stephen theron

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I have taught in various universities etc. and researched in Münster Germany. I have published, am publishing, c. 10 books and 80 articles etc. Until this century I was more or less describably as an anti-analytical Thomist (with roots in "analytical" philosophy) and in this century as following the Hegelian absolute Idealist interpretation of Aristotelian-Augustinian Thomism. I study and write free lance (belong to an Internet "Hegel" group); my latest two books are appearing with Cambridge Scholars Publishing ("More Hegelian essays", "From Narrative to Necessity". See also "Thomas Aquinas: Happiness, Desire, Virtue", "Unboundedly Rational Religion", Verlag GRIN.

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Happiness and Rationality

New Blackfriars, 2011

... there is no reason to struggle with this obscure matter, these hypothetical big brothers and ... more

Other problems about the self

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INTENTIONALITY, IMMATERIALITY AND UNDERSTANDING IN AQUINAS

We tend to expect intentionality to prove the most difficult of these notions, immateriality to b... more We tend to expect intentionality to prove the most difficult of these notions, immateriality to belong merely to the history of ideas, understanding to be no trouble at all. In fact understanding, the fundamental notion, is the most mysterious of the three (like being, its metaphysical correlate). It is difficult to say what it is to know or understand. Aquinas starts his explanation of human knowing from sense-cognition, but, I shall argue, this implies no kinship with an evolutionary or immanentist view of intellect. Intellect, in both origin and operation, allies us rather with angels than with apes. This is no mere preference for a mediaeval explanatory 'model' or comparison. For Aquinas words are indeed names of our concepts, yet the concepts themselves, which are not just capacities to use words, refer to or are of real natures or qualities, without distortion or modification. They are intentional. So he is not just offering a 'model', but claims to see and relate how it is with understanding and so on. Critical discussion and discursive reasoning, itself tracing real causality, lead us to this vision. To this extent he does construe knowledge as a matter of seeing and not merely talking or being part of a 'way of life'. Knowing what's what is itself the highest life; hence his epistemology culminates in the hope of the beatific 'seeing'.

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Creation stricto sensu

New Blackfriars, 2008

Informed study of Aquinas suggests that absolute idealism and realism do not differ about the rel... more Informed study of Aquinas suggests that absolute idealism and realism do not differ about the relation of created and uncreated freedom (praemotio physica) but rather, if at all, about created vis à vis uncreated being generally. Both cannot be in the same sense. Nor, therefore, have we grounds for distinguishing divine or infinite thinking from real production, if nothing else really is. The Thomist doctrine that God has no real relation to anything outside God is thus, implicitly, absolute idealism. Positing “ontological discontinuity” denies the absolutely infinite transcendence in affirming it. We have no being as God, uniquely, has. This is the meaning of “image”, while “face to face” is ultimately one face (intimior me mihi). Seeing and being are one. Thus Hegel should be seen as rather explicating than reducing creation, thus deepening the doctrine and not offering an alternative. R. Gildas merely assumes the latter. Infinity requires union with “alterity”within God and intra-Trinitarian and ad extra processes are thus analogous. So self-renouncement as explaining either creation (originating an origin) or incarnation (kenosis) is anthropomorphic paradox. God has to be “all in all”.

The Interdependence of Semantics, Logic, and Metaphysics as Exemplified in the Aristotelian Tradition

International Philosophical Quarterly, 2002

Duty and the divine

Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und …, 1989

... art.5. Page 13. 320 Stephen Theron Likewise, to see ... this idolatrous moralism. But that is... more

From Soul to Self

... Could man have arisen naturally, from within, or must the intellect have come from outside,... more

Self and World

Reflections on the Teaching of Philosophy in Clerical Seminaries

Education and How Not to Corrupt the Young

Journal of Applied Philosophy, 1986

... 132 S. Theron strong conclusion, but certainly one can't tr$n the flame itself. This is ... more ... 132 S. Theron strong conclusion, but certainly one can't tr$n the flame itself. This is the point about insight. RS Peters, in his What is an Educational Process? [15], refers to the teaching of skills as a sub-class of training, and distinguishes mastery of skills from both knowledge ...

Books by stephen theron

Categories, and What Is Beyond

by Alex Hall, stephen theron, and Gyula Klima

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Happiness and Rationality

New Blackfriars, 2011

... there is no reason to struggle with this obscure matter, these hypothetical big brothers and ... more

stephen theron

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