Aquinas on Philosophy as Prudent Desire, Pursuit, and Job of the Wise Man and Culture: To Understand First Principles and Causes of the Whole Truth about Everything

Abstract

This article defends the thesis that, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, when the Ancient Greeks and other Mediterranean cultures prior to them had first started to philosophize, engage in science, they had done so as parts of an individual and community team enterprise. They were convinced that all human beings have a moral duty as rational animals to philosophize – prudentially to wonder about the most universal causes about everything. Considering themselves essentially to be a ‘world-community of prudential wonderers’, they first conceived of philosophy, science, to be a psychological act of prudential wondering practiced by a world-wide community of people. In starting this organization, this world community shared a common, prudent chief aim: to help free the entire known-world from the damaging effects they had commonly recognized brute-animal ignorance causes. They were convinced that an imprudent people can never become philosophical or scientific. St. Thomas maintains that their natural desire to satisfy their wonder about the chief subject, aim, efficient and final cause of the existence, behavior, and truth of everything must have included understanding God. Having this included as part of its chief subject and aim caused them to understand the job of every philosopher chiefly to be what philosophy is for anyone who understands its proper nature: to bring into existence First Philosophy, Metaphysics’ – ‘the most divine and honorable science’!