Aquinas

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Bobo
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Aquinas

Post by Bobo »

Here's a quote from David Quinn debate on 'ne plus ultra' (David was talking about blind faith and how irrelevant Aquinas thought may be today, I think compared to David's thought and 'timeless thinking')
David Quinn wrote:Aquinus used to do groundbreaking work in the field of theology. It used to impress his fellow theologians, and no doubt it required a considerable amount of intelligence to carry it out, but in the larger scheme of things, looked at from the perspective of a great philosopher, it is nothing.
Of course I have a quote from Aquinas too:
  • The negation of things is included in multiplicity, in the one the negation of things and of negation are simultaneous. The one then is not what is divided by a division that would consist in admitting that this is and this isn't. So the one -while denying affirmation and negation simultaneously- is the negation of things and of negation simultaneously.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

The main question here for me is: are you starting this topic to promote Aquinas as some worthwhile, profound thinker? Or is this for you just about demonstrating how David might have erred when giving his opinion to the brainiacs at Ne Plus Ultra?

The first possibility is interesting but you're not providing much information on Aquinas at all as of yet or why you think he would be a good philosopher! Based on some of your earlier attempts, I'd say you're indeed trying to catch errors in Quinn's thoughts, some kind of female "gotcha" game of ressentiment. And that's a bit sad as it would be way better to develop your own or just focus on the errors you see in the arguments of people you're actually discussing with. Like I'm doing here although I'll further try to avoid the subject of "motive", however tempting that can be. It's for you to contemplate.

As it stands now, it looks like arcane theology to even discuss this. And I think Quinn was not saying that much else on the matter than for example Bertrand Russell when he wrote: "He [Aquinas] is not engaged in an inquiry,,,,,before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth. The finding of arguments ....is not philosophy, but special pleading. I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times" (From: A History of Western Philosophy, Ch. 34, p .463).
Bobo
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Bobo »

That's on contradiction, anything said can be unsaid, negated, contraried, and the unsaid can carry negation or denial, that even when used rethorically may have more feelings than reason or logic.

David said that from the perspective of a great philosophers it is nothing. Would this perspective be something like the negation of things as in Aquinas quote?

The discussion doesn't need to be only about the people we're discussing with, any written words can be part of the 'discussion'.

I remember a story about Boddhidharma when someone asked him how much merit that person had gained from building monuments and churches for the Buddha, 'no merit' said Boddhidharma. The point of the Gothic architecture was to build the greatest constructions to elicit feelings of humility on people. It's suppose to work by contrast, but one could say they are not humble at all, or not even great. It's there from the new testament where the first will be the last, the kingdom of god is for the poor in spirit. That doesn't stop people from building churches upon stories like that of Boddhidharma, and there may be some irony in David's talking about 'great philosophers' in this context, which may depend on whether David meant only to negate and deny or not.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Bobo wrote:David said that from the perspective of a great philosophers it is nothing. Would this perspective be something like the negation of things as in Aquinas quote?
The discussion doesn't need to be only about the people we're discussing with, any written words can be part of the 'discussion'.
Of course, but it's still unclear why that remark in some old forum discussion became so important to analyze. Perhaps as segue into some further exposition on Aquinas? But no, we don't get any of that but a single quote, without context, without source to examine. From the little I know from Aquinas he didn't mean exactly what your translation implies it does. It seems like another version of a very common theological argument for proving the existence of God. The problem is that the same argumentation could be used to argue against religion and worship, since God is being equaled with the total of existence. Perhaps Aquinas was just parroting Aristotle? It's up to you to generate a bit more substance around the issue.
Bobo
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Bobo »

The debate came up three or four times this year on this forum, and I don't think David's thought changed since then. Directly to the point, I think the perspective of a great philosopher David was talking about would be a perspective from 'timeless thinking', Aquinas theology may be considered arcane today the same way that the old paganism was an artifact of the past in Aquinas time. Unless we're quarreling about small matters any great perspective should regard the greatest matters and David's negation seems to come from a timely perspective where theology is disregarded instead of any timeless perspective. Or maybe David thinks that a great philosopher wouldn't engage in small timely thinking, but that shouldn't be the case as in the same debate he puts science and art as 'higher activities'.
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Russell Parr
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Russell Parr »

Bobo wrote:[...]David's negation seems to come from a timely perspective where theology is disregarded instead of any timeless perspective.
How so? Whether or not Aquinas ever tapped into timeless wisdom is itself a timeless truth, is it not?
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Bobo »

I mean here that David was using a scientific materialistic view of the world to deny theology and by consequence Aquinas thought, it is more timely than timeless by all means.

Whether or not Aquinas tapped into timeless wisdom is a timeless truth?

From what I gather what David is talking about, that a timeless truth is an analytical truth, from this perspective the answer would be no. And from Aquinas there's one eternal truth which is the intellect of god and things are true in comparison to it, the eternal truth is external but one to all truths, so yes and no.
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Russell Parr
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Russell Parr »

A timeless truth is a truth that isn't subject to changes in time; a truth that is always true.

I think David was using Aquinas as an example of someone who's work eventually becomes out-dated or old fashioned, while also perhaps suggesting that typical scientist types (like the ones he was discussing with) cling to their ideas in a similar way that theologians do. What does that have to do with scientific materialism?
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Bobo »

It's a perspective from which any random person could say that something like theology is nothing. David may be saying that from a greater philosopher's perspective a philosophers perspective is nothing as from a super greater philosopher's perspective a great philosophers perspective is nothing. Or David is saying that from his own perspective it is nothing, as anyone could say that from theirs perspective David's perspective is nothing.
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Russell Parr
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Russell Parr »

It's true that it's all relative, but David was referring to the difference in scope that the 'great philosopher' and scientists deal with. The great philosopher is concerned with the infinite nature of reality, while the dealings of scientists and theologians are infinitesimal in comparison because they deal with finites.
Pam Seeback
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Pam Seeback »

What David thought or believed about Aquinas is hearsay and cannot be discussed from the point of view of the absolute. To be or not to be, that is the question.
Bobo
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Bobo »

movingalways wrote:To be or not to be, that is the question.
That depends on what you bring to the question.
Russell wrote:The great philosopher is concerned with the infinite nature of reality, while the dealings of scientists and theologians are infinitesimal in comparison because they deal with finites.
The problem with infinite or a singularity in science is that it is an end point for any advancement, unless we have a complete understanding of things it means that we are not on the right track of understanding reality.
David Quinn wrote: You feel a need to paint me as a kind of insane, out-of-touch-with-reality, anti-scientific, mentally disturbed fellow. It is no different to the way that the medieval Christians used to paint the couragous scientists and philosphers who challenged the central tenets of the Church as completely immoral, devil-possessed monsters.
It seems that David really doesn't know what he was talking about as there were no such cases of scientists being persecuted for doing science by the catholic church in medieval times.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Bobo wrote:
David Quinn wrote: You feel a need to paint me as a kind of insane, out-of-touch-with-reality, anti-scientific, mentally disturbed fellow. It is no different to the way that the medieval Christians used to paint the couragous scientists and philosphers who challenged the central tenets of the Church as completely immoral, devil-possessed monsters.
It seems that David really doesn't know what he was talking about as there were no such cases of scientists being persecuted for doing science by the catholic church in medieval times.
Right, indeed not for doing the science or debate the theory itself like it's often being portrayed by popular history but for advocating, no even pushing very hard for it as absolute or "physical truth" thereby challenging various institutional authorities. The main conflict seems to have been the idea that you could derive "physical truths" of such a scale and universal validity through something else than the guidance of scripture and the papacy. This, in essence, was the struggle. And the same mindset is still here of course: discover and explore deep and stunning truths about the world and existence itself outside the guidance of academic expertise, social mores or authorative guidance? It's seen as completely bonkers at the very least (and well, that's often enough the case) and the moment it would get more traction, it probably would be forbidden in some sense as potentially being a too radicalizing ideology, that is, rejecting some of the core tenets of modern beliefs and the social deities.
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Bobo »

I don't know if sooner or latter it was established that natural knowledge couldn't be in contradiction with the scriptures as one were the creation of god and the other the revealed word, and contrary to what appears this may give a positive view towards the investigation of the natural world as the scriptures hold only until there's enough evidence of something contrary to it and even the dogmas are conventions. In this model the role of faith and dogma aids reason and logic in producing understanding of the world.

It seems that David wants to do away with faith and dogma and keep only reason and logic, maybe that's why he has a problem in understanding the first lines of Tao te ching - the tao that can be spoken is not the eternal tao - where the rational and what can be spoken commutes. David is not only painting himself in the light of Christ, it seems that his views of science is that it is a higher activity that is made of perspectives from which other views are nothing and made by geniuses out of nothing. It is the kind of view that is supposed to be at the core of what David is criticizing, so one can see how David's perspective is not really that distant than that of his opponents.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Bobo wrote:In this model the role of faith and dogma aids reason and logic in producing understanding of the world.
Sure, like what we believe, hope, envision or just how we feel under the skin all have a lot to do with the nature of our world and what and how we perceive. It's even possible to say that reason can grow out of all this as a natural consequence, when there's a certain "rationality" or in other words: balanced and proportional in relation to a context. It's tempting to think of it as inevitable if not upset or disturbed (aka "dukkha") -- but I won't claim that.
It seems that David wants to do away with faith and dogma and keep only reason and logic, maybe that's why he has a problem in understanding the first lines of Tao te ching - the tao that can be spoken is not the eternal tao - where the rational and what can be spoken commutes.
That's a weird statement to me as you completely seem to have missed the boat on that one with David as well as the first lines of the "Tao Te Ching". Which is no problem, it would be a major thing if you did. Anyway, if you would allow yourself to be a bit more observant, you'll notice David appeared to be often advocating that people should stop being irrational, distracted, blocking and opposing what he described as natural, spontaneous and wise.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Bobo wrote:In this model the role of faith and dogma aids reason and logic in producing understanding of the world.
Sure, like what we believe, hope, envision or just how we feel under the skin all have a lot to do with the nature of our world and what and how we perceive. It's even possible to say that reason can grow out of all this as a natural consequence, when there's a certain "rationality" or in other words: balanced and proportional in relation to a context. It's tempting to think of it as inevitable if not upset or disturbed (aka "dukkha") -- but I won't claim that.
It seems that David wants to do away with faith and dogma and keep only reason and logic, maybe that's why he has a problem in understanding the first lines of Tao te ching - the tao that can be spoken is not the eternal tao - where the rational and what can be spoken commutes.
That's a weird statement to me as you completely seem to have missed the boat on that one with David as well as the first lines of the "Tao Te Ching". Anyway, if you would allow yourself to be a bit more observant, you'll notice David appears to be often advocating that people should stop being irrational or distracted. Or cease actively internally blocking and opposing what he described as natural, spontaneous and wise. Which is not the same as doing away with faith or law. In some way you have it upside down! Don't you ever get dizzy that way?
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Bobo »

I am giving a materialistic reading of DQ and that is one of the things that follow from it. I think the matter of the discussion in case was whether the ultimate can be talked about, there are views contrary to the idea that the ultimate can be discussed, presented or thought, and David's position is that it can be written about and analysed. And here what can be put into paper meets with the position David was criticising, what DQ seems to be contending and is advocating for is that the epistemological foundations of science should be regarded to be ultimate, that from the heights of complex construction there are higher constructions with ultimate foundations which are the same constructions of now (like science and art) from a different even greater view.

PS. There's something wonky happening to the oldest posts of the forums.
PPS. The end is near people.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Bobo wrote:I am giving a materialistic reading of DQ and that is one of the things that follow from it.
Why would you even do that? It's just as much a distorted position to start with as some idealism or spiritualism. Causality is the reason you cannot correctly reason philosophically starting from any of those positions. Because why or how does matter arise? Or nuclear particles? Or life? If the answer lies hidden in the mathematical order, then the abstract mathematical world would be absolute reality here and not any world of material objects or measurable processes. But that mathematical universe is exactly not material at all! Philosophy of science cannot seem to move beyond this. In any case, as an abstract it might represent something deeper but one needs to define life like we experience it as something having more facets and issues than just material or spiritual ones. It's a matter of ordering through all of the facets, distinguishing truth from false, superficiality from principle and get to a balanced view where all is effortlessly connected without any contrived or forced knot to be made.
what DQ seems to be contending and is advocating for is that the epistemological foundations of science should be regarded to be ultimate, that from the heights of complex construction there are higher constructions with ultimate foundations which are the same constructions of now (like science and art) from a different even greater view.
The greater view is indeed important to develop but it's not a collection of "complex", "higher" or "ultimate" constructions. But for those minds aspiring to the ultimate, only a few dangerous, restless ones really, some challenges will have to be put forward. Especially all what's now the "ultimate" in science, art, poetry and "depth" in human understanding needs to be challenged with a bigger view. As a result one can support science and art and yet not believe anymore they, at best, express anything more than some twisted, distorted fraction of "reality". But who is big enough to even contain the wider view? And since nothing can "contain it", the answer should be clear. The infinite means the "unbound".
PS. There's something wonky happening to the oldest posts of the forums.
AFAIK they never have been right since they were salvaged from the old Ezboard at the time.
PPS. The end is near people.
As it always will be! The "end" is the horizon of our mental landscape after all. Beyond that the ships will keep falling off.
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Bobo »

The difference you make between abstract and material can be seen epistemological just as how we experience and understand things, that math is a language makes sense here in how we experience language sensorial things. The all connected may be as well called the one amorphous blob.

DQ is saying that from the heights of a view (like from a high building, an airplane, or the moon) things are nothing, and probably people that don't have this view should look at them up as something unreachable. What he was criticising was that thinking often is not taken to be ultimate enough. Weininger associated anihilationism with criminal dispositions, woman, matter, nothingness, he was talking about abstract ideal types to make it otherwise (material for example) would be criminal. This kind of negation seems different from the negation of all things and negation itself.

I think I saw one of the last posts vanishing, maybe it was the forums horizont line, let's say it is the end if nothing ever come out of it.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Bobo wrote:DQ is saying that from the heights of a view (like from a high building, an airplane, or the moon) things are nothing, and probably people that don't have this view should look at them up as something unreachable.
Sure, in such view everything is made small, controllable and easier to dismiss. A nice way to cope for a while.

But the philosopher does almost the reverse: his view encapsulates all other views and dives into your cells and nerve ends too. In that view, things turn out to be nothing, in the literal sense of non-existing. It's not even negating: it's pure seeing, understanding and knowing this is the case. It cannot be helped, desired or dismissed, it's not a view to choose out of many. Actually one can only arrive there after a lifetime of resisting that same view since it's the last thing we desire to know. And yet it was the philosopher's dream to find...
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Pam Seeback »

Diebert: But the philosopher does almost the reverse: his view encapsulates all other views and dives into your cells and nerve ends too. In that view, things turn out to be nothing, in the literal sense of non-existing. It's not even negating: it's pure seeing, understanding and knowing this is the case. It cannot be helped, desired or dismissed, it's not a view to choose out of many. Actually one can only arrive there after a lifetime of resisting that same view since it's the last thing we desire to know. And yet it was the philosopher's dream to find...
The truth, yeah, yeah...:-)

My argument for meaning is that the philosopher finds the truth of nothing inherently existing for a reason therefore this finding of truth means something to him or her. And that it is this meaning of finding truth that sustains him vis the vis the female/male, Earth/Heaven aspects of his or her consciousness.

Can you honestly say that pure seeing does not have meaning for you?
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

movingalways wrote:Can you honestly say that pure seeing does not have meaning for you?
Understanding meaning cannot have any further meaning. It's that way not like other kinds of seeing -- pure, undisturbed. Perhaps it should not be called seeing at all since all meaning forms out of connections. Even neutral observation remains a complex of connections, a sort of dialog, a language full of confusion.

Another way of saying this is that it becomes true because it's now seen in everything. Every breath one takes. It's become unavoidable.
Bobo
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Bobo »

Here's a quote from DQ's thread Greatest thing of all (which ironically sounds like the medieval way of demonstrating god)
You've obviously chosen to value the true, but limited, perception that "nothing is fundamentally important" and place it above all else. That's your choice. But as I say, from my point of view, it is a very limited and uninteresting insight. It's kindergarten knowledge. Everyone already knows that nothing is intrinsically of value. Big deal. It's no great achievement to know this. What is far more challenging is trying to find that hidden thread of absolute knowledge which takes into account the truth that "nothing is fundamentally important" and uses it as a stepping stone to even greater truths. That's what I call philosophy.
The view that "nothing is fundamentally important" checks from a materialistic stand point, the idea that there is an ultimate truth out there to be discovered by language out of human sentient experience also checks with scientistic goals, and that there's a hierarchy of views where there is "hidden thread of absolute knowledge" instead of open knowledge accessible to everyone checks with the worst of academic myths. It's like David's view is just an extremer form of what he is trying to criticize.

And here's a quote from Kevin Solway's review of a book which spouts similar views ( I don't know if it was prior to David's debate or not)
 
Upon reading “Wittgenstein reads Weininger”, a compilation of writings by various Western academic philosophers, I asked myself what impression it had left on my mind, and how I could express that. The answer immediately formed itself in my mind: “Nothing”.
 
There is no mistake. Indeed, from cover to cover, from one page to the next, and irrespective of author, the consistency is unmistakable. It is absolutely nothing. The theme is nothing, the execution is nothing, the intent, nothing. And there is absolutely nothing about the book that is not nothing.
 
For this reason “Wittgenstein reads Weininger” will only be of interest to the handful of Wittgenstein scholars, and then only grudgingly, since they already have more than enough of nothing to keep themselves occupied into the far future.
 
This all might sound unbelievable to some; for how could it be that such highly educated and handsomely paid professionals (who yet cry poor) conspire to produce a book that might as well have had all its pages left blank?
 
To illustrate how and why this happens, I will examine the actual “contents” of the book –  remembering all the while, please note, that any expression I use describe this book, such as “having contents”, must necessarily be poetic only, since there is in fact nothing to be described, and no real contents at all.
 
And since the nothingness in question is precisely that spoken of by Otto Weininger when he says that people can indeed truly be nothing, and enact nothing (specifically the criminal and the feminine-minded[1]), it will serve for us to examine this book from the perspective of Weininger’s view. More specifically, I will examine how Weininger’s ideas are represented in this book as a way of demonstrating the essential nothingness of the whole book, and by logical extension the essential nothingness of the whole of Western academic thought.
I find it strange for David and others to be against thinking, even if academic, the view that academic thinking is not real thinking is not unpopular at all, but without comparison to other producers of thinking in society any critique seems baseless after all the academia is where 'science' seems to come from. David's demise of Aquinas and other thinkers seems more of a gimmick than anything else.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Aquinas

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Perhaps there's indeed more to Aquinas but not as much to his work. More in his own quite sudden devaluation of it.

Chaff: Thomas Aquinas's Repudiation of His Opera omnia
  • "I cannot": Thomas Aquinas replied to an anxious inquiry about why he had abruptly ceased writing and dictating his Summa heologiae, "because everything that I have written seems to me chaffy." Reginald was stunned. Within the month Aquinas decided to visit a sister but upon arrival remained withdrawn and taciturn. "Why," asked his sister, "is he stupefied and hardly speaking to me?" Reginald explained the case: "From about the feast of St. Nicholas he has been in this state, and since then he has composed nothing." Reginald importuned Aquinas to tell him why he refused to write and why he was stunned. After many interrogations Aquinas answered, "I adjure you by the living almighty God, and by the faith you have in our order, and by charity that you strictly promise me you will never reveal in my lifetime what I tell you. Everything that I have written seems to me chaffy in respect to those things that I have seen and have been revealed to me."

    Aquinas's "everything" was voluminous: 101 works. He interrupted his Summa theologiae in the third part at the end of question ninety, "On the parts of penance in general," and his lectures on the psalms with fifty-four, an entreaty for salvation from enemies. A legend that on his deathbed he obliged monks of Fossanova with a commentary on the Song of Songs is apocryphal, for there is no extant manuscript or report of it. Aquinas never wrote another theological word. His resignation has become anecdotal. It recently introduced a review in The New York Times of Richard Rorty's philosophical papers: "At the end of his life, St. Thomas Aquinas had a heavenly vision that convinced him that his writings were 'as straw.'"
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