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Papers by Aquinas Guilbeau, OP

Nova et Vetera, 2015

The personalist thought of Karol Wojtyla distinguishes itself from that of Emmanuel Mounier and J... more The personalist thought of Karol Wojtyla distinguishes itself from that of Emmanuel Mounier and Jacques Maritain due to its more classical conception of the common good.

Conference Presentations by Aquinas Guilbeau, OP

For the ancients, law and freedom hold together not in a paradoxical tension but in a close bond—... more For the ancients, law and freedom hold together not in a paradoxical tension but in a close bond—they fit hand- in-glove—in large part because the ancients did not reduce law to a restraint on willing, nor did they reduce freedom to the issue of choice.

For over a century, the Catholic Church has cast a merciful gaze on the plight of the divorced an... more For over a century, the Catholic Church has cast a merciful gaze on the plight of the divorced and civilly remarried.

Even before the Second World War drew to a close, while the Axis and Allied powers were still at ... more Even before the Second World War drew to a close, while the Axis and Allied powers were still at arms, philosophers, theologians, and statesman worldwide took up the question of post--war Europe's political and economic re--constitution. Catholic intellectuals like Emmanuel Mounier, Jacques Maritain, Konrad Adenauer, and Charles Malik assumed prominent roles in these discussions. Half a world away in the United States and Canada, Thomist philosophers, many of them European émigrés, also joined the discussion, engaging in lively debates of political philosophy. These European Thomists in America discussed the first principles of man's social life, focusing especially on the relation of the individual's particular good to the political common good. Though these thinkers generally agreed on essential points of social philosophy, on one question they disagreed considerably. That question was this: Is the person's particular good part of and therefore subject to the common good, or is the common good an instrument of and therefore subject to the person's particular good? From our point of view today, this question may seem oddly arcane. To Europe's war-ravaged peoples, what could such a speculative discussion have mattered? Would not focus on more practical concerns have better suited the moment? For these Thomist thinkers, however, speculative discussion of political philosophy's first principles was not merely academic; for them, their discussions had real--life, practical consequences. They pursued the question of the relation of the particular good to the common good convinced that one's understanding of this relation determines one's understanding of another relation, namely the relation of the person to the state. These thinkers knew that an incorrect notion of the relation of the particular good to the common good leads ineluctably to an incorrect notion of the relation of the person to the state, as the totalitarian regimes of Germany, Italy, Russia, and Spain had plainly demonstrated. These thinkers, therefore, took the question of the particular good and the common good seriously; for them, the question's correct answer could provide war--torn Europe a life--saving reorientation of the continent's political thinking. Charles De Koninck, the Belgian--born dean of the philosophy faculty at the University of Laval in Québec, sparked a particularly heated debate on this question by publishing a short work in 1943 entitled De la primauté du bien commun, contre les personnalistes (On the Primacy of the Common Good, Against the Personalists). 1 As the main title of the work suggests, De Koninck defends the classical doctrine of the primacy of the common good over the individual's particular good, a moral and political doctrine developed both by Aristotle and by St. Thomas Aquinas. As the subtitle of the work suggests, De

Nova et Vetera, 2015

The personalist thought of Karol Wojtyla distinguishes itself from that of Emmanuel Mounier and J... more The personalist thought of Karol Wojtyla distinguishes itself from that of Emmanuel Mounier and Jacques Maritain due to its more classical conception of the common good.

For the ancients, law and freedom hold together not in a paradoxical tension but in a close bond—... more For the ancients, law and freedom hold together not in a paradoxical tension but in a close bond—they fit hand- in-glove—in large part because the ancients did not reduce law to a restraint on willing, nor did they reduce freedom to the issue of choice.

For over a century, the Catholic Church has cast a merciful gaze on the plight of the divorced an... more For over a century, the Catholic Church has cast a merciful gaze on the plight of the divorced and civilly remarried.

Even before the Second World War drew to a close, while the Axis and Allied powers were still at ... more Even before the Second World War drew to a close, while the Axis and Allied powers were still at arms, philosophers, theologians, and statesman worldwide took up the question of post--war Europe's political and economic re--constitution. Catholic intellectuals like Emmanuel Mounier, Jacques Maritain, Konrad Adenauer, and Charles Malik assumed prominent roles in these discussions. Half a world away in the United States and Canada, Thomist philosophers, many of them European émigrés, also joined the discussion, engaging in lively debates of political philosophy. These European Thomists in America discussed the first principles of man's social life, focusing especially on the relation of the individual's particular good to the political common good. Though these thinkers generally agreed on essential points of social philosophy, on one question they disagreed considerably. That question was this: Is the person's particular good part of and therefore subject to the common good, or is the common good an instrument of and therefore subject to the person's particular good? From our point of view today, this question may seem oddly arcane. To Europe's war-ravaged peoples, what could such a speculative discussion have mattered? Would not focus on more practical concerns have better suited the moment? For these Thomist thinkers, however, speculative discussion of political philosophy's first principles was not merely academic; for them, their discussions had real--life, practical consequences. They pursued the question of the relation of the particular good to the common good convinced that one's understanding of this relation determines one's understanding of another relation, namely the relation of the person to the state. These thinkers knew that an incorrect notion of the relation of the particular good to the common good leads ineluctably to an incorrect notion of the relation of the person to the state, as the totalitarian regimes of Germany, Italy, Russia, and Spain had plainly demonstrated. These thinkers, therefore, took the question of the particular good and the common good seriously; for them, the question's correct answer could provide war--torn Europe a life--saving reorientation of the continent's political thinking. Charles De Koninck, the Belgian--born dean of the philosophy faculty at the University of Laval in Québec, sparked a particularly heated debate on this question by publishing a short work in 1943 entitled De la primauté du bien commun, contre les personnalistes (On the Primacy of the Common Good, Against the Personalists). 1 As the main title of the work suggests, De Koninck defends the classical doctrine of the primacy of the common good over the individual's particular good, a moral and political doctrine developed both by Aristotle and by St. Thomas Aquinas. As the subtitle of the work suggests, De