A report on Scholasticism and Aristotelianism

Thomas Aquinas, OP (Tommaso d'Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest, who was an immensely influential philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known within the scholastic tradition as the Doctor Angelicus, the Doctor Communis, and the Doctor Universalis.

Unlike many currents in the Catholic Church of the time, Thomas embraced several ideas put forward by Aristotle — whom he called "the Philosopher" — and attempted to synthesize Aristotelian philosophy with the principles of Christianity.

Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy within the Lyceum and the wider Aristotelian tradition.

He also influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies (800–1400) during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church.

Averroes was a strong proponent of Aristotelianism; he attempted to restore what he considered the original teachings of Aristotle and opposed the Neoplatonist tendencies of earlier Muslim thinkers, such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna.

This explanation was used up to the seventeenth century by the European Scholastics to account for Galileo's observations of spots on the moon's surface, until the Scholastics such as Antoine Goudin in 1668 conceded that the observation was more likely caused by mountains on the moon.

Albert's activity, however, was more philosophical than theological (see Scholasticism).

The philosophical works, occupying the first six and the last of the 21 volumes, are generally divided according to the Aristotelian scheme of the sciences, and consist of interpretations and condensations of Aristotle's relative works, with supplementary discussions upon contemporary topics, and occasional divergences from the opinions of the master.

Whereas the Organon of the Latin Scholastic tradition comprises only the above six works, its independent reception in the Arabic medieval world saw appended to this list of works Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics.

In the Enlightenment there was a revival of interest in logic as the basis of rational enquiry, and a number of texts, most successfully the Port-Royal Logic, polished Aristotelian term logic for pedagogy.

He often affirmed Aristotle's views with independent arguments, and largely followed Aristotelian terminology and metaphysics.

Aquinas shifted Scholasticism away from neoplatonism and towards Aristotle.