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Full Idea
Augustine says bodies don't form images in our spirit; our spirit does that itself with amazing quickness. ...So the appearances under which mind knows things aren't drawn from the things themselves.
Gist of Idea
Our images of bodies are not produced by the bodies, but by our own minds
Source
report of Augustine (works [c.415]) by Thomas Aquinas - Quodlibeta 8.2.1
Book Ref
McDermott,Timothy: 'Aquinas: how to read' [Granta 2007], p.7
A Reaction
This is Augustine's theory of 'illumination' - that God creates experience within us. His theory was soon discarded by the early scholastics.
| 22167 | Our images of bodies are not produced by the bodies, but by our own minds [Augustine, by Aquinas] |
| 4348 | Love, and do what you will [Augustine] |
| 22117 | Our minds grasp reality by direct illumination (rather than abstraction from experience) [Augustine, by Matthews] |
| 22118 | Augustine created the modern concept of the will [Augustine, by Matthews] |
| 7821 | Pagans produced three hundred definitions of the highest good [Augustine, by Grayling] |
| 22119 | Augustine said (unusually) that 'ought' does not imply 'can' [Augustine, by Matthews] |
| 22116 | Augustine identified Donatism, Pelagianism and Manicheism as the main heresies [Augustine, by Matthews] |
| 19338 | Augustine said evil does not really exist, and evil is a limitation in goodness [Augustine, by Perkins] |