Notula tomistica : gli Analitici secondi di Aristotele nel Commento di Tommaso d’Aquino Super Boethium De Trinitate (q. 2, art. 2)

In his commentary on Boethius’ De Trinitate Thomas Aquinas cites explicitly Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. He uses this work in order to establish, in the relevant section of his commentary (quaest. II, art. 2), the criteria by which one can verify the main features of a science, namely its genus, its principles and the attributes per se of the genus. What is at stake is the scientific status of the knowledge of divine things, which fall within the domain of faith. Nonetheless Thomas needs, along with the Posterior Analytics, to draw also on a neoplatonic concept, that is the concept of ‘participation’, in order to explain how human knowledge can receive the truths of faith from God and use them as apodictic principles in a deductive pattern. Such a combination of Aristotelian criteria and a neoplatonic notion allows Thomas to argue that in fact there is a positive science of the contents of faith.