Warsaw Circle

      Warsaw Circle for the Study of the Ontology of Thomas Aquinas

 

The group “Warsaw Circle for the Study of the Ontology of Thomas Aquinas” will work in two sections: “Problems of Thomasic Ontology” and “Thomasic Onto-Logic”.

“Problems of Thomasic Ontology” encompasses the following topics: “The Thomasic ontology of God”; “The Thomasic ontology of the human mind: Is hylemorphism a viable option?”; “The Thomasic theory of actions”; “The Thomasic conception of causation”; “The Thomasic conceptions of human freedom (infinity, space and time, …)”; “Axio-ontological hierarchies in Thomasic philosophy” (or: “Ontology and axiology in Thomasic metaphysics”), etc. All of these topics are approached by the researchers in an analytic historico-reconstructive fashion: What Thomas Aquinas meant – or intended to mean if benevolently interpreted – is expressed as accurately and clearly as possible in modern philosophical language, and this is largely done by availing oneself of the conceptual tools in the toolbox of Analytic Philosophy. Thomas’s views are connected to ongoing or recent discussions in the diverse fields of Analytic Philosophy. In some cases, certainly, the perspectives opened up by taking Thomasic philosophy into account will be more or less new to Analytic Philosophy.

“Thomasic Onto-Logic” encompasses the following topics (they have a more formal nature than the topics offered under “Problems of Thomasic Ontology”): “The Thomasic conception of abstraction, universals, and exemplification”; “The Thomasic conception of analogy”; “The logic Thomas actually used in the Summa theologiae” (a vast project!); “Thomasic predication theory”; and so on. The method used by the group “Thomasic Onto-Logic” is the same as the method used in “Problems of Thomasic Ontology”: it is the historico-reconstructive method. The only difference is that in this section, considerably more use will be made of formal devices, sometimes even in a systematic fashion.

 

The Section:  Problems of Thomasic Ontology

  1. Christian Kanzian (University of Innsbruck, Austria)
  2. Gabriele De Anna (University of Bamberg, Germany; and University of Udine, Italy)
  3. Daniel D. De Haan (University of Cambridge, England)
  4. Michał Głowala (University of Wrocław)
  5. Tomasz Kąkol (University of Gdańsk)
  6. Marek Piwowarczyk (The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland)

The Section:  Thomasic Onto-Logic

  1. Uwe Meixner (University of Augsburg, Germany)
  2. Janusz Kaczmarek (University of Łódz, Poland)
  3. Tomasz Kąkol (University of Gdańsk, Poland)
  4. Srecko Kovac (University of Zagreb, Croatia)
  5. Jason Megill (Bentley University, USA)
  6. Ludwig Neidhart (University of Augsburg, Germany)

Both sections are open to new members.