Original language: Latin.
Born in present-day central Italy, he moved around a lot in Europe.
I read Aquinas’s Selected Writings published by Penguin Classics, 1998. It was edited and translated with an introduction and notes by Ralph McInerny.
I found a lot of Aquinas’s early work unintelligible, too jargon-filled and not saying anything of substance.
As I got further into his works in chronological order, I started to understand his method of argument – the Disputed Question. It’s very close reasoning, the type associated with the Scholastics, and indeed the Talmudists. Though I personally disagree with Aquinas putting God at the center of all, I still got something out of reading it.
Aquinas, like many of my other authors, wrote in an age when cosmology and the origins of humanity and animals were still the province of philosophers.
I didn’t really understand most of Aquinas’s reasoning in his disputed questions.
As an exercise for myself, I am writing here why I think the Aquinas book belongs in Great Books. No right or wrong answers.
I think it’s a Great Book because:
– It was extremely influential on later Catholic theology
– It synthesized Aristotelian philosophy with Church teachings
– It attempted to separate the domains of rationality and faith, and give each its due
– Aquinas’s erudition
– His respect for the reader
– The boldness of what he set out to do
Last thoughts on Aquinas
– I found the scholastic reasoning not at all helpful.
-A lot of his decisions on topics like God and the soul seem arbitrary.
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