May 28-30, 2025, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Philosophy
Krakowskie Przedmieście 3, Warsaw, Library Reading Room (118)
DOWNLOAD: The Book of Abstracts
DOWNLOAD: The Programme
We would like to invite you to participate in a conference on St. Thomas Aquinas’s strategies and methods. Why?
St. Thomas Aquinas had brilliant ideas, which contributed to both theology and philosophy. However, an important part of his success as a theologian and philosopher which can be easily overlooked was his effective planning. In order to gain truth and present it to the readers or listeners (according to the Dominican motto: contemplata aliis tradere), it is essential to know how to do that. Aquinas’s investigations and presentations are always ordered according to certain patterns and governed by ideas, which he often explains. They also follow clear methodological frameworks.
In the year of the 800th anniversary of his birthday, we would like to focus on strategies he adopts in different types of his production and methods he applies both as a theologian and as a philosopher. We are going to examine the importance and the consequences of such choices, as well as their motivations and inspirations. We will include both those strategies and methods which are explicitly mentioned by Thomas and those which can be traced back. This will enable us to create a picture of Aquinas as a scholar who cared about the correct ways of thinking and scientific procedures.
We are going to analyse Aquinas’s:
- patterns of work composition,
- exegetical techniques,
- hermeneutical strategies,
- methodology of sciences (including metaphysics, theology, natural sciences),
- ways of argumentation and argumentative strategies,
- use of logic,
- analytical approach,
- other similar aspects of his work.
Keynote Speakers
- Eleonore Stump (Saint Louis University) – online lecture,
- Constant Mews (Monash University, Melbourne),
- Harm Goris (Tilburg University),
- Timothy Bellamah (Leonine Commission, Pontifical Faculty at the Dominican House of Studies, Washington DC).
Programme
WEDNESDAY, May 28
11:00-11:20 – REGISTRATION
11:20-11:30 – OPENING
11:30-13:00 – session 1 (papers in Polish) | chair: Tomasz Stępień
- Michał Zembrzuski: Tomasza z Akwinu sposób uzasadnienie niematerialności intelektu
- Paweł Superat: Akwinata o stworzeniu świata: jego strategie i metody
- Adam Górniak: Dlaczego Tomasz z Akwinu krytykował Immanuela Kanta?
13:00-15:00 – lunch break
15:00-16:30 – session 2 | chair: Piotr Roszak
- Leonardo Fedriga: Thomas Aquinas’ use of Aristotle in the book Against those who oppose the cult of God and the religious status
- Marek Porwolik: St. Thomas Aquinas and Analytic Theology
- Tomasz Stępień: Essentia, Virtutes, Operationes – The Second Methodological Principle of Organizing Questions in Summa Theologiae
16:30-17:00 – coffee break
17:00-18:00 – KEYNOTE LECTURE: Constant Mews: Strategies and communities: From Alexander of Hales to Thomas Aquinas on Scripture, theologia, and sacred teaching
THURSDAY, May 29
10:00-11:00 – KEYNOTE LECTURE: Harm Goris: Nature, sin, grace: three parameters for analyzing human life
11:00-11:30 – coffee break
11:30-13:30 – session 3 | chair: Harm Goris
- Robert Miner: Reason’s Malign Influence on the Passions: The Cases of Hatred, Desire, and Sorrow in Thomas Aquinas
- Rudolf Seño: Using Aquinas’ Concept and Method of Knowing the Truth to Critique Umberto Eco’s Concept of the Power of Falsity
- Marek Lechniak: Aquinas Analysis of the Concept of Faith
- Izaak Piknjac Phillips: Reconsidering the Thomistic Solution to the Problem of Universals
13:30-15:00 – lunch break
15:00-16:30 – session 4 | chair: Krystyna Krauze-Błachowicz
- Paweł Kawalec: The Prospects of Thomistic Economic Theory: An Assessment
- Hernan Guerrero-Troncoso: Thomas Aquinas on being and truth. Reflections on his hermeneutical strategies
- Alex Judson Yeung: Aquinas’ metaphysical use of the metaphor of distance, proximity and conjunction
16:30-17:00 – coffee break
17:00-18:00 – KEYNOTE LECTURE: Eleonore Stump: Aquinas on Human Nature and Its Perfection
18:30 – dinner
FRIDAY, May 30
10:00-11:00 – KEYNOTE LECTURE: Timothy Bellamah: Aquinas’ Quest for Paul’s Meaning in his Commentary Super Epistolam ad Romanos
11:00-11:30 – coffee break
11:30-13:30 – session 5 | chair: Hernan Guerrero-Troncoso
- Jaison John: Aquinas’s Methodological Approach to In Persona Christi: A Study in Exegesis and Theological Development
- Antoni Źrebiec: Strategies and Methods of Thomas Aquinas in His Expositions of the Divine Names in the Context of the Earlier Latin Tradition of Dionysian Commentaries
- Bartosz Adamski: Christ as the keystone and hermeneutical principle of the interpretation of Sacred Scripture in the example of the teaching on Christian freedom in the fifth chapter of the „Super Epistolam S. Pauli Apostoli ad Galatas lectura” by St. Thomas Aquinas
- Jan Siwierski: Nominal Definitions and Existential Import
13:30-15:00 – lunch break
15:00-17:15 – session 6 | chair: Robert Miner
- Sylwia Adamiuk: Dialectics as a method of epistemic uncertainty reduction in Thomas Aquinas
- Michał Głowala: Blind reasonings, outlines of arguments, and fully understood proofs. Aquinas on the pragmatics of the progress in understanding arguments
- 15-minutes coffee break
- Jędrzej Gosiewski: Does Aquinas commit a quantifier-shift fallacy?
- Marcin Trepczyński: The Method of Reasoning Reconstruction in Aquinas’s Biblical Exegesis
17:15 – CONCLUSION
Venue
The conference will be held at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Warsaw, which is located in the charming historical part of Warsaw at 3 Krakowskie Przedmiescie Str., in a wonderful area, which in May is full of green and blooming flowers.
Academic Committee
- Harm Goris (Tilburg University) – president
- Krystyna Krauze-Błachowicz (University of Warsaw)
- Enrique Alarcon (University of Navarra)
- Adam Górniak (University of Warsaw)
- Therese Cory (University of Notre Dame)
- Rudi te Velde (Tilburg University)
Organising Committee
- Piotr Roszak (Nicholaus Copernicus University in Toruń) – co-chair
- Marcin Trepczyński (University of Warsaw) – co-chair
- Antoni Juszkiewicz (University of Warsaw)
- Łukasz Wierciński (University of Warsaw)
Institutional Organisers
The conference will be organised by the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Warsaw, and co-organised by the Faculty of Theology, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, in collaboration with partners, including the Tilburg School of Catholic Theology and IGTM – International Society for the Study of Medieval Theology.
Conference Fees
Accepted regular participants who present papers and participants without papers who wish to accompany them during meals will be asked to issue a conference fee:
- 100 EUR (or 400 PLN) for scholars employed by the universities or research institutions and independent scholars,
- 50 EUR (or 200 PLN) for students, PhD students and retired professors.
The fees will cover the costs of materials and meals (coffee breaks, lunches, dinners).
Contact
If you have any questions about the conference please contact the main organisers:
Marcin Trepczyński (m.trepczynski@uw.edu.pl) and Piotr Roszak (piotrroszak@umk.pl).
