A History of Western Philosophy: And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day

by Bertrand Russell

They devoted themselves to reconciling Aristotle and Christ; Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, both Dominicans, accomplished this task as well as it is capable of being accomplished.

CHAPTER XIII Saint Thomas Aquinas THOMAS AQUINAS (b. 1225 or 1226, d. 1274) is regarded as the greatest of scholastic philosophers. In all Catholic educational institutions that teach philosophy his system has to be taught as the only right one; this has been the rule since a rescript of 1879 by Leo XIII. Saint Thomas, therefore, is not only of historical interest, but is a living influence, like Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel —more, in fact, than the latter two.

In the time of Aquinas, the battle for Aristotle, as against Plato, still had to be fought. The influence of Aquinas secured the victory until the Renaissance; then Plato, who became better known than in the Middle Ages, again acquired supremacy in the opinion of most philosophers.

In the seventeenth century, it was possible to be orthodox and a Cartesian; Malebranche, though a priest, was never censured. But in our day such freedoms are a thing of the past; Catholic ecclesiastics must accept Saint Thomas if they concern themselves with philosophy.

Saint Thomas was the son of the Count of Aquino, whose castle, in the kingdom of Naples, was close to Monte Cassino, where the edu...

When it was forcibly brought to their notice that this doctrine is contrary to the Catholic faith, they took refuge in the subterfuge of “double truth”: one sort, based on reason, in philosophy, and another, based on revelation, in theology.

He, however, followed the genuine Aristotle, and disliked Platonism, even as it appears in Saint Augustine.

For my part, I should say that the De Anima leads much more naturally to the view of Averroes than to that of Aquinas; however, the Church, since Saint Thomas, has thought otherwise. I should say, further, that Aristotle’s views on most questions of logic and philosophy were not final, and have since been proved to be largely erroneous; this opinion, also, is not allowed to be professed by any Catholic philosopher or teacher of philosophy.

Saint Thomas’s most important work, the Summa contra Gentiles, was written during the years 1259-64. It is concerned to establish the truth of the Christian religion by arguments addressed to a reader supposed to be not already a Christian; one gathers that the imaginary reader is usually thought of as a man versed in the philosophy of the Arabs.

Natural reason, however, is deficient in the things of God; it can prove some parts of the faith, but not others. It can prove the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, but not the Trinity, the Incarnation, or the Last Judgement.

Accordingly, of the four books into which the Summa is divided, the first three make no appeal to revelation, except to show that it is in accordance with conclusions reached by reason; only in the fourth book are matters treated which cannot be known apart from revelation.

It is important to remember that religious truth which can be proved can also be known by faith. The proofs are difficult, and can only be understood by the learned; but faith is necessary also to the ignorant, to the young, and to those who, from practical preoccupations, have not the leisure to learn philosophy. For them, revelation suffices.

The existence of God is proved, as in Aristotle, by the argument of the unmoved mover.II There are things which are only moved, and other things which both move and are moved. Whatever is moved is moved by something, and, since an endless regress is impossible, we must arrive somewhere at something which moves without being moved. This unmoved mover is God. It might be objected that this argument involves the eternity of movement, which Catholics reject. This would be an error: it is valid on the hypothesis of the eternity of movement, but is only strengthened by the opposite hypothesis, which involves a beginning, and therefore a First Cause.

God is His own essence since otherwise He would not be simple, but would be compounded of essence and existence. (This point is important.) In God, essence and existence are identical.

Human happiness does not consist in carnal pleasures, honour, glory, wealth, worldly power, or goods of the body, and is not seated in the senses.

Man’s ultimate happiness does not consist in acts of moral virtue, because these are means; it consists in the contemplation of God.

This leads to an argument that prayer is useful although Providence is unchangeable. (I have failed to follow this argument.)

There must be strict monogamy; polygyny is unfair to women, and polyandry makes paternity uncertain.

In its general outlines, the philosophy of Aquinas agrees with that of Aristotle, and will be accepted or rejected by a reader in the measure in which he accepts or rejects the philosophy of the Stagyrite. The originality of Aquinas is shown in his adaptation of Aristotle to Christian dogma, with a minimum of alteration.

He was even more remarkable for systematizing than for originality.

Even if every one of his doctrines were mistaken, the Summa would remain an imposing intellectual edifice. When he wishes to refute some doctrine, he states it first, often with great force, and almost always with an attempt at fairness. The sharpness and clarity with which he distinguishes arguments derived from reason and arguments derived from revelation are admirable. He knows Aristotle well, and understands him thoroughly, which cannot be said of any earlier Catholic philosopher.

The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times.

FRANCISCANS, on the whole, were less impeccably orthodox than Dominicans.

The three most important of Franciscan philosophers were Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and William of Occam. Saint Bonaventura and Matthew of Aquasparta also call for notice.

He therefore produced in a very short time three books, Opus Majus, Opus Minus, and Opus Tertium. These seem to have produced a good impression, and in 1268 he was allowed to return to Oxford, from which he had been removed to a sort of imprisonment in Paris.

Saint Bonaventura (1221-1274), who, as General of the Franciscan order, forbade Bacon to publish, was a man of a totally different kind. He belonged to the tradition of Saint Anselm, whose ontological argument he upheld. He saw in the new Aristotelianism a fundamental opposition to Christianity. He believed in Platonic ideas, which, however, only God knows perfectly. In his writings Augustine is quoted constantly, but one finds no quotations from Arabs, and few from pagan antiquity.

William of Occam is, after Saint Thomas, the most important schoolman.

Dante (1265-1321), though as a poet he was a great innovator, was, as a thinker, somewhat behind the times.

After William of Occam there are no more great scholastics. The next period for great philosophers began in the late Renaissance.

Aristotle, during the thirteenth century, came to be known fairly completely in the West, and, by the influence of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, was established in the minds of the learned as the supreme authority after Scripture and the Church.

I cannot but think that the substitution of Aristotle for Plato and Saint Augustine was a mistake from the Christian point of view. Plato’s temperament was more religious than Aristotle’s, and Christian theology had been, from almost the first, adapted to Platonism. Plato had taught that knowledge is not perception, but a kind of reminiscent vision; Aristotle was much more of an empiricist. Saint Thomas, little though he intended it, prepared the way for the return from Platonic dreaming to scientific observation.

The defeat of the Western Empire in its conflict with the papacy proved useless to the Church, owing to the rise of national monarchies in France and England; throughout most of the fourteenth century the Pope was, politically, a tool in the hands of the King of France.

More important than these causes was the rise of a rich commercial class and the increase of knowledge in the laity.

Clement V signalized his alliance with the king of France by their joint action against the Templars.

During the fifteenth century, various other causes were added to the decline of the papacy to produce a very rapid change, both political and cultural.

In France and England, Louis XI and Edward IV allied themselves with the rich middle class, who helped them to quell aristocratic anarchy. Italy, until the last years of the century, was fairly free from Northern armies, and advanced rapidly both in wealth and culture.

The new culture was essentially pagan, admiring Greece and Rome, and desp...

When Constantinople, the last survival of antiquity, was captured by the Turks, Greek refugees in Italy were welcomed by humanists. Vasco da Gama and Columbus enlarged t...

This sublunary sphere appeared no longer as a vale of tears, a place of painful pilgrimage to another world, but as affording opportunity for pagan delights, for fame and beauty and adventure. The long centuries of asceticism were forgotten in a riot of art and poetry and pleasure.

Even in Italy, it is true, the Middle Ages did not die without a struggle; Savonarola and Leonardo were born in the same year.

Of these, two are the most important: the diminishing authority of the Church, and the increasing authority of science.

There were in Italy five important States: Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal Domain, and Naples; in addition to these there were a number of small principalities, which varied in their alliance with or subjection to some one of the larger States.

In the thirteenth century, there were three conflicting classes in Florence: the nobles, the rich merchants and the small men. The nobles, in the main, were Ghibelline, the other two classes Guelf.

His most famous work, The Prince, was written in 1513, and dedicated to Lorenzo the Magnificent, since he hoped (vainly, as it proved) to win the favour of the Medici. Its tone is perhaps partly due to this practical purpose; his longer work, the Discourses, which he was writing at the same time, is markedly more republican and more liberal.

The question is ultimately one of power. To achieve a political end, power, of one kind or another, is necessary.

It is true that power, often, depends upon opinion, and opinion upon propaganda; it is true, also, that it is an advantage in propaganda to seem more virtuous than your adversary, and that one way of seeming virtuous is to be virtuous.

But there are important limitations. In the first place, those who have seized power can, by controlling propaganda, cause their party to appear virtuous; no one, for example, could mention the sins of Alexander VI in a New York or Boston public school.

Even in such times, as Machiavelli himself says, it is desirable to present an appearance of virtue before the ignorant public.

The Renaissance Church shocked everybody, but it was only north of the Alps that it shocked people enough to produce the Reformation.

It follows that politicians will behave better when they depend upon a virtuous population than when they depend upon one which is indifferent to moral considerations; they will also behave better in a community in which their crimes, if any, can be made widely known, than in one in which there is a strict censorship under their control.