St. Thomas Aquinas is the protagonist of the July-August issue of the magazinePope Francis launches three years of celebrations in honor of Thomas AquinasIt has often been said that Thomas Aquinas is a thinker of synthesis. He received from Alberto Magno fundamental teachings on Aristotle and Neoplatonism, elaborated by both on a Christian basis.
Along with Sacred Scripture and the Fathers of the Church, Thomas Aquinas was also familiar with the classics of Greco-Roman culture and Arabic philosophy. This capacity for synthesis explains, to a large extent, why his vision would be proposed, centuries later, as a sure basis for the study of philosophy and theology, despite the suspicion that Aristotelianism had aroused in the thirteenth century.
If we consider this initial rejection, the insistence of Aquinas in proposing Aristotelian thought is even more surprising. It seems reasonable to think that he found, in the Stagirite, a confirmation of his own synthetic vision of reality.
This vision was based on a dynamic understanding of beings from their causes: the integrity of matter and form (substantial "hylemorphic" unity) and the orientation of all movements towards an end (teleology of nature).
Metaphysics
This understanding of reality implied a metaphysics that was at the same time unitary and dynamic. Hence neither Aristotle nor Thomas Aquinas had a rigid conception of substance: for them, every substance possesses some degree of activity, and the substances par excellence are natural beings and, more precisely, living beings. In turn, life is given according to degrees, that is, plants, animals and intellectual beings.
From this unitary and dynamic metaphysics, Aquinas arrived at an anthropology equally opposed to dualism and monism. Rational nature includes body and soul, and is the principle of free activity. Therefore, this anthropological understanding of the human being had notable consequences for ethics.
Free activity is open to the universal good, which the human being is capable of attaining by himself. This good is the most excellent and constitutes his happiness, which is life attained. However, insofar as we are a unity of soul and body, our activity does not consist exclusively in performing actions, but also in receiving the influence of the actions of other beings. The direction towards the ultimate end requires, therefore, the rational order of both actions and passions, and this order is given by the virtues.
Insofar as we need the action of others, the rational being requires the collaboration of other rational beings. Therefore, the good of each individual is in continuity with that of others. Rational beings tend to this common good by configuring among themselves a unity, which is human society. In this way, sociability is constitutive of our nature.
A unitary vision
At the beginning of these lines, we asked ourselves what Thomas Aquinas had seen in Aristotle in order to follow his philosophy in fundamental areas such as metaphysics, anthropology and ethics. According to what we have said, the key lies in a synthetic understanding of reality, which proves to be a valid interpretation insofar as it allows us to bring different philosophical traditions into dialogue, with a unitary and dynamic vision of the multiplicity of beings.
Aquinas' thought has also been the object of multiple readings. These conceptions sought, at bottom, to approach the unitary and dynamic vision of beings to which we referred earlier. In other words, Thomas Aquinas, like the Stagirite, aspired to a synthetic understanding of reality.
Basically, Aquinas' thought sought to maintain continuity with Aristotle, but not from the point of view of a particular school, but as an adequate access to reality. This is what has traditionally been known as the philosophia perenniswhich has been interrupted, in a certain way, in modernity. One manifestation of this has been the fragmentation of knowledge into partial perspectives and a certain renunciation of reaching an understanding of things in themselves.
From here, it is understood how the renewal of a philosophical approach along the lines of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas must fulfill at least three conditions. The first is that it be open to a continuity in the knowledge of things. The second is that it be capable of establishing a dialogue with other traditions that can be found on common ground. The third is that it must seek to overcome the fragmentation of knowledge in order to access reality in its unity and dynamism.
MacIntyre and other proposals
In recent times, there have been several attempts to approach a realist philosophy, along the lines of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. One of the proposals that seems to us the most remarkable is that made by the Anglo-Saxon thinker Alasdair MacIntyrewhich distinguishes itself by accessing the Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy precisely through ethics.
In MacIntyre's case, his point of departure is a modern context -analytic philosophy, Marxism, psychoanalysis-, in which he feels dissatisfied at not finding answers that give reason for the human being, in a unitary way, in his acting in relation to others. Thus, for him, modernity has been weighed down by individualism and the fragmentation of the human being. This is why he initially proposed the recovery of the Aristotelian notion of virtue, through a narrative conception of human life, which is interwoven with that of others within a common tradition.
Teleology in Thomistic thought
However, the British author becomes aware of the fundamental role of teleology in achieving this unitary conception of human life. In this search, he discovers Thomas Aquinas as a reader of Aristotle, which brings him progressively closer to clearly metaphysical approaches and to a more unitary vision of knowledge.
In this process, he also discovers in greater depth the relevance of the unity of body and soul in the human being, and in this research he recognizes the importance of biology in order to adequately understand the nature of rational beings. In this way, that rational nature is shown not only in its spiritual-corporeal unity, but also in its own vulnerability. This condition signifies a reciprocal dependence among rational beings, which manifests the capacity to give and receive in the relationship with others.
The Scottish philosopher comes to this conclusion by understanding in depth not only the spiritual-corporeal integrity of each human being in himself, but also the unity of one with another in a common life. At this point, he realizes that Aquinas's approach continues the Aristotelian conception of the human being as a unitary and social being. Alasdair MacIntyre has thus had the audacity to recognize that Thomas Aquinas has taken Aristotle further than Aristotle himself.
University of Navarra and Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
