How to Think Like Aquinas

by Kevin Vost

  As we know from the experience of centuries, the method of Aquinas is singularly pre-eminent both for teaching students and for bringing truth to light; his doctrine is in harmony with Divine Revelation and is most effective for safeguarding the foundation of the Faith and for reaping, safely, and usefully, the fruits of sound progress.169

  Decades after that, St. John Paul II would concur: “The Church has been justified in consistently proposing St. Thomas as a master of thought and a model of the right way to do theology.”170 To think like Aquinas is to think like the Church, the rock that resists the passing winds of change that would reshape God in man’s image.

  43. Nihilism. Nihilism is from the Latin nihil, “nothing.” Moral nihilism holds that there are no firm bases for any human morals or values. Writing about nihilism in the context of modern rejections of the power of reason, John Paul II wrote:

  As a result of the crisis of rationalism, what has appeared finally is nihilism. As a philosophy of nothingness, it has a certain attraction for people of our time. Its adherents claim that the search is an end in itself, without any hope or possibility of ever attaining the goal of truth. In the nihilist interpretation, life is no more than an occasion for sensations and experiences in which the ephemeral has pride of place. Nihilism is at the root of the widespread mentality which claims that a definitive commitment should no longer be made, because everything is fleeting and provisional.171

  Note how nihilism reduces us to sensations and experiences of the sensitive soul, positing no real truths or worthwhile goals. There is a sense in which nihilism can be seen as the very antithesis of speculative wisdom and practical prudence. Wisdom and prudence focus on matters that matter the most, while nihilism holds that nothing really matters much. Like relativism, it holds that there are no objectively right or wrong behaviors. A deeply embraced nihilism bespeaks pessimism and despair for one’s own life and denigrates the value and meaning of the lives of others. There is growing concern that the recent rise of horrendous mass murders of innocent victims may be the fruit of the moral depravity of extreme nihilism.

  44. Nominalism. Nominalism (from the Latin nomen, “name”) has some kinship with epistemological idealism in that it denies any direct connection between our abstract or universal concepts and the outside world. It declares that only sensible individual things exist and that general universal terms, for example, “humanity” or “abstract entities,” or geometric forms such as a triangle, are merely names or labels we use to describe particular things. Nominalism, therefore, denies the intellectual soul’s crucial powers of abstraction and leaves us with perception but without valid conceptual thought.

  Diametrically opposing nominalism is Plato’s exaggerated realism of his theory of forms, which holds that perfect universals, such as humanity or triangularity exist in some higher realm beyond the reach of the senses. We see on earth merely dim and imperfect copies.

  Moderating between both extremes is Aristotle’s stance, aptly called moderate realism, which holds that universal concepts do accurately reflect essences of particular realities. We do form abstract concepts of the common essences of things, such as people as “rational animals” or triangles as “closed plane figures with three straight sides and three angles.” Though the essences, such as humanity or triangularity, do not exist in and of themselves in some other realm, they can be accurately applied to identify essential attributes, and to differentiate particular, individual things. As we saw in chapter 8, to think like Aristotle, in this case, is to think like Aquinas.

  45. Postmodernism. Postmodernism, in its extremes, is like modernism on steroids with ’roid rage against reason! Postmodernism took to the roads in France in the mid-twentieth century and is a synthesis and logical culmination of old and modern errors such as skepticism, constructivism, and relativism that denies the power of reason to grasp objective reality because there is no objective reality to grasp. According to this view, what have historically been called “truths” are not based on any kind of actual correspondence between reality and our thoughts about it but have been established to fit the needs of whatever groups happened to be in power at the time they were fashioned. Since postmodernists deny the validity of reason, you might surmise that it can be a little difficult to reason with them. Further, feeling free from the constraints of objective reality, at times their writings can get a little bizarre. My favorite exposé of postmodernist thought was truly a grand variation of an argument ad absurdum.172

  In 1996, physicist Alan Sokal published an article enti­tled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” in the journal Social Text. Perhaps that title generated a “What on earth is the author even saying?” response in you. Well, it apparently did not to the editors of the avant-garde, “postmodernist” journal in which it was published.

  You see, in 1998, the article’s creator produced the book Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science,173 in which he and the book’s coauthor, Jean Bricmont, revealed that Sokal’s article was indeed a hoax, fabricated gobbledygook that made no sense whatever — and the journal’s own editorial staff was not in on the joke! Sadly, such lack of clarity, meaning, and truth seems to make little difference in some postmodern academic circles. Sokal wrote the article as a protest against some contemporary postmodern humanist writers who played loosely with theo­ries in math and science (not to mention with language), and whose writings, in effect, argued against objective truth, common sense, and reason.

  Erroneous Isms 16–20 (Locations 46–50)

  We move now to the second of four sections of the study, and we stop first at the first of two swivel rockers (location 46). Upon the rocker sits a mat and upon the mat a rag with an embroidered letter P. (Got that?) There’s a very odd tall lamp (47) next to the chair, for it has a vibrating belt attached to it, like those old electric purported reducing machines. On the other side of the lamp is a second swivel rocker (48), and it is apparently a really good one, since all of your relatives are trying to sit down in it at the same time! Now, between the two chairs is a cushioned footrest (49) and sitting on it is a white-coated man hunched over a microscope. You deduce that he is a scientist. Finally, behind the lamp and chairs is a large picture window (50), and as you peer at the front yard, you spy a group of four people skipping a rope, double Dutch,174 and they call out to you, “Why not skip this ism?”

  All right then. The “P” rag on the mat on the first rocker (46) stands for pragmatism (of course) which holds that the criterion for truth is simply whatever works. The tall lamp (47) is acting as an old reducing machine to call reductionism to mind, though reductionism, like materialism, does not hold that mind really matters.175 Your relatives are crowding into the second rocker (48) to remind us of relativism, the idea that there are no absolute truths, ironically held by relativists as if it were an absolute truth! Sitting there on the footstool (49), that white-coated scientist hunched over a microscope will surely remind us of scientism, which acts as if all kinds of truths could be found through the methods and instruments of science. Finally, those rope skippers you see out the picture window (50) wanted you to “Skip this ism,” so you would not think too deeply about the way skeptics themselves never act as if they believed skepticism was true. Of course, if they were true skeptics, they could not be sure you were really there to hear them, that there really existed a rope to skip, or that they themselves existed!

  Location

  Image

  Premise of Sand

  46. First chair

  “P” rag, mat

  Pragmatism

  47. Tall lamp

  Reducing machine

  Reductionism

 
48. Second chair

  All your relatives

  Relativism

  49. Footrest

  Scientist hunched over microscope

  Scientism

  50. Picture window

  Skippers say, “Skip this ism!”

  Skepticism

  46. Pragmatism. Pragmatists hold that the proper function of human thinking is the solving of practical problems, which may well change over time, rather than accurately grasping facts of reality. Pragmatism holds that the true is that which works in practice; it disregards theoretical principles and foundational values. St. John Paul II warned of the growing prevalence of pragmatism at the end of the twentieth century after his discussion of scientism:

  No less dangerous is pragmatism, an attitude of mind which, in making its choices, precludes theoretical considerations or judgements based on ethical principles. The practical consequences of this mode of thinking are significant. In particular there is growing support for a concept of democracy which is not grounded upon any reference to unchanging values: whether or not a line of action is admissible is decided by the vote of a parliamentary majority. The consequences of this are clear: in practice, the great moral decisions of humanity are subordinated to decisions taken one after another by institutional agencies. Moreover, anthropology itself is severely compromised by a one-dimensional vision of the human being, a vision which excludes the great ethical dilemmas and the existential analyses of the meaning of suffering and sacrifice, of life and death.176

  To those who think like Aquinas, any moral action that truly works operates in accordance with man’s true and enduring nature and value as made in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26).

  47. Reductionism. Extreme reductionist views hold that complex phenomena can be explained most fully by the operations of their simplest, most fundamental parts. For example, the processes of biology can be reduced to those of chemistry, and chemical reactions to those of physics, while ignoring or downplaying the importance and interaction of processes at the various levels of complexity. This tendency may be seen in modern psychiatry if there is an overemphasis on mental disturbance as a result of chemical imbalances in the brain, while ignoring that a person’s thoughts and physical activities can also impact physiological processes that regulate the stimulation of various hormones and chemicals throughout the body, including the brain. Think back on the last time something scared you for an example of how our perceptions of events in our lives can dramatically impact our body chemistry and physiological reactions.

  For nearly the first half of the twentieth century, reductionist views held sway in the field of behavioral psychology, prompting the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky to argue that to study external stimuli and people’s responsive reflexes without consideration of the workings of the human mind is like trying to understand the properties of water in relation to fire by only separately studying hydrogen, which burns, and oxygen, which sustains combustion.

  As we saw in our look at materialism, among the most common and disastrous species of reductionism in our day is that which reduces the human mind to the brain, ignorant of the Aristotelian and Thomistic proofs of the mind’s immateriality and the brain’s role as its instrument. Determinism that denies the existence of free will is a common bedfellow of materialism and reductionism. In this view, free will is an illusion and our behaviors are all caused or determined by previous chains of events and experiences (including, one would then surmise, not only belief in free will, but belief in determinism as well).

  48. Relativism. No, relativism is not about giving choice jobs to one’s unqualified family members. (That’s nepotism.) Relativism refers to a far more serious and pervasive premise that can leave all manner of destruction in its wake. Indeed, in our time, the man who would soon become Pope Benedict XVI warned: “We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.”177

  Relativism replies to Pilate’s question, saying that one thing might be “true for me” and another quite different thing “true for you” or for someone else. It most often takes the form of moral relativism and denies common moral truths, thereby seeking to remove limits on many behaviors commonly found harmful or unnatural throughout most of the history of humanity. Part of the reason is that it denies any such thing as a definite human nature. Ironically, however, this apparently tolerant stance that ostensibly allows everyone his own truths is marked by the greatest intolerance for those who believe there is absolute truth, there are statements that are true or false, and there are behaviors that are moral or immoral, regardless of who posits the arguments or engages in the behavior. From a Thomistic perspective, relativism rejects the nature of truth and the laws of logical reasoning, such as the principle of noncontradiction, and it also rejects the manner and methods of human understanding, from the fact that our senses provide us reliable information about the outside world, to the fact that we can grasp abstract truths and communicate them meaningfully with others.

  49. Scientism. If fideism is the Scylla that drives us off the course of truth in one direction, then scientism is the Charybdis that threatens to sink us when we veer off course in the other direction. The word scientism was not in use in Thomas’s time. Per St. John Paul II, it is “the philosophical notion which refuses to admit the validity of forms of knowledge other than those of the positive sciences; and it relegates religious, theological, ethical, and aesthetic knowledge to the realm of mere fantasy.”178 Indeed, we have seen in just the last year or so a popular media scientist argue that not only faith but also the discipline of philosophy are irrelevant and contrary to science.179 The dismissal of philosophy as well as religion is a real peril of scientism. Philoso­phy can examine data that a purely materialistic science must ignore or write off as a cumbersome byproduct of atoms and genes — namely, human interior experience, or what it means to be you or to be me. Further, philosophy can address questions of what we “should” do, as well as what we “can” do. Science can tell us, for example, how to make deadly weap­ons, while philosophy can address whether, and under what circumstances, it might or might not be right to use them. This is part of the reason why St. John Paul II warns against misunder­standing the limits of science, of a scientism that thinks we need only concern ourselves with material facts, and not with the ethical implications of those facts (for ethics, too, is a branch of philosophy):

  In the field of scientific research, a positivistic mental­ity took hold which not only abandoned the Christian vision of the world, but more especially rejected ev­ery appeal to a metaphysical or moral vision. It follows that certain scientists, lacking any ethical point of reference, are in danger of putting at the center of their concerns something other than the human person and the entirety of the person’s life.180

  When a person embraces scientism, he lets go of the highest parts of himself, of his neighbors, and of the God who created us all. In Thomas’s terminology, we could say that the embracer of scientism is one who makes the intellectual virtue of science all there is to intellectual virtue, focusing on lower-order secondary causes and effects, while ignoring the fundamental principles on which they are based (the realm of understanding) and the final, highest, primary cause responsible for all of the facts of creation (the realm of wisdom, seeking knowledge of God), not to mention the realm of human moral actions, the realm guided by of the virtue of prudence.

  50. Skepticism. Skepticism goes way back to the Greek philosopher Pyrrho (ca. 360–ca. 270 B.C.) and his followers. Pyrrho has many modern-day adherents, too, whether they realize it or not. Skepticism is the stance of doubt that holds that we cannot obtain certain knowledge about anything.

  A humorous ancient response to skeptic
ism is found in the writings of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus (A.D. 55–135). In refuting the followers of Pyrrho of his day, Epictetus provides several delightful arguments ad absurdum. Here is one of the tersest from a live public lecture: “When I want to swallow something, I never take the morsel to that place instead of this. . . . And do you, who take away the evidence of the senses, do anything else?181 Truly, ancient skeptics acted in their daily lives as if they believed their senses did indeed supply them with accurate information.

  As for one modern follower, some years ago, a skeptical coworker, waxing philosophical, said to me, “You know, we can’t be sure about anything,” to which I simply responded, “Hmm, are you sure about that?” He chuckled and walked away without responding. To point out philosophical skepticism’s contradictory, self-refuting nature is no guarantee its adherents will give it up, but those who would think like Aquinas should be well aware of the fact that skeptics cast doubt upon the workings not only of their own intellectual powers, but of their sensitive powers, too. In a way, the only thing a skeptic does not doubt is doubt itself.