Thomas Aquinas

=== Modern influence ===
[[File:Saint Joseph's Catholic Church (Central City, Kentucky) - stained glass, St. Thomas Aquinas, detail.jpg|thumb|A stained glass window of Thomas Aquinas in St. Joseph's Catholic Church ([[Central City, Kentucky]])]]

Some modern ethicists within the Catholic Church (notably [[Alasdair MacIntyre]]) and outside it (notably [[Philippa Foot]]) have recently commented on the possible use of Thomas's [[virtue ethics]] as a way of avoiding [[utilitarianism]] or Kantian "sense of duty" (called [[deontology]]).<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Snow |editor1-first=Nancy E. |title=The Oxford Handbook of Virtue |date=2018 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780199385195 |page=322 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g8Q9DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA322}}</ref> Through the work of twentieth-century philosophers such as [[G. E. M. Anscombe|Elizabeth Anscombe]] (especially in her book ''Intention''), Thomas's [[principle of double effect]] specifically and his theory of intentional activity generally have been influential.{{Citation needed|date=October 2019}}

The cognitive neuroscientist [[Walter J. Freeman (neuroscientist)|Walter Freeman]] has proposed that Thomism is the philosophical system explaining cognition that is most compatible with [[neurodynamics]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Freeman |first=Walter |date=2008-01-01 |title=Nonlinear Brain Dynamics and Intention According to Aquinas |url=https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/mm/2008/00000006/00000002/art00005 |journal=Mind and Matter |volume=6 |issue=2 |pages=207–234}}</ref>

[[Henry Adams]]'s ''[[Mont Saint Michel and Chartres]]'' ends with a culminating chapter on Thomas, in which Adams calls Thomas an "artist" and constructs an extensive analogy between the design of Thomas's "Church Intellectual" and that of the gothic cathedrals of that period. [[Erwin Panofsky]] later would echo these views in ''Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism'' (1951).{{Citation needed|date=January 2022}}

Thomas's aesthetic theories, especially the concept of ''claritas'', deeply influenced the literary practice of modernist writer [[James Joyce]], who used to extol Thomas as being second only to Aristotle among Western philosophers. Joyce refers to Thomas's doctrines in ''Elementa philosophiae ad mentem D. Thomae Aquinatis doctoris angelici'' (1898) of Girolamo Maria Mancini, professor of theology at the [[Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas|Collegium Divi Thomae de Urbe]].{{sfn|Anon.|1899|p=570}} For example, Mancini's ''Elementa'' is referred to in Joyce's ''[[Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Joyce |first=James |url=https://archive.org/details/portraitofartist00jame |title=A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man |publisher=Wordsworth Editions |year=1992 |isbn=978-1853260063 |page=[https://archive.org/details/portraitofartist00jame/page/221 221] |url-access=registration |via=Internet Archive}}</ref>

The influence of Thomas's aesthetics also can be found in the works of the Italian [[semiotics|semiotician]] [[Umberto Eco]], who wrote an essay on aesthetic ideas in Thomas (published in 1956 and republished in 1988 in a revised edition).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Umberto |first=Eco |title=The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |year=1988 |isbn=978-0674006768 |translator-last=Bredin |translator-first=Hugh}}</ref>