Aquinas on Ontology, Knowledge, and the Existence of God
Ontology
The sensory experience teaches us that there are beings that exist by themselves. This defines their essence or substance, their “quiddity.” Their form allows us to have a concept of substance and matter, unlike individuals of the same species, which can explain the change. They are composed of matter and form. Matter is the potential, and the form is the act of the subject, according to Aquinas. Thomas takes part in creation; God created the world, and therefore there exists a being who is the creator and created beings. Thus, God is the quintessential cause of beings, and other beings exist because of Him. His fundamental reform to suit the needs of Christian dogma is the real distinction between essence and existence. In this relationship, the concepts of potency and act are also involved, so that the essence is in the power and existence is the act. God is thus the essence of who exists by Himself. The essence is that by which a thing *is*. Existence is that by which a thing *exists*.
Creation, Participation, and Analogy
These are cause and effect.
- Creation: As finite beings, we are created from nothing, and God cannot express Himself because He is simple and spiritual.
- Participation: It is the ontological relationship. God is to be essentially and necessarily existent, and if things take it.
- Analogy: It is a cognitive relationship. The term “being” applied to creatures has a meaning that is not identical, similar, or corresponding to the essence of the being of God. Analogy is the difference between being a supreme created being and is not meant to be neither univocal nor equivocal, but analogous, similar but different proportions.
Theory of Knowledge: Thomas Aquinas
Aquinas does not need to prove the existence of God because faith gives us that reality. The purpose is to show that reason can reach its existence. All knowledge must start from sense experience, just so you can trace the degree of abstraction, the ideas that are abstracted from the sensible. Reason should be a source of knowledge because reality is an intelligible character; the world is articulated rationally because of the existence of forms. Abstraction is the process by which knowledge is passed from sensitive to intelligible knowledge, which separates the form of the matter. This is derived from the senses; there is nothing in the understanding that has not previously been in the senses. The understanding has a dual activity: on the one hand, it is able to abstract, to remove the substance of each object perceived by the senses; on the other side, it is able to formulate an abstract concept.
Demonstration of Science
Science is able to capture the sensitive objects in the following steps:
- The imagination beckons the susceptible species recorded in the self-image of that object.
- This image is called a ghost.
- The susceptible species called agent intellect abstracts, taking off everything that has to do with the particular.
- The result is the intelligible species.
- The passive understanding develops the universal concept. This is what Thomas calls the intelligible species.
The ghost conversion occurs when you apply the understanding directly to the object. The universal understanding is known, concrete beings are known indirectly.
Reason and Faith
Aquinas takes apart reason and faith, in addition to defending the need for their entire scope of concordance. Philosophy comes exclusively from reason. For its part, theology is based on revelation in the authority of God. Neither reason nor disclosure may be misleading. We have the obligation to carry as far as possible the rational interpretation of the truths of faith, to move up reason to revelation. Faith can help in three ways:
- Showing the preambles of faith, truths whose demonstration is necessary or clarifying.
- Clarifying faith through comparisons of articles of faith.
- Refuting the objections made against the faith, showing that they are false.
Faith can also assist reason as a standard or criterion of extrinsic truth. There may be no conflict between faith and reason. If allowed, only a very small portion of people would know God, for various reasons: a natural disposition devoid of intellect, lack of time, or lack of motivation for the investigations. The second drawback is the great difficulty and the long time required for these studies. The road that leads to these truths is not error-free.
Individualization
The understanding deprives the agent of the particular object and keeps the universal essence. This intelligible species is common to all individuals of the same species. The matter is different in each.
Five Ways
The rational demonstration of God is necessary and possible because we have no concept of infinite reality. It requires an explanation and affirmation of a causal series. The roads are paths to God from the real world. The logical structure is the same in the five ways:
- First, as a starting point, the experience of an effect.
- Second, a universal principle of causality.
- Third, a corollary of the principle of causality.
- Lastly, infinite causality is God.
First Way: The First Movement
It is true and evident from the sense that in this world some things are moved. But everything that is moved is moved by another. If what moves is moved in turn, it has to be moved by another, and this by another. But we cannot proceed until infinity. Then it is necessary to reach a first mover that is not moved by anything, and everyone understands that this is God.
Second Way: An Order of Efficient Causes
It is necessary to assume a first efficient cause because everyone calls this God.
Third Way: The Contingency or Limitation in Existence
We find things that are likely to exist and cease to exist, as some are generated and corrupted. If all things had the absence of that possibility, nothing would have ever existed, and therefore nothing now either because nothing comes from nothing. But because now there is something, not all things are possible to exist, and the absence of that something must be necessary, and this is ultimately God.
Fourth Way: Varying Degrees of Perfection in Things
In this world, there are more or less good things, more or less true, more or less noble. The more or less are said of different things according to the different approach to what is maximum. What is maximum in a genus is the cause of all that is contained in this genre. There must be a maximum being, and this is God.
Fifth Way: The Government of Things
We see that some things work with the intention of an end. Things are not aware of the end. Then there is an intelligent being who directs what we call God.
Anthropology
The human being is a composite material and is substantially a form. The rational soul reports directly to the subject. The difference with Aristotle is that the soul of man only makes all the determinations of man, and man is only the rational soul.
Moral and Political Reflection
Only in life can we come to perfect happiness, and this is the natural vision of God. The law is clear, universal, and unchanging and consists of a set of moral orders that are based on human nature and are discovered and issued by reason. This natural law has its origin and its source in divine and eternal law governing the entire universe. In Thomistic theory, enabling man to discover natural law is the fact that the law of reason derives from the eternal divine existence. The eternal law and natural law do not override human freedom. Man is free and may not follow the immutable natural law. Distinguish between free will and freedom or spontaneity of the will. Free will is that before the election judges, there are benefits and disadvantages. I am free only if I can choose to follow it or not. Acts are free acts of man and come from the will, and the object of the will is good, but the highest good is God. The presence of evil in the world can be of two kinds: punishment, which is a difference in form, and guilt, which is the human act of choice.