(October 9, 2021 at 11:00 am)Nomad Wrote: On giving Aquinas the benefit of the doubt, a) older philosophers than him got things more right. His whole philosophy was based on proving his god real when he knew he didn't have evidence. Even in his own day his five ways received some very scathing rebuttals.
B) Even giving him the benefit of doubt that doesn't mean we should take his views seriously today when we know so much more. That'd be like saying the theory of the humours is authoritative medicine.
Oddly enough "getting stuff right" isn't what makes someone a great philosopher. Asking the right questions, furthering the understanding of mankind (even when you're demonstrably wrong)... that kinda stuff will get you into history of philosophy textbooks. I do have to grant you one thing: I find it easier to appreciate philosophers of the Greco-Roman era than I do Anselm or Aquinas.
Anselm and Aquinas are so derivative of Aristotle, you make a good point to say "Aristotle got more right." But... inasmuch as they agreed with Aristotle, they got right what Aristotle got right. But, again, "getting stuff right," isn't all that great of a metric.
I like Plato better than Aristotle, Anselm, or Aquinas (the three As). For one thing, Plato is enjoyable to read. Reading the three As is like eating a cinder block for lunch. It's displeasurable to consume their work and even harder to digest. Reading Plato, on the other hand, is like eating a nymph's pussy. It's delightful. The three A's could really use style lessons. (Although, to be fair, all we have left from Aristotle are his lecture notes. Maybe his books-- lost to history-- were more stylistically inclined. We'll never know. We'll never know what are possibly his greatest ideas. But we DO know he was more correct than Plato on a lot of things.
I don't think the three As are authoritative on anything. The thing about your humors example is that bodily humors are a claim about nature, and that claim has been debunked. It's harder to debunk a philosopher. Care to debunk Nietzsche? Care to prove Nietzsche correct? We can do neither.
The big bang doesn't debunk Aquinas. If anything, it makes some of his points more salient. We don't know what caused the big bang. And even if the "free lunch" speculations of some physicists are correct, we still don't know what established those "free lunch" conditions in the first place, so Aquinas's inquiry is still valid on many fronts.
I guess (in summary) I'll say: I don't agree with Aquinas, but he's still intellectually enriching to contemplate and discuss.
