Secunda Secundae

Tradition:
Scholastic Christian
Author:
Thomas Aquinas
Form:
scholastic summa (Part II-II)
Approx. date:
c. 1272 CE

Pars II-II of the Summa Theologiae. 189 Quaestiones on the theological and cardinal virtues taken individually, plus the states of life. English from the Dominican Fathers (1920s); Latin from the Vivès edition (Paris 1871-1880).

Source context· Greco-Christian stream · Greco-Latin cultural age
Stream
Greco-Christian
Cultural age
Greco-Latin (4th post-Atlantean cultural age)
Composed
c. 1272 CE
Soul-faculty
Intellectual Soul

What this work carries

Pars II-II carries forward the patristic and monastic moral tradition by systematizing the theological virtues (faith, hope, charity) and cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance) as distinct ordered powers of the Christian soul. Aquinas integrates Aristotelian ethical analysis with biblical and Augustinian sources, treating each virtue in its act, object, opposing vices, and accompanying gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Language frame

High-scholastic Latin in the quaestio form: each question divided into articles proceeding by objections, sed contra, respondeo, and replies. The 189 quaestiones treat virtues individually rather than as a generic moral psychology, followed by states of life (active, contemplative, religious).

Steiner’s engagement

  • GA 108, 1908-03-14Steiner characterizes early scholasticism as a peculiar synthesis of Aristotelian thought and defends it against modern misreadings, noting that absorbing scholastic concepts requires the keen mind and fine distinction-making its critics typically lack.
  • GA 246, 1908-08-17Steiner describes the scholastic method as a technique of thought suitable for rationally processing empirical and sensory material, and for pressing a limited distance upward toward spiritual truth.
  • GA 176, 1917-09-11Steiner names Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) within the karma of Western intellectual development as the representative scholastic philosopher whose work conditions the subsequent shape of European thinking.
  • GA 213, 1922-07-09Steiner argues that modern scientific thinking is a straightforward continuation of scholastic thinking, however much its practitioners deny the lineage.
  • GA 213, 1922-07-15Steiner urges that contemporary scientific workers would do well to learn to think as sharply as the scholastics, while diagnosing the sundering of unified scholastic knowledge into modern spiritual crisis.
  • GA 220, 1923-01-27Steiner treats the scholastic realism/nominalism dispute as a still-living question concerning the reality of forms in which substance is coordinated.

Cross-tradition congruence

  • Aristotle, Nicomachean EthicsAquinas's treatment of the cardinal virtues as habitus ordering the rational and appetitive powers structurally extends Aristotle's analysis of moral and intellectual virtues, while adding the theological virtues as a distinct order presupposing revelation.
  • Augustine, De moribusThe ordering of charity (caritas) as the form of all virtues parallels Augustine's account of rightly ordered love, which Aquinas explicitly absorbs while reframing it in Aristotelian terms of habitus and end.

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