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St.Thomas Aquinas

Born: 1225,Roccasecca Italy

Died: 7 March 1274, Fossanova Abbey, Italy

Feast: 28 January (7 March, until 1969)

Education: University of Paris, University of Naples Federico II

Quotes

The things that we love tell us what we are.

There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.

To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.

Books

Summa theologica 

Summa contra Gentiles

Selected Political Writings

On Being and Essence

In thomistic philosophy

•Man is substantially body and soul

•The soul is united with the human body because it is the substantial form of the human body

•It is the principle of action in the human body and the principle of life of the body

•But the soul however requires the body as the materilas medium for its operations particularly preception.

•Soul has operative function which do not need a material medium they are the man’s intellect and will.

•Thus at death intellection and will remain in the soul which is immortal simple and incorruptible.

•Body and soul before death are essentialy united because the two exist in a                                                                                                  correlative manner.

Nature of god

•God is Simple without composition of parts such as body and soul or matter and form.

•God is perfect lacking nothing

•God is infinite and not limited in the ways that created beings are physically,intellectually,and emotionally limited

•God is immutable incapable of change in respect of essence and character.

•God is one such that God’s essence is the same as god’s existence.

Thomas distinguished four (Kinds of law)

•Enternal law is the decree of god that governs all creation. It is “That law which is the Supreme Reason Cannot be understood to be otherwise than unchangeable and enternal

•Natural law is the human”participation” in the enternal law and is discovered by reason Natural law is based on “first principles”

•Human law the natural law applied by governments to societies

•Divine law the specially revealed law in the scriptures.

 Thomas Aquinas was a theologian and a Scholastic philosopher. However, he never considered himself a philosopher, and criticized philosophers, whom he saw as pagans, for always "falling short of the true and proper wisdom to be found in Christian revelation. With this in mind, Thomas did have respect for Aristotle, so much so that in the Summa, he often cites Aristotle simply as "the Philosopher." Much of his work bears upon philosophical topics, and in this sence may be characterized as philosophical. Thomas' philosophical thought has exerted enormous influence on subsequent Christian theology, especially that of the Catholic Church, extending to Western philosophy in general. Thomas stands as a vehicle and modifier of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. In fact, Thomas modified both Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism by way of heavy reliance on the Pseudo-Dionysius. This source has arguably been assessed not as a communicator of tradition, but as a polemicist, who tried to alter Neo-Platonic tradition in a novel way for the Christian world that would make notions of complicated Divine Hierarchies more of an emphasis than notions of direct relationship with the figure of Christ as Mediator. Indeed, a number of Catholic sources contend that Thomas was influenced more by this concoction than any other source, including Aristotle.

  Thomas was most probably born in the castle of Roccasecca, located in Aquino, old county of the Kingdom of Sicily (present-day Lazioregion, Italy), c. 1225. According to some authors, he was born in the castle of his father, Landulf of Aquino. Though he did not belong to the most powerful branch of the family, Landulf of Aquino was a man of means. As a knight in the service of King Roger II, he held the title miles. Thomas's mother, Theodora, belonged to the Rossi branch of the Neapolitan Caracciolo family.^]Landulf's brother Sinibald was abbot of the first Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino. While the rest of the family's sons pursued military careers, the family intended for Thomas to follow his uncle into the abbacy; this would have been a normal career path for a younger son of southern Italian nobility.

 At the age of five Thomas began his early education at Monte Cassino but after the military conflict between the Emperor Frederick IIand Pope Gregory IX spilled into the abbey in early 1239, Landulf and Theodora had Thomas enrolled at the studium generale(university) recently established by Frederick in Naples. It was here that Thomas was probably introduced to Aristotle, Averroes and Maimonides, all of whom would influence his theological philosophy. It was also during his study at Naples that Thomas came under the influence of John of St. Julian, a Dominican preacher in Naples, who was part of the active effort by the Dominican order to recruit devout followers. There his teacher in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music was Petrus de Ibernia.

 At the age of nineteen Thomas resolved to join the recently founded Dominican Order. Thomas's change of heart did not please his family. In an attempt to prevent Theodora's interference in Thomas's choice, the Dominicans arranged to move Thomas to Rome, and from Rome, to Paris.^] However, while on his journey to Rome, per Theodora's instructions, his brothers seized him as he was drinking from a spring and took him back to his parents at the castle of Monte San Giovanni Campano.

 Thomas was held prisoner for almost one year in the family castles at Monte San Giovanni and Roccasecca in an attempt to prevent him from assuming the Dominican habit and to push him into renouncing his new aspiration. Political concerns prevented the Pope from ordering Thomas's release, which had the effect of extending Thomas's detention. Thomas passed this time of trial tutoring his sisters and communicating with members of the Dominican Order. Family members became desperate to dissuade Thomas, who remained determined to join the Dominicans. At one point, two of his brothers resorted to the measure of hiring a prostitute to seduce him. According to legend, Thomas drove her away wielding a fire iron. That night two angels appeared to him as he slept and strengthened his determination to remain celibate.

 By 1244, seeing that all of her attempts to dissuade Thomas had failed, Theodora sought to save the family's dignity, arranging for Thomas to escape at night through his window. In her mind, a secret escape from detention was less damaging than an open surrender to the Dominicans. Thomas was sent first to Naples and then to Rome to meet Johannes von Wildeshausen, the Master General of the Dominican Order.

Thomas Aquinas has Five Ways of exixstence First is The Agurment from Motion Thomas  argues that since everything that moves is moved by another.there must there must thereby exist an Unmoved Mover.Second is The Agurment from Efficient CauseThe sequence of causes which make up this universe must have a First Cause.Third is The Agurment from Necessary Being.  Since all existent things depend upon other things for their existence.there must exist at least one thing that is not dependent and so si a Necessary being.Fourth is The Agurment from Gradition Since all existent things can be compared to such qualities as degrees of goodness,there must exist something that is an absolutely Gogog being.and the last is The Agurment from Design Also name “The Teleological Agrument” The intricate design and order of existent things and natural processes imply that  a great Designer exists.

The moral philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) involves a merger of at least two apparently disparate traditions: Aristotelian eudaimonism and Christian theology. On the one hand, Aquinas follows Aristotle in thinking that an act is good or bad depending on whether it contributes to or deters us from our proper human end—the telos or final goal at which all human actions aim. That telos is eudaimonia, or happiness, where “happiness” is understood in terms of completion, perfection, or well-being. Achieving happiness, however, requires a range of intellectual and moral virtues that enable us to understand the nature of happiness and motivate us to seek it in a reliable and consistent way.On the other hand, Aquinas believes that we can never achieve complete or final happiness in this life. For him, final happiness consists in beatitude, or supernatural union with God. Such an end lies far beyond what we through our natural human capacities can attain. For this reason, we not only need the virtues, we also need God to transform our nature—to perfect or “deify” it—so that we might be suited to participate in divine beatitude. Moreover, Aquinas believes that we inherited a propensity to sin from our first parent, Adam. While our nature is not wholly corrupted by sin, it is nevertheless diminished by sin’s stain, as evidenced by the fact that our wills are at enmity with God’s. Thus we need God’s help in order to restore the good of our nature and bring us into conformity with his will. To this end, God imbues us with his grace which comes in the form of divinely instantiated virtues and gifts.This article first considers Aquinas’s metaethical views. Those views provide a good context for understanding his unique synthesis of Christian teaching and Aristotelian philosophy. Also, his meta-ethical views provide an ideal background for understanding other features of his moral philosophy such as the nature of human action, virtue, natural law, and the ultimate end of human beings. While contemporary moral philosophers tend to address these subjects as discrete topics of study, Aquinas’s treatment of them yields a bracing,comprehensive view of the moral life. This article presents these subjects in a way that illuminates their interconnected roles.