Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
For Italian theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas later in the 13th century, Aristotle’s natural sciences, ethics, and politics commented on a clear natural order that could rise to a higher dimension by faith. Born about 1225 at Roccasecca, midway between Rome and Naples, he became a Catholic priest in the Dominican Order and one of the most important medieval philosophers and theologians. He was immensely influenced by scholasticism and Aristotle and known for his synthesis of the two aforementioned traditions.
Aquinas believed that when infused by grace, Aristotle’s natural virtues could become supernatural virtues. Like Aristotle, Aquinas recognized that the body positioned human beings in the natural order where they shared many characteristics with animals and also argued that human ideas originated through the senses, which experienced an external world of objects. In turn, the mind then produced concepts as it extracted the form of the objects as conveyed with sensory data. He also believed that the greatest pleasure human beings could experience came from the supernatural life of the soul in the vision of God after death, although he did agree with Aristotle on the significance of reason. Aquinas eventually developed one of the greatest syntheses in Western educational thought by incorporating Aristotle’s philosophy of natural realism with the doctrines of the Christian Church. It combined the Greek and Roman classical intellectual legacy with the new cultural dynamic of Christianity.
Built upon Aristotle’s ideas, Aquinas’s dualism dichotomized life and learning into two dimensions: the spiritual and the corporeal. It then extended the spiritual into the intellectual dimension of theory and the corporeal into practice. Despite John Dewey’s later criticism, the theory-practice distinction has remained an important characteristic of Western education.
Although he wrote many works of philosophy and theology throughout his life, his most influential work is the Summa Theologica which consists of three parts. The first part is on God. In it, he gives five proofs for God’s existence as well as an explication of His attributes. He argues for the actuality and incorporeality of God as the unmoved mover and describes how God moves through His thinking and willing. The second part is on Ethics. Thomas argues for a variation of the Aristotelian Virtue Ethics. However, unlike Aristotle, he argues for a connection between the virtuous man and God by explaining how the virtuous act is one towards the blessedness of the Beatific Vision (beata visio). The last part of the Summa is on Christ and was unfinished when Thomas died. In it, he shows how Christ not only offers salvation, but represents and protects humanity on Earth and in Heaven. This part also briefly discusses the sacraments and eschatology. The Summa remains the most influential of Thomas’s works and is mostly what will be discussed in this overview of his philosophy.
A prolific writer, Aquinas penned close to 60 known works ranging in length. Handwritten copies of his works were distributed to libraries across Europe. His philosophical and theological writings spanned a wide spectrum of topics, including commentaries on the Bible and discussions of Aristotle’s writings on natural philosophy.
Shortly after his death, Aquinas's theological and philosophical writings rose to great public acclaim and reinforced a strong following among the Dominicans. Universities, seminaries, and colleges came to replace Lombard's Four Books of Sentences with Summa Theologica as the leading theology textbook. The influence of Aquinas's writing has been so widespread that somewhere in the range of 6,000 commentaries on his work exist to date.
Aquinas believed that when infused by grace, Aristotle’s natural virtues could become supernatural virtues. Like Aristotle, Aquinas recognized that the body positioned human beings in the natural order where they shared many characteristics with animals and also argued that human ideas originated through the senses, which experienced an external world of objects. In turn, the mind then produced concepts as it extracted the form of the objects as conveyed with sensory data. He also believed that the greatest pleasure human beings could experience came from the supernatural life of the soul in the vision of God after death, although he did agree with Aristotle on the significance of reason. Aquinas eventually developed one of the greatest syntheses in Western educational thought by incorporating Aristotle’s philosophy of natural realism with the doctrines of the Christian Church. It combined the Greek and Roman classical intellectual legacy with the new cultural dynamic of Christianity.
Built upon Aristotle’s ideas, Aquinas’s dualism dichotomized life and learning into two dimensions: the spiritual and the corporeal. It then extended the spiritual into the intellectual dimension of theory and the corporeal into practice. Despite John Dewey’s later criticism, the theory-practice distinction has remained an important characteristic of Western education.
Although he wrote many works of philosophy and theology throughout his life, his most influential work is the Summa Theologica which consists of three parts. The first part is on God. In it, he gives five proofs for God’s existence as well as an explication of His attributes. He argues for the actuality and incorporeality of God as the unmoved mover and describes how God moves through His thinking and willing. The second part is on Ethics. Thomas argues for a variation of the Aristotelian Virtue Ethics. However, unlike Aristotle, he argues for a connection between the virtuous man and God by explaining how the virtuous act is one towards the blessedness of the Beatific Vision (beata visio). The last part of the Summa is on Christ and was unfinished when Thomas died. In it, he shows how Christ not only offers salvation, but represents and protects humanity on Earth and in Heaven. This part also briefly discusses the sacraments and eschatology. The Summa remains the most influential of Thomas’s works and is mostly what will be discussed in this overview of his philosophy.
A prolific writer, Aquinas penned close to 60 known works ranging in length. Handwritten copies of his works were distributed to libraries across Europe. His philosophical and theological writings spanned a wide spectrum of topics, including commentaries on the Bible and discussions of Aristotle’s writings on natural philosophy.
Shortly after his death, Aquinas's theological and philosophical writings rose to great public acclaim and reinforced a strong following among the Dominicans. Universities, seminaries, and colleges came to replace Lombard's Four Books of Sentences with Summa Theologica as the leading theology textbook. The influence of Aquinas's writing has been so widespread that somewhere in the range of 6,000 commentaries on his work exist to date.