St. Thomas, a synthetic understanding of reality

Author: José Manuel Giménez Amaya and José Ángel Lombo
Published in: Omnes, July-August 2024, pp. 20-21, with the degree scroll "The relationship between human biology and rationality. A recent interpretation of Thomas Aquinas".
Publication date: 2024

It has often been said that Thomas Aquinas is a thinker of synthesis. As is known, he received from Albertus Magnus fundamental teachings on Aristotle and Neoplatonism, elaborated by both on a Christian basis. Along with the Sacred Scripture and the Fathers of the Church, Thomas Aquinas was also familiar with the classics of Greco-Roman culture and the Arabic Philosophy . This capacity for synthesis explains, to a large extent, why his vision would be proposal, centuries later, as a secure basis in the programs of study of Philosophy and theology, in spite of the suspicion that Aristotelianism had aroused in the 13th century.

What did Thomas see in Aristotle that led him to follow him not only in his metaphysics, but also in his anthropology and in his moral Philosophy ? It seems reasonable to think that he found, in the Stagirite, a confirmation of his own synthetic vision of reality. This vision was based on a dynamic understanding of beings starting from their causes: the integrity of subject and form (substantial "hylemorphic" unity) and the orientation of all movements towards an end (teleology of nature).

Metaphysics

This understanding of reality implied, therefore, a metaphysics that was at the same time unitary and dynamic. Hence neither Aristotle nor Thomas Aquinas had a rigid conception of substance: for them, every substance possesses some Degree of activity, and the substances par excellence are natural beings and, more precisely, living beings. In turn, life is given according to Degrees, that is, plants, animals and intellectual beings, among which are human beings (also angels and God, in whose understanding our authors differ notably).

From this unitary and dynamic metaphysics, Aquinas arrived at an anthropology equally opposed to dualism and monism, whether the latter was materialistic or spiritualistic. Rational nature includes body and soul, and is the principle of free activity. Therefore, this anthropological understanding of the human being had, in addition, notable consequences in ethics.

Indeed, free activity is open to the universal good, which human beings are capable of attaining by themselves. This good is the most excellent and constitutes his happiness, which is life attained. However, insofar as we are a unity of soul and body, our action does not consist exclusively in performing actions, but also in receiving the influence of the actions of other beings. The direction towards the ultimate end requires, therefore, the rational order of both actions and passions, and this order is given precisely by the virtues.

Thus, insofar as we need the action of others, the rational being is not sufficient in itself to achieve its ultimate end, but requires most especially the partnership of other rational beings. Therefore, the good of each individual is in continuity with that of others, in a good that is common to all. Rational beings tend to this common good by configuring among themselves a unity, which is human society. In this way, sociability is constitutive of our nature and not something added to it.

A unitary vision

At the beginning of these lines, we asked ourselves what Thomas Aquinas had seen in Aristotle in order to follow his Philosophy in fundamental areas such as metaphysics, anthropology and ethics. From agreement with what we have exposed, the core topic is found in a synthetic understanding of reality, which proves to be a valid interpretation insofar as it allows to put in dialogue different philosophical traditions, with a unitary and dynamic vision of the multiplicity of beings.

Just as Thomas Aquinas proposed an understanding of Aristotle in the face of various interpretative currents, so too the thought of Aquinas has been the object of multiple readings, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive. These conceptions sought, at bottom, to approach the unitary and dynamic vision of beings to which we referred earlier. In other words, Thomas Aquinas, like the Stagirite, aspired to a synthetic understanding of reality and not to simple partial explanations.

Basically, Aquinas' thought sought to maintain continuity with Aristotle, but not from the point of view of a particular school, but as an adequate access to reality. This is what has traditionally been known as philosophia perennis, which has been interrupted, in a way, in modernity. A manifestation of this has been the fragmentation of knowledge into partial perspectives and a certain Withdrawal to reach an understanding of things in themselves.

From here, it is understood how the renewal of a philosophical approach along the lines of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas must fulfill at least three conditions. The first is that it be open to a continuity in the knowledge of things, not closed in a system. The second is that it be capable of establishing a dialogue with other traditions that can be found on common ground. The third is that it seeks to overcome the fragmentation of knowledge in order to access reality in its unity and dynamism.

In the last two centuries, Thomism has tried to develop the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas in dialogue with some modern intellectual positions, as in the case of Rosmini, Maréchal or Rahner. However, the consonance of these attempts with the thought of Aquinas has often been questioned, if we consider that the medieval thinker presupposed continuity with Aristotle along the lines of the aforementioned philosophia perennis. In this sense, modernity started from assumptions of rupture, rather than continuity, with the aforementioned Philosophy. Assuming modern presuppositions makes coherence with an Aristotelian-Thomistic Philosophy with a claim to universality highly problematic.

MacIntyre and other proposals

In recent times, there have been other attempts to approach a realist Philosophy , along the lines of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. One of the proposals that seems to us to be the most remarkable is the one put forward by the Anglo-Saxon thinker Alasdair MacIntyre, who distinguishes himself by accessing the Aristotelian-Thomistic Philosophy precisely through ethics.

In MacIntyre's case, his point of departure is a modern context -Philosophy analytic, Marxism, psychoanalysis - in which he feels dissatisfied at not finding answers that give reason for the human being, in a unitary way, in his acting in relation to others. Thus, for him, modernity has been weighed down by individualism and the fragmentation of the human being. This is why he initially proposed the recovery of the Aristotelian notion of virtue, through a narrative conception of human life, which is interwoven with that of others within a common tradition.

Teleology in Thomistic thought

However, the British author becomes aware of the fundamental role of teleology in achieving this unitary conception of human life. In this search, he discovers Thomas Aquinas as a reader of Aristotle, which brings him progressively closer to clearly metaphysical approaches and to a more unitary vision of knowledge.

In this process, he also discovers in greater depth the relevance of the unity of body and soul in the human being, and in this research he recognizes the importance of biology to adequately understand the nature of rational beings. In this way, that rational nature is sample not only in its spiritual-corporeal unity, but also in its own vulnerability. Beyond a simple lack, this condition signifies a reciprocal dependence among rational beings, which ultimately manifests the capacity to give and receive in relation to others.

The Scottish philosopher reaches this conclusion by understanding in depth not only the spiritual-corporeal integrity of each human being in himself, but also the unity of one with another in a common life, a reality that he discovers through Thomas Aquinas. At this point, he realizes that Aquinas' approach continues the Aristotelian conception of the human being as a unitary and social being. Thus Alasdair MacIntyre has had the audacity to recognize that Thomas Aquinas has taken Aristotle further than Aristotle himself.