Course Number:A PHS781 Course Title: A Thomistic Personalism: Knowledge & Love Instructor: A A Fr. Pawel Tarasiewicz, Ph.D. A 1. COURSE DESCRIPTION There are five characteristics that hold for personalism as such (see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): (1) an insistence on the radical difference between persons and non-persons; (2) an insistence on the irreducibility of the person to impersonal spiritual or material factors; (3) an affirmation of the dignity of persons; (4) a concern for the person’s subjectivity and self-determination; (5) a particular emphasis on the social (relational) nature of the person. The course seeks to demonstrate that personalism can be effectively grounded in the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. It presents Thomistic personalism as that which successfully addresses all the essential issues concerning the human person. Particular lectures undertake such topics as: When does the person begin?, Is the person a soul?, What is the difference between persons and animals? How is the person’s happiness achieved? Why are cognition, freedom and love the areas of the person’s transcendence over nature?, What are the errors of individualism and collectivism?, etc. 2. ENVISIONED LEARNING OUTCOMES The student will be able to demonstrate a familiarity with and understanding of the core teachings of Thomistic personalism, including its foundational philosophical ideas (e.g. the person’s identity, potentiality and transcendence). The student will be able to explain and discuss a variety of topics related to Thomistic personalism, including the following: a) What is the outcome if love is espoused by wisdom? b) Why is Thomistic personalism in need of phenomenology, according to Karol Wojtyła/St. John Paul II? c) What is the major contribution of Fr. W. Norris Clarke, S.J., to the development of Thomistic personalism? d) What is an argument which supports the claim that conception and ensoulment converge? e) Is the person an incarnate spirit? f) What is that which defines the range of our humanity (against the background of animal nature and “posthuman nature”)? g) Are we potential persons or persons with potential? h) Is it possible for persons’ decisions to be morally good, while contrary to natural law at the same time? i) What is wisdom and how does it differ, if at all, from knowledge and understanding? j) Why does lying undermine (deprive us of) our freedom? k) Why is it that our love for other persons is conditioned by our self-love? l) Why can the development of human persons’ potentials be regarded as a common good proper to human societies? m) Is God necessary to explain human dignity? n) What is that which makes society a communio personarum? o) What is the advantage of Thomistic personalism, if any at all, over non-Thomistic brands of personalism? 3. COURSE SCHEDULE 1 Week 1: Why Thomistic Personalism? (a) Recorded lecture discussing the following: ▪ What is personalism? ▪ What is Thomistic personalism? (Maritain’s Thomistic personalism; Wojtyła’s Thomistic personalism) ▪ What is Thomistic personalism? (Clarke’s Thomistic Personalism: Metaphysics) ▪ What is Thomistic personalism? (Clarke’s Thomistic Personalism: Metaethics; Strong Thomistic Personalism: From Metaphysics and Metaethics to Personalism) ▪ Thomistic personalism: Why knowledge and love? (b) Readings: indicated by the instructor (in handouts). (c) Assignments/Activities/Discussions: Please answer the question: ▪ What is the outcome if wisdom is espoused by love? Week 2: Thomistic Personalism: Supplementing Thomism (St. John Paul II/Karol Wojtyła) (a) Recorded lecture discussing the following: ▪ What is Thomistic personalism, according to Karol Wojtyła? ▪ Why Thomistic personalism is not enough for Karol Wojtyła? ▪ Wojtyła’s unique approach to the study of the human person (b) Readings: indicated by the instructor (in handouts). (c) Assignments/Activities/Discussions: Please answer the question: ▪ Why does Thomistic personalism need phenomenology, according to Karol Wojtyła/St. John Paul II? Week 3: Thomistic Personalism: Developing Thomism (Fr. W. Norris Clarke, S.J.) (a) Recorded lecture discussing the following: ▪ Fr. Clarke’s relational metaphysics ▪ Being as dynamic act ▪ The meaning of person ▪ The structure of human nature ▪ Person and Being: Conclusion ▪ The human person as frontier being and microcosm (b) Readings: indicated by the instructor (in handouts). (c) Assignments/Activities/Discussions: Please answer the question: ▪ What is the major contribution of Fr. Clarke to the development of Thomistic personalism? Please explain your opinion. Week 4: The Identity of the Person: When Does the Person Begin? (a) Recorded lecture discussing the following: ▪ What is a person? ▪ Evidences showing that the early embryo is not a person ▪ Counter-arguments showing the zygote as a person ▪ The metaphysical arguments about personhood ▪ Conclusion about the personhood of the early embryo (b) Readings: indicated by the instructor (in handouts). (c) Assignments/Activities/Discussions: Please answer the question: ▪ What is an argument which supports the claim that conception and ensoulment converge? Week 5: The Identity of the Person: Is the Human Person a Soul? (a) Recorded lecture discussing the following: ▪ How is it that a human person exists as a unified substance? ▪ How is it that a human person exists naturally as an embodied being, while a human soul can exist without being united to a body? ▪ What accounts for the individuation of human persons as distinct members of the human species? 2 ▪ What is the principle of identity by which a human person persists through time and change? (b) Readings: indicated by the instructor (in handouts). (c) Assignment (by an e-mail to the professor): Please present a draft plan for your term paper, containing the answers to the following questions: ▪ What topic are you going to write on? ▪ Why is this topic worth to be explored? ▪ What bibliography are you going to resort to? The topic of your term paper should be approved by the professor in the fifth week of the course. Week 6: The Identity of the Person: Between Animals and “Posthumans” (a) Recorded lecture discussing the following: ▪ What is the difference between human beings and other animals? ▪ What is the difference between human beings and “posthumans”? (b) Readings: indicated by the instructor (in handouts). (c) Assignments/Activities/Discussions: Please answer the question: ▪ What is that which defines the range of our humanity (against the background of animal nature and “posthuman nature”)? Week 7: The Potentiality of the Person: Towards Happiness by Means of Vitrue (a) Recorded lecture discussing the following: ▪ Are we potential persons or rather persons with potential? ▪ What is the Thomistic approach to virtue? (b) Readings: indicated by the instructor (in handouts). (c) Assignments/Activities/Discussions: Please answer the question: ▪ Are we potential persons or persons with potential? Why? Week 8: Natural Law and Human Subjectivity: Towards the Areas of the Person’s Transcendence over Nature (a) Recorded lecture discussing the following: ▪ What do the two commandments of love have in common with natural law? ▪ Why does Aquinas think that the two commandments of love are knowable to natural human reason? ▪ Why is it plausible to regard Aquinas’ theology-based considerations as binding for natural human reason? (b) Readings: indicated by the instructor (in handouts). (c) Assignments/Activities/Discussions: Please answer the question: ▪ Is it possible for persons’ decisions to be morally good, while contrary to natural law at the same time? Please give an example. Week 9: The Areas of the Person’s Transcendence over Nature: (1) Cognition (a) Recorded lecture discussing the following: ▪ Thomas’s theory of self-knowledge: What accounts for the fact that human experience always takes place from the viewpoint of a subject? ▪ Thomas’s theory of self-knowledge: What accounts for the fact that one experiences oneself, the subject of one’s experience, as “I,” in the first person? ▪ Thomas’s theory of self-knowledge: What accounts for the continuity in this first-person viewpoint? (b) Readings: indicated by the instructor (in handouts). (c) Assignments/Activities/Discussions: Please answer the question: ▪ What is denoted by the term “I” in Thomas’s theory of self-knowledge? What is its essence? 3 Week 10: The Areas of the Person’s Transcendence over Nature: (2) Freedom (a) Recorded lecture discussing the following: ▪ St. Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of the correlation between Divine causality and human freedom ▪ Six Thomistic interpretations of Aquinas’s position ▪ A Thomistic personalist model of the relationship between Divine causality and created freedom developed by Mark K. Spencer (b) Readings: indicated by the instructor (in handouts). (c) Assignments/Activities/Discussions: Please answer the question: ▪ Is there any strongest part in Mark K. Spencer’s model of the relationship between Divine causality and created freedom? Or is there any weakest part in it? Please try to explain. Week 11: The Areas of the Person’s Transcendence over Nature: (3) Love (a) Recorded lecture discussing the following: ▪ The functions and effects of love (love and its effects; love and apprehension; love and complacency; love and human acts; love and final end; love as an aptitude to an end; love as a uniting principle) ▪ The interpersonal character of human love (love for others is based on the natural love of self; self-love leads to the love of