Early Religious Effect on Economics

Aristotle

Aristotle was born in Stagira in northern Greece in 384 B.C. In his early years he was a student of Plato's Academy and later became a teacher there. After Plato's death in 347 BC, Aristotle moved to Assos to council Hermias. While there he met and married Hermias niece and adopted daughter, Pythias. Hermias was captured and executed in 345 BC, which took Aristotle to Pella where he tutored the young Alexander the Great. In 335 Alexander became king and Aristotle returned to Athens. There he established his own school, Lyceum. Upon the death of Alexander in 323 B.C., Aristotle retired to a family estate in Euboea. He died there the following year. (7)

Aristotle divided the sciences into theoretical, practical, and productive sciences. Theoretical science included metaphysics, or "first philosophy," physics, and mathematics. The practical sciences are ethics and politics, and the productive sciences aim to make things. He considers logic the prerequisite to all philosophy. The Prior Analytics contains his theory of syllogism or deduction, and works out all combinations of premises and conclusions. The Posterior Analytics contains the logic of science. (7) Different from his teacher Plato, Aristotle defines sciences as separate categories with different premises.

Aristotle's thought, in his work Physics, that there is a Prime Mover of things in the universe. He argues that since movement is eternal there can be no first or last change. Change therefore must be eternal. This Prime Mover is not of this earth and therefore controls everything as well as eternal life. In the Metaphysics he calls this Prime Mover "God," whose only activity is pure thought. It must think of itself only, since it is the most excellent of all things, and "its thinking is a thinking about thinking."(7)

Nicomachean Ethics is probably the best book written on the subject of ethics. In the book Aristotle divides virtues into two categories, morals and intellectual virtues. Morals are acquired by practice and wanting to do so, the goodness or badness of the human character. Intellectual virtue presumes moral virtue. Aristotle divided this into practical and theoretical wisdom. The practical side is concerned with proper actions, the theoretical is concerned with intuitive knowledge of concepts and truth and what follows from them, and is the highest virtue one can have.

After the decline of Rome, Aristotle's works were lost in the west. In the 13th, century Saint Thomas Aquinas found in it a philosophical foundation for Christian thought. In the early stages of Aquinas's use of Aristotle's work he was questioned by the Catholic Church official's because of the outlook of the world being so materialistic. Finally the work of Aquinas was accepted, and the later philosophy of scholasticism continued the philosophical tradition based on Aquinas's adaptation of Aristotelian thought. (7)

Aristotle's philosophy has been preserved in that it has helped shaped modern language and common sense. His doctrine of the Prime Mover as final cause played an important role in theology. Until the 20th century, logic meant Aristotle's logic. Until the Renaissance, and even later, astronomers and poets alike admired his concept of the universe. (7) Until Charles Darwin modified the doctrine of the changelessness of species in the 19th century the science of Zoology rested solely on Aristotle's work.

St Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas was born in 1225 in Roccasecca in the ancient Kingdom of Sicily. At about the age of 5 he was placed, by his parents, in the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino. After many years at the monastery he traveled to the University of Naples where he lived for some time. He became involved with the Dominican order and against the violent disapproving of his family; he became a Dominican friar in 1244. (8) From 1245-1252 he studied under the German Scholastic philosopher Albertus Magnus, then went to Paris to teach at the Dominican studium generale. Because Aquinas was heavyset and taciturn, his fellow novices called him Dumb Ox, but Albertus Magnus is said to have predicted that "this ox will one day fill the world with his bellowing." (8)

Aquinas was ordained a priest about 1250, and began to teach at the University of Paris in 1252. (8) His first writings, primarily summaries of his lectures at the university, appeared two years later. His first major work was Scripta Super Libros Sententiarum (Writings on the Books of the Sentences, 1256), which consisted of explanations of an influential work concerning the sacraments of the church, known as the Sententiarum Libri Quatuor (Four Books of Sentences), by the Italian theologian Peter Lombard. In 1256 Aquinas was awarded a doctorate in theology and appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Paris. Pope Alexander IV summoned him to Rome in 1259, where he acted as adviser and lecturer to the papal court. In 1274 Thomas fell ill and died in the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova on March 7. (8)

Aquinas was influenced by the writings of Aristotle, the Muslim Aristotelians Averroлs and Avicenna, and the Jewish philosopher Maimonides. (8) Unlike many theologians, he welcomed the Latin translation of Aristotle's complete writings. Aquinas meant to take Aristotle's philosophical arguments to their deepest level, not just to fit them into the existing theological framework. He agreed that some truths, such as the mystery of the incarnation, can be known only through revelation, and others, such as the composition of material things, only through experience; still others, such as the existence of God, are known through both equally. All knowledge, Aquinas held, originates in sensation, but sense data can be made intelligible only by the action of the intellect, which elevates thought toward the apprehension of such immaterial realities as the human soul, the angels, and God. (8) To reach the understanding of the truths of religious aspects, revelation is required.

Aquinas' deductive reasoning of the divisions of Law dominates his political philosophy. Law is rational; it is for the common good of a communion of people. The Eternal Law or the law that God gives us presides over all other laws. It is presented to humans as Natural Law. In contrast stands Positive Law that may sometimes reinforce Natural Law as practical additions to make the good life easier or to safeguard public order. He departed from the traditional Augustinian view that civil power was a remedy against our antisocial appetites, and revived Aristotle's idea of the State meeting the essential demands of human nature. Human legislation should