The Philosophy of Aquinas

Robert Pasnau and Christopher Shields, University of Colorado at Boulder
This volume of the Westview Histories of Philosophy offers an overview of the most significant aspects of Thomas Aquinas's philosophical thought. Each chapter focuses on a specific work, and leads the reader through the arguments that shape Aquinas's thinking in that area.

Below, we provide links - where available - to the focal texts of each chapter. Where the relevant text is not available through the internet, we provide alternative texts that cover the same material.

Contents

  1. Life and Work
  2. Aquinas’s Explanatory Framework: The Four Causes
    The Principles of Nature
  3. Aquinas’s Metaphysical Framework: Being and Essence
    On Being and Essence
  4. God’s Existence and Nature. Summa contra gentiles I
  5. The Order of the Universe
    Summa contra Gentiles II.15-46, III.64-94
  6. The Human Soul and the Human Body. Summa theologiae1a 75-76
  7. Intellect and Sensation. Summa theologiae1a 78-79, 84-86
  8. The Goal of Human Life. Summa theologiae1a2ae 1-5
  9. Ethics. Treatise on Law (Summa theologiae1a2ae 90-94)
    Questions on the Virtues in General