Thomas Aquinas: Scholastic Philosophy and its Influence

Posted on Dec 12, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

ITEM 6. The Christian Scholastic: Thomas Aquinas

  1. Historical Context: The Middle Ages and the Feudal Order (5th-15th Centuries)

Estate society had a strong and rigid social hierarchy: clergy, nobility, and peasants. Social life was based on Christian morals, and the Pope (Benedict XVI) was the highest authority in Christendom.

  • Class system based on the dual ownership of land: right to use (servants) and usage rights (feudal lords).
  • Culture was preserved in the monasteries, communities of monks subject to a rule, whose bases were prayer, study, and work. They dedicated themselves to copying and illuminating books, thereby transmitting knowledge.
  • From the 13th century, cities developed with traders and craftsmen, giving rise to new religious orders, Franciscans and Dominicans. Universities and research centers appeared: Paris, Oxford, Salamanca, Bologna, etc.
  1. Scholastic Philosophy
  • General Characteristics:
    • Christian scholasticism is a tradition of thought in medieval Europe. It began in the 11th century with thinkers of various trends, predominantly Augustinian Neoplatonic until the 13th century. There was an influence of Islamic thought and Aristotle through translations from Arabic (School of Translators of Toledo to Alfonso X the Wise).
    • Metaphysics addresses the problem of universals (which is predicated as common to all and each of the individuals):
  • Realism (Plato): Universals have real existence in a transcendent world.
  • Moderate realism (Aristotle): There are individuals; universals are the essences of material things, and there are individuals (several performances).
  • Augustinian-realism (a variant of Platonism): Universals are ideal types that exist in the divine mind and form the essential substance of things.
  • Conceptualism (variant of Aristotelianism): Universals are ideas conceived and exist as such.
  • Nominalism (radical version of conceptualism): Universals are only names with no extra-mental reality; there are only single individuals.
  • Stages and Authors
    • First systems:

Scotus Eriugena (9th century), later condemned for pantheistic heresy, and St. Anselm of Canterbury (11th century) and the ontological argument.

  • First doctrinal synthesis (12th century): Peter Abelard taught dialectic, understood as a method of rational discussion, addressing the problem of universals. Peter Lombard wrote the Book of Sentences.
  • Apogee (13th century) with two streams:
    • The traditional Augustinian, integrated with the metaphysics of Avicenna, promoted scientific development at the University of Oxford using the experimental method: Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus.
    • Aristotelianism, influenced by Andalusian Muslim culture, with two streams: heterodox or Latin Averroism with Siger of Brabant, and orthodox Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas.
  • Crisis and decline (14th century)
    • Criticism of the Thomistic synthesis: separation between faith (theology) and reason (philosophy), by William of Ockham (nominalism).
    • Development of the mystic, Meister Eckhart.

Thomas Aquinas

  • Metaphysics
    • The creation of the world out of nothing by God involves the radical contingency (depends on Him to exist).
    • Distinction between essence (power) and Existence (act):
      • The essence is what defines things, what they are.
      • Existence is an update of the essence, which makes it exist.
  • Hierarchy of beings (metaphor of the feudal order):
    1. Separate substance (no subject):
      • God is simple, pure act; His essence is His existence.
      • The angels or intelligences are composed of essence and existence.
      • The human soul-spirit that binds to a body.
    2. Beings composed of matter and form (hylomorphic Aristotle):
      • The human body is substantially united to the soul material.
      • Material beings are composed of matter and form.
      • Raw material, raw power, and principle of individuation.
  • Natural Theology: Part of metaphysics that considers God as knowable by reason.
  • Refutation of the ontological argument: An unwarranted step from thought to existence.
  • Five Thomistic ways to demonstrate the existence of God: movement, efficient cause, contingency of beings, degrees of perfection, the cosmic order, or final cause.
  • Thomistic Anthropology
    • Unity of body and soul (composed of matter and spirit); properties of the soul: immaterial, immortal, created by God in His image (person), and therefore endowed with intellect and will.
    • Epistemology (Aristotelian theory of abstraction): Knowledge is to separate matter and form, capturing the universal in the particular.
      • Sense captures sense objects by separating the material, giving rise to an image or ghost (imaginary representation of things).
      • Intellect strips the ghost of its individual characters (space, time, number, …) and discovers what is intelligible or universal, the essence of things, to develop the kind of print.
      • Patient-understanding: the species collected print (memory) and produces the kind expressed or verbum mentis, the universal concept.
    • Aquinas defends against the Averroists the unity of understanding and patient agent in the individual soul created by God.

Moral and Political Theory

  • Human beings are fundamentally moral:
    • Their will wants universal good (which is God), but they can choose between evil or good (human free will, source of moral evil).
    • The natural end of man is virtuous happiness in society; the supernatural end is the eternal bliss or contemplation of the divine essence.
    • The virtues are good habits that help achieve human natural ends (Aristotle); the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity) help achieve the supernatural goals. Grace is conferred by the Church.
  • Four kinds of laws:
    • Legislative eternal reason of divine wisdom, which governs all actions and movements of human actions directed towards its end.
    • Natural law participates in the eternal law; it is promulgated by the light of reason, as a result of reflection on the natural inclinations of human origin of the natural rights of all men.
    • Positive divine law, revealed by God (moral commandments), provides the supernatural end of humanity.
    • Positive human law, promulgated by the State: if it disagrees with the natural law, it is a perversion, an act against the divine law that must be obeyed; whether it agrees with the natural law, it is fair, and in good conscience requires it, it derives from the eternal law.
  • Political Theory: The natural order of human society is self-directed by the State.
    • Fundamental traits of human nature are reason and sociability.
    • The government seeks the perfect society and the common good of society.
    • The aim of society is a good and virtuous life.
    • Individual good is subordinated to the common good.
    • The state is subordinate to the Church, as natural to the supernatural and Reason to Faith.
    • Kinds of states: Their quality can be good or bad; by the number of rulers, just one, a group, or the majority.

Nominalism: William of Ockham

  • Historical Context: Crisis of the feudal system, struggle between the Papacy and the Empire, the development of nation-states. Western Schism. After criticizing the Roman Church, Ockham was persecuted by the Roman Curia and took refuge in Germany.
    • Critique of the natural theology of Thomas Aquinas: God is omnipotent and cannot be known by human reason. The only limitation that constrains the divine action is the principle of contradiction.
    • The problem of universals is addressed in a position that ranges from a moderate nominalism to conceptualism (Aristotle): there are only individual beings; universals are linguistic signs involving a confused perception of objects.
    • Critique of metaphysics and philosophy of science:
      • The concepts of cause and effect are human ideas, whose reality is proven.
      • Essences do not exist; you must eliminate unnecessary entities. Ockham’s razor: entia non sunt multiplicanda (do not multiply beings).
      • There is only intuitive knowledge of singular objects; scientific knowledge is hypothetical.
  • Moral and political theory:
    • Conventional morality: Moral laws are not prescribed by God but are the result of agreement among men to live in society.
    • Natural law established by God produces natural rights (to life, property), which may be known by human reason.
    • Separation of church and state.
  • Historical Influence (announces the Renaissance):
    • In Theology: Roots of the Protestant Reformation in Germany.
    • In the philosophy of science: The nominalist movement develops scientific research in the 14th century. Nicholas of Oresme points out the possibility of heliocentrism.
    • In politics, supporting the independence of the princes on papal authority, the origin of the modern nation-state.

Thomistic Routes for the Demonstration of the Existence of God

  • Sensitive part of the experience to rise to the knowledge of God. There are five tracks, all with the same basic scheme, but each chooses a different reason: the movement (via manifestior), causation, contingency, perfection, and purpose.
Outline of the Show (Four Steps)
  • Sensitive part of the evidence (the immediate object of human knowledge are material beings) material beings:
    • Are in motion (step potency to act) (called via manifestior by Thomas).
    • Are caused by another being.
    • Are contingent (dependent on another being to exist).
    • Are imperfect in the qualities that they show (good, truth, beauty, etc.).
    • Are ordered to an end of perfection, as seen in the order of the cosmos (teleological proof).
  • Implementation of a metaphysical principle:
    • Everything that moves is moved by another.
    • It is caused by another cause.
    • There is another contingent.
    • Imperfect participate in a supreme degree of perfection.
    • The cosmic order requires a final cause that establishes it.
  • One cannot explain the existence of beings, or their qualitative and quantitative qualities, for a generalization or ‘infinite regress’ because:
    • Eternal movement does not exist (Aristotle).
    • Existential reality effects are lost with respect to their causes (Plato).
    • The contingent cannot exist because it is not itself (Avicenna).
    • The qualities of beings arise from eternal perfections (Plato).
    • Order cannot occur at random from disorder (Plato).
  • Conclusion: There is something or someone that gives meaning to the whole cosmic process, and that something is God: Unmoved Mover, First Cause, Necessary Being, Perfect Being, Supreme Intelligence.
Criticisms of Thomistic Evidence
  • Against the second premise: The critique of metaphysics asserts that choice is a subjective idea (Hume), and generalizing the other categories with which we think the world (substance, accident, space, time, etc.) are also conceptual constructions of human understanding to understand the world, but one cannot prove that there is really objective reality (Kant).
  • Against the third premise: The modern conception of the universe admits:
    • The motion of matter is eternal because matter is energy.
    • There may be an infinite chain of causes and effects because the effect is no less true than the cause.
    • There is a universal matter that is the substance of all reality.
    • The perfections of things are relative, and the highest perfection is an unattainable ideal.
    • Chaos theory says that from random processes, order can be produced (for example, the process of biological evolution).
  • Against the conclusion, it cannot be proved that the Unmoved Mover, the First Cause, the Necessary Being, the Perfect Being, or Supreme Intelligence, is the personal God as conceived by Christianity. For that, we must have faith.