Wisdom in Aristotle and Aquinas: From Metaphysics to Mysticism

This essay contains an attempt to trace the evolution of the concept of wisdom as found in the thought of Aristotle and Aquinas in terms of how the philosophical concept of wisdom as an intellectual virtue is understood and used to express the theological concept of wisdom as a gift of the Holy Spirit. The main aim is to understand how Aquinas derived the concept of wisdom from Aristotle's metaphysics and developed it in his mysticism. This research is based on a close study of Book Six of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, the corresponding sections of Aquinas' Sententia libri Ethicorum and question forty-five of the second part of the second part of Aquinas' Summa Theologiae. The insights gained from the study are then used to decipher the theoretical meaning of Augustine's famous saying: "love and do what thou wilt" and to expound on the practical value of wisdom for religious leaders

The Virtues and Vices of a Judge: An Aristotelian Guide to Judicial Selection

A core insight of the legal realists was that many disputes are indeterminate. For example, in many appellate adjudications, respectable legal arguments can be made for both sides of the dispute. A contemporary reaction to the realist insight by critical legal scholars is expressed in the slogan Law is politics. This critical slogan might be elaborated as follows: in openly political activities, such as the legislative process or partisan elections, debate centers on issues of value and social vision that are outside the scope of legal reasoning. Judicial opinions merely dress up political decisions in the garb of legal reasoning. The realist insight and critical reaction challenge conventional notions about the selection of appellate judges on the basis of merit-a combination of legal expertise and judicial temperament. If appellate judges really render decisions on the basis of politics, then why should judges be selected (or elected) on the basis of merit? In his essay, Judging in a Corner of the Law, Professor Schauer has gone so far as to suggest that appellate judges need not be lawyers and certainly need not be experienced or excellent lawyers. Moreover, Schauer maintains, the skills and knowledge desirable in appellate judges are not even taught in law schools

Modifications to Aristotle's Poetics

Aristotle's Poetics has been the basis for theories of entertainment for over 2,000 years. But the general approach it uses has led to a number of gaps, contradictions, and difficulties in predicting the success of books, plays, movies, and entertainment as a whole, so much so that sayings like "there are no rules, but you break them at your peril," and "in Hollywood, nobody knows anything" have become widespread and accepted. However, it turns out that a model of entertainment that defines literary conventions by the pleasurable feelings they release in the brain, and then equates them with outside experiences that people subconsciously attach to the literary work, in the same way that we can be conditioned to feel love when we view our wedding rings, can actually resolve almost every seeming contradiction in Aristotle's ideas and traditional theories of storytelling when compared to real-world results. Furthermore, this approach can be extended to the other major forms of art, including painting, music and even video games, leading to a "Non-Aristotelian" theory that modifies the fundamental aspects of each of these fields, but in a natural and necessary way, which strengthens both our understanding and our ability to predict the success or failure of art in the future. My work as a vlogger and writer, mostly done via my Youtube channel "StoryBrain," has been viewed over 6 million times, and written about in MovieMaker magazine, Creative Screenwriting magazine, on the front page of major sites like Reddit, Roger Ebert online, and in international newspapers like the Sydney Morning-Herald in Australia and Fotogramas in Spain. My work is also the subject of a chapter of the currently-in-release book "Neuro-Design," by Kogan Page publishing, called "The Neuro Movie Analyst." This paper is a detailed introduction to the theory of Emotional Indiscretion which I have talked about in my work

1. Greek and Medieval Science

What kind of questions did the Greeks ask themselves about the physical universe? We can paraphrase Plato: the stars move about the earth in circles, the perfect paths, and they move with uniform motion as befits divine and eternal beings. But five of these stars are planets (Greek for wanderers) which appear to have irregular motion, first moving forward, then actually stopping, and then moving backward for awhile. Since the heavens are incorruptible, the planets too must really be moving in uniform motion in circular paths. How then can we account for the apparently irregular motions? What uniform motions must be hypothesized to account for the observable wanderings? [excerpt