The philosophy of Thomas Aquinas is one of the brightest systems of thought in medieval Europe and world philosophy in general. Thomas Aquinas himself did not consider his philosophy original and claimed that he was striving only for an exact reproduction of the main ideas of Aristotle (Brook, 2018). However, he clothed Aristotelian thought in a new, medieval form, whose originality raised it to the rank of independent teaching. The ideas and categories of Thomas Aquinas partly laid the foundation for the philosophical language of modern times (Elders, 2018). According to Thomas, philosophy in the proper sense, “first philosophy,” has been as such (ens in quantum ens) as its object (Brook, 2018). There are two types of being (entia): material objects that exist objectively, really (esse in re), and substances, ideal entities (essential, substantiae). Most of the latter, like the former, consist, as Aristotle taught, of form and matter. There is only a straightforward essence or pure form without the admixture of matter, which Thomas considered the Lord.
I like the ideas of Thomas Aquinas precisely because of his understanding of the fundamental concepts of mind and God. According to the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, only one form of form, that is, God, does not combine with any matter; it has neither origin nor corruption (Elders, 2018). The more imperfect the form, the more it seeks to increase the number of individuals (individual manifestations) that realize it; the more perfect the form, the fewer individuations it has (Brook, 2018). The form of forms, God, no longer forms a species that could be decomposed into separate individuals but as a whole being in which the differences of persons continuously merge into the unity of essence.
Since God alone is a pure form (actus purus), without matter and, consequently, without imperfection. For matter is, in essence, an unrealized possibility, something that does not yet exist, an absence, a lack of being, then one God, and there is the perfect and complete reason, the meaning of all things (Brook, 2018; Elders, 2018). In him is the absolute truth, for he is the truth. Truth, Thomas Aquinas develops further, is the agreement between a thought and its object (Brook, 2018). This agreement exists to a greater or lesser extent in man but never in perfect fullness. It never reaches absolute identity in man; never in his mind does a thought merge with the object of thought.
There is always a more or less significant gap between cognition and its object. In God, the ideas accurately reproduce things, and even the ideas of God are the things themselves. From the point of view of man, things first exist, and then he thinks about them. From God’s point of view, thought precedes things that exist only because God thinks them and that exist as he thinks them (Brook, 2018). So, Thomas concludes, in God, there is no difference between a thought and its object; in it, thought and being are identical. Furthermore, since this identity is the truth, God is the truth itself (Brook, 2018). From the fact that God is truth, it follows that God exists. For it is impossible to deny the existence of truth, and even those who deny it think that they are correct and therefore thereby assert that truth exists.
Like many people’s lives, my life crumbled at a particular moment. I felt as if the earth had left from under my feet. For all people, sooner or later, the so-called “dark night of the soul” begins. Furthermore, it is precisely in this that Thoma’s philosophy stands most firmly and unshakably. A Thomas is a person who stands calmly in the path of the tsunami of existence that will destroy him (Elders, 2018). He recognizes the futility of existence but continues to fight, aware of imminent defeat. It is love for existence and anti-nihilism through the pain of accepting reality. These principles help me, as well as all people who have accepted the ideas of the Stoics in their lives, and will always help.
References
Brook, A. (2018). Thomas Aquinas on the effects of original sin: A philosophical analysis. The Heythrop Journal, 59(4), 721–732.
Elders, L. J. (2018). Thomas Aquinas and his predecessors: The philosophers and the church fathers in his works. The Catholic University of America Press.