Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Essential Thinkers #12: St Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways from Summa Theologica


The favoured philosopher of the Catholic Church, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) is principally remembered for reconciling the philosophy of Aristotle with Christian doctrine. Born in northern Sicily, he was educated first at the University of Naples and later at Cologne, and lectured at Paris and Naples. Aquinas was canonized in 1323 by Pope John XII (thus, he is called Saint Thomas Aquinas).

While much of Aquinas’ work was Aristotelian in derivation he also extended and clarified many of Aristotle’s ideas and made many original contributions to Aristotelian thought. Chief amongst Aquinas’ many achievements are the Five Ways, or proofs of the existence of God, from his Summa Theologica. The Five Ways are the clearest and most succinct attempt to prove the existence of God by means of logical argument.

In the first of the Five Ways, Aquinas says the existence of God can be proved by considering the concept of change. We can clearly see that some things in the world are in the process of change, and this change must be a result of something else, since a thing cannot change of itself. But the cause of the change itself, since in the process of change, must also be caused to change by something other than itself, and so on again, ad infinitum. Clearly, there must be something which is the cause of all change, but which itself does not undergo change. For, as Aquinas says, “If the hand does not move the stick, the stick will not move anything else.” The first mover, Aquinas concludes, is God.

In the second Way, arguing in a similar manner to the first, Aquinas notes that causes always operate in series, but there must be a first cause of the series or there could not be a series at all. Interestingly, both the first and second Ways proceed on the assumption that a thing cannot cause itself. Yet this is precisely his conclusion, that there is a thing which does cause itself, namely, God. Philosophers have criticized this form of arguing as confused, since the proposition that appears to be proven in the conclusion is the very same proposition denied in the argument.

In the third Way, it is noted that we observe that things in the world come to be and pass away. But clearly not everything can be like this, for then there would have been a time when nothing existed. But if that were true then nothing could ever have come into being, since something cannot come from nothing. Therefore something must have always existed, and this is what people understand by God. The first, second and third Ways of Aquinas’ arguments are often called variations of a more general argument, the Cosmological Argument.

In the fourth Way, Aquinas offers a version of the Ontological Argument (to know more about this argument, see my previous post on St Anselm). In Aquinas’ version some things are noted to exhibit varying degrees of a quality. A thing may be more or less hot, more or less good, more or less noble. Such varying degrees of quality are caused by something that contains the most and perfect amount of that quality. Because, just as the sun is the hottest thing, and thus is the cause of all other things being hot, so there must be some fully ‘good’ thing which makes all other things good. That which is most good is, of course, God.  

Finally, the in the Fifth Way, Aquinas relies on Aristotle’s notion of ‘telos’ or purpose. All things aim towards some ultimate goal or end. But to be guided by a purpose or a goal implies some mind that directs or intends that purpose. That director is, once again, God. Versions of Aquinas’ cosmological and ontological arguments are still accepted by the Catholic Church today, though modern philosophers have almost unanimously rejected all five of Aquinas’ Ways.
[Summarized from Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers by Philip Stokes, 2012. Also watch YouTube’s ‘The School of Life: Thomas Aquinas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJvoFf2wCBU]

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