ST. THOMAS AQUINASHis Life, Thoughts, and Contributions

By: Harold R. Siapo

• A. Biography- Thomas D’Aquino was born in central Italy in 1224.- At the age of five he was placed by his parents in the Benedictine Monastery at Monte Cassino.- He enrolled at the University of Naples where he was exposed to the Dominican Order.- In 1244 he became a Dominican

Friar.- In 1245-1252 he studied at the University of Paris & Cologne under the influence of St. Albert Magnus

- In 1256 he became a Master of Theology.

- He wrote the Summa contra Gentiles (1258-1260) and the Summa Theologicae

(1267-1273).- In 1274, Pope Gregory X called him

to Lyons to participate in a council, and while on his way there, he died in a monastery between Naples and Rome,

at the age of forty nine.

B.Who influenced hima. He based much of his works on the

Aristotelian philosophy.b. He was deeply influenced by St.

Albert Magnus about his thoughts.c. Due to the translation of Boethius of

the classical philosophy (Aristotle’s) from Greek to Latin, he became more interested with it.

d. He either argued or affirmed the philosophies of Plato and St. Augustine.

II. His ThoughtsA. About God

According to him, “God is, simply speaking, the highest good, not only good of a kind or some respect. For good is to be attributed to God, in that all desired perfections flow from Him as from a first cause…”

B. The Nature of Man- Man is his unity of body and soul. The soul depends on the body for

its intellectual purposes, and the body depends on the soul for its life and has its part in the rational nature of man.

C. Philosophy and Theology (Reason and Faith)

- Philosophy and Theology played complementary role in man’s quest for truth.

- Philosophy proceeds from principles discovered by human reason, whereas theology is the rational ordering of principles received from authoritative revelation and held as a matter of faith .

- Philosophy begins with the immediate objects of sense experience and reason upwards to more generalconceptions while Theology begins with a Faith in God and interprets all things as creatures of God.

- Philosophy draws its conclusions from the natural description of the essences of things whereas, Theology rests the demonstration of the conclusions upon the authority of revealed knowledge.

III. His ContributionsA. On Education

- The Scholastic Philosophy (Methods and Doctrine) – was an attempt to put together a coherent system of traditional thought rather than a pursuit of genuinely novel forms of insight. The Scholastic method involves the “Lectio” and the “Disputatio”, it is a process relying chiefly upon “strict logical deduction” taking on a form of intricate system and expressed in a dialectical or disputational form in which Theology dominated Philosophy.

In his Treatise on Education “De Magistro” (The Teacher), he emphasized self activity in the process of education, but also stressed the great power of the teacher, the giver of knowledge which helps character.

In his “Concerning the Teacher” he said that there is a twofold manner of acquiring knowledge, the one when the natural reason of itself comes from a knowledge of the unknown, which is called “discovery”, the other when someone extrinsically gives aid to the natural reason, which is called “instruction.”

B. On Literature- Summa Theologicae and Summa contra Gentiles.

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS’ CONTRIBUTION TO EDUCATION IS BASICALLY THE PROVISION OF A BASIS FOR CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION .

HIS SCHOLASTIC METHODS ARE SOMEHOW RELATED TO THE PERENNIALIST AND ESSENTIALIST’S APPROACHES ON EDUCATION.

“There are things that Faith can

understand but Reason cannot.”

- St. Thomas Aquinas