Aims of the Conference
For Thomas Aquinas, ‘cognitio’ had an extremely wide range. It included external sensations like seeing, hearing and smelling, and internal sensations like imagining and remembering, intellectual acts like apprehension, judgment, and reasoning, and even supernatural acts like faith and beatific vision. As such, to speak of Aquinas’s “cognitive theory” is to speak of an aspect of his thought that stands at the intersection of his epistemology, his natural philosophy, his philosophical anthropology, and even his sacred theology. Moreover, precisely because it is so wide-ranging, Aquinas’s cognitive theory can also serve as a privileged locus for studying how he received earlier sources, critically engaged with his contemporaries, was subsequently received by later scholastics, and continues to be of relevance for philosophy today. The aim of this conference is to study and discuss Aquinas’s cognitive theory from all these perspectives.
Paper Requirements
We welcome abstract submissions dealing with any of the themes mentioned above. Abstracts should be 200-500 words in length and should clearly articulate both the thesis of the presentation and the general line of argumentation it will adopt. The deadline for submission is June 30th. All abstracts should be sent to Fr. Philip-Neri Reese, O.P., at atiphilproject@gmail.com.