THOMISM

Thomism is a philosophical system of thought based on the writings of Thomas Aquinas, from his death in 1274 to the present. As a philosophy Thomism may be viewed as a moderate realism developed within medieval and Renaissance scholasticism that has been in continuous dialogue with alternate systems of thought in the modern and contemporary periods. The focus here is on Thomism specifically as it relates to science, technology, and ethics in the present.

Notion and Relevance

Thomas of Aquino (1225–1274) was a Dominican who studied under Albert the Great (c. 1200–1280) in Paris and Cologne and then taught at the University of Paris and in various Italian cities. Thomas was a prolific writer, known in his own day as a commentator on Aristotle, who adapted his thought to explicating the Catholic faith. Thomas was himself competent in the science of nature in the Aristotelian sense, and owed much to Albert's knowledge of the biological and psychological sciences. The relevance of both Albert and Thomas to modern science and its problems has been explored extensively by three contemporary Dominicans, Benedict M. Ashley, William A. Wallace, and James A. Weisheipl (1923–1984).

Modern science differs from scientia as understood in the Thomistic tradition, where it is defined as true and certain knowledge acquired by demonstration through prior knowledge of principles and causes. Modern science makes a lesser epistemic claim, only to knowledge acquired by hypothetico-deductive reasoning yielding conclusions with a high degree of probability but that fall short of certitude. Mathematical logic is instrumental for science, but science itself remains fallible and revisable. For Thomists this is too pessimistic. They would say that philosophers of science should rediscover the epistemology of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, and rather than basing their reasoning on logic alone, could also focus on concepts provided by the philosophy of nature developed within the Aristotelian tradition (Wallace 1996).

For Thomism's relevance to technology a balanced view is that of a former Dominican and Wallace student, Paul T. Durbin. Durbin insists, first, that technology in the present day is essentially related to science, and second, that an identifiable social group is the carrier of technology. Thus the term technology can be taken to cover this scientific and technical community, including its inner structure and functions, its products, its particular values, and its implicit view of human nature. The term philosophy of technology then means a set of generalizations or a systematic treatment, in philosophical language, of one or another or all of the above social phenomena.

With regard to ethics, of the three terms—science, technology, and ethics—the last has the most explicit and enduring relationship to Thomism. There ethics is seen as the philosophical study of voluntary human action, with the purpose of determining what types of activity are good, right, and to be done, or bad, wrong, and not to be done, so that human individuals might live well. As a philosophical study, ethics treats information derived from a person's natural experience of the problems of human living. The term ethics is etymologically connected with the Greek ethos, meaning customs or behavior, and is the same as moral philosophy, similarly connected with the Latin mores, also meaning customs or behavior. It is a practical science in the sense that its objective is not simply to know, but to know which actions should be done and which should be avoided, so as properly to translate knowledge into action. Thus understood, only one thesis on ethics is listed among various theses seen as essential to Thomism. This states that humans have by nature the right to cooperate with others in society in the pursuit of personal happiness in the common good, and that this pursuit of happiness is guided by conscience, laws both natural and positive, and virtues both private and public. Briefly, Thomistic ethics is a virtue ethics that infers from nature what humans ought to do or be to achieve their proper perfection.

Historical Overview

Albert and Thomas wrote in the medieval period of high scholasticism. Albert was the first to appreciate the importance of the newly imported Greek-Arabic learning for science and philosophy, and he set himself to making encyclopedic summaries for his students, which earned for him the title "the Great" in his own lifetime. He had many followers among German Dominicans, including Meister Eckehart (c. 1260–1327) and Theodoric of Freiberg (c. 1250–1310), the second of whom worked out the first correct theory of the rainbow. But Albert's work bore principal fruit in the monumental synthesis elaborated by his pupil Thomas. Called the "Angelic Doctor," Thomas brought natural philosophy and metaphysics into the heart of theology to develop the unique synthesis known as Thomism. Its major teachings are that first matter is pure potentiality and its first actuation is by substantial form; that the human rational soul is the unique substantial form of the human body, endowed with powers that are really distinct from it; that human knowledge originates with the senses but is capable of attaining universals; and that humans can reason to the existence of God and some of God's attributes from the visible things of the world.

In later scholasticism Thomism became the official doctrine of the Dominican Order, where it was championed by Harvey Nedellec (1250 or 60–1323), John of Naples (d. 1330), and Jean Capréolus (c. 1380–1444). The Renaissance was the period of great commentaries on Thomas known as "Second Thomism," when Dominicans exerted strong influence at Paris and Salamanca as well as northern Italy. The more famous of the figures of Second Thomism were Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1469–1534), who debated the German religious reformer Martin Luther on the Eucharist; Francisco de Vitoria (1486?–1546), who developed the theory of natural law during Spain's period of colonial expansion; and Vitoria's colleague Domingo de Soto (c. 1494–1560), whose work foreshadowed to a degree Galileo Galilei's law of falling bodies (Wallace 2004). The same period saw the foundation of the Jesuits, who were initially trained as Thomists but then developed their own versions of Thomism. Jesuits and Dominicans later entered into prolonged controversy over the efficacy of God's grace on human free will and God's foreknowledge of human free actions, and were convinced that many modern evils stem from false philosophy, to which Thomas's thought would supply a needed corrective.

Developmental Thomism

The period from the mid-sixteenth to the late nineteenth century saw little development within Thomism. The system itself had received strong endorsement by the Council of Trent (1545–1563), and, as what may be referred to as Scholastic Thomism, it was taught in Catholic seminaries as a philosophical preparation for the study of theology. It was often seen as the "perennial philosophy," an integrated system that gave enduring answers to central questions about reality and knowledge. And it was largely unaffected by the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, which was mainly concerned with physical sciences that seemed to have little relevance to Catholic teaching.

This situation changed dramatically after the issuance in 1879 of the encyclical Aeterni Patris of Pope Leo XIII (1810–1903), which gave rise to a movement known variously as neo-scholasticism or neo-Thomism (or, among Dominicans, "Third Thomism.") The stimulus came from the labors of medieval historians such as Maurice De Wulf (1867–1947) and Martin Grabmann (1875–1949), who had recovered works of medieval thinkers and focused attention on Thomas's thought as containing answers to pressing contemporary problems. With Pope Leo's endorsement, Thomism underwent extensive development in the twentieth century and came in dialogue with other philosophical movements. Arguably it is the most extensively developed systematic philosophy in the present day.

In this expanded sense, the term Thomism has itself undergone a change of meaning. An "ism" need not refer exclusively to an original system of thought. It might also refer to a system of thought that has taken on new meaning in light of developments that were unforeseen and unknown by its originator. In this alternate sense René Descartes could not be a Cartesian nor could Immanuel Kant be a Kantian. This sense would apply to those who came after them and assimilated new knowledge into their syntheses in ways consistent with the principles they had established, while rejecting matter that had been superseded in the interim. This is obviously a more speculative enterprise, but it is in this sense that one might speak of one or more developmental Thomisms.

Types of Thomism

The development of overriding importance is the growth of modern science in its classical and contemporary senses and how this affects Thomism as a whole. Allied to this are three subsidiary developments that may be characterized as different types of Thomism. Of these, two have already achieved the status of movements, namely, Existential Thomism, which arose from confrontation with existentialist thought, and Transcendental Thomism, which arose from the confrontation with Kantianism and other forms of idealism seen in the works of Continental philosophers. A third, resulting from the confrontation with Anglo-American philosophy, may be described as Analytical Thomism, though it is not yet regarded as a movement.

EXISTENTIAL THOMISM. The two philosophers most identified with this movement were the Frenchmen Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) and Étienne Gilson (1884–1978), both former students of Henri Bergson (1859–1941). Maritain became interested in the thought of Thomas after being converted to Catholicism. His most lasting achievements have been in the area of epistemology, in elucidating the different degrees of knowledge and their interrelationships, so as to constitute an integral, Christian humanism. He also made substantial contributions to social and political philosophy and to constructive critiques of modern culture and art. In his theoretical philosophy he stressed the authentic existentialism of Thomas, maintaining the primacy of existence in a realist philosophy of being, and seeing this as also providing the basis for an understanding of knowledge and of love.

Gilson did his early work on Descartes, which led him to a study of medieval philosophy and of Thomism in particular. He saw the philosophy of the Middle Ages as a Christian philosophy, one that, while keeping the orders of faith and reason distinct, considers Christian revelation as an indispensable auxiliary to reason. In Thomas he found a metaphysics of existence that conceives God as the very act of being (Ipsum Esse) and creatures as beings centered on the act of existing (esse). His disciples regarded his existential metaphysics as a corrective to the essentialism that had insinuated itself in Renaissance and rationalist versions of Thomistic thought.

TRANSCENDENTAL THOMISM. The roots of this movement can be traced to Désiré Mercier (1851–1926) and Maurice Blondel (1861–1949), and to the efforts of two Jesuits, Jean-Pierre Rousselot (1846–1924) and Joseph Maréchal (1878–1944), to rehabilitate critical philosophy in light of the teachings of Thomas. Maréchal's thought passed through several phases, but in a later formulation he proposed the act of judgment as an affirmation of absolute reality that objectifies the form or concept and so grasps it as being. Then, beyond the concept, the intellect is made aware of a further intelligibility by its own tending, in a dynamism unleashed by the concept itself, toward something infinite and absolute—actually the infinite act of existing that is God. The intellect thus "constitutes" its object as belonging, in a finite and participatory way, to the realm of the real.

Maréchal's innovative views gained new insights from dialogues with phenomenology by two German Jesuits, Karl Rahner (1904–1984) and Emerich Coreth (b. 1919), and by analyses of modern science by a Canadian Jesuit, Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984). From these have emerged a new metaphysics in which the being investigated is that which occurs in consciousness. So Coreth writes of an immediate unity of being and knowing in the very act of knowing, and Lonergan looks upon being as whatever is to be known by intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation, and so extrapolates from the being of consciousness to the being of the cosmos. For Rahner an analysis of the performance of the human spirit discloses an innate drive to being as absolute and really existing, which itself is human nature as "spirit in the world" or finite transcendence. They elaborate these insights in various ways through the use of what is called a transcendental method.

ANALYTICAL THOMISM. Like phenomenology, analytical philosophy is more a method or way of doing philosophy than it is a philosophy itself. Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) was one of its pioneers, and after him came the logical positivists, with their anti-metaphysical programs, and finally a more relaxed conception of linguistic analysis, culminating in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951). One of Wittgenstein's students, Elizabeth Anscombe (1919–2001), along with her husband Peter Geach (b. 1916) were the first analysts to attend to Thomism in their writings. A related thinker is Alasdair MacIntyre (b. 1929), whose work in Aristotelian politics and virtue ethics brought him to the study of Thomas. Also noteworthy is the work of John N. Deely, a former Dominican and student of Weisheipl, who recovered the work on semiotics of the early-seventeenth-century Thomist John Poinsot, known in the Dominican Order as John of St. Thomas. By the early twenty-first century, the most distinctive contributor to the emerging movement is John J. Haldane, of the University of Aberdeen, who has published extensively in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of God from a Thomist perspective.

Areas of Continuing Research

Thomists in the United States seem more inclined to pursue the analytical route than the other two movements, and have two main areas of research. The first focuses on an analysis and critique of scientific concepts with reference to the Aristotelian-Thomistic heritage, particularly the latter's use of first matter and transient entities to develop a view of creation and evolution that concords with recent theories of cosmogenesis (the origin of the cosmos). The second focuses on problems in bioethics, particularly through a recovery of Thomas's teaching on delayed hominization as this relates to the study of homogenesis.

On the theme of cosmogenesis, this line of research associates God's creative act at the beginning of time with the "big bang" theory of cosmic origins (Wallace 2002). Time began some 13 billion years ago by the production by God, ex nihilo (out of nothing), of the primordial mass-energy of which the universe is now composed. Along with the act of creation, God as prime mover also initiated the "big bang," releasing the enormous energy of the primitive mass for the formation of the natures now found in the universe. These are, in order, transient natures, inorganic natures, plant natures, animal natures, and human nature. They correspond to the stages of evolution commonly accepted among scientists: the period of fundamental particles impelled at high energy; that of element and compound formation; the two periods of biogenesis, wherein first plants and then animals were generated; and finally that of hominization, when Homo sapiens first appeared. All of these stages except the last were accomplished by a natural process Thomas referred to as "the eduction of [substantial] form from the potency of first matter" (Summa Theologiae I, q. 90, a. 2).

The final stage of cosmic evolution would then be hominization, the appearance of humans with a special type of substantial form, an immaterial (and immortal) soul. Here there is a break in the line of causality extending back to creation, because, according to Catholic teaching, such a soul cannot be educed from the potency of matter. Up to this point the entire process of evolution can bring organisms to a level just below that of thought and volition, but they cannot progress to the final stage. Here God's creative act is again required. This second input of divine causality is the production, ex nihilo, of the immaterial souls of the first humans, tailored to match the ultimate disposition of first matter, as this has been prepared, over billions of years, for their reception.

With regard to bioethics, an important advance has been in the recovery of Thomas's teaching that the beginning of human life is a gradual process: that the human soul is not infused into the incipient organism at fertilization but rather is prepared for by a succession of substantial forms that dispose first matter for the reception of an intellective soul (Wallace 1995). Less well known is his speculation that the reverse process may occur at the ending of human life, namely, that the human soul may depart from the body well before all signs of life have disappeared from it. Both views are opposed to the notion of immediate hominization, commonly taught in Catholic circles, namely, that human life begins at fertilization, when the rational soul is infused by God into the body, and terminates at death, when the same human soul departs from the body.

With regard to human generation, Thomas followed Aristotle in holding that the conception of a male child was not completed until the fortieth day after intercourse, whereas that of the female child was not completed until the ninetieth day. The details of Thomas's treatment, now referred to as delayed hominization, were worked out on the basis of Aristotle's teaching as developed by medieval commentators, particularly Avicenna (980–1037). Little empirical evidence was available to support the various steps of the argument. In the early twenty-first century, however, the human reproductive process is being studied intensively, and much evidence can be brought to bear on the problem of hominization.

Catholic theologians have advanced two lines of argument that generally favor Thomas's solution. The first, proposed by Norman M. Ford (1988), is based on the possibility of twinning in the formation of the fetus and is essentially an argument from individuation. This would propose that the definitive individuation of the human fetus does not occur until fourteen days after conception, and thus that the intellective soul, and so the human person, need not be present before that time. The second argument, advanced by Joseph F. Donceel (1970), is based on the organ systems required first for sensitive life and then for the exercise of reason, which would involve the senses, the nervous system, the brain, and especially the cortex. The time when such organ systems are present in the human fetus must be ascertained by embryology. This probably occurs somewhere between several weeks and the end of the third month after conception, and so it is possible, on this theory, that human animation does not occur before this time.

Both of these conclusions, if accepted, would have far-reaching implications for future work in human genetics. Because the Catholic Church has thus far not taken a definitive position on the precise time when the human soul is present in the developing organism, the question remains open to discussion.

WILLIAM A. WALLACE

SEE ALSO Christian Perspectives;Thomas Aquinas;Virtue Ethics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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