A Summary of Principal Psychological Doctrines

for Lawrence Cecchi John Francis Nieto 1. Things are said to live because they feed and grow, sense other things, move about, or think.  So, without hesitation, we say that men and the animals live.  Plants also live, for they vegetate. But, as they do not move to their food but await it where they

Clothes and Participation

John Francis Nieto 1. Nakedness is the principal image used by Sacred Scripture to make the fall of our first parents intelligible. Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed when they were yet clothed in grace, a participation in the divine nature. But once they had sinned they recognized in their nakedness the loss of

Where Does Metaphysics Begin?

John Francis Nieto             1. How does one establish a science of metaphysics beyond the science of mobile being? What is the being that must be the subject of another science? How does one know that “to be” is not “to be a mobile being”? To the answer, ‘the proof of a first unmoved mover,’

The Quantum Leap

A Concise Examination of the Abstraction of Quantity and the Formation of Its Generic Concept John Francis Nieto             1. Among the first things known to the human mind is quantity, “so much”. Yet, as St. Thomas teaches, “all conceptions are resolved to that of being,” and thus the understanding of quantity does also. I

S. Thomas’ Exposition of Principle Whose Substance Is Act

John Francis Nieto But if [such a substance] is able to move or able to make, but one not at work [in act], there will not be movement. For what has a power is able not to act. So there is not profit, even if one make eternal substances, 15 as those making the forms

Right, Left, Forward, or Back?

Or Why I Am Neither Left Nor Right John Francis Nieto             1. The following remarks propose to explain why I have no expectation of political gains from either right or left and why rather I distrust both movements, at least in so far as they are political movements arising within modern political theory. Nonetheless,

Overcoming Irrational Fears of Trusting the Senses

for Julian Pedro Sicam John Francis Nieto             1. Many, perhaps all, who share in the intellectual life in our times have some irrational fears of trusting their senses. In saying this I am recognizing that there are rational fears of trusting one’s senses. We reasonably hesitate to judge as real everything that seems to

On the Meaning of the Sabbath

John Francis Nieto             1. Both the Old and New Testament teach that for one day of each week a man must refrain from working in honor of God. Divine worship is accorded the central place on this day. But the whole of this day is distinguished from other days of the week as dedicated

Observations on Cogitative Power

John Francis Nieto Insofar as estimative and cogitative power are the highest sensitive powers and are thereby definitive of the various animals, while each depends upon intellect, human or divine, sensation clearly depends for its real being and definition upon intellect. Hence, Aristotle never resolves sensation immediately to the divine.

The Object of Poetry and Its Truth

John Francis Nieto             1. The comments I will make this afternoon concern the proper object of poetry and the truth that object admits of. I hope to situate this truth more or less “between” the that of ethics and prudence and the truth of history, taking that word to include not only history proper