The Sixth Way of St. Thomas Aquinas

THE SIXTH WAY OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS WHEN ONE THINKS of arguments for God's existence which SL Thomas Aquinas records with appr01 ;al, one thinks of a posteriori arguments. Aquinas disapproves of, and argues against1 the a priori argument of St. Anselm; forcefully and conclusively, in my view. Moreover, the a posteriori arguments one thinks of are arguments whose point of departure is some fact or other observed in the world of sense experience, at least to some extent: the fact of motion, the fact of an order of efficient causes, things for which it is possible to be and not to be, the graded perfections of things, the fact that things without knowledge (natural bodies) act for an end. And not only that, one thinks quite immediately, and most often only, of the Summa Theologiae, I, q. ~.a. 3, the locus of the Five Ways; sometimes, though considerably less often, one also thinks of the Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. I, ch. 13. Maritain, in describing his own Sixth Way, which he regards as an addition to the Five Ways which Aquinas records in the Summa Theologiae, is careful to point out wherein it differs from the Five. One of the points of difference which he emphasizes is the fact that his Sixth Way is not based on a fact observed in any way in the world of sense experience. It is based, rather, on a peculiar intuition, an intuition intimately connected with an intellectual experience of intellectual experience, with an " experience of the proper life of the intellect." 1 It is during such an experience, Maritain notes, that the intuition on which his Sixth Way is based occurs, the intuition that I, this thinking I, have always existed.2 And so, whereas the arguments which Aquinas records begin in this way: there exist things in motion 1 Jacques Maritain, Approaches to God (trans. from the French by Peter O'Reilly) (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1954) p. 73. 2 Ibid., pp. 73-75. 373 374 JOSEPH BOBIK (sensed-observed), or there exists an order of efficient causes (based on sense observation) , etc. through the others of the Five Ways, and then seek to make explicit what is implied by these facts, ultimately the existence of God as the First Unmoved Mover, as the First Uncaused Efficient Cause, etc.; Maritain's Sixth Way begins as follows: there exists an I (namely, I myself) which has always existed (introspectively based, i.e., based on Maritain's inner awareness of intellectual activity) , and then seeks to draw out the implications of this fact, ultimately the existence of God as Being and Thought and Self in pure act. Now, if one goes beyond the Summa Theologiae, I, q. 2, a. 3, and beyond the Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. I, ch. 13, and looks to the Summa Theologiae, I, q. 79, a. 4-an expanded version of which is found in the De Spiritualibus Creaturis, a. 10-, one finds there a discussion, part of which (and a part which is only instrumental to the main point of the article) is an argument for the existence of God, also an a posteriori argument, but one which is closer to Maritain's Sixth Way in its point of departure than it is to any of the Five Ways. The point of departure here is an introspective one, though clearly not an intuition that the thi;~king I has always existed, a point of departure based on a fact which any man can experience about himself as a knower: that he abstracts universal forms from their particular conditions, thereby making them actually intelligible.3 The purpose of this paper is to consider the text of the Summa Theologiae, I, q. 79, a. 4, along with its expansion in the • The actual use to which Aquinas puts this introspectively based claim in the Summa Theologiae, I, q. 79, a.4, c., and in the De Spiritualibus Creaturis, a.10, is this: he employs it as evidence for his view that the agent intellect is "aliquid animae," a power which inheres in the human soul, as opposed to being a separated substance, as in the view of...