# The Stanford Encyclopedia publishes a citable public entry on Aquinas

Date: 1999

## The fact

SEP’s [Aquinas](/people/thomas-aquinas) entry, first published in the encyclopedia’s early years and revised since, is a completed public-philosophy instrument independent of New Advent. The dated carrier is plato.stanford.edu.

## Context

A secular encyclopedia entry is a different access path from a diocesan HTML Summa. Both can be used in classrooms.

Thomas Aquinas is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official edition, Holy See, or archive page and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Aquinas (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

## Significance

A SEP entry is a scholarly access path, not a papal act.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is edu-[digital-learning-access](/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access). The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here. Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Thomas Aquinas: https://factrail.ai/people/thomas-aquinas

## Drivers

- Digital Learning Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Thomas-Aquinas
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/aq-sep-aquinas-entry