Abstract dei contributi

Tom Angier
What is Custum and What is its Value?
Although custom is a key political concept, it has been ignored by most political philosophers. I will attempt to analyse its nature and normative significance. I will argue that custom is characteristically less precise than positive law; it is not as easily codifiable; custom conditions much legal observance; although custom also depends on positive law, there is an asymmetry of dependence; a lawless society is possible, while a ‘customless’ society is not. In exploring the nature and value of custom, I will touch on Aristotle’s distinction between justice and philia, along with Peter Berkowitz’s work on virtue and liberalism.

Daniel De Haan
Discerning the Natural Law via Phronesis: How can Plain Persons Vindicate, Revise, or Reject their Consuetudines?
As plain persons we regularly act throughout our days in ways that conform to stereotyped routines, customs, practices, or traditions, that is, according to some consuetudines. Can such socially conformist actions and reactions of plain persons be rationally justified and morally responsible human actions? Can they be virtuous human actions? Many noncognitivists argue that socially conformist beliefs and actions like these disclose one of the many different ways humans act, not on the basis of rationally justified moral convictions, but on the basis of non-rational biological or social preferences. They point out that humans continue to hold or revise their moral convictions not on the basis of rational argumentation but on the basis of non-rational groupthink. I want to respond to these challenges by showing how plain persons can, in their shared practical reasoning, provide rationally justified grounds for vindicating, revising, or rejecting their consuetudines. Central to my response is an account of how human persons, as developing rational animals, grow up within social relationships saturated with different consuetudines that shape the developing person's shared and individual convictions. Along with one's initiation into these consuetudines can be shared deliberative practices of asking Anscombean-why questions aimed at discerning good reasons versus mere reasons or bad reasons for action among the endoxa or consuetudines one has inherited. To use the language of MacIntyre and Sokolowski, which consuetudines are structured by genuine ends with internal goods connected to the proper fulfillment of some function (ergon), and which consuetudines merely serve some human motive or purpose without any end, or which comprise the ends of good practices. I will argue such shared deliberative practices comprise the aspiration to phronesis or practical wisdom. These everyday phronetic practices enable individuals and communities to discern the precepts of the natural law and employ them to vindicate, revise, or reject the consuetudines that have shaped their lives so far. What I hope to provide is a psychologically and socially realistic account of how plain persons can be rationally justified in acting on the basis of socially embedded consuetudines.

Hagos Woldeselassie Fissuh
Bad Custom Cannot Become Law: Thomas Aquinas and Contemporary Debates on Customary Law Abstract
This paper investigates Thomas Aquinas's theory of customary law and its relevance for resolving contemporary disputes regarding custom’s validity as law. Aquinas believes that law must be proportionate to the capacity of those who are subject to it. For this reason, he states that it must be in accordance with the custom of the people. For the same reason he asserts that laws should not be changed easily, implying the same for customary laws. For him, people tend to obey their custom more willingly than newly imposed laws, even when the latter are superior. However, Aquinas sets an important limit, namely that custom must conform to natural law, the law that is expressed in natural inclinations of human nature. Thomas Aquinas argues that custom violating the dictates of natural law must be eliminated. This theory of Thomas’s provides a valuable solution to modern jurisprudential disagreements about the validity of custom as law. In contemporary legal theory, some scholars argue that any custom considered obligatory by the people should be accepted as valid law. Others counter that bad customs should not be accepted as law, and accordingly, they propose various standards by which the validity of custom as law can be determined. Some state that custom must agree with international human rights standards. Others argue that it has to be reasonable. Yet, most of the time, what they understand by reasonableness is not being in agreement with the requirements of rational nature, rather it is being in accordance with the acceptable principles of conduct of a given milieu. Yet these standards are often criticized as lacking universality and objective grounding. Aquinas’s insistence that that legal custom must agree with natural law—the law that is expressed in natural inclinations of human nature—offers an objective and universal criterion for distinguishing legally valid from legally invalid custom. His understanding of customary law as a practice in agreement with the requirements of human nature avoids both legalization of any custom merely because it is considered binding by the people, regardless of its moral worth, and the use of arbitrary standards to judge the validity of custom. Despite its depth and relevance, Aquinas’s theory is frequently overlooked in modern legal discussions, possibly due to the dominance of legal positivism or the fact that Aquinas’s writing on customary law is terse and economical. Nevertheless, Aquinas developed this theory as a rational response to legal reforms in his time that downplayed or completely denied the legal value of custom. Reexamining his insights can be invaluable in resolving today’s contested issues concerning the legal status of custom.

Luca Gili
Why Some Think Faster: Aquinas on Intelligence
Abstract. In his commentaries on Aristotle’s Parva naturalia, Aquinas observes that some people think more quickly or remember more easily than others because of their consuetudo—their habitual practice of reflecting on certain subjects. Thus, individuals of equal intelligence may reason at different speeds depending on how familiar they are with the topic at hand. Aquinas does not seem to consider intelligence or memory as possessing natural capacities that make them intrinsically more or less apt for quick thinking, independently of habit. In his commentaries on Aristotle’s logical works, he does not emphasize the repeated exercise of a natural capacity (consuetudo), but rather describes the intellectual habits employed in logical reasoning, underlining that these are acquired. In this paper, I will offer a coherent reconstruction of Aquinas' take on habits (habitus) and repetitions of acts (consuetudines) in his commentaries on Aristotle.

Tobias Hoffmann
Are Individual Prudence, Household Prudence and Political Prudence Specifically the Same Virtue? Thomas Aquinas, Godfrey of Fontaines, and John of Pouilly on the Kinds of Prudence
An important topic in medieval ethics is the unity of prudence. The question of whether there is one prudence for all human life or whether there are distinct prudences for each domain of life is indicative of the conception of ethics as a whole. The single-prudence view goes along with a conception of the moral life as deeply united, while the multiple-prudences view reveals a conception of the moral life that is compartmental. Adherents to the single-prudence view discuss a further question: whether prudence has several species. This paper begins by discussing the theory of Thomas Aquinas, who argues that the prudence of an individual, household prudence, two kinds of political prudence, and military prudence are specifically distinct (Summa theologiae II-II, q. 47, a. 11; q. 48; q. 50). Then it turns to Godfrey of Fontaines (Quaestio ordinaria 3) and his disciple John of Pouilly (Quodlibet IV, q. 8) who argue against Aquinas that individual prudence, household prudence, and political prudence are not specifically distinct, which means that one cannot be prudent regarding the conduct of one’s own life without also being prudent politically, and vice versa.

Matteo Negro
Consuetudo, Second Nature, and Practical Rationality
How can we read the notion of consuetudo today, which, moreover, does not seem to be treated so extensively by Thomas Aquinas? An interesting key, although not without critical aspects, could be Robert Brandom's proposal, contained in "A Spirit of Trust: A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology" (2019). Brandom, who gave the Aquinas Lecture in 2019, resumes and strengthens the normative and pragmatic approach to the theme of conceptual contents, and recognizes in some of Hegel's works, particularly in the "Phenomenology of Spirit", the dependence of semantics on pragmatics. For Brandom, who rereads Hegel starting from Kant, Kantian rule-setting subjectivity, which ascribes normative authority to itself by virtue of the intellect's capacity to make explicit the rules implicit in conceptual content, is intensified by Hegelian rationality which, through the dialectical method, reconstructs normative attitudes starting from actual and historically established normative states. Hegelian rationality is fundamentally retentive (recollective) and fulfills its expressive role by making explicit the normative attitudes implicit in institutional and social practices: Kantian responsibility is reinterpreted by Hegel as semantic co-responsibility, which is the true nature of mutual recognition and trust. Brandom's thesis is challenging and complex: 1) it accepts the principle of meaning as use; 2) it accepts the principle that meaning is determined by the rules that serve to define it; 3) it accepts the Kantian principle that subjectivity manifests itself in the normative activity that determines content; 4) however, recognizes that 3) does not explain whether and how subjectivity is linked to the rules it itself sets; 5) accepts the principle that Hegelian Vernunft assumes the rules of Verstand as rules that derive from the way in which subjects are mutually linked in social practices and historical dialectics, in that game of recognitions in which they assume defined (albeit asymmetric) roles and exercise a common responsibility; 6) integrates Kant and Wittgenstein: normative attitudes are transcended by the normative states and conceptual contents established by those attitudes; 7) only under these conditions does the truth of the subject appear, or the subject itself as self-conscious spirit. 8) The subject is therefore no longer noumenal (being in itself), but totally extroverted in the forms of its becoming (Hegel, “Phenomenology of Spirit”, I, 29: «no longer merely original nor immersed in Dasein, but rather already reduced to memory»). 9) Neonaturalism: overcoming dualism (McDowell, Sellars, etc.) by absorbing norm and nature into the principle of Geist, or second nature. 10) Reevaluation of the principle according to which there are no states of authority and responsibility independent of the practical attitudes of subjects, consisting in considering and treating each other as authoritative and responsible.

Matthias Perkams
Imagination and the Intelligence of Animals in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas
The paper discusses Albert’s and Aquinas’s explanations of intelligent behavior of animals. Both authors agree with Aristotle’s claim that there are different degrees of intelligence in animals and explain them as well as the anthropological difference in more detail. The paper argues that Albert and Aquinas develop this theory by inserting it into a Neoplatonic framework and by applying to it their versions of Avicenna’s theory of the inner senses, assigning prominent place to 
imagination, memory and experience.

Michele Saracino
Prius addiscere logicam. On the Transmission of Knowledge According to Aquinas
In the Sententiae Metaphysicae (II, 5), Thomas Aquinas employs the notion of consuetudo in a twofold way. On the one hand, following Aristotle, he acknowledges its persuasive power in leading individuals to accept something as true – this is especially evident in the context of law. On the other hand, consuetudo may hinder access to truth, acting as a barrier to the attainment of truth (i.e. to the consideratio veritatis). Building on the Aristotelian theory of habit and considering the crucial role consuetudo plays in Aquinas’s ethical writings, this paper argues that the concept takes on a more ambiguous and problematic status in his theory of knowledge. Because familiarity can make a narrative more easily accepted – even when false – consuetudo may facilitate intellectual complacency or distortion. This is an unintended consequence Aquinas seems to ignore in his analysis. Conversely, individuals can become resistant to knowledge precisely due to the habits of thought they have formed; this is exemplified by those who reject any argument not presented in a mathematical mode (“quod quidam non recipiunt quod eis dicitur, nisi dicatur eis per modum mathematicum”). The paper explores the epistemological implications of this tension. While Aquinas seems to affirm a strong intellectualism – especially through his claim that logic provides a meta-methodological foundation for the sciences – it remains an open question whether such confidence in reason is sufficient to overcome the limits imposed by differing consuetudines. Addressing this issue sheds light on Aquinas’s broader view of how diverse systems of knowledge may – or may not – be rendered comparable. In this regard, consuetudo may function analogously to what Thomas Kuhn later called a “paradigm” (Kuhn 1962): a deeply embedded intellectual framework that both enables and constrains knowledge. Whereas Kuhn acknowledges a productive role for imagination, especially through thought experiments (Kuhn 1977), Aquinas consistently denies imagination any substantial epistemic significance (see, among others, Marmo 2020). Investigating this parallel may help illuminate Aquinas’s implicit assumptions about the comparability of different cognitive frameworks and the possibility of epistemic transcendence.

Thérèse Scarpelli Cory
Species in Habitu vs. Intellectual Habits?: Light, Memory, and Scientific Knowledge in Aquinas
Aquinas famously responds to Avicenna by insisting that the intellect retains the species it abstracts, even when not engaged in thinking by that species.  While merely retained and not in the act of thinking, he says that the  species is "in habitu" in the intellect.  But in his earliest writing on the topic, in the Sentences, he does not make this distinction, but only discusses intellectual habits such as "scientia."  In the Sentences as well, he says some rather puzzling things about the relationship of species and the intellectual light, suggesting that a habit is constituted from a species plus intellectual light.  In this paper, I explore this development and its implications.  I will show how the later version of his account relates to the earlier, and what it tells us about another role of the agent intellect beyond abstraction, i.e., in exercising habitual knowledge. 

Luca Tuninetti
Inventio and Disciplina. Two Ways to Knowledge Acquisition according to Thomas Aquinas
In several passages, Aquinas contrasts two ways in which humans can acquire knowledge. To describe these two methods, he uses the terms inventio and disciplina (or doctrina). Humans can come to know something (or to truth) either by discovering it themselves or by being taught by someone else who is in a position to instruct others (see Super Sent. II, d. 23, q. 2, a. 2; Super Sent. III, d. 33, q. 1, a. 2, q.la 1; CG II, c. 75; Q. de ver. q. 11, a. 1; Q. de anima, a. 15 ad 17; Q. de virt. q. 1, a. 9, ad 9; Quodl. VIII, q. 2. a. 2; S. th. I, q. 60, a. 2; q. 84, a. 3; q. 117, a. 1; II-II, q. 47, a. 15; III, q. 9, a. 4, ad 1; q. 12, a. 3, ad 3; Super Metaph. XII, l. 3; Super Ethic. II, l. 1). While many scholars have analyzed Aquinas’s ideas on teaching and learning, it seems fair to say that in Thomism, general accounts of knowledge and cognition are often given from an individualistic perspective. An individualistic view of knowledge may acknowledge the fact that we learn many things from others, but sees learning primarily as a substitute or replacement for the autonomous process of discovery. In my paper, I want to explore how deeply the pair of terms inventio and disciplina is embedded in Aquinas’s understanding of what knowledge is and how it is acquired. In the case of revealed truth, the relationship to the authority that proclaims it is essential. If we are able to understand the role that teaching and learning have in knowledge acquisition more generally, this could lead to a greater appreciation of the social aspect of Aquinas’s account of knowledge.

Marco Vorcelli
Gutta cavat lapidem. Albert the Great, Consuetudo, and the Via to Being Good
Beside denoting commonly accepted norms of conduct, in Thomas Aquinas’s mind, the word “consuetudo” also indicates the habituation that is necessary in order to acquire a good character disposition, namely, a virtue of the soul. Then, to employ the medieval partition of ethics (scientia moralis) into monastica, oeconomica, and politica, one can say that next to the “political” meaning evoked in the conference title, “consuetudo” has a “monastic” meaning too, in that it concerns the ethical development of individuals in themselves to boot. In this presentation, I would like to focus on this second sense of “consuetudo” so as to outline the theory of the acquisition of moral virtue put forward by Thomas Aquinas’s “frate e maestro” Albert the Great (c. 1200-1280). In my eyes, the question of the acquisition of virtue constitutes a privileged vantage point to gain access to several important aspects of the Universal Doctor’s intellectual profile. First, one can witness his peculiar way of engaging with the history of philosophy. Indeed, with respect to the question at hand, the Dominican contrasts the Peripatetics – for whom the habit of a given virtue is achieved through habituation (consuetudo, assuetudo, assuefactio) by practicing certain actions time and again – with the members of “the anti-Aristotelian Stoic-Platonic school” who believe that the virtues already dwell in us and that we just need, as it were, an act of spiritual cleansing (tersio, politio) to fully bring them to light. Faithful to the doctrine of the Nicomachean Ethics, Albert strongly favors the opinion of the former over that of the latter. Second, and most importantly for our purposes, in defining the concept of habit, Albert customarily draws a parallel with natural forms, availing himself of the typical language of his physics and metaphysics (inchoatio formae, eductio formae). He often resorts to physiological analogies – the most prominent being that of the semen –, and he compares the gradual development of habits to physical change (motus physicus), which he conceives of as a form flowing toward completion (forma fluens, fluxus formae) (a key passage in this regard is Albertus Magnus, Super Ethica, II, lec. iv, ed. Kübel, p. 107, ll. 36-47). My thesis is that accentuating the linearity and continuity of the process of habit formation is another peculiarity of Albert’s posture. Contrary to him, Thomas Aquinas, at least in his magnum opus, tends to differentiate the various stages of this formation process (cf. Thomas de Aquino, Summa theologiae, Ia-IIae, q. 49, art. 2, ed. Leonina, coll. 311b-312b). Thus, also with respect to the development of habits, one can detect the same contrast between Albert’s gradualism and Thomas’s tendency to isolate ontologically discrete moments that emerges most prominently when the two masters address the evolution of the embryo and the formation of the human soul.