Thomas Aquinas

Project objectives

The purposed project is standing for more distinctly objectives, imposed by the domains involved in the accomplishment (philosophical, historical, philological and theological), but also by the reception plans of the studies that are in intention of being done (didactical, publicly, strategic and international).

Regarding the four domains implied, the objectives of the purposed project are contained in the developing of the very translation effort and commentary of Aquinas’s work. They are concerning the capitalization of some specialists in the mentioned domains, outlining the professional character of the proposed project, each by the perspective of his domain.

a) The philosophical objective is seeing to endow the Romanian philosophy with the study of the most important synthesis speculative work produced in the Western medieval thinking by the scholar Latin culture, planed not only form an understanding of the Greek- Arabian philosophical sources of the Aquinas’s thinking with the Greek neo-Platonism, with the Arabian neo-Platonism (Averroes, Avicenna, but especially the famous anonymous work Liber de causis), but also from the perspective of the understanding of the effects that the Aquinas’s work had during the early modernity (the political philosophy of Marsilius from Padova, the cosmological and poetical imaginary at Dante, the monadology of Leibniz or for the Kantians concepts of the experience and of the transcendental faculties).

b) The historical objective is to frame the Aquinas’s researches accordingly to the contexts of the doctrinal disputes of his time and to the particular imaginary of the medieval intellectual. Generally, such a kind of objective is innovative on an international scale and it is sustained by the most recent generation of consecrated specialists in the medieval area (Alain de Libera or Ruedi Imbach). The supporting of the contextualist theory, specific to the historical domain of our project is completing the clerical intention to present the Aquinas’s system as an universal philosophy, depending on hears medieval circumstances, those being the only ones that could offer a coherent image of the Aquinas’s thinking as a synthesis of the Scholastic and the source of the occidental modernity.

c) The philological objective consists in the construction of a professional critical edition that will assure the international visibility of the Romanian translation by discovering some connections with the late antiquity works, ignored by the most recent editions that functioned as the source of the Summa Theologica. The Latin-Romanian translation may offer an opening to the classical Romanian philology for the research of the scholar medieval Latin that is constituting a very particular aspect of the Latin language by the lexical shaping under the problems criteria that the medieval theology and philosophy are inventing, that are exceeding the classical Latin vocabulary.

d) The theological objective is to establish a dialogue between the different Christian confessions by indicating a convergence point of a prolific debate in the Aquinas’s work. Considering the fact that, on one side, the palamisme was bred in the Christian Orient as a polemical answer at a series of Aquinas’s thesis concerning the proportion of the creator nature and the created nature, and, on the other side, that the appearance of the protestant phenomenon was also a reaction at the subjectivity theory proposed by Aquinas, the publication of the studies that are analyzing this work in an area of debates that include the both confessions it cannot be otherwise but extremely fecund.

The four objectives concerning the plans implied by the proposed project are possible by the effective publication of the volumes that are researching and commenting the Summa. Their major consequence consists in the determination of debates, of teaching, for the establishment of a terminological continuity and for the international confronting at the competence level of the research results.

a) The formative objective consists in the offering an accessible reference material, easy to understand and accompanied by instructive information for the students and the teachers that are making their studies in the fields of the history of the medieval philosophy, the Christian dogmatic, the mentalities history, the esthetics, the ethic, the ontology, the axiology, the logic and the theory of knowledge. The necessity of such an instrument it becomes obvious because of the rarity and of the particularity of the existent studies, from the most recent historical researches of medieval philosophy point of view. The involvement of more young specialists in formation within the project has as part their formation as specialists in medieval philosophy of a highly qualification by their training in the direct experience of the distributed work during the hole project.

b) The public objective concerns the dissemination of the knowledge in the scientific universities areas, but also the accomplishment of a dialogue between the philosophers, the theologians, the philologists and the historians that have a common reference, available in the language itself of the dialogue involved. Such an objective results from the presupposition according to which the existence of an authentically dialogue in a culture, becomes possible and determine a problematical space when defining the identity of the spiritual conscience of a community and in the defining of hers historical composition during medieval period and the modernity.

c) The media objective regards the construction of a site that will be willing to provide a constantly and public visibility of the contributions brought through the corresponding theme of the project and that will ensure the complete transparency of the research theme’s state at a national and international level.

d) The strategic objective concerns the connection of this research activity to others achievements made during the last years of the members implied in the project, that are ensuring in the present a far-reaching approach of the Summa Theologica. By consequence, the translation, the edition and the exegesis achieved by the team members between 2000-2007, of the integral Plotinus’s work, of the Aristotelians treatises The Politic and On the soul and of the anonymous Liber de causis had prepared the field of a terminological opening towards the Aquinas’s work, inspired by the Aristotelian thinking and by the Greek-Arabian Neo-Platonism.

By following the same strategically order, we may say that only after the conclusion of the research and of the work’s translation, the Romanian philosophical terminology will be able to receive other medieval and modern philosophical works placed in the middle road between the Greek Neo-Platonism and the configuration of the main problems of the christian dogmatic, fructified in the Aquinas’s philosophy;

e) The international objective concerns the achievement of a dialogue among the most important centers of Western medieval studies (Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques from Paris, Thomas Institut from Koln or Societa Internationale Tomasso d’Aquino from Rome which members are participating at this project). The preparation of a special edition of the revue Chora, revue des etudes anciennes et medievales, published by the Center of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy featuring Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques from Paris, the subjects of the project are having as purpose the obtaining of a maximal international visibility of the Romanian research of Summa’s Theologica.