Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas (also Tommaso d'Aquino, * c. 1225 at Roccasecca Castle near Naples in Italy; † 7 March 1274 at Fossanova Abbey) was a Dominican friar and one of the most influential philosophers and theologians in history. He is one of the most important of the 35 Catholic Doctors of the Church and as such is known by various epithets such as Doctor Angelicus[1]. According to his history of influence in the philosophy of the High Middle Ages, he is one of the main representatives of scholasticism. He left behind a very extensive body of work, which formed the basis of Thomism and which continues to have an effect, for example in Neothomism, as the intellectual core of Neo-scholasticism up to the present day. He is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church.
Significance for spiritual science
Thomas united the scientific approach of antiquity, especially of Aristotle, with Christianity. He had to naturalise the scientific approach, the systematic questioning and answering, categorising and cataloguing, in the religious world of the medieval monasteries and the first universities. The modern spiritual-scientific tradition that came into being as a result of this must today, for Rudolf Steiner and those who follow him, be kept the other way round under the spell of a genuine interest in the deepest facts.
„He who today is a philosopher, a scientist in general, according to the pattern of popular concepts, says: Well, Aristotle is an old man who has been dismissed; Thomistics, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, belongs to the Middle Ages. - Anthroposophy knows that something special must emerge from the conditions and impulses of the present spirit of the age; it does not want to put into the present epoch what was right for an earlier epoch. But it understands from the conditions of those epochs that which only those epochs could grant. And it does not understand it merely externally, it understands it inwardly and essentially; it understands it so essentially that it says to itself: In Thomistic philosophy, which was essentially a servant, a companion of the Christianity of that time, there is something which could only arise from the spirit of that time. If one wants to become proficient, one must find one's way into that which can only emerge from the spirit of that time, not from the spirit of our time. Anthroposophy, therefore, does not regard it as a mere historical study to engage in Thomism, but it regards what one gets through Thomism as something that one can only get through it. That is very important. For this does not bring about that fuzzy, nebulous tolerance which is so often spoken of today, but it brings about that inner, understanding tolerance which, although it stands entirely on the ground of development, does not regard that which has once developed as something dismissed, but allows it to stand in its place, allows it to stand in its developing reality. Some things in nature, some things in spiritual life, must develop in the same way as plants, which have only a one-year existence: They develop this one-year existence, then develop another one-year existence. Other plants, however, develop from one year into the next, what is there as wood; they are permanent plants. It is the same in spiritual culture. Some things must continue in spiritual culture, must be taken up in later times by those who really want to feel solidarity with the overall development of humanity.“ (Lit.:GA 72, p. 87ff)
Literature
- Rudolf Steiner: The Riddles of Philosophy. Anthroposophic Press 1973, CW 18 rsarchive.org
- Rudolf Steiner: The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. CW 74. Kessinger Publishing 2010. ISBN 978-1163180693 rsarchive.org
- Rudolf Steiner: The Redemption of Thinking: A Study in the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Translated by A. P. Shepherd. Anthroposophic Press Inc. 2004. ISBN 978-0880100441 rsarchive.org
German
- Rudolf Steiner: Die Rätsel der Philosophie in ihrer Geschichte als Umriß dargestellt, GA 18 (1985), ISBN 3-7274-0180-X English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
- Rudolf Steiner: Freiheit – Unsterblichkeit – Soziales Leben, GA 72 (1990), ISBN 3-7274-0720-4 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
- Rudolf Steiner: Die Philosophie des Thomas von Aquino, GA 74 (1993), ISBN 3-7274-0741-7 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
- Rudolf Steiner: Das Prinzip der spirituellen Ökonomie im Zusammenhang mit Wiederverkörperungsfragen, GA 109 (2000), ISBN 3-7274-1090-6 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
- Rudolf Steiner: Menschliche und menschheitliche Entwicklungswahrheiten. Das Karma des Materialismus., GA 176 (1982), ISBN 3-7274-1760-9 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
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References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com. Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English. Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA) Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF. |
References
- ↑ In addition, e.g. doctor communis, doctor ecclesiae, angelus scholae, pater ecclesiae, lumen ecclesiae, old Augustine, (rarely) doctor universalis; cf. e.g. Friedrich Ueberweg: Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie von Thales bis auf die Gegenwart, vol. 1, Berlin 1863, p. 97.
