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Aquinas, Thomas (ca.1225–1274)

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2016

Laurence Renault
Affiliation:
Université Paris-Sorbonne
Lawrence Nolan
Affiliation:
California State University, Long Beach
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Summary

As one of the leading intellectual figures of the Middle Ages, Aquinas was a Dominican master in theology who taught at the University of Paris (1256–59 and 1268–72), as well as in Dominican schools of Rome (1265–68) and Naples (1272–74). Following the impetus of his master Albert the Great (1206–80), he is responsible for having integrated into Christian thought philosophical themes found in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, and Physics, which were made available for the first time in Latin translations in the thirteenth century. Aquinas's grand synthesis of Aristotelianism and Christianity was extremely influential, so much so that Descartes had to be especially careful, four centuries later, not to offend the church when trying to replace Aristotelianism with his own philosophical ideas.

The influence of the Summa Theologica (1268–73), Aquinas's magnum opus, was felt up through the seventeenth century. Along with Aristotle's thought, Aquinas's work undergirded the educational system of the Jesuit schools in this period. Even at the threshold of the modern age, his work was the object of voluminous Jesuit commentaries, including those by Francisco Suárez.

Descartes rarely invokes the name of Aquinas in his writings, although he indicates in his correspondence (AT II 630, CSMK 142) that he possesses a “Summa” (presumably the Summa Theologica). And when the official objectors to the Meditations compelled him to compare his arguments with those of the Angelic Doctor, Descartes seems anxious to avoid direct criticism (as in the First Replies). But in developing his own doctrine he never ceases to struggle with Aristotelian themes, as reworked and elaborated by Aquinas. Three areas of particular concern are knowledge, metaphysics, and physics. With respect to the first, Descartes gives the theory of knowledge a primacy not found in either Aristotle or Aquinas. He also seeks to undermine the Thomistic empiricist dictum that “nothing is in the intellect unless it was first in the senses” (nihil est in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu) and to develop a system of true knowledge obtained by withdrawing the mind from the senses (AT VII 9, CSM II 8). In metaphysics, the battle is fought over the concepts of substance and accident.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

d'Aquin, Thomas. 1980. Opera omnia, ed. Busa, R.. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.Google Scholar
Carriero, John. 2009. Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes's Meditations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Garber, Daniel. 1992. Descartes’ Metaphysical Physics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gilson, Étienne. 1979 (1913). Index scolastico-cartésien.Paris: Vrin.Google Scholar
Gilson, Etienne. 1930. Etudes sur le rôle de la pensée médiévale dans la formation du système cartésien. Paris: Vrin.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Paul. 2009. Essays on Descartes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Renault, Laurence. 2000. Descartes ou la félicité volontaire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar

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