“Among all human pursuits, the pursuit of wisdom is more perfect, more noble, more useful, and fuller of joy.”

This famous quote is from St. Thomas Aquinas in Book I, Chapter 2 of his famous treatise Summa Contra Gentiles, an intellectual defence of the Catholic faith intended for a non-Christian scholarly audience.

St. Joseph’s College in Edmonton hosted a philosophy roundtable on March 13 in honour of the Italian Dominican friar and priest, theologian and philosopher’s 800th year of birth. Moderator Dr. Matthew Kostelecky, the vice-president academic and dean of the liberal arts institution, explained that it is unclear if Aquinas was born in 1224, 1225 or 1226. He said humorously that “we are in the last possible year in which we can say with some measure of plausibility that we can celebrate the eighth centenary of his birth.”

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What is the philosophical legacy of Thomas Aquinas? That question guided panellists Dr. Celia Hatherley, an assistant professor of philosophy at MacEwan University, Dr. Francis Fast, chief academic officer of Alberta Classical Academy and University of Alberta philosophy professors Jack Zupko and Amy Schmitter.

Zupko commended how Aquinas, a key builder of the medieval philosophical and theological system known as Scholasticism, which champions analytical reasoning and the synthesis of faith and reason, was a go-to source on a wide range of philosophical controversies.” The professor cited the plurality of substantial forms, the eternity of the world and the relationship between intellect and will as several debates that saw Aquinas’ arguments attract attention.  

“In scholarship of the period, he comes to be identified with the view known as intellectualism in the free will debate,” said Zupko. “(He defends) the position that the intellect is the dominant faculty and human agency, and that the will never acts against the deliverances of the intellect.”

Hatherley, a medievalist specializing in Islamic philosophy, centred her segment on examining how Aquinas deeply engaged with the work of earlier philosophers and reframed it for his own purposes.

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She used Aquinas reinterpretation of Persian polymath Avicenna’s (970-1037) metaphysical distinction between existence and essence as an example to elucidate her concept.

Avicenna declared that all created things have a distinct essence (what it is) separate from their existence (that it is). Aquinas adopted this core argument, but he contested Avicenna’s notion that the “Necessary Existent” – God – created out of natural necessity (divine flow), not from nothing. Aquinas declared that God, in free will, did create ex nihilo (out of nothing).

“He doesn't just take (his predecessors) as authorities, and he doesn't just take them as something to reject,” said Hatherly. “He takes them as something to be transformed.”

Schmitter’s contribution to the roundtable was as a counterpoint. She advanced how the French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) used Aquinas “as a punching bag” in his efforts to challenge the scholastic system and the philosophy of Aristotle (384-322 BC). Aristotelian philosophy offered a foundational framework for Aquinas’ systematic theology.

She delved into how Aquinas viewed life as operated by the soul, while, contrastingly, Descartes declared humans operate on mechanical impulses.  

“Where Aquinas sees various other soul functions (like) growth, nutrition, reproduction, locomotion, and sense perception, Descartes sees a very complex machine, an automaton,” posited Schmitter.

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Fast, who described himself as a “resident Thomist,” examined how Aquinas’ concept of a “healthy secularity” – a balanced relationship between secular and spiritual powers in the public square to promote the common good and human flourishing – has been adopted by recent Popes like Benedict XVI and Francis. The academic suggested that this “healthy secularity seems further out of reach today than I think it did 20 years ago.”

In terms of a larger appraisal of Aquinas’ legacy, Fast suggested Thomistic “thought offers an intellectual compass for navigating secular society without reducing Christianity to cultural nostalgia or partisan identity.  It allows faith to illuminate reason while preserving the autonomy of rational inquiry.”