Collective Action and Social Ontology in Thomas Aquinas
Keywords:
Aquinas, social ontology, collective intentionality, metaphysics, virtue ethicsAbstract
In this paper I argue that there are resources in the work of Thomas Aquinas that amount to a unique approach to what David P. Schweikard and Hans Bernhard Schmid’s call the “Central Problem” facing theorists of collective intentionality and action. That is to say, Aquinas can be said to affirm both (1) the “Individual Ownership Claim” and (2) the “Irreducibility Claim,” coherently and compellingly. Regarding the Individual Ownership Claim, I argue that Aquinas’s concept of “general virtue” (virtus generalis) buttresses an account of the way in which individuals act collectively qua individuals, i.e., without invoking hive minds or other scientifically problematic phenomena. Further, with respect to the Irreducibility Claim (2), I argue that Aquinas’s concept of “common good” (bonum commune) offers an account of the way in which some powers and acts of social groups are importantly irreducible to those of their members. Considered together, I argue that these two positions in Aquinas are correlative, and therefore amount to a coherent account of collective action and group agency, respectively.
References
Annas, J. 2003. Virtue Ethics and Social Psychology. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/32006.
Annas, J. 2011. Intelligent Virtue. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199228782.001.0001
Anscombe, G. E. M., and P. T. Geach. 1961. Three Philosophers. Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press.
Aquinas, T. 1906. Opera omnia iussu impensaque Leonis XIII P. M. edita, Summae theologiae. Rome: Leonine Commision.
Aquinas, T. 1965. Quaestiones disputatae, t. 2: Quaestiones disputatae de virtutibus in communi. Turin-Rome: Marietti.
Aquinas, T. 1969. Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, t. 47: Sententia libri Ethicorum. Rome: Leonine Commission.
Aquinas, T. 1971a. Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, t. 48 A: Sententia libri Politicorum. Rome: Leonine Commission.
Aquinas, T. 1971b. In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio. Turin-Rome: Marietti.
Aquinas, T. 1976. Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, t. 22: Quaestiones disputatae de veritate. Rome: Leonine Commission.
Aquinas, T. 1979. Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, t. 42: De regno ad regem Cypri. Rome: Leonine Commission.
Aquinas, T. 1996. Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, t. 24/1: Quaestiones disputatae de anima. Rome-Paris: Leonine Commission.
Aquinas, T. 2007. Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Austin, N. 2017. Aquinas on Virtue: A Causal Reading. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1t89k5h
Bratman, M.E. 1999. Faces of Intention Selected Essays on Intention and Agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511625190
Deely, J. 2002. “The Absence of Analogy.” The Review of Metaphysics 55 (3): 521–50.
Epstein, B. 2015. “How Many Kinds of Glue Hold the Social World Together?” In Social Ontology and Social Cognition, edited by M. Galloti, and J. Michael, 41–55. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9147-2_4
Goyette, J. 2013. “On the Transcendence of the Political Common Good.” The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13.1: 133–56, https://doi.org/10.5840/ncbq201313174.
Gilbert, M. 1989. On Social Facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Haldane, J. 2010. “Kenny and Aquinas on the Metaphysics of Mind.” In Mind, Method, and Morality, edited by J. Cottingham, and P. Hacker, 119–39. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hittinger, R. 2007. The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World. Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
Kenny, A. 1994. Aquinas on Mind. New York: Routledge.
Keys, M. M. 2006. Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511498213
Klima, G. 1996. “The Semantic Principles Underlying St. Thomas Aquinas’s Metaphysics of Being.” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 5 (1): 87–144, https://doi.org/10.5840/medievalpt1996515.
Lawson, T. 2012. “Ontology and the Study of Social Reality: Emergence, Organisation, Community, Power, Social Relations, Corporations, Artefacts and Money.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 36 (2): 345–85, https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/ber050.
Lisska, A. J. 2016. Aquinas’s Theory of Perception: An Analytic Reconstruction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198777908.001.0001
Pakaluk, M. 2001. “Is the Common Good of Political Society Limited and Instrumental?” The Review of Metaphysics 55 (1): 57–94. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315264790-5
Searle, J. R. 2010. Making the Social World. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780195396171.001.0001
Schweikard, D. P., and H. B. Schmid. 2013. “Collective Intentionality.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2013), edited by E. N. Zalta. Stanford, CA: Stanford University. Also available at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/collective-intentionality/.
Searle, J. R. 1998. Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World. New York: Basic Books.
Schloßberger, M. 2016. “The Varieties of Togetherness: Scheler on Collective Affective Intentionality.” In The Phenomenological Approach to Social Reality, edited by A. Salice, and H.B. Schmid, 173–195. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27692-2_8
Schmid, H. B. 2014. “The Feeling of Being a Group: Corporate Emotions and Collective Consciousness.” In Collective Emotions, edited by C. von Scheve, and M. Salmela, 3–22. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199659180.003.0001
Schmitz, M. 2017. “What is a Mode Account of Collective Intentionality?” In Social Ontology and Collective Intentionality: Critical Essays on the Philosophy of Raimo Tuomela with his Responses, 37–70. New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33236-9_3
Stump, E. 2006. “Substance and Artifact in Aquinas’s Metaphysics.” In Knowledge and Reality: Essays in Honor of Alvin Plantinga, edited by T. M. Crisp, M. Davidson, and D. V. Laan, 63–79. New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4733-9_4
Tollefsen, D. P. 2017. “Collective Intentionality and Methodology in the Social Sciences.” In The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intentionality, edited by M. Jankovic, and K. Ludwig, 389–404. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315768571-37
Tuomela, R. 2013. Social Ontology: Collective Intentionality and Group Agents. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199978267.001.0001
Vidal, D. M. 2020. Res as Transcendental in the Metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas, Dissertation. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America.
Wilkins, J. D. 2011. “Grace and Growth: Aquinas, Lonergan, and the Problematic of Habitual Grace.” Theological Studies 72: 723–49, https://doi.org/10.1177/004056391107200402.
Wulf, M. 2008. Philosophy and Civilization in the Middle Ages. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
