Thomas Aquinas was born in the Kingdom of Naples at Rocca Secca purportedly between the years 1225 and 1227. He died on the 7th of March in 1274 at Fossa Nuova. Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican Friar, Theologian and Philosopher. He was of the Scholastic tradition, which emphasized dialectical reasoning as a means with knowledge. Scholasticism, as was Thomas Aquinas, was greatly influenced by the Aristotleelian resurgence and Neo-Platonism, both of which Scholastics, and Thomas Aquinas in particular, would seek to reconcile with Christian theological doctrine. Two of the most important works in this tradition, which subsequently created a tradition, are the Summa contra Gentiles (1259-1264), and the Summa Theologica (Summary of Theology), (1265-1274), considered to be Thomas Aquinas’ masterwork. Within thus contains his renowned proofs for the existence of God through faith and reason, both of which, for the “angelic doctor,” originate in God.
It is said that Thomas Aquinas was born in a hilltop castle at Rocca Secca not far from the Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino where his education would first commence. The castle was that of his father, the Count Landulf of Aquino. His mother was the Countess Theodora of Theate and apparently of the Hohenstaufen lineage of Holy Roman Emperors. After military actions broke out in the Abbey he was transferred to Frederick II’s University of Naples, where he was introduced to the new Dominican order and most likely where he was first introduced to the works of Aristotlele, Averroes and Maimonides that would have such a profound influence on him. He, against his family’s wishes, joined the Dominican order and was to go to Rome, but was kidnapped by his own brothers on the command of their mother. He was under ‘family house arrest’, so-to-speak, for two years in which various taunts, including a prostitute, were used to dissuade Thomas Aquinas’ commitment to the Dominican order and way of life. Due in part to political concerns over his defiance and a mother’s eventual consent, Theodora ‘allowed’ him to escape; legend has it that he was lowered from his window in a basket into the arms of fellow Dominicans who were immediately impressed with the competence of his prolonged independent study while in custody and took him to Rome.
After proving his devotion to Pope Innocent IV in Rome, Thomas Aquinas was soon on his way to Paris to study at the Faculty of the Arts at the University of Paris around 1245. For a few years he left to take up studies in Cologne under the Aristotleelian scholar, Albertus Magnus, who famously said of Thomas Aquinas after a thesis defense, “we call this young man a dumb ox, but his bellowing in doctrine will one day resound throughout the world.” The “ox” returned to Paris in 1252 and taught as an apprentice regent the Sentences by Peter Lombard that would become Scriptum super libros Sententiarium (Commentary on the Sentences). During this time he also wrote more philosophical texts such as, De ente et essentia (On Being and Essence) and The Principles of Nature. He became a Master regent and held a chair in the Faculty of Theology in 1256, which he held until 1259.
His university years took place during a period of important growth and development in educational pedagogy in general as universities were being founded and the Aristotleelian resurgence within mendicant orders posed a challenge. Some of his writings during this time directly or indirectly addressed such challenges and eventual attacks, such as those by William of St Amour in which Thomas Aquinas wrote, Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem (Against Those Who Assail the Worship of God and Religion). He also produced Questiones disputatae de veritate (Disputed Questions on Truth) and Quaestiones quodlibetales (Quodlibetal Questions) for public and academic debates. In addition he wrote commentaries on Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius and began the Summa contra Gentiles.
His reputation was already huge and Thomas Aquinas would spend the next decade accepting various posts, positions and appointments, primarily in Italy, preaching, teaching and writing (in addition to his own consistent devout prayer and spiritual exercise). He completed the Summa contra Gentiles, and also produced the Catena Aurea (The Golden Chain) and Contra errores graecorum (Against the Errors of the Greeks). He was involved in many disputations, many of which revolved around the power of God and were compiled in the work, De potentia. In Rome Thomas Aquinas began work on the infamous Summa Theologica and produced many of his commentaries on Aristotlele, including On the Soul. As well, the prolific writer also wrote other, more polemical works, such as On the Eternity of the World and On There Being Only One Intellect.
In 1269 Thomas Aquinas was called back to Paris to address the dispute brought on by the growth of (Christian/Latin) Averroism (based on the Arab philosopher Averroës’ commentaries on Aristotlele and his bringing together of Aristotleelian thought and Islamic faith). He wrote and held disputations to address the dissemination of what was considered radical interpretations of Aristotlele and to adjudicate the fears it spawned in order to recover a harmonious Aristotleelian presence, including De unitate intellectus, Contra Averroistas (On the Unity of Intellect, Against the Averroists), De virtutibus in communi (On Virtues in General), De virtutibus cardinalibus (On Cardinal Virtues), and De spe (On Hope).
After three years as Regent Master in Paris, where he continued work on the Summa, Thomas Aquinas returned to Italy to become Regent Master in Naples. He continued to work on the Summa until a mystical experience occurred between he and Christ, which caused him to abandon his writing. In response to the abandonment, Thomas Aquinas is infamously quoted as having said, “I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me.” A few months later Thomas Aquinas died en route to the Council of Lyon as summoned by Pope Gregory X. Ironically, he died not far from his birthplace in Fossanova at the Cistercian Abbey.
Three years after Thomas Aquinas’ death, the Parisian Bishop, Etienne Tempier, furthered his condemnation of Averroism to include Aristotleelian thought including aspects of Thomas Aquinas’ thought due to its great Aristotleelian influence. Aristotlele is so admired by Thomas Aquinas that he is often referred to simply as “The Philosopher” in the Summas. As he opens in the Summa contra Gentiles speaking of wisdom, as being “concerned with the end of the universe” which is “the good of the intellect” and hence “truth,” he follows: “The pursuit of wisdom in this sense is the most perfect, sublime, profitable, and delightful of pursuits. All this is proved by appeal to the authority of ‘The Philosopher,’ i.e., Aristotlele.” This is of utmost importance to his following treatise because what follows is the declaration of “truth which the Catholic Faith professes.” And in order to declare such truth, especially for the gentiles, he must “recourse to natural reason” even though it is in part “deficient in the things of God; it can prove some parts of the faith, but not others.”
The distinction Thomas Aquinas makes allows him to use Aristotleelian reason and logic to prove the existence of God, but not necessarily his divine actions, such as the Incarnation or the Last Judgment — these are matters of revelation. It is this play between theological revelation and philosophical reason that many philosophers take issue with, such that what cannot be reasoned in faith (and always in order to prove thus) is then ‘simply’ a revelatory issue. Of course Thomas Aquinas understands this and accepts that Theology is the least definitive of the sciences precisely because its source is divine knowledge—yet, as such, divine knowledge can still be philosophically approached and analyzed.
The perfect example of this, and the most cited, is in Thomas Aquinas’ arguments for the existence of God in the Summa Theologiae, which is essentially a cyclical historical overview of the cosmos and its purpose that begins with God. Thomas Aquinas posits the existence of God on five proofs, based on the employment of Aristotlele’s argument of the unmoved mover. “There are things which are only moved, and other things which both move and are moved. Whatever is moved is moved by something, and since an endless regress is impossible, we must arrive somewhere at something which moves without being moved. This unmoved mover is God.” God is the “first cause, himself uncaused” and thus causes all things. Another important distinction that comes out of this is in the notion of essence and existence, which for Thomas Aquinas are separate except for God—“God is His own essence”—in God they are identical. Yet, one can in fact not “know” this essence because that would assume a sense of substantive materiality, which of course God is not.
Aristotlele wasn’t his only interlocutor of course, but certainly his primary one. He was very much influenced by various others in one form or another and included in his Summa: Averroes as the Commentator, Peter Lombard as the Master; Augustine of Hippo as the Theologian; Ulpian as the Legal Specialist; and Dionysius, Avicenna, Algazel, and Maimonides. As well, some scholars point to traces of Neo-Platonism in his work as regarded in passages as the following that carries on his argumentation of the first cause: “it is absolutely true that there is first something which is essentially being and essentially good, which we call God, ... [thus] everything can be called good and a being, inasmuch as it participates in it by way of a certain assimilation.”
While in the years immediately after his death, the works of Thomas Aquinas were often condemned they were soon recovered and celebrated. In 1323, Pope John XXII declared Thomas Aquinas a Saint; in 1567 he was made a Doctor of the Church by Pope Saint Pius V, and, in the Aeterni Patris, Pope Leo XIII calls for the study of Saint Thomas Aquinas to be the model and norm for Christian philosophy. Aside from all of the accolades, his thought and writing had been influential from the start, especially among the Dominican monastic order, and propagated what has come to be called Thomism. The “Thomistic revival” begun in the late 19th century under Leo XIII lasted through to the 1960s and was then picked up again in the encyclical Fides et Ratio written by John Paul II in 1998. As well, his notion of what has come to be called the “principle of double effect” has greatly influenced the ethics of Elizabeth Anscombe. James Joyce regarded Thomas Aquinas almost as much as he did Aristotlele. In relation to neurodynamics, the contemporary neuroscientist Walter Freeman has lauded Thomas Aquinas’ thoughts on the mind, cognition and perception. Umberto Eco wrote an essay on his aesthetics. Thus, whether or not Thomas of Aquinas is considered to be a “true” philosopher, to this day he remains highly influential and is still regarded as one of the most important theologians of Christianity, and historically considered one of the strongest of the Scholastic philosophers.