Today we’re going to talk about a question that’s probably been on your mind from the moment you found this blog. And that is “what is Thomistic”? What does this word mean? So I’m going to explain that today.

Thomistic is a reference to St. Thomas Aquinas, who was a Catholic philosopher from the 1200s. Believe it or not, his philosophy is actually very relevant nowadays, because he asked questions about the broader and ultimate things in life. His greatest achievement is a book he wrote called The Summa Theologiae, which was a summary of Catholic doctrine but done in such a way that it reconciled Faith and reason. It also didn’t just summarise Catholic doctrine, but gave very thorough documentation and proofs for just about everything that the Catholic Church teaches. St. Thomas was really the first person to do that, because up until then, no one had collected all the teachings, as well as their opposing arguments in one place. He also took the previous philosophers like Aristotle, Socrates, and others, and he analyzed what they had said, and picked out the parts that were true and the parts that weren’t and then put it all together in the same volume of books that contained the Catholic teachings those ideas related to. It was very brilliantly done and he’s widely regarded as one of the best philosophers that ever lived, even by non-Catholics. If you go into any courses that summarise world philosophy or the history of philosophy, even at non-Catholic colleges, he’ll come up because what he did was just so groundbreaking. 

Thomistic philosophy is also a little different than say, socialist philosophy or feminist philosophy. His philosophy was characterized by a fundamental orientation toward “what is” and knowing what is and then adjusting and making your decisions based on that, based on what’s really there. (I’m kind of oversimplifying it…there’s a lot more to him, but that’s kind of what it is in a nutshell). 

Because of this, “thomistic” is also about human nature. When I was in college, there was a priest who was the Dean of our College, and he was very famous locally in the community because he was a very interesting person and had a lot of outspoken opinions. One of these opinions is that he would often say that Thomistic was something that was in keeping with human nature, something that illustrated human nature. So one of the things he was known for saying is that he would say “The Muppets are Thomistic”. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Muppets, like “Muppet Treasure Island” or “The Muppet Movie” but the muppets are pretty funny, and that’s why they’re popular. And things tend to be funny when they’re true. A good example is standup comedy: a lot of standup comedians’ jokes will fall flat if they joke about things that people don’t know about, or that people haven’t experienced. So that’s kind of the point Father was making. He was saying the Muppets are funny, because they’re true. And because they’re true, they’re Thomistic. Because Thomistic is about reality. 

Having said all that, in my opinion, a Thomistic woman is a woman who’s grounded in reality, who looks at life the way it *is*, not the way she’d like it to be. There are a lot of things that we experience in life, especially a lot of sad or disappointing things: Take for example breakups… sometimes you have to just look at the relationship as it is, not how we’d want it to be, and then make decisions based off of that. So maybe we need to break up, maybe I need to get with somebody else, etc. So as you can see it’s basically just about being grounded in reality. When we’re on this blog and we talk about relationships, or we talk about femininity or personal identity, you really want to know “what is”. So a Thomistic woman is a woman who’s grounded in reality: she knows how life works. It’s like that saying by Earnest Hemingway: “I am the captain of my ship, I am the master of my fate.” That’s how it is: she’s the captain of her ship, and she masters her fate by knowing how things go and how life works and adjusting to that, so she can achieve her goals and get what she wants and needs out of life.