So is Aquinas really all that?

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As both a Catholic and a Philosophy Major (this is my first semester in the program) I inevitably hear a lot about St. Thomas Aquinas. Apparently a lot of people think he’s pretty darn awesome.

My question is to all of you, do you think Aquinas is really all that? I have been wanting to really dig deep into a specific philosopher, but have yet to choose one. I figure that as I am Catholic that perhaps I should educate myself on the most famous Catholic philosopher of all time. However I have heard that his works are very long and complicated, and if I am going to go through all that pain I want some sense that it will be worth it.

So what do you all think about dear old St. Aquinas?
 
Because he has had such a huge impact on Catholic theology many Catholics will not only say he’s all that, but all that AND a bag of chips. Which is really something…

I recall reading Peter Kreeft’s Summa of the Summa, then a Modern Library selection of his work and being rather disappointed. His philosophy (what you’re focused on) wasn’t all that interesting and his complete lack of humor (something lacking in all Scholastic philosophy) made him a boring read. No shots at the Dumb Ox, but as far as I can tell, dude is overrated.

The wine named after him however…

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St. Thomas actually cleared up a lot of theological confusion that was going on at the time (i think). He DID come with the 5 scientific proofs fro God’s existence, which is just wonderful. Look up more about him, you’ll find out that he was actually a pretty cool person.

4everjsutjesus
 
Considering your choice in education, I don’t think you have a remaining choice but to study Aquinas.

Personally, looking into his “5 Ways” because someone threw them at me despite my advice not to, I could easily see flaw in all 5 ways. But such doesn’t mean that the man had nothing important to say or even that he was a poor philosopher. Just don’t expect his writings to be Gospel of course.

Every philosopher will make mistakes of one type or another. Such shouldn’t be an issue as long as none are taken to the point of debilitating your ability to handle your ongoing real life. Philosophy is really for those who have the time for thinking deeply and carefully without disrupting their life. Thinking carefully takes time, and time is often not affordable, especially for the young who would need even more time so as to begin the dig.

Often those who spend too much time in philosophical thought hear the words, “WHO CARES??!!” coming from those busy with more rational endeavors for their situation in life.

Frankly, I can’t imagine a situation where a young person today would really have the rational time to bother with philosophy. Being retired, I can take such time. But having done so, I have found no philosopher that seems to be without error.

But the most accurate that I have ever studied was Jesus himself. Considering your choice of study, I would have to recommend Jesus’ philosophical perspective as a course of study far above that of Aquinas.

I have my list of favorites, but when it comes to finding real truth (what it is supposed to be all about), I consider it wisest to begin with whoever at least preaches that their method lends itself to the discovery of more truth. Those would be Jesus and the Buddhists as each do not preach so much what truth is as much as how to obtain it for yourself.
 
Aquinas may have been a clever old sausage, but in no way has he “scientifically proved” the existence of God. In fact, all five of his ‘proofs’ fall at the final hurdle, if not before.
 
I think Aquinas is all that. For nothing else, he was remarkably intelligent–one of the most intelligent men in Church history, if not THE most intelligent. There is a great story that he would write four pieces at a time–with a scribe in each corner, and he would walk from scribe to scribe, a sentence on this piece, a sentence on that…

People often misunderstand the five proofs. He never intended them individually to be a solid proof for God. He intended them, as a whole, to be an aid to the believer, not something to convince a philosopher. Consider this–almost nothing we believe could be proven to the standard philosopher’s use to evaluate his five proofs. I cannot absolutely prove the existence of other people. But I still will drive 2 hours to meet my friend at the airport, despite not knowing with philosophical certainty that he (or the airport) even exists. The five proofs go as far to prove the existence of God as does an e-mail from my friend proves his existence. True, the proofs could be disproved. But taken together with our other innate, spiritual knowledge of God, they help reveal His existence.

And, of course, the five proofs are not nearly the only thing Aquinas did for the Church. Do not change major; just resist the overwhelming trend in philosophy away religion.
 
If you read some of Jacques Maritain’s work you will have a modern version of Thomism which takes science into account.
 
Years ago, when I was in a Catholic college, I acquired enough credit hours in philosophy for a major, but since, back then, you couldn’t have a double major, I ended up majoring in English Lit with two minors; one of them in philosophy.

Given the nature of the college, there was a lot of Aquinas. A lot, but not to the exclusion of all others. I think I ought to give fair warning. Studying Aquinas is a lot like studying Shakespeare. There are a lot of levels to it, and it takes an enormous amount of study before one really “gets it”. Even then, one is very unlikely to exhaust Aquinas in a lifetime, just as one is very unlikely to exhaust Shakespeare. But I will say that one can feel fairly comfortable with Aquinas at the point where he can “think in it”. Until then, it’s just a knowledge accretion.

Aquinas never did claim that the “proofs” really proved God’s existence. He, himself, said they don’t. His purpose was to demonstrate that Christian beliefs are not “unreasonable” according to the most widely regarded philosophical system at the time, which was Aristotelian philosophy. The latter has an internal “logic system” to it; a sort of “thinking mathematics”, and that system is also incorporated into Aquinas’ works. Therefore, before we were ever exposed to Aquinas, we studied (Aristotelian) logic first, then Plato and Aristotle, and only then did we study Aquinas. Understanding Aquinas also requires at least a bowing acquaintence with Plato. Hate to keep piling on, but it’s also helpful to study Augustine in advance as well, because Aquinas cites his works frequently. He cites the Church Fathers a lot too, and even Jewish and Arabic philosophers.

Aquinas’ works are not light reading, and were not intended to be. They were intended to be read by people of at least a minimum level of scholarship. Unfortunately for us moderns, that “minimum level” was a lot higher then than it is now. Unfortunately as well, we can’t understand a lot of other, later works in Western Civilization very well without understanding Aquinas at least somewhat. Our progenitors knew a lot more than we do, I’m afraid.

But I think if a person approaches Aquinas with the idea that it’s a major study, and if one is patient with it, he won’t be dissatisfied with it at all. Ultimately, it does affect the way one thinks. There is a whale of a lot of Aristotle and Aquinas in western thought, and in my opinion, gaining an understanding of them also aids in approaching and understanding our own world.
 
Aquinas is the very basis of Catholic thought for the past 700 years. Thomistic philosophy is the only viable answer to modern philosophy that we know of.
 
tonyrey said:
If you read some of Jacques Maritain’s work you will have a modern version of Thomism which takes science into account.
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Boy, does this take me back.

I wasn’t the best student anyone ever saw, but I actually enjoyed reading Aquinas in the library. Why the library? Because there are so many references in his works to ancient philosophy, to Augustine, to the Church Fathers and to Scripture, that it’s intellectually enjoyable to go look up those references. If you look at the way, for example, that the Summa Theologica or the Summa Contra Gentiles are written, they pose objections to Christian (then Catholic only) belief and their supporting arguments. He then examines the argument logically, cites contrary references and then answers in detail. Among things he argues against are a lot of heretical and non-Christian beliefs; some of which are current today.

It isn’t just philosophy in the way we usually think of philosophy. Always, always faith is there too.

Regarding Maritain and other “neo-Scholastics”, I think I would be more comfortable advising someone to study Aquinas first, because people like Maritain, Gilson, etc, kind of presume familiarity with it.

Finally, I will say that I greatly enjoyed teasing out thought processes in other works, particularly in literature, using Thomistic ways of thinking. In fact, a fair number of my papers in literature courses involved examining aspects of the literary work in “Aquinas think” without ever acknowledging that I was. I couldn’t have written some of my most successful ones without doing that. On one occasion, I actually ended up writing an analysis of a particular symbolism structure in D.H. Lawrence from that way of thinking. I researched and researched and researched all the literary critiques of Lawrence, and found to my surprise that my analysis was not only almost certainly right, but was indisputably original. That’s a big deal in literature. My professor gave me an “A” for the course, based on that paper alone. (I had performed indifferently otherwise) Studying Aquinas did open “thought doors” for me, at least.
 
If you want to get into Aquinas, you must first be steeped in Aristotle. If you don’t know Aquinas, don’t bother with Aquinas. That is my advice. Perhaps other people’s experiences would disagree.

Also, there is the possibility you might have the heart of a Neo-Platonist/Augustinian, which is fine. If that is the case, Thomism might not be your cup of tea. If you’re looking for more moving (but still profound) kind of philosophical writing, then Aquinas shall disappoint you. If you want clear, precise, no-B.S. kind of stuff, then Aquinas is your man.

Although for those in this thread who have attacked the 5 proofs: I hold that the 5 ways do work, and of all threads which have attacked it, I have yet to see them disproved. Attacking the proofs inevitably ends in throwing out some common sense principle of natural reason and leads to self-contradiction. That’s … my view of it, of course.

But of course, the 5 proofs only take up 1 one-hundreth of the Summa Theologica. There’s quite a bit more in there.
 
Areopagite said:
Although for those in this thread who have attacked the 5 proofs: I hold that the 5 ways do work, and of all threads which have attacked it, I have yet to see them disproved. Attacking the proofs inevitably ends in throwing out some common sense principle of natural reason and leads to self-contradiction.
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Are to try again? You have never debated those with me. 😃
 
I’m not at all sure how to find or access it, but Abp. Fulton Sheen delivered at least one televised homily on precisely this question. In it, he spoke about his own experience of Aquinas and how impressed he was to discover, in the Summa, so many of the eventual developments of more modern philosophies, partially or (in the particular case of Freud he said) almost completely anticipated. It has intrigued me enough to begin my own studies of Aquinas, and I’m not getting course credit for it.
 
johngh said:
So what do you all think about dear old St. Aquinas?
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Sure, why not? I think it’s important to study Aristotle concurrently, just to see where Aquinas is coming from. Understanding Aristotelianism will also help you if you decide to look at other religious traditions e.g. Islamic philosophy. There’s now some pretty good English translations of Ibn Sina, whom I believe Aquinas was aware of through translation, and even the opponents like al-Ghazali, who is in particular my favourite ‘philosopher’ in Islam. He’s remarkably lucid.

Good luck. 🙂
 
Yes you have to have a good grounding in Aristotle before going anywhere near Aquinas.

Aquinas did much to marry the old classical philosophy with the Christian theology. It works for most folks
 
I agree with some of the pp - Aquinas is not something you can read lightly and expect to “get” or “refute” right away. But then, that is true of all of the ancient and medieval philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, or Aquinas. I think part of the reason so many have difficulty with these guys is that they don’t read them as a whole argument, but try to dissect them into a bunch of discrete little syllogisms, and they don’t meditate on them. Both are important. Consider the texts such people had access to themselves. Unlike us, they were often limited, and they spent years contemplating them. And a good teacher helps, one who takes such thinkers seriously. If they are dismissive, then you know you haven’t found a useful teacher.

A nice read if you are interested is Chesterton’s biography of THomas. It’s not too long, has a nice personal touch, and very clearly lays out Thomas’ significance.
 
Bluegoat said:
I agree with some of the pp - Aquinas is not something you can read lightly and expect to “get” or “refute” right away. But then, that is true of all of the ancient and medieval philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, or Aquinas.
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That’s also true of literature. It has been decades since I was in college, but (and I might just be slow, okay?) I never really “got” MacBeth until about four years ago when my son and I were discussing it preparatory to his writing a paper about it. I can’t count the number of times I have read Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag” series and his major novels, and I find something new in them every time.

Maybe someday I’ll actually become wise. Probably not, but I will have enjoyed the trip.
 
You have to take a course on metaphysics to truly appreciate Aquinas.

Most people just skim through the Summa Theologiae, because that’s his most famous and accessible work, though the sheer amount of things he wrote is mind-boggling. Here is about half of his corpus in English, courtesy of the Order of St. Dominic: op-stjoseph.org/Students/study/thomas/
 
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