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thepursuitofunderstanding · 4 months

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Fear is such a powerful emotion for humans that when we allow it to take us over, it drives compassion right out of our hearts.

Thomas Aquinas

#thomas aquinas #aquinas #quotes #philosophy #wisdom #life #literature #writer #books #psychology #write #art #artist #idea #ideas #fear #powerful emotions #compassion #heart

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thecatholicbozo · 4 days

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"What most characterizes [St. Thomas's] love of truth is his attitude toward his opponents. Indeed, he seems hardly to have opponents, so well does he work with them.

St. Paul says, "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good." To do this, we must first be able to recognize the good when we see it, and that implies sympathy. St. Thomas loved the truth that others possessed, because, as he says, "Truth does not change with the diversity of persons, and whoever maintains it is thereby invincible."

He dealt with his opponents not out of any vindictive desire to refute them, but rather to judge them fairly and meet them halfway. He accepts what is true in them, and rejects what is false, showing where it goes wrong."

-A. G. Sertillanges, OP, Thomas Aquinas - Scholar, Poet, Mystic, Saint

#st thomas aquinas #aquinas #christian #christianity #catholic #catholicism #apologetics #faith and reason

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littleflowerfaith · 1 year

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I've been avoiding ChatGPT only because it's inhuman. What makes you say it's demonic?

To answer this we must first dismiss the wholly unchristian philosophy of evil called Manichaeism, in which the forces of good and evil are battling for control- this is very common, and unconsciously accepted by many Christians. Think of all the media where separate forces of good and evil are fighting to triumph over the other. This conception of evil is incompatible with Christian doctrine. If there is only one God, and he has created everything, and all he creates is good, then he cannot have created evil. St Augustine posited that evil is the absence of good- the privation or perversion of something that was good in its creation, but is now without that goodness, no longer good. Evil is created when our will, which is distorted by our fallen sinful nature turns away from the true good of God, and towards apparent goods - pleasure, monetary gain, false teachings etc. ad infinitum. Thomas Aquinas writes extensively on this. Evil is created when we turn away from God’s creation which is truly good, towards something we perceive to be good. Artificial intelligence is a perversion of the human intelligence that God gave us. Therefore human intelligence is good, as it was created by the will of God, and artificial intelligence is without that good, and therefore evil. Demons are fallen angels- they have turned away from God, therefore that which is demonic is that which has turned away from the true good of God. Frodo Baggins said it best in the Return of the King, speaking about Tolkiens devil and demon analogue, Morgoth and the Orcs. “The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own.” A truly Augustinian take, Frodo!

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saint-augustines-pears · 7 months

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HOLY SHIT

Saint Thomas Aquinas have you ever heard of keeping it to like three thoughts per sentence tops

#catholicism #philosophy #religion #christianity #catholic #god #good #evil #aristotle #saint thomas #aquinas #thomas aquinas #people struggle with understanding what I write?#they must be stupid or something

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catholicsaintquotes33ad · 2 years

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#Saint Thomas Aquinas #Catholic Saints #Catholic Saint Quotes #Saints #christian quotes #Christianity #Aquinas #thomas aquinas #Jesus #the times #gen x #Trad Catholic #Catholicism #Catholic #men quotes #man #generational quotes #life quotes #end times

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cissy-side-thoughts · 7 months

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Virtue of Justice

I am a person with a strong sense of Justice as a Virtue.

In my younger, primary school years, I was given the virtue award of Justice. My teacher said that she had witnessed me display a strong sense of Justice in the year that she had taught me.

Since then, I have explored my Justice. And I found that that my old teacher was on the mark. I do have a strong sense of Justice. I have strong beliefs of what is right and wrong.

Now, this is not law related Justice that I mean. No, I’m talking about the Virtue of Justice, the philosophical concept. Like St. Thomas Aquinas defined justice as “giving to another what is their due”. The concept of right, wrong, dues, and what is deserved. These are what I have a strong Virtue compass for.

If something unjust is happening to someone, I have no trouble interfering. I will walk right up to the injustice and interrupt the accused party and tell them off. Sometimes this gets me in sticky situations, but I do what I believe is right, what is just.

I am a person with a strong sense of Justice as a Virtue.

~~~

Discussing Strengths Challenge

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medievalistsnet · 1 year

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#Thomas Aquinas #aquinas #economics

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radio--katsuyu · 11 months

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An Observation about (Scholastic) Latin

When I got into reading some of the Scholastic writers, I observed painfully diverse their use of Latin was. Specifically, the difference between Duns Scotus and Aquinas or Bonaventure. There's an undeniable Englishness in Scotus' Latin, of course, but more than that, his use of the lexicon is innovative, to say the least. And he uses it -- and I say this as someone with experience in language teaching and learning -- almost the way one would play around with a new language when they had a decent amount of Semantic and Syntactic experience, but not yet a full grasp of the Pragmatic.

Another thing I observed was how mutable was Latin and how clearly it was able to show us the workings of someone's mind. Jerome is a linguistic nerd, Aquinas is a logician, Bonaventure is a natural, humoured teacher and Scotus is a metaphysician with a silly, unpredictable side. And to be clear, I have no formal training in Latin hermeneutics (my only formal training in Latin was during my first two years of high school), so I suspect that it is the property of the language to shine the character through.

#linguistics #latin #scholastic #aquinas #duns scotus #bonaventure #language #amateur linguistics

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marta-bee · 1 year

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I recently bought Susan Dimmock’s “Classic Readings and Cases in the Philosophy of Law,” and today read the first chapter/selection on natural law. Is it natural to liveblog a textbook? Let’s just say it’s a good thing I’m past caring about normality, more or less.

(Also posted to El Jay, but I heard some of you like philosophy, so I thought I’d share this here as well.)

I had a half-day off and wasn't meeting up with the Kid until later, so I read the first chapter of my legal philosophy textbook this afternoon. It was a mini-essay on natural law along with a series of selections from Aquinas. Which is such an odd place to start in a lot of ways because it's so based in a whole other political system than our current one. I mean, I focused so much on medieval philosophy and know quite a lot about him though more other areas than the social/political philosophy this was pulling from. And it had a nice nostalgia factor for me. Still, it felt like starting your study of astrophysics by reading a treatise by Ptolemy.

I did find the way the intro-essay framed natural law to be really interesting, though. Basically it says that law is something not dependent on human minds creating it, and it's in our power to discover it. That's a very medieval way of defining "real," or close to it. Not real in the sense of being physical but the kind of thing that would still be true whether or not anyone created a theory or law based on it. It's the kind of thing we can get right or wrong, and we can't just make any law we want. The bits of Aquinas excerpted were a bit vague on the specifics, which is probably good --as I recall Aquinas's politics can get really mired in his metaphysics of authority and where power originates from really quickly, probably way too complicated for present purposes-- but it's definitely based in what's in the common interest. If an emperor (or a democratic society) makes a law demanding people give half their salary to cater to the uber-rich's comfort, while people lie starving in the street that could have been helped with that money, we'd all probably recognize that as an unjust law. Aquinas would go further and say it's no law at all, because it's not geared toward the natural purpose of law, which is justice and what's good for everyone, not just those making the laws.

It's an interesting idea but seems like it would be way too easy to abuse. There's too much danger in allowing people to decide individually that a certain law doesn't apply to them so they're under no obligation to obey it, and I think a society needs a way to collectively say, part of being a part of our group means working within certain rules, even if you disagree, and that if you don't like the law you need to work to change it not just disregard it. Aquinas himself doesn't actually allow for that, but if we're not all in agreement about what the common good actually is, I'm not sure how we keep moderns with our individualistic sympathies from pushing too far in that direction. I was also concerned it didn't give enough credence to individual rights in the face of what's good for the whole society.

I do like the fact it's tied to morality. My starting question was why we should make things illegal or legal if it's not because they're good or right. This side-steps all that by saying, that's exactly what the law's about. It's about identifying what's good and forcing people who weren't already going to act that way to do that. But then it ties us into that whole ethical project I'm sure a lot of people would like to avoid. Even if "good" is real and we can discover it, do I really trust my fellow citizens to all do the work of finding that out? How often do we agree what's in the common good, really?

Which is probably the biggest problem for me here. It's not that natural law is wrong, it's that it's not what we're trying to do in modern democracies when we make laws. In practice, I mean. Because natural law is about having an actual intelligence identifying what's good and making pronouncements based on that. There's an intellect at the heart of it; or perhaps a few intellects who are reasoning together. But democracy isn't about what some small group identified as right, it's about what ideas were popular enough to get the most votes, with no guarantees that voters are well-informed or acting on good motives. And it's about what lawmakers happen to be in a politically powerful position- all fairly random, unreasoned elements. And even with court cases, even at high level like the Supreme Court, they're less arguing about whether a certain law is just, and whether it contradicts some other law or precedent. The rightness of the law seems like such a small part of it. Maybe with international law where there are less adapted frameworks and more reasoning together based off rights, there's more room for this kind of effort. But at a national level, it just doesn't seem like the political process makes space for what natural law needs.

I will say this, though: I wanted to know more. Natural law was intriguing, and I liked the idea that not everything a person in power decrees as law has the force of law, even as that idea scared me. I'd like to read someone more modern explaining how natural law fits into a democracy. And for a short introduction, "tell me more" is high praise indeed, at least coming from me.

I do suspect my own political leanings are more in line with a kind of social contract we've all agreed to work with, rather than set of moral principles some philosopher-king has the right to identify and impose on the rest of us. Maybe there are certain things we have no right to agree to live under, that it's irrational to accept a social contract built around not having the right to do them anymore. Which makes me seem vaguely Kantian; something I never thought I'd say.

Ah, well. It will be interesting to see where the next chapters lead.

#political philosophy #legal philosophy #philosophy #aquinas #natural law #marta blathers #there is this natural incongruity between democracy and legal philosophies tied to actually getting at some sort of universal wisdom #and i for one would love to see someone try to square those systems with each other

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vulnerasti-cor-meum · 1 year

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always amazed that the summa theologica was/is supposed to be for “beginners.” what

#it's one of those books I NEED to read but the categories of thought are just so alien to a contemporary man like me #thomas aquinas #aquinas #the angelic doctor #catholicism #protestantism #theology #christianity

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thelionessandmedusa · 2 years

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Heaven help me! I used to be fairly good at thinking. I could paraphrase any page in Aquinas once.

- Fr. Brown, The Secret Garden by G. K. Chesterton

#quote #Fr. Brown #g. k. chesterton #the innocence of Fr Brown #Aquinas

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sparrowinthefield · 2 years

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Every time I call St. Thomas Aquinas "T-Dawg" in my moral theology notes I get an extra year in purgatory

#i have only a few regrets #Its shorter #I hope hes not mad #st. thomas aquinas #aquinas #catholic #mine

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apesoformythoughts · 2 years

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“In the unique, twofold creation of Adam and Eve, the Scriptures reveal what experience bears out, and what political and theological liberalism must stringently deny in order to create a homogeneously governable subject: male and female human beings are not two modes of a common, pre-sexed human species.”

— Marc Barnes, “The Intellectual Body: Male and female for the sake of contemplating God”

#marc barnes #new polity #sexuality #catholic #theology #aquinas

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end-stopped-lines · 2 years

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Heave

God created a boulder he couldn’t lift

and called it the earth.

-C.B.V.