page_title: Thomism
section_title: Anthropology
hierarchical_section_title: Thomism / Anthropology
context_page_description: Thomism is the philosophical school that arose as a legacy of the work and thought of Thomas Aquinas, philosopher, theologian, and Doctor of the Church. In philosophy, Aquinas' disputed questions and commentaries on Aristotle are perhaps his best-known works.
  In theology, his Summa Theologica is amongst the most influential documents in medieval theology and continues to be the central point of reference for the philosophy and theology of the Catholic Church. In the 1914 encyclical Doctoris Angelici Pope Pius X cautioned that the teachings of the Church cannot be understood without the basic philosophical underpinnings of Aquinas' major theses:
  The capital theses in the philosophy of St. Thomas are not to be placed in the category of opinions capable of being debated one way or another, but are to be considered as the foundations upon which the whole science of natural and divine things is based; if such principles are once removed or in any way impaired, it must necessarily follow that students of the sacred sciences will ultimately fail to perceive so much as the meaning of the words in which the dogmas of divine revelation are proposed by the magistracy of the Church.
context_section_description: In addition to agreeing with the Aristotelian definition of man as "the rational animal," Aquinas also held various other beliefs about the substance of man. For instance, as the essence (nature) of all men are the same, and the definition of being is "an essence that exists," humans that are real therefore only differ by their specific qualities. More generally speaking, all beings of the same genus have the same essence, and so long as they exist, only differ by accidents and substantial form.
caption: Summa Theologiæ, Pars secunda, prima pars. (copy by Peter Schöffer, 1471)
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