Thomism

High school (ages 12+)
Philosophy & Big Questions

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/thomism

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the primary philosopher?Saint Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274)
2. What is the key philosophical influence?Aristotle
3. What is Thomism and who made it?Thomism is the philosophy and theology of Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar from the 1200s, who tried to combine faith and reason.
4. How did Thomas Aquinas use Aristotle?He studied Aristotle’s ideas and showed that they could help explain Christian beliefs, making faith and reason work together.

Epistemology: The branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge.
Metaphysics: The branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.
Act and Potency: Aristotelian concepts describing the relationship between what something is and what it has the potential to become.
Abstraction: The process of forming general ideas or concepts from specific instances.