Great Minds - Aquinas' Summa Theologica: The Thomist Synthesis and its Political and Social Content

You can find Aquinas work here amzn.to/3AllHDd
This is the official KZbin channel of Dr. Michael Sugrue.
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Dr. Michael Sugrue earned his BA at the University of Chicago and PhD at Columbia University.

[@jackodwyer1156]

I love the way he says “now…” before moving on with his thoughts

[@johnsimmons6637]

I know it makes me laugh. My mom does it

[@jeanlobrot]

The Sugrue Now is a hallmark

[@itsjefferson]

Have you heard his pronunciation of “oxymoron”? It’s delightful: ox-im-er-on. (See his lecture on Neitzsche.)

[@renataabreu2020]

This is a very Irish thing.. I wonder if he has Irish parents 😅

[@santaanna700]

I kid you not, I read this comment at exactly 2:48 and almost peed my pants 😂.

[@RobertWard3000]

Rest in peace, Dr. Sugrue.

[@monterreycontreras3007]

The fluency of all his lectures are beyond beautiful, you’ll be missed Dr Michel Sugrue

[@kiaa11]

Midst of this time of absurd post modernity it’s a blessing that we are able to listen to these lectures. We should not take it for granted. Thank you Professor Sugrue and God bless you!

[@dacedebeer2697]

We gotta take advantage of this sort of thing while we can lol. God knows what kind of wild dystopia we're heading into.

[@AJO87]

@@dacedebeer2697 😄

[@markusoreos.233]

@@dacedebeer2697 Sir, you're hysterical.

[@wanshitong5101]

@@markusoreos.233 For real.

[@wanshitong5101]

Absurd, yet potent and beautiful.

[@havefunbesafe]

He’s the GOAT, let’s face it. Delivery and context second to none.

[@arizonacolour8793]

Hi, my name is None

[@starhaze3593]

St. Thomas Aquinas... one of the top figures on Philosophy's Mount Rushmore up there with Socrates and other intellectual greats. Great lecture as always Dr. Sugrue, thank you very much for sharing. If philosophy is the love of wisdom, these lectures are food for the moral soul.

[@hutja727]

I am so glad he's made a channel o m g

[@AndrielleHillis]

Am I the only one listening to these as a way of calming myself?

[@The_Lord_Of_Confusion]

no

[@steft7903]

way better then watching Netflix lol

[@johnsimmons6637]

Absolutely not

[@JosephusAurelius]

Nope. It is productive, provides a healthy outlet against the malaise of modern life and intellectually stimulates brains like ours.

[@user-lz6dm5lk9y]

No, Philosophy always has been how I find escape from so much of everyday life that seems so pointless and irritating and useless. Prof. Sugrue is a very learned scholar. I wish I could have known him personally.

[@rainmaker5758]

This professor has mastered his craft .

[@Johnny_smathers]

What’s crazy is his width of knowledge

[@observingabsurdity215]

Dr. Sugrue you are a truly gifted orator. I want to thank you, for making this great material freely accessible, and for making it even more enjoyable with your rhythmic intonation as a lecturer

[@orion777ben]

All his lectures are marvels of clarity, information and inspiration. He will long be remembered.

[@user-lz6dm5lk9y]

I agree. I had no idea he passed. How long ago was this?

[@nikolajunkovic7894]

@@user-lz6dm5lk9y January 16th

[@charliesloan6059]

The way Dr. Sugrue delivers information should be its own field of study. He's basically a Mentat, from Dune.

[@ok-kk3ic]

These lectures are euphoric!

[@kaidoloveboat1591]

Man, there are so many of these I didn't know about. I'm pumped to hear Professor Sugrue talk about Aquinas!

[@JWBaSiTo]

This is certainly one of the best channels on KZbin.

[@TheGringoSalado]

A Life Well Lived! Peace be with you brother 🙏🙏🙏

[@BrandonStewartCS]

Rad. Just finished studying Cicero, learning is gnarly, bro. I dig it

[@dr.michaelsugrue]

Congratulations. You have potential because you are teachable. Watch a movie called "The Alpinist". Every great writer is a mountain range of major and minor books. Your first climbs should be with a group, at least until you develop your skills without getting killed or daunted. Nothing is free, all serious study is work, not play, but it is superior to any other ecstasy. It requires discipline and focus but if you apply yourself and you are willing to sacrifice other admittedly fine things in pursuit of of knowledge, you can become a one percenter, start climbing solo and start leading groups of would be climbers. The autonomous freedom to climb solo offers uncommon vistas. The price is your life and this is a very good deal.

[@JRLeeman]

It was such a good idea for Dr Sugrue to upload all of these lectures - I was really captivated by his lecture on Marcus Aurelius since I watched it several years ago, as was really interested to find more talks by such a charismatic speaker. Thanks - from a Science Graduate trying to explore more of the classics and philosophy in general.

[@clive2296]

Wow! Impressive class. Thank you for putting it on the internet.

[@christopherlord3441]

Really very good. But I should point out to interested parties that it is not true that Albertus Magnus and Aquinas were the only sources for Aristotle. Boethius in the 6th century, a Christian and a Roman who served as a court official to an Ostrogothic king after the fall of Rome, had learned Greek and set himself to translate all of Plato and Aristotle into Latin in service of the Church. This is a fundamental fact of European intellectual history, since his translations 1. powered the neo-Platonism that drove Christian learning for the next 500 years and 2. with translations of Aristotle's Logic gave the learned the tools for the Scholastic logic that was one of the few bright spots in an age of mysticism and superstition.

[@coreymcenaney1269]

Thank you for making these lectures public

[@goldenoriolesilverbirch8220]

I am not well educated, religious or particularly intelligent, but I have watched a number of Profssor Surgue's videos and find them fascinating.

[@alexanderdavis5884]

Same

[@jeanfrancoiskolyonivogui9204]

Professor Sugrue is our Saint Thomas in that he is exceptionally brilliant in communicating knowledge!

[@rickm2061]

To those with faith, no explanation is necessary, and for those without, no explanation is possible. -Thomas Aquinas

[@dr.michaelsugrue]

Kiss Fide et Ratio goodbye. Welcome to Calvin and Kierkegaard.

[@rickm2061]

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Dr. Sugrue….I have a deep yearning and will never stop to understand. To Calvin and Kierkegaard we trudge. May God bless you and keep you safe.

[@ChopinIsMyBestFriend]

Dr. Sugrue is a real gift to the world. I can’t imagine how many more people than myself have gotten profound knowledge all over the world from this one series of lectures. Who knows the impact of he has had.

[@boysonthm1462]

RIP Dr Michael sugrue

[@wisco_simple]

Thank you for giving the best lectures I have ever heard in my life. I cannot express the appreciation I have for you furthering the Intelligence of the masses thank you

[@tunespacetime]

I just walk around with Dr Sugrue lecturing in the background all day. Life’s a long song … especially in the west …

[@alexanderdavis5884]

I like that line, what do you have in mind when you say along song?

[@tunespacetime]

@@alexanderdavis5884 it's an Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) lyric. I quote it here because the tradition of Western thought has a rather linear, songlike quality to it.. with distinct movements, parts, sections, crescendos, moments, etc... identity, drama... in the east the tradition resembles their music more, lacking those two specific qualities of identity and drama... its a drone, a feeling, a truth known and exemplified here and there by the best of their nameless philosophers, adapted and readapted in various ways, but largely drawn from a single source/notion.. in the west you can follow the trail of lampposts in the dark, lit by specific individuals in our intellectual journey out of the Stone Age. it's got a melody. "but the tune ends too soon for us all..."

[@thescoobymike]

I love this channel and I'm glad you recorded and upload these lectures. Very easy to understand and you've made these ideas very palatable.

[@margaretmanfredo8410]

Awesome!

[@lerouxvanderhoven548]

Prof Sugrue, you are a story teller. That is what sets you apart from your contemporaries.

[@jmulcahy7]

Excellent intro to Aquinas and the effort to meld faith and reason. A very minor slip at about the 15:20 mark...Professor cites Aristotle as "defanging" the ancient writings; he clearly meant to say Aquinas (IMHO!)

[@TheEdudo]

yes, the subsecuent phrases clears that. Is Sad he is gone now, he leave these lectures for us to follow the path

[@jonathanflugstad6425]

Thank you so much for these lectures! Incredibly interesting and a real gift!

[@ABRARKHANISM]

This series along with the podcast Philosophize This, have such excellent lectures that make complex idea easy to grasp and contemplate for laymen like myself. Thank you!

[@fungdark8270]

My grandfather was a devout Christian, a Calvinist Presbyterian to boot. I suspect he may have liked Kierkegaard, but I remember him talking about Aquinas, if only because it was relevant to a daily devotional we did over breakfast

[@richardmayer541]

Always impressive - lucid, articulate and entertaining...

[@firstal3799]

He explains it really well

[@albertoscalici8235]

Lovely lecture, as always. Thanks!

[@autumnbrooke1721]

Thank you so much for your channel. This was excellent as always

[@dy6697]

Great content as always !!

[@pl8154]

Reading the Summa is a life-long adventure and great treasure to the life of the mind. I can attest to the fact that Scholasticism is thick and demanding, but with serious commitment and gradual increase in one's intellectual endurance, and reducing or completely abandoning TV, it becomes a great source of enrichment and brings the reader closer to God by knowing Him better. Read Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Josephus/Old and New Testament first, at least, or you'll be at a great disadvantage and by the time you've finished studying these authors you are ready to take on Aquinas without becoming completely whelmed and drained. I like this guy, very bright and great energy, however he glosses and generalizes and omits a lot of really important aspects of Aquinas, such as Man as a Substantial Unity, his place on the spectrum of creation being the only creature dwelling in both material and immaterial realms at once, he also mentions nothing about Aquinas' psychology and the faculties of the soul. In fact, I'm pretty sure this guy hasn't actually read/studied the Summa himself, not all of it, as his take seems second-hand, what he learned from someone else in class, rather than actually having studied it himself. That he states that the most important part of the Summa are the chapters/questions on Law is disappointing, as the whole work is priceless and relevant to contemporary philosophy. Aquinas is worth every bit of energy you have to spend. If you ever feel like you should be doing something worth doing to better yourself and the world around you, pick up the Summa for an hour or so.

[@oscarpaez123]

Haha bro give him a break, it was only 46 minutes

[@cinnamon4605]

Really?

[@johnsimmons6637]

Augustine moved me. Thomas more informed and enlightened

[@pl8154]

@@oscarpaez123 Thanks for your intelligent comment. I'm sure everyone is deeply enriched now. However, it took him only a few seconds of that 46 minutes to make a clear statement of Primary value, that is clearly wrong. Stating that the chapters of the Summa regarding Law is most important is a value statement, that I and likely many other thinking people will disagree with. Those chapters are very good and valuable, but valuing them over the chapters of the essence of Man, his psychology and his relations with God, not to mention the nature of God Himself, is clearly an error.

[@Greg-n]

​@@pl8154Hey man, I agree with everything you said and I believe the late Sugrue would as well - go through his last uploads and find the video simply titled "Aquinas" - Sugrue was a traditional Catholic who speaks exceptionally highly of the angelic doctor in his older age. I'll need to rewatch the video, but the gist is that Aquinas is the intellectual summit; He describes the Summa Theologica as an intricate root system that you can keep following...

[@dandi4017]

Thanks for including theology in your lecture series

[@Protolamna]

In Catholic school we learned about the 'five-fold method of medieval exegesis'. It took me a minute to realize you were referring to the same concept lol 😂

[@gentilenation1117]

Very well put, Thank you, Doctor.

[@RobbyGood1]

I would love to buy these lectures! Amazing work. :)

[@franciskm4144]

Excellent 🙏

[@thomassimmons1950]

Absolutely Brilliant!

[@user-gl9jd3ih8h]

Greetings from Australia 🦘 WOW! Fantastic and brilliant lecture Michael (minus the gulping of water). You create a thirst (sorry for the pun) for knowledge. I'm hooked. Thank you very much Michael. Greatly appreciated.

[@rexbanner7256]

It's so incredibly funny because I imagined Michael sogrew doing a lecture about Thomas Aquinas I then typed it in to KZbin and just like magic here it is it was almost as though as meant to be I'm so glad that you Michael so grew are talking about Thomas Aquinas you do it in such a damn good way ww thank you

[@andyayala9119]

Nectar to the ears and mind

[@OldMovieRob]

This has been very interesting to follow. I'm still a novice with philosophy and Dr. Sugrue really does a decent job explaining things here in a way that's easy to follow. Also, an obscure aside, but the professor looks like a weird hybrid of R.C. Sproul and Norm Macdonald.

[@asoulist4829]

Dr. Sugrue has very good Hermeneutics. He knows his limts, but he knows his abilities as well.

[@ryans3001]

Thank You!

[@davidfost5777]

I'm always looking for new interesting lectures on Psychology/Philosophy, please let me know if you guys have any recommendations, would be highly appreciated

[@Purkinje90]

Rick Roderick’s lectures are also quite good

[@kaidoloveboat1591]

Yeah, the Islamic thinkers are absolutely worth studying. Aquinas received much insight from Averroes and Al-Ghazali

[@bigman3274]

@@kevincarbone6831 dunno if you knew this, but not everyone follows your one true god and there are plenty who consider your ideas as "satanic."

[@bigman3274]

@@kevincarbone6831 besides that, why would a person's religion lessen the impact they have in other areas of study? i can guarantee plato wasn't a christian. islamic thinkers have an extremely rich history of philosophy, science, and math (golden age of islam)

[@willmercury]

@@kevincarbone6831 Grow up, and get an epistemology consistent with the millennium in which you're living.

[@NYCZ31]

Aquinas deepest philosophical work is his treatise “On the Power of God.” To get an idea of how the book goes, when he deals with the question of whether God can create something from nothing, Aquinas lists no less than 17 reasons why, according to philosophical principles, God cannot create something from nothing. But Aquinas states the contrary and then goes on to address each of the 17 objections. And that’s just one question; each of the 10 books contains several questions treated to this extent.

[@h.astley2113]

mike is on fire in this one

[@MrMarktrumble]

Thank you

[@ossekop5748]

Did Dr. Sugrue use the methods from Quintilian or Cicero in becoming such a great speaker ?

[@wifi-toaster]

Merely time travelers who studied Sugrue

[@paulsolon6229]

Well spoken lecturer, accomplished w o notes. Wow On Aquinas, the boor.

[@nhatnamphan9694]

1. Cicero... nature law independent 2. Scholasticism call realism 3. Divine law Grateful ❤

[@davidstrubeck8195]

(Coffee sip) Now..

[@alfredhitchcock45]

Moderate realism Nominalism vs Realism Intellectual destroyer - Nietzsche Intellectually creative - Plato

[@nicholasfevelo3041]

Epic!

[@jason8434]

Bernard Lonergan was a Jesuit at Boston College. His scholarly project was to recover or redeem Aquinas for the modern age, so that Aquinas is not lost to us as a caricature of the high middle ages. Lonergan located Aquinas's significance in critical realism as a philosophical method. By critical realism meaning an approach to reality and knowledge that starts with one's reality as one experiences it, and proceeding from there. In this way (as I understand it), one sticks close to empirical reality while thinking critically. This is where Lonergan thought Aquinas remains relevant as a philosopher even today, as a model of critical realism. Critical realism is of course different from Socratic dialectical idealism.

[@dr.michaelsugrue]

My problem with neo-Thomism is the same one I have with neo-Aristotelianism. Aristotle's physics and metaphysics require substance, causality and teleology among other things, and the current state of physics is incompatible with these assumptions. See Physics II:3, and Metaphysics V:2. If you study physics currently, you will find accounts of matter but none of "substance", because it is not included in the Standard Model. This will be a glitch in transubstantiation because neither bread and wine nor anything else is understood to be physically a literal substance. In addition, teleology usually does not make it much past high school science, with frog guts explained in terms of purpose, but by the time astronomy is undertaken, teleological questions become comic [Is Neptune spinning in the proper direction or is it malfunctioning?] Quantum entanglement may well undermine our ideas about cause and effect as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle did.

[@vgrof2315]

I really was impressed with this presentation, even though I disagree with Aquinas' reasoning, except that I had to listen to parts multiple times because he speaks so rapidly. Couldn't he have slowed down just a bit?

[@jaymorris9526]

RIP King

[@cheri238]

🙏❤️

[@ColonelMuppet]

No comment on Petrarch? was it not he that led the charge into the discovery of old texts?

[@alfredhitchcock45]

Aristotle - concrete things - syllogistic thinking - encyclopedism

[@nightoftheworld]

19:38 *Platonic forms = problem of universals* “Within the tradition of scholastic logic and within the tradition of Platonic idealism, which is so important in the development of early Christianity, there is always the problem of the _forms._ Or as it’s rephrased within the logic of scholasticism-the _problem of universals.”_

[@thescoobymike]

"Ten minutes of reading it and you'll probably close the book and find a commentary that's easier to get through" lol that's me

[@angusdesire]

James I of GREAT BRITAIN, VII of Scotland was a Protestant.

[@philipcorr8225]

Why did Martin Luther burn the works of Aquinas?

[@user-vg7zv5us5r]

40:43 but if there is a case of Mt.10:21 and it was a self-defence?

[@Len124]

I wonder if this mini-Renaissance Dr. Sugrue describes, which would prefigure the full intellectual bloom to come in the 15 Century, might have been successful and less of a false-start or slow-burn if it weren't for its bad timing with respect to the century ahead; as opposed to Classical thinkers like Aristotle being better integrated into Middle Ages' worldview by figures like Aquinas. Conversely, I wonder if the Renaissance could have suffered the same fate without certain unusually favourable pre-conditions. Obviously that has to be the case to some degree, but I thinking of specific events that support these counterfactuals. Perhaps we'd be taught about a Renaissance that began in the 12th-13th Centuries followed by an early transition to Modernity if the intelligentsia, and society in general, weren't obliterated over the 14th Century by the beginning of the Little Ice Age, the resulting series of famines, and the Black Death. It becomes far harder to maintain a robust intellectual class when half the population disappears and institutions crumble, resulting in the gains achieved in the preceding generations being all but wiped out, delaying the project for over a century. Then, once some semblance of a society is rebuilt, the idea of replacing the old feudal assumptions about how a society should be run is easier to imagine. The fact that serfs died in such huge numbers meant that they had more leverage against the aristocracy due to the surplus of work and the fact that attaching them to a single piece of land was no longer viable economically. This contrasts sharply with the relatively stable and sturdy system of Aquinas' time.

[@Courtney-wx9bu]

20:51 Exactly how I got HERE... HA

[@christopherwalonzo6218]

Can someone remake these without the mount clicks?

[@eapooda]

It was sad that Michael strawmanned Aquinas's First Way, Fourth Way, and Fifth Way. The First way is not about an accidentially ordered series of causation where each member possesses the causality of the series in itself, and it is most certainly not like the dominos analogy because with dominos the previous members in the causation of pushing who have already fell over no longer have to exist for the causal efficacy to still affect later members. Rather we should use Aquinas given example with the person moving his hand so to move the stick so to move a stone. Here if the agent no longer existed at any moment---the hand would not move and so the stick and the stone would not move. The later members causality is dependent on the earlier member's causality at every moment not just the first moment. The Fifth way is not an argument from design in the way some have believed it to be...mostly misunderstanding it to be either a version of the watchmaker arg or the fine tuning arg. Rather Aquinas points out that things in nature have particular ends that they "desire" to reach--which is its own perfection (but as we will see also God). An acorn has an end and it is to become a Tree. A Tree has an end and it is to come to full stature and reproduce things of its likeness. Now things that are non-intentional can not move towards an end by itself, rather they need a directive a being who posses intentionality knowledge and intelligence and this being whom all natural things are directed towards their end is called God.

[@diegofreire4767]

I wish that he would have done a better breakdown of the five point for god !

[@drbonesshow1]

Had the Mob (i.e., Mafia) been around back then the response would have been : How would you like it done?

[@christinemartin63]

If God truly exists, it has a lot to answer for. Amongst many (many!) more serious things, one is the time and great effort spent by towering intellects, such as Aquinas, in rationalizing its existence in tome after tome through multiple generations. (If ANY lecture could have made effective use of references to Procrustes, it was this one. Yet none appeared.) I best move on to the next lecture.

[@user-vg7zv5us5r]

42:56 aka Categorical Imperative

[@williammcenaney1331]

Dr. Sugrue may not enjoy St. Thomas's prose. But about 62 popes endorsed Thomism.

[@markusjnx3294]

gracias Pedro Sánchez

[@armir_ko]

44:52 This bulwark is being stripped away bit by bit all in the name of the supposed benefit of the collective. Breaking the current mask and lockdown mandates is akin to committing a thoughtcrime. We've decided that the individual could potentially be a walking disease. Thanks for uploading all these lectures! I'm listening to them whenever I'm doing something passive: washing the dishes, working out, or just being.

[@gamemage4750]

The individual is a walking disease in a plague. It is this denial of a benefit of the collective, which comes from a yielding of personal sovereignty for the benefit of a larger society (which itself is a benefit to the individual through positive liberty) which is the cause of this pandemic being so out-of-control. You don’t seem to realize what Orwell was getting at with thoughtcrime and if you’re going to pretend you aren’t free to speculate about the efficacy of the mandates, voice your opinion, hell even suggest that the virus escaped from a chinese lab (which I firmly believe and am not executed or ostracized for), then you are living in an oppressive fantasy of your own making. Think of it this way; of course you could keep your lights on during the Blitz in London because you don’t want the government to “strip away your individuality”… and be individually responsible for the death of your neighbors. Thinking you can’t be a carrier of the virus and ergo a link in the causal chain of someone’s death is intellectually dishonest and it shows a profound narcissism. Your individuality is not a sufficient reason to justify doing what you want, in the face of preventable suffering. If you want to do what you want, leave the city and live alone. You’ll find nobody cares about lockdowns and masks when it doesn’t genuinely affect general wellbeing.

[@seeleyization]

He's very sure about a lot of things he can't be sure about.

[@markandrewgonzales6291]

Thomas Aquinas 😇

[@youcontrolfreakssuckit3784]

At 28:51 he should’ve said like the vesica piscis , Venn diagrams are the occurrence of Archimedes complex of a circle and Jesus’ acknowledgement of the 153. Blue circle red circle creates the Purple Heart 💜 in the middle which we all can attain through the sacrifice of our hearts and minds to the gifts of faith and reason. () 153 is the denomination of the mind and the heart manifest in the flesh. He could’ve enlighten the externally important frame work with a hint of the muscle that drove this integration of Classical Greek natural reasoning and the scriptures. It was right there at his finger tips and he side stepped it. 😮. He missed it again at 29:28. Greeks prove the existence of a trinity through the vesica piscis put the dot in the center of the 2 interlocking identical radi circles you will see 2 dimensions become three. The one in the center of the two become 3 dimensional, mysterious but true. The camera man is awesome, so much pacing so centered in the camera 😂😅 summa camera focus 😊

[@FAMA-18]

It’s safe to say, that St. Thomas Aquinas’ is the second intelligent mind after Jesus Christ. The natural law is the imperfection law to the law of perfection which is the first cause.

[@ykim2337]

YES

[@drbonesshow1]

I'm not a rock, thus I won't be rocking the boat.

[@joe.h-7322]

32:00

[@arunprasad2849]

23:30 the 'dog definition' , COME WHEN YOU CALL THEM ; LOL

[@alfredhitchcock45]

Ciceronian Idea of Natural Law More synthetic than creative/inventive Islamic and Jewish Aristotelianism - Maimonides St Albert the Great Avaros - Islamic Aristotelian Renaissance - re-infusion of Greco-Roman learning Orthodox tradition Profane vs Sacred Domain of Knowledge

[@MerakiTheTribe]

18:20

[@thwooop9994]

I wish i could hear Dr. Sugrue extrapolate the ideas of natural law to the expansion and synthesis of "wokeism" in Western Culture today

[@dandogzbutt1518]

24:04

[@dacedebeer2697]

Dogs are domesticated wolves. I have no idea what wolves are.

[@williammuk886]

24:49

[@williammuk886]

16:40