Saint Thomas and the Greeks (Aquinas Lecture 3)

126 Pages·1939·0.36 MB·English

by  Anton Charles Pegis

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
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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
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Nihil Obstat
Gerard Smith, S.J., censor deputatus
Milwaukiae, die 28 Julii, 1939
Imprimatur
Milwaukiae, Die 16 Junii, 1939
Samuel A. Stritch
Archiepiscopus Milwaukiensis
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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
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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.
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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
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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