Was he just a poor man's Aristotle

?

23 Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God!” 24 This amazed them. But Jesus said again, “Dear children, it is very hard[b] to enter the Kingdom of God. 25 In fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”

Yeah, there is nothing Patristic about his theology. It's just Aristotle with some forced logic on a number of things to justify conclusions he arrived at beforehand.

...

If you take his stuff completely out of historical context, as plebs seem to do with every piece of lit or phil, then yes, you can reduce his thinking to that.

But you would be missing the point entirely.

Aquinas = poor mans Aristotle
Augustine = poor mans Plotinus
Paul = poor man's Plato
Jesus = poor mans Socrates

You're not thinking fourth dimensionally.
>Socrates = prototype of Jesus

There was no valid philosophical thought before Christ. If you disagree you look like pic lol.

They both saw the forms my man.

Are you shitting me.

The idea is that Aquinas extended Aristotle's system while also purifying by removing shit that was plain wrong which aristotle inherited from pagan thought.
You can't come on here and say "is he a poor man's Aristotle," that's how birdbrain college students think.
Seriously, the man knew Aristotle's writing better than your tiny dick knows your right hand and even better than aristotle himself in many ways, and yet you play with the thought that he's just "Aristotle for religious people."
You know why you do that? Because you're autistic and you don't understand human beings, you see historical people as some kind of conceptual being, totally incomparable to yourself, when in reality those people wandering the desert in 300AD knew more about life and were more contemporary in their thinking than you will ever be.

Nice argument, dorknado

>Nothing patristic
>Refers to Augustine all the time

>There was no valid philosophical thought before Christ.

This was the only time where there was a philosophical thought.

>dorknado

To quote Alasdair MacIntyre, the most important and influential aristotelian of the 20th century, Aquinas is a better aristotelian than Aristotle.

>Alasdair MacIntyre

What's with the MacIntyre meme that's been going around recently. He's as pedestrian as they come. There isn't a single original idea in the entire text of After Virtue.

He was certainly not a 'poor man's' aristotelean. Going to universitas was reserved for the richies back in scholastic times.

Also, as his been mentioned, probably a better aristotelean than Aristotle himself. Yeah, scholastic thought is associated with these formulaic logical puzzles centered around abstract theological questions. But Thomas transcended that in some ways and was actually smarter than he even gave himself credit for.

I'm assuming some of the people around here took intro ethics courses and discovered him. I majored in philosophy and learned about MacIntyre in my very first semester. He's a massive bore.

I don't know what pedestrian is supposed to mean, he's absolutely amazing to read. His criticism of human rights and the dialectic of virtue are both great.
And originality is somehow important in philosophy? He can be as derivative as they come (he isn't), but still shed light on a lot of things.
No, I'm a law student in a post Kelsen Europe. Philosophy has been completely removed from law. MacIntyre's brilliance is exactly in recognizing and articulating the emotivism which rules law in its entirety.
And being a bore is unimportant and subjective.