8 - Aquinas: Summa Theologiae

Summary

Introduction

The presence of a book whose title translates as “Summary of Theology” might seem odd in a list of great works of philosophy. Yet Aquinas's major work does make a significant contribution to the history of philosophy and has had wide-ranging influence on many philosophers. However, the initial puzzlement one might feel about the title is reflected in the different kinds of scholarly responses to Aquinas's work. Over the centuries, some philosophers have delighted in attacking Aquinas as the philosophical representative of the Catholic Church, and in so doing exposing the perceived errors and perniciousness of that institution. Others have treated Aquinas's writings as almost holy writ and have exhibited excessive reverence and lack of critical distance in their appreciation of his thought. In both approaches there has been a layer of non-philosophical baggage obscuring the philosophical merits or demerits of Aquinas's work.

This issue is ongoing and is reflected in recent scholarship on Aquinas. While there has been some excellent work investigating the philosophical value of Aquinas's thought, much recent work focuses on Aquinas as a theologian and seeks to downplay the independent philosophical value of his writing. Some of this seeks to counterbalance readings of Aquinas that treat him anachronistically and ignore the historical context of the production of his work. However one can be hermeneutically faithful to that context while simultaneously treating his work as a contribution to the history of philosophy.