Can you be an idealist and a thomist?

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Fatima-Crusader

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Can you be an idealist and a thomist, and does idealism take away from the faith?
 
I have seen that it seems a Thomist is one who thinks he understands Thomas Aquinas when he has learned what others think Thomas meant without reading Thomas nor being Thomas’s student himself.

I would wonder can there be an ‘idealist’ without an authority absolutely defining the ideal… Otherwise is it not simply a ‘follower of opinions’?
 
What do you mean by idealist? Plato is considered an idealist because he believed in a realm of ideas or forms that everything in the world was a reflection of. Thomas was more of an aristotealian and consequently a realist because he believed the forms were in the object. The soul is the form of man, and the body is the matter.

The modern meaning of idealist is a little different though.

Also, what does it mean to be a thomist? What is the limit on how much you have to agree with Thomas? An idealist certainly wouldn’t be a thomist on the questions of anthropology and cosmology.
 
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@Sad_girl

You’re going way off topic talking to yourself and making non-sequiturs.
 
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