The Convertibility of Being and Goodness | Prof. Thomas Ward

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This lecture was given on February 22nd, 2025, at Dominican House of Studies.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speaker:

Thomas M. Ward is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He specializes in the history of philosophy and theology of the Middle Ages and has contributed over thirty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters to these fields of study. Ward is the author of After Stoicism: Last Words of the Last Roman Philosopher (Word on Fire, 2024), Ordered by Love: An Introduction to John Duns Scotus (Angelico, 2022), Divine Ideas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and has translated, with commentary, John Duns Scotus’s Treatise on the First Principle (Hackett, 2024). He has been a NEH Fellow (2022) and Harvey Fellow (2009-2011), and is a past winner of the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy Founder's Award (2013) and the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly Rising Scholar Essay Contest (2018). Before taking up his current post at Baylor, Ward taught in California at Azusa Pacific University (2011-2012) and Loyola Marymount University (2012-2017). He studied philosophy at Biola University (BA 2004) and theology at Oxford University (M.Phil 2006), where he was Head Resident at the Kilns, the former residence of C.S. Lewis. His PhD in philosophy is from UCLA (2011). Ward is married with six children and is a member of St. Peter Catholic Student Center in Waco.

This project/publication was made possible through the support of Grant 63391 from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

Transcript

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0:51.1	So this topic really is the positive corollary of the privation theory of evil.
0:58.9	If we accept that evil is not a real entity, but a lack of goodness where goodness should be,
1:08.9	then you might think that it simply follows that everything that exists is good insofar as it exists.
1:16.1	It doesn't actually quite follow, but it's a view that's naturally at home with the privation theory of evil.
1:23.1	After all, you could think, well, suppose that things in themselves are neutral
1:29.6	or that aspects of being were totally value neutral.
1:35.4	And then you could still define evil as a lack of goodness
1:38.3	without it entailing that every being just insofar as it exists is good.
1:46.0	So it's a corollary, I'm calling it, but not an entailment of the privation theory of evil,
1:52.6	that everything that exists is good insofar as it exists.
1:59.3	And so this too is a view that is well represented in the great theologians of the church,
	...

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