A study of Aquinas's theory of self-knowledge, situated within the mid-thirteenth-century debate and his own maturing thought on human nature.

Self-knowledge is commonly thought to have become a topic of serious philosophical inquiry during the early modern period. Already in the thirteenth century, however, the medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas developed a sophisticated theory of self-knowledge, which Therese Scarpelli Cory presents as a project of reconciling the conflicting phenomena of self-opacity and privileged self-access. Situating Aquinas's theory within the mid-thirteenth-century debate and his own maturing thought on human nature, Cory investigates the kinds of self-knowledge that Aquinas describes and the questions they raise. She shows that to a degree remarkable in a medieval thinker, self-knowledge turns out to be central to Aquinas's account of cognition and personhood, and that his theory provides tools for considering intentionality, reflexivity and selfhood. Her engaging account of this neglected aspect of medieval philosophy will interest readers studying Aquinas and the history of medieval philosophy more generally.

Self-knowledge is commonly thought to have become a topic of serious philosophical inquiry during the early modern period. Already in the thirteenth century, however, the medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas developed a sophisticated theory of self-knowledge, which Therese Scarpelli Cory presents as a project of reconciling the conflicting phenomena of self-opacity and privileged self-access. Situating Aquinas's theory within the mid-thirteenth-century debate and his own maturing thought on human nature, Cory investigates the kinds of self-knowledge that Aquinas describes and the questions they raise. She shows that to a degree remarkable in a medieval thinker, self-knowledge turns out to be central to Aquinas's account of cognition and personhood, and that his theory provides tools for considering intentionality, reflexivity and selfhood. Her engaging account of this neglected aspect of medieval philosophy will interest readers studying Aquinas and the history of medieval philosophy more generally.

This study concerns the position of Saint Thomas Aquinas on human self knowledge (“the soul’s knowledge of itself,” in medieval idiom). Its main goal is to present a comprehensive account of Aquinas’s philosophy of self knowledge, by clarifying his texts on this topic and explaining why he made the claims he did. A second objective is to situate Thomas’s position on self awareness within general world, and specific thirteenth century, traditions concerning this theme. And a third is to apply Aquinas’s approach and insights to selected and contemporary issues that involve self knowledge, such as the alleged paradoxes of self reflection and of “unconscious awareness.” The primary approach is that of “critical narrative,” which attempts to understand St. Thomas’s texts by posing critical questions for them. While this questioning may expose certain texts as equivocal or unsupported, usually Thomas emerges as coherent, reasonable, and better understood. This work is serious scholarship that presumes reader interest in philosophical reflection and some background in medieval type thinking. On the other hand, the book is not narrowly specialized in Aquinas or a single methodology, but includes broad reference to worldwide traditions and attempts to integrate St. Thomas’s approach into topics of contemporary interest.

Contemporary introductions to the theme of self-knowledge too often trace its emergence in the history of philosophy to thinkers such as René Descartes and David Hume. Whereas Descartes conceives of self-knowledge as intimate and first-personal, Hume contends that it is limited to our awareness of our impressions and ideas. In point of fact, self-knowledge is a perennial theme. We may, for instance, trace the lineage of Hume and Descartes on these matters to Aristotle and Plato, respectively. This volume studies philosophical treatments of self-knowledge in the Medieval Latin West. It comprises two sets of papers; the first is taken from an author-meets-critics session on Therese Scarpelli-Cory’s Aquinas on Human Self Knowledge, which advances the thesis that Aquinas’s theory of self-knowledge wherein the intellect grasps itself in its activity bridges the divide between mediated and first-personal self-knowledge. The second set of papers discuss self-knowledge in terms of self-fulfilment. Authors look to Aquinas’s account of how we can know when we have acquired the virtues necessary for human happiness, as well as the medieval traditions of mysticism and theology, which offer accounts of transformative self-knowledge, the fulfilment that this brings to our emotional and physical selves, and the authority to teach and counsel about what this awareness confers.

This thesis investigates whether Thomas Aquinas's treatment of human self-knowledge constitutes a coherent theory of self-knowledge. It concludes that a case can be made for coherence, provided Aquinas's 'ex professo ' discussions of self-knowledge supply the principles that govern the interpretation of his commentary on Aristotle's 'De anima' and exposition of the Neoplatonic 'Liber de causis.' The first chapter examines the various divisions of self-knowledge treated in the 'ex professo' discussions and argues that Aquinas requires only the twofold Aristotelian distinction between awareness of oneself as an individual and knowledge of the nature of the soul. Intuitive self-knowledge is rejected, since the soul knows itself through actualization by intelligible species. The soul's habitual self-presence and self-knowledge through the eternal exemplars also figure in Aquinas's account, but are not predominant. Chapter two examines self-reflexivity ('reflexio') and the mind's return to itself ('reditio'), which are developed in supplementary texts, and suggests that reflexivity stands to return as individual to universal self-knowledge. While 'reflexio' and ' reditio' both indicate a movement of the mind back upon itself, reflexivity is used as a premise in an argument to the soul's immateriality, while the return of the mind to its essence ('reditio completa') presupposes that the soul's nature has already been attained. Finally, chapter three examines Anthony Kenny's critique of Aquinas's treatment of self-knowledge, which argues (1) that it presupposes but cannot account for the individuation of thought, and (2) that it attributes to the soul a capacity for disembodied existence incompatible the soul's nature as the form of the body. I respond (1) by pointing to Aquinas's individuation of thinkers by their intelligible species, and (2) by investigating Aquinas's account of the disembodied soul, especially his claim that the soul will then know itself as a separate substance. On this latter point I indicate certain potential difficulties for the coherence of Aquinas's theory of self-knowledge. I conclude by suggesting that an epistemological study ultimately provides fullest sense will be attained by broadening the scope of such study to include Aquinas's moral and theological thought.