In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • An Inconsistency in Aquinas's De veritate Account of Divine Ideas
  • Carl A. Vater

St. Thomas Aquinas offers his most extended treatment of divine ideas in De veritate (1256–1259).1 A close reading of this account of ideas reveals a serious inconsistency that renders the account incomprehensible as written. The inconsistency in Aquinas's theory can be found between his definition of divine ideas and his account of divine ideas as principles of speculative or practical cognition. In short, Thomas's definition of an idea includes the agent's intention to produce the artifact, but he claims that such an intention is irrelevant when he discusses ideas as principles of speculative and practical cognition. In the latter discussion, all that matters for an exemplar idea is that the agent knows he could produce an artifact like the idea. There is a tension here. Do divine ideas in the strict sense of exemplars require an intention to produce or not? I will argue that this tension is ultimately irreconcilable and that we can attribute Thomas's later emphasis on the role of divine exemplars in what is actually produced in part to an attempt to resolve this tension.

This paper will have five parts. First, I will discuss Aquinas's De veritate account of ideas as exemplar forms that necessarily include intention. Second, I will treat his De veritate account of ideas as principles of speculative and practical knowledge, which declares the intention to produce irrelevant. Third, noting the inconsistency of the conclusions of the first and second parts, I will examine the ways in which Aquinas uses [End Page 639] the term "intention" as a possible way to resolve the tension. This section will conclude that Aquinas uses the term "intention" to refer to an act of the agent's will, which confirms that the inconsistency of De veritate's account of divine ideas unresolvable as written. Fourth, I will briefly look at Aquinas's later accounts of divine ideas, which I suggest are changed from the De veritate account in a way that resolves the inconsistency. I will also suggest that Aquinas makes these changes in later works precisely so that he could resolve the inconsistency. Finally, I will summarize all these points in a conclusion.

Divine Ideas as Exemplar Forms

In De veritate, Aquinas begins his account of divine ideas by discussing how the Greek term "idea" should be translated into Latin. Following Augustine, he concludes that it should be translated as "form." The form of some thing can be said in three different ways. In one way, the form of something can be understood as the form from which (a qua) a thing is formed, as the formation of an effect proceeds from the form of the agent. But such a form is not what is meant by the term "idea." In another way, the form of something can be understood as the form according to which (secundum quam) something is formed, as the soul is man's form and a statue's shape is the bronze's form. This sort of form, which is part of the composite being, is not what is meant by "idea" because an idea signifies a form that is separated from that of which it is a form. Thus, in a third way, some thing's form is said to be the form of something to which (ad quam) something is formed, and this is an exemplar form to the imitation of which something is constituted. This third sense of the term "idea" agrees with the common use of the term, namely, that an idea is that form which something imitates.2

It follows that imitation is essential to the character of an idea. But, Thomas continues, something can imitate another in two ways. In one way, it imitates from the intention of an agent, as when the painter paints a picture that imitates someone whose figure it depicts. In another way, it imitates by accident, outside of any intention and comes to be by chance. Accidental imitation occurs when a painter makes an image that just happens to resemble something or something. The resemblance happens by...

pdf

Share