re: the Summa, prima secundae

[0dense]

So, I get it. The Summa isn't the blockbuster it was; not all of the arguments are welcome in the secular day and age. No, St Aquinas didn't have our modern perspective on many issues, and yes, the commentary around, eg, sex out of marriage, isn't as applicable as it was. But just because he was limited doesn't mean we need to limit his argument! The point he's getting at with natural law isn't that we need to have punishments for every article he brings up, it's not that the only way to try to be good is to restrict oneself to exactitude. Contrary: every principle is intended to guide us to eudaimonia, and that is Not utilitarianism*. The restriction against sex out of marriage was intended to prevent mothers from having to raise children alone - if that's hard in the modern day, the 1200s were nowhere as forgiving**. It's oriented towards helping people have a better life. That's what it all intends towards. If he was writing now, he could use another argument, but the point still stands: how can we make a world that is good to live in? How can we as a society make a good world happen?
All of his questions are for us as a unified people, as a world. Don't take it so personally, we're detracting from the mission. A charitable reading is one that looks for the good we can do, and why aren't we trying to take that as far as we can??

Anyway, I'm reading the Summa excerpts along with Politics and the Hackett abridged Guide of the Perplexed, and it's a trifecta I Highly recommend.



* The fact that we look at 'what's good for people' and immediately slap a modern label on it is our problem, not a charitable reading. And no, hedonism as a predecessor isn't the same style of thing either. 
** @the diocese^, if this is an exogenous reading, it's the best I've got in the name of promoting that charitable reading. 

^ @the diocese tho I put the Ash Wednesday mass in my calendar on the break from seminar where we're doing Nietzsche, so that was fun

Comments

[0dense]

oh noooo yeah that would ruin it for sure!
yeah I absolutely lucked out, my first professor for Ancients walked us through the presocratics - like, they didn't have our conception of science at all, but it was still the first really scientific-style approach to trying to figure out how the world comes together. and I just thought it was so creative of them? like, they used what they had! and were so clever with it!

[casualbird]

you know, that's really true! i feel the same way about mythology--i think it's so interesting, the ways that people tried to explain the world around them before any sort of scientific method.

[0dense]

exactly! like, we can laugh now, with the distance, but it's just ourselves we're laughing at. everyone's trying their best?? history is people and I love it so much!