ABSTRACT
Thomas Aquinas certainly has a thoroughly worked out view about the meaning of life. Nothing in Aquinas's philosophy can properly be understood apart from his commitment to Aristotelian essentialism and teleology. Essentialism is the thesis that every natural object has, as a matter of objective fact, an essence or nature. In Aquinas's view, knowable is purely philosophical arguments and attainable in theory by means of the natural powers. Incorporating the understanding of Christian theology into his system of thought, Aquinas takes human existence to have a twofold point. Human beings have as their natural end the knowledge of God which pagan philosophers at least approximated. They have as their supernatural end the beatific vision, which is not possible apart from the special divine assistance which in Christian theology called grace. Early modern philosophy was defined by, perhaps more than anything else, its rejection of Aristotelian essentialism and teleology.
