Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes

2. The Existence of Divine Ideas

44 TWo THE ExISTENCE oF DIvINE IDEAS Thomas’s analogy between human art and divine exemplarism is a useful one for understanding the metaphysical role that he assigns to the divine ideas. Taken alone, however , the analogy presumes two things: first, that God does in fact exist and second, that he indeed possesses ideas. Regarding the first point, we find in Thomas’s ex professo treatments of the divine ideas that the existence of God is either taken for granted or has already been proven earlier in the relevant work. As regards the divine ideas themselves, however, he is not content in these treatments merely to presume their existence. Rather, he also presents a variety of philosophical arguments to prove that they exist. ThomaS’S CrITIque of The PlaTonIC aPProaCh It might strike the reader as surprising that Aquinas affirms the existence of ideas as formal causes of things: it is well known that, following Aristotle, he is strongly critical of Plato’s account of Ideas.1 In numerous passages 1. When referring to this Platonic doctrine, I have chosen to capitalize the first letter of the term “Ideas” to emphasize their self-subsistent na- ^ ExISTENCE oF DIvINE IDEAS 45 throughout his corpus, Thomas presents this account and then rejects it. To be more precise, what he rejects is his understanding of Plato’s account. As scholarship has shown, it is likely that Thomas had little if any direct exposure to Plato’s writings, instead gathering his knowledge of Platonism from sources such as Aristotle’s Metaphysics.2 It is in Thomas’s commentary on that work that we find his most detailed presentation of Plato’s doctrine of Ideas. Following Aristotle , Thomas explains that Plato was motivated to posit his doctrine out of a concern to find certainty. Like Cratylus and Heraclitus, Plato had believed that all sensible things are in a constant state of flux and, consequently, that there could be no scientific knowledge of particular, sensible things. It is for this reason that Socrates had turned his attention away from the natural world to focus on moral matters, seeking universals and definitions. Plato adopted this method and applied it to natural things, identifying in them universals that could be defined. Since only what is immutable can be defined, he concluded that these universals are immutable entities. The universal “man” that is predicated of both Socrates and Plato, ture and to contrast them with the Thomistic divine ideas, which exist only within the mind of God. For a consideration of Aquinas’s criticisms of Plato, see Henle’s Thomas and Platonism. Despite this explicit opposition to Plato, Thomas is nonetheless implicitly influenced by Platonism and Neoplatonism. Scholarship since the mid-twentieth century has increasingly come to acknowledge this fact. See, e.g., Norris Clarke, “The Platonic Heritage of Thomism,” Review of Metaphysics 8 (September 1954): 105–24; Luis Cortest, “Was St. Thomas Aquinas a Platonist?” The Thomist 52 (1988): 209–19; Cornelio Fabro, La nozione metafisica di partecipazione, 2nd ed. (Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1963); id., Participation et causalité selon s. Thomas d’Aquin (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1961); id., “Platonism, Neoplatonism and Thomism: Convergencies and Divergencies,” The New Scholasticism 44 (Winter 1970): 69–100; Louis B. Geiger, La participation dans la philosophie de s. Thomas d’Aquin, 2nd ed. (Paris:Librairie Philosophique J. vrin, 1953); Wayne J. Hankey, God in Himself: Aquinas’ Doctrine of God as Expounded in Summa theologiae (oxford: oxford University Press, 1987); Charles A. Hart, “Participation and the Thomistic Five Ways,” The New Scholasticism 26 (1952): 267–82; id., Thomistic Metaphysics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall Inc., 1959); Arthur Little, S.J., The Platonic Heritage of Thomism (Dublin: Golden Eagle Books, 1949); Rudi A. te velde, Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas (New York: E.J. Brill, 1995); Wippel, Metaphysical Thought, chap. 4, 94–131. 2. See chap. 1, nn. 73–75. ExISTENCE oF DIvINE IDEAS 46 therefore, would have a real existence independent of Socrates, Plato , or any other man. This universal “man” would be the essence of all individual men, and similarly, every other universal would be the essence of those particulars of which it is predicated.3 In short, according to this account, Plato held that whatever is separated in thought is also separated in reality, existing apart from matter. For this reason, R. J. Henle has termed this approach to proving the existence of Ideas the via abstractionis...