Can man be happy? And how can happiness be achieved? These everlasting human concerns are the focus of Thomas Aquinas’s analysis of man. His account of human action and his treatment of cognitive and practical faculties are all centred in an attempt to answer these questions. The view he arrived to is a definitive contribution to the history of philosophy, one which is still an object of study and discussion in contemporary debates. This seminar will deal with the extensive discussion of human happiness, which Aquinas put forward at the beginning of the second part of his Summa theologiae. Subsequently, it will consider the contributions of some contemporary philosophers working in the English-speaking tradition who used Aquinas’s account of happiness as a living contended in current debates.

Seminar zum Thema:
Analytical Thomism and The Philosophy of Action

Prof. Dr. Gabriele de Anna, Lehrstuhl für Philosophie I
Donnerstags, 14-tägig, 14:00 - 15:45 Uhr (ab 13.11.2008)
Raum: U2 / 226 (hinter dem Sekretariat Philolosophie I)