Key Concepts in Scholastic Philosophy and Theology
Almighty
Almighty applies to God as the Creator who made the world. It is an operational divine attribute. Divine power is manifested in three ways: the creation, maintenance, and governance of the world. For the first, God works from nothing, being the essence of all things. Secondly, God remains what He has created. Thirdly, God directs all things to an end and moves, concurring with it in all its operations.
Operation
There are two orders between moving right: the speculative and the practical. The theoretical or speculative reason is that which seeks knowledge. The practical reason is operational, or it is directed to action. The operation is the essence of the practical reason that “sees things from the well,” while speculation is itself of theoretical reason, which sees things from the self.
Order: Speculative, Practical
Order is the set of various things or parts that are related and with a principle common to them all. There are several classifications of orders. Aquinas makes a connection to them by reason. And so he distinguishes between natural and supernatural order, physical, mathematical, metaphysical, logical, moral, and artificial order. The speculative concerns physical objects, mathematical and metaphysical. The practical concerns moral.
Ordering of Things
It refers to the way things happen in the sensible world, which is not chaotic but organized. Things happen according to plan, a goal, but the end is not external but internal to them, is present in nature, although not known. The whole sensible world is presented as structured, as if responding to an earlier organization called in advance.
Perfection
Something perfect is something finished and complete so that it lacked neither to spare nothing to be what it is. The idea of perfection has been of great importance in Christian thought in considering God as the model of perfection or perfection. Perfection is equated with goodness, as we call perfection to any property possessed by something or someone. It is customary to distinguish between absolute perfection, in which the track is so perfect, and perfection on which it is only in relation to something absolutely perfect or perfect in itself. Only God is absolute perfection. Everything else has a relative perfection. The idea of perfection is also related to the act. Absolute perfection is one that excludes any power.
Possible
What can be defined as “what can be and not be” (quod potest esse et non esse) or as what is not and can be (quod est et esse non potest). Such power or ability is understood as an ability to exist. In the metaphysical sense, which is how it is defined here, it may match the power.
Power
The notion of power is related to the act and is the ability of an entity to move from one state to another. Power is a possibility, while the act is now reality. The doctrine of potency and act serves to explain the movement or change of things. All things that change or move do they pass from potency to act.
Principle
Everything is called a principle therefore something exists. There are real principles and logical principles. The real principles are, for example, cases concerning the effects. The top logical order is the contradiction, and in the practical, “has to do good and avoid evil”.
Proposition
It is the logical product of the act of the trial, which affirms or denies something, or thought in that act. You could say that the trial would be the subjective and objective aspect of the proposition that act. Thomas Aquinas sometimes equated “proposition” with “statement”.
Reason: Speculative Reason, Practical Reason
Reason can be seen in several ways: as a faculty, as an act, and as a cause or foundation. As a faculty, reason is the same understanding in their discourse function, non-intuitive. As an act, it is tantamount to the same human reasoning. As a cause or ground means any real process of causation, formal, efficient, or final. As an act, reason is divided into speculative reason and practical reason. Speculative reason is that down to study their subject. Practical reason is that which drives human action.
Natural Reason
It is the faculty of human nature and to demonstrate permits deduction. Reason is necessary to obtain knowledge of objects that are not sensitive and therefore cannot capture directly but by inference. This is what happens with the knowledge of God whom natural reason can arrive but very imperfectly.
Knowledge, Wisdom, Wise
Knowledge is knowledge of why a thing is what is examined. Learn to understand and demonstrate. Understand the principles underlying one thing and show how the thing examined is derived from those principles.
Senses
Agencies that permit feelings. Modes of sensation have been classified according to organs, and this has been talked about the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. Thomas Aquinas distinguished in man a faculty of sense, in addition to the vegetative faculty and the rational faculty. The sensitive faculty is formed by the internal senses (the five senses above) and the internal senses, which are common sense or perception, fantasy, imagination, and memory capacity estimate.
Being, Creatures
It is the more general notion, for it is that which we can apply to all existing things. There is a higher genre but a transcendental, because it is present in all beings and yet is above them all. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, accepts the doctrine of the analogy of being. Being is true in many ways, but not totally different, because the different meanings refer to a single principle. Nothing is said in the same way the infinite being (God) and of finite beings (created), although there is an analogy between the two meanings.
Summa
A didactic genre, typical of medieval Christian scholasticism, which consists of the systematic and orderly presentation of all the issues or problems (quæstiones) of a given subject, whether of philosophy or theology. It is related to one of the methods that were used in scholasticism.
Substance
This is defined as “that which is competent to exist in itself and not in another as its subject inhesion. It opposes accidents, as they need the substance and cannot exist without it. Being the substance itself is the “subsistence”, while the accident is “inher” (being in). The substance is the basis and foundation of all reality. Substance is divided into first and second substance. The most important is the first substance, which is individual. The second is universal substance is the abstract essence of the original substance.
Theology
Science that seeks God. It can be natural, or supernatural and sacred. Natural theology is a part of metaphysics and seeks only the knowledge of God through reason. Sacred theology is a science that sees God as the author of the supernatural and relies on faith, although with the help of reason. Without faith, there is no sacred theology, but not without reason, that is what allows explicit knowledge that are only implicit in the faith.
Truth
Truth is defined in Aquinas as “the correspondence between the intellect and the thing”. It may be logical and ontological. In the logical sense is the adequacy of a trial to the reality to which it refers. We then say that truth is “rendered” by the understanding and “known” by him. So the truth is itself in the act of the trial. On the ontological truth is one of the transcendentals of being, along with goodness (bonum) and unity (unum). Is defined as the conformity of the body and mind because, as a transcendental entity related to the understanding. This means that being is intelligible, otherwise, the agreement would be impossible.
Vitando
A term that means “avoidable”, “to be avoided”.
Will
It is the faculty which seeks the good as it is presented by the intellect. Only good can be loved and wanted to turn everything must be previously known by the intellect. Evil cannot be willed as evil because it consists in privation. If you ever want something really bad is because we are presented under the appearance of good (sub specie boni) or is linked to an asset. To aim at the good will is a faculty of desire, and understanding its relationship to an intellectual appetite. The will carries out six different acts: three relate to order and are the simple volition, intention, and fruition, the other three relate to the means and are able to consent, choice, and active use.