Did St. Thomas Aquinas Justify the Transition from 'Is' to 'Ought'

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38 1. Aquinas’s General Approach to Cognition against opponents, and discover new truths. 18 Using this method we may proceed from merely probable premises, such as commonly received opinions or some analogies (as in arguments ex convenientiae), or from general, that is, only logical considerations. Conclusions of such arguments are only more or less probable. This distinguishes dialectics from scientific method, to which it is proper to attain a certain knowledge through proper causes. Dialectical discourse may also concern things about which we cannot have strictly scientific knowledge, supplying tentative conclusions where certitude is impossible. It can play a preparatory function in gaining first indemonstrable principles or an exact scientific knowledge of something. Thanks to its discursive mode, a problem may be stated properly and unconvincing arguments may be undermined in order to find proper causes and make room for a strict demonstration. So, in Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s account, dialectics, understood as an inquiry led by the method of research, is significantly present along with demonstrations in scientific disciplines. 19 St. Thomas indicates that dialectical discourse is to scientific discourse what an unterminated process is to a terminated one. 20 18 Cf. Louis-Marie Régis, L’Opinion selon Aristote (Paris-Ottawa: Vrin-Institute d’Etudes Médiévales, 1935), an authoritative study where the author with a great clarity utterly dispels absurd accusations against Aristotle’s alleged dogmatism in philosophy: “Aristote n’est ni dogmatique, ni aprioriste, come on le lui a si souvent reproché, c’est nous qui le faison dogmatique et aprioriste par nos interprétations textuelles et doctrinales” (p. 267-268). Although Aristotle is the main figure of this book, the author refers from time to time to Aquinas showing several serious errors and inaccuracies in some interpretations of Aquinas’s writings. These spurious interpretations seem to result from ignorance or underestimation of Aristotle’s logical books and Aquinas’s commentaries upon them. See also his Epistemology, p. 127. By the end of the book Régis writes: “Everyone knows the profound contempt in which Descartes and modern thinkers hold Scholastic logic; to them, it is formal, vicious, and does violence to the mind without giving it evidence. And what is worse, it is absolutely sterile as an instrument for discovering truth. According to Descartes, the source of these capital sins of the Scholastic method is in its essentially synthetic character, which completely excludes analysis, by which fact the only method of discovering truth is excluded. These statements made by the putative father of philosophic method are owing to his total ignorance of the texts of ancient philosophers as well as to his identification of the method of discovery proper to mathematical truth with that of philosophical truth” (p. 442). Cf. following pages of this book for a plain justification of these claims. 19 Alasdair MacIntyre underlines the role of dialectics in the process of gaining first principles of demonstration in Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s theory of science, and notes that such science “had thus been an inseparable blend of demonstration and dialectic. But from late medieval Aristotelianism onward they were split apart in a way that first diminished the importance of Aristotle’s discussions of the Topics, either by downgrading the importance of dialectical argument or else by assimilating the study of dialectic to the study of consequentiae (see Eleonore Stump ‘Topics: their Development and Absorption into Consequences’ chapter 14 The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, edited by N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny, J. Pinborg, and E. Stump, Cambridge, 1982), and then during the Renaissance permitted the presentation of dialectic, or rather what then became represented as dialectic, as a rhetorical rival alternative to the Aristotelian logic of demonstration” (Whose Justice? p. 224). 20 Cf. STh, I, 79, 8 c.; In Boet. De Trin., 6, 1 ad 1am and ad 3am.
39 1. Aquinas’s General Approach to Cognition It is not enough simply to reject objections in answer to our wonder, problems or doubts, because after doing this another doubt can still arise. A doubt arises when the resolution of contradictory wonder-provoking accounts becomes too difficult. Doubt is, therefore, a state of mind avoiding decision through fear of error or falsity. Error or falsity, according to Aquinas, is feared more than ignorance itself; it is avoided naturally because it constitutes a “great part of misery.” 21 Threatened with a failure to grasp what something really is and the prospect of remaining in doubt, the investigation should not halt before any artificial barrier; it should go as far as the nature of the thing to be known requires. 22 We should not even refrain from doubting the truth universally in the domain that studies universal truth. 23 Asking questions open to both sides of the contradiction is the fundamental feature of the method of research in Aristotelian philosophy. It is not doubt that is problematic in modern philosophy but the way of coping with it. Especially the most problematic seems to be the identification of doubt, which is a fear of error, with error itself, and considering what is doubtful to me as what is doubtful in itself. 24 Whereas for Aquinas one of the most important and yet simple distinctions is that between what is more knowable to me and what is more knowable in itself. To attain a satisfying depth of knowledge, we should know thoroughly and perfectly the nature or essence of the thing that happens to be the object of our 21 “Deceptio autem et error magna pars miseriae est: hoc est enim quod omnes naturaliter fugiunt” (CG, III, 39, n. 2170). See also Aquinas’s sobering remark: “Videmus enim quod homines ex se ipsis decipi et errare possunt … et iterum pluri tempore anima est in deceptione quam in cognitione ueritatis” (In De An., II, 28 [Leon. 45/1, p. 189, lin. 141-146]). 22 “[Aristoteles] dicit hoc accidisse, quod [quidam] tam defectivas solutiones assignaverunt, quia videntur quaerere circa dubitationes usque ad aliquem terminum, et non quousque possibile sit dubitari. Oportet autem eum qui vult recte solvere, ut perducat solutionem usque ad id ubi non sit amplius dubitatio; quod isti non faciunt. Cuius rationem assignat, connumerans se aliis, causa vitandae iactantiae; dicens quod omnibus nobis dubitationes solventibus hoc videtur esse consuetum, ut inquisitio fiat non ad rem, sed ad contraria dicentem, idest non quousque natura rei requirit, sed quousque adversarius non habeat ulterius contradictionem: quia etiam hoc quilibet observat ad seipsum, ut cum ipse dubitat de aliquo, quaerat in seipso quousque ipse non habeat in promptu unde sibi contradicat. Sed illud non sufficit: quia cum aliquis vult veram solutionem invenire, oportet quod non sit contentus obiectionibus quas habet in promptu, sed diligenter inquirat eas. Et propter hoc, sicut ipse subdit, oportet eum qui vult bene inquirere veritatem, esse promptum ad hoc quod instet et sibi ipsi et aliis; non per instantias sophisticas, sed per instantias reales et rationabiles, proprias, idest convenientes, generi de quo inquiritur. Et hoc quidem contingit ex hoc quod homo considerat omnes differentias rerum, ex quarum similitudine quaestio solvitur” (In De caelo, II, 22, n. 10). 23 “Sed ista scientia [i.e. philosophia prima] sicut habet universalem considerationem de veritate, ita etiam ad eam pertinet universalis dubitatio de veritate” (In Meta., III, 1, n. 343). 24 Cf. Régis, Epistemology, p. 110.
Page 1 and 2: Piotr Lichacz, O.P. DID ST. THOMAS
Page 3 and 4: CONTENTS --------------------------
Page 5 and 6: 2 Introduction what the character o
Page 7 and 8: 4 Introduction of “man’s last e
Page 9 and 10: 6 Introduction however, when studyi
Page 11 and 12: 8 Introduction believers. 16 Perhap
Page 13 and 14: 10 Introduction In this study I wou
Page 15 and 16: 12 Introduction provisionally analy
Page 17 and 18: 14 0. A Short History of the Proble
Page 34 and 35: PART ONE --------------------------
Page 36 and 37: 32 1. Aquinas’s General Approach
Page 62 and 63: 58 2. St. Thomas’s Logic First, w
Page 64 and 65: 60 2. St. Thomas’s Logic appropri
Page 66 and 67: 62 2. St. Thomas’s Logic for the
Page 68 and 69: 64 2. St. Thomas’s Logic is used
Page 70 and 71: 66 2. St. Thomas’s Logic concerns
Page 72 and 73: 68 2. St. Thomas’s Logic Therefor
Page 74 and 75: 70 2. St. Thomas’s Logic “Aquin
Page 76 and 77: 72 2. St. Thomas’s Logic Let us t
Page 78 and 79: 74 2. St. Thomas’s Logic can say
Page 80 and 81: 76 2. St. Thomas’s Logic This is
Page 82 and 83: 78 2. St. Thomas’s Logic act. “
Page 84 and 85: 80 2. St. Thomas’s Logic conseque
Page 86 and 87: 82 2. St. Thomas’s Logic Aristotl
Page 88 and 89: 84 2. St. Thomas’s Logic Knowing
Page 90 and 91: 86 3. Theory of Signification and P
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88 3. Theory of Signification and P
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100 3. Theory of Signification and
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4. Scientific Methodology or Ways o
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* * * 138 4. Scientific Methodology
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5. The Division of Theoretical Scie
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146 5. The Division of Theoretical
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174 6. Explanation in Natural Scien
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204 7. Some Lessons from Natural Sc
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7.3. Cogitative power (vis cogitati
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242 8. The Analyzability of Goodnes
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CONCLUSIONS The aim of this dissert
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266 Conclusions common to diverse d
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268 Conclusions really are. Imperat
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270 Conclusions In Chapter 6 we exp
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272 Conclusions We offered only som
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274 Conclusions is claimed to be go
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Works of Thomas Aquina
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278 Bibliography Anscombe, G. E. M.
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280 Bibliography Engelmann, Edward.
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Kenny, Anthony. Aquinas on Mind. Ne
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284 Bibliography -----. “Beyond t
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286 Bibliography Sweeney, Eileen C.
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ABBREVIATIONS EPM - David Hume, Enq
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Did St. Thomas Aquinas Justify the Transition from 'Is' to 'Ought'

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