INTRODUCTION

Part IV presents the scholastic evolution of theories of knowing and remembering, culminating in the magisterial teaching of Thomas Aquinas. Most of the texts analysed are not easily accessible and they have rarely been expounded in English, especially with the purpose of tracing the changes in theories of knowing and remembering and their consequences for scholastic attitudes to the past: how men recall it and why they do so. The Arabic and Jewish analyses of the soul, only meagrely presented here, are part of an immensely impressive intellectual endeavour, far more so than many Christian Latin attempts simply to understand them and produce a synthesis acceptable to Christian orthodoxy. Until Aquinas.

It is frequently asserted that St Thomas Aquinas is an extraordinary medieval mind and indeed later centuries, notably the nineteenth, determined his as the voice of Catholic orthodoxy. But after confronting the writings of his numerous learned thirteenth-century forebears and contemporaries, a reader faced with his Summa cannot help being overwhelmed by his clarity, his comprehensive knowledge of all contemporary debates, and for the most part by his inspired, largely optimistic sympathy for men and their capacities. It is probably not enough simply to say this. One has to read the other scholastics first, not only to understand why Aquinas chooses to argue the ways he does, but also to see the difference. So much has been written on Aquinas that the sections in this book can only attempt a poor beginning.