The Thought of Thomas Aquinas

A presentation of the thought of Thomas Aquinas, both of his philosophy and theology - the two cannot safely be separated. The book aims to meet the needs of scholars and students without specialist knowledge of medieval thought.

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Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest of Western philosophers and one of the greatest theologians of the Christian Church. For workers in both philosophy and theology he is not only illuminating (for his questions as much as his answers) but surprisingly relevant to current concerns. Philosophers who, since Wittgenstein, have been struggling to escape from the thought patterns so powerfully established by Descartes, and theologians seeking to escape the sectarian dichotomies dating from the same era, both find Aquinas refreshingly free from these preoccupations and speaking quite directly to our own time. In this book is a modern presentation of the total thought of Aquinas. Books on Aquinas invariably deal either with his philosophy or his theology. But Aquinas himself made no arbitrary division between his philosophical and his theological thought, and this book allows readers to see him as a whole. It introduces the full range of Aquinas's thinking; and it relates this thinking to writers earlier than and later than Aquinas himself.
The book is intended to be of interest to professional theologians and philosophers, as well as to those with particular interest in medieval thinking. Since it is designed to serve as an overall study of Aquinas, it should also be of interest to general readers without specialist knowledge of medieval thought and without professional training in philosophy and theology.