NATURE OF THINKING

• Cognitive Activity and Process

• Manipulation and Analysis Data
• Involves Reasoning, Imagining, Problem-Solving, Decision Making, etc.

DISTINCT CHARACTERISTICS OF THE KINDS OF THINKING

• REFLECTIVE
• CREATIVE
• CRITICAL
- Reflective and Creative
- Authentic
- Reasonable
- Involves
o Standards/Ethics
o Asking Questions
o Answering Questions
o Believing the Result of the Reasoning
What is Critical Thinking? Chapter 1. Retrieved from
(https://www.pearsonhighered.com/assets/samplechapter/0/1/3/8/0138132429.pdf)
LIFE OF ST. THOMAS (as a Dominican, students, and teacher)

Saint Thomas Aquinas

(c. 1225–1274)
Italian Dominican theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas was one of the most
influential medieval thinkers of Scholasticism and the father of the Thomistic
school of theology.

Who Was Saint Thomas Aquinas?

Combining the theological principles of faith with the philosophical

principles of reason, Saint Thomas Aquinas ranked among the most influential
thinkers of medieval Scholasticism. An authority of the Roman Catholic Church
and a prolific writer, Aquinas died on March 7, 1274, at the Cistercian monastery
of Fossanova, near Terracina, Latium, Papal States, Italy.

Early Life

The son of Landulph, count of Aquino, Saint Thomas Aquinas was born
circa 1225 in Roccasecca, Italy, near Aquino, Terra di Lavoro, in the Kingdom of
Sicily. Thomas had eight siblings, and was the youngest child. His mother,
Theodora, was countess of Teano. Though Thomas' family members were
descendants of Emperors Frederick I and Henry VI, they were considered to be
of lower nobility.

Before Saint Thomas Aquinas was born, a holy hermit shared a prediction
with his mother, foretelling that her son would enter the Order of Friars Preachers,
become a great learner and achieve unequaled sanctity.

Following the tradition of the period, Saint Thomas Aquinas was sent to the
Abbey of Monte Cassino to train among Benedictine monks when he was just 5
years old. In Wisdom 8:19, Saint Thomas Aquinas is described as "a witty child"
who "had received a good soul." At Monte Cassino, the quizzical young boy
repeatedly posed the question, "What is God?" to his benefactors.

Saint Thomas Aquinas remained at the monastery until he was 13 years

old, when the political climate forced him to return to Naples.
Education

Saint Thomas Aquinas spent the next five years completing his primary
education at a Benedictine house in Naples. During those years, he studied
Aristotle's work, which would later become a major launching point for Saint
Thomas Aquinas's own exploration of philosophy. At the Benedictine house,
which was closely affiliated with the University of Naples, Thomas also
developed an interest in more contemporary monastic orders. He was
particularly drawn to those that emphasized a life of spiritual service, in contrast
with the more traditional views and sheltered lifestyle he'd observed at the
Abbey of Monte Cassino.

Circa 1239, Saint Thomas Aquinas began attending the University of

Naples. In 1243, he secretly joined an order of Dominican monks, receiving the
habit in 1244. When his family found out, they felt so betrayed that he had
turned his back on the principles to which they subscribed that they decided to
kidnap him. Thomas's family held him captive for an entire year, imprisoned in
the fortress of San Giovanni at Rocca Secca. During this time, they attempted to
deprogram Thomas of his new beliefs. Thomas held fast to the ideas he had
learned at university, however, and went back to the Dominican order following
his release in 1245.

From 1245 to 1252, Saint Thomas Aquinas continued to pursue his studies
with the Dominicans in Naples, Paris and Cologne. He was ordained in Cologne,
Germany, in 1250, and went on to teach theology at the University of Paris.
Under the tutelage of Saint Albert the Great, Saint Thomas Aquinas subsequently
earned his doctorate in theology. Consistent with the holy hermit's prediction,
Thomas proved an exemplary scholar, though, ironically, his modesty sometimes
led his classmates to misperceive him as dim-witted. After reading Thomas's
thesis and thinking it brilliant, his professor, Saint Albert the Great, proclaimed in
Thomas's defense, "We call this young man a dumb ox, but his bellowing in
doctrine will one day resound throughout the world!"

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY

Theology and Philosophy

After completing his education, Saint Thomas Aquinas devoted himself to

a life of traveling, writing, teaching, public speaking and preaching. Religious
institutions and universities alike yearned to benefit from the wisdom of "The
Christian Apostle."

At the forefront of medieval thought was a struggle to reconcile the

relationship between theology (faith) and philosophy (reason). People were at
odds as to how to unite the knowledge they obtained through revelation with
the information they observed naturally using their mind and their senses. Based
on Averroes' "theory of the double truth," the two types of knowledge were in
direct opposition to each other. Saint Thomas Aquinas's revolutionary views
rejected Averroes' theory, asserting that "both kinds of knowledge ultimately
come from God" and were therefore compatible. Not only were they
compatible, according to Thomas's ideology, but they could also work in
collaboration: He believed that revelation could guide reason and prevent it
from making mistakes, while reason could clarify and demystify faith. Saint
Thomas Aquinas's work goes on to discuss faith and reason's roles in both
perceiving and proving the existence of God.

Saint Thomas Aquinas believed that the existence of God could be

proven in five ways, mainly by: 1) observing movement in the world as proof of
God, the "Immovable Mover"; 2) observing cause and effect and identifying
God as the cause of everything; 3) concluding that the impermanent nature of
beings proves the existence of a necessary being, God, who originates only
from within himself; 4) noticing varying levels of human perfection and
determining that a supreme, perfect being must therefore exist; and 5) knowing
that natural beings could not have intelligence without it being granted to them
it by God. Subsequent to defending people's ability to naturally perceive proof
of God, Thomas also tackled the challenge of protecting God's image as an all-
powerful being.

Saint Thomas Aquinas also uniquely addressed appropriate social

behavior toward God. In so doing, he gave his ideas a contemporary—some
would say timeless—everyday context. Thomas believed that the laws of the
state were, in fact, a natural product of human nature, and were crucial to
social welfare. By abiding by the social laws of the state, people could earn
eternal salvation of their souls in the afterlife, he purported. Saint Thomas
Aquinas identified three types of laws: natural, positive and eternal. According
to his treatise, natural law prompts man to act in accordance with achieving his
goals and governs man's sense of right and wrong; positive law is the law of the
state, or government, and should always be a manifestation of natural law; and
eternal law, in the case of rational beings, depends on reason and is put into
action through free will, which also works toward the accomplishment of man's
spiritual goals.
Major Works
A prolific writer, Saint Thomas Aquinas penned close to 60 known works
ranging in length from short to tome-like. Handwritten copies of his works were
distributed to libraries across Europe. His philosophical and theological writings
spanned a wide spectrum of topics, including commentaries on the Bible and
discussions of Aristotle's writings on natural philosophy.

While teaching at Cologne in the early 1250s, Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote
a lengthy commentary on scholastic theologian Peter Lombard's Four Books of
Sentences, called Scriptum super libros Sententiarium, or Commentary on the
Sentences. During that period, he also wrote De ente et essentia, or On Being
and Essence, for the Dominican monks in Paris.

In 1256, while serving as regent master in theology at the University of Paris,

Aquinas wrote Impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem, or Against Those Who
Assail the Worship of God and Religion, a treatise defending mendicant orders
that William of Saint-Amour had criticized.

Written from 1265 to 1274, Saint Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica is

largely philosophical in nature and was followed by Summa Contra Gentiles,
which, while still philosophical, comes across to many critics as apologetic of the
beliefs he expressed in his earlier works.

Saint Thomas Aquinas is also known for writing commentaries examining

the principles of natural philosophy espoused in Aristotle's writings: On the
Heavens, Meteorology, On Generation and Corruption, On the Soul,
Nicomachean Ethics and Metaphysics, among others. Shortly after his death,
Saint Thomas Aquinas's theological and philosophical writings rose to great
public acclaim and reinforced a strong following among the Dominicans.
Universities, seminaries and colleges came to replace Lombard's Four Books of
Sentences with Summa Theologica as the leading theology textbook. The
influence of Saint Thomas Aquinas's writing has been so great, in fact, that an
estimated 6,000 commentaries on his work exist to date.
Biography.com Editors. (2021). Saint Thomas Aquinas Biography. https://bit.ly/3KRyHDD
VALUES DRAWN FROM HIS PHILOSOPHY

St. Thomas Aquinas believes that we can never achieve complete or final
happiness in this life. For him, final happiness consists in beatitude, or
supernatural union with God. Such an end lies far beyond what we through our
natural human capacities can attain. For this reason, we not only need the
virtues, we also need God to transform our nature—to perfect or “deify” it—so
that we might be suited to participate in divine beatitude.

Aquinas offers several definitions of virtue. According to one very general

account, a virtue is a habit that “disposes an agent to perform its proper
operation or movement” (DVC 1; ST IaIIae 49.1). Because we know that reason is
the proper operation of human beings, it follows that a virtue is a habit that
disposes us to reason well. This account is too broad for our present purposes.
While all virtues contribute in some way to our rational perfection, not every
virtue disposes us to live morally good lives. Some virtues are strictly intellectual
perfections, such as the ability to grasp universals or the causes underlying the
world’s origin and operation.

A cursory glance at the second part of the Summa Theologiae would

reveal a host of virtues that are indicative of human goodness. But there are
essentially four virtues from which Aquinas’s more extensive list flows. These
virtues are prudence, justice, temperance, and courage (ST IaIIae 61.2). Aquinas
refers to these virtues as the “cardinal” virtues. They are the principal habits on
which the rest of the virtues hinge (cardo) (Rickaby, 2003).
Floyd, Shawn. (n.d). Thomas Aquinas: Moral Philosophy. https://bit.ly/3G5uc4Q