A Note on the Texts
A Note on the Texts
The following selections follow the chronological order of their composition, an approach that was decided on after the undoubted attractions of various alternatives had been explored. The aim has been to give as comprehensive a portrait of the thought of Thomas Aquinas as possible. While emphasis is on Aquinas as philosopher, it is essential to see how he distinguished philosophical from theological inquiry. Because of his conception of theology, a good deal of philosophy is either imported into theological works or developed there in order to be put to theological purpose. This is why selections meant to convey his philosophical positions are sometimes drawn from theological writings. Explicitly theological selections are meant to illustrate Thomas’s employment of philosophical reasoning in pondering the mysteries of the faith.
No one can fail to be struck by the amount of attention Thomas devoted to understanding and explaining the thought of others. In the case of his biblical commentaries, the motivation is obvious. Similarly, his exposition of the Sentences of Peter Lombard. But commentaries on two works of Boethius serve as a kind of bridge into the interpretation of Aristotle. Chronologically, commentaries on Aristotle fall to the last periods of Thomas’s academic career. But Aristotle is present from the beginning as On Being and Essence and The Principles of Nature, early works, illustrate. Such short works could be included in their entirety, but given the extent of expositions and commentaries, selection had to be made of sections that are fairly self-standing. So too with such a disputed question as that on truth: it was possible to present entire sub-questions. Mere snippets have been avoided and the ideal of this series – to translate complete works – has been the ideal striven for but, for reasons just mentioned, not always reachable as such.
The inner divisions of the texts follow those of the editions from which the translations were made. In the case of the Aristotelian commentaries, the convention of the original Leonine editions is adhered to – that is, division into lessons – rather than the more recent Lconinc practice of dividing them by the chapter divisions of the work being explained. I have also retained paragraph numbers in the commentaries on Aristotle, in order that nearly a century of scholarship can be easily related to the text.