Topic
Topic
Pantheism
The doctrine according to which God and creation are identical. Thus, everything that exists would be divine or some aspect of the divine.
Participation
Possessing some reality or attribute in a limited way. E.g., creatures possess existence in a limited way and not in the unlimited way in which God possesses it. Creatures, thus, have existence by par...
Particular Affirmative Proposition
A categorical proposition that affirms that the predicate applies to some of the subject. Whether the predicate applies to more than some of the subject is left open. It can be formally expressed as “...
Particular Negative Proposition
A categorical proposition that denies that the predicate applies to some of the subject. Whether the predicate applies to none of the subject is left open. It can be formally expressed as “Some S is n...
Passion
(also called Emotion).— A movement of the sense appetite in response to a particular, concrete good apprehended by the estimative or cogitative sense power, which consider the known object under aspec...
Patient
That which is affected by the efficient causality of an agent and, hence, the subject of a change. E.g., a tree that is struck by an ax wielded by a lumberjack.
Per Accidens
Latin term that can be translated as “accidentally,” “by accident,” or “not essentially.”
Per Se
Latin term that can be translated as “by itself,” “through itself,” or, in some cases, as “essentially.”
Perfection
1. Ontologically understood, a state of being complete, i.e., not lacking in what is required by a nature; self-sufficiency. 2. Morally understood, being in a state or consistently living in a way tha...
Person
According to the generally accepted definition of Boethius, a person is an individual substance of a rational or intellectual nature. The notion of person is subject to analogical differences dependi...
Phantasm
An image produced by the imagination of what we perceive by our external senses or of what is derived from their perceptions.
Philosophy
“The love of wisdom.” However, this very general definition has been understood in various ways. For Socrates and, to an extent, Plato, philosophy is either a preparation for a proper and detached d...
Philosophy of Nature
(also called Natural Philosophy and, in ancient and scholastic usage, Physics).— The philosophical study of being under the aspect of mobility. Classically, the philosophy of nature treated of mobile...
Political Philosophy
(in scholastic usage, also called Political Science or Politics).— The division of moral philosophy that studies the nature, principles, and structures of the political community, as well as the dynam...
Potency
(also called Power).— A capacity for act, whether entitative or operative.
Practical
Terminating in an operation or action of human making or doing.
Predicable
The logical relationship that a predicate bears to its subject in a proposition. There are five predicables: genus, difference, species, property, and accident. In the following proposition, the predi...
Premise
A proposition in an argument whose truth, when taken together with the truth of at least one other proposition, is supposed to entail the truth of the conclusion.
Principle
1. That from which something in some way proceeds. 2. More restrictively, that which in some way determines or constitutes a thing. 3. Improperly, principle is sometimes equated with cause.
Principle of (Efficient) Causality
The principle according to which whatever comes into existence must have an efficient cause.
Principle of Double Effect
The principle according to which an action that has both a good and a bad effect is morally permissible on the following four conditions: (a) the act to be performed is morally good in itself or moral...
Principle of Excluded Middle
The principle according to which there is no third possibility between being and non-being. Thus, something either is or is not.
Principle of Finality
The principle according to which every agent is ordered toward an end. It is sometimes formulated in the following way: every agent acts for an end or, in Latin, omne agens agit propter finem.
Principle of Identity
The principle according to which being is being, and non-being is non-being.
Principle of Likeness in Causality
(omne agens agit sibi simile).— The metaphysical principle according to which all effects have some formal likeness to their cause. This principle is sometimes expressed thus: every cause likens its...
Principle of Non-Contradiction
(also called Principle of Contradiction, Law of Non-Contradiction, Law of Contradiction).— The principle according to which being is not non-being or, more exactly, that one and the same thing cannot...
Principle of Proportionate Causality
The principle according to which no effect can be greater than its efficient cause. Properly understood, this principle does not imply that the effect must be produced by a single cause which is equal...
Principle of Sufficient Reason
(also called Principle of Reason).— The principle according to which whatever exists must have a reason for its existence, this reason being either intrinsic or extrinsic to the thing which exists. So...
Privation
1. The absence of a form that could be present in a thing. E.g., the absence of motion in a ball. 2. The absence of what should be present; the absence of a due good; moral or natural evil. E.g., the...
Property
1. See Necessary Accident. 2. Any attribute of a thing. 3. In logic, a predicable designating that something belongs only, necessarily, and always to a given species and its members. For example, to b...
Proposition
The term in logic for the means by which the second operation of the intellect (i.e., judgment) is attained. More precisely, it is the affirmation or negation of a predicate of a subject. Sometimes a...
Providence
1. God’s ordering of things to their ends. 2. God’s execution of the plan that he has concerning the ordering of things to their ends. Both of these senses are also referred to as “divine government”...
Prudence
(also called Practical Wisdom).— The intellectual and cardinal virtue by which one makes the right decisions about what is to be done in concrete situations (“right reason about things to be done”). I...
Psychology
1. Modern scholastic usage. The division of the philosophy of nature (also called Special Philosophy of Nature) that studies living things, i.e., animated beings, which have souls. It is less often us...
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