Aquinas’s Key Philosophical Concepts: A Concise Overview
Thomas Aquinas: Key Terminology
Abstraction
The capacity of understanding whereby the extracted form, the universality of individual things (concrete), is removed from the material. Through this process, concepts are derived from sensory experience.
Act
The relation of what is in power that makes it to be what it is. What is being made has already acquired its way. It opposes potency, along with the concept of power, to explain the move as the passage from potency to act. This pair of concepts is used in the first way. The notion of act has a plurality of meanings, with the following fundamentals: change or movement, action, form, and being.
Analogy
The property that can be attributed to several individuals with an identical meaning in part, and partly different. Preaching is used ontologically in St. Thomas’s ontological level, mediated by predicates extracted from sensible reality, but then applied to God in analog form. Given the transcendent principle of causality and the limited direct knowledge of human understanding, this analogy is subjected to a dialectical process consisting of three stages: affirmation, negation, and excellence.
Cause and Effect
The principle from which something comes or necessarily follows (i.e., the effect). Following Aristotle, the cause may be of four types: material, formal, efficient, and final. Using the principle of causality and the interpretation of God as a principle at the ontological level creates a relation of resemblance between cause and effect, enabling the identification of the cause through the effect.
Definition
According to Aristotle, the essential definition expresses the continuous pouring of one thing, by genus and specific difference. For a definition to be scientific, the connection between the terms or concepts should be constituted via demonstration.
Demonstration
A discursive proceeding intended to derive the truth of a proposition. Aristotle was the first to analyze and define the notion of proof by way of syllogism, which follows a true conclusion from true premises. Following Aristotle, Averroes distinguishes between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning, where starting from a real background gives a real consistent result.
God
Essential theology defines the essence of God with the following attributes: simplicity, perfection, goodness, infinity, immensity, immutability, eternity, and unity. God is the being whose essence is to exist. Essence and existence are identified in God because God is necessary and self-existent. We understand a supreme God as distinct from and creator of the world.
Evidence
The patent for a true understanding. This truth is manifested in the judgment, which is the propositional expression. A proposition is obvious when you know the terms of which it is composed. A proposition is evident in itself and for us if we know the content of the subject and predicate, and this is included in the definition of the subject. A proposition is evident in itself but not for us when we know the contents of only one of the terms.
Faith
The act of understanding that nods to divine truth, flowing from the will, which, in turn, is moved by grace. In an act of reason, it is made by the efficient action of the object on the understanding and the activity of this over that.
Necessary
That which does not require an external cause to exist and must exist by its own capacity. In the context of the three ways, God relates to that which is taken if the reason for its necessity.
Possible
That which can exist or not exist. In the context of the ways, it refers to beings or creatures that are contingent, generated, and corruptible, needing an external cause to exist and providing reasons for their existence.
Potency (Power)
An intermediate state between being and not being in action. It usually indicates a lack or deprivation of a form. Potency is ordered to act and requires intervention to be in action. The potency to which St. Thomas refers in the first way is passive potency or the ability to be changed, not the ability to change or active power. It opposes act.
Principle
That from which something appropriate originates. There are two types of principles:
- Logical: The background in relation to the consequential. They are a set of truths that require no demonstration, but any proof rests on them. They are visible and unverifiable.
- Ontological: That where something is something, providing reasons for the effects.
Process to Infinity
The formulation of succession in series, such as chains of engines, efficient causes, necessary causes, causes of perfections, and governing intelligences, where one causes the other to the extent that the other causes. St. Thomas does not raise the process to infinity in the field of mathematics or physics, but in the field of metaphysics. The denial of the infinite series of causes leads to the formulation of the first cause argument.
Proposition
The minimum unit of meaning, composed of two terms: the subject and predicate (or attribute), plus a copula. It may be true or false and take the following forms: universal, particular, affirmative, and negative. In the displayed text, two types of propositions are mentioned: modern analytical and synthetic.
Reason
Rational human knowledge is natural and is explained by the theory of abstraction. The act of knowledge originates from the action of the object on the cognitive abilities of the subject, starting from what is manifest to the senses, but is completed by the dynamism of the subject’s powers. Its criterion of truth is evidence.
Truth
For St. Thomas, truth is the correspondence between the intellect and the thing. Truth is given in the judgment to affirm or deny the statement or proposition. This kind of truth is called logical or semantic truth, versus ontological truth or the truth of being.