Thomas Aquinas: God and Explanations

233 Pages·1997·34.788 MB·English

by  Christopher F. J. Martin

Thomas Aquinas
God and Explanations
C. F. J. Martin
THOMAS AQUINAS

THOMAS AQUINAS
God and Explanations
J.
C. F. Martin
Edinburgh University Press
© C. F. ]. Martin, 1997
Edinburgh University Press
22 George Square, Edinburgh
Typeset in Monotype Ehrhardt by Westkey Ltd, Falmouth,
and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Eastbourne
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 10 0 7486 0901 6
ISBN 13 978 0 7486 0901 7
The right of C. F. J. Martin to be identified as author
of this work has been asserted in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act (1988).
CONTENTS
Introductory Preface vu
Acknowledgements xvm
Copyright Permissions xx
1. The Summa Theologiae as a Summary of a Divine Science 1
2. The Nature of Science in Medieval Thought 15
3. The Role of Questions in the Articulation of Science 32
4. The Signification of a Name 37
5. The Notion of Existence Used in Answering an est? 50
6. Demonstrating the Existence of a Cause from its Effect 80
7. The Existence of God as a Scientific Question 97
8. 'Does God Exist? Apparently Not' 110
9. The First Way 132
10. The Second Way 146
11. The Third Way 155
12. The Fourth Way 171
13. The Fifth Way 179
Select Bibliography 207
Index 209

INTRODUCTORY PREFACE1
Like many other people, I have tended in the past to skip prefaces and
introductions. I have always felt that if an author puts something he wishes
to say to me outside the body of his book, then I am under no obligation
to read it. This is ridiculous, of course, since I am under no obligation to
read any of the book at all. But my experience suggests that this ridiculous
attitude of mine is fairly common. Let me make a plea: do not skip this
preface unless you are sure you want to. What I have to say now cannot
properly form a part of what I have to say in the book, but I am sure that
it needs saying. I only hope my readers will be sufficiently warned by this
first paragraph that if they do skip the reading of it they may fail to
understand the book. Worse, if they skip the preface they may find
themselves reading something they do not like, or leaving aside something
they would like.
Since the days in which I was an undergraduate a change of nomencla
ture has been spreading over the teaching and the writing of philosophy
in Britain. When I was young, all those who taught or learnt in philosophy
departments were considered to be philosophers, in some sense, and to be
doing philosophy. It was out of fashion at the time to try to do philosophy
entirely out of one's own head, and I approved and approve of this modest
fashion. Since not everyone can manage to do everything, and since tastes
differ, what philosophers principally read to support the efforts of their
own minds varied. Some read principally Kant; others, principally the
empiricists. Some, the kind I liked best, read principally the ancients, and
a very few read the medievals, as I have done since those early days in
philosophy. Others, meanwhile, were working in more restricted but more
rapidly moving fields, and read principally their contemporaries. Each
choice was respected by the others, at least to the extent that those who
chose to do their philosophy one way recognised the right of others to
choose to do philosophy another way. All were willing to concede to the
others the right to claim that they were trying to do philosophy, even
though they may have thought that those others were not going the best
Vlll Introductory Preface
way about it. All were more or less aware of the restrictions and advantages
of their own choice, and of those of others. (Usually, of course, they were
more aware of the advantages of their own choice, and of the disadvantages
of the choices of the others, but that is natural.) It was a fairly free and
relaxed world, in my recollection of it, and no-one would refuse to cite a
contemporary author in support of his or her view of an ancient text, or
refuse to cite an ancient author in support of a step in a contemporary
debate. We were all philosophers.
But between ten and fifteen years ago I began to find that a new name
was being given to the kind of studies I was interested in: searching for
the wisdom with which to answer problems people have had all through
the ages, problems apparently inseparable from the great problem of being
a human being, in the writings of those who had been dead for more than
seven hundred years. My interests were now being called 'the history of
philosophy'. I felt at the time that the name was inappropriate. It is a
matter of fact that in almost any schedule of examinations for undergradu
ates there will be some papers which are to be answered principally by
reading material written by people still alive or not long dead, and some
papers which are to be answered principally by reading material written
by those long dead. It seems to me natural that the latter should be called
'historical' papers, though there might be another half-dozen labels at least
as natural. But to call them studies in the 'history of philosophy' seemed,
and seems, misleading to me. There is a discipline, or set of disciplines,
called 'science'; and there is a separate discipline called the 'history of
science'. There is 'art', and there is the 'history of art', quite separate; and
there is 'music', and there is the 'history of music', also quite separate.
While it is hard for people who know no music to study the history of
music, it does not seem to me impossible. But I would claim that it is
impossible for those who know no 'philosophy' to study the 'history of
philosophy'. (I would also be inclined to make the stronger claim that
those who study 'philosophy' and care little for the 'history of philosophy'
will remain with a severely limited understanding of 'philosophy', but I
do not intend to press this claim at once.) The label, which implies that
'history of philosophy' is not philosophy, seems to be at best misleading.
Perhaps I should have said 'I would have made one or other of these
claims' for as I found my own studies labelled the 'history of philoso
phy', inaccurately enough, I began to notice the growth of a subject
which could also be called the 'history of philosophy' with a good deal
more accuracy, a subject of considerably less interest to me. I found
myself increasingly subjected, at conferences and in reading journals,
to productions which seemed to me to be lacking in any philosophical
Introductory Preface lX
interest, except incidentally. These productions showed a breadth and
a depth of erudition that I could not aspire to: I do not have the necessary
patience or eye for detail. But these admirable qualities seemed to be
directed indiscriminately to any object, provided that it was within the
scope of what people would now or would once have called 'philosophy'.
A case in point was the loving care directed to the reading, recovery and
elucidation of hitherto wholly neglected medieval texts which dealt with
the medieval logic exercise of oppositiones. Listening to or reading these
papers I noticed that either the medieval authors or their contemporary
commentators were incapable of distinguishing between suggestions for
winning strategies and proposals to improve the rules of the game. It
seemed clear to me that no logical insight was to be derived from the studies
of these texts, and so I neglected them. I was allowed to: I was lucky. A
colleague of mine wrote a introductory book on medieval logic, in which
he confined himself to those authors and texts which, in his (generous)
view could afford valuable logical insights. A distinguished historian of
logic said in print that this book should be consigned to the flames. This,
besides being a highly offensive thing to say to a Jew, as my colleague is,
implies to anyone familiar with the writings of Hume that the book contains
nothing but 'deceit and sophistry'.
Strong attitudes indeed. I, and those who thought like me, found
ourselves in danger of falling between two stools, the only two stools
currently permitted. On the one hand was the stool of'philosophy' which
means developing some currently fashionable topic, in however detailed
or trivial a way, basing oneself solely on material published within the last
few years - or, since the advent of e-mail and the Internet, to be published
within the next year or so. On the other hand was the 'history of philoso
phy', whose exponents seemed to be pure scholars, caring little or nothing
for philosophical importance, or even logical importance, but only for the
erudition of digging up the past-not, I fear, to learn from it anything that
might be of value to anyone today who is exercised by that wonder which
is traditionally said to be the origin of philosophy.
The case of the history of logic is particularly interesting. It may be
objected, perhaps fairly, that I seem to want to go back to a dilettante age,
now fortunately superseded, of elegant gentlemen reading the classics for
their own improvement. I have no objection to elegance, though I am not
elegant, and no objection, other than political and economic, to gentlemen,
though I am not a gentleman, and I certainly have no objection to people,
of any class or level of elegance, reading anything with the desire, however
far-fetched, of 'self-improvement', of making themselves better people. I
certainly wish to improve myself, in many senses of the word, and I think