I believe Flannery O’Connor is an epistemological Thomist because she agrees with Aquinas when discussing knowledge, abstract ideas, and reason. O’Connor agrees with Aquinas by citing him multiple times in her essay and uses his statements as starting points and support for her discussions about art and writing and how each relates to knowledge. Firstly, O’Connor begins her essay discussing the nature of fiction by relating it directly to the beginning of knowledge. According to Gilson, Thomistic epistemology states that “‘whatever is received into something else is received according to the mode of the receiver’” (210). Similarly, O’Connor states that “the nature of fiction is…determined by the nature of our perceptive apparatus” (67). O’Connor
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Secondly, O’Connor and Aquinas deny that one can come to know an object by knowing the idea of it, which is a Platonic epistemological belie (67, Gilson 212). She states that fiction writers who are just starting to write “loathe to create” worlds because “[the writers] are possessed not by a story but by the bare bones of some abstract notion” (68). By revealing this problem, O’Connor is addressing fiction writers and telling them it is necessary to not focus on “unfleshed ideas and emotions” because these “bare bones” of language are not the way a reader comes to know and understand a fictitious world (67, 68). O’Connor exemplifies this belief by explaining how people commonly ask what the theme of the story is (73). As a result of inquiring about the theme of a story, O’Connor says people “go off happy and feel it is no longer necessary to read [a story]” (73). O’Connor is inferring in this example that asking the question about themes is altogether misunderstanding the theme and purpose of a story. A reader cannot come to understand a story by knowing its theme(s) (a broad idea), but by actually reading the story and seeing the theme be developed and discussed using imagery, characters, dialogue, narration, etc. (O’Connor 70, 73). In other words, a reader can only fully
Secondly, O’Connor and Aquinas deny that one can come to know an object by knowing the idea of it, which is a Platonic epistemological belie (67, Gilson 212). She states that fiction writers who are just starting to write “loathe to create” worlds because “[the writers] are possessed not by a story but by the bare bones of some abstract notion” (68). By revealing this problem, O’Connor is addressing fiction writers and telling them it is necessary to not focus on “unfleshed ideas and emotions” because these “bare bones” of language are not the way a reader comes to know and understand a fictitious world (67, 68). O’Connor exemplifies this belief by explaining how people commonly ask what the theme of the story is (73). As a result of inquiring about the theme of a story, O’Connor says people “go off happy and feel it is no longer necessary to read [a story]” (73). O’Connor is inferring in this example that asking the question about themes is altogether misunderstanding the theme and purpose of a story. A reader cannot come to understand a story by knowing its theme(s) (a broad idea), but by actually reading the story and seeing the theme be developed and discussed using imagery, characters, dialogue, narration, etc. (O’Connor 70, 73). In other words, a reader can only fully