PHILOSOPHY - Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas deserves to be remembered for reconciling faith with reason, thereby saving Western civilisation from turning its back on science and Greek and Roman wisdom.

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Produced in collaboration with Mad Adam

[saeedbaig]

A video on Aquinas that doesn't mention the 5 ways? Hmm...

[ganondorfchampin]

I wouldn't quite call Aristotle an atheist, he did believe there had to be a first mover.

[andrewporter]

"He opened the [Catholic] mind to the insights of all of humanity." False. He opened the pagan and atheistic mind to the insights of all of religion. St. Thomas Aquinas is called Saint for a reason. He was not here to serve man, but to serve God. He wrote for God. He did not write to the Catholic Church to be more like the world. He wrote so that the world might become more Catholic.

[jamesegan]

This video is really really inaccurate. Wow. Generally you guys have insightful and accurate takes on philosophy, but I can tell you've spent almost no time studying Aquinas, and are desperately trying to put a secular spin on him. Like your explanation of natural law... wow. Very inaccurate, at best that's what some later Thomistic philosophers did with Thomas' philosophy as a way to interact with Enlightenment thinkers. I'm sure the goal of this video, like many of your videos, was to fit Thomas in with the particular interests of your channel (and that's no bad thing), but you could have done so much better. You should really understand Thomas as presenting and expansive unity of knowledge with a theological center. The division between faith and reason, religion and science was not present during Thomas' time and in many ways that division is the result of the reaction to Thomas' writing. I encourage you to look more deeply into Thomas. Even if you're not religious, so much of Western thought and history is a reaction to Thomas and the Medieval scholars and studying their ideas can only aid you in getting a better picture of everything.

[mattschneider]

At my catholic school we always end a prayer with saying " St Thomas Aquinas pray for us". I can see why now.

[LittleMushroomGuy]

Congratulations on creating maybe one of the worst representations of "Aquinas" philosophy

[jayfaisa]

I love Christian moral philosophy and intellectual tradition. Even those who are secular and atheist can learn from the works of C.S Lewis, Ignatius, Pope Benedict, or even Newton since he too was a Christian philosopher.

[erichvazquez]

The Marriage of Reason and Faith has been one greatest achievements in human history as God blessed this union for the excellence of man itself. The myth that science is opposed to religion is one the greatest tragedies of our modern day. Even in a philosophical sense the two can't contradict each other because they are two completely different branches, one of the Philosophy of Science and the other of Philosophy of Religion. The former comes from epistemology and the latter comes from metaphysics. If science is against religion then how come the Pope has a Masters Degree in Chemistry? The only way science would contradict religion is if both assume the God is a being among the cosmos but yet that is not who God is, God according to St.Thomas is the essence of being itself having God go beyond the Space-Time continuum and transcend all of the dimensions of the Universe.

[Joetheshow]

God bless Saint Aquinas, what a brilliant man

[JudgeSabo]

The distinction between natural and eternal law is off base here. Aquinas did not consider these separate things. Rather, natural law is a part of the eternal law.

In fact, Aquinas believed in four kinds of law: eternal law, divine law, natural law, and human law. Eternal law is God's ordering of the universe, and all law is ultimately founded in this. Divine law consists of the direct commandments of God communicated in scripture. Natural law is our use of reason to properly conform with our nature and the eternal law. Human law is the laws of governments, which is subject to natural law.

It's also pretty disingenuous to just push Aquinas' only contribution as his emphasis on reason. Reason is definitely central for Aquinas, pointing that out is hardly the only thing he ever did.

[FelipeCruzMelo]

Such ignorance about Christian intellectual tradition...

[aahlstrom]

I am a Catholic Christian and love to read the Summa Theologica. Easy to read, bitesize, Catholic philosophy.

[Odood]

Thomas of Aquin did that which distinguishes good philosophers from _great_ philosophers. He helped push a civilization (the western-xian world) in a more productive direction. He is one of the founding fathers of scholasticism, which became one of the most effective methods of teaching.

[valsmith]

the reason I have a Bible and particle physics book on my bedside.

[mariafoteini]

You are close to 1 million subscribers! i am so happy for you! I was waiting for your channel to get more attention months now! Congratulations! You truly deserve it!

[strive]

You can see the atheistic biases in this video very heavily. As a devout Catholic and a student of Thomas Aquina’s work, this was a disappointing video.

[bolivar]

I love this quote:

"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".

There is nothing more beautiful and meaningful than a " dedicated life". But here is a problem:

When you dedicate your entire life to one field, if you don't remain open and curious enough, you may shut down all the other possibilities and come to believe that what you are doing is the "only" key to all that matters.

So that's why you have the militant scientist who thinks you can apply only to science dealing with any possible issue in life, you have the religious fundamentalist who can't even see the climate change because it isn't written in his holy book, you have the neurologist who looks down on the psychoanalyst, because he thinks " why to talk to people for years" if there is a pill for every suffering, you have the classical piano teacher who wouldn't let his student to play a pop song, because that's not music after all....

These may be brilliant people in their fields, but as they deepen on their subjects, what they learn open their eyes to certain things and blinds them for others...

Take Richard Dawkins who is an excellent scientist from whom we can learn a lot. But here is what bothers me:

In one of those atheists versus religious people events, if someone from the audience, just a normal, ordinary person who happens to be a believer dares to ask him a question, he looks at him with so much contempt. I mean he answers in such arrogant manners as if he would want to say:

" Me, Professor Richard Dawkins from Oxford, do I really have to talk to people like you?".

But if you think about it, how can an "intellectual" have the luxury to be " so surprised" by those questions? I have no trouble with God being a delusion, but isn't this also a delusion to believe that if you make people feel themselves stupid enough, eventually they will be so inspired and motivated by you as to change their entire view on life?

I would rather read Alain de Botton's ( the founder of this channel) book Religion for Atheists and learn something very important about our species: where does this need to believe come from? How can we replace it as atheists? How could the institution of religion survive for thousands of years? Is there anything we can learn from the way religious communities are organised?

So Alain is just more curious than Dawkins in this case. He goes much deeper into the topic rather than calling all religious folks stupid. I am sure this is a great example of what Aquinas meant.

Dalai Lama is a great example too. Despite being a religious leader he is extremely interested in science. He financially supports many scientists and this is what he says:

“If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”

Or take Natalie Batalha: she is a very famous astrophysicist who works for NASA. She had found a couple of exoplanets herself. But it seems that science is not the only tool for her to understand us and the universe. She is very much into literature too. She talks a lot about novels and poems too... In an interview I have heard, she compared dark energy with love. They both are not yet explained but they move everything. Isn't that beautiful?

So we should aspire to be more like this. I mean we can all be much more than a hammer and manage to see much more forms in the world than just nails. Curiosity, openness and modesty can get us there.

Thank you for this wonderful lesson! I very much liked the saint philosopher!

[sambrown]

he sure does sound quite... reasonable.

[ThomasRiver]

Ironic how his name is Thomas and he strived to bridge a gap between faith and reason. I'm quite Doubtful he should be named something else.

[Jack-mekl]

You say "greatest thinkers" but then I see Marx's face. That one is, at the very least, arguable.