Saint Thomas Aquinas

Yasir Samad, Samantha John, Samar Sheikh

Biography• Born in 1225 Aquino, Italy • Referred to as Thomas because his last name Aquinas refers to where he

was born• Roman Catholic• After he attended university in France he became a friar• Died in 1274 in Italy

Main Theories

•Believed that both matter and essence are bound up in physical objects.

•Believed that knowledge begins with sense perception

•Knowledge can grow beyond the sensory world when reason is applied to sensory experience

•Believed in using inductive reasoning to arrive at generalizations or universals

•Supported scientific inquiry

Issues With Knowledge

He thought knowledge was:

• Knowledge is a certain kind of being, a modification. or vital action of the knowing subject.

•There are two different types of knowledge like sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge

•Sense is the beginning for all of man's natural knowledge

•There are different types of sense knowledge like sense-memory, sense-consciousness, instinct, and imagination

•For intellectual knowledge there is abstract and general.

•This knowledge is quite different from the real and particular of outer and inner senses. This was because the fact that abstract knowledge was attributed to intelligence or reason .

Responding To

 •He used Aristotle’s theories of perception and knowledge through perception to write one of his famous pieces of work Summa Theological.

•He disagreed with Plato’s theory of forms. He was known as an Aristotelian and an Empiricist which are opposing ideas and theories of Plato’s rationalism

Rationalist or Empiricist

• Aquinas was an empiricist

• Believed in knowledge through sensory

• Lead empiricist movement

• One of the few Empiricists in a predominantly Roman Catholic Europe

Main Vocabulary

• Talked a great deal about knowledge, truth, and the overall understandings of epistemology

• Mentioned Aristotle in his work

• Aquinas also referred to Christianity and revelations through divinity regularly

• Also spoke of sensory and knowledge gained ostensibly through the five senses.

• He was very inductive in his reasoning