ALASDAIR MACINTYRE
2010 Recipient

Alasdair MacIntyre is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.

He has written 16 books, including God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition in which he presents a compelling argument on the necessity and importance of philosophy. Because of a need to better understand Catholic philosophical thought, especially in the context of its historical development and realizing that philosophers interact within particular social and cultural situations, MacIntyre offers this brief history of Catholic philosophy. Tracing the idea of God through different philosophers’ engagement of God and how this engagement has played out in universities, MacIntyre provides a valuable, lively, and insightful study of the disintegration of academic disciplines with knowledge. MacIntyre demonstrates the dangerous implications of this happening and how universities can and ought to renew a shared understanding of knowledge in their mission.

It is with pride and gratitude that we award Prof. Macintyre the 2010 Charles Cardinal Journet Prize for God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition.

THOMAS HIBBS
2008 Recipient

In his book,  Aquinas, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion, Thomas Hibbs recovers the notion of practice to develop a more descriptive account of human action and knowing, grounded in the venerable vocabulary of virtue and vice. Drawing on Aquinas, who believed that all good works originate from virtue, Hibbs postulates how epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and theology combine into a set of contemporary philosophical practices that remain open to metaphysics. Hibbs brings Aquinas into conversation with analytic and Continental philosophy and suggests how a more nuanced appreciation of his thought enriches contemporary debates. This book offers readers a new appreciation of Aquinas and articulates a metaphysics integrally related to ethical practice.

Professor Hibbs is also the author of numerous other acclaimed books, including two books on film and culture, Acts of Darkness: American Noirand the Quest for Redemption and Shows about Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture from The Exorcist to Seinfeld, as well as Virtue’s Splendor: Wisdom, Prudence, and the Human Good and his groundbreaking first book Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas: An Interpretation of the Summa contra Gentiles.

Prior to taking up his present position as Dean of the Honors College and Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Culture at Baylor University, Dr. Hibbs taught philosophy at Boston College, and he began his teaching career at Thomas Aquinas College.

We have had the privilege of knowing Thomas Hibbs for a number of years, first as students and later as colleagues in the academy. His brilliance and wit are a rich contribution to any conversation. He is the model of a Catholic scholar and philosopher, and someone whose insights are always worth obtaining. It is with pride and gratitude that we award Thomas Hibbs’s Aquinas, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion the 2008 Charles Cardinal Journet Prize.

RALPH MCINERNY
2007 recipient

The Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal is delighted to announce the winner of the 2007 Charles Cardinal Journet Prize, Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers by Ralph McInerny.

The praeambula fidei (“preambles of faith”) are regarded by Thomas Aquinas as the culmination of philosophy: natural theology, the highest knowledge of God that is possible on philosophical grounds alone. The natural home for such considerations is the Metaphysics of Aristotle and Thomas’s commentary on that work. Yet Thomas’s view has been cast into doubt, with philosophers and theologians alike attempting to drive a wedge between Aquinas and Aristotle. In this book, renowned philosopher Ralph McInerny sets out to review what Thomas meant by the phrase and to defend a robust understanding of Thomas’s teaching on the subject. After setting forth different attitudes toward proofs of God’s existence and outlining the difference between belief and knowledge, McInerny examines the texts in which Thomas uses and explains the phrase “preambles of faith.” He then turns his attention to the work of eminent twentieth-century Thomists and chronicles their abandonment of the preambles. He draws a contrast between this form of Thomism and that of the classical Dominican commentators, notably Cajetan, arguing that part of the abandonment of the notion of the preambles as philosophical involves a misreading and misrepresentation of Cajetan. McInerny concludes with a positive rereading of Aristotle’sMetaphysics and Aquinas’s use thereof. In the end, the book argues for a return to the notion of Aristotelico-Thomism—Thomistic philosophy as the organic development of the thought of Aristotle.

Ralph McInerny is Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies in the department of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is cofounder of Crisis magazine and author of several books published by CUA Press, namely, the bestselling Ethica Thomistica, The Question of Christian Ethics, Aquinas on Human Action, and Boethius and Aquinas.

MICHAEL SHERWIN, OP
2006 recipient

The Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal is delighted to announce the winner of the 2006 Charles Cardinal Journet Prize, By Knowledge and By Love: Charity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas by Michael Sherwin, O.P.

Fr. Sherwin is Associate Professor of Fundamental Moral Theology at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. As Alasdair MacIntyre says of Fr. Sherwin’s By Knowledge and By Love, “Sherwin has provided a wonderfully illuminating study of the development and structure of Aquinas’ thought on these matters. Both as a guide to recent scholarship and as an insightful account of what is philosophically and theologically at stake this is an excellent book.”

Similarly Fr. Stephen Brock of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross observes that in light of Sherwin’s book, “There should be no more talk of a Thomas who detaches will from reason.”