The Study Of Philosophy Is Not

From Aquinas's Commentary on Aristotle's De Caelo (On the Heavens), Book I, Lecture 22, No. 228, where he sets out his purpose in teaching philosophy. Aquinas drew a sharp distinction between the history of ideas and the pursuit of truth: reading the philosophers is valuable only insofar as it advances understanding of reality itself. The principle shaped his entire method — in the Summa Theologica he engages with Aristotle, Plato, and earlier Christian thinkers not as authorities to be cited uncritically but as contributors to an ongoing inquiry into truth.