The "System?" of St. Thomas

THIS IS IT. I have officially started my first blog. I was a double major in Philosophy and English as an undergrad, yet somehow I managed to avoid this experience.

A little about me first. I am a Master's student in philosophy at Texas A&M University. I grew up in Kansas City, MO, where I met my wife, Rachel. My interests in philosophy are a bit diverse, but primarily in metaphysics and Aquinas.

Which leads us to this blog....

St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae is perhaps the most important text in philosophy ever written and it is rarely utilized in philosophy today. The concepts in this extensive work are the foundation of Catholic thought and many of these philosophical tenets originate from the thought of ancient Greece, particularly from Plato and Aristotle. The works of Aquinas were condemned by the Catholic church in 1277 due to their relation to pagan thought.

But this precisely was the wisdom of St. Thomas.

He understood that truth was not dependent upon its adherent, but rather truth was objective and available to all men through reason. Of course, certain truths must be illuminated by grace, but Aquinas, like Aristotle, knew the place of natural reason. Aquinas used the substantial groundwork laid down by The Philosopher (Aquinas attributes this great title to Aristotle) to formulate arguably the most comprehensive "system" in all of philosophy. But is it a system? Is it the "Thomistic System"?

Dr. Morris, a professor at Rockhurst University and a friend, emphasized that the philosophy of Aquinas is just that: the philosophy of Aquinas. If it were a system, it would imply that the philosophy of Aquinas is a "possibility" that we can abstractly "fit" into some framework that is more fundamental--but this cuts at the heart of St. Thomas Aquinas' life project. Aquinas did not spend his life composing some system of philosophy; instead, he spent his life trying to describe reality and seek out the truth. What we learn from the Summa (et. al.) is how things are. A system of philosophy implies that it can be unplugged and tweaked to sort-of "fit" the way we think the world works, or is.

The philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas is not a system, although many contemporary philosophers call it such. Scholasticism is making a comeback of sorts in contemporary analytic philosophy precisely due to its appeal to clarity and its inherent complexity. However, while this is "good press" for Aquinas, it is misguided; it is all too easy to read into Aquinas and take away whatever is convenient. I will try to study Aquinas as a Scholastic, Catholic philosopher, which means that I will not buy into the analytic appeal to logic.

While important, an emphasis on logical structure seems to miss the mark; Aquinas took care with his distinctions, but they were not the fundamental point of his philosophy. What is fundamental to Aquinas' philosophy is, in fact, the Catholic faith. For Aquinas, reason gets us so far and we must rely on Revelation to take us beyond the constraints of natural reason and philosophical inquiry. More on this later...

Well, I hope that I have not lost too many potential subscribers at this point. If you like this post, I promise you will like this blog. Cheers!