That Aristotle is enormously influential on St. Thomas is not seriously questioned. Thomas’s Summa is both a handbook for beginniers in theology and a response to the philosophical challenge that the medieval rediscovery of Aristotle’s works presented to Christianity (which had, up until that point, developed its own philosophic self-understanding along lines derived from Aristotle’s teacher, Plato).
The question that you ought to consider can be put this way: how is it that St. Thomas’s natural law teaching accords with Aristotle’s teaching in the Ethics, and how does it differ? Secondarily, to what extent do you think Aristotle would agree with the presentation that we see in Thomas’s work? There is one obvious disagreement: Aristotle would not speak of natural law, because law requires a lawgiver, and Aristotle has no conception of a personal, legislating God such as the God of the Abarahamic faiths. Is that the only difference, however? Or do you see more?
**Needs to be 400 Words. See attached excerpts.
