Thomistic Meditations: What We Learn from Phenomenological Anthropology

With Daniel De Haan, PhD, Research Fellow in Natural Theology at the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion and the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford.

I start with division between several rival traditions of philosophical anthropology. I locate the basic differences between the Thomist and phenomenological traditions of philosophical anthropology in the way they approach and answer the basic questions “who are we?” and “what are we?” Next, in the two main parts of the presentation, I first address some of the substantive minor and major ways phenomenology can enrich Thomist anthropology. I focus on the problems Thomism faces in the very starting point of its demarcation of the psychological objects and operations required to differentiate the psychological powers of human nature. I argue for the indispensable need to appropriate phenomenological elucidations of subject and object consciousness, including how we enactively engage our environment and world as embodied rational animals. I conclude by pointing out ways the phenomenological tradition, and in particular its hermeneutical and genealogical enquiries, provides insights for helping Thomism overcome one of its own epistemological crises.