Commentary on the PhysicsThomas Aquinas
About Commentary on the Physics
Aquinas's is a line-by-line exposition of Aristotle's foundational treatise on nature and change. Aquinas follows the text with extraordinary precision, clarifying the arguments for the reality of change against the Eleatics, the analysis of the four causes, and the account of place, time, and the infinite.
But this is not paraphrase. Aquinas reads Aristotle through the lens of his own metaphysics of being, and at key points he draws distinctions that Aristotle did not make explicit. The treatment of prime matter as pure potentiality, of change as the act of a being in potency, and of the unmoved mover as ipsum esse subsistens all bear the marks of Aquinas's philosophical theology.
The commentary established the framework through which Latin Christianity received Aristotle's natural philosophy. It made the available not as an artifact of pagan learning but as a philosophical resource compatible with, and in service of, the doctrine of creation.