Saint Thomas and the Greeks (Aquinas Lecture 3) PDF
Preview Saint Thomas and the Greeks (Aquinas Lecture 3)
Saint Thomas and the Greeks Aquinas title: Lecture ; 1939 author: Pegis, Anton Charles. publisher: Marquette University Press isbn10 | asin: 0874621038 print isbn13: 9780874621037 ebook isbn13: 9780585141213 language: English Thomas,--Aquinas, Saint,--1225?-1274 , subject Philosophy, Medieval, Philosophy, Ancient. publication date: 1980 lcc: B765.T54P35 1980eb ddc: 189 Thomas,--Aquinas, Saint,--1225?-1274 , subject: Philosophy, Medieval, Philosophy, Ancient. Page iii The Aquinas Lecture-3 Saint Thomas and the Greeks Under the Auspices of the Aristotelian Society of Marquette University By Anton C. Pegis Fellow of the Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University Graduate School MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY PRESS MILWAUKEE Page iv Fourth Printing, 1980 © Copyright 1980 Marquette University ISBN 0-87462-103-8 Page v TO REV. GERALD B. PHELAN PRESIDENT, INSTITUTE OF MEDIAEVAL STUDIES, TORONTO Page vi Nihil Obstat Gerard Smith, S.J., censor deputatus Milwaukiae, die 28 Julii, 1939 Imprimatur Milwaukiae, Die 16 Junii, 1939 Samuel A. Stritch Archiepiscopus Milwaukiensis Page vii The Aquinas Lectures The Aristotelian Society of Marquette University each year invites a scholar to speak on the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. These lectures have come to be called the Aquinas Lectures and are customarily delivered on the Sunday nearest March seven, the feast day of the Society's patron saint. This year the Aristotelian Society has the pleasurer of recording the lecture of Anton C. Pegis, Ph.D., assistant professor of philosophy in the Fordham University Graduate School, New York, N. Y.; B.A., M.A., Marquette University; Ph.D., University of Toronto, Carnegie Fellow, St. Michael's College, University of Toronto; Fellow of the Institute of Mediaeval Studies, University of Toronto; Instructor in Philosophy, Marquette University, 1932-1934; Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Marquette University, 1934-1937; Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University, 1937; Assistant Editor of New Scholasticism; Member of American Catholic Philosophical Association and Mediaeval Academy Page viii of America; Author of: St. Thomas and the Problem of the Soul in the 13th Century (Toronto, 1934); Contributor to New Scholasticism, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, Speculum and Thought; Aquinas Lecturer, Marquette University, 1939. Page 1 I St. Thomas Aquinas is studied and interpreted from so many different points of view, and there are such varying appreciations of his significance, that it ought not to be necessary to apologize for any attempt to reach the living historical personality from which all these interpretations are distilled. Such an undertaking, however, may seem strange to those who, living in the twentieth century, are frankly not interested in the thirteenth century and its complicated intellectual life, even when they are very much interested in the philosophical ideas of the Angelical Doctor. Such an undertaking may seem strange also to those who will wonder why it should receive the title of the present lecture. In both instances my apology is one and the same. If it is true that the ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas have a perennial value, it is not by ignoring or forgetting the intellectual world in which they came into being that we shall give them such a value. On the contrary, they Page 2 rise above that world to an atemporal realm of truth by successfully mastering its problems. Angel of the Schools though he may be, St. Thomas does not speak from some abstract philosophical heaven. It is to the thirteenth century that St. Thomas gives voiceto that century, precisely, which was the first Christian century to behold and to feel the full power of the Greek philosophical genius. In the following lecture, it will be my purpose to suggest that the real significance of St. Thomas Aquinas is not seen until it is viewed in the astonishingly turbulent intellectual life of his century, and that when St. Thomas is so viewed, his relations to the Greeks and their Arabian successors assume the role of a major issue in the formation of his thought. The thirteenth century was the age in which Christian thinkers were confronted with the enormous literature of Greek and Arabian philosophy. The special significance of this historical circumstance lies in this, that up to the time when they came into contact
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