Currently #reading: Selected Philosophical Writings by Thomas Aquinas.
Have read the first 50 pages or so. It has to be said that I’m finding it fairly heavy-going - the medieval scholastic style of “disputation” takes some getting used to - but a couple of things to have struck me so far:
- The emphasis on “natural science” as a key area of learning, alongside mathematics and “divine science” (i.e. metaphysics/theology). Yes, we’re a long way from modern science - with a lot of “but Aristotle says” instead - but equally we’re a long way from the benighted, anti-science medievals who populate modern mythologies of the pre-Enlightenment past.
- I have never read any writer who engages so frequently and so respectfully with Muslim thinkers (especially Ibn Rushd and Ibn Sīnā). There is a thrilling sense of two worlds, Christian and Islamic, meeting in their joint reading of Aristotle - three worlds, once you include Moses Maimonides, though he hasn’t cropped up by name in this collection yet.
