Marie I. George responds to the use of Aquinas by a Dominican biologist. The full title is “Aquinas’s Teaching on Concepts and Words in His Commentary on John, contra Nicanor Austriaco OP.” The article appears in the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly (volume 94(3), 2020, pages 357-378).
Nicanor Austriaco’s article, titled, “Defending Adam after Darwin”, appears in the same journal, a little over a year earlier. My comments will appear in a separate work.
Nonetheless, George takes the Dominican to task in a most interesting way, little realizing that we, civilized folk, practice two types of abstraction. One is concocted in the our current Lebenswelt. The other is an adaptation to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
So, there is a possibility that Aquinas addresses one type of abstraction and Austriaco another.
Even weirder, Aquinas may be describing intrinsic abstraction, characteristic of human evolution and Austriaco may be pointing to extrinsic abstraction, characteristic of human life after Adam.
Thus, Marie George’s critique inadvertently raises the very idea that Nicanor Austriaco OP misses in his defense of Adam.
Our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
