Great Books III Study Questions for Assignment 12

Study Questions for Aquinas, on Knowledge

The Angelic Doctor
----THE ANGELIC DOCTOR----

Sample of Aquinas's handwriting

  1. Page 376: Outline the first 3 paragraphs, and say where the 4th paragraph fits into your outline. Say where the top paragraph on page 400 fits into your outline. Say where the top paragraph on Page 425 fits into your outline.


  2. Your outline should look like this (you fill in what I have left blank):

    I. The Acts of the Soul

    A.

    B. The Intellectual and Appetitive Powers of the Soul


    1. The Appetitive Powers

    2.

    a. How the Soul Understands When Separated from the Body

    b.

    i. How the Soul Understands Immaterial Substances above it

    ii.

    iii.

    alpha.

    beta. How and in What Order Does it Know Them?

    gamma.

  3. Pages 377-379: Two terms that show up frequently here are "changeable" and "unchangeable". How do these terms relate to the intellectual and the corporeal realms? Why do they present a problem for the philosophy of knowledge? (see also. Page 392, "Objection 1") Page 379: How does Aquinas solve this problem?


  4. Page 382: Given the discussion about whether the soul knows all things by actually containing them or not, which leads up to the second full paragraph on this page, what does Aquinas conclude about the difference between God and man?


  5. Pages 384: What does it mean to say that "the soul understands corporeal things through innate species"? Page 385: By what arguments does Aquinas refute Plato's teaching that the soul has natural knowledge of all things? (This is an important issue, and this doctrine of Plato's has been very influential)


  6. Page 387: How do the Ideas produce both corporeal individual things, and understanding of those things, according to Plato? Page 389: Contra Plato and Avicenna, from where does Aquinas say the intelligible species come from?


  7. Pages 390-391: What is Aquinas's attitude toward Augustine and his (Augustine's) Platonism? (n.b.-- Augustine was more heavily influenced by the Platonists earlier in his theological career, and less later on.)


  8. Pages 393-394: What are three different opinions of the ancient philosophers about whether intellectual knowledge can be derived from sensible things? Which does Aquinas side with? (To help your understanding of the "agent intellect", read Q. 79, Articles 3 and 4, Pages 340-346. This will also shed light on Aquinas's answer to objection 1 and is very significant for Christian epistemology and apologetics. Page 345: From what source does the soul derive its intellectual light?)


  9. Page 397: Where do we see the universal nature of things existing? How do we understand incorporeal beings, or truth, of which there are no phantasms?


  10. Pages 402-403: What does it mean to "abstract the universal from the particular, or the intelligible species from the phantasm"?


  11. Page 406: Aquinas's second reason for denying that "what we know is only our own impressions" is that if it were true, it would lead to the opinion that "whatever seems, is true"--that every opinion would be equally true. He assumes this is wrong. Why? This is commonly heard in the modern world too: how can it be refuted? Page 407: Which is the thing actually understood, the intelligible species in the intellect, or the thing itself?


  12. Page 410: Which comes first in the order of knowing, the particular or the universal?


  13. Page 413, reply to obj. 1: What is the definition of time given here by Aquinas?


  14. Page 415: What is the difference between how the human intellect understands, and how the angelic and divine intellects understand?


  15. Page 427: How does the intellect know itself, or become aware of itself?



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