Transcript An Introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas

Introduction
to St.
Thomas
Aquinas
Prof. Rob Koons
St. Louis King of France, Austin
May 28, 2014
Overview of Series
• May 28: The Nature and Destiny of Man
(STh I q75 and 76; I-II, q1 and 3).
• June 4: The Proof of the Existence and
Perfection of God
(STh I, q2-5 and q44, a5; SCG I, q13, 37 and 72)
• No meeting June 11
• June 18: Social and Political Thought
(STh I-II, q90, 94, 95, 105; SCG III, q 122-3, 128-9)
• June 25: Moral and Theological (Spiritual)
Virtues
(STh I-I, q18, 55, 61, 62)
Tonight’s Topics
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The Life of St. Thomas Aquinas
A Short History of Thomism
St. Thomas on Faith and Reason
Aristotle’s Philosophy
The Structure of the Summa Theologiae
The Unity of Happiness (Summa Th. I-II, q1-3)
The Soul and the Body (Summa Th. I, q75-76)
The Life of St. Thomas
Aquinas (1225-66)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Noble family
Joins the Dominicans. Kidnapped by his family.
With St. Albert the Great in Cologne, Paris.
Doctorate at the University of Paris (with St.
Bonevantura).
Guest of St. Louis, King of France.
Commentaries on Aristotle, the Scriptures, the two
Summas.
Battles with arch-conservatives and Averroists.
“Thou hast written well of me.” “I can write no
more…all that I have written is but straw.”
Ups and Downs
• Theses condemned by Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris
in 1277.
• Canonized by Pope John XXII in 1323. Condemnation
revoked.
• Council of Trent (1545-63). Works placed on the altar.
Still eclipsed by Blessed John Duns Scotus (1266-1308).
• Proclaimed Doctor of the Church in 1567 by Pius V.
• Pope Leo XIII in Aeterni Patris (1879): urges all Catholic
theologians and teachers to look to Thomas for
guidance. Made patron saint of Catholic colleges and
schools.
Pope Leo XIII
on Aquinas
…he is rightly and deservedly esteemed the special bulwark and
glory of the Catholic faith. With his spirit at once humble and swift,
his memory ready and tenacious, his life spotless throughout, a
lover of truth for its own sake, richly endowed with human and
divine science, like the sun he heated the world with the warmth of
his virtues and filled it with the splendor of his teaching….
He reasoned in such a manner that in him there is wanting neither a
full array of questions, nor an apt disposal of the various parts, nor
the best method of proceeding, nor soundness of principles or
strength of argument, nor clearness and elegance of style, nor a
facility for explaining what is abstruse. (Aeterni Patris 17)
Other Popes
• Pope Innocent VI: “His teaching above that of
others, the canonical writings alone excepted,
enjoys such a precision of language, an order of
matters, a truth of conclusions, that those who
hold to it are never found swerving from the
path of truth, and he who dare assail it will
always be suspected of error." (1352-62)
• Pope Urban V: “"It is our will, which We hereby
enjoin upon you, that ye follow the teaching of
Blessed Thomas as the true and Catholic doctrine
and that ye labor with all your force to profit by
the same." (1362-72)
St. John Paul II
“[T]he Magisterium has repeatedly acclaimed the merits of
Saint Thomas’ thought and made him the guide and model
for theological studies.… The Magisterium’s intention has
always been to show how Saint Thomas is an authentic
model for all who seek the truth. In his thinking, the
demands of reason and the power of faith found the most
elevated synthesis ever attained by human thought, for he
could defend the radical newness introduced by Revelation
without ever demeaning the venture proper to reason.”
The Virtues of
St. Thomas
Clarity, clarity, and still more clarity.
Lack of egoism, self-consciousness.
Fairness to opposing positions. No “straw men”.
Charity to all. Seeks the element of truth in every
philosophy.
• Asks all the relevant questions – even “awkward” ones.
• The most learned man in all Western history –
photographic memory, of all of the Scriptures, Church
Fathers, Aristotle, Moslem and Jewish commentators.
• A great contemplative, as well as a scholar.
•
•
•
•
Brief History of
Thomism
• Disciples of St. Thomas defend him
against the condemnation of 1277,
culminating in his canonization.
• Works revived during the Council of
Trent. (1545-63) Thomas Cardinal
Cajetan writes commentary. Declared
Doctor of the Church.
• The Salamanca school in Spain. F.
Suarez (1548-1617), L. de Molina.
• The Angelicum founded in Rome. Six
volume Summa Philosophica published in
1777.
• Neo-Scholasticism of the 1800’s. Leo
XIII’s Aeterni Patri. Pius X’s TwentyFour Thomistic Theses.
th
20
Thomism in the
and
st
21 Centuries
• Garrigou-Langrange, teacher of John Paul II at the
Angelicum.
• Existential Thomism: Etienne Gilson, Jacques
Maritain, Joseph Owens. Influences Vatican II.
• River Forest/Laval/Aristotelian Thomism: De
Conninck, Weisheipl, William Wallace, Benedict
Ashley, Ralph McInerny.
• TranscendentalThomism. Bernard Lonergan, Karl
Rahner.
• Lublin/Phenomenological Thomism. John Paul II.
• Analytical Thomism: Elizabeth Anscombe, Peter
Geach, John Haldane, David Oderberg, Edward
Feser.
Themes of St. Thomas
• Natural knowledge comes through the senses, not by
direct divine illumination.
• In this life, we know God only by His effects, not as He
is in Himself.
• The unity of truth, the consistency of faith and reason.
• Doctrine of analogy: we can speak truly of God’s
perfections, although there is an infinite difference.
• The reality of the physical world, as created by God and
known by human science.
• Moderate ‘realism’ about common or universal ‘natures’.
• The will is guided by the intellect.
Faith and Reason
• Two distinct ways of knowing God: by natural reason
(natural theology) and by faith (sacred theology).
• There is no possible real conflict between the two,
although faith reveals truths far beyond the capacity of
reason. Any conflict can be only apparent, due to bad
reasoning on one side or the other.
• Natural theology is valuable for sacred theology.
• St. Thomas was, by profession, a theologian. However, it
is possible to extract from his works a coherent
philosophy.
• No artificial separation of faith and reason. He
philosophizes as a faithful Christian.
St. Thomas and Aristotle
• St. Thomas calls Aristotle “The Philosopher”.
• G. K. Chesterton (in his book, Saint Thomas Aquinas)
writes, “St. Thomas made Christendom more Christian by
making it more Aristotelian.”
• Most obvious tension: Aristotle clearly believed that the
physical universe had no beginning.
o Aquinas argued that Aristotle did not think that this could be philosophically
demonstrated.
o He also argued that a beginningless creation was possible, although we know by
faith that God did not choose to do so.
• On other points, Aquinas argued that the Averroists
(following Averroes or ibn Rushd) had misinterpreted
Aristotle (especially on the denial of an immortal,
individual human soul).
Plato’s Theory of “Forms”
• A “Form” is the kind of essence that Socrates
sought: the Form of Justice, the Good, Humanity,
etc.
• Forms are not physical objects, nor something
private, subjective or merely mental. A “third
realm”.
• Examples: mathematical objects, like the
triangle.
• For Plato, material objects (including us) are
faint, imperfect copies of some perfect Form.
• This fact has normative implications: something
is a better F the more perfectly it copies the form
of the F. Better triangles, better men.
• In modern philosophy, Plato’s Forms are
classified as “abstract objects”. They are typically
called “universals”.
The Philosophy of Aristotle
•Aristotle (388-322 BC) was
Plato’s student.
•Influenced all later Christian
philosophers, including Augustine
and Thomas Aquinas.
•Wrote on many subjects: biology,
chemistry, astronomy.
•Best-known: Ethics, Politics,
Metaphysics.
“Moderate” Realism about
Universals
• Aristotle agreed with Plato that universals
(forms) must exist to make science and thought
possible.
• However, he rejected the idea that material
objects were mere “copies” of separately existing
Forms.
• Instead, he insisted that the Forms existed “in”
particular objects. A universal (like humanity or
justice) exists only insofar as there actual
humans or just people.
The Possibility of Change
•
•
“It is a distinctive mark of substance,
that, while remaining numerically one
and the same, it is capable of admitting
contrary qualities (accidents), the
modification taking place through a
change in the substance itself.”
Example from Physics, 1: “the
unmusical man becomes musical.”
Denials of the Possibility of Change
• Denied by Parmenides and his disciples
(the Eleatic philosophers). Zeno (the
creator of the famous paradoxes, like
Achilles and the tortoise) was one of
these.
• Argument from the impossibility of
thinking of the non-existent. Change
involves a transition from non-being to
being (or vice versa). However, it is
impossible for some thing to have nonexistence.
Denials of the Possibility of Change
•
Argument from the causal impossibility
of change.
– Any new thing must come from either
being or non-being.
– If it comes from being, it already exists,
and so isn’t new.
– Nothing can come from non-being.
– Consequently, no new thing can come to
be.
Potential and Actual Being
•
•
Aristotle rebuts these arguments by
introducing a distinction between two
kinds of being: potential and actual.
To speak or think of a thing, it must
have at least potential being, not
necessarily actual being.
The Causation of Change
• Change comes from both being and non-being
(in different ways).
• For a change to occur, there must be something
that exists before and after the change (the
substance).
• There must also be the absence or privation of
some accident (e.g., being non-musical).
• The non-musical man becomes musical (i.e., a
musical man). Change begins with a
combination of being (as a substance) and nonbeing (of an accident in the substance).
Causation Requires Potentiality
• When change happens, there was already
a potentiality for the new state in the
changing thing.
• Potentialities for new states are rooted in
the actual nature of a thing, not just in
what we can imagine or conceive of.
Causation Requires an Agent
• In addition for a potentiality for change in
the thing that changes (the “patient”), we
also need an outside “agent”, with an
active power of producing the change.
• This “agent” must exist separately from
the “patient”, or else we could not explain
why the change did not happen sooner:
the change happens only when the agent
and patient come into mutual contact (or
appropriate proximity) with one another.
This Applies also to Animals and Persons
•
•
•
Animals and people may appear to act spontaneously,
with no external agent, but we can in fact always find an
agent-patient pair.
In many cases, the organism is stimulated into action by
some perceived change in the environment.
In every case, we can find some part of the organism
acting (as a relatively external agent) upon some other
part: such as molecules in the in the stomach or heart
acting upon neurons, which in turn act on the brain,
stimulating further behavior through perception of some
internal state.
Potentialities always Depend on
Some Actuality
•
•
•
These are complementary notions.
However, actuality is more fundamental than or “prior to”
potentiality, in several ways:
• The potentiality of a thing is always grounded in its
actual nature.
• A potentiality is always a potentiality for some kind of
actuality, not vice versa. Actuality is prior in
definition.
• Potentialities are never actualized except by the
presence of actual agents.
As a consequence, a being of pure actuality is possible,
but not a being of pure potentiality.
The Necessity
of Stability
• Heraclitus argued that nothing whatsoever
endures from one moment to the next.
• Aristotle argues that this is impossible. Change
implies that something is changed: the thing
changed must in some respects endure.
• In simple case: substances endure, accidents
change.
What about Substantial Change?
•
•
There are two kinds of change that
don’t fit Aristotle’s simple model (as
presented in The Categories):
generation (creation), and destruction
of substances.
Aristotle believed that some
substances (plants, animals, perhaps
blobs of pure element or of a mixture)
do come into and go out of existence.
Aristotle’s Physics, Book 1
• In this chapter, Aristotle introduces the notion
of ‘matter’ (hule -- lumber).
• Matter = “the primary substratum of each thing
from which it comes to be without qualification
(I.e., from which it is generated), and which
persists in the result (after the thing is
destroyed).”
• Substratum = that which endures through a
change.
In what sense does the matter endure?
•
•
Not as actual substance.
For Aristotle, one substance cannot be
composed of, constituted by another
substance or substances. A substance
is a thing that exists in and of and by
itself, not through the existence of
other things.
Generating & Destroying a
Complex Individual Substance
Potentiality
A Particles
Actuality
B complex
A Particles
Form and Matter
• Aristotle’s view is called ‘hylomorphism’ (or
‘hylemorphism’).
• Substances are “composed” of both form
(morphe --- the same word Plato used) and
matter (hule – Aristotle’s coinage).
• Socrates’ humanity is his form: that by which
Socrates exists, that by which his matter is
his matter (as opposed to being an actual
corpse).
Form is the Actuality;
Matter is Potentiality
• The “matter” of a substance is its potentiality to
produce new substances, either by extruding parts of
itself, or by being utterly destroyed and leaving
behind some residue of itself.
• The “form” of a substance is the principle of its actual
nature, here and now. The form explains what active
powers and passive potentialities a thing has.
• This is why a being of pure actuality, like God, must
be immaterial.
Pure Form
• Just as actuality is prior to potentiality, so form is
prior to matter.
• Thus, it is possible for a substance to exist as
pure Form (God, the angels, the human soul
after death and before the resurrection), but it is
impossible for anything to exist as pure,
unformed Matter.
• The human soul can exist after death because
its pure intellectual functions (unlike the
functions of non-rational animality, like
sensation) don’t require physicality in their very
definition.
Rejecting Dualism
• Nonetheless, before death (and after the
Resurrection) human beings are (like other
animals) body-soul (or matter-form) composites.
• The rational soul acts as the form of the body
– fully responsible for the body’s being (in
actuality) a living, organic thing.
• Leads naturally to the “theology of the body” (as
John Paul II put it). What happens to the body
has spiritual significance – the body’s isn’t a
mere external contraption attached to an
essentially immaterial human being.
The Four “Causes”
•
•
•
•
The Material Cause: what is a thing made of?
The Formal Cause: what is the fundamental nature
of a thing? What is it?
The Efficient Cause: what agent brought this thing
into existence?
The Final Cause: what is the end or purpose for
which the thing exists?
• These obviously apply to human artifacts, tools.
• Also to organs.
• Aristotle argues that all four apply universally, to
all substances.
• The most controversial is the last one.
Final Causation
•
•
•
•
In the inorganic world: consider cycles, like the water cycle or
rock cycle. Each stage exists “for the sake of” the next one.
The basic laws of nature are not just regularities. They
represent the ways things act, exercising their active powers
and passive potentialities.
Powers and potentialities point forward, to a possible future.
This is the final cause. Aquinas: “Every agent acts for an end,
otherwise one things would not follow from the action of the
agent more than another.” (ST I, q44, a4)
Final causation is the “cause of causes”, the fundamental
basis for all explanation.
Implications of Final Causation
• Biology is thoroughly teleological: ‘genes’,
‘enzymes’, ‘cells’, ‘organs’ – all are defined in
terms of their function.
• The natural function of the human intellect is
the basis of the distinction between reason &
madness, knowledge & opinion, science &
pseudo-science.
• The natural function of the human will is the
basis of ethics and political philosophy: the
human person is naturally ordered to the life of
justice and virtue.
Structure of the Summa
• The Summa Theologiae is divided into four Parts,
comprising a total of 512 “questions”.
o Part I: God and Creation
o Part I-II: Human Nature (Happiness, Passions,
Habits, Law, Grace)
o Part II-II: The Virtues and Vices
o Part III: Christ and the Sacraments
• Each question is further subdivided into a considerable
number of “articles”.
• Each article, in turn, follows a fixed pattern.
The Structure of an
Article
• 1. The article begins with a question, almost always a Yes-orNo question.
• 2. An answer is then given to the question that Aquinas finds
inadequate. This section is always preceded by the words “It
seems…” It is vitally important that one realize that Aquinas
is not endorsing this initial answer. He will invariably either
reject it altogether, or find it only partially true. This can be
confusing, because Aquinas always tries very hard to be fair
to every opinion. He does his best to state the case for the
opposing view as clearly and persuasively as he can.
• 3. Several arguments for the erroneous answer are given, each
labeled as an “objection”. As I just mentioned, these
arguments can sound quite persuasive, but Aquinas will later
explain what is wrong with them.
Structure of an Article
• 4. Aquinas gives a better answer to the question,
preceded by the words “To the contrary…” He will
generally accept this second answer, although in some
cases he will take the position that both answers are
partly right and partly wrong.
• 5. Aquinas finally resolves the tension with a section that
begins “I respond that…” Here he gives what he takes
to be the correct answer and the essential reason why
this answer is correct. Pay very careful attention to this
section – this is where Aquinas lays out the foundation
of his thought.
• 6. The plausible but wrong arguments given in section 3
are refuted, one by one.
Finding the Summas
• Summa Theologiae (or Theologica):
o www.newadvent.org
o Summa of the Summa, edited by Peter Kreeft
(Ignatius Press, 1990).
o http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ (most of the works of
St. Thomas, in both English and Latin).
• Summa Contra Gentiles
o Jacques Maritain Center, Notre Dame:
http://www3.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/
gc.htm
o http://dhspriory.org/thomas/
o Book One: God, translated by Anton C. Pegis
(University of Notre Dame Press, 2012).
Part I-II. Q1:
Man’s Final End
1. Whether it belongs to man to act for an end? Yes
2. Whether it is “proper” to the rational nature to act for
an end? (I.e., do only rational creatures do so?) No
3. Whether human acts are “specified”(made what they
essentially are) by their ends? Yes
4. Whether there is one ultimate end of human life? Yes
5. Whether one man can have several ultimate ends at the
same time? No
6. Does a man will whatever he does for the sake of this
ultimate end? Yes
7. Whether all men have the same ultimate end? Yes
Part I-II. Q2:
In What Happiness
Consists
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
In wealth?
In honor?
In fame or glory?
In power?
In any good of the body?
In pleasure?
In any good of the soul?
In any created thing?
Part I-II. Q3:
What Happiness Is
1. Is happiness something created or uncreated (i.e., God)?
Uncreated object; created enjoyment.
2. Is happiness an activity? Yes
3. Is happiness an activity of the sensory soul, or only of
the intellectual? Strictly speaking – only the intellectual
4. Is it an activity of the intellect or the will? The intellect
5. The contemplative or the practical intellect? The
contemplative
6. The contemplation of the sciences? Imperfect, Yes.
Perfect, No.
7. Contemplation of angels? No
8. Vision of the divine essence? Yes
Part I. Q75:
Man’s Soul
1. Whether the soul is a body? No
2. Does the human soul “subsist” (can it exist “on its
own”)? Yes
3. Are the souls of brute animals subsistent? No
4. Is a man a soul? No (he is composed of soul and body)
5. Is the soul itself composed of matter and form? No
6. Is the human soul naturally incorruptible? Yes
7. Is a human soul the same as an angel? No
Part I, Q76:
Union of Body & Soul
1. Is the principle of the human intellect also the “form” of
the body? Yes
2. Does each man have his own intellectual principle? Yes
3. Does each man have multiple souls? No
4. Is there in man any “form” other than the intellectual
soul? No
5. Is it proper or fitting for the human intellectual soul to
be united with a body? Yes
6. Is the soul essentially or only ‘accidentally’ united to the
body? Essentially
7. Is it united to the body by another body? No