Cody Moran

Saint Thomas Aquinas commences his study distinguishing the types of order that exist and with these he determines that moral philosophy studies, on one hand, the order of voluntary acts and, on the other hand, the human acts as ordered together and as orderd towards an end. The social character of the human being and the type of help he gives and receives in the order of the whole and the part is attended, and this leads to Aquinas dividing moral philosophy in three parts: the monastic, which orders the acts towards an end; the economic, which orders the acts of the domestic multitude; and the politic, which orders the acts of the civil multitude.

By the notion of imitation, Saint Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between the cognoscitive approach towards nature and the productive approach towards art. From these relation arises the possibility of reason ordering the multitude of men who conform a community. Thus, Saint Thomas Aquinas explains how is it that the city is the most important whole that reason can know and produce directing it towards an end. Aquinas continues annotating that politics belong to the genre of practical and moral sciences, not mechanical or productive, and that in these genre it is the most worthy and perfect science of them all.

Saint Thomas Aquinas explains how is it that there must be among sciences one which is the most perfect and orders all of them, and that may be therefore trully called wisdom. This science has for its object the common entity and studies simultaneously the first causes, the most universal principles and the separated substances. Aquinas sustains that this science receives three different names: theology or divine science, for it treats separated substances; metaphysics, for it studies the entity and the transphysical things that follow it; and first philosophy, for it studies the first causes of things.

Saint Thomas Aquinas establishes why is it that logic is the directive art of the act of reason and why is it convenient to divide it in correspondence with the operations of the intelect. Thus, the Posterior Analytics are related with the act of reason which goes from one thing which is known to other thing that is unknown. By analogy with the process of necessity of nature, in which she can not fail, Aquinas explains that truth can not fail in the demonstrative syllogism, which has the certainty of science, and that this act of reason is founded in the Posterior Analytics. The rest of saint Thomas Aquinas' exposition focuses on determining to which books of logic does each act or process of reason corresponds.