Query:

In the First Part of the Summa theologiae, Thomas Aquinas cites Aristotle to the effect that the intellect is like “a tablet on which nothing is written."  That’s in the sed contra, his restatement of the traditional view.  But then in his own response, he agrees:  Man's potential knowledge is transformed into actual knowledge "through the action of sensible objects on his senses," so that the soul "has no innate species" (no innate knowledge of forms).

WHAT?  My whole academic life, I have been hearing that Locke rejected the innate ideas in which his predecessors supposedly believed, calling our minds a tabula rasa or blank slate.  I must be missing something, because surely those critics had read this passage in Aquinas.  Would you be so kind as to enlighten me as to why Locke is so different from Aquinas here?

Reply:

Yes, I had the same reaction when I was first studying Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas!  However, the notion of innate knowledge does not come from those two luminaries – I don’t know why people say this.  And really, the notion is crazy.  If there were such a thing as innate knowledge, then even the baby freshly popped from the womb would have it.  Fancy a newborn thinking to himself, “I must never do anyone undue harm -- whatever doing is, whatever harm is, and whatever it is to be undue”!

St. Thomas certainly believes in natural knowledge.  He says so in the very section you quote.  Of course he doesn’t think all our knowledge is natural, or else we would never forget anything, and even a blind person would know what color is.  Now here’s the kicker.  According to him, not even natural knowledge is innate.  Even natural knowledge depends, in a way, on sense experience.  Someone who had never had sense experience wouldn’t know anything.

Let’s think about this.  There are certain things that a person who has reached the age of reason naturally knows, but he isn’t born with this knowledge.  For example, an infant doesn’t innately know that two things equal to a third thing are equal to each other.  But when the proposition is taught to a twelve-year-old who understands the meanings of such terms as “equal,” he can’t help but see that it is true.  The knowledge is per se nota, “known in itself.”

Does he know it just because someone has taught it to him?  No.  Your mother and father taught you the Golden Rule, but you didn’t believe it just because they said it was true; you believed them because when they said it, you could see for yourself that it was true.  What they did by their teaching was call your attention to this truth, and what they said made sense to you.

Even per se nota knowledge depends on sensory experience, because if you had never perceived any things which were equal, you wouldn’t understand what equality is, and so you wouldn’t grasp that two things equal to a third thing are equal to each other.  Yet in another sense such knowledge transcends sensory experience, because even though you haven’t seen all equal things, you know that the proposition “two things equal to a third thing are equal to each other” must be true – even of the equal things you haven’t seen!

According to St. Thomas, the reason your mind can know such a thing is that the universal forms of things are implicit in sense experience, and the rational mind extracts them.  A bird, which is not rational, knows only particulars:  This worm, this branch, this nest.  In fact, since it doesn’t possess the concepts of worm as such, branch as such, or nest as such, even that way of putting it falsifies the bird’s knowledge.  All it really knows is this, this, this!  By contrast, when you see a worm, you recognize it as an individual instance of worm.  This is stupendous.

Our power to grasp universal forms is what makes it possible for us to formulate predications:  To say, for example, that man is a rational animal, or that undue harm must not be done.  When a proposition is per se nota, the mind recognizes that the predication expressing it has to be true, just from the meanings of the terms it employs.  The subject, man, contains the meaning of the predicate, rational animal, so of course “man is a rational animal” is true.  The subject, undue harm, contains the meaning of the predicate, something that must not be done, so of course “undue harm must not be done” is true.  By contrast, the proposition “the table is made of brass” is not per se nota, because the subject, table, does not contain the meaning of the predicate, made of brass.  The table might be made of wood, plastic, dark matter, pixie dust, or something else.

Now Locke doesn’t differ from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas merely because he believes that the mind learns from experience.  Locke differs from them because he and the other empiricists radicalize the idea, trying to make sense of it without recourse to real forms or essences.

Aristotle and St. Thomas would have considered that impossible.  And I think it is. 

You might think of it this way.  The mind of a bird is a blank slate, and the mind of a human being is also a blank slate.  But what can be written on the bird and the human being slates differs radically, and so does the way it is written there.  The mind of a bird takes in only the particulars of a thing; the mind of a rational being takes in its form or essence.

And just for that reason, the slate is not blank in the peculiar sense that some people give to the expression tabula rasa, for not just anything can be written on it – and some things can’t help but be written on it.  There are some things that a rational being of the age of reason can’t not know, and cannot disbelieve even if he tries.

Related:

Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law

What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

Query:

In my country, lower caste Hindus feel inferior in relation to Brahmins, so that if a Brahmin were to rape the daughter of a lower caste Hindu, this would be considered a privilege.  Doesn’t this cast doubt on the idea that conscience is available to all humans?

It seems that humans can believe anything.  Whatever is put into them by external authority, they seem to consider true.  What is going on?  Is their will truly not free?

Reply:

One would think that since humans often both commit and comply with wrongdoing, conscience must be very weak.  On the contrary, our deepest moral knowledge is incredibly strong, but we can go to great lengths in the attempt to escape it. 

To begin with the perpetration of wrong:  The most interesting thing is not that we can tell ourselves that wrongdoing is right, but that we have to tell ourselves:  Our consciences will not simply overlook what we have done.  Moreover, the only way we can make wrong look right to ourselves is to take genuine moral truths and misapply them.  I like to say that rationalization is the homage paid by sin to guilty knowledge.

For example, it is impossible not to be ignorant of the wrong of theft, but I might rationalize the deed by telling myself that the person from whom I stole did not deserve what he had.  I reason that what might look like an act of stealing was really an act of restorative justice.  Similarly, we can’t not know that we must never take innocent human life, but the abortionist tries to convince himself that the unborn child wasn’t innocent, wasn’t human, or wasn’t really alive.  Such excuses don’t erase the awareness of wrong; rather they suppress it by misapplication.

Can the awareness of profound wrong be suppressed to the point of extinction?  I don’t think so.  For example, some abortionists who have written about their grisly trade admit that they have nightmares of their victims accusing them.  This wouldn’t happen unless at some level, they knew that their lies were lies.  Moreover, even in the case of the most hardened perpetrator of wrong, there can be such a thing as repentance and change of heart.  Repentance is difficult, of course, because once we have done wrong, we “dig in” to evade the accusations of conscience – something that would hardly be necessary if conscience did not exist.  But if there were no free will, repentance would not be merely difficult.  It would be impossible.

So far I have been speaking of those who perpetrate wrong, but conscience can also be distorted in the case of those who unjustly suffer it.  Conviction of fault arouses in us an impulse to atone, to pay a price.  Unfortunately, this impulse can arise not only when the fault is real, but also when it is imaginary.  For example, a child who has been sexually abused may feel ashamed about the experience, telling himself that he was to blame for what happened to him.  If he does, then the abuse may seem to him as though it were a deserved punishment.  Or if people are constantly treated as inferiors, as in the cases you describe, they may come to think that they really are inferiors, and even that their inferiority is their fault.  In this case they may believe that they deserve to be treated badly.  Again, what drives submission to injustice is the misapplication of a real moral truth – in this case, the principle of desert.  

When people have been abused or mistreated, they often find it difficult to believe that they are made in the image of a loving God.  Yet if only they can believe it, they rejoice to learn it.  Moreover, although they may need help to understand that the things for which they blamed themselves were not really their fault, they experience this discovery as a liberation.  So again, free will is vindicated – but its vindication comes through struggle and God’s grace.

Perhaps these reflections help to explain what is going on when people seem to acquiesce in their oppression.

Related:

"The Revenge of Conscience"

Query:

Professor, does the fact that children raised by wolves cannot function in human society show that there is no human nature?

Reply:

There are said to have been a few cases of this sort of thing, but no, you are working with a flawed definition of “nature.”  As you are using the term, our nature is merely our innate behavior, fixed patterns of action which do not have to be learned.  If you use the term that way, then just because there are so few such patterns – just because we might learn to act all sorts of ways, or fail to learn to act in the ways expected -- it seems that we haven’t any nature.

However, our nature includes much more than innate behavior.  It is better to think of it as a bundle of natural potentialities, distinct to human beings, which must unfold if we are to attain our full development and live well.  In a properly human environment, these potentialities can fully unfold, but in a subhuman environment, they can’t.  That is why children raised by wolves cannot function in human society.

If there were no human nature, then children would flourish equally whether they grew up among humans, wolves, or ants.  In ant society, they would thrive as though ants; in wolf society, as though wolves; and in human society, as humans.  What we find is that in an ant society, they can’t function at all.  In a wolf society, they can function but not thrive, for although they may be able, say, to catch rabbits, natural human potentialities such as language, rational inference, and the desire for truth and beauty have no chance to develop in them.  Only in a human society can they flourish. 

Another way to think of this is that the natural habitat for human beings includes not only physical features of the environment, such as food, oxygen, dry land, and a certain range of temperature, but also social features of the environment, such as parents, friendship, conversation, and worship.  Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas rightly say that man is “by nature” a social and political animal – “social” meaning that we live together and cooperate, “political” meaning that we provide for justice and take thought for the common good.  When they say this, their claim isn’t that we form our communities by instinct, or even that we cannot live without them.  Rather they mean that these communities are our natural habitat, so that without them, we cannot live well.  A good life for wolves is not a good life for us.

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.   And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves.”

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!

“May they prosper who love you!

 Peace be within your walls,

and security within your towers!”

 For my brethren and companions’ sake

I will say, “Peace be within you!”

 For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,

I will seek your good.

-- Genesis 12:1-3; Psalm 122:6-9

Query:

Ever since one of my professors found out I didn’t share his woke opinions, I’ve been having a hard time sharing my interests with them.  Suffice it to say, those who preach tolerance can be quite intolerant!

Anyway, I would like to have a research plan for studying culture that they can’t dismiss as “racist” (because I believe in being colorblind instead of practicing reverse discrimination), “homophobic” (because I don’t believe all forms of sexual behavior are equivalent), “xenophobic” (because I don’t believe every way of life is equally good), or offensive in some other way, just because I don’t march to their drum.

Reply:

I get this question often.  What can you do?

First, don’t expect to be able to share your interests with each of your professors.  Be discrete.  Learn with whom you can talk freely, with whom you can’t, who will respect your confidences, and who will gossip.  This applies to conversations with fellow students, too.

Second, choose your mentors carefully.  This is important not only for those already in a graduate program, like you, but also for those who are just choosing one; they shouldn’t go just by ranking or reputation, but should research the faculty in the program first.  Having to defend yourself is normal and good for you, and it isn’t necessary that all of your professors be sympathetic to your point of view.  However, you need to find at least one or two of the faculty who will be sufficiently likeminded to help you with your projects instead of tearing you down.  Naturally, you should expect to be criticized for laziness or sloppy reasoning!  But you shouldn’t have to do daily battle just because you don’t hold woke views.

Third, although you should try to get along with everyone, you should reconcile yourself to the fact that with some people this is impossible.  Avoid them.  When you have to deal with them, find things to talk about that interest them, not you, and do your work so impeccably that they find it difficult to criticize.  But of course this is good advice even if you aren’t dealing with hostile critics!

Fourth, remember that although you must never be complicit with what is unconscionable, there are all sorts of interesting questions about race, family, and culture which don’t even raise issues about reverse discrimination, sexual disorder, or the evaluation of different ways of life.  If – as I suspect – you don’t want to study one of the safe questions, but one which is inescapably risky, more power to you!  As G.K. Chesterton said, only living things can go against the stream.  But find ways to frame your question which intrigue even those whose views are radically different than yours.  To do this, you will have to understand them as well as you possibly can.

Fifth, plan for the future.  One of the most brilliant graduate students I’ve taught framed his research question in the way I’ve just urged, and did his work so well that he disarmed his critics, whose reasons for being interested in his project were quite different than his own.  He used his doctoral research to lay the groundwork ahead of time for his next project after getting his PhD.  It was much more controversial – but by that time, he had strengthened his position.

Finally, have fun.  You’re still a young man.  Young men like to fight.  Learn which things are worth fighting for, and fight prudently:  Not with your fists, but with your mind.