How to Think Like Aquinas

by Kevin Vost

  Hopefully, you are now feeling quite at home with all the ten precepts and a full twenty logical fallacies tucked away in their proper places, not to mention the first five premises of sand. Now it is time to scoop up the next five sandy isms as we proceed further into our mnemonic cathedral.

  Erroneous Isms 6–10 (Locations 36–40)

  Moving up to the altar of our mnemonic cathedral (36) you see an emotional priest, so moved, after the Consecration, by Christ’s Real Presence in Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity that tears flow down his cheeks. Next, you see the strangest site in front of the confessional (37): people holding Bibles appear to be bowing before a big dog named Fido. Up now to the front of the pews on the right (38), and who should be there walking back to his pew but your most (or least) favorite history teacher. Back now to the center back of the church (39), you see a cardsharp dealing the most unusual cards that crumble into sand as he calls out to you, “I deal isms!” At last we come to the space at the start of the center aisles (40) as a young child does his best to recite the national anthem, but stumbles a bit, saying “one nation, individual.”

  Cathedral

  And now for the even sillier ideas those silly images represent. The emotional priest crying in joy at the altar (36) simply serves to remind us of emotivism, the belief that all moral judgments are based on our feelings. Meanwhile, back at the confessional (37), the people with Bibles bowing before a dog named Fido are there to remind us of fideism (pronounced “fee day ism”), which holds that all truths about God and morals come from the revealed things of faith, thus discarding the role of our God-given reason. Your history teacher was walking past the front of the right bank of pews (38) to remind you of historicism, which overvalues the role of history in determining what we believe to be true. At the back of the church (39) was that cardsharp with crumbling cards who said, “I deal isms!” to remind us of, well, idealism, which understands our ideas as that which we think about, rather than that through which we think about things. Finally, back at the start of the center aisles (40) we saw the young lad saying, “one nation, individual” (instead of “indivisible”) to remind us of the rampant individualism that breeds such selfishness in our day, by so focusing on our personal worth and dignity that we forget that all people are of worth and dignity, too.

  Location

  Image

  Premise of Sand

  36. Altar

  Emotional priest crying

  Emotivism

  37. Confessional

  People with Bibles bow before Fido

  Fideism

  38. Front pew right

  Your favorite history teacher

  Historicism

  39. Back of church

  Cardsharp says, “I deal isms!”

  Idealism

  40. Start of center aisle

  Child: “one nation, individual”

  Individualism

  36. Emotivism. René Descartes said famously, “I think, therefore I am.” Emotivists effectively replace the word “think,” with “feel.” Emotivism, explicitly developed philosophically in the mid-twentieth century, holds that moral judgments are not based in thought or fact but are merely expressions of our emotions or feelings. It is common today for people to espouse emotivist views even if (or perhaps precisely because) they have never heard or thought about emotivism. It dovetails nicely with relativistic views (see “Relativism,” below), which hold that the same moral actions may be right “for me” while wrong “for you,” since people may feel differently about the same issues. It implies a great sense of tolerance — until what a person feels is not in accord with what you feel, or what you feel does not match what the perceived majority feels! Further, it removes the instruments of objective thought and reasoning that enable us to discover moral standards and find common ground between people who feel differently. In the Thomistic framework, emotivism lies stunted at the level of the sensitive soul. Humans, like the lower animals, have feelings, passions, and emotions, but they do not guide us to the true and the good without regulation by our intellectual powers. Natural virtues, including prudence, inform and guide our emotions to follow truths discerned from right reason, not from how we happen to feel about some issue without having carefully thought the issue through in the light of objective reality.

  37. Fideism. Fides being Latin for “faith,” fideism is alive and well in modern times. In his encyclical Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason), St. John Paul II warned against a fideism that “fails to recog­nize the importance of rational knowledge and philosophical discourse for the understanding of faith, indeed for the very possibility of belief in God” (no. 55).158 We see this most commonly in “Biblicism,” which makes the Bible “the sole criterion of truth.”159 Fideism is particularly dangerous in our time when it shuts off discourse between Christians and non-Christians. If Christians appeal only to the Bible about the existence of God or any moral issue, there is no common ground with people who reject the Bible’s veracity. Human reason provides a common ground and a mutual starting point for every person who acknowledges the validity of rational argument. Thomas addressed this issue in many places, including in his Summa Contra Gentiles, which especially reaches out to nonbelievers by first appealing primarily to rational arguments. He writes, for example:

  Since there exists a twofold truth concerning the divine being, one which the inquiry of reason can reach, the other which surpasses the whole ability of the human reason, it is fitting that both of these truths be proposed to man divinely for belief.160

  38. Historicism. St. John Paul II wrote of tendencies toward historicism prevalent in our time:

  The fundamental claim of historicism . . . is that the truth of a philosophy is determined on the basis of its appropriateness to a certain period and a certain historical purpose. At least implicitly, therefore, the enduring validity of truth is denied. What was true in one period, historicists claim, may not be true in another. Thus, for them the history of thought becomes little more than an archeological resource useful for illustrating positions once held, but for the most part outmoded and meaningless now. On the contrary, it should not be forgotten that, even if a formulation is bound in some way by time and culture, the truth or the error which it expresses can invariably be identified and evaluated as such despite the distance of space and time.161

  Not long after John Paul II wrote those words, I came across an article in the Mensa Bulletin of the American Mensa high-IQ society, in which the writings of Aristotle were referred to as “mere historical curiosities,” implying that since they were written more than 2,300 years ago, they could obviously be of no real value to folks as enlightened as we are today.162 In my printed response in the next issue, I commented that if Aristotle is a historical curiosity, I prayed that we might all become far more historically curious!

  Historicism misses the target of truth, both by overshooting the mark and overvaluing history (granting the time and circumstances in which truths are discerned more important than the truths themselves), and by undervaluing history (denying that perennial truths discovered long ago are just as true today as they were when first discovered or revealed).

  Further, speaking of Aristotle (and Aquinas), just today I learned in John D. Mueller’s Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element that in 1972 a major American university “abolished the requirement that Ph.D. candidates learn the history of economic theory before being granted a degree. The economics departments of most other major universities quickly followed suit.”163 Talk about not thinking like Aquinas! Even more interes
ting is Mueller’s suggested remedy. He writes about a “missing element” that is found deep in the history of economics — within Scholastic economic theory — that “might be called AAA economics, because its basic formula is Aristotle + Augustine + Aquinas.”164

  39. Idealism. The idealism referred to here (more precisely called epistemological idealism165) holds that sensation gives rise to ideas, and when we think, we are conscious of our ideas. Although this may sound innocuous on its surface, in Thomistic philosopher Mortimer J. Adler’s Ten Philosophical Mistakes, it is ranked the most profound and foundational mistake in modern thought! Those who think this way are clearly not thinking like Aquinas! Here is the crux of the matter. Peek again at our diagram in chapter 8 labeled “The Birth of an Idea.” Many modern philosophers since the days of John Locke cast doubt on the powers of the mind by supposing that ideas are the objects of our thinking or that which we think about, thus severing the direct connection between our ideas and the outside world. St. Thomas makes clear that things themselves are the objects of our thinking, and our ideas are primarily a means or that by which we think about things, although we also possess the self-reflective capacity to think about our thinking, when we are so inclined.

  40. Individualism. Individualism is not a bad ism to hold if we take it in the general sense of a belief that acknowledges the worth and dignity of every single person, treating no person as merely the means to another person’s or group’s ends. Christ’s words and actions proclaimed the value of every individual in the eyes of God, as He preached the salvation of every person who would take up his cross and follow Him, and He suffered torture and death to defeat sin and death so that we might attain everlasting joy in heaven.

  Individualism is often corrupted into selfishness, however, placing one’s own desires above the needs of others, denigrating or ignoring the value of loving relationships, while elevating one’s own hedonistic pleasure. We see such individualism practiced and endorsed in many ways, at many levels. It occurs within families, for example, when an unhappy husband or wife desiring greater hedonistic pleasures forsakes his or her commitment and responsibilities to a spouse and children, legally divorcing the spouse, and to some extent, the children as well, as one’s time and attention are drawn elsewhere. We see it, too, in the rising epidemic of loneliness in the modern world.

  I found in my recent research into the problem of loneliness that psychiatrists (and spouses) Jacqueline Olds and Richard Schwartz expressed concern that America’s primarily Protestant culture can overemphasize self-reliance and underemphasize the need for interpersonal connection. They cite sociologist Robert Bellah, who warned of “the near exclusive focus on the relationship between Jesus and the individual, where accepting Jesus Christ as one’s personal Lord and Savior becomes almost the whole of piety.”166 Further, based on interviews he conducted, Bellah noted: “If I may trace the downward spiral of this particular Protestant distortion, let me say that it begins with the statement, ‘If I’m all right with Jesus, then I don’t need the church.’ ”167 Those who think like Aquinas will always bear in mind that while every individual matters to God, who knows the number of hairs on everyone’s heads (Matt. 10:30; Luke 12:7), we are made for relationships and are called to love God with all we are and our neighbor as ourselves, and not ourselves alone (Matt. 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27; Deut. 6:5; 10:12; 13:3).

  Let’s do a quick review. Can you recall all forty of the virtues, fallacies, and faulty worldviews contained in our mnemonic foyer, living room, dining room, family room, and cathedral? If you need to double-check or study any of them further, please see the mnemonic master table in the appendix. If not, let’s begin to study the contents of our very last room — quite fittingly, the study.

  Erroneous Isms 11–15 (Locations 41–45)

  As you step through the study door (location 41) you are greeted by a saleslady bearing loads of colorful material across her shoulder, accompanied by a wispy figure you take for some kind of spirit. When you ask the saleslady what that figure is, she tells you it is not there. Next, you peer into a small bookshelf along the wall (42). A book entitled Isms captures your attention because of this memory tour, and when you reach out to grab it, a person with a strong Southern accent grabs it first, telling you, “It’s ma turn for Isms.” A tall bookcase (43) stands next to the short one, and you are dismayed when you see on the shelves medical specimens in glass bottles that appear to be knees and heels. Upon taking a closer look, you see that on the shelves of this bookcase there is really nothing at all. On top of the tall bookcase is a group of wrapped presents (44), and when you unwrap the largest one, you see an animal trainer inside with a small dog named Al (it’s on a big name tag he wears). The trainer is using small mints for rewards, and when Al fails to sit on command, the trainer declares, “No mint, Al!” Finally, above the tall dresser is a picture on the wall (45); you feel as if it’s déjà vu all over again when you see a painting of that person telling you “It’s ma turn for Isms” again, except that the scene is painted in the setting of your local post office.

  Now let’s study just what the images in the study represent. The saleslady with material at the study door (41) stands for materialism, which, like her, denies the existence of a spiritual realm. The Southerner at the short bookcase (42) saying “It’s ma turn for Isms,” will remind us of modernism, the worldview that holds that our reason permits us to transcend the outdated truths of tradition. The tall bookcase (43) with the knees, heels, and nothing will remind us of nihilism, the view that holds that ultimately nothing matters. In the presents on top of the tall bookcase (44) we saw the trainer saying, “No mint, Al!” to remind us of nominalism (just remember: we’re dropping the t). Let the dog in the image also remind us that nominalism holds that universal concepts are really just generalized names for particular things, thus denying the crucial distinction between the perceptual thought of animals and the conceptual thought of humans. Finally, in the picture (45) atop the tall bookcase, you saw the depiction in your post office of the Southerner saying “It’s ma turn for Isms” again, to represent postmodernism, the view that we have now transcended even reason itself.

  Study

  Location

  Image

  Premise of Sand

  41. Study door

  Saleslady with material

  Materialism

  42. Short bookcase

  Southerner: “It’s ma turn for Isms.”

  Modernism

  43. Tall bookcase

  Knees, heels, nothing

  Nihilism

  44. Presents on top of case

  Trainer to dog: “No mints, Al!”

  Nominalism

  45. Picture

  Post office: “Ma turn” again

  Postmodernism

  41. Materialism. Materialism can refer to the overvaluation of material goods, akin to that of consumerism, but here I refer to the more fundamental, metaphysical view that material things are all that exists, ruling out from the start the realm of the immaterial, the realm of the spirit, of the human intellect, the angels, and God. Materialists believe that nothing but matter mat­ters. This view is predominant among self-proclaimed Darwinian “new atheists,” who do not admit the existence of any kind of a spiritual realm. They think that if we cannot see it, hear it, taste it, touch it, or smell it, it does not exist — or that it is a mere byproduct, or even a delusion, with no significance of its own, such as the illusion of human free will or the delusion of God.

  Many hold to this idea with obstinate passion. And yet neither we nor t
hey themselves can see, hear, taste, touch, or smell their idea of materialism. How much does a consciousness raised by Darwin weigh, I wonder? What color is it? How loud might it be? If I say that it stinks or leaves a bad taste in my mouth, I’m merely being metaphorical. Atheists put science and reason on pedestals; how unfortunate it is that we can’t take photographs of science and reason to hang on our walls to gather inspiration. Of course, science and reason themselves are “things” that exist not as matter but as the workings of the human intellect. Are they, then, any less real? You’ll recall from chapter 8 that among the arguments for the human mind’s immateriality is the fact that that human intellect is able to become, in a sense, all things, as it grasps conceptual forms abstracted from sensible matter. Further, none of the thoughts that you hold in your mind can be found through the operation of any kind of brain scan, biopsy, or chemical or electrical analysis, at the gross or microscopic levels.

  42. Modernism. Modernism is a broad term encompassing several related erroneous philosophical and theological positions that became most prominent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but are still around. In his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (On Modernism) of September 8, 1907, Pope St. Pius X called it “the synthesis of all heresies.” Some of its more prominent theological features are a rejection of the objective certainty of Tradition and established dogma in favor of the idea of the progress, evolution, and malleability of truths. With modernism came criticism of the divine authority of Scripture, dismissal of the miraculous, and the search for the secularized “historical Jesus.” Its theories were bolstered by modern philosophy and the then-new theory of Darwinian evolution, and it placed greater emphasis on “personal experience” than on objective facts and revealed truths of the Faith. As for its remedy, Pius X wrote, “We admonish professors to bear well in mind that they cannot set aside St. Thomas, especially in metaphysical questions, without grave disadvantage.”168 Some decades later, Pope St. Pius XII would write on August 12, 1950, in Humani Generis (On Certain False Opinions Which Threaten to Undermine the Foundations of Catholic Doctrine) in section 31, on Thomistic Philosophy: