The first in a series of talks about Thomas Aquinas's natural law and political theory. This one discusses Aquinas's background and development of his ideas.
I wonder about the idea that Aristotle didn't see the world as having a beginning: didn't his conception of everything being in motion, striving towards its telos, and, through that, his idea of the Unmoved Mover, lend itself to Aquinas' cosmological argument? I could see the idea of the Unmoved Mover not having a beginning--after all, it moved itself and everything else--and, sure, it seems as though the Unmoved Mover wasn't necessarily an entity, and so couldn't be be entirely synonymous with God, but given that the Mover (Aquinas' First Cause) moved/caused everything else in the physical world, doesn't it stand that, for Aristotle, the world DID have a beginning?
I wonder about the idea that Aristotle didn't see the world as having a beginning: didn't his conception of everything being in motion, striving towards its telos, and, through that, his idea of the Unmoved Mover, lend itself to Aquinas' cosmological argument? I could see the idea of the Unmoved Mover not having a beginning--after all, it moved itself and everything else--and, sure, it seems as though the Unmoved Mover wasn't necessarily an entity, and so couldn't be be entirely synonymous with God, but given that the Mover (Aquinas' First Cause) moved/caused everything else in the physical world, doesn't it stand that, for Aristotle, the world DID have a beginning?
Oh wow. That is very interesting. Thank you for sending that to me.