Thomas Aquinas

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Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 - March 7 1274) was a Catholic philosopher and theologian in the scholastic tradition, who gave birth to the Thomistic school of philosophy, which was long the official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church. He is considered by the Catholic church to be its greatest theologian and one of the thirty-three Doctors of the Church. St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick and the University of Saint Thomas are named for him.

Biography

Early years

The life of Thomas Aquinas offers many interesting insights into the world of the High Middle Ages. He was born into a family of the south Italian nobility and was through his mother Countess Theadora of Theate related to the Hohenstaufen dynasty of Holy Roman emperors. He was probably born early in 1225 at his father's castle of Roccasecca in the kingdom of Naples, his father being Count Landulf. Landulf's brother, Sinibald, was abbot of the original Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino, and the family intended Thomas to follow his uncle into that position; this would have been a normal career-path for a younger son of the nobility.

In his fifth year he was sent for his early education to the monastery. However, after studying at the University of Naples, Thomas joined the Dominican order, which along with the Franciscan order represented a revolutionary challenge to the well-established clerical systems of early medieval Europe. This change of heart did not please the family; on the way to Rome, Thomas was seized by his brothers and brought back to his parents at the castle of San Giovanni, where he was held a captive for a year or two to make him relinquish his purpose. According to his earliest biographers, the family even brought a prostitute to tempt him, but he drove her away.

Finally the family yielded and the Dominicans sent Thomas to Cologne to study under Albertus Magnus; he arrived probably in late 1244. He accompanied Albertus to the University of Paris in 1245, remained there with his teacher for three years, and followed Albertus back to Cologne in 1248. For several years longer he remained with the famous philosopher of scholasticism, presumably teaching. This long association of Thomas with the great polyhistor was the most important influence in his development; it made him a comprehensive scholar and won him permanently for the Aristotelian method. Thomas Aquinas was deeply religious and represented the separated view of the world of the middle ages: something was either demonical or divine. When he encountered a robot or early automata made by Albertus Magnus that imitated a woman and could speak he demolished it in the belief that it could be only satanic. See Weblinks.

Career

In 1252 Aquinas went to Paris for the master's degree, but met with some difficulty owing to attacks on the mendicant orders by the professoriate of the University. Ultimately, however, he received the degree and entered upon his office of teaching in 1257; he taught in Paris for several years and there wrote some of his works and began others. In 1259 he was present at an important chapter of his order at Valenciennes. At the solicitation of Pope Urban IV (therefore not before the latter part of 1261), he took up his residence in Rome. In 1269-71 he was again active in Paris. In 1272 the provincial chapter at Florence empowered him to found a new studium generale at such place as he should choose, and he selected Naples.

Contemporaries described Thomas as a big man, corpulent and dark-complexioned, with a large head and receding hairline. His manners showed his breeding; he is described as refined, affable, and lovable. In argument he maintained self-control and won over opponents by his personality and great learning. His tastes were simple. His associates were specially impressed by his power of memory. When absorbed in thought, he often forgot his surroundings. The ideas he developed by such strenuous absorption he was able to express for others systematically, clearly and simply.

Death and canonization

Early in 1274 the Pope directed him to attend the Second Council of Lyons and, though far from well, he undertook the journey. On the way he stopped at the castle of a niece and there became seriously ill. He wished to end his days in a monastery and not being able to reach a house of the Dominicans he was taken to the Cistercians. He died at the monastery of Fossanova, one mile from Sonnino, on March 7, 1274.

Aquinas had made a remarkable impression on all who knew him. He was placed on a level with the saints Paul and Augustine, receiving the title doctor angelicus. In 1319, the Roman Catholic Church began investigations preliminary to Aquinas's canonization; on July 18, 1323, he was pronounced a saint by Pope John XXII at Avignon. At the Council of Trent only 2 books were placed on the Altar, the Bible and St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica.

Aquinas's philosophy

Aquinas worked to create a philosophical system which integrated Christian doctrine with elements taken from the philosophy of Aristotle. Generally, he augmented the Neo-Platonic view of philosophy which, after Augustine, had become tremendously influential amongst medieval philosophers, with insights drawn from Aristotle. In this he was greatly influenced by his reading of contemporary Arabic philosophers, especially Averroes. Aquinas, is, therefore, generally agreed to have moved the focus of Scholastic philosophy from Plato to Aristotle. The extent to which he was successful in doing this is, of course, still hotly debated.

In his writings Thomas does not, like Duns Scotus, make the reader his associate in the search for truth, but teaches it authoritatively. The consciousness of the insufficiency of his works in view of the revelation which he believed he had received was a cause for dissatisfaction.

The writings of Thomas may be classified as,

(1) exegetical, homiletical, and liturgical;

(2) dogmatic, apologetic, and ethical; and

(3) philosophical.

Category (1) includes: Commentaries on Job (1261-65), Psalms i - li, and Isaiah; Catena aurea (1475)- a running commentary on the four Gospels, constructed on numerous citations from the Church Fathers; Commentaries on Canticles and Jeremiah; reportata, on John, on Matthew, and on the epistles of Paul, including, according to one authority, Hebrews i.-x. Officium de corpora Christi (1264). Numerous other works have been attributed to him.

Category (2): In quatuor sententiarum libros; Quaestiones disputatae; Quaestiones quodlibetales duodecim; Summa catholicae fidei contra gentiles (1261-64);

Summa theologioe. - his magnum opus.

Also: Expositio in librum beati Dionysii de divinis nominibus; Expositiones primoe et secundoe decretalis; In Boethii libros de hebdomadibus; Proeclaroe quoestiones super librum Boethii de trinitate.

Category (3): Thirteen commentaries on Aristotle, and numerous philosophical opuscula of which fourteen are classed as genuine.

Familiarity with Jewish philosophy

Aquinas did not disdain to draw upon Jewish philosophical sources. His main work, "Summa Theologiæ," shows a profound knowledge not only of the writings of Avicebron (Ibn Gabirol), whose name he mentions, but of most Jewish philosophical works then existing.

Thomas pronounces himself energetically against the hypothesis of the eternity of the world. But as this theory is attributed to Aristotle, he seeks to demonstrate that the latter did not express himself categorically on this subject. "The argument," said he, "which Aristotle presents to support this thesis is not properly called a demonstration, but is only a reply to the theories of those ancients who supposed that this world had a beginning and who gave only impossible proofs. There are three reasons for believing that Aristotle himself attached only a relative value to this reasoning. . . ." ("Summa Theologiæ," i. 45, art. 1). In this Thomas copies word for word Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed, where those reasons are given (I:2,15).

His proofs for the existence of God

Thus he gives five proofs of the existence of God, three of which are taken from Jewish philosophers. The first runs as follows: "It is clear that there are in this world things which are moved. Now, every object which is moved receives that movement from another. If the motor is itself moved, there must be another motor moving it, and after that yet another, and so on. But it is impossible to go on indefinitely, for then there would be no first motor at all, and consequently no movement" ("Contra Gentiles," ii. 33). This proof seems to be taken from Maimonides, whose seventeenth proposition reads: "All that which is moved has necessarily a motor" (Guide of the Perplexed, II:16).

Second proof: "We discern in all sensible things a certain chain of efficient causes. We find, however, nothing which is its own efficient cause, for that cause would then be anterior to itself. On the other side, it is impossible to ascend from cause to cause indefinitely in the series of efficient causes....There must therefore exist one self-sufficient, efficient cause, and that is God" ("Contra Gent." i. 22). This is similar to the argument in Bahya ibn Pakuda's Duties of the Heart (chapter on "Unity," 5) and Maimonides' argument in the Guide, II:16.

The third proof runs: "We find in nature things which may be and may not be, since there are some who are born and others who die; they consequently can exist or not exist. But it is impossible that such things should live for ever, for there is nothing which may be as well as not be at one time. Thus if all beings need not have existed, there must have been a time in which nothing existed. But, in that case, nothing would exist now; for that which does not exist can not receive life but from one who exists; . . . there must therefore be in nature a necessarily existent being." This proof is based on Avicenna's doctrine of a necessary and possible being, and is expounded by Maimonides in the Guide, II:19.

Demonstrating God's creative power

In order to demonstrate God's creative power, Thomas says: "If a being participates, to a certain degree, in an 'accident,' this accidental property must have been communicated to it by a cause which possesses it essentially. Thus iron becomes incandescent by the action of fire. Now, God is His own power which subsists by itself. The being which subsists by itself is necessarily one" ("Summa Theol." i. 44, art. 1). This idea is also expounded by Bahya ibn Pakuda in his "Duties of the Heart."

Appreciation in the Jewish community

Aquinas' doctrines, because of their close relationship with those of Jewish philosophy, found great favor among Jews. Judah Romano (born 1286) translated Aquinas' ideas from Latin into Hebrew under the title "Ma'amar ha-Mamschalim," together with other small treatises extracted from the "Contra Gentiles" ("Neged ha-Umot").

Eli Hobillo (1470) translated, without Hebrew title, the "Quæstiones Disputatæ," "Quæstio de Anima," his "De Animæ Facultatibus," under the title "Ma'amar be-KoḦot ha-Nefesh," (edited by Jellinek); his "De Universalibus" as "Be-Inyan ha-Kolel"; "Shaalot Ma'amar beNimẓa we-biMehut."

Abraham Nehemiah ben Joseph (1490) translated Thomas' "Commentarii in Metaphysicam." According to Moses Almosnino, Isaac Abravanel desired to translate the "Quæstio de Spiritualibus Creaturis." Abravanel indeed seems to have been well acquainted with the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, whom he mentions in his work "Mif'alot Elohim" (vi. 3). The physician Jacob Zahalen (d. 1693) translated some extracts from the "Summa Theologiæ Contra Gentiles."

Writings

• Summa contra Gentiles
• Summa Theologica
• The Principles of Nature
• On Being and Essence (De Ente et Essentia)
• On Truth (De Veritate)

Modern criticism

Some of the conclusions he reaches in his work, Summa Theologica, are at odds with contemporary ethics (cf. Gospel of John 7:7), giving rise to questions as to whether St. Thomas may be regarded as an authority. An example of a clash between modern mores and the theology expounded by St. Thomas is that over masturbation, today regarded as a foible, or even as a means of health, yet which St. Thomas determined, in II-II 153, to be a mortal sin. Still, the Catholic Church still maintains this position Catechism. Of course, questions raised on the latter basis alone only have validity, outside mere ad hominem argumentation, if we indeed demonstrate modern ethics correct over against St. Thomas's, which has never been done.

On the other hand, many modern ethicists, both within and outside of the Catholic Church, have recently become very excited about Aquinas' virtue ethics, notably Philippa Foot and Alasdair MacIntyre, as a way of avoiding utilitarianism or Kantian deontology.

Modern readers might also find the method frequently used to reconcile Christian and Aristotelian doctrine rather strenuous. In some cases, the conflict is resolved by showing that a certain term actually has two meanings, the Christian doctrine referring to one meaning, the Aristotelian to the second. Thus, both doctrines can be said to be true. Indeed, noting distinctions is a necessary part of true philosophical inquiry. In most cases, Aquinas finds a reading of the Aristotelian text which might not always satisfy modern scholars of Aristotle but which is a plausible rendering of the Philosopher's meaning and nevertheless thoroughly Christian. Indeed, Aquinas usually sheds much light on the subject at hand, which after all is what matters in the end.

Links

• Wikisource
• Wired about Robot from Albertus Magnus
• Aquins destruction of Mechanical Woman
• Catholic Encyclopedia article

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