Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

THE SUBJECT-OBJECT RELATION IN CONTEMPORARY CATHOLIC MORAL THEOLOGY 43also, of course, frequently used in contemporary philosophybeyond the sphere of ethics. 3 I sought to make it clear that Iwas intending to discuss the theme within the limits of Catholicmoral theology, without entering into the debate in contemporaryphilosophy. I concede that I could have explained the pointat greater length.I will now deal with the five points mentioned above.1. The Interpretation of St. Thomas AquinasMy analysis of the thought of St. Thomas was intended toprovide an example of a unified vision of the world, as a contrastto that which emerged with the separation or detachmentof subject and object. When I use the term “moral world,” withregard to St. Thomas, I am referring to a unity in Thomas’sframework of thought. I am not dealing with the unity of thecultural or social world in which he lived. Nor did I claim thatthe unified vision of the world, such as I suggested we find inSt. Thomas Aquinas, was an ideal to which we ought to return.That St. Thomas did seek to construct a unified vision of realityis, I believe, a common enough view among scholars of the historyof thought.This unity is based, I argued, on the notion of conformity totypes in the divine mind. 4 Perhaps it would have been better tosay that the unity is founded on a notion of teleology, explainedphilosophically in terms of final causality and theologically interms of the unfolding of the divine plan, or providence. 5Whether St. Thomas succeeded in putting together a perfectly3Paul Gorner, Twentieth Century German Philosophy (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2000) 53. For Husserl, the term meant an account of realitywhich leaves no room for the subject. See also, ibid., 169, 171.4Cf. Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Malden, MA.:Blackwell, 2002) 29; Richard Campbell, Truth and Historicity (OxfordClarendon Press, 1992) 128-129.5Max Seckler, Das Heil in der Geschichte: GeschichtstheologischesDenken bei Thomas von Aquin (Munich: Kösel, 1964) 35.