Humanidades: revista de la Universidad de Montevideo, nº
16, (2024): e1610. https://doi.org/10.25185/16.10
Este es un artículo de acceso abierto distribuido bajo los términos de
una licencia de uso y distribución Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0.) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
https://doi.org/10.25185/16.10
Preface
Thomas Aquinas: Yesterday and Today
Tomás de
Aquino: ayer y hoy
Tomás de
Aquino: ontem e hoje
Daniel Contreras
Universidad de los Andes, Chile
danielcontrerasrios@gmail.com
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-6197-579X
This
edition of the Humanidades journal is dedicated to Thomas Aquinas, on
the occasion of the 750th anniversary of his death. Despite the rather negative
associations that often unfairly are tied to the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas
has almost always been recognized, from many different fronts, as one of the
most important intellectual figures, not only of the Middle Ages, but of the
entire history of Western philosophical and theological thought.
Born
in Roccasecca in 1225, Thomas Aquinas entered the recently founded Order of
Preachers at a very young age. He received his intellectual formation in
different educational centers in Europe, under the tutelage - at least for a
time - of Albertus Magnus, and in 1256 he was appointed master regent of the
Faculty of Theology at the University of Paris[1].
After this first regency in Paris, St. Thomas was sent to Italy, where in
different places he exercised his ministry and wrote an important part of his
best-known works. Finally, he returned to Paris for a second regency in the
Faculty of Theology, and this was probably the most intellectually intense
period of his life, in which he produced philosophical and theological works of
a very high level, including a large part of his commentaries on Aristotle and
the Summa theologiae. He died in
1274, on the way to the Second Council of Lyon, and his remains rested, at
first, in the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova, although very soon his body was
claimed and disputed by different interested groups[2].
As anyone who has had access to it can confirm, the work of Thomas Aquinas is enormous. The Leonine Commission, founded in 1879 with the impulse of Pope Leo XIII to produce critical editions of the complete works of St. Thomas, is still active more than a century after its creation, and it is certainly unlikely its work will stop relatively soon[3].
After repeated magisterial
interventions over many centuries, Thomas Aquinas has become a sort of bastion
of Catholic orthodoxy[4].
While this is undeniable today, this was not always the case in the past.
Following the example of his master Albertus Magnus, very early in his academic
career St. Thomas devoted himself to the in-depth and thorough study of the
recently translated works of Aristotle, together with those of his Arabic
commentators, in order to assimilate the best of Greek philosophy and
incorporate it critically into the Christian tradition -which by that time had
already reached a fairly high level of development and reflection. In the
general landscape of the doctrinal movements of the thirteenth century, the
thought of St. Thomas is far from representing the ordinary path of
philosophical and theological thought. On the contrary, it can be located by
the margins of what was considered permissible at that time[5].
This volume
brings together three works dedicated to different aspects of the philosophical
thought of St. Thomas. The first article, by Manuel Martín, entitled La doctrina tomista de la ley natural en el
marco de la participación del hombre en la providencia divina [The Thomistic
Doctrine of Natural Law in the Context of Man’s Participation in Divine Providence],
deals with the particular way in which, according to St. Thomas, men are regulated
by the eternal law. As the author argues, for St. Thomas, the human being is
subject, like every other creature, to the supreme divine ordination, but in a
most peculiar way, since he is called, precisely because of his rationality, to
be provident for himself and to dictate the natural law to himself. Thanks to
his understanding, the human being is capable of becoming aware of himself and
of recognizing those things to which it is naturally inclined, in order to decide,
freely and rationally, to turn to them in order to attain, by means of such
things, the fulfillment they long for. By acting in this way, the human being
imitates, in a limited but real way, divine providence itself.
In Definiendo lo
indefinible. El método para conocer la existencia de Dios según Tomás de Aquino
y el "unum" argumento de Anselmo de Canterbury [Defining the
indefinable. The method for knowing the existence of God according to Thomas Aquinas
and the ‘unum’ argument of Anselm of Canterbury], Santiago Corti explores the
similarities and differences between the ways of rational access to the existence
of God that both medieval thinkers developed in their works. Taking on a
distinction that Thomas Aquinas introduces in Expositio super librum Boethii De
Trinitate, q. 6, a. 3 between a nominal and an actual definition of God, Corti
argues that both Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas begin their respective
demonstrations of God’s existence by using a nominal definition of God, which
merely manifests a general or common —and fundamentally negative— knowledge about what God is. While both thinkers start
by giving a nominal definition of God, the great difference between their
approaches lies, Corti argues, in what that definition is capable of achieving:
while for Thomas it is simply the legitimate starting point of an a posteriori
demonstration of God - or several demonstrations, to be more precise-, Anselm argues
a definition already contains enough strength or content to manifest the
evidence of God’s existence in itself.
In his article
entitled El conocimiento de la persona en su singularidad. Una aproximación
desde dos exponentes de la Escuela Tomista de Barcelona [The knowledge of the
person in their uniqueness. An approximation from two exponents of the Thomist
School of Barcelona], Íñigo García investigates the particularities of the way
in which Thomas Aquinas conceives the self-knowledge of the human soul.
Following the interpretations of Jaime Bofill and Francisco Canals, two of the
leading exponents of the so-called Thomistic School of Barcelona, the author
explores the peculiarities of the two types of self-knowledge that the soul has
of itself, as Thomas Aquinas distinguishes them in De veritate, q. 10, a. 8.
García argues the knowledge the soul has of itself as a being —existential
self-knowledge, as opposed to essential self-knowledge— allows the human beings to recognize not only themselves,
but also enables cognitive access to the singularity of other persons, through
a sort of immediate and dynamic presence, which the author calls 'biography'.
Each one in its
own way, the three articles highlight the undeniable relevance of Thomas
Aquinas' thought in current times. At a distance of more than 700 years, the
rigor and insight of his philosophical and theological work have lost none of
their original vigor, being able even today to show the contemporary reader
ever new paths of illumination and penetration into the central themes of all
genuine philosophical and theological reflection: God, the human being and the
world. We hope that the reading of these articles will serve as a useful opportunity
to delve into the work of one of the most important authors of the Middle Ages
and of the long history of Western thought.
To reference this article / Para citar este artículo /
Para citar este artigo
Contreras,
Daniel. “Proemio”. Humanidades: revista de la Universidad de Montevideo,
nº 16, (2024): e1610. https://doi.org/10.25185/16.10
[1] Biographical data on Thomas Aquinas are duly collected and presented in Jean-Pierre Torrell's classic biography, Initiation à saint Thomas d'Aquin. Sa personne et son œuvre, Paris, Les Éditions du Cerf, 2015; there is a useful summary chronology on pages 421-424. For the various stages of the intellectual training program at the University of Paris, in the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Theology, see Palémon Glorieux, “L'enseignement au Moyen Âge. Techniques et méthodes en usage à la Faculté de Théologie de Paris au XIIIe siècle,” Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age, vol. 35, 1968, pp. 65-186; Bernardo Bazán, ‘Les questions disputées, principalement dans les facultés de théologie,’ in Bernardo Bazán & John Wippel, & Gérard Fransen & Danielle Jacquart (eds. ), Les questions disputées et les questions quodlibétiques dans les facultés de théologie, de droit et de médecine, Turnhout, Brepols, 1985 [vol. 44-45 of Typologie des Sources du Moyen-Âge Occidental], pp. 13-149; and Olga Weijers, A Scholar's Paradise. Teaching and Debating in Medieval Paris, Turnhout, Brepols, 2015 [vol. 2 of Studies on the Faculty of Arts. History and Influence]. For a cautious and up-to-date presentation on the extent of the intellectual relationship between Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, see Paul Hellmeier, Anima et intellectus. Albertus Magnus und Thomas von Aquin über Seele und Intellekt des Menschen, Münster, Aschendorff Verlag, 2011 [vol. 75 of Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters], pp. 11-43.
[2] Shortly after his death, the members of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Paris addressed a letter, dated 02 May 1274, to the general chapter of the Dominicans gathered in Lyon, asking them to please send them his bones to be buried in Paris, the most suitable place to remember “the memory of such a great cleric, such a great father, such a great doctor” [ad tanti clerici, tanti patris, tanti doctoris memoriam]. See M.-H. Laurent (ed.), Fontes vitae s. Thomae Aquinatis, Saint Maximin, Revue Thomiste, 1937 [part of Documents inédits publiés par la “Revue Thomiste”] Fasciculus VI, pp. 583-586; here p. 585. For a detailed history of the events related to the body of St. Thomas after his death, see Marika Räsänen, Thomas Aquinas's Relics as Focus for Conflict and Cult in the Late Middle Ages. The Restless Corpse, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2017.
[3] For a panoramic view Leonine Commission and its past and futurework, see Concetta Luna, “L'édition léonine de saint Thomas d'Aquin: vers une méthode de critique et d'ecdotique,” Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques, vol. 89, 2005, pp. 31-110.
[4] The various testimonies and magisterial documents are collected and commented on in Santiago Ramirez, De auctoritate doctrinali s. Thomae Aquinatis, Salamanca, Apartado 17, 1952.
[5] Not long after the death of St. Thomas, a heated dispute broke out among theology masters about the orthodoxy of some Thomistic theses. The discussion, for example, about the alleged scope of the condemnation of 1277 of some theses held by St. Thomas, is well known. For more information regarding this discussion, see Robert Wielockx, “Autour du procès de Thomas d'Aquin,” in Albert Zimmermann (ed.), Thomas von Aquin. Werk und Wirkung im Licht neuerer Forschungen, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1988 [vol. 19 of Miscellanea Mediaevalia], pp. 413-438; John Wippel, “Bishop Stephen Tempier and Thomas Aquinas: A Separate Process Against Aquinas?”, Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie, vol. 44, 1997, pp. 117-136; and in response to the latter, Robert Wielockx, “A Separate Process Against Aquinas. A Response to John F. Wippel,” in Jacqueline Hamesse (ed.), Roma, magistra mundo. Itineraria culturae medievalis. Mélanges offerts au Père L. E. Boyle à l'occasion de son 75e anniversaire, Louvain-la-Neuve, Brepols, 1998 [vol. 10 of Textes et Études du Moyen Âge], pp. 1009-1030. On the so-called correctoria’s debate, see Pierre Mandonnet, “Premiers travaux de polémique thomiste,” Revue de Sciences philosophiques et theologiques, vol. 7, 1913, pp. 46-70; Franz Ehrle, “Der Kampf um die Lehre des hl. Thomas von Aquin in den ersten fünfzig Jahren nach seinem Tode,” Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie, vol. 37, 1913, pp. 266-318; Palémon Glorieux, ‘La littérature des correctoires: simples notes,’ Revue Thomiste, vol. 33, 1928, pp. 69-96; Palémon Glorieux, “Les correctoires. Essaie de mise au point,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, vol. 14, 1947, pp. 287-305; Ludwig Hödl, ‘Geistesgeschichtliche und literarkritische Erhebungen zum Korrektorienstreit (1277-1287),’ Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, vol. 33, 1966, pp. 81-114; Palémon Glorieux, “Pro et contra Thomam. Un survol de cinquante années,” in Theodor Köhler (ed.), Sapientiae procerum amore. Mélanges Médiévistes offerts à Dom Jean-Pierre Müller O.S.B. à l'occasion de son 70ème anniversaire, Rome, Editrice Anselmiana, 1974 [vo. 63 of Studia Anselmiana], pp. 255-287; and more recently Mark Jordan, “The Controversy of the Correctoria and the Limits of Metaphysics,” Speculum, vol. 57, 1982, pp. 292-314. For a more panoramic view of the reception of the thought of St. Thomas, see Matthew Levering & Marcus Plested (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2021.