in this unit we will encounter a thinker who is if not the most certainly one of the top five most important thinkers historically in the christian theological tradition thomas aquinas he is known for being extremely precise and concise in the language that he uses but in encountering his exact texts which of course were written in latin and we're reading them in an english translation but encountering him in those texts can feel very discouraging or foreign to us just because his language is so precise and some would say his language is very dry but the issue with thomas aquinas is that not only is he an imaginative thinker on his own but he stands firmly within an entire tradition in the middle ages of philosophy and theology and he particularly summarizes a lot of the thinking of the age so if we encounter a little bit of thomas aquinas we're not only encountering him but we have a pretty good chance of encountering what most other thinkers would be thinking about and how they would be thinking about things in the same period of time so these are all good reasons to be reading some thomas aquinas the purpose of this little presentation is partly to get into the text of thomas himself but also to explain a couple of bigger ideas that that are part of what he's trying to do in his five ways to the existence of god and and these things are just standard modes of looking at the universe that would have been accepted by anybody else that he was talking to or any of his readers and they're a little foreign to us so this first half of the presentation is meant to provide a little bit of context for how thomas is thinking about what he thinks the first is the notion of causality which is something very very standard in the middle ages in the west aquinas relies very heavily on the greek philosopher aristotle and to aquinas in aristotle and into quite a few others in both of their their eras philosophy which is also kind for them another way of talking about science or what you call science these days philosophy science are essentially searches into the causes of things meaning the great philosophical question in science if you're trying to understand the world around you is to ask a question along the lines of well why is this thing here and why is it not here or what you know why is it here as opposed to not being here why is why is this thing why does this thing exist why does this thing that i observe that i can touch that i can that i can smell that i can taste why does it exist and i would also if i'm being just observant about the things around me be aware that i'm not just observing a thing at any particular moment in time but over the course of time i will see that things change things change their form from one thing to the other new things come about old things die you know life in the universe seems to be in this constant flux things actually do change from one thing to another and if i'm really really curious i'm going to want to know well if i'm observing things and over time i'm seeing that they change then i'm going to be curious about well what causes things to change is there something i can figure out about this now this way of dealing with causality is really you know first and foremost a way of dealing with physical things but there's also an ethical reality here in that in addition to recognizing that material objects around me material things around me change if i am always curious in science and philosophy about wondering what the causes of change are that change actually does happen it may very well be the case that i can change things not only i can affect the physical world around me by changing things but more internally more morally i can also be the agent of change for things that i think and that i do and that i decide so investigations into causality are not only a way of trying to understand and explain the world as it exists around us the world in which we live but it's also a way of encountering ourselves and taking some ownership over our own actions and our own ethical and moral power ultimately investigations into causality are looking not just at the things as they are right now not just wondering about what caused them to be in the past but are also future directed or end directed and this is a very important notion in medieval philosophy that medieval philosophy is concerned with the telos it's a greek word t-e-l-o-s the telos the end of something and what in ethics and philosophy when we talk about the end of something we don't really mean the final point of something like it's the end of the movie is the like the very last second after the credits have gone by that's not how medieval philosophers use the word end they use the word end which okay fair enough it it may be the final moment in an old change of in a whole series of changes or maybe the final moment chronologically but the end of something ultimately refers to the purpose of something the goal the completion of something it's another way of asking and answering the question why is this thing here what is its purpose what is its end morally ethically what am i trying to achieve by doing this or starting this chain of events or cooperating with this what is the end of something so general thinking that's concerned with um the end of something the telos of something we can refer to as teleological something that is teleological is directed toward the end of a thing directed towards the purpose of a thing okay so that's just some basic terminology causality can be seen more precisely by aristotle and thomas and other people by observing for example a a static object and let's use um for our example here this sculpture which is in fact it sits in the brooklyn museum it's a very large and heavy and elaborate i believe it's it's made out of marble but i could be wrong about that but let's let's pop let's stipulate that's made out of marble um and it's very impressive to stand there in the brooklyn museum and to look at this sculpture of the fallen angels by salvatore albano if i want to think about and explain what this thing is if i'm looking into causality my explanation of what this thing is is going to be an explanation of the causes of the thing and in this worldview there are in fact four causes four ways of referring to a cause there's the material cause which usually refers to the physical stuff out of which something is made in this case of a sculpture we would say it's marble meaning that sculpture cannot exist unless there is a certain volume of marble that allows it to exist the marble is the material stuff out of which the thing exists and we can say well it the material cause the material reason that that sculpture is is because of that amount of marble we can also talk about the instrumental cause which for some an object would usually be the person or the persons who make whatever physical manipulations are necessary in order for the thing to be in the form that it is namely the sculptor so the instrumental cause of this sculpture at the brook museum is the artist who carved that marble into that form if the artist didn't exist that sculpture wouldn't exist and if that marble didn't exist that sculpture wouldn't exist so we can say that the marble and the sculptor are both causes they both help to cause they both help to allow that sculpture to come into being but in different ways one materially one instrumentally another kind of cause the formal cause for an object like a sculpture that would be referring to the the shape the size the dimensions how it sits in the space how it takes up limited space how how because it's in that space something else can't be in that exact space the form of something is referred to as the formal cause the formal cause allows us as observers to be able to actually see the thing if if that sculpture were invisible somehow or other and lacking a formal cause it wouldn't exist to us we wouldn't be able to discern it we wouldn't be able to know it and then finally quite literally causality is also interested in describing the final cause of something meaning what is its end what's its purpose why would somebody intend to make this what what was their purpose in making it because notice that that sculpture would not exist a whole chain of causes would not come together unless at some point in the past at least the sculptor decided oh i'm going to make a sculpture and in that decision oh i'm going to make a sculpture a chain of causality is set up towards an end towards a telos towards something final a purpose we might even be able to go back further than that and say well even before the sculptor had an idea of making that sculpture there was a really rich person who commissioned the sculptor to make it who had an idea about it and got money together for it and approached the sculptor and said i'm going to give you all this money if you make a sculpture for me so if that's the case we go back a little further and say well the person commissioning the art is the one responsible for the final cause coming up with the idea that is the purpose of doing this in the first place and we might even be able to go back further than that so causality in and of itself is ultimately teleological because it is ultimately interested in what the purpose of a thing is and and then you end up if we were to go into aquinas's aesthetics um even a bit into aquinas's ethics we would always be thinking about is this thing functioning according to its purpose if a thing is functioning according to its purpose then you can say it's beautiful or you can say it's noble or ethical if something is not functioning according to its purpose then it's not beautiful or it's not healthy or it's not not good another thing to realize about reading anything at aquinas though again this this could apply to quite a few other thinkers in the middle ages there was a standard way of making argumentations among medieval philosophers it was a regular course of their day that they would argue with other thinkers and and arguing with other thinkers didn't mean that they were yelling and screaming at each other it just meant that they were engaged in very serious debate and when presenting these ideas and debate or certainly and writing them down to share them or hand them on to others one regular way of communicating one's argument communicating once well organized ideas was to put it together put those ideas put that idea into what we now refer to as an article so an article is a unique genre of text like all kinds of other things we've looked at already but an optimistic or medieval article is a particular form of text that comes in a form generally in five parts the first part of a to mystic or medieval philosophical or theological article is going to be to clearly state the question often began with the word whether whether something is whether such and such a thing is the case and it is always the expectation that the way that the question is posed it can be answered yes or it can be answered no nothing else can't be answered maybe can't be answered sometimes the question itself is put in such a limited way such a precise way that the answer must be yes or no you then immediately moved to stating the objections to your point of view and in stating the objections to what ultimately your answer is going to be what ultimately your point of view is you are required by good standing and it's considered good behavior considered you know the proper thing to do you are expected to state the objections to your point of view as clearly as honestly as respectfully as thoroughly as possible so you're not to make fun of someone who disagrees with you or totally discount what they say you it is your responsibility to respect the objections that are being made to what your point of view and answer is i just think how different that is than than so much of what what we engage in these days where even high-level political speech just devolves into into the stupidest and the silliest criticisms of each other where there's no even there's not even any basis for it very very different way of arguing in the middle ages thirdly usually you would then as you're getting to stating your case you would then pull on some kind of authority before you somebody other than you somebody that that both you and the person you're arguing with would recognize as an authority and you use something that they say to support your position very quickly upon that you then creatively present your position so so far in the structure of a domestic article parts one two and three are pretty limited and pretty strict part four is where all the creative activity happens and in essence what i've i've had you read of thomas aquinas and what we're going to look at later in this presentation you've looked at a couple of full articles but what we're really going to concentrate on is just the part four of one of those uh questions that he asks the the the creative part the personal and unique part of what he puts forward but but he he's not going to say what he thinks he's not going to lay out his argument until he's formed it framed it um disciplinedly limited it in this kind of way and then finally after you lay out what your opinion is and make your argument for it as clear as possible you go back to the objections that you acknowledged in part two and you you refute them one by one but you're refuting them only at the very end of this whole presentation and you're refuting them not by mis having been misrepresented what your the person objecting to you says but by responding respectfully and thoroughly to what you understand their objection to be so let's just we come up with an example okay so let's let's build a optimistic article let the question be whether joel should lose about 15 pounds so as the statement of the question it has to be stated in a way that could only be answered yes or no so the answer to this question is yes or no when we get to part two and begin to look at objections we can deduct pretty quickly what the ultimate answer is going to be by what the objections being raised are so here's objection one joel's doctor is more concerned with his cholesterol than his weight okay so think about that for a second if joel's doctor is more concerned with his cholesterol than his weight is an objection to the answer whether or not joel should lose 15 pounds then what is the answer going to be look at the next objection eating and drinking what he wants gives joel great comfort okay so first i'm seeing an objection one a deflection away from weight to cholesterol objection to a general statement about how nice it is to eat am i am i can i can i predict what the answer is going to be even before i get to a subjection three or even more general food and drink is nutritious yes okay so looking at those objections what answer yes or no are those objections answering yes joel should lose 15 pounds or no he should not in quoting from some authority i would have to find someone a nutritionist a doctor a chef someone that you and i both could accept as some sort of knowledgeable person about what my answer is going to be and then i would present as clearly as possible as creatively as possible but my answer is so what is my answer going to be if i were to do the creative part of this if we've seen the objections already the objections deflect from joel eating a lot they seem to minimize weight gain right so the answer in this article is actually well let's go to the fifth part and see what the objections the refutations of the objection are refutations of the objection are ways of restating specifically precisely what the answer is here's a refutation of rejection joel's doctor may well be concerned about his weight but she also said to him you're getting a little bit chubby okay so the answer to the question is posed should joel lose weight the answer is yes joel should lose weight because now we're going to get another refutation of an objection so to refute objection 2 which is about eating and drinking is kind of very pleasurable emotional maturity requires not always being soothed and to number three if you remember that objection was food is nutritious but the objection is there's plenty of nutritious food that won't cause it to get fat so the answer to this article to the question whether or not joel should lose 15 pounds would be yes thomas aquinas himself italian philosopher theologian very interested in ancient philosophy basis himself on plato aristotle etc but he's really really interested in some more general ideas that are important to understanding aquinas aquinas and others in his era when describing human capacities and capabilities will refer to the intellect as a human capability the intellect is the capability the capacity that we have to be able to know things but the intellect works in a particular way i usually like to describe the intellect as working in in this way we observe all kinds of facts around us outside of us sometimes we have self-insight and observed facts inside of us we we observe things we experience things we hear things things come into our senses we're made aware of things people point things out to us all kinds of facts and through a hermeneutical process thomas wouldn't use that word but we've been using that word through a humanital process we inevitably as aware creatures human beings we inevitably create meaning and understanding out of the things that we observe well intellect is the capacity that human beings have that allows them to connect all the dots of those different facts and to pull them together in a way that makes meaning out of it that creates an understanding for it if we didn't have intellect we we would still observe things and experience things and feel things but we wouldn't connect them we wouldn't be able to theorize about what the bigger picture the bigger meaning of them is intellect is the capacity that humans have that allows us to do that related to intellect is will which is a power that allows us to actually do things so that if internally for example we make a decision about something our will is the energy essentially that we have to be able to put that into action to make a decision as one thing but then to actually do things based on the decision is another thing our will is what allows human beings to accomplish to do to work towards some kind of goal there's a general sense um then making this a bit more complex and humane the just a capacity that i have or power that i have let's push it into ethics and morals there's a sense in medieval philosophy certainly in thomas aquinas that you are what you do and you do what you are you are what you do and you do what you are meaning you are what you do if you repeatedly perform actions that are kind you are likely to become a kind person you do what you are if you are a kind person you are likely to do kind things but there's a circularity there the more that you do kind things you become more stably kind and if you're stably kind you are more likely to do kind things the latin tag here is andre sequitur essay audrey doing secretary follows upon essay being audrey secretary essay doing follows or flows from being our actions as human beings aren't just completely chaotic one-off things human beings we are always somehow or other acting in some way according to habit and a habit is a kind of neutral thing in aquinas's philosophy i have it is is any sort of repeated or normalized activity the thing we do without even thinking about it we don't we don't we don't make a big decision about doing something if we do it by habit we just kind of do it it's just sort of natural to us but habits you know they can they're morally neutral in one sense but habits can can lead to good things or bad things and in this worldview we would say that a habit that leads to the good conduce is the proper word here a habit it leads it conduces to the good we would call a virtue and what would we call a habit that leads to evil well the opposite of virtue is of ice then very importantly to this worldview and a bit unreal in ours is the notion of the ipsa res reality as it really is aquinas and some other medieval philosophers were humbly aware that as much effort as human beings put into learning about the world around them human intellect is still created right it's it's limited but reality still is reality and so reality as it really is if res is something that i if i'm astute and honest and diligent and work hard i can i can really connect my intellect can connect with the ipsa res with reality but it can also avoid reality i can ignore reality if i want to my intellect can be badly functioning or i can be avoiding reality and if i'm doing that then that connection isn't made then then if i'm avoiding things as they really are not as i want them to be not what a fantasy of them is but is what they really are then something's gone wrong my intellect isn't quite connecting so that thomas actually has a definition for what truth is in truth is an and the technical word is adequatio maybe we would say correspondence or an adequation or connection between intellect and the ipsa res meaning truth is a state of being when my intellect my capacity to to accumulate and understand the relationship between facts when that capacity is adequately connected to reality to the ips arrest reality as it really is again my fantasy of it what realities but real reality interesting here in common language today i think you and i probably when using the word truth feel that truth is or expect that the understanding of truth is a thing that it's a you know it's a noun right it's a it's it's a thing but to thomas truth wasn't a thing to thomas truth is an activity and it ebbs and flows it's in flux the more adequate my intellect is the better it connects to reality then there's more truth or i am being more truthful or i am uh living in a state of truth in a better way than if my intellect is incapable or refuses to acknowledge what really is