Aquinas's Ethics: Metaphysical Foundations, Moral Theory, and Theological Context

Acknowledgments

acknowledgments This book has been a long time coming. When Rebecca, Colleen, and I first began the conversations that led to our thinking that it would be a great idea for us to sit down and write a book together, we were all (very) junior scholars, and the millennium was just getting underway. It should come as no real surprise, then, that the number of people to whom we owe thanks for their support and encouragement over the course of this project far exceeds the number to whom we can do justice in these acknowledgments. We offer our deepest apologies to all those who deserve more (and better) thanks than we can give them here. This project went through two distinct phases, each of which was supported by a separate grant: first, a three-year Initiative Grant from the Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities facilitated our initial conversations on this topic at summer workshops and conferences; second, a two-year grant from the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship supported our meeting to discuss the manuscript while it was in progress, as well as funding one course-release apiece. As anyone who has collaborated on a long-term project with colleagues at different universities knows, this type of support was absolutely essential for the completion of this book. Our heartfelt thanks to both the CCCU (particularly Harold Heie) and the CCCS— especially to Jim Bratt and Donna Romanowski, whose good-humored flexibility allowed us to rearrange funding timetables and course releases to meet unexpected changes in our schedules. The CCCU grant culminated in a two-day conference held at Saint Louis University on April 11–12, 2003, which focused on the major themes of our project. The success of the conference encouraged us to stop talking about how Aquinas’s ethics needs to be understood in its metaphysical xi and theological context and to start writing about it instead. We’d like to thank Denis Bradley, Thomas Hibbs, Scott MacDonald, Bob Pasnau, Brian Shanley, Eleonore Stump, and Thomas Williams for their willingness to speak on “our” topic and for their insightful contributions. In addition to CCCU funds, the conference was supported by a variety of sources at Saint Louis University, including the Department of Philosophy , the Wade Memorial Session, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the Manresa Program in Catholic Studies. Ted Vitali, SLU “chair extraordinaire,” has been a source of constant enthusiasm for our project since its inception, as well as for our scholarly abilities; he is just one of the many people in our home departments who merit far more gratitude than we can express here. Our thanks, nonetheless, to all the wonderful folks in the philosophy departments at Saint Louis University and Calvin College, especially Eleonore Stump (to whom we owe special thanks for encouraging us to begin this project and for her sustained support during the long process of its completion), John Kavanaugh, Terence Cuneo, Ruth Groenhout, and Del Ratzsch. Additional thanks go to those in other departments who have commented on earlier versions of individual chapters , including Jeff Brower, Scott MacDonald, and John O’Callaghan. Writing a book with two other people that attempts to present a single argument in a unified voice is a daunting task—and one of the reasons this book has been so long in the making. Each of us read and commented on several versions of the others’ chapters, and each of us tried to abide by the others’ general rules of writing. Still, the voice of the book as a whole would be far more fractured if it weren’t for the hard work and meticulous attention of Gayle Boss, who was the first person (other than us) brave enough to read through the entire manuscript and offer extensive suggestions for copyediting. Comments from the anonymous referees at the University of Notre Dame Press also proved helpful in this respect; we are especially grateful for the substantive suggestions provided by those referees, and we accept full responsibility for any errors that remain in the text. There is an awkwardness inherent to the “family and friends” acknowledgments section of a coauthored book, which we have decided xii Acknowledgments to handle by taking a completely generic route: our many thanks, then, to all our friends and family members for their love, support, and encouragement . We may not be mentioning you...