2015 4th TPRC - UST Philosophy Department

Theme: QUAESTIO: Aquinas, Truth, and the Passion Not to Stop Asking

Venue: Martyrs’ Hall, Ecclesiastical Faculties

When: 30-31 January 2015

Quaestio, like disputatio, is one of the most significant and popular literary and pedagogical forms of philosophic discourse during the Middle Ages.  One finds the prominence of quaestio in St. Thomas Aquinas’ magnum opus, Summa Theologica as well as in the transcripts of his numerous questiones disputatae.   As a thinker and teacher par excellence, St. Thomas was one who never balked at the questions of his time, especially those coming from the fertile minds of his wards and such interlocutors whose opinions he didn’t share.  Although a theologian by reason of profession, he was constantly employing philosophic discourse to provide new renditions of Catholic teachings even if it meant arguing against the privileged tenets of tradition and appropriating those which are considered strangers to the canons of Catholic faith.  Aquinas would say: “We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject. For both have labored in the search for truth and both have helped us in the finding of it.”

It was this reverence for truth, blended with a commitment to dialogic inquiry, which marked St. Thomas Aquinas’ whole intellectual career and made his legacy resonate well into the current generation.  St. Thomas has always been unfairly lampooned as a vanguard of conservatism yet history, as well as his philosophical and theological corpus would bear witness to this on the contrary.  What he had to say about justice, human emotions, the practice of virtues, the integrity of the human person, law and governance, cosmology, engagement with Islamic and Jewish thought, his creative critique of the ancient and medieval thoughts and his tireless efforts to wade through the apparent chasm between faith and reason testify to the breadth and uniqueness of his intellectual disposition which most scholars conceded as well ahead of his time.  Pope John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio, the most progressive encyclical on Thomism to date,  may be read therefore not just as an explicit endorsement of Thomism but veritably an outright recognition of the indispensability of the dialogic nature of philosophic enterprise which St. Thomas Aquinas represents.

In an age where we see a global rethinking of the role of faith/religion in the public sphere; the emergence of a variety of problems impinging on the dignity of the human person such as poverty, modern slavery, human trafficking, prostitution among others; the degradation of the environment brought about by the excessive confidence on the instrumental function of reason; the rise of competing ethical views; the shared interest on the search for an alternative discourse that would mitigate the economic and technological determinism of the present-day; the erosion of public good in favor of private interests, we turn once more to St. Thomas Aquinas for the necessary intellectual impetus as we engage with the questions and problems of our time just as he did in his own.

May we then invite you to join us in honoring and celebrating such legacy as the Department of Philosophy of the University of Santo Tomas convenes the Fourth Thomasian Philosophers Reunion Convention. The conference aims to bring Philosophy alumni of the university together in a dialogue. The conference theme is QUAESTIO: Aquinas, Truth and the Passion Not to Stop Asking.

Here is a list of confirmed speakers:

Michael Anthony Vasco, UST (PhD from UST)

Corazon Toralba, UA&P (PhD from UST)

Tomas Rosario, AdMU (PhD from UST)

Fr. Leonardo Mercado, SVD, UST (PhD from UST)

Ranilo Hermida, AdMU (AB from UST, PhD from Monash University)

Manny Dy, AdMU (PhD from UST)

F.P.A. Demeterio, DLSU (MA from UST, PhD from UP-Diliman)

Franz Giuseppe Cortez, UST (PhD from UST)

Bryan Bustamante, San Beda (PhD from UST)

Paolo A. Bolaños, UST (AB from UST, PhD from Macquarie University)

Fr. Antonio Aureada, OP, UST (MA from UST, SThD from Pontifical Gregorian University)

Rev. Fr. Ranhilio Aquino, San Beda (MA from UST, JD from Columbia Pacific University)

Moses Aaron Angeles, San Beda (PhD from UST)

Fleurdeliz Altez-Albela, UST (PhD from UST)

Jove Jim S. Aguas, UST (PhD from UST)

Bro. Romualdo Abulad, SVD, UST (PhD from UST)

The venue will be at the Martyrs’ Hall of the Ecclesiastical Faculties on 30-31 January 2015.  Please see attached program.