Aquinas: Basic Works

by Thomas Aquinas, Jeffrey Hause (Editor), Robert Pasnau (Editor)

Drawn from a wide range of writings and featuring state-of-the-art translations, Basic Works offers convenient access to Thomas Aquinas' most important discussions of nature, being and essence, divine and human nature, and ethics and human action. The translations all capture Aquinas's sharp, transparent style and display terminological consistency. Many were originally published in the acclaimed translation-cum-commentary series The Hackett Aquinas , edited by Robert Pasnau and Jeffrey Hause. Others appear here for the first Eleonore Stump and Stephen Chanderbahn's translation of On the Principles of Nature , Peter King's translation of On Being and Essence , and Thomas Williams' translations of the treatises On Happiness and On Human Acts from the Summa theologiae. Basic Works will enable students to immerse themselves in Aquinas's thought by offering his fundamental works without internal abridgements. It will also appeal to anyone in search of an up-to-date, one-volume collection containing Aquinas' essential philosophical contributions--from the Five Ways to the immortality of the soul, and from the nature of happiness to virtue theory, and on to natural law.

Genres: Philosophy, Religion, Nonfiction

712 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 2014

About the author

Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar and theologian of Italy and the most influential thinker of the medieval period, combined doctrine of Aristotle and elements of Neoplatonism, a system that Plotinus and his successors developed and based on that of Plato, within a context of Christian thought; his works include the Summa contra gentiles (1259-1264) and the Summa theologiae or theologica (1266-1273).

Saint Albertus Magnus taught Saint Thomas Aquinas.

People ably note this priest, sometimes styled of Aquin or Aquino, as a scholastic. The Roman Catholic tradition honors him as a "doctor of the Church."

Aquinas lived at a critical juncture of western culture when the arrival of the Aristotelian corpus in Latin translation reopened the question of the relation between faith and reason, calling into question the modus vivendi that obtained for centuries. This crisis flared just as people founded universities. Thomas after early studies at Montecassino moved to the University of Naples, where he met members of the new Dominican order. At Naples too, Thomas first extended contact with the new learning. He joined the Dominican order and then went north to study with Albertus Magnus, author of a paraphrase of the Aristotelian corpus. Thomas completed his studies at the University of Paris, formed out the monastic schools on the left bank and the cathedral school at Notre Dame. In two stints as a regent master, Thomas defended the mendicant orders and of greater historical importance countered both the interpretations of Averroës of Aristotle and the Franciscan tendency to reject Greek philosophy. The result, a new modus vivendi between faith and philosophy, survived until the rise of the new physics. The Catholic Church over the centuries regularly and consistently reaffirmed the central importance of work of Thomas for understanding its teachings concerning the Christian revelation, and his close textual commentaries on Aristotle represent a cultural resource, now receiving increased recognition.

Reviews

[Jacob Villa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I am a Frame-ian, so-called biblicist, and though I found some sections tedious and full of unnecessary categories (which were helpful handles but I think Thomas would have said they were actual separate things), and though Aquinas does lean on his ol' pal Aristotle to a shocking extent, I found myself strangely moved and clarified by so much here.

"As the Philosopher says in the same place, Delight perfects an activity as beauty perfects youth; the beauty that is a consequence of youth."

[Birdie]

i really could not care less about phantasms and intelligibles and a bunch of other abstract concepts he talks about in here. not to put myself out there to get roasted by the philosophy bros on here but i prefer Augustine's work to this. i went cross-eyed multiple times trying to read this for class.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the fundamental works of philosophy and the foundations of Christian apologetics. This edition contains his fundamental works unabridged. The way that he explains the nature of God and links his philosophy to that of Aristotle is brilliant. This is a work to study over and over again.

[no · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seems that Aquinas is an enjoyable read. Useful ideas, yes, if a little dubious. Like the will, which is yet still predicated on a distastefully amalgamated sense of the word "good," giving far too much credit to reason to dictate a suitable end. Ultimately God is the guarantor of so much here. Deus ex machina operating literally and figuratively here. For Aquinas's assumed fidelity between the world and the mind just can't follow without fides. Veritas follows only from verbum and verum if we accept the absolute divine. If you believe, not necessarily in God but anything, like love or literature or art, then mutatis mutandis there's a lot for investigation, permutation, and use here, q.v. or cf. (not sure) the recent uptick in theological studies of desire. I submit that a radical Aquinas, an Aquinas reread or misread, ripped from his context or forced into speaking literally (look at the Latin!), does so much good. I submit this also: so unenjoyable, so dry it chafes. Even the most preposterous and useless meditations from 20th-century French people have oodles of style, obnoxiously sometimes deriving their derision from simple puns and wordplay, bad and prone to unintentional comedy, yet style. That's the liminal space between philosophy, politics, and poetry that is theory. That's my pedigree. Little Aristotle and less Augustine.

Takeaway:
"So, necessarily, every human act that proceeds from deliberative reason is, taken individually, good or bad. On the other hand, if it does not proceed from deliberative reason but from some sort of imagination, as when someone strokes his beard or moves a hand or a foot, such an act is not properly speaking moral or human, since an act's being moral or human derives from reason. And thus it will be indifferent in the sense that falls outside the genus of moral acts."