernity’s fragmentation, Paul Tyson argues that we must recover a foundation of reality based on meaning and being. (35 minutes)
“Broken Bodies Redeemed” — Today’s Feature presents a reading of a 2007 article by Gilbert Meilaender that explores the significance for bioethics of the mystery of human being as body and soul. (39 minutes)
The light shines in the darkness — Physicist David Park explores the physical, aesthetic, and spiritual aspects of light, considering the phenomenon of light in profound ways, from spiritual meanings embedded in our culture to the challenging questions put forth by great scientists and philosophers. (17 minutes)
Thinking Christianly about the body — Theologian and ethicist Gilbert Meilaender discusses some of the themes he explores in two of his books: Body, Soul and Bioethics; and Bioethics: A Primer for Christians. (19 minutes)
What is at stake for us in a self-driving future? — Matthew Crawford vividly details the “personal knowledge” acquired in interaction with physical things, their mecho-systems, and the people who care for them. (16 minutes)
Cosmology without God — Modern science is practiced in the context of beliefs that are intrinsically metaphysical and theological, even though practitioners of science claim (and usually genuinely believe) that their disciplines are philosophically neutral. David Alcalde challenges such claims within a sub-field of astrophysics. (21 minutes)
Dallas Willard on discipleship — Dallas Willard talks about how pastors should understand their vocation as one of making disciples — apprentices of Jesus — and that the training of pastors must include a commitment to pursue spiritual wisdom and faithfulness. (21 minutes)
Carelessly invoking “science” in the pandemic — Historian of science Steven Shapin talks about about how the authority of “science” has been invoked by many political authorities during the pandemic, yet how scientific pursuits are deeply human endeavors. (18 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 147 — FEATURED GUESTS:
R. Jared Staudt, Jason Peters, D. C. Schindler, Craig Gay, Mary Hirschfeld, and Patrick Samway
Confronting modernity through farming — Jesse Straight, who nurtures the life of Whiffletree Farm in Warrenton, Virginia, talks about how he decided to pursue a vocation as a farmer in an effort to discover a way of life that worked against the characteristic fragmentation so dispiriting in modern culture. (24 minutes)
