THE NATURAL ASPIRATION OF HUMAN BEING TO KNOWLEDGE AND THE VIRTUE OF HUMILITY IN THOMAS AQUINAS

Abstract

The text intends to investigate a possible connection between the human desire for knowledge and the virtue of humility in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. The first section analyzes the way Aquinas receives and develops the Aristotelian principle that all men have a natural desire for knowledge, presenting the openness of the human soul to the Transcendentals as well as to God as its ultimate and. The second section examines the scheme of cognitive grades highlighting the relations between believing and knowing. The third and last section reviews the treatise of temperance in the Summa theologiae focusing on the virtue of humility as a kind of cowcatcher that deflects obstacles both to faith and to science.