The second long paragraph on page 91 of our reading was a particularly helpful example of the phenomenon Aquinas is discussing. I am talking about one’s understanding of color. Like Aquinas says, one can understand color separate from the thing that has color, (e.g. being an apple is unrelated to the state of being any given color) but the color that the apple is, (let us say red,) does not exist on its own without being applied to the apple or some other (red) thing. By this example Aquinas appears to be attacking the notion of forms/ideas altogether.
I am slightly confused on the meaning of the phrase “know God.” I feel as though I have read that the human intellect both can know God, and cannot know God. More importantly I am unsure how Aquinas means “know.” Certainly a human can comprehend the notion of God, otherwise there would be no religions. But, although he suggests that humans can know infinite things, he appears to be saying that we know OF infinite things, perhaps being familiar with them, without necessarily having a meaningful understanding of the infinite thing (e.g. idea or form.) Thus explaining why there is so much confusion and debate around these ideas.
1.) During the Aquinas reading I wondered if he would have held the platonic position in a world with an alternate timeline where the pagan schools were never shut down by the empire. It seemed to me that he was trying his best to patch the work of Plato and keep it relevant from its critics at the time. 2. My charge here is going to be that he doesn’t do anything in any kind of a new way that doesn’t involve patching an existing theories holes for the sake of preserving his own world of morality. The end result is a very complex metaphysics that lacks any kind of meaningful explanatory power, instead clinging to its conserve roots in a convoluted way. I have no doubt that being must get some sort of self satisfactory emotion from adopting these metaphysics, perhaps that is where it is useful and also where it is the most destructive.
1. The way Aquinas starts off addressing knowledge sounds very Neo-Platonic and very similar to the rationale provided by Augustine in our previous reading. Aquinas quotes scripture saying, "the invisible things of God are there for the mind to see in the things he has made" (87). It sounds like Aquinas is stating that only God has knowledge of the forms, or the perfect essential qualities or reasons of things, and then relays these forms to man through imperfect copies or representations. Aquinas goes on to state, "But among the invisible things of God are the divine ideas. Thus these divine ideas are known through material created things and not the other way around" (87).
2. It began to confuse me on the bottom of page 90 when Aquinas is breaking down the three ways in which knowing faculties can know of knowable things. He states that it can do so in three ways: the first being through the corporeal mind and senses and he goes on to seem to express how this is a lower type of knowledge. The other type is through an incorporeal intellect, like that of an angels, that seems to know of things in a more pure or real way. Finally he states that there is a sort of sliding scale that falls in-between these two types of knowledge and this is where the human psyche rests. But this does not seem to be an adequate enough description to me and seems to leave a lot to be desired still in understanding how the psyche works.
I like how talks about understanding singulars. He makes a logical arguments that we must know and act in singulars because actions are of individuals. ". Again, our intellect understands itself. But it is something singular or else it could not act, since activities are of individuals. Therefore our intellect knows the singular.
I also like he said how we can't understand things in a logical way when he says, "we cannot expect to acquire the pure truth from the corporeal senses". He says that anything our corpral sense knows is changing but at the same time we can't precevie them in a logical way. This is intresting and makes a point that some answers we will never truly understand.
1. I agree with Aquinas' conclusions about knowing material things in the mind. I don't know if I would have gone about it in the way he did. A lot of terms don't make sense to me, such as knowing something "in the divine ideas."
2. I also agree with his statement about species abstracted from sense images being that which is understood. I found his paraphrase of Aristotle i.e. that words are the symbols of things experienced in the soul interesting. I wonder that if the words that we communicate to each other are inaccurate at describing what happens in our souls.
the reading came across as platonic to me which was interesting and easy to grab except for the concept on the knowledge that the mind has that the form doesn't. it read well for me but still the concepts within it were confusing to me as to exactly what or who has what knowledge.
what i am most confused about is the divine knowledge and how it is known to the mind but not the form, is there implications of needing a form of enlightenment to be able to gain this knowledge. But it also seems that only God has this knowledge for Aquinas so I don't really understand.
In my attempt to understand this reading it seems like Aquinas wants to agree with some aspects of Plato, but not all, as well as Augustine. I am having trouble understanding exactly his notion of "divine ideas" however, it is interesting how he combines Plato's concepts with Christian theology saying that our capacity to access these would be in connection with God.
I am also having trouble understanding whether or not he finds it possible to know "divine ideas" or whether he is stating that we can partially know divine ideas through access of our world. He references a passage from the New Testament to possible make this point that access to the physical world is one way of knowing the divine knowledge which is similar to Plato's idea of knowing the forms through reason.
I do like how Aquinas articulates his stance that we are incapable of acquiring truth from corporeal things. That the transient properties ascribed to the ever-changing nature of corporeal objects is somewhat deceptive and unable to be truly perceived; as well as the mental "image" of things maintained in hindsight, pose plausible domains for inquiry and agreement. It would be difficult to ascertain the truth value of objects who's status remain ambiguous and ever-changing and since the senses can be deceived, it does follow that the senses are not vehicles towards pure, but a temporary truth in order to assess a case-by-case circumstance. Although I enjoyed the former part of his argument, I cannot say that I agree with the latter part of it. I do like how Aquinas details the human intellect being able to acquire knowledge of singulars, however he argues for that same intellect being capable of knowing the infinite and that's where the disagreement is. It makes sense that human intellect can know singulars, as it is able to ascertain a composition of concepts and things and have knowledge of them; therefore it follows that in order to comprehend and have knowledge of composition, one must have knowledge of the individual elements in that composition. However the infinite is an open interval of singulars and compositions, whereas the argument used for the knowledge of singulars deals with finite composition. A finite composition consists of finite elements, so it makes sense for the human intellect to understand and have knowledge of such a thing. However the latter does not, because the human intellect, if it were able to have knowledge of everything would go against human intellect due to its limitlessness and would therefore be God-like intellect. Maybe I am just misreading Aquinas, but that's where I believed he was going.
I think that when Aquinas talks about how only God has knowledge of the forms it is very interesting. All lot of time is spent discussing the forms and what they are so to say that God is the only one who knows the forms id baffling. However, he makes this idea somewhat more easy to understand by stating that God relays forms by revealing imperfect representations of forms.
The point about people struggle to understand things in a logical way is interesting to me. Aquinas talks about how because people do not see as clearly as God does we struggle to properly reason. Aquinas also goes into how our senses can deceive us because they are not refined.
1- It is always odd to me how these theologians change Plato in the weirdest ways. They substitutes what Plato calls rational and reasonable with some notion of the divine. I am speaking here of Augustine. “Not any and every rational soul can be called worthy of that vision, name of the divine ideas, but only one that is pure and holy– such as are the souls of the blessed.” I simply can't get used to an argument like this being used in a philosophy class. 2- I don't know if I missed anything when these philosopher were introduced to us, but I often wondered during this reading if they weren't following their religious sect as tradition dictates. I say this because in using this platonic language Aquinas kept referring to gaining knowledge of God. As I understand it this idea is a big no-no in Catholicism. That the church acts as a middle man and gaining an individual relationship with the divine was impossible. So I wonder what sect Aquinas was part of?
The second long paragraph on page 91 of our reading was a particularly helpful example of the phenomenon Aquinas is discussing. I am talking about one’s understanding of color. Like Aquinas says, one can understand color separate from the thing that has color, (e.g. being an apple is unrelated to the state of being any given color) but the color that the apple is, (let us say red,) does not exist on its own without being applied to the apple or some other (red) thing. By this example Aquinas appears to be attacking the notion of forms/ideas altogether.
ReplyDeleteI am slightly confused on the meaning of the phrase “know God.” I feel as though I have read that the human intellect both can know God, and cannot know God. More importantly I am unsure how Aquinas means “know.” Certainly a human can comprehend the notion of God, otherwise there would be no religions. But, although he suggests that humans can know infinite things, he appears to be saying that we know OF infinite things, perhaps being familiar with them, without necessarily having a meaningful understanding of the infinite thing (e.g. idea or form.) Thus explaining why there is so much confusion and debate around these ideas.
1.) During the Aquinas reading I wondered if he would have held the platonic position in a world with an alternate timeline where the pagan schools were never shut down by the empire. It seemed to me that he was trying his best to patch the work of Plato and keep it relevant from its critics at the time.
ReplyDelete2. My charge here is going to be that he doesn’t do anything in any kind of a new way that doesn’t involve patching an existing theories holes for the sake of preserving his own world of morality. The end result is a very complex metaphysics that lacks any kind of meaningful explanatory power, instead clinging to its conserve roots in a convoluted way. I have no doubt that being must get some sort of self satisfactory emotion from adopting these metaphysics, perhaps that is where it is useful and also where it is the most destructive.
1. The way Aquinas starts off addressing knowledge sounds very Neo-Platonic and very similar to the rationale provided by Augustine in our previous reading. Aquinas quotes scripture saying, "the invisible things of God are there for the mind to see in the things he has made" (87). It sounds like Aquinas is stating that only God has knowledge of the forms, or the perfect essential qualities or reasons of things, and then relays these forms to man through imperfect copies or representations. Aquinas goes on to state, "But among the invisible things of God are the divine ideas. Thus these divine ideas are known through material created things and not the other way around" (87).
ReplyDelete2. It began to confuse me on the bottom of page 90 when Aquinas is breaking down the three ways in which knowing faculties can know of knowable things. He states that it can do so in three ways: the first being through the corporeal mind and senses and he goes on to seem to express how this is a lower type of knowledge. The other type is through an incorporeal intellect, like that of an angels, that seems to know of things in a more pure or real way. Finally he states that there is a sort of sliding scale that falls in-between these two types of knowledge and this is where the human psyche rests. But this does not seem to be an adequate enough description to me and seems to leave a lot to be desired still in understanding how the psyche works.
I like how talks about understanding singulars. He makes a logical arguments that we must know and act in singulars because actions are of individuals. ". Again, our intellect understands itself. But it is something singular or else it could not act, since activities are of individuals. Therefore our intellect knows the singular.
ReplyDeleteI also like he said how we can't understand things in a logical way when he says, "we cannot expect to acquire the pure truth from the corporeal senses". He says that anything our corpral sense knows is changing but at the same time we can't precevie them in a logical way. This is intresting and makes a point that some answers we will never truly understand.
1. I agree with Aquinas' conclusions about knowing material things in the mind. I don't know if I would have gone about it in the way he did. A lot of terms don't make sense to me, such as knowing something "in the divine ideas."
ReplyDelete2. I also agree with his statement about species abstracted from sense images being that which is understood. I found his paraphrase of Aristotle i.e. that words are the symbols of things experienced in the soul interesting. I wonder that if the words that we communicate to each other are inaccurate at describing what happens in our souls.
the reading came across as platonic to me which was interesting and easy to grab except for the concept on the knowledge that the mind has that the form doesn't. it read well for me but still the concepts within it were confusing to me as to exactly what or who has what knowledge.
ReplyDeletewhat i am most confused about is the divine knowledge and how it is known to the mind but not the form, is there implications of needing a form of enlightenment to be able to gain this knowledge. But it also seems that only God has this knowledge for Aquinas so I don't really understand.
In my attempt to understand this reading it seems like Aquinas wants to agree with some aspects of Plato, but not all, as well as Augustine. I am having trouble understanding exactly his notion of "divine ideas" however, it is interesting how he combines Plato's concepts with Christian theology saying that our capacity to access these would be in connection with God.
ReplyDeleteI am also having trouble understanding whether or not he finds it possible to know "divine ideas" or whether he is stating that we can partially know divine ideas through access of our world. He references a passage from the New Testament to possible make this point that access to the physical world is one way of knowing the divine knowledge which is similar to Plato's idea of knowing the forms through reason.
I do like how Aquinas articulates his stance that we are incapable of acquiring truth from corporeal things. That the transient properties ascribed to the ever-changing nature of corporeal objects is somewhat deceptive and unable to be truly perceived; as well as the mental "image" of things maintained in hindsight, pose plausible domains for inquiry and agreement. It would be difficult to ascertain the truth value of objects who's status remain ambiguous and ever-changing and since the senses can be deceived, it does follow that the senses are not vehicles towards pure, but a temporary truth in order to assess a case-by-case circumstance.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I enjoyed the former part of his argument, I cannot say that I agree with the latter part of it. I do like how Aquinas details the human intellect being able to acquire knowledge of singulars, however he argues for that same intellect being capable of knowing the infinite and that's where the disagreement is. It makes sense that human intellect can know singulars, as it is able to ascertain a composition of concepts and things and have knowledge of them; therefore it follows that in order to comprehend and have knowledge of composition, one must have knowledge of the individual elements in that composition. However the infinite is an open interval of singulars and compositions, whereas the argument used for the knowledge of singulars deals with finite composition. A finite composition consists of finite elements, so it makes sense for the human intellect to understand and have knowledge of such a thing. However the latter does not, because the human intellect, if it were able to have knowledge of everything would go against human intellect due to its limitlessness and would therefore be God-like intellect. Maybe I am just misreading Aquinas, but that's where I believed he was going.
I think that when Aquinas talks about how only God has knowledge of the forms it is very interesting. All lot of time is spent discussing the forms and what they are so to say that God is the only one who knows the forms id baffling. However, he makes this idea somewhat more easy to understand by stating that God relays forms by revealing imperfect representations of forms.
ReplyDeleteThe point about people struggle to understand things in a logical way is interesting to me. Aquinas talks about how because people do not see as clearly as God does we struggle to properly reason. Aquinas also goes into how our senses can deceive us because they are not refined.
From: Christopher Atuahene
1- It is always odd to me how these theologians change Plato in the weirdest ways. They substitutes what Plato calls rational and reasonable with some notion of the divine. I am speaking here of Augustine. “Not any and every rational soul can be called worthy of that vision, name of the divine ideas, but only one that is pure and holy– such as are the souls of the blessed.” I simply can't get used to an argument like this being used in a philosophy class.
ReplyDelete2- I don't know if I missed anything when these philosopher were introduced to us, but I often wondered during this reading if they weren't following their religious sect as tradition dictates. I say this because in using this platonic language Aquinas kept referring to gaining knowledge of God. As I understand it this idea is a big no-no in Catholicism. That the church acts as a middle man and gaining an individual relationship with the divine was impossible. So I wonder what sect Aquinas was part of?