Yes, the lovely thing about university is that we should have the capacity to think universally.
Research St. Thomas Aquinas. Consider what he has to say. Remember to define abstract concepts. This will allow you to truly understand major and minor ideas that comprise the literary canon. Also, remember to take a position. You must agree or disagree, proving "why" and "how."
Finally, you must draw linear conclusions by comparing what Aquinas was saying centuries ago to Meursault's character.
Mr. Whyte
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Thomas Aquinas believed that human beings are smart just has they are, but also that at one point or another they need divine help to step in. Natural revelation is what humans can do; which is think of the logical reason and do things all by themselves. Supernatural revelation is when God talks, shows you, or helps you do something that make you understand or do complex things. I agree with Aquinas' beliefs, I think that there are times when God steps in and gives human beings that knowledgement that they need. Compared to Meursault, he does not believe in anything beyond this earth. He never seems to talk to God, or think about him; Meursault is almost always talking to himself and thinking about other things rather than God. Even when he is in jail ready to die and the priest goes to his cell to try to get him to change his way of thinking, the priest just does not want Meursault to die without listening what God can do with him. Meursault did not want to hear about it and just wanted the priest to go away; which shows that he did not have faith that God could help him. Meursault did have a little hope, but he lost it fast because of his lack of faith; he just did not believe that God could help him in this either.
Wow! Excellent. Does Meursault require "hope"? Explain such a concept as hope to Meursault's character. Respectfully, what do you think Meursault would say to the idea of "divine help", as well as to "Supernatural Revelation"? These concepts are complicated, requiring considerate thought...Do you agree or disagree with the idea of someone like Meursault's character rejecting Aquinas' position?
Saint Thomas Aquinas was a priest and a Christian philosopher and theologian. His ideas are greatly influenced by the Roman Catholic Church. In Aquinas’s thinking, God is an important factor towards understanding the world. People have to develop a fellowship with God in order to discover truth through faith and reason. Although humans carry the ability to understand some things in life, they still need to obtain divine revelation in their search for the truth. According to Aquinas, there are natural revelation and supernatural revelation. Natural revelation is available to all human beings through human nature; they find truth through correct human reasoning. Supernatural revelation can be obtained through God and other prophets. With the supernatural revelation, humans can understand more complex things in life that they cannot understand by themselves; this also allow them to understand the world more as they uncover the truth through the reason and faith they learn from God. I support Aquinas’s philosophy because I believe that having a relationship with God or any religious prophets is crucial in obtaining the truth and happiness in life. When you live your life by God teachings, you tend to understand more about life and gain more knowledge that will aid you in making right decisions. Unlike Aquinas, Meursault does not believe in God or any other religious prophets. Meursault defies God and does not conform to his teachings because he believes that man needs to find his own values and purpose in life without religious moralities. At the end of The Stranger he refuses to pray to God because he knows that his fate will not be change by conforming to God teachings; he will have to face death just like everyone else in the world. To Meursault, there is no such thing as supernatural revelation because he sees religion as one of society moralities imposed on people. God and religion only give false hope, which prevented people from breaking away from the morals they learned from society because they are afraid of being seen as a stranger.
St. Thomas Aquinas is an essential literary figure due to his ideas on natural theology and philosophy. In his works, Aquinas states that rational thinking and the understanding of nature are tools to provide a greater perception of God. In order to have a deeper comprehension of God, one must have reason in order to understand God’s divine nature. With reasoning, people are able to understand the truth that God exists. This realization, or “natural revelation” allows humans to comprehend the truth through their own logic, but with the help from God, or “supernatural revelation” people can perceive ambiguous divinations from God. I agree with Aquinas’ theories because humans do have the capacity to understand certain truths by using their own reasoning, but God does step in to help humans understand certain incomprehensible ideas. In order to have faith in God, reason is necessary in order to accept certain intangible ideas. Aquinas’ ideas however, contrast with Meursault’s for Aquinas believes that God provides reason and structure for a society. Meursault rejects the idea of God when he refuses to listen to the chaplain’s insistence to believe in a religion. Meursault does not believe that God can bring rational order into a society because he only values his physical surroundings. He is not able to accept God because he only focuses on substances that are tangible and that are important to him. While Meursault believes that society’s standards are irrational, Aquinas values the reasoning that God has provided for society.
Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy has several points but the central theme of it all is God and knowledge. Aquinas believed that knowledge could be gained in two ways. One way is through the reason, otherwise known as natural revelation, which is when a person learns something, be it a value, virtue, or truth, through human nature. The other means by which someone can learn is through a divine revelation in which God or a medium for God’s will allows the person in question to gain insight on a matter. He believed that with the powers of reason and faith granted to us by nature and divine powers that we would be able to achieve the ultimate goal which is a greater understanding of God. Although Aquinas has some good points in his philosophy the overall thing is flawed due to the many irrational arguments that he uses and the inconsistencies they create. Throughout the entirety of his philosophy the same message is repeated that through faith and reason one will better understand God. This statement is the grounds upon which his philosophy is based on and it is very flawed. Reason and faith are incredibly contradicting abstract ideas and are virtually always detrimental to an argument when used jointly to justify the main point. This is the equivalence of trying to prove God’s existence through a math formula or telling people to believe a scientific theory because God said it must be. In matters of faith and reason each aspect only works within its own limits. This very contradictive basis for his argument then distorts many of his other arguments making them irrational as well. This can be seen in how he attempts to rationalize God’s existence. Overall Aquinas’s adamant dedication to his beliefs left him blind to the truth as well as the world around him. In Meursault’s life, Aquinas and his beliefs can be seen in the chaplain who stubbornly tries to impose onto Meursault that God is the sole power and that in order have Faith and Reason one most acknowledge him. Meursault being a true absurdist however spurns faith, hope, and the Deacon. Then through the death of god and all the morals he represents, Meursault finally accepts his death upon which true, pure knowledge is available to him, lacking the imperfection of society’s twisted values.
Apologies for the grammar mistakes. It seems that I forgot to spell check.
St. Thomas Aquinas believed that man needs divine help to succeed in life. Even though god does help man that did not mean that man could not think for himself; they just need the right direction to follow. Thomas Aquinas believed that truth was from faith and reason. This was because with faith you need that outside help that could be the bible or any religious scripture that can lead a person to right path, while with reason a person is “born with it” so it can cause a more natural effect on people. Aquinas was a priest in the Catholic Church which makes him a very religious person. He involves God with nature and science, this enables Aquinas to put these three things to together for humans to be able to comprehend that they need help from an outside source, which does not include other humans. Furthermore, he makes sure to involve these, so humans see the importance on how to view spiritual things and make them see that they intertwine; if one is challenged so are the rest. I do agree with Aquinas, humans are capable of reasoning and making their own decisions. Even though they might need help on the way spiritually they eventually find a path and take it. Meursault is the opposite of Aquinas; while Aquinas believes in god and takes the time to reason and try to understand the whole concept of having faith, Meursault does not take a religious stand nor he tries to involve himself in any religion. Meursault lives life the way he thinks is correct, he does not try to follow what others have done or what they expect of him, he is just there to be himself.
St. Thomas Aquinas is a theologian and philosopher. He explains that the relationship between man and God are essential in realizing what the purpose of life is. God has a plan, an order. He knows that people will reach their end. God understands the acts of man. Man does not simply have "accidental" actions. St. Thomas Aquinas supports freedom. he believes that man has a motivation for everything. People need guidance for God. In my opinion, humans do not have need to have a motivation for everything they do. There can be reasons to why things are done. This relates to Meusault because he is accused of having no emotions for his mother's death. He explains to the audience that he cannot see how the courtroom does not understand that there is no motivation in his murder. It just happens. St. Thomas Aquinas seems to believe in hope. I think that hope is always needed in life even if the end is the same for everyone. However, hope does not always need to be from God. The hope to live will only interfere with the acceptance of reality. Meusault deomnstrates how he understands that life, even with hope, ends.
Saint Thomas Aquinas is an Italian Catholic Priest, philosopher and theologian who believed that the only way a person can gain true knowledge is through the divine help of God. Aquinas believed that people alone can come to reasoning, or "natural revelation", through their own human nature, but it takes faith, and the search of God to gain "super natural revelation". When both are combined, a person can gain complete knowledge and divine knowledge that is given from God. I completely agree with Aquinas, reason is naturally born in every human being to make their own choices in life and to make judgement, but without faith one lacks the inner spiritual satisfaction that can only be given by God. One cannot go without the other for they are complimentary ideas that need one another to completely come to a full grasp of reasoning. One can have reasoning of something, but to completely understand it and comprehend it, one must look towards the divine in order to know the answer to unanswered questions and thoughts to confirm such reasoning. Meursault, on the other hand, does not believe in super natural revelation for his mentality is strictly set in natural revelation. His own reasoning is that he believes in no God whatsoever, and completely ignores the fulfillment of faith, which is why he becomes upset when the chaplain insists on trying to fill him with super natural reasoning. Faith has never existed in him. The only type of reasoning he lives by is human nature. Meursault is completely clueless of faith which is why he states about the judge in the courtroom that it is "hard to follow his reasoning" (68). Meursault cannot comprehend faith for he has never felt it. That is the reason why he only conforms to his own natural revelation, and in the end of the novel decides to keep believeing in his own reason to not believe in God. I disagree with Meursault's decision to go against Aquina's ideas. One needs both natural and super natural revelations to fully understand and grasp life as a whole. One needs reason to make decisions, but one needs the inner spiritual fulfillment to be complete. The choice that Meursault picked in not believing in Aquina's ideas is in someway contradicting. In the scene where he is at the beach and shoots the Arab, it is very symbolic for Meursault's supernatural faith trying to enter his life. The sun and heat keep bothering him, which symbolize God and faith. God is the light of life and the completement of reason that is lacking in the life of Meursault and is trying to enter into his life. That is why Meursault states that he is trying to "overcome the sun", which means that he pushes faith away from him. He does not want to believe in it. The Arab symbolizes natural revelation and Meursault himself kills the Arab which symbolizes that with the lack of faith, reason cannot exist. That is the reason why Meursault contradicts himself. He pushes away faith, but yet he kills reason, which supports Aquina's idea that the human being needs both super natural and natural revelations to have complete truth.
St. Thomas Aquinas believes in two forms of revelations, natural and supernatural. Natural revelations are acquired by reasoning through the humans while supernatural is acquired by faith by prophets of God. I do not entirely agree with St. Thomas Aquinas. I do not believe that enlightment or an answer can be acquired by a faith, only to a certain extent, but by reasoning and, coincidental, chance. Faith, such as a Bible or a Koran, can give a person a limited guide to their question but never a complete answer and neither can a prophet or a spiritual occurrence happen to give a complete answer to a question. Spiritual occurrences seem like hallucinations. Meursault in The Stranger does not acquire his answer to the universe by a spiritual occurrence, except the fact that he was yelling at the top of his lungs at the Chaplin, but arguing against faith. He was able to acquire his answer without faith. Society tries continually to have Meursault look to God for answers and “forgiveness” so he can live a happy ending but Meursault never looks to God for answers, only the prosecutor does. Yet Meursault does not even look for natural revelations, reasoning, to answer his questions either. He does not question many things in life but only sees things happen by chance. As a result of his chance of receiving an enlightment in dispute with the Chaplin, Meusault is able to easily end his life with serenity
Saint Thomas Aquina, an Italian Catholic priest in the Dominican Order, believed “that for the knowledge of any truth whatsoever man needs Divine help, that the intellect may be moved by God to its act." This means that for something to make sense, the individual must have faith and seek a transecendental power, or what Greeks called “Godlike.” However, he also believed in natural relevation, which means the truth all people have naturally in their genes.His philosophy influenced the Roman Chatolic Church as he believed God to eb three interrelated persond: the son, the father,a dn holy spirit. He further believed that humans have four natural cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude. In tehother hand, a person obtains three theological virtues faith, hope, and charity from God. I do believe we learn that there is a natural force that pushes a person to act a certain way and have those virtues. Yet, I do not believe it is God that gives us our reason and intellectual being. I believe that we learn to think. In desperate times we become vulnerable and try to find answers by talking to a supreme force like God, but in reality all we are doing is searching within ourselves the answer. I think that our past influences the decisions we take and our reflection comes within us not from a Godlike force. Hope and intellectual reasoning is created by nature, our genes, while we confuse it tinking it is an enlightment by God.
St. Thomas Aquinas was a priest and Church doctor. Aquinas believed in God and always had reasons to. Aquinas had five reasons to believe in God, one was motion; this is because there are things in motion in nature, but no person is there moving those things, so it had to be God. Secondly, Aquinas believed in the idea of cause and effect, for example the clock. The clock did not come into existence by itself; someone had to create the clock, and that person was the clockmaker, but that clockmaker did not just create himself, which means that someone had to make the human, and for Aquinas, that was God. Thirdly, Aquinas believed in the transitory nature, where there are things that exist one time and then another time they don’t. Fourth, Aquinas believed that justice and goodness in man had to come from some place, which was God. Lastly, Aquinas believed that the way nature works is because of God. Through all of this, we see that Aquinas believed that God gave us our reason and ability to think. These ideas do sound convincing for a person who is fully devoted to church, but I have to disagree with this, because if God gave us reason and the ability to think, we would all be the same. I believe that through the experiences that we have in life is where we get our ability to reason and think. This is what makes each and every one of us different, unique.
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