Preparation for the 6 August 2019 Session

Reading: Josef Pieper, Guide to Thomas Aquinas, chapters IX and X.

Questions to help your reflexion as you read:

Chapter IX

Was Latin Aquinas's native language?
Was Latin a living or a dead language in the Middle Ages?
When and how did Latin become a "dead language"?
What was the difference between Humanist and Scholastic Latin?
What is the specific kind of Latin Aquinas uses?
What is the main attribute of the language used by St Thomas and his contemporaries?
What is St Thomas's approach to jargon in his academic writing?
How was scholastic Latin distinct from medieval Latin, between St Thomas's and St Agustine's?
What was in practice St Thomas's approach to jargon, artificial and natural language?
How would you compare St Thomas's use of language versus Heidegger and versus (the first) Wittgenstein.
How "objective" or "subjective" is language for Aquinas?
What is the most outstanding trace of St Thomas's style according to Pieper?

Chapter X

What was the challenge that Thomas took as his life task?
Can you explain what Boethius's and Anselm of Canterbury's simplifications were?
How did the problems of "split consciousness" and "double truth" affected the relations of faith and reason at the time St Thomas enters the intellectual scene?
Which of St Thomas's ideas about the living of the Christian life upset the "faith camp" among his contemporaries?
Why was Aquinas's appeal to Aristotle so problematic from the point of view of the "faith camp"?
How does St Thomas define "world" and why is this concept important?
What was the role of purity in the pursuit of truth in St Thomas's life and teaching?
What was the difference between Siger de Brabante's and Aquinas's Aristotelianism?
What were the basic tenets of Latin Averroism and why was it problematic?
Why is St Thomas summoned to the University of Paris for the second time in 1268?
Describe the two intellectual fronts on which St Thomas had to battle during his second stay at the University of Paris and how he went about it.
What were the three main lines of St Thomas's argument to articulate his position?







To join our mailing list or for any questions/comments click here.

Preparation for the 2 July 2019 Session

St Thomas Aquinas's Quaestiones disputatae de veritate contains 29 questions. For our discussion next Tuesday we will only see the first four articles of question 1.

Question One

1. What is truth?

2. Is truth found principally in the intellect or in things?

3. Is truth only in the intellect joining and separating?

4. Is there only one truth by which all things are true?

As you read through, you will find some terms that may sound more familiar after having read De ente et essentia in April 2019, for instance the concepts of being, essence, accident and others. If you wish to refresh them go to this post.

Your only preparation for this July session consists of reading carefully these articles. Try to follow the internal logic in each of them. You may find it tiring, but it's worth it: your intellect will be working out in a mental gym.

Remember you can access a vast number of St Thomas's works in English (and Latin) on this site compiled by the Dominicans in United States. Have a look, even if only to see all the works of Aquinas they have in the site.



To join our mailing list or for any questions/comments click here.

Clarifications after the 4 June 19 session

Which version of the Bible was used in the Middle Ages?

The version of the Bible most widely used during the Middle Ages (especially around St Thomas's time) was the Vulgate, that's the short answer. The Vulgate was translated into Latin from the original texts by St Jerome (d. 420). The main reasons why the Vulgate became so widely used were: its clarity of exposition, the fidelity of its translation and its elegance of diction. By the 9th century it had been adopted by most of Christendom as the most authoritative translation. You can read a very good summary of the history of the Vulgate up to the 20th century by clicking on this link.

What exactly was an articulus?

The articulus, explains Pieper on his Guide to Thomas Aquinas, was the smallest building block of the quaestio disputata (and other forms of writing). It typically contained the following parts:
The question under discussion;
the opposing arguments to the idea the author was going to submit;
an idea contradicting the arguments (n. 2);
the thesis, a synthetic statement where the author advances his own reply to the question (n. 1).
a development addressing each of the opposing arguments (n. 2).


For a good example of this check the structure in any of the twelve articles of Question One of Aquinas's De veritate (the reading for our July 2019 session).

Preparation for the 7 June Session

Chapters VII and VIII of the Guide to St Thomas describe to us Aquinas's activity in the final years of his life, his late 40s. In addition to the content of his intellectual endeavours, pay attention to the discussion format often referred to in these two chapters: the disputatio, a method of debate which required from participants (1) a commitment to find the truth on a particular matter, (2) a thorough analysis of the opponent's argument, and (3) the advancing of one's own position based on logical and well-grounded reasoning. The second work by St Thomas that we'll start reading and discussing next month (De Veritate) will have this format.

Below are some questions as an optional help for your reading. If your time is limited choose three or four that you find more intriguing or interesting, and add others later.

• Who is that opponent St Thomas argues against the last five years of his life and why would others confuse St Thomas with that opponent?
• What is, in a few words, the spirit, the essence of the disputatio and how does St Thomas practise it?
• What were the risks of an ill-understood disputatio spirit (present even as far back as Socrates's time, and even more so during the late Middle-Ages? How does Thomas tackle this problem, for instance at the beginning of his Summa theologiae?
• What is the role and importance of the articulus within the disputatio?
• What was the difference between the quaestiones disputatae and the quaestiones quodlibetales and how did Thomas approach them?
• Do you agree with the idea that the spirit of the disputatio is at the core of what a university should be about, as Thomas seems to have believed?
• Among the many roles he had to fulfill in his life, what was the one that Thomas had most at heart up to the end?
• What was the historic and nearly impossible task Urban IV assigned Thomas which regarded all Christendom (had you heard about it)?
• What are the two components in the art of teaching according to St Thomas?
• What is at the beginning of philosophising or any other kind of knowledge?
• What kind of argumentation does Thomas use in his Summa contra gentiles?

Preparation for the 7 May 2019 Session

Reading: Aquinas, Thomas. De ente et essentia (chapters 4 to 6, paragraphs 88 to 113).

This second part of the reading we started discussing in March (see corresponding post) passes from the concepts already reviewed in the previous chapters (1 to 3) to see how essences are found mainly in three different substances: God, intellectual (purely spiritual) substances and human beings (who are spiritual and material). St Thomas develops these ideas in chapter 4 (paragraphs 88 to 98).

Chapter 5 (paragraphs 99 to 112) is devoted to explain how essence is found in accidents. Accidents can be defined (to a certain extent), and if we can say that they are something we are referring to their essence. But their essence and that of substances is different.

Chapter 6 is the conclusion not only of the previous two chapters but of the whole opuscule too.

As an introduction to help your own analysis here are some hints:

(1) God's (philosophical) definition is the substance whose essence is being (remember that what the translation we are using calls "existence" should be called by the less literary but more accurate "act of being" corresponding to the Latin "esse"). Other substances have received the act of being which is different from what their essence. But God who is the source of being itself is infinitely actual and simple, not divided in any way. [See paragraphs 89-91.]

(2) Separate intelligences are the philosophical term for what with the aid of Revelation we commonly know as "angels" and denote spiritual beings serving God (in Latin angelus, in Greek ἄγγελος, meaning in both cases "messenger"). Among other such messengers or servers, the Bible mentions Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and the guardian angels. St Thomas describes them as substances not limited by matter (like humans) but not cause of their own being either. They have received being each according to a different capacity--their essence. What distinguishes one separate intelligence from another is the "level of act of being" they hold, with some very close to God and some (the lowest ranked) close to humans. Each of these intelligences is a species to itself. [See paragraphs 92-97.]

(3) Finally human beings are the lowest substance, a composite not only of essence and act of being (like the separate intelligences) but also of matter and form. It is possible for all human beings to belong to the same species because each is limited, individuated from the rest by its matter. [See paragraph 98.]

(4) That's for act of being and essence in substances, which are "self standing entities". But how can we speak of accidents (things which "live" in a substance, which are predicated of a substances, such as "tall" referred to a person)? St Thomas will explain how their essence is qualified and their definition incomplete, always depending on a substance to become complete. [See paragraphs 99-112.]

Challenges / questions for your reflection while reading:

• Try to grasp and distinguish the concepts of:
• essence and act of being (translated in the reading as "existence");
• substance and accident;
• matter and form;
• genus and species;
• act and potency.
• If, unlike the separate intelligences (each of them a different species), all human beings belong to the same species (have a similar form), how can (if at all) they be identified from one another when they die?
• If God is pure act of being (Ipsum Esse Subsistens), can we say that he is anything else (Good, Provident, Omniscient, etc.)?
• We know for sure that humans are material. How can we know we are spiritual too and can we say from a philosophical point of view if we are different from animals (and why)?

Preparation for the 2 April 2019 Session

Highlights to help your reading of Pieper's Guide to Thomas Aquinas, IV-VI:

• St Thomas can't be identified as "Aristotelian" (or "Platonist" or "Augustinian" for that matter). He looked for the truth of relevant matters wherever (and from whomever) he could find it. 
• For St Thomas what Aristotle has to say is important not because Aristotle says it but inasmuch as it is true. St Thomas engaged with Aristotle's ideas, scrutinised them and made them relevant to philosophy in the Middle Ages and beyond. 
• He deepened on Aristotle because of the Greek philosopher's attention to concreteness, to the natural world, to things as they are in reality. 
• The discovery of Aristotle and his perspective coincides with a move in Christian thought away from a certain Augustinian contempt for the (natural) world and in favour of a symbolic interpretation of this world as a symbol of the sacred.
• This discovery could potentially lead to an extreme view away from the sacred (secularisation) and this was the reason Aristotle was seen with reserve by many.
• For St Thomas, a believer in Sacred Revelation as the highest expression of objective truth, Aristotle represents however an opportunity to revisit an implicit idea present in Christian thought from the beginning: the appreciation of Creation (including the natural world).  
• Though several universities flourish in the XIII century, some focus more in Law (eg Bologna) or Maths and Sciences (eg Salerno and Oxford), but one, Paris, focuses on the two disciplines that are universal by nature (about the whole of reality): theology and philosophy. Therefore the University of Paris becomes the most important academy of the Western world. 
• St Thomas arrives there as a student in 1242. He becomes the equivalent of a lecturer (after obtaining his licentia docendi or "permission to teach") in 1256. Due to the "Mendicant controversy" he is barred from membership to an equivalent of the university's teaching union (the universitas magistrorum) and his students are forbidden to attend his lectures. In the meantime he has just concluded De ente et essentia (the small work we are analysing during these weeks) and is composing other works.
• The matter is so serious that it is not solved till the Pope himself intervenes in 1257, so that Dominican St Thomas and Franciscan St Bonaventure be allowed to teach. During this time Thomas defends the way of life fostered by the Mendicant orders using the disputatio ("disputation").
• The disputatio was a disciplined form of debate, based on solid argumentation, but still remaining a dialogue with those holding the opposing view. It was a very common way to learn and teach in medieval universities. The second work of St Thomas we'll analyse this year (De veritate) is written in that format.   

Preparation for the 5 March 2019 Session

"Translation" of some of the terms to ordinary language, just as a first intuitive approach to the concepts (not a full academic explanation) of Aquinas's De ente et essentia, I-III 

• ​"being" = a verb, the act of being (essse); or = something that "is" in the sense of actively being (ente); 
• "essence" = that which something is (essentia); all things "are" (have being, esse), each is  a "being" (ente); but how do you distinguish between one and the other? By their "essence" or the what they are (a tree, a human person, etc.);
• "act" = the principle of "movement" ​​metaphysically understood (from possibility to reality, from capacity to actual perfection);
• "potency" = the principle of "limitation" or contention of act (possibility before it becomes real, capacity before it reaches perfection). 
• "substance" = a "proper" being (when "being" means "ente," see above);
• "accident" = a feature of a substance, something that can or cannot be in the substance without the substance losing what it is.
• "nature" = the principle of (metaphysical) movement of something, according to what it is.
• "genus" = a family of species.
• "species" = what something is, its "quiddity" or essence.
• "quiddity" = from the Latin interrogative "quid" or what (is)? Used as equivalent to nature, form or essence depending on the context.
• "form" = the principle of actuality making a being (ente) to have a specific nature. 
• "matter" = the principle of limitation that makes possible for material beings (entia) belonging to a species to be many. 

An example. A horse is a being (ente), because is something that has act of being (esse). Before we say anything about it, we take for granted that it is. Its essence (essentia) is to be an animal that eats oats and alfalfa, drinks water, neighs, runs, etc. A foal is a mature horse in potency (potentia), if you train it and care for it to develop to its full ​perfection (actus) or actuality, one day it will run as fast as an adult horse. It is of the substance (substantia) of the horse to have four legs, not one hundred, but whether ​​it's being brown is an accident (accidens): it could be white and still being a horse. It belongs to its nature (natura) to neigh and to run, but not to fly. "Horse" is a species of the genus "animals". The matter of a horse is this matter that makes this horse different from all the other horses. Its form is the nature of a horse that this particular horse shares with all the other horses members of the same species. The essence of a horse comprehends its form and matter. And for a horse to exist essence is not enough it needs the act of being (esse). 

It can be shown the possibility non material beings or "intelligences"; they can't be differentiate from one another by matter, so each of them is a species constituted of one individual. Still intelligences or non-material or spiritual beings are composed of essence and act of being (esse).

Some clarifications requested by group members:

The categories mentioned in the reading refer to what we can say about things, substance and the nine accidents. Substance has act of being in itself and therefore possesses some independence. The accidents are quantity, quality, relation, location, time, position, habit, action and passion and they don't have their own act of being but live in another. You can find a simple explanation here and a comprehensive one here.

To better understand paragraph number 18, St Thomas is saying that through the form something acquires not only the act of being, but the act of being in a certain, specific way. The form "whiteness" causes something concrete to be white. But the key to understand the paragraph is the conclusion: "It remains, therefore, that the word 'essence' in composed substances signifies that which is composed of matter and form". Not only act of being, but matter and form which make for instance a horse not just any creature or just any horse, but this concrete brown, 4 year old horse that I'm riding.   

Prime (undesignated) matter is the principle of material potentiality to become anything, but it's pure indetermination. Designated matter (materia quantitate signata) means the matter that has been actualised in a certain way, i.e. a matter that has received a form to become something (eg a horse). 

Finally, in paragraph 28 St Thomas is not saying that the human being has two natures (as we say of Christ assuming the human and the divine nature), or that he has two different essences in one (eg a frog and an eagle). The key to understand the paragraph is "perfection". So the essence of humans implies both the sensitive perfection (shared with animals) and the intellectual perfection (shared with spiritual beings). But he is speaking about human beings as being one essence only.