The aim of this chapter is to introduce Aquinas’s account of ultimate explanations in metaphysics. What are the constituent principles of created reality? What do they indicate about God in his unique existence, nature, and divine simplicity? How may one reasonably understand the Christian doctrine of the Trinity in light of the affirmation of divine simplicity? To consider these questions I will proceed in three stages, examining first Aquinas’s distinctive claims regarding the distinction of essence and existence in creatures; second his interpretation of the traditional Christian affirmation that the divine nature is simple; and third his concept of Trinitarian persons as subsistent relations, a teaching that helps illustrate the logical compatibility of Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology, his doctrine of God, and his metaphysics of creaturely composition.

This chapter considers the difficulty that economics has found in defining labor as a practice separate from its product. Looking first at classical and Marxist economics, it uses feminist economics to highlight the omissions that conventional definitions of labor contain, especially concerning the work of women. By comparing feminist economics with recent novels by women, including Halle Butler’s The New Me (2019), Alice Furse’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (2014), Heike Geissler’s Seasonal Associate (2014), Hilary Leichter’s Temporary (2020), and Ling Ma’s Severance (2018), it argues that contemporary fiction has been attentive to the same omissions. Through a reading of the techniques of literary fiction, including realism and a range of experimental narrative devices, the chapter proposes that the contemporary novel offers kinds of writing that expand our conception of labor. Contemporary fiction contains narratives that highlight the work of social reproduction as a central component of the economies of labor and offer a wider critique of economic categories of value.

Wherever Aquinas discusses mental life – cognition, perception, thought, knowledge, reasoning – his writing can seem like a trackless wilderness to the uninitiated. The texts overflow with technical Latin terms that come into English as impenetrable jargon: ‘intellect in actuality,’ ‘habit of science,’ ‘sensible species,’ ‘intelligible being,’ ‘intellected intention,’ ‘estimative power,’ ‘word of the heart.’ Even terms corresponding to familiar English terms, such as ‘belief,’ ‘judgment,’ ‘experience,’ ‘passion,’ ‘intention,’ or ‘perception,’ are used in confusing and unexpected ways.

The doctrine of the Incarnation is the Christian teaching that Jesus Christ, the man who was born of Mary and crucified under Pontius Pilate, was not merely a human, but was God incarnate – one person of the Holy Trinity. Retaining his divine nature, the Son of God took on, or assumed, in the technical language, a human nature, and thus became a real human, no less a human than you or I. Jesus Christ, then, on the traditional view that Aquinas inherited and defended, is one divine person with two complete natures. This chapter will focus on Aquinas’s metaphysical understanding of the Incarnation. For a discussion of the goal of the Incarnation – the regeneration of humans to right relationship with God – seein this volume, by Thomas Williams.1

The nature of Aquinas’s ethical theory has often been the subject of debate among scholars. During much of the twentieth century, he was regarded as holding a natural law theory. In more recent years, recognition of his extensive discussion on virtue has led scholars to argue for a virtue-based account. Currently, an important debate centers on what counts as genuine virtues for Aquinas.

Although initially associated with English forms of horror and Gothic culture, as interest in folk horror has intensified over the past decade it has become apparent that the subgenre’s scope transcends national boundaries. It has also become obvious that there is a distinctive – and evolving – North American folk horror tradition. This chapter has three strands. The first establishes that the powerful North American suspicion of the community in the wilderness owes much to anxieties spawned during the English colonization of North America, as underlined by Robert Eggers’ 2015 film The Witch: A New-England Folk Tale. In the second section the author briefly surveys some of the most prominent post–World War II American folk horror texts. Finally, several recent folk horror texts are discussed in which the recent feminization of American folk horror is placed at the forefront, concluding with a discussion of Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019).

This chapter examines natural philosophy in the early modern period (roughly 1600-1800), focusing on three areas: 1) the so-called mechanisation of nature, which presents a rival understanding of the natural order to that of medieval Aristotelianism; 2), the rise of experiment and laws of nature as tools for the knowledge of nature; 3) the emergence of new theologies of nature and new methods of biblical interpretation, which develop in concert with wider changes in natural philosophy. The chapter demonstrates how early modern thinkers inherit and transform the natural philosophy of the medieval Latin tradition, producing new philosophical and theological accounts of nature that are sufficiently comprehensive to rival the Christian-Aristotelian framework of the Middle Ages.

The premise of this chapter is that an examination of the Cuban son provides important insights into Cuban history and society, into Caribbean race relations, and ongoing processes of cultural fusion involving Afro-descendant and Euro-descendant practices, among others. The chapter focuses primarily on early son history, its antecedent forms, the African-influenced aesthetic sense that gave rise to it, and the popularization of the music and dance in the early twentieth century. Later it briefly considers changes to son music in the 1930s and beyond.

This chapter reviews the evidence from the Greek world for tribute and taxation. It begins with some comparative considerations about tributary regimes and the impact of Achaemenid imperialism on the fiscal development of the Greek city-states, including the Delian League and the Hellenistic kingdoms. The transition from tribute to taxation is cast as a significant indicator of state formation. A fundamental theme in ancient Greek taxation is the relationship between coercion and consent, especially how political institutions facilitate the sharing of communal burdens by the rich. Extraordinary levies on property and persons were a common feature of city-states, which Macedon and the Hellenistic kingdoms also adopted. Finally, the chapter treats indirect taxes, which are thought to provide a much larger and more regular portion of state revenue in the Greek world.

The conquest of Egypt and Asia, leading to new urban and fiscal infrastructures and new forms and levels of elite consumption, increased the scale of trade and exchange in the Hellenistic economy. Complex institutional changes that were spurred by both fiscal-military demand and local responses to this demand changed agrarian and commercial patterns, with likely positive effects on local markets. This chapter argues that the Hellenistic period was one of moderate economic growth both in the Greek poleis of the Aegean and in the core regions of Hellenistic Asia and Egypt. The greater presence of Roman traders in the Hellenistic East from the second century onwards is also likely to have had positive effects on market exchange and monetary circulation. Yet there is reason to assume that in the final decades of the Hellenistic period, all Hellenistic regions to some extent, but particularly the Aegean and Asia Minor, suffered from the destructive forces of the Roman military presence and subsequent tributary exploitation. Only after the Roman civil wars came to an end and fiscal practices were better regulated did the economies of the East begin to recover and to expand along the pathways that had developed in the Hellenistic period.