You are invited to attend our next monthly meeting to be held on Friday, August 14th from 4:00pm to 5:30pm.
We will be discussing “Beauty as the Wellspring of Human Action in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas” by D.C. Schindler from the Winter 2025 issue entitled “800 Years of Thomas Aquinas” (Volume 52.4).
Here is an excerpt from the Introduction to the issue:
In “Beauty as the Wellspring of Human Action in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas,” D.C. Schindler proposes a reconsideration of the role of beauty in the account of human action. For Aquinas, every action—not only of rational creatures but of all beings without exception—proceeds from love. Within this context, moral acts are specified by the fact that the love that governs them expresses the particular faculties of intellect and will, which direct the agent from within toward being in its intelligibility and goodness. It is the rational faculties of the human person, within the unity of body and soul, that render him receptively open to an encounter with reality that awakens love and directs him toward the good. Yet it is precisely with regard to the role of the good in human action that Schindler believes many proponents of Thomistic moral thought do not go far enough. Although Aquinas states that the good alone is the cause of love, he also holds that the good moves the appetite only insofar as it is apprehended, which is in fact the very definition of the beautiful. On this basis, Schindler argues that beauty should be understood as the origin of love and, in this sense, the source of action. Human action therefore begins not first in willing but in contemplation, and the freedom of the will presupposes a prior reception of reality that first moves man to love.
We will meet in the Kateri Room located at St. Michael’s Church, 240 Hemlock Street, Waterloo, Ontario. Use the east side parking lot and enter by the rear doors. Walk up the stairs. The Kateri Room is on your right before you enter the church proper.
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