See also: Holy Thomas, Aquin, Saint-Thomas-with Aquin

Saint Thomas d' Aquin (born towards 1225 with Aquin, close to Naples, in Italy of the South, dead the March 7th 1274 with the abbey of Fossanova close to Priverno) was a Théologie N and Italian Philosophe, member of the Dominican order. Regarded as one of the principal Masters of the Scholastic and Catholic theology , it was proclaimed Doctors of the Church in 1568 (and even doctor of the doctors: the common doctor). He is also called " Doctor Angélique" by the clergy.

In its Divine comedy , Dante gives to Thomas d' Aquin the first place among the philosophers theologists. After Holy Augustin (354 - 430) - and in continuity subsidiary company with the thought of the bishop of Hippone - Thomas d' Aquin carried out at the 13th century the great synthesis of the reason and the faith, trying to reconcile the Philosophie Aristote and the Christian thought .

To reconcile contradictions between philosophy aristotelician and the Christian doctrines, it separates the truths from the reason of those of the faith, definite like an unconditional adhesion with the word of God. Philosophy for this reason represents only one of maidservants of the Théologie ( philosophia ancilla theologiae ), of which this one does not have consequently absolutely anything to fear.

As a disciple of Aristote, holy Thomas affirms that intellectual knowledge is acquired through the significant experiment. There is for the human intelligence no direct access with the abstract principles and spiritual realities. If the men having of direction and reason can advance gradually on the way of knowledge, they end up meeting an insurmountable obstacle, because the knowledge of God exceeds the natural exercise of the Raison; this is why, to meet God, the man needs the faith.

From its name derive Thomisme and thomist , qualifying, inter alia, its philosophy. The Thomisme is declared doctrines official of the Église in 1879 by the pope Leon XIII, during the encyclical Æterni Patris . Then during the reforms of the Vatican (cf the Vatican II), the Catholic church declares that the holy doctrines of which it is guardian are primordially given by the Holy Scriptures and, that in that, he does not exist " philosophy officielle" church: the recourse to Thomas saint obligatory any more, but is not strongly advised. Thus, the thomism born at the 16th century finds the statute wanted by Thomas himself of privileged access but nonexclusive to knowledge of the world and of God.

Biography

Wire of the count Landulphe, count of the town of Aquino, and the countess Théadora d' Inverno, it was born in 1224 or beginning 1225 with the castle from Roccasecca, in the kingdom of Deux-Siciles (this castle is today in the Province of Frosinone); of 1230 with 1235, it is oblat with the Benedictine abbey Mount-Cassin, whose his/her uncle Sunnibald was the abbot. It remained there 9 years, during which it is subject to the bénédictine influence and attended the library of the monastery which was to contain traditional truim and of Augustin saint. Starting from 1239, Frederic II, fights against Gregoire IX, expelled the monks of the abbey about it, it studies at the university of Naples where it undoubtedly discovers Aristote with translations out of the Arab provided by Frederic II. It is over there that it meets Preaching friars whose type of life attracted it largely. His/her father dies on December 24th, 1243, redant the Thomas young person a little freer of his destiny. He decides to return in the order of Dominican the (order then young and causing religious and intellectual enthusiasm) in 1244, at the twenty years age, against the opinion of his family which wanted to make the Abbé of it Mount-Cassin.

His/her mother then makes it remove and assigns it with residence. Retained during one year with Roccasecca, it reads the Bible and the Livre of the Sentences of Pierre Lombard. Thomas not changing an opinion, and perhaps thanks to the intervention of the Innocent pope IV, his family ends up accepting his choice. He is then student with Paris of 1245 with 1248, in Paris of Saint Louis, where he is called by the other students " the dumb ox " because of its stature, of its silence and its taste for contemplation. Then it follows its Master Albert Large the (Dominican commentator of Aristote) to Cologne until in 1252. Of return to Paris, he is biblical graduate (readings with accompanying notes of the Writings) of 1252 with 1254, then graduate sententiaire (i.e commentator of the Livre of the Sentences of Lombard, the comment of Thomas saint is enormous: more than 6000 folio pages) of 1254 with 1256, stages necessary and fundamental for any student in theology. He starts to teach the Scriptures, writes the Graft and Essentia , receives its control in theology, is named Master-Regent, defends and writes the Disputed Questions : of Veritate , the Quodlibet (7 to 11); comment on the of Trinitate of Boèce… In 1256, Thomas is magister in crowned paginated , i.e. " Master in sciences bibliques". Its activity consists mainly of theological arguments ( disputatio ), of comments and sermons public. After rough fights with the secular ones of the University, it will be finally allowed - with Bonaventure - in the Consortium Magistrorum , not without some pontifical pressure in their favor, and of 1256 with 1259, he is Master in theology (he is selected before the necessary age).

In 1259, Thomas has thirty-four years when it leaves for the Italy, with Orvieto, where there will remain ten years. It teaches there theology until in 1268. It was affected with the intellectual training of the young people Dominicains, work extremely tiresome, because they began for the majority and the teaching method appeared not very practical to him (it is after this experiment that it had the idea of the Summa Theologica, nap of the truths of faith organized between them). But it found there however the leisure to advance and complete the drafting of the Somme against nice the and the expositio super Job . Thomas was sent to Rome between 1265 and 1268, near the Pope Urbain IV. He wrote in particular the chain of gold ( catena aurea ), a comment of the Évangiles, verse by verse, gathering many quotations Patristiques, considerable work which he offered to the Pope. During this stay, Thomas wrote potentia Dei, the first part of the compendium of theology and began his comments of Aristote with the comment of " heart ". He writes also many small various opuscules for people who asked for her assistance.

Thomas returns to Paris of 1269 at Easter 1272, whose University is in full intellectual crisis and morals caused by the diffusion of the aristotelism. Remi of Florence followed its courses during its second Parisian teaching. It has forty-four years when it writes the second part (IIa Pars) of the Summa Theologica and most of the Commentaires of works of Aristote . It must face attacks against the Orders Beggars, but also with competitions with the Franciscain S and with arguments with certain Masters be arts (in particular Siger of the Brabant, whose mysterious death is told by Dante, which also evokes in an enigmatic way the competition between Thomas and Siger in the Paradise of the Divine comedy). He writes perfectionie spiritualis vitae and the quodlibets I-VI and XII against the secular ones and the treaties of aeternam mundi and of unitate intellectus against the fransiscains.

Accomplished incredible work at the same time for the teaching and the drafting of its work, continual fights that it must lead to the center even University, the departure of some of his/her friends (Robert de Sorbon, Eudes de Saint-Denys…), all that contributed to undermine the health of Thomas, who, at forty seven years (1272) sets out again with Naples, where it is named Régent Master in theology of the Dominican school, at the request of king Charles of Anjou. It finishes there the third part (IIIa Pars) of the Summa Theologica , the lectio of the Épître to the Romans , the comments of the Psalms, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ave Maria… One thus notes a return to the Scriptures towards the end of the lifetime of Thomas Saint. It is in particular at this period that it begins the tertia leave the Summa Theologica which is devoted to Jesus-Christ.

Starting from the December 6th 1273, after having had a vision during the mass, it ceases writing, perhaps because it holds from now on its works for vain; its health declines and, aphasic, while going to the council of Lyon, convened by the Pape Gregoire X, which was to be held in May, it dies the March 7th 1274, with old 50 years, the monastery Cistercien of Fossa Nova, where it will rest until the translation of his mortal remains in 1369 with Toulouse, with the Jacobins, where it rests always today. It is said that he commented on the Cantique of the Canticles to the monks which accompanied it on its bed by death. By receiving its last Eucharistie, he says: I receive you, O hello of my heart. It is by love of you that I studied, taken care of the whole nights and that I became exhausted; it is you whom I preached and taught. Never I said a word against You. I do not stick either obstinately to my own direction; but if ever I badly expressed myself on this sacrament, I subject myself to the judgment of holy Roman Eglise in the obedience of which I die.

All testimonys in our possession agree to present it like a large and fatty man; he was brown of dye and fair of hair, but the dismantled face. Appearance was to be harmonious because, when it passed in the countryside, the good people gave up his work and precipitated with his meeting " admiring its imposing stature and the beauty of its traits". Chesterton, in " the dumb ox " , we depicts it as follows: " S. Thomas was a bull: an immense, fatty and silent man; soft and magnanime, but not very sociable; shy person, even by taking account of the humility which accompanies holiness; and the spirit absent, even by not taking account of its occasional fright or extases, which it took care to dissimulate. " Its students presented it like a concerned of froisser people by bad words, and very assiduous man with work, rising very early, well before the first offices, for commenceer to be worked. Its courses were full with life, of Master much the courses dynamic and liked its intellectual personality its students made. Its piety turned especially towards the Eucharistie and the image of Christ crucifié.

To follow the teaching of Aristote at the 13th century, it will discuss and generally refute the comments of Avicenne and Averroès, theologists Moslem who preceded it in the reading by Aristote. Averroès, for example, doubted the unicity of the heart and the Intellect, which intended to refute Thomas. Curiously, Plato and Aristote had in their time expressed a dissension of the same order.

The Philosophie thomist tries to reconcile human autonomy, the immortality of the heart and the belief as a Single God as Cause of any good. Its certainty is that the philosophical study, so thorough is it, will not contradict to in no case the teaching of the religion, since - writing-it - both have the same object, which is the Vérité.

Its works are catalogued in a writing of 1319, but their exact chronology is still discussed. The work of Thomas saint was condemned on March 18th 1277 by the English archbishop Robert Kilwarby, then by a certain Guillaume of the Pond, Fransiscain, which published towards 1279 a " correctorium " of Thomas brother, rescensant 117 too daring proposals. Rehabilitated thereafter, in particular from the growing influence of the Dominican Order, it is canonized in 1323 by the pope Jean XXII.

Theology and philosophy

God is the object of all the work of Thomas Saint. According to Thomas, the Philosophie studies initially the beings created, to rise then with the Connaissance of God; in the order of the Theology, on the contrary, one starts with the study of God, and it is precisely this order which is followed in the Sums. Consequently, the order of the Théologie can be thus specified: the main object of the crowned Doctrine is to transmit the knowledge of God, not only according to what it is in itself, but also according to whether it is the principle and the end of the things, especially of the reasonable creature . Philosophy and theology thus differ by the object first from human knowledge, and they will differ also consequently by their method: there is a statute epistemological suitable for each one of these two speeches, which raises the question to know if one leads in the two fields to Vérité S which agree or not and how.

The thesis of Thomas is that faith and reason cannot be contradicted because they emanate both of God; theology and philosophy cannot thus arrive to divergent truths. It is the argument of the double truth which one finds in the Somme against nice the and in question 1 of the Summa Theologica : as the light of the reason and that of the faith come both from God, they cannot be contradicted. Better still, the faith makes use of the reason just like the grace makes use of nature, i.e. the truths of the natural reason ( ratio naturalis ) are used to clarify the articlees of faith.

Thus, there is no radical rupture between theology and philosophy (contrary to the radical rupture of Saint Bonaventure, for example, which will say: theology starts where philosophy finishes), and it is in this direction that holy Thomas will say this sentence which remains famous: “philosophy is the maidservant of theology” ( “Philosophia ancilla théologiae” ). Let us note however that it is absolutely not pejorative for philosophy: being useful, at the 13th century were privileged people.

Ratio naturalis and Révélation

It is while seeking to convert the pagan ones and the Moslems in the Somme against Nice the that Saint Thomas clarifies the concept of natural reason ( ratio naturalis ). Indeed, neither the pagan ones, nor the Moslems recognize the authority of the Bible; whereas one can discuss with the heretics on the ground the New Testament and with the Jews on the ground of the Old Testament. It was thus necessary to find a ground common with the people who do not recognize the same Révélée authority. Thus Saint Thomas initially seeks to expose purely rational arguments in order to show thereafter that they coincide exactly with the Bible. In this direction, the natural reason is used as common ground for all humanity and makes it possible to prove coherence between the Revealed Truths and the truths of reason. However, the natural reason cannot arrive by its own forces at the total comprehension of the Révélés mysteries. Indeed, theology known as natural is ascending : it goes from bottom (creatures) to the top (God); but are development is limited within the frameworks of the " per " (for oneself). God will not be seen in what It is itself " in " , but in what It is for us; for example, one cannot know if He is creator in Itself, but starting from the creatures, one can inférer that He is creator for us . Other is the Théologie itself, because it is downward : it leaves the top (God) to the bottom (creature) by mode of Révélation. It is the direction of theology starting from the Bible, not only with the Raison. There is no theology or of philosophy, but there is either philosophy, or theology.

Saint Thomas use of the precise terms to clarify this distinction faith/reason and their common interractions. It names the révélable ( revelabile ) Révélée knowledge but which is all the same accessible by the natural reason (like the existence from God, for example) and revealed ( revelatum ) that of which it is the gasoline to even be revealed (like the incarnation of Christ, for example); it is possible to know objects inaccessible to the natural reason by means of the Grace

“ the understandable objects thus presenting as a God two kinds of truth, one to which can reach the investigation of the reason, the other which exceeds the capacities of the human reason completely, it is justifiably that God proposes one and the other like object of faith ”

It should be noted that there exists a last mode of knowledge of God who is done in the Béatitude.

Deepening of the four directions of the Writing

For the interpretation of the Bible, Thomas d' Aquin improved the doctrines of the Four directions of the Writing. This one resulted from the tradition Judaïque, and had been transposed by Origène in the Christianisme before being largely employed during all the Moyen-âge, and particularly at the 12th century in the incipient Scolastique. The things meant by the words of the Writing return they same to other things. Thus the hermeneutics scripturaire of Thomas saint expose the literal or historical direction as being the base of the spiritual directions of the Writing: the allegorical direction, the tropological direction and the anagogic direction.

Let us note that Saint Thomas d' Aquin devoted a whole disputed question ( disputatio ) to these directions of the Writing: " the Direction of the Crowned writing - sensibus Sacrae Scripturae " in 1266.

God according to Thomas saint

Saint Thomas is before a whole theologist: its main object is to raise a corner of the metaphysical veil which hides God with our human existence. God is absolutely everywhere in the work of Saint Thomas d' Aquin: in metaphysics (as creator, first engine, etc), in morals (as a principle and an end of the man), in moral theology (as a dispenser of the Holy Ghost), etc God is identified, and it is a first, with the being ( ens ) and either with the bonum (well), as in Augustin saint for example. It is a onto-theological interpretation of God who rests on the major analysis of the " I am that am That which am " Exodus. The method of the Théologie developed by Thomas saint is a theology known as negative, because it progresses by mode of deprivation. The method will be thus the following one: God is infinite because it is not finished, it is good because it is not bad, etc

The existence of God

Why try to show the existence of God right in the middle of the 13th century, whereas the environment is entirely Christian, and that Thomas addresses to theologists? Isn't the existence of God obvious and it is not useless to show it? In fact, holy Thomas does not seek as well to prove the existence of God as to find the conditions of possibility as to the man to go back to God by the forces of his reason.

According to Thomas, who opposes Bonaventure, the Existence of God is not an obviousness: it is not an innate idea which any man has in him and which the simple reflection (to draw aside the prejudices, like, later, at Descartes) makes him discover. Thomas is aristotelician: we do not have natural concept of a to be infinite. God is not recognizable in oneself or itself ( in ), but only for oneself ( per ), i.e. one can know of God only what It is for us, not what it is in Itself. Saint Thomas bases this problem on a method different from that of those which think that God is obvious by Itself, because Thomas goes from the existence to the gasoline: it is a metaphysical problem which makes it consider the things thus.

We can however know that God is by the natural light , i.e. by the Raison. We are not yet here in true the Théologie; that God is, it is what watch the natural Philosophie. Thomas begins again thus to show it five ways of reasoning which leave existing reality to go up to God. And, in these three manner of knowing God, it says that created that incréé itself is rather known. Thus, for example, one could not affirm with our only reason that God is creator in itself, but that It is creator compared to us as we let us be created.

The method to go back to God by the reason is summarized at three points: by mode of causality (it is the cause of this world), by mode of negation , i.e. while denying in him what is limiting in us (for example: God is not material, mortal, localized etc, and by mode of eminence , by affirming that there exists in him eminently what is qualitative in us (for example: God is love, intelligence, power.)

Summa Theologica , left Anger, question 2, article 3: “God does there exist? ”

Saint Thomas says that there are five ways to prove that God exists:

1° by the movement : the things are constantly moving, but it is necessary that there is a driving cause with any movement. In order not to go from a driving cause t0 another, it is necessary to admit the existence of a First engine not mû : it is God.

2° by causality efficente ( ex rations causae efficientis ): we observe a sequence of causes for purpose in nature, but it is impossible to go up causes with causes ad infinitum; one needs necessarily a Main cause: it is God

3° by the contingency : there is in the universe of the necessary things which do not have in themselves the base of their need. One thus needs a Being by Itself necessary which is God.

4° by the degrees of the beings : taken again proof of Plato, who noticed that there are perfections in the things (well, beautiful, love, etc) but to differing degrees. However it is necessary necessarily that there is a Being which has these perfection with a maximum degree, since in nature all the perfections are limited.

5° by the order of the world : One observes an order in nature: the eye is ordered with the sight, the lung with breathing, etc Or with any order one needs an intelligence which orders it. This Intelligence ordinatrice is that of God.

It should be noted that the purpose of Saint Thomas was not at all to prove the existence of God; indeed, addressing itself to students in theology (i.e. preaching friars, priests, etc…), there was no intention to prove the existence of God to them, because it was obvious. The intention of Thomas Saint was rather to show that one could reach God with the natural reason on the basis of what one notes of the world. This is why they are not evidence , but of the ways .

Single God, Trine God

• questions 2 to 26 of the first part of the Summa Theologica relate to the single God , i.e. God of the metaphysicians.

We discover there that God exists (qu.2), that It is simple (qu. 3), infinite (qu. 7-8), perfect (qu.4-6) and immutable and eternal (qu. 9-10).

Firstly, It is not body: God is the first motionless engine, but no body of drives unless it is mû, therefore God is not a body. It cannot be made up of matter and form, since the matter is in power and that God is pure act. Its existence included gasoline or " God is identical to his being " because the act to exist does not require that the cause of existence, which is by oneself as a God.

• questions 27 to 43 of the first part of the Summa Theologica relate to the God Trine and make a distinction between the People (hypostases) divine.

The Trinité is made up of the Père (qu. 33), of the Wire which is Verbe and image, (qu. 33-35) and of the Holy Spirit which one names by " Amour" and " Don" (qu.36-38). Their relations are studied question 39 with question 43 of the Summa Theologica. There are as a God two processions: that of the generation and that of the love. Thomas saint, in order to explain the substancielle unit of the three divine People has recourse to the concept of relation.

Trinitaire God and single God are only one and even incomprehensible entity in itself. God of the Foi (Trinitaire) is absolutely not in contradiction with God of the reason (Single God). We are located there in what Martin Heidegger called a onto-theology, i.e. in a diagram where God is rational concept before being God of the faith: God returns in philosophy before entering in theology.

Christ

Christ is the Son, i.e. the Trinitaire person who is Verbe. Christologie de Saint Thomas is developed in the tertia leave the Summa Theologica in 90 questions (+ 99 if one counts the supplement). The prolog of the tertia leave starts as follows: " Our Saver, Seignuer Jesus (...) was shown with us like the way of the truth , by which it is possible for us from now on to arrive to the résurection and the bliss of the immortal life. " God incarnated (qu. 1-26); He suffered in his flesh for men (qu. 27-59). We reach the eternal life and the sacraments by and in Christ. Its incarnation was suitable with God: it estce which one called the reasons of suitability: " it appears higher suitability than by the visible things the invisible attributes of God are expressed. The whole world was created for that, according to the Apostle (Rm 1,20): " The invisible perfections of God are discovered with the thought by its works. " But, known as S. Jean Damascène, it is by the mystery of the Incarnation that we are expressed at the same time kindness, wisdom, the justice and the power of God: its kindness, because he did not scorn the weakness of our flesh; its justice because, the man having been overcome by the tyrant of the world, God wanted that this tyrant is overcome in his turn by the man himself, and it is by respecting our freedom that it tore off us with death; its wisdom, because, with the most difficult situation, it knew to give the most adapted solution; its infinite power, because nothing is larger than this: God who is made man. " Always in these reasons of suitability, holy Thomas rests on the bonum diffusium sui: the Good is what is diffused. God thus communicates himself: " Aussi all that arose with the reason of good is appropriate for God. However, it belongs to the reason of although it communicates to others as Denys shows it. Also it belongs to the reason of the sovereign although it is communicated supremely to the creature. And this sovereign communication is carried out when God " links itself with nature created in order to train only one person of these three realities: the Verb, the heart and the flesh " The Incarnation, in addition to being necessary to the hello of the men, by way of superlative need (the best possible way), is thus also the significant demonstration of God in his glory, wanted by God Himself.

Creative God: Its Creation

The exitus reditus

Saint Thomas d' Aquin regards creation as a transitive action coming from God, i.e. like something emanating from him, but which will turn over to Him by a movement of exitus reditus (left/return). Creation is thus interpreted in an intrinsic metaphysical dynamics with the things.

The Summa Theologica starts as follows:

“ We will thus have, having to expose these doctrines, to treat:

1. of God (first part: Ia)
2. of the movement of the reasonable creature towards God (second part: Ia, IIae in general and IIa, IIae in particular)
3. of the Christ who, like man, is for us the way which leads to God (third part: IIIa) ”

Thus, God, who created the world by pure love, is the principle of all things (as a creator) , but also end of all things (as an ultimate end: the bliss), because it printed with the creatures a movement towards him. It is ansi which is organized the Summa Theologica, but it is also like all things, any being, any act go beings located and known in this movement which emanates from God and who goes back there. This plan will make it possible to lead the rational knowledge until the divine causes of the things, and their so divine purposes they.

pure Spirits or Angels

The pure Spirits or Anges is the type of creature which east even carries out more the high degree of perfection of all creation in its nature. The Angéologie thomist is extremely important in volume and with the eyes of its author even. It includes/understands the study of the Anges, of the Démons, of maintains ones and fall of the others, their relations between them, and their relations with the human beings. The angeology thomist represents many questions in the Summa Theologica.

Some important points:

• the existence of the angels can be shown
• they are a substance only spiritual and incorporeal
• each angel constitutes with him only a species
• they are incorruptible and immortal but do not exist any eternity
• there is a hierarchy between them
• they know only by intuition
• they can sin (from where the fall of the Démons)
• they can speak itself to
• the men can beings, by the Grâce, from equality with the highest orders angelica
• the angels order all the body beings
• the angel can: to illuminate the intelligence of the man, to act on the intelligence of the man and to act on their directions
• they deliver sometimes the messages of God

Theory of knowledge

Saint Thomas d' Aquin is regarded as a philosopher Réaliste. He retains Aristote the fact that any knowledge is initially sensitive before being in the intelligence. Reality is thus not apart from the human being, as at Plato, but they is not either only in the sensitive one, as at the Nominalisme which will follow holy Thomas (for example in Guillaume of Ockham). The best exposure of the theory of the knowledge of saint Thomas d' Aquin is in the Summa Theologica , Ire left, of question 84 with question 89.

We will follow the architecture of the Summa Theologica , which exposes 1) how the heart knows realities which are lower to him (significant and perceptible reality) (qu.84-88); 2) how the heart knows itself (introspection) (qu.87) and 3) how she knows realities which are higher to him (God and angels).

Significant knowledge

Summa Theologica, left Anger, question 84 : “by which means the heart linked with the body does she know body realities which are lower to him? ”, i.e. how the intelligence knows what is lower to him: material objects. This design originally aristotelician finds her degree of completion and perfection in saint Thomas d' Aquin. The man is a being made up of a body and a heart which knows while drawing from the sensible universe. The directions are not thus to disavow since the man is a body being plunged in a body world: the directions enable him to be connected to this body world. It is in particular starting from these articles of the Somme that will be born the various medieval forms of Nominalisme. It is especially against the Platonic ones that holy Thomas want to reaffirm, with Aristote, the significant origin of the ideas.

Article 1 : " does the heart know the bodies by the intelligence? " :

Saint Thomas draws aside the position of Plato for which the ideas is substances completely separated from the sensitive bodies. This position is false, for two reasons 1° the immaterial and motionless ideas being, it would be necessary to reject field of sciences the knowledge of the movement and matter, the clean knowledge of the science of nature and the demonstration by means of the efficient and material causes. 2° It appears ridiculous, whereas we seek to know realities present at our experiment, to resort to other realities which cannot be the substance of the first, since they differ from it as for the existence. Consequently, the fact of knowing these separate substances would not enable us to consider things sensitive. After that, holy Thomas says that the intelligence knows indeed by the directions, but according to the clean mode of the intelligence. the significant form exists under a mode in reality external with the heart, and under another mode in the direction, which receives the shapes of the sensitive things without the matter, like the color of gold without gold. Pareillement, the intelligence receives the species of the material bodies and mobiles under an immaterial and motionless mode, in accordance with its nature; because what is received is in what receives according to the mode of this last. Thus let us say that the heart knows the bodies by means of the intelligence, of an immaterial knowledge, universal and necessary.

Article 6: Does the heart acquire intellectual knowledge starting from the direction? It is also necessary to draw aside the position of Démocrite for which the directions and the intelligence was exactly the same thing. Only Aristote had a satisfactory intermediate position. It is on the latter that Saint Thomas is inspired in order to develop a theory of realistic knowledge. Aristote, took an intermediate way to him. He admitted with Plato that the intelligence differs from the direction, but that the direction does not have a clean operation without communicating with the body (…) Aristote thus agrees with Démocrite to admit that the operations of the sensitive heart are produced by an impression of the sensitive things on the direction, not by manner of emanation, like wanted it Démocrite, but by a certain action. (…) But this active ingredient, higher and of more raised nature, than Aristote calls intellect agent and about which we spoke previously, makes understandable in act by mode of abstraction, the images acquired by the direction. According to that, insofar as it depends on the images, the intellectual act is caused by the direction . We thus find in Thomas saint an elegant interpretation of realism aristotelician located between the platonism and the Empirisme of Démocrite, where the intelligence is an intellect agent which brings up to date the human intelligence starting from significant perceptions, purely passive, because they do nothing but receive the action of an external object. Thus, all that we know by the sensitivity is individual or singular: only intellect agent generalizes then significant perceptions in general idea, i.e. of concept.

Saint Thomas distinguishes the internal directions from the external directions:

• the external directions are our five directions
• the internal directions are the common direction (understanding and synthesis of the feelings), imagination, imagination, the estimate and the memory

Intellectual knowledge

The intelligence is a power of the heart which puts in report/ratio the latter with the universal being. Indeed, intellect is not very whole reality, it is thus in power compared to it. And as intellect is in power compared to reality, it is passive compared to reality. Intellect is nothing but can all become in what it receives, by the means of the directions, impression of reality: it is thus passive (passive intellect).

The direction causes the act of significant knowledge by the mode of the image. But it is by the action of intellect agent that this significant knowledge is transformed into intellectual knowledge. Which is the method of this action of intellect? It is the abstraction. Thomas saint known as:

• the sensitivity knows only the private individual

There is a faculty to know which is the act of a body body, it is the direction. For this reason the object of any significant power is a form which exists in a body matter. And since this matter is the principle of the individuation, any significant power knows only the particular beings. The faculty to know the sensitive one, of which holds significant knowledge, thus knows only the singularities: one knows by the sensitivity only this apple, this dog, etc

• human intellect is not the intellect of intuition of the angels

- There is another faculty to know which is not the act of a body and is not plain in any manner with the body matter: it is intellect angelica. Also its object is a form which remains without matter. Even when the angels know material realities, they contemplate them only in immaterial beings, either in themselves, or as a God. The pure Spirits (the Ange), from the fact that they are not connected to a body, know the beings only in their immaterial form, or, will say holy Thomas, by intuition, i.e. without passing by the significant mode.

• human intellect knows the form starting from the significant image provided by the directions

- the human intelligence is held between the two; because it is not the act of a body, but a faculty of the heart, which is the shape of the body, as one saw previously well. It is thus clean for him to know a form which exists individuée in a body matter, but not to know this form as it is in such matter. However, to know what exists in an individual matter, but not as it exists in such matter, it is to abstract from the individual matter the form which the images represent. And this is why one must say that our intelligence knows material realities by abstrayant them of the images. And while considering kind these realities, we manage to know something of the immaterial beings, while the angels know the material beings via the immaterial beings. When with the human intelligence, it is held between that of the angels and purely significant knowledge. It abstracts a form individuée in a body matter; we will say for example that it abstracts the idea from man of this man in particular. The intelligence knows the nature of the things by abstrayant the singularities of a thing in particular. The idea is formed by abstrayant the understandable one in the data of the significant experiment; it is exactly the direction of this passage: “But, to know what exists in an individual matter, but not as it exists in such matter, it is to abstract from the individual matter the form which the images represent”. It would be also possible to speak " of extraction". We include/understand now why intellectual knowledge is known as abstract. But there exist several levels of abstraction, according to whether the intelligence abstracts more or less from the singular in a thing.

• the object of the intelligence is reality in an intentional way

Any intelligence is in power compared to the universal being. Only the divine Intelligence is in pure act because it contains the being in its Universality. In the order of knowledge, significant faculties extract a significant image from a matter and provide it to the intelligence, more precisely with passive intellect. Intellect agent is this act which extracts the form from the significant image: it is this faculty which proceeds by abstraction. Saint Thomas says to us: " there is the same relationship between the understandable species and the intelligence which enters the significant species and the direction. " the understandable one is thus it by what the intelligence includes/understands, and not what she knows . It is a point of major importance: the concept is not known, but the concept is what makes known to us. One will call that the realism of the ideas: " what is firstly known, it is the reality whose understandable species is the resemblance. ". Thus the object (concept or image) intelligence is reality, but in an intentional way: in a similar way. It is at this stage that one finds then passive intellect, because it is him quiest-EC-which is known in an intentional way.

• the problem of the unit of intellect

It is important to speak about the error of Averroes because holy Thomas devotes a whole work to it: Against Averroes . Saint Thomas develops his theory of intellectual knowledge starting from the works of Aristote (in particular of the of animated). However holy Thomas has there had access with the comments of the Moslems, in particular of Averroes (see illustration). Thomas takes again the comments, comments on Aristote with them, but give up them when they go too far. It is the case of Averroes when he speaks about human intellect as being separate and common to all. " For a long time much of spirits was let surprise by the error of Averroès, which endeavors to prove that intellect, that Aristote recognizes like possible, by a denomination distorts, is a species of separate substance of the body as for the gasoline, and who is plain for him, in a certain way as for the form; and moreover, that it is possible that there is only one common intellect for all: for a long time we refuted this error. " Active intellect and intellect agent are not, as Averroes thinks it, in two distinct subjects but in only one individual substance. Then human intellect is under various reports/ratios in act and power compared to reality.

Degrees of abstraction

According to the degree according to which the abstract intellect of the significant images of the understandable forms, the gasoline of the thing ( LMBO ) finds of them more or less distant from its significant qualities first. By the process of abstraction, the intelligence explores at various depths or zones of intelligibility the thing even. It is possible to distinguish three from them:

1° leaving of with dimensions the singular natures of the thing, one discovers natures and the universal laws of this thing. One finds with this degree the applied sciences such as the Physique or the Biologie. These sciences discover the shape of the thing in its same significant characters.

2° leaving side the physical properties and sensitive of the thing, one considers nothing any more but the accident quantity; one finds with this degree the Mathématique, which deals only with the quantitative relations in the nature even of the thing, or in his relations with the other things.

3° leaving side the quantities and the physical properties of the things, one is in the Métaphysique, which is thus the most abstract science in what it is only occupied to be thing as being, i.e. it treats of the Ontologie. It is thus consequently that it is universal science more and more abstract .

Metaphysics

Saint Thomas proposes a speech on the being as created (it is then a Théologie) and on the being as being (it is then a Ontologie). Thomasienne metaphysics is in a dynamics which determines it ontology until theology, while following the intrinsic movement of the exitus reditus. The étants, as created, take part of this movement towards God, who constitutes at the same time their main cause and their fine last. Thus taken share leaves share by theology, Thomasienne ontology cannot nor should not be understood independently of theology and the mysteries revealed by God in the Bible, in particular that any being is created, that there are a visible universe (that of the men) and an invisible universe (that of the angels), that all started and that any form to be current will end like such.

The analogy to be it

The analogy to be it is the key concept of all metaphysics thomasienne. This concept is binding on saint Thomas d' Aquin when he seeks to name God with question 13 of the Summa Theologica . The being as being is neither univocal, nor ambiguity, it is similar (as an analogy of proportionality)

1° the being as being is not univocal , i.e. that it is not exactly the same one in all the things: for example, the being of a cup is not exactly the same being that of a book; or the being of the substance, which substist by itself, is not the same one as the being of the accident, which needs a substance to remain. Saint Thomas would say that the being is not differentiated by extrinsic differences: the being concient in him all the particular determinations.

2° the being as being is not either ambiguity , i.e. which it is not exactly different in all the things. All the things are: the being is thus from a certain similar point of view in all the things: it is truly common to all the things.

The being is not carried out in the same way in all the things, while being the same one. It, is thus concluded holy Thomas, whom it is carried out to differing degree in the things, while proportioning itself with the diversity of these degrees. It arranged hierarchically intrinsically in all the things according to whether they more or less approach To be it in plenitude, God, because any hierarchy implies a relation or a reference to quelquechose of single. This ontological hierarchy is a analogy of proportionality . All the beings refer to something of single, God.

The theory of the analogy of lêtre poses beeucoup however problems with the commentators of Thomas saint. One can be really located on this question from only known as Thomas between the of potentia , the veritate and the two sums . One could not too much advance to affirm that the analogy of relates to que' a problem of nomination with God as reference such as one finds it in the Summa Theologica and the of potentia or an ontological problem, such as with desired seeing it Cajetan. We leave the problem in the state because no interpretation makes authority for the moment.

Human nature

The man is with the borders of two natures: spiritual nature (as it has a spirit) and material nature (as it has a body). Saint Thomas keeps the two definitions of Aristote on the man: he is by nature a social animal (Aristote explains it in the first book of the Policy) and is a reasonable animal.

Statute of the reasonable creature in creation

Among very whole creation, the man is regarded as a reasonable creature to which is intrinsically printed fine the last to go back to God (under the terms of the metaphysical dynamics of the exitus reditus) until the bliss; moreover, the man " carries the resemblance and represents the image of God " , which makes it able to move freely towards the ends which seems to him the best and to use the means which seems to him most suitable. We find here a whole moral philosophy of the responsibility as a free purpose, very outstanding in the whole work of Aquinate; one finds this thesis declined in the form of the autonomy of terrestrial realities . To be autonomous, it is to give laws ( cars-nomos in Greek). Thus the man must dictate laws with itself, but these laws are at a behavioral level: in fact laws must make it possible to use the good means to arrive at a good end and which must respect the laws that God revealed. One consequently conceives very quickly two of the statutes of the good for the man: he characterizes what is best adapted to the realization of an end and the relevance of this end compared to the human nature. It is thus all the question of acting it according to the human nature for an end suitable for the human nature. This reasonable creature that is the man thus finds plunged with its responsibilities in a nature ordered by a higher Intelligence: it is to say that it is then a question for the man of being maintained in the natural order of the things, and that the principal question of morals is summarized to adapt its acts and its ends to this order.

The heart and the body

If God gave us a body, it is that there is a reason well. There is no duality in the man according to Thomas saint: the heart and the body constitute only one being. Indeed, if the heart and the body are two principles or two different realities, they could not carry on the same " activity; of realities ontologiquement various could not carry on activity a ". However when the man acts, it acts of all its being, its act is one. The heart is thus the shape (according to the terminology of Aristote) of the man, and the body his matter. It is the logic of the Hylémorphisme aristotelician: the heart is the only shape of the human compound to which it gives to be an alive and sensitive body.

It was one of great work of Thomas Saint to have exceeded the design Neo-Platonist of the heart locked up in a body by applying the Hylémorphisme aristotelician to a Chrétienne design of the man. The substance even of the man is thus fully in the world of the material beings: the man does not have any more one body, but the man is a body . The shape of the body, i.e. the heart, are the vital principle of the man, which gives him the nature of man. The body is the matter, it gives to the man his characteristics singular: the body is thus principle of individuation, with the result that a man is such man, and not another. The hylemorphism is this design of a substance as a made up of matter and form. The man is thus a substancielle or ontological unit. Thus when the man thinks, it is all the compound body/heart which thinks at the same time, of the same lorsuq' it acts, or gfait an sports activity. Saint Thomas opens here a metaphysical key of interpretation to all the problems Psychosomatique (of the interactions heart/bodies). Let us notice that it is the same for the intellectual knowledge which starts with the directions, and thus requires the body for it.

It is possible to distinguish three parts in the heart, which remains however one:

1° the vegetative heart, principle of the nature's needs for the man

2° the sensitive heart, principle of passivity of the feeling and seat of passions

3° the intellectual heart, forms substancielle of the man, as it is a be reasonable

Human acts

One finds a precise description of the human acts in PRIMA secundae (Ia, IIae) of the Summa Theologica. It is an axiom of Saint Thomas d' Aquin who to affirm that " if there are acts which are known as human, it is as they are voluntary " . In reference to the statute of the Man within the general metaphysical framework, this assertion was based on the coloured resemblance, under the mode of analogical attribution, on God, and conferred on the man a heavy responsibility for his own acts as they are free since voluntary. But the fact that an act is voluntary does not prove that it is free. An act is known as truly human when it is a free voluntary act. The voluntary word " means that the act is born from a clean slope ". The Volonté is thus born from a desire which causes a slope. One can say that the famished one wants to be nourished, for example, since that belongs to one of its natural inclinations (to nourish itself); but one cannot say " that a man is trailed with violence because of his will " since the man does not want into clean wanting to be to force. The will is thus driven towards an end, which represents the end of the slope which caused this will; however this end must be to him known: " so that a thing is done for an end, an unspecified knowledge of this end is necessary ". But this end must be to him known by the reason. In this definition of the will, one sees already stinging the fact that the act can be truly qualified of voluntary act only if: firstly, it is founded because, and deuxièment, if it coincides with a true tendency of the human nature. And in addition, the will dominates indifferently all the goods: it is what confers its freedom to him and qualifies it free voluntary act.

There exists a duality inside even of the act to want: the interior voluntary act (i.e. the act to want quelquechose) and the act of the will to carry out it (that one could describe as external) by means of a faculty external with the will (for example the ability to speak to say something). We will see hereafter where the good in this duality is located.

To summarize:

1° the human act is voluntary, rational and free; if it does not fill one of these two characteristics, it cannot be qualified of human act but it will be described as immoral or animal act

2° the will is known as internal in what it chooses an end and external in what it chooses and carries out the means of reaching it.

Passions

The study of passions is fundamental: the man is a being mû by his passions, as it is unit of heart and body. The Passion is one to suffer ( suffered ), resulting from outside, by various methods, which comes to modify the significant appetite. One cannot choose to feel or not passion because it does not belong to the man into clean, but only as an animal; not being human into clean, they do not make left the sphere Morale, since this sphere governs only the free voluntary acts, which belong into clean to the man. The heart and the body test one constantly the other: thus when the aêm tests the body, it is about a body passion and when the body tests the heart, it is about a animal passion (since caused by the heart, animated ). Thus passion is a modification of the heart which comes from the body. Passions are caused, develop and occur in the human compound: the study of passions thus rests on a hylemorphic Anthropologie. They are located in what holy Thomas calls the significant appetite, which causes the movement towards an object which interests the body.

Saint Thomas distinguishes various types of appetites of which will be born passions:

• natural appetite which is movement of a being towards what interests because of its own nature; the subject moves towards such object because it needs some ontologiquement from its nature even, because of a certain connaturality between the object and the subject.
• the significant appetite is started by the directions as they perceive quelquechose the delectable one or of necessary into clean (food, for example) or because of the species (the generation, for example)
• the intellectual appetite is a reflected desire, entirely subjected to the reason in a free rational judgment: it is the will.

The love is basic principle of passions as it allows the dynamism first between a subject and its object, and awakes the appetite, the movement itself of the subject towards its object. It is principle of the movement, and not the movement him even.

Moral science is given for goal to bring the entire man (animality included/understood) to a good life: it must thus not push back passions, but integrate them in the voluntary acts and make a good use of it, because it is the use which one makes of the passion which makes it good or bad; it is itself only morally neutral. But what is essential, it is that the presence or the absence and the degree of distance of the required good will influence largely the whole sensitivity of the human being, and thus to have important repercussions in the plan Physiologique and Psychologique.

In the order of passions, one can carry out a distinction between passions of irascible ( irascibilis ) and them passions of concupiscible ( concupiscibilis ). The first is a movement which avoids or destroys the obstacles towards the good, the second is the movement which will go towards or flee of the good in question.

Morals: the man and his finality

Nature in its totality is entirely turned towards God like his principle, its base and its fine last, and the Révélation identifies God as being the absolute Good; the human being does not escape this irrefutable fact and any moral reflection must fall under this metaphysical dynamics, because one finds in Thomas saint a perfect continuity between morals and the Métaphysique.

The reasonable creature that is the man in the world as a system of things is taken in this dynamics which starts from God as in his principle and which goes back there in a rational way: it is the movement of the exitus reditus where the man comes from his Creator and goes back there by means of acts ordered to his own nature.

God thus prints a direction with the things by creating them, and the direction printed with the reasonable creature is to turn over to God by means of their actions which they choose themselves freely. It is the choice of these average correlatives for this ultimate purpose which constitutes clean moral science.

Saint Thomas d' Aquin conceptualizes his optimistic vision of the man and the world to make germinate in the middle of the moral life the possibility natural to reach happiness, i.e. without the supernatural help of the Grâce, although it is not without this help that the man can reach a perfect happiness in this world.

Thus, as there is a supernatural destiny of the man, there is also a natural destiny: this destiny is the Bonheur, and it consists with well acting, i.e. to act according to its own nature, to be maintained in the natural order of the things, order which can only be good since he is created directly by God.

It is thus the rejection of any artificiality, which it is individual or collective, and a question of adaptation of the man to itself and the world which surrounds it: it is only accordingly that the man will make well, because it will not try to be withdrawn from the divine government, but well rather to adapt to it.

The virtue

All to act human rests on provisions of the heart which one calls Vertu. The virtue is one ( habitus ) to have acquired and had durably in the heart which " supports at the man the good to act " and thanks to which it reaches happiness and helps with the reasonable adequacy between the ends and the human nature. It is thus a interior principle human acts. Being given that the virtues are essential for the good development of the moral life, and thus of the goods which will result from this, it is necessary to include them in this study on the good of the man. More especially as the virtue is defined as being a good provision of the heart and as what returns good: " the virtue is what returns good that which has it " , because the virtue is what durably directs the heart towards the good.

Saint Thomas d' Aquin distinguishes the appetitive virtues , which are in the part significant (or irrational) of the heart, the intellectual virtues , which are in intellect, either speculative, or practical and the theological virtues , or gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The moral virtue maintains the man who has them in the happy medium between various states which hold of its sensitivity; for example the Courage is the state of the man who is neither releases, nor bold. However this medium is that which is appropriate for the human being: it is thus in its place, neither in one to act by defect (cowardice), nor in one to act by excess (temerity), but in one to act properly human because reasoned by a intellectual virtue that Aristote and holy Thomas names temperance (it is the intellectual virtue which has report/ratio with the capacity computer of the rational heart). Thus the verus morals cannot do without the intellectual virtues. Thus to act it virtuous is that which orders with the good because it is to act it which corresponds best to the substancielle shape of the man who is to be a reasonable creature. The properly moral problem of the distance between the man and his human nature finds its solution (to be put into practice) in the Vertu: it is while acting virtuously that the man acts as man, and thus acts well.

Parmis the intellectual virtues, there are some who are paramount compared to the others: they are the cardinal virtues . There are four of them: the intelligence , wisdom and the simple intelligence for the speculative part of the heart and the prudence for the computer part of the rational heart. It is the prudence which is principal cardinal virtues, it is most necessary to the good to act human: " prudence is the virtue most necessary to the human life. ".

The theological virtues are thus named because they concern God and that they are caused by Him. They transcend the simple possibilities of the human nature, because they are precisely founded on God: " the intellectual virtues and the virtues morals improve the intelligence and the appetite within the limits of the human nature; but theological virtues, supernaturally ". The man could not be contained indeed on itself whereas it is invaluable with God: the Grâce gives access to him a practice theological virtues, which transcend to act it human naturalness. This life is the " life surnaturelle" of the man. They are studied in the secunda secundae Summa Theologica of questions 1 to 46. It there a:

• the faith (questions 1 to 16) whose object is the Revealed Truth

• the hope (questions 17 to 22) whose object is the eternal Bliss
• the charity (questions 23 to 46) which is the friendship with God who makes the man participating of his own bliss.

Good use of the richnesses

Two things are appropriate for the man at the place of the external goods and it is initially the capacity to manage them and to have which it. Under this report/ratio it is allowed to have the goods into clean, it is even necessary to the human life and that for three raisons.
1 - Each one gives care more attentive with management of what belongs to him into clean than it would not give any to a community property with all or with several. In this case, indeed, one avoids the effort and one leaves with the others the care to provide for work commune.
2 - There is more order in the administration of the goods when the care of each thing is entrusted to a person, while it would be confusion if everyone dealt indistinctly with tout.
3 - Peace between the men is better guaranteed if each one is satisfied with what belongs to him; one indeed notes frequent quarrels between those which have joint things and in the indivision.
One second thing which is appropriate for the man, with respect to the external goods, it is the use which it makes, pleasure that it takes some. Under this report/ratio, the man should not have goods as if they were clean for him, but as being in all, in the sense that it must be all laid out to make of it share with the others in their needs, in their nécessités.

(Summa Theologica, IIa, IIa, qu.66, art 2, by 3)

Freedom and of the free-referee

The problem of freedom is explicitly Miss with the question of the voluntary act. It is the judgment, in the act of deliberation, which makes it possible to determine if an object is good or not, adapted to the situation, the subject, etc… but this judgment is entirely free, absolutely nothing is not opposed to him. It is of course of the rational judgment, and not about the instinctive judgment, which is determined to him by the sensitivity. But the free will is neither a power of intellect, nor a power of the appetite, but of both at the same time: the choice is or an intellect which wants, or an appetite which judges . Here is the reasoning of saint Thomas d' Aquin on this subject: is the man endowed with free will?

Objections: 1. It seems that the man does not have the free will. Because that which has the free will done what it wants. However the man does not do what he wants. S. Paul says indeed (Rm 7,19): " I do not do it although I want, and I make the evil which I hate. " The man thus does not have the free will. 2. Who has the free will can want and not want, act and not act. But that does not belong to the man. According to S. Paul (Rm 9,16), neither to want belongs to that which wants, nor to run to that which runs. The man thus does not have the free will. 3. " Is free what is cause of oneself " , known as Aristote. What receives its movement of another, is not free. However God puts moving the will according to the book of the Proverbs (2 1,1): " The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord who turns it in the sense that he wants. " And S. Paul (pH 2,13): " It is God who operates in us to want it and to act it ". The man thus does not have the free will. 4. Whoever is free, is Master of its acts. But the man is not it. He is written (Jr 10,23): " The way of the man is not in his capacity, it does not belong to the man to direct his steps ". The man is thus not free. 5. " Such is a being, such appears its end " to him; , known as the Philosopher. But it is not in our capacity to be of such or such way; that is given to us by nature. It is thus natural for us to follow a given end. We thus do not reach it freely.

In contrary direction , according to the Ecclesiastic (1 5,14): " God created the man at the beginning, and it left it with the capacity of its council " , i.e. " of its free will " , known as Glose.

to draw the share from it from the things according to him:

the man has the free will, or then the councils, the exhortations, the precepts, prohibitions, the rewards and the punishments would be vain . (…)

One should not include/understand text of S. Paul in the sense that the man could not want or run freely, but in the sense that the free will is not enough there if it does not receive the impulse and the assistance of Dieu.arbitre, we showed it previously. - Side of the body and its powers, the man can have such manner of being natural, because of its temperament or of a provision coming from an unspecified influence of body causes; however these causes cannot modify the intellectual part since this one is not the act of a body. Consequently, such each individual because of his body state is and such the end appears to him; because the man is inclined by the effect of such a provision to choose or dismiss such action. But these inclinations are subjected to the judgment of the reason which obeys the lower appetite, as one said. Also this tender does not carry it damage to the free will. (...)

As for the manners of being added again, they are the habitus and passions, which rather incline an individual in a direction than in the other. However these inclinations themselves are subjected to the judgment of the reason . Moreover, these qualities still depend on it, by the fact that it belongs to us to acquire them, by causing them or while us laying out to with it, or to reject them. And thus, nothing is opposed to freedom décision: (Summa Theologica, I, question. 83, article 1)

Fine the last of the man

The goods, as goods, themselves are treated on a hierarchical basis, because we said in the first part that the good is a transcendantal, and is thus arranged hierarchically proportionally: all the goods are desired in a subordinate way (for example health for the possibility of a social blooming or the acquisition of a technique in order to make use of it at useful ends as the soldier learns how the handling from the sword in order to be able to kill its enemy), therefore relative the ones to the others, and that because there is a supreme end which is desired for him in an absolute way, which is to some extent the top of the Analogie: the soldier killed his enemy in order to gain the battle, victory which will make it possible to live in peace, which will make it possible to the citizens to open out, etc… that until a supreme end which will be desired for itself, and not for another things. Without it, nothing would be subordinated and all the goods would be worth. All the other things are required only in the sight of this end: " All that the man wants or wishes, it is necessary that it is for its ultimate end. ". This ultimate end can be freely selected, but it generally more or less conscious and is more or less determined by physiological and psychological phenomena. The experiment shows us besides well that all men, that they recognize it or not, that it are clearly aware of it or not, act all for a goal which they want in an absolute way and to which is subordinates all their acts; thus the miserly one acts only for the money, for certain artists it is for the beauty, for a hitlérien it is for the vital expansion of the German race, for a revolutionary Marxist it is for the material power of the proletariat. However, a man can have only one end ultimate: " it is impossible that the will of a man moves at the same time worms various objects like ultimate ends "

Saint Thomas places the supreme good of the natural moral life, in what it calls the Bonheur, and the supreme good of the supernatural life in the Béatitude, i.e. the knowledge of God. It is the end of all the men: " the reasonable man and the other creatures angels reach their ultimate end by knowledge and the love of god ". Why this only end, whereas it is clear that all the men do not agree on their ends? Because the formal reason of fine last is the good perfectly filling, and alone God is perfectly filling. Let us note that as the supernatural life is infinitely higher than the natural life, the Béatitude is a good infinitely more perfect than happiness.

" happiness is fine the last of the man and is at the top of the goods; the closer one thing is to this end, higher is its row parmis the human goods ". This quotation is one cannot clearer: happiness is the ultimate and last end of the man. Indeed, all the goods keep in mind only happiness, by a mode of relativity: health is in order to have a good social life, which it even allows the blooming, which itself makes it possible to be happy; knowledge, good in itself, which is the perfection of the intelligence, makes it possible to enjoy what is known: this pleasure makes happy, etc… The examples can extend to all the transcendantaux goods and all perfectionren. Thus the goods take their value according to their proximity with the Bonheur.

By a flash of clearness and intelligence, Saint Thomas explains why certain lower goods which one is private causes more nuisance than the deprivation of a higher good: " it is in the nature of a deprivation to oppose the will. However, each man always does not appreciate in his will the goods according to the truth: he is made that a thing can deprive of a large good without opposing the will in so far as he is right less of sorrow. Thus much judge the sorrows body higher than the spiritual sorrows: their judgment on the hierarchy of the goods is then distorted. " And their judgment is distorted by the immediacy of the lower deprivation, by their not-capacity of abstraction. Thus not to be rich, pécunièrement speaking, causes more sorrows than not to be virtuous, for example, and " this is why they often see the sinning enjoying body health and having the external fortune whose virtuous men are sometimes private " . And this " distort injustice" their cause more sorrow than the deprivation even of the virtue because they do not consider the hierarchy of the goods to its true value.

It is seen well that this consideration of the hierarchy of the goods is made under the intellective mode, and that only the reason makes it possible to give an account of it. The statute of the reason takes a new dimension then. It is not only any more faculty to judge what is good or not, but also to embrace the very whole life by an abstractive objectivity and to replace each good in its true place, that which is wanted by the computer of all things and which constitutes the gasoline even single Good from which all the other goods take value: God.

love

When one studies the good and his diffusion, the Universe seems very quickly a whole of individualities animated by the covetousness of its own good: the individual appetite classifies and distinguishes realities which arise and from that, intellect retains, under the name of good, which will form the subject with happiness. This ego-agathon can seem to be a reduction of the man to a being contained on itself, on its own happiness. It is to forget that the man is also defines as a social animal and a being open on the supernatural one, and the concept which marks this decisive opening is the love.

• the opening on the other: love like base

The love ( amo, dilectio, caritas, amicitia ) is the cause of all the internal or external movements of the human being. It understands in him, any form of appetite, that it is sensitive or rational, but is not reduced to them. Which is the correlation between the love and the good? They are both of the analogical concepts, of the transcendantaux one, and God has them in absolute plenitude: what wants to say that the bliss, as a knowledge of God, is the supreme Good of the man, but that the love of god left constituent the bliss, because it is the characteristic of the man whom to like what he judges like good, and more still when this good infinitely exceeds it. The love is also the principle first of any movement of the will or an unspecified appetitive faculty towards the Good: " the love has report/ratio with the good in general, that it is had or not. It is thus the love which is by nature the act first of the will or the appetite ". The love is thus not only one passion, but as an object of knowledge is the being, and when this being is object of a subject under the method to act it, it is it under the terms of the love. The love, in its dimension of principle of the human acts, is then the base of any morals. There is nothing which is made without love, and there is no good if it is not liked before. The love is thus principle of acting it in general. We will not be able to extend us here on the love in its particular cases, because there are in fact as many qualities of love of qualities of good: the love carries towards the good, but receive its dignity of the good towards which it carries; for example the love which a being carries to a woman is more estimable, for Thomas saint, whom love that this same being carries to sauerkraut.

Moreover, the concept of love introduces otherness and ethics ( éthicorum ) into the moral behaviors, and that it substitutes to some extent the perfection virtuous and necessary to the happiness which is the friendship, notion developed by Aristote in books VIII and IX of the Ethique in Nicomaque, because it does not suppose any more the friendship, but included, with the way in which the superior (the whole) included the inferior (the part). The concept of friendship is thus found taken in a whole vaster than itself: love. Indeed, to like something in the order of the honest good, it is him to want good: " the love consists mainly of what the friend wants of the good to that which likes . ". The love thus opens the human good with a new dimension: that of the other, because one of the philosophical significance of the verb is to like, it is the division of its individual perfections and its virtues to another. As a formal principle of the affections and appetites, the love makes it possible the man to tie bonds between him and the whole of realities - the other included/understood, which surrounds it: it becomes thus an element founder of civilization and culture. We developed up to now a design egocentric person of the good as a good for the human subject, the concept of love, as a principle extatic (in its higher forms), opens the human being and its good specific to the other and its good with him.

The voluntary love is not specified and formally not determined by the individual good, but by the Good. Its superiority, it is precisely to reach its objects in their reason of good ( sub-rations profit ), because it is lit by a knowledge which reaches the being under its raison d'être ( sub rations entis ): the love is thus in a bond of dependence with knowledge. It is the rational, or voluntary love (it names then dilectio ). It becomes an autonomous psychological capacity compared to the significant appetite: this last being only one good under the terms of the ontological order of the subject, i.e. what is appropriate to him into clean whereas the dilectio is an autonomous reality psychological because rest on intellect and the free-referee. It results from it that this love is self-love but primarily “objective love”; it exceeds the appetite, the desire or covetousness, while including them, and it is “homage” to the good like good, it is “presence with the good”. It emanates from the loving subject, but it finishes with the good itself. From this point of view, a not involved love does not make any difficulty; and a not involved love takes its object in its quality of honest good.

The love thus pushes with the good, in its capacity as horse-power, it allows a constancy in the virtuous research of the good, in its capacity as rational or rather rationalized appetitive power, and it makes it possible to open the purely individual sphere of the research and the pleasure of the good to a sphere extended to the other, individual or community, as liked. In addition, the particular good is lower than the political or Community good, and more still, it tends there: " the particular good tends to the community property as at its end (…) from there, the good of the community is divine than that of the individual ". Thus the good is diffused through all realities which surround the human being under the method of the love (it is all the direction of the bonum diffusium of Thomas saint), and takes consequently the role of principle founder of any sociability and any Community life: the family life, the social life, the political life and even any singular report/ratio from one individual to another which have a constructive and good aiming rest on the love as it is division of good, of all the forms by which one can understand the word well (quite material, useful, pleasant, intellectual, interested, virtuous, jouissif, etc…).

• charity base of the virtues morals

The love becomes charity ( caritas ) when it is a theological virtue, i.e. a virtue which comes and which concerns God. Saint Thomas is thus on a supernatural register when he speaks about charity. The virtues morals cannot exist without charity. They is thus that natural virtues, immanentes with the human nature (the virtues morals) have a supernatural base as them rest on the charity, which is a theological virtue. Charity is a friendship with God, i.e. a reciprocity based on the Grâce. It makes that God shares his bliss with the man. We are still a faith in the register of the division and the opening, which is allowed by the love. Moreover, she adds a certain perfection àl' love

to contemplate and transmit

Contemplation, activity higher than all the others, is that of the Dominican one. More still, the Dominican one must transmit what he contemplated with the others: Indeed, it is more beautiful to light than to only shine; the same it is more beautiful to transmit to the others than one contemplated than to only contemplate. This quotation summarizes the intellectual and religious dynamism of Thomas Saint: the fruits of contemplation can and are divided with the others. Thus the theologist and holy philosopher Thomas, while teaching and while seeking, nothing but do deepen, scan and divide the fruits of the knowledge of God, which are the most perfect fruits in this world and the other.

the Vocabulary scholastic of Thomas Saint

It is useful to specify some terms important and usually used by Thomas saint, because the direction of many terms changed much since the many centuries which separate us from the Thomas Saint living corporally. It will be noticed that they come for the majority from the vocabulary from Aristote, that holy Thomas allowed himself to specify.

To be (ens or ess)

The being is the notion fondamenatale of philosophy thomist. But the ontology developed by Saint Thomas extrêment is extrêment varied to make it possible to be satisfied with only one definition of the mot.

• the ens in the direction of the concept ( conceptus entis ) means the being thought in all its general information, or rather the act to be common to any being, after abstraction. It is the central concept of all the metaphysics of Thomas. The being is analogical, i.e. that it arranged hierarchically with various degrees according to the étants. God, as a top of the analogy to be it, is the ipsum ess , the pure act to exist, That in which merges the gasoline and the existence.
• the ess is the act to even exist of one being.
• the essentia or quidditas is one of the significance of the word being as a thing is what it is: it is the gasoline of the thing, which the intelligence will reach of the thing by the process of abstraction.
• Enfin the being merges with reality even as it is thought (of being of reason) or as it is simply (to be real)

Causes (caused)

This theory of the quatres causes comes from Aristote. It was practically taken again such as it is by Saint Thomas.

• the causes efficient is what carries out the change.

• the causes final is it towards what the change occurs
• the causes material is what in the subject is suceptible to receive a determination.
• the causes formal is it in what the effect is, with the result that it is what it is.

The first two causes its known as extrinsic , because they are not constitutive to be it thing, and the two last causes are known as intrinsic in what they even constitute the subject in its being. Full with other distinctions between the causes are possible in Thomas saint (main cause and second, cause per and per accidens, etc…)

Matter and Form (materia and formed)

Also taken again concepts of Aristote.

• the form is the principle intrinsic and constitutive of a being, with the result that a thing is what it is. For example, it gives the human nature to a body matter. It is thus also principle of species and it constitutes what Saint Thomas calls the heart. This concept is worth especially to speak about the substance of a thing.
• the matter is what in a being receives the form, i.e. an unspecified determination.

Act and power (actus and potentia)

Terms them also aristotelicians, they have many significances

• the act means completion, whatever it is (moral, ontological, etc…) to be it of a thing: it is thus taken in this direction of the entéléchie. But it also means the fact of even existing or the simple fact of acting.
• the power means what can be given by an act, or a passage to the act. It represents or reveals to some extent an ontological incompletion but which can potentially receive an improvement. There are passive powers and active powers.

substance and accident (substantia and accidens)

• the substance is being it which exists by itself, which constitutes the subject in what it has of more irreducible. The substance first is the individual (for example Socrate) and the substance second is nature (for example man).
• the accident is what is " ajouté" with a substance, as it can exist of itself, but that the accident can only exist with a substance. One distinguishes from many accidents: time, of place, relation, etc…

Passive intellect and intellect agent

• intellect passive (or possible) is the activity of intellect conditioned by the reception of the significant images, it is to some extent a passive activity. It is to some extent a clean slate in which is printed the significant images extracted by the directions.

• intellect agent is the operation of the intellect which will abstract the significant characteristics from the significant images. It separates the universal element from the singular element of what the directions provide him.

Method

Saint Thomas d' Aquin remained faithful to the method which was inculcated to him by saint Albert Large the:

As regards faith and manners, it is necessary to believe holy Augustin more than the philosophers, if they are in disagreement; but if we speak Médecine, I rely to Galien and Hippocrates, and if it is about the nature of the things, it is with Aristote that I address myself, or with some other expert in the matière. The drafting of the Summa Theologica watch however that even faith manners, he preferred to bring his own compilation of arguments and his own conclusions to rely on Augustin. It is known as in addition as he had always criticized the point of view of Augustin who gaussait himself that one could accept the theory of the Antipodes, consequence of the rotundity of the Earth adopted by Aristote.

Some opinions

Leon XIII, Pope

There the Fathers of the Concile of Thirty wanted that, in the middle of their assembly, with the book of divine Écritures and the decrees of the supreme pontiffs, on the furnace bridge even, the Somme of Thomas d' Aquin was deposited opened, to be able to draw councils, reasons, oracles.

(in the encyclical Aeterni Patris , August 4th, 1879)

Jean-Paul II, Pope

Rightly, holy Thomas can be called “ apostle of the truth ”. Indeed, the intuition of the Doctor angelica consists of the certainty which there exists a fundamental harmony between the faith and the reason: “It is thus necessary that the reason of the believer has a natural, true and coherent knowledge, things created of the world and the man, which are also the object of the divine revelation; more still, the reason must be able to articulate this knowledge in a conceptual way and in the form of argumentation.

(in the apostolic letter Inter Munera Academiarum , January 28th, 1999)

G.K. Chesterton

“Thomas d' Aquin was one of the large liberators of the human spirit, by reconciling reason and religion. It opened the ways of the scientific experimentation to him, it returned to the sensory impressions their dignity of windows of the heart, and to intellect its right divine to nourish checked facts. It made it possible the Faith to be assimilated the substantial marrow of densest and squatest of ancient philosophies. ”

(in the biographical work holy Thomas of the creator )

Jean-François Revel

What the Scolastique bequeathed us of more useful, it is perhaps this precision. All Western teaching, with its Premièrement, Deuxièmement, large has, small has, small B , was impregnated. Subordination and fitment, the vision and division, not only additive, but by hierarchy of importance and bond of dependence, the logic of the ideas, the almost architectural plan in the talk of the thought or the facts are incorporated then definitively in the mental practices of the Occident.

(in History of Western philosophy )

Jacques Maritain, Philosopher of the 20th century

Chrétienne philosophy is not determined doctrines, although in our opinion, the doctrines of Thomas saint in oneself the most completed expression and purest. (…) we find particularly refreshing for the spirit the fact that Thomas d' Aquin received his philosophical armor of the largest thinker of antiquity païenne. (in Of Christian philosophy , 1932)

Anecdotes

• At the time of its studies, his/her comrades called it the dumb ox because of its stoutness and its discretion which one took for timidity whereas it was rather of deep humility and showed its deep intelligence with not morfondre with the imbeciles. Its Master Albert Large the, seeing his comrades thus calling it, made then: “when the ox mugira, it will make tremble the Occident! ” The considerable posterity of its young student gave him reason.
• Two beginners wanting to joke said to him to look with the window, because one saw, said, an ox flying. Thomas moved with the window, and answered them: I would have been less astonished to see an ox flying than a monk to lie (the nomenclature of the sins indexed venial then which named the merry lie).
• Whereas one posed to him the question “Which God made before creating the world? ”, he answered: He created a hell to put at it those which raise such questions!
• It however did not deprive itself of this kind of interrogations: one of the paragraphs of the Summa Theologica request Since God is the Almighty, can it make a rock so heavy which it would not be able to raise it? , and the answer thomist is not without pointing out what one will name later the autoreferential definitions.
• One reports that holy Thomas put his head in the Tabernacle when it was in evil of ideas.
• Approximately a month before its death, it affirmed to have a vision of God saying to him: “ You wrote ego well, Thomas, that you like reward wish? ”, holy Thomas would then have answered: " You only, Lord ". This vision of God face to face made him suddenly appear its work like “ridiculous” (with its biographer: “ my work seems to me to be straw beside what I saw ”). From this day, it ceased working there.

Works

List works

For more precise details, to see the Catalog with accompanying notes of works of saint Thomas d' Aquin.

Theological work

• Commentaire of the Sentences of Pierre Lombard (1254 - 1256) that the graduates sentenciaires were to study and comment during two years. It is a compilation of proposals arranged by topics, organized in a coherent way.

• Of graft and essentia AD fratres and socios suos (Paris, 1252 - 1256) (the being and gasoline). Work intended for its fellow-members of the Saint-Jacob convent.
• Of veritate (in Paris in 1256 - 1259). Ordered report of 29 questions disputed on the truth.
• Somme against nice the ( Summa countered gentiles ) (started in 1258). Work made up at the request of saint Raymond Penàfort the purpose of who was " to write a work against the errors of the infidels At to the use of the Dominican missionaries preaching against the Moslems, the Jews and the Christians hérétiques".
• Countered errores Graecorum (Orvieto, be 1263) (Against the errors of the Greeks).
• Countered impugnantes Dei cultum and religionem (Paris, September-October 1256) (Against those which fight the worship of God and the religion). Refutation of a work of Guillaume of Saint-Love.
• Of aeternitate mundi (Paris, spring 1271) (of the eternity of the world). Philosophical treaty on the controversy on the eternity of the world.
• Summa Theologica ( Summa theologica ) (1266 - 1273; unfinished work ) the major work of Thomas saint undertaken, at the base, to guide the beginners (!) studium of theology.
• Of potentia (with Rome, 1265 - 1266). 10 disputed questions.
• Of malo (with Rome, 1266 - 1267). 16 questions disputed about the evil.
• Of animated (Paris, February-April 1269). 21 articles of disputatio on the heart.
• Compendium of theology (Paris or Naples 1269 - 1273 - unfinished work ) (short treaty on the Christian faith).
• Of the unit of intellect against the averroïstes
• Sermons. , Editions of the Pike perch
• Of beatitudine - philosophical Bookstore J. VRIN - Paris, 2005 (bilingual edition, texts translated by Ruedi Imbach and Ide Fouche, accompanied by the Of summo bono of Boèce de Dacie).

Summary of the disputatio and opuscules:

• 88 opucules , in particular on the Our Father , on the I greet you Marie , etc… they are short writings intended for various individuals, according to various circumstances on various subjects.

• 12 quodlibets or questions drawn randomly which are disputed
• 15 questions disputed , in particular about the evil, the heart, etc…

Comments of the Scriptures

• Glossa continued super Evangelia (Catena aurea) (Orvieto, Rome, 1262 with 1267). Glose on the four Gospels starting from the writings of Greek and Latin Fathers.

• literal comment of the book of Job (1261-1264)
• comment of the book of the Psalms (until psalm 54) (1272-1273)
• Comment of the prophet Isaïe (1267-1269)
• Comment of the Lamentations of Jérémie (1267-1268)
• Comment of the totality of the letters of Saint Paul
• Comment of the Gospels

Comments of Aristote

• Comment of the Book of the Metaphysical (1268-1272)

• Comment of the Book of the Ethical with Nicomaque (1269)
• Comment of the Book of the world
• Comment of the Book of the generation and corruption
• Comment of the Book of Weather the , to Book II, 10 inclusively (1269-1271)
• Comment of the Book Of the Heart , until the lib. III
• Comment of the Book of the " direction and sensations" (1266-1272)
• Comment of the Book of the memory (1268-1272)
• Comment of the Book of the Policy , to the Book III, lect. 6, (about 1269)
• Comment of the Book of the Causes (1269-1273)
• Comment of the Physics
• Comment of logic to Book II, lect. 2, (1269-1272)
• Comment of the treaty of interpretation

Bibliography and studies on saint Thomas d' Aquin

• Jean-Pierre Torrell O.P., Initiation with saint Thomas d' Aquin. Its person and her work, Initiation 1. (Ancient and medieval Thought, Vestigia 13), Paris-Freiburg, Editions of the Stag - University Editions, 1993,2 {{E}} ED. 2002, XVIII-650 p.

• Jean-Pierre Torrell O.P., Holy Thomas d' Aquin, spiritual Master. Initiation 2. (Ancient and medieval Thought, Vestigia 19). University editions, Freiburg - Editions of the Stag, Paris, 1996, 2nd ED. 2002, VIII-600 p.
• Ivan Gobry, Holy Thomas d' Aquin: biography . Salvator editions, Paris, 2005. 254 p., 21 cm. ISBN 2-7067-0399-7. Includes a detailed bibliography of works of saint Thomas d' Aquin p. 217-223.
• Guillaume de Tocco, History of saint Thomas d' Aquin (French translation of the last state of the text (1323) with introduction and notes by Claire the Brownone). - Paris: editions of the Stag, coll “Christian Wisdoms”, 2005. - 223 p., 20 cm. - ISBN 2-204-07729-1. - Original Title: Ystoria sancti Thomae de Aquino .
• Etienne Gilson, Thomisme: introduction to the philosophy of saint Thomas d' Aquin , editions VRIN, 6th republication: 2005. Fundamental work on saint Thomas d' Aquin who exposes all the doctrinal points of the philosophy of saint Thomas d' Aquin.
• Marie-Dominique Chenu, Introduction to the study of saint Thomas d' Aquin , editions VRIN. Contextual study of the methods scholastics of the 13th century, and methodology specific to Saint Thomas.
• Marie-Dominique Chenu, Holy Thomas d' Aquin and Theology , edition VRIN
• Louis-B. Geiger, O.P., the Problem of the love in saint Thomas d' Aquin , conference Albert the Large one, 1952, editions VRIN
• Marie-Dominique Philippe, Holy Thomas doctor, witness of Jesus . Saint Paul, Freiburg-Paris, 1992, ISBN 2-85049-501-8. Introduction to philosophical, theological, and spiritual work of saint Thomas d' Aquin.
• Umberto Eco, the esthetic Problem in saint Thomas d' Aquin , editions VRIN. Thesis of doctorate of philosophy of Umberto Eco.
• Rene-Antoine Gauthier, Holy Thomas d' Aquin, Summons against the Nice ones, Introduction , Éditions university, Paris, 1993.
• Alain of Released, “Thomas d' Aquin. Somme against Nice the ”, philosophical Gradus , to dir. L. Jaffro and Mr. Labrune, Flammarion, GF 773, Paris, 1995, p. 765-783.
• Michel Nodé-Langlois, the Vocabulary of saint Thomas d' Aquin , 1999
• Thierry-Dominique Humbrecht, To read holy Thomas d' Aquin
• Jean Daujat, Y does it have a truth? , Téqui. Introduction excellent and extremely accessible to Christian philosophy and thus introduced in an extremely clear way with that of saint Thomas d' Aquin.
• Jacques Maritain, the Doctor angelica , Paris, Paul Hartmann, 1929
• G.K. Chesterton, Holy Thomas of the creator , 1933, biographical work which is presented in a dynamic way and very hanging.
• R. Joly, Quarta via Summa Theologica , 1920, Ghent
• A. Wohlman, Thomas d' Aquin and Maïmonide. An exemplary dialog , Stag, Paris, 1988.

Internal bonds

• History of philosophy

• History of philosophy
• History of the method
• History of metaphysics
• Plato
• Aristote

• History of Christian philosophy

• Christian Philosophy
• Metaphysical Thomisme
• Pseudo-Denys Aréopagite
• Holy Augustin
• Albert Large the, the Master of saint Thomas d' Aquin
• Scholastic, the " philosophy of Ecole"
• John Duns Scot
• Francisco Suárez, which synthesized holy Thomas and founded the Thomisme in XVIème century

• theological Questions

• Christian Philosophy
• catholic Theology
• Encyclical
• Fides and Ratio, Jean-Paul II, September 14th 1998, about the relations between faith and reason,
• Æterni Patris, on the relations between faith and reason, Leon XIII, August 4th 1879, on Thomas d' Aquin and theology Scholastic
• theses of 1914.
• the question of the Grace

Bond external

• complete works of saint Thomas d' French Aquin: Project Doctor Angélique. The whole of this site, except four works, is under license GFDL (Free Documentation License). Another site: jesusmarie.com.
• complete works of saint Thomas d' Latin Aquin (site of the University of Navarre)
• works of saint Thomas d' Aquin: text with agreements and list of frequency (Bibliotheca Thomistica IntraText)
• Gate of Aquin
• Re-examined thomist (Dominican of Toulouse, School of theology)
• Texts of Thomas d' Aquin on the site of the Academy Nancy-Metz
• Life and Oeuvre of Thomas d' Aquin Works - Chronology of works - Editions - Translations
• Holy Thomas seen by Writers - Philosophers - Theologists - Magistère - Artists
• Jean-Pierre Torrell O.P., the " vrai" portrait of saint Thomas d' Aquin. Sources

See too

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