What is the main difference between Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle?

Well, for one thing, one of them is a Christian.

I totally have Homework feelings about this question…

If this is a homework question, we’ll be happy to point you in the right direction to discover the answer for yourself, but we won’t do the work for you. So, is this a homework question?

One of em kinda looked like Zeus. The other one looks like a Padre.
My vote’s on Zeus.

This is not a homework question. I am wondering if anyone can get into the core of the issue besides the obvious Christian difference. Thomas is often criticized of being just a follower of Aristotle who did nothing more than Christianize him. But Thomists often argue that Thomas brought much more than just Aristotelian thought into the philosophical field. That his understanding on Existence was much more than just the ‘unmoved mover.’ I am in love with Philosophy, the very opposite of someone scavenging for someone to think for me.

It’s like comparing oranges and apples and saying they’re both round.

You already stated in your question that they are 1600 years apart, and pdworkin also noted one of them is a Christian. Keeping that in mind, you can find a series of philosophical differences. Aristotle was great for his time, but today he would be considered a stubborn and narrow-minded bigot who believed people could not change, and slavery was ok because some people were simply born better than others. He was an elitist who believed only certain people should be educated, and that there is logic and rationality behind everything (but no soul). Don’t get me wrong, he was amazing for his time. But Christianity is supposed to be about equality, and the ability to make yourself a better person (even if it is merely through prayer). And it had a message of Love which Aristotle ignored.

Aristotle was a scientist who taught us how to think. Thomas Aquinas was a man of God who taught us how to feel.

Thanks Jack, I appreciate your sincere and thoughtful response. Though I must say, Aquinas did keep some of the same Aristotelian stances on women/slavery, and Catholicism would never consider Aristotelian ideas narrow-minded today (though on those more subjective, non-dogmatic ideas, the Church has in fact changed its approach/thought).

I think Thomas would be a bit in horror to see himself being framed as a ‘feel’ guy. He taught the difference between reason and feeling, and always went for reason, just like Aristotle. But a Reason that went with Faith, and an aim for the Godhead and the Supernatural, and yes – Charity, which is not a feeling – it is the most important Virtue and the main attribute of the Godhead. He is in fact credited as the man who balanced faith and reason in the world.

Remember, he called Aristotle the Philosopher. While considered pagan, the Church, thanks greatly to Aquinas, embraced much of Aristotle’s philosophy and still does to this day (see the Pope’s Regensburg speech as an example of Church’s defense on its adoption of Greek thought).

I am interested in more of the metaphysical subtleties of their differences. Theologically speaking, Aquinas, through Supernatural Revelation, had an insight that Aristotle could not have. But how does this translate philosophically? Aquinas used Aristotelian concepts and did the translation, thus surpassing the Philosopher in substance, but staying faithful to his methodology. I would love to see this expounded in more detail.

Love the diversity of answers that I’m getting though, nice!

Well ancient Greeks were not atheists. The fact that they were not Christians does not mean they were not spiritual too, and in fact among the many gods they worshipped they had a temple for the “Unknown God”, the one that could possibly be the True One God, in case they had got it all wrong. It was on that rock (just below the Acropolis) where St.Paul converted the Athenians, using precicely that idea about the unknown God.

Aristotle and his peers believed in the metaphysical, and in a world parallel to ours where souls and ideas lived. It is a bit hard to understand, and even harder to explain, but in any case this was far from the modern atheist view of “dust to dust”. Aristotle was not so much interested in how we got here, or the creationist vs evolutionary debate that is central in theology nowadays. At his time it was pretty clear that the Titans came first, then the Gods, then humans. And it didn’t matter that much.

It’s just a completely different context between the two men, so it’s quite hard to make comparisons.

Aristotle did not attribute his philosophy to God. Thomas Aquinas did. Thomas Aquinas is the reason that Roman Catholic priests can not marry. He is responsible for most of the Roman Catholic Dogma about the sins of sex.