Saint Thomas Aquinas Celebration 2022

Prof. Colleen McCluskey, Saint Louis University

MONDAY 7 MARCH 2022

• 16:00 Public Lecture (online)
• What can the vices teach us about the virtues? (abstract)

TUESDAY 8 MARCH 2022

• 16:00 - 18:00 Seminar (online)
  The use of climate theory in Albertus Magnus's natural philosophy (abstract)

Register

To register, please send an e-mail to ines.vanhoutte@kuleuven.be to receive the Zoom-link.

Abstract: “What the vices can teach us about the virtues”

Traditionally, ethical theory has focused on such notions as the identity of correct moral principles or the nature of good behavior and virtuous character. Moral theorists tend to develop their accounts of right behavior and good character, defining wrongdoing and vicious character derivatively as behavior that violates moral principles or contradicts virtuous standards. In recent years, however, scholars such as Robin Dillon and Miranda Fricker have argued that this approach is not sufficiently robust to understand and avoid the performance of wrong actions or the development of bad character, or to identify unjust social practices. Furthermore, both of these scholars argue that studying the vices on their own terms can enable us to develop better practices of individual virtue or social justice.

In this talk, I consider the implications of their position for the account of the seven capital vices found in Thomas Aquinas’s text, De malo. I discuss the framework of Aquinas’s account, which presents the vices as disordered pursuits of the good, and demonstrate how his account can help us better understand what it means to be a virtuous individual and what it means to be a virtuous community.

Abstract: “The use of climate theory in Albertus Magnus’s natural philosophy”

The idea that climate in a particular geographic location could determine or influence one’s physical properties and mental character figured prominently in racial theories developed in the European early modern period prior to an understanding of genetics and inheritance. In recent years, scholars of the medieval period have begun to trace the origins of this idea back to the European Middle Ages. Philosophers of race have traditionally argued that racial theories originated in the early modern period when Europeans expanded their global explorations and routinely encountered peoples who did not look like them. Recent work in medieval studies challenges this view, arguing that Europeans explorers interpreted their experiences through a lens of racial difference generated in the medieval period.

I examine Albertus Magnus’s discussion of the effects of climate on racial and gender characteristics in two texts from his work on natural philosophy. First, I look at his discussion that heat from the sun (or its corresponding lack) plays a role in determining skin color and other traits, an idea raised in his treatise, De natura loci, produced around 1250 during his time as Regent-Master in Cologne. Secondly, I consider his argument that climate affects the reproductive process in females, as discussed both in De natura loci and in his treatise, De animalibus (circa 1260).