11b. How does Thomas Aquinas' Christian view modify the "traditional rationalist view" of Aristotle?

Thomas Aquinas (13th c. AD) is influenced by Aristotle (middle 4th c BC) as Augustine (4th-5th c AD) is influenced by Plato (late 5th c to early 4th c BC). Aristotle and Aquinas compared Aristotle (4th c. BC) and Aquinas (13th c. AD) agree in listing the following human faculties: life, perception, practical reason, and theoretical reason. Life serves perceiving life (common to animals), perception serves reason (common to human beings), practical reason serves good moral living, which creates a framework in which theoretical reason can be activiated; theoretical reason is used in knowing the ultimate causes of nature; for Aquinas, the ultimate cause of nature is God. [not discussed Spring 2002] Aristotle's first cause is the ultimate cause of motion in the universe. For Aristotle the physical universe has always existed and the ultimate cause is not aware of the physical universe and does not prescribe how humans should behave. Aquinas also hold that there is a first cause, God, which is the ultimate cause of motion in the universe. God is also the creator of the universe from nothing and therefore has complete knowledge of it. He is the author of the moral law we should obey. (In Aquinas' "natural law theory" of ethics, God creates natural tendencies and desires from which careful observers can detect his wishes for us. For instance, because human beings for the most part seek to stay alive, this is evidence for God's general instruction to us that we should try to preserve human life.) For Aristotle, the human purpose is to develop our moral and intellectual capacities to the fullest; our intellectual capacities will help us understand nature and its ultimate cause. But for Aristotle the ultimate cause did not create the material world and is not conscious of us. For Thomas Aquinas, however, the ultimate cause is a creator and a moral lawgiver, that is, it is God. The purpose of human life is to know God. We cannot know God completely, but the purpose of human existence is to know God as far as possible. What do we learn from the passage from Plato's Phaedo on pp. 99-100 about the Platonic "rationalist's" view of the body and the soul? When body and soul are united, the soul has the function of ruling and governing the body; the body the function of serving the soul. When the soul, or rational part of the soul, does its task, humans will live happily and virtuously and after death dwell forever in the company of the gods. When the soul is fascinated by the interests of the body, it turns away from its proper

task and serves the body instead of the other way around. And when it does this, it experiences lusts and fears and hate, in short with the emotions and appetites. 11a. How does Augustine's Christian philosophy modify the "traditional rationalist view" of Plato? Augustine took from Plato the view that the human self is an immaterial soul that can think. Plato held that after death the souls of those who most love the forms would rise to contemplate the eternal truths, a sort of heaven beyond space and time. Augustine said that these forms were ideas in the mind of the perfect eternal God. He said that what was required was that we love the perfect eternal God. While Plato emphasized the importance of perfecting reason and following it, Augustine emphasized the importance of the will, the ability to choose between good and evil. The fundamental religious duty is to love and serve God; if we can succeed in this, we will also choose the good and avoid the evil. [Augustine and Original Sin] But, according to Augustine, humans are constantly attracted towards evil, that is, toward excessive satisfaction of our lower desires for material things and pleasures. (As he explains it, this is a result of an inheritance of original sin from our first parents. Adam and Eve disobeyed God when they ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.) We can only escape from inherited sinfulness if we receive grace from God, and there is no way we can earn such grace, or force God to give it to us by being good. Pre-Fall (Adam and Eve before disobeying God ---- able to sin or not to sin Post-Fall (the human condition after expulsion from Eden) --- unable not to sin Saved (in Heaven) -- confirmed in goodness, unable to sin This is a view that combines a rather low opinion of human nature with a belief in the immortality of the soul. Therefore, materialists like Freud are not the only thinkers who have a low opinion of humanity in general. Augustine does believe that there are saintly humans. Such humans love the things that they ought to love; they use their reason properly. But without the grace they get from God, and which they cannot earn, they would neither be good nor able to reason correctly. Augustine's view was that God selects only a few people to receive grace and be saved. The rest of humanity will just continue to sin and not repent, and then they will be punished for it after death in hellfire.