Aquinas Humility Essay

Augustine’s Confessions is a diverse blend of autobiographical accounts as well as philosophical, theological and critical analysis of the Christian Bible. Augustine treats his autobiography as an opportunity to recount his life and mentions how each event in his life has a religious and philosophical explanation. Augustine had many major events happen in his life but only 3 events would deem of extreme importance to his journey to faith. Theses major events were Book II how he describes that he considered his time of adolescence to be the most lurid and sinful period of his life, Book III how this becomes the lowest point in his relationship with God because his

Francis of Assisi was a poor man who astounded and inspired the Church by taking the gospel literally—not in a narrow fundamentalist sense, but by actually following all that Jesus said and did, joyfully, without limit and without a mite of self-importance. Francis was famous for his love of all creation. He called for simplicity of life, poverty, and humility before God. He worked to care for the poor. Thousands were drawn to his sincerity, piety, and joy. In all his actions, Francis sought to follow fully and literally the way of life demonstrated by Christ in the Gospels. My report is going to discuss the life and contributions of St. Francis of Assisi.

In Augustine’s Confessions, he confesses many things of which we are all guilty; the greatest of which is his sadness of not having a relationship with God earlier in his life. He expressed to us that to neglect a relationship with God is far worse than the pity he felt for Dido. In reviewing his life, he had come to examine life and how there are temptations in this world that can keep us distracted. He tells to us how he became aware of this fact; everything is negligible except love for God, and his own guilt at not having found this truth sooner.

For Dante and Aquinas, happiness does not only compose a useful life on earth but also in Heaven. Dante and Aquinas were sure that continued use of Aristotle virtues would not land any of their followers in heaven. To increase chances of one entering heaven, Dante and Aquinas developed proposed the incorporation of hope, faith, and charity into the daily virtues that people possess. According to Dante and Aquinas, possession of virtues like good temper and judgement could only lead one to live a good life but not perfect for heaven. Dante and Aquinas specifically based there philosophical thinking on four ideas; perfect ordinary happiness on earth, happiness on earth is not important as compared to happiness in Heaven, following of Aristotle virtues was not a problem to them but it could not help in trying moments, and lastly the importance of perfecting the art of love especially to people

Well unfortunately some believe their (omnipotent) God has all the answers and knows of every person’s next moves and what’s yet to come. I can somewhat agree with that but I don’t believe it is my duty to judge or prove the existence, and the all mighty power God has. I certainly am a believer of faith and that the existence of good and evil lies in all of us, regardless of the control God has over us. My opinion relates to how Aquinas believes that everyone’s consequences and endings they choose are because of the free choice God gives us all. As mentioned in the book, a great example that I find makes a perfect analogy is when he states, “He can create in a multitude of ways, No

To support Aquinas’ claim that money, honor, fame, power, goods of the body, or pleasure is not required for human happiness, one may cite they share ends for the sake of human beings. That is, their ends are meant only to fulfill human capacities

     Augustine on his own view stole the fruit for the mere enjoyment of the sin and theft that the stealing involved. He says in (II,4)

Through the works of Epicurus, Epictetus, and Aquinas, it is evident that their philosophies inherit a great deal of virtue. Although roughly specified, virtue is implanted within their different ideologies. From achieving happiness, stoic beliefs, and in respects to Christian idealism, virtue turns out to be the driving factor in determining the ideal meaning of life from the perspective of each philosopher and it gives them their value. Backed by firm evidence, it is notable that virtue is more apparent in the Thomism philosophy.

Throughout the course of this essay, I will first define what Aquinas means by incorporating the claim that “an unjust law is no law at all”. This will include defining important terms that will correspond with evaluating Aquinas’ claim.

According to Aristotle, intellectual virtues belong in the ‘rational’ fragment of the soul and moral virtues lie in the ‘irrational’ measure of the soul However, they are both dependant on reason. Although Aristotle recognised many virtues, he was an advocate for the notion of the existence of only four cardinal virtues. His proposal proved to be popular in the society that he lived in, being acknowledged by Plato and other bodies. The four cardinal virtues are: courage, a virtue which ensures control in the interest of goodness, temperance, a virtue which diminishes wants and desires by limiting them to reason, justice, the only virtue that consists of expressing care for other beings. A human that possesses the virtue of justice has the ability to practise this virtue on other human beings and not solely on themselves. The final and one of the most important virtues is prudence, a logical virtue of practical reason by which we separate the good and the methods of achieving it. Aristotle accentuates that virtues are pragmatic skills and hence experience guides us towards becoming more dexterous in avoiding deficiency. Although familiarity with the vices as extremes supports us in our aspiration for the mean, the wider connotations of the doctrine is that only through experience will we as humans come to know the right pretences and

Aquinas articulates that pride is the basis for all sin, because pride takes place when we refuse to be subject to the will of God, and the beginning of all sin is when we first turn away from God. Those who are greedy and miserly refuse to obey God's command of taking care of the poor and rather horde as much money as they can to no

Aristotle’s theory will be discussed in full length on his theory of virtue. Now Aristotle did believe in a multitude of theories that are all based off of virtue, but also the soul. To Aristotle, virtue is an excellence, which comes after happiness and achieving our final goal. When Aristotle talks about an individual’s final goal and excellence of that

He speaks to the human desire for happiness, which he defines as the fullness of being. However, he asserts that we cannot achieve this alone. We require God’s grace. This idea is supported by the text when Aquinas states: For the means must be proportionate to the end: if then man is ordained to an end transcending his natural capacities, he must be furnished with some supernatural assistance from heaven, enabling him to tend to that end.

Aristotle believes that happiness is the ultimate goal in life. You can’t reach happiness unless you work hard and become successful. That is where virtue comes into play. A human’s function is to engage in “an activity of the soul which is in accordance with virtue” and which “is in conformity with reason” (page 76, Palmer). The two kinds of virtue are intellectual and moral. Our virtues are what make us all individual and all different. Intellectual virtues are what we are born with and what we learn. It is our nature as humans and what we have inherited that makes desire to learn. As humans, we develop wisdom to help guide us to a good life. With the intellectual virtue you develop two different kinds of wisdom: practical and

In this context, charity is much more. It does not fit within our narrow definition, but rather charity is the ultimate source of what it means to be real and is the ultimate goal of human life. Because Aquinas was a theologian and a man of strong faith, he believed that all relationships were closely related to our view of love for God. Aquinas states that “charity is the friendship of man for God” (Aquinas Question 23, Article 1). Since he believed that to truly love God means to truly love our neighbor because our neighbor is the immediate image of God, Aquinas also believed that friendship is only charitable if “we love someone as to wish good to him” (Article 1). For if “we do not wish good to what we love, but wish its good for ourselves, it is love not of friendship, but of a kind of concupiscence” (Article 1). According to Aquinas’ logic, just as all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares, similarly all true charity is friendship, but not all friendship is charity. Charity is something much larger than us and something which we must continually strive to acquire. Because of this, we strive for charitable, friendly love to become a virtue. It is human nature for us to practice anything we want to get better at—especially if we have a goal to reach. Since charitable friendship is the ultimate goal, we must make a habit out of loving. As we discussed in class, the only way to get better at something is to