Thomas Aquinas

(1225 – 1274)

Maria KalyvakiTexas Tech University

2009

Life and Times• St. Thomas Aquinas

(1225-1274)• Aquinas came from a

noble family from Naples.

• He joined the Dominican order against his family’s wishes

• Aquinas studied with Albert the Great in Paris and participated in the Aristotelian revival of the Middle Ages.

• He was canonized and became a saint in 1323.

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Life and Significance

• Educated as Friar (Dominican Order), Studies Theology in Cologne and Paris, Teaches in Paris and various Italian Cities

• Most famous Works Summa contra Gentiles, Summa Theologiae (unfinished), numerous biblical and philosophical Commentaries

• Scholasticism and the Revival of Learning

• Canonized in 1323• Aquinas’ work is declared

the official ‘philosophy’ of the Catholic church in 1879

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Aquinas’ Challenge

• The Return of Aristotle– Teleology– Causality– The ‘Errors of

Aristotle’• The Claims of Reason

and Faith• What do you know about

God?– Being– Attributes

Book III ScG

Aquinas, God, and Ontology

• Five Ways of proving God’s Existence

• Descartes, Leibniz and Kant

• Causality, Being, Time, Space

“Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is” (Ludwig Wittgenstein)