Programme
Harm Goris
School of Catholic Theology, Tilburg University, the Netherlands
Thomas Aquinas on Tenses and the Workings of the Human Intellect
Aquinas thinks that not only human language (sentences) but also human knowledge (propositions) is irreducibly tensed. He offers a psychological reason for this tensedness. In its “second operation”, that is the formation of a proposition, the human intellect always “adds” a tense because it is dependent on concrete, historically determined phantasmata for its knowledge.
When it comes to propositions about future contingencies, Aquinas denies that these have a truth-value. He endorses what we would now call a dynamic view on time with an open future. However, such a view on time does not imply a denial of divine foreknowledge. After all, God’s knowledge is non-propositional and, hence, not-tensed. A counter-argument is that this also goes for angelic knowledge, yet foreknowledge of future contingencies is a divine prerogative. In Aquinas’ view, we not only have to take into account the divine mode of knowing but also the divine mode of being. God is eternal, while the angels are not.