Part Two - The Adventure of Metaphysics
Saint Thomas's Impact on Aristotle's Metaphysics: A Study of Contributions
In addressing Aristotle [1], Thomas doesn't merely reiterate the good found in his Metaphysics; rather, he advances it, enriching it with insights from Christian Revelation. This includes the concept of being (esse, einai) beyond mere entity (ens, on), which Aristotle stopped at, and thus the distinction between essence (essentia, usìa) and being as the act of essence (esse, einai). At the same time, Aristotle halted at the consideration of essence.
Thomas accepts Aristotle's definition of metaphysics as the science of being as being and its properties. He recognizes that the notion of being is the first to be conceived and the most universal of all notions (ens commune), resolving all others within it.
In the Prooemium to his commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Thomas introduces the notion of metaphysics by demonstrating the existence of a universal, supreme, and fundamental rational knowledge—the metaphysics—whose purpose is to order all sciences and arts towards human happiness. Thomas observes that it is the intellect's role to govern things, whose being is the effect of divine thought.
Thomas explains from the Prooemium to Lectio I of his commentary on Aristotle's Book III that metaphysics is the science of a common or universal being. Since science is the science of truth and common being is universal truth, metaphysics is the most universal science and the science of universal truth. It is the necessary, primary, fundamental, radical, original, incontrovertible, most certain, most evident, noblest, and most sublime knowledge.
Following Aristotle, Thomas teaches that the being studied in metaphysics is primarily and, in reality, firstly full being, which is the substance [2], i.e., being existing in itself or subsisting, composed of a subsistent subject, essence, and being.
Secondarily, the accidents, which adhere to substance, are relative to it, and depend on it, perfecting it in being. If a substance contains matter, the subject is matter; if it's pure form, the subject is essence. Substance is the individual being. Common being is the generic object, while substance is the specific object of metaphysics. Metaphysics can therefore be defined as the science of beings. Not that there isn't a universal notion of substance. But this is a simple essence. If we want to consider existence, the object necessarily becomes multiple.
Considering entity not from the perspective of notion but of being, then the main object of metaphysics is the first cause, the supreme being, the highest good, and the ultimate end—God—who is pure substance without accidents because they perfect substance, while divine substance is already most perfect in itself [3].
Thomas also notes how it's up to metaphysics to establish the certainty of knowledge in its greatest universality and radicality. Its object is a universal being and consequently universal truth. Now, as Thomas observes [4], everything, as it relates to its being (se habet ad hoc quod sit), so it relates to its being true, (se habet ad hoc quod habeat veritatem).
Moreover, Thomas, following Aristotle, observes that in the search for truth in any science, to determine what truth is, the researcher must confront and resolve doubts and difficulties arising from opponents. Now, the function of metaphysics is to establish certainty in its greatest universality, given that its object is a universal being.
Thus, if in other sciences doubt concerns the particular object of those sciences, the metaphysician starts from a «universalis dubitatio de veritate»[5], (a universal doubt about truth). This is also what Descartes did, albeit with the difference that he unreasonably doubts the truth of the senses, so he hasn't resolved doubt by resorting to their truth but by overriding the sense with the certainty of cogito, as if sense alone were incapable of knowing sensible truth without intellect's intervention [6]. Besides, the certainty of cogito isn't that of thinking being, but the certainty of doubt, which doesn't establish any certainty, but certainty arises from an act of will's violence upon intellect, compelling it arbitrarily to consider certain what it isn't sure of and consequently to doubt what is certain, as we see, for example, today in the theology of modernists, who doubt dogmas but consider ideas of Schillebeeckx or Rahner certain.
Thus, for Thomas, metaphysics is the most intellectual knowledge that apprehends the most intelligible realities, the supremely knowable realities sought for themselves, objects of pure speculation, at the summit of which is God, the highest being and highest good, the first cause and ultimate end of all things.
These are the noblest, spiritual, supremely universal realities, far removed from the senses, attainable through abstraction from the sensible, the most difficult for us to know, accustomed as we are to deal with sensible things. For this reason, if metaphysics has its starting point in very simple notions known to all, seeking their potentialities leads to the endpoint of discovering the first cause.
Saint Thomas explains that metaphysics is the science of the totality of reality, or all things, not in the detail of each, something only possible for God, but in the horizon of the universality of being, what Jaspers calls the "circumscribing horizon" (Umgreifende). Indeed, the metaphysician possesses the most universal notions, beneath which all individual things stand. And thus, in a certain way and this sense, he knows all things.
For this reason, metaphysics, based on the first principles of thought and being, seeking the first causes of things, ascends from knowledge of the material being to spiritual being and is introduced to theology [7]. To this science, observes Saint Thomas, belongs the name "wisdom.” [8]
Metaphysics, as Saint Thomas always explains following Aristotle, is also supremely liberating knowledge and expression of freedom, liberating knowledge and source of freedom, if it's true that the free person governs himself; indeed, it is rational knowledge acquired by man's efforts and makes him enjoy the highest good, God, whom it comes to know as the first Being, cause of being.
For this reason, it is knowledge for its own sake, not aimed at higher purposes, because there is nothing above God, and there is nothing better than contemplating God. However, it is divine knowledge, worthy of God, so if it is the supreme knowledge of reason, it also appears as knowledge superior to the human, since God transcends man. To say it with Jaspers, reason "shipwrecks" before God, but to say it with Leopardi, it is a "sweet shipwreck in this sea."
Therefore, it is not oriented towards utility or action for its good, but for it, man finds his good in aiming towards God. Indeed, it is knowledge worthy of God. But because of this, it is in some way supra-human knowledge, since God is transcendent. However, it also guides man towards the attainment of the ultimate end, which is God, and therefore provides the necessary moral knowledge to reach it.
Man, on the other hand - observes Thomas with Aristotle -, with his miseries, fails to have secure possession of this sublime knowledge. Hence the discouragements and skepticism. Hence the illusions and foolish boasts: man realizes that metaphysics is divine knowledge and, having inflated his head like Icarus or infatuated with his thoughts like Narcissus or overestimating his strength like Prometheus, he pretends to possess tout court (outright) a priori science and divine omnipotence, becoming those "impious" of whom the Book of Wisdom speaks (Wisdom 1:16), "who invoke death upon themselves with gestures and words, deeming it a friend and consuming themselves for it, and with it they conclude an alliance because they are worthy to belong to it."
Thomas thus distinguishes a common being from being as being [9]. Common being is the highest logical genus, the most abstract of all, which encompasses differences below it, such as finite and infinite, created and uncreated, mutable and immutable, material and spiritual, necessary and contingent, possible and actual, etc.
The intuition of being naturally brought with it and implicitly includes the perception of an ordered and systematic set of ontological, elementary, primary, and spontaneous distinctions, known to all, which constitute the content of metaphysics, clear and mysterious notions at the same time, an indispensable basis for all others, undeniable and insoluble notions, evident, intuitive, within being, which therefore do not need to be explained, defined, or demonstrated or motivated, but rather symbolized or described, so either they are understood or they are not. But they are not understood because they do not want to be understood or they are understood without realizing it.
They are the distinction between being and non-being, between essence and being, between substance and accident, between univocal and analogical, between categories and transcendentals, between finite and infinite, between effect and cause, between agent and end, between spirit and matter, between necessary and contingent, between possible and actual, between possible and impossible, between relative and absolute, between ideal and real, between thought and being, between being and becoming, between being and acting, between being and appearing.
Anyone who denies, confuses, or opposes, refutes themselves because to take such a position they are forced to use the same distinctions they would deny or refuse to understand.
The distinction already present in Aristotle (the on and the alethés) between real being and ideal or mental being, representation and represented, is then connected by Thomas to epistemological realism, which distinguishes extramental being (ens extra animam) from mental being (ens in anima), explaining how it is possible that in knowing, while the intellect is distinct from reality, the cognitive content is the same in the mind and outside the mind.
But it is necessary to admit this, precisely by distinguishing representational intentional being (esse intentionale, similitudo entis, verbum interius) from real being (res), which is necessary for the possibility of knowledge's truth, since if what I have in my mind is not what is in reality, it means I am in error. Indeed Aristotle says, "It is not the stone that is in the soul, but the image of the stone."
Idealists, by confusing the two, materialize thought which becomes the stone (Locke's thinking matter), and nullify the stone, making it their idea (Berkeley's esse est percipi). The difference between realists and idealists can be reduced to these simple definitions: for the realist, the object of knowledge is reality; for the idealist, it is the idea.
Logical being, immanent to reason, the concept (ens rationis), is therefore distinct from being as being (ens reale), that is, metaphysical being; it is supergeneric, that is, analogical, it is one and multiple because it implicitly contains its differences, does not completely abstract from them, otherwise, if they were to exist outside of being since there is nothing outside of being, they would be nothing, as happens in Parmenides' being.
We might ask where Thomas drew inspiration for his sublimation of Aristotle's metaphysics and how he could find in it the best material for the construction of Christian metaphysics. The answer is very simple and very logical: by delving into the knowledge of Christ's metaphysical teachings.
Thomas, like no other Doctor of the Church, has understood with such depth and accuracy the metaphysics of Christ; he discovered Christ as a metaphysician, a concept that no one before or after him has considered as deeply. It is by meditating on the Word of the Lord that Thomas was able to understand how to use, appreciate, correct, and complete Aristotle in metaphysics.
It is strange that until now no Catholic philosopher has thought to highlight Christ's metaphysical notions, those that served as a guiding star for Thomas in the construction of Christian metaphysics.
I don't know how well I've succeeded, also because I didn't have works of this kind that preceded me to refer to. But others may do better than me. It is a debt we all have to Our Lord, the Master of Truth.
Indeed, no one has ever thought of Christ as a metaphysician: Thomas discovered it, and all I have done is highlight the metaphysical notions of Christ that inspired Aquinas and helped him see what in Aristotle's metaphysics could be gathered. With my book, I aimed to make this operation of Thomas understandable, a book that I would have liked to call "The Metaphysics of Jesus," if the Publisher, perhaps for fear that the book would appear strange and unsellable, had not titled it "Jesus Christ, the Foundation of the World."
The Emergence of Metaphysics: Spontaneous Knowledge of Reason
The notion of metaphysical being, therefore, is not the simplest, as Blessed Duns Scotus believed, because being is composed of even simpler elements: the subject, that which exists (quod est), essence (quidditas, quid est, essentia), and existence (an est, esse). Thomas adopts from Aristotle that being does not have a single meaning but is "said in many ways" (pollacòs legòmenon); it is an analogical notion, without becoming equivocal because, although diversified, it still tends towards unity, turning towards unum (the one), universal, versus-unum.
In this way, this notion is implicitly present in the child's mind from when they form their first notions drawn from sensory experience. They are interested in the essence of each thing and begin to name it. But they are not yet capable of abstracting the notion of being, which is too universal for them, although they always think within the horizon of being. The child does not use the word 'being' because they do not yet have the explicit notion of being, which only the metaphysician obtains and the adult obtains through a suitable abstract process.
The child, therefore, already has the notion of being, but since they are not aware of it, they cannot even use the word 'being' and do not consciously know its meaning. Instead, they use the verb 'to be' casually, which indicates that they have already grasped what being is.
By conjugating the verb 'to be' in the present and its tenses, the child shows that they can distinguish temporal being from being as such. With the concept of being, the child understands the opposition of being to non-being, and thus knows what nothingness is, which is inferred from the fact that they know how to use the word 'nothing' or 'none.’[11]
Aristotle also saw in 'einai' only the copula of judgment and understood that the truth of thinking is connected with judging whether a thing or being exists or does not exist. Being, in itself, indicates essence, but does not affirm or deny its existence; for this, the predicate of being or existence is required.
However, Aristotle could not conceive being ('einai') except as the conjunction of subject with its predicate in judgment. Instead, in commenting on this thesis of Aristotle [12], Thomas observes that being does not primarily mean the synthesis of judgment but means first and foremost "what falls into the intellect in the mode of absolute actuality; in fact, simply said, it means being in the act; and therefore, it means in the manner of a verb." Being therefore already means by itself, independently of whether it is the copula of judgment. Thomas can say this in light of Scripture, where subsisting being even becomes the essence of God (Exodus 3:14).
Being has meaning by itself without needing a subject on which it is predicated. In God and as God, it is a subject for itself and by itself, and without needing to be determined by a predicate because it is the predicate of all subjects.
Thomas thus explicates the Aristotelian notion of entity in light of being. Entity is the existent, that which exists or can exist; it is that which has an essence in the act of being, that which has being in an essence. Thomas accepts Aristotle's distinction between entity as pure form (usìa coristè), corresponding to pure spirit or the angel, and entity as a composite of matter and form. Entity can participate in existence, or it can be being by essence, subsisting being, God.
Thomistic metaphysics, like Aristotelian metaphysics, is realistic; that is, the object of knowledge is not the idea, concept, thought, thinking, thought, ego, consciousness, spirit, or things of that kind, but it is the external material and spiritual reality, sensible and intelligible, objective reality, i.e., that which stands before it (ob-jectum) and outside of thought (extra animam) because our intellect does not produce reality but the representation (species, eidos) or image (similitudo, imago) of reality; it is this that is in the mind, not reality itself, which is not produced by the mind but is created by God, the creator also of the mind.
Reality, therefore, has primacy over the idea; being transcends thought. An entity can be the actualization of a practical idea, but it is the entity that is the measure of thinking; it is not man, as Protagoras believed, both subjectivist and idealist at the same time. Plato already refutes Protagoras by clarifying that not man, but God is the measure of all things.
Moreover, Aristotle mainly considers entity as substance but does not consider the act of being (actus essendi). Thomas maintains entity as the object of metaphysics but specifies that it is not just a simple entity but an entity existing in act, with its act of being.
On the other hand, metaphysics does not become, with Thomas, a metaphysics of being, as Bonaventure, Rosmini, and Bontadini thought, because positing being as the object of metaphysics entails the risk of substantializing it. Now, only divine being is subsistent. Thus, there is a risk of pantheism.
We Form the Concept of Being: Exploring the Beginnings of 'To Be”
Being stands before the intellect of anyone. However, being does not immediately appear to us at the beginning of the functioning of our intellect, upon reaching the age of reason. We start by conceiving entities that fall under our senses but without yet discovering the fact that they exist, so we do not yet think about their existence or being. We begin to have awareness of ourselves, but not yet of its existence. We utter names, but we do not yet use verbs.
But then, at a certain point, suddenly, our intellect begins to form a sentence, a judgment that involves the use of the word "is", the third person of the verb "to be". This is the sign that we have discovered being!
We all know, at least implicitly, what being is. This is evident from the use of the verb "to be". Being is what we mean when we use the infinitive form of the verb "to be". Grammatically, being (ens -Latin: ente -Italian; however, since the Author uses here the term 'ente', as distinct from 'essere,' the term 'entity' will be used for the first form, and 'being' for the latter." (Ed.)) is the present participle of the verb "to be". And the essence is the abstract of the term "being" just as goodness is the abstract of the term "good".
For the discovery of metaphysics, the use of the first three persons of the verb "to be" is fundamental: I am, you are, he is, a usage that already appears in early childhood. While speaking of human persons, we add a predicate, for example, I am a child; Scripture teaches us that these voices of the verb "to be", used to designate God, the subsisting being, are devoid of the predicate: I Am and He Is (The One Who Is) are predicates that God assigns to Himself. Instead, the predicate You Are is assigned to God the worshipper in prayer [13].
Metaphysics is knowledge by invention, not by learning, like experimental, historical, and positive sciences. The child understands on their own what being is upon hearing a judgment pronounced; no one teaches them; afterward, they begin to use the verb "to be", which precisely expresses in words what the child's mind has intuited. Since we all use the verb "to be", it is clear that we all know what being is, even if we cannot give its definition. It can, however, be described, as Saint Thomas does [14].
This is the performance of metaphysics, no longer original, intuitive, and elementary like that of the child, but elevated to the state of science in the metaphysician. Metaphysics at this level is learned from a teacher, through learning. School is required. Thus, Catholic scholastic philosophy has been formed and developed, in a continuous secular progress, especially since the 12th century, approved, authorized, promoted, protected, and recommended by the Church, to this day, always misunderstood, ridiculed, and despised by all heretics, fools, ignorants, and charlatans.
It is critical metaphysics, aware of itself and of its dignity as the supreme and foundational rational knowledge of all sciences, which has nothing to do with that caricature of critical knowledge that is Descartes' or Kant's or Fichte's or Husserl's cogito.
We must distinguish between the predicate of being and that of existing. Being signifies perfection, existence is simply being outside of nothingness. Existence, therefore, does not need a nominal predicate, which refers to essence, while existence simply means outside of non-being. Existence can be attributed both to God and the creature. I can say I exist and God exists because we are not nothing. Instead, I cannot simply say I am without specifying what I am. We can say of God simply that He Is because in that Is, everything is already there.
Instead, the predicate of being needs a nominal predicate in the creature because this predicate expresses the limitation of the creature, while God does not need it because He is an infinite being [15]. God can say of Himself I Am. And we can say God Is. But I cannot say of myself I am, nor simply say Socrates is, without adding a nominal predicate.
Furthermore, with the intuition of being, we come into contact with reality and begin the journey of knowledge and truth. We realize that thinking is our duty and that we must conform thought and judgment to being if we want to acquire knowledge and be in truth. Thus, after starting with this entity, with something, we discover being, the thing, the real. We know that it exists and we grasp being. We wonder what the essence of different things is.
For indeed, entity participates in essence as goodness participates in goodness. It also participates in being, just as the student participates in studying, and is in the act of being just as the student who is studying is in the act of studying. Saint Thomas masterfully speaks of being, as I said above [16]; he tells us what he means by the word being, we understand and feel how true what he says is, but he does not tell us how to arrive at grasping it in a concept. He says that it is not the object of simple apprehension(simplex apprehensio), but is affirmed in judgment.
So, it refers to the verb "to be". How we then come to grasp being and what linguistic expressions to use (experience, understanding, sense, intuition [17], intellection), I think should be left to each person's preferences.
The important thing is to understand being as act, following Saint Thomas and not to confuse it with thought. Only under this condition can we understand the meaning of Ex 3:14 and the expression "I Am" used by Jesus.
If anything, the Ipsum Esse can be the subject of natural theology. Aristotle himself understood that metaphysics is a preamble to theology, but only because he considers God as the cause, purpose, and mover of being, not as the subsistent and creative Being. These are metaphysical data in themselves, which, however, come from biblical revelation.
As with Aristotle, for Thomas as well, metaphysics leads to theology because if metaphysics is the science of being, this being is analogical, so it is predicated on both the world and God. The notion of cause is analogical, so man is a cause similar to how God causes.
In the study of being, reason moves from effect to cause, from the sensible to the intelligible, from the many to the one, from the temporal to the eternal, from the contingent to the necessary, from the corruptible to the incorruptible, from the mutable to the immutable, from the mobile to the immobile, from formed matter (the composite) to pure subsisting form, the spirit or person(usìa coristè). Now indeed, God is necessary, the first cause, the first agent, the supreme good, the unmoved mover, person, spirit, subsisting form, the ultimate end.
Regarding the concept of God, Thomas, in light of Scripture, sees God not only as the unmoved mover but as the creator; consequently, God is provident and preserver of all beings designed, desired, created, and loved by Him, especially man.
In Thomas, God is not only Absolute Self-Consciousness (nous noeseos), but ipsum Esse per se subsistens. God is the creative cause, causes the being of things, makes them be, and brings them from non-being to being, while Aristotle stopped at the cause of the motion or becoming of the being; he did not inquire why, although contingent, they exist. He has the notion of entity, but not that of being, although his realism, with the perception of the extramental real, put him on the right track. But he failed to leap essence to being.
In this way, Thomas maintains the creation of both matter and form, whereas, for Aristotle, they are simple presuppositions. Thomas realizes that the doctrine of creation entails a real distinction in the creature between its essence and its being, since the essence remains itself, even if only possible or deprived of its being. Thomas thus becomes aware of the contingency of the existence of the created being.
Existence is not essential to it; it does not have it from itself or by itself but is added by God to make it pass from possibility to actuality. In this way, the creature does not resolve itself into its being created because its essence would remain as such, as possible, even if it were not created. The creative act, which is identical to God, is distinct from the created being as the cause is distinct from the effect.
Furthermore, the notion of the human person emerges with Thomas, drawn from Scripture, as the subsistence of a single human nature, while Aristotle stops at the consideration of simple human nature; for Aristotle, what matters is not the individual but the species or universal essence: only this can be the object of science.
The Aristotelian God deserves to be loved, as the supreme good and supreme end; but in turn, he is only interested in the noblest beings, the pure and incorruptible forms, which surpass the dignity of mortal man. He does not care about saving man from corruption because man is naturally corruptible. Unlike Scripture, he has nothing to reveal to man regarding his salvation, nor can a man expect from God the revelation of a salvation plan.
Thomas extends the use of reasoning by analogy from the horizon of the created to the relationship between God and the world. In this way, under the suggestion of Scripture, he finds an analogy between the being, thinking, and acting of man and the being, thinking, and acting of God; he applies Plato's doctrine of ideas to the way God thinks, something Aristotle had not thought of.
Thomas realizes the metaphysical value of Plato's doctrine of participation to explain the degrees of being and the relationships of the creature with the Creator because, while the creator is being by essence, the creature possesses being by participation.
Moreover, Thomas sees the possibility of linking Aristotle's doctrine of causality, which places the primacy of the cause over the effect, with Plato's doctrine of participation, according to which the effect participates in the causal power of the cause.
Seeking Harmony: An Idealistic Attempt to Mediate Between Realism and Idealism
Descartes' attempt to construct a metaphysics of the sum instead of entity will lead idealists to give up calling their system "metaphysics", realizing that only realists had the right to use this term. So, to avoid confusion with the realists, they abandoned the term metaphysics and openly adopted the name "idealism" until Bontadini.
At the same time, Catholic metaphysicians continued, on the whole, with few exceptions, such as Malebranche, to remain faithful to Thomistic metaphysics, sharply criticizing Descartes and the idealists of the 19th century. Only in that century in Germany, with Günther, Hermes, and Frohschammer, in France with the ontologists, and Italy with Rosmini, did the idea of a possible reconciliation between Thomistic metaphysics and the idealism of Descartes, Kant, and Hegel gain ground. However, the Church disapproved of these projects because only realism, not idealism, is compatible with the truths of faith.
The attempt was repeated in the times of modernism and again was disapproved by Saint Pius X. But certain Catholic metaphysicians of the first half of the last century attempted the endeavor again: Cardinal Mercier thought he could connect St. Thomas with Descartes; Maréchal connected Thomas with Kant; Rahner thought he could identify Thomistic being with Hegel's or Heidegger's being; Ingarden and Edith Stein thought that Husserl's phenomenology could serve to introduce Thomistic metaphysics, just as in knowledge we move from the perception of the phenomenon to that of the essence.
Bontadini believed he could use Gentile to verify the same idealism and at the same time to achieve a complete idealism with a return to Parmenidean realism; others thought of approaching Thomistic being to Severinian being, to see in this the radical meaning of Thomistic being itself, which would be a realistic derivation.
We cannot deny in this comparison some points of contact between realism and idealism: both know that the spirit involves a return to itself, both put God, reality, the ideal, being, becoming, spirit, transcendental, thought, certainty, knowledge, truth, freedom, objectivity, reason, ego, self-awareness, person, the absolute, the eternal, the infinite, totality, unity, and universality as themes. Where does the irreconcilable contrast, the fundamental error of idealism lie? In the confusion of thought with being, a confusion which, as St. Thomas notes, involves two aspects: one concerning the object of thought and the other concerning the essence of thought.
In the first case, there is the reduction of being to thought: the object of thought is not being but thought itself. Or, to express it as Thomas does, not things, not reality, but our ideas are the object of our knowledge [18]. Here Thomas demonstrates the drawbacks that follow from this.
In the second case, thought is identified with being, so that in the knower, thinking is its being. Now, this - St. Thomas shows - is the same divine thinking, coincident with its being [19]. Therefore, the idealist identifies human thinking with divine thinking. It is Gnosticism, which also entails the identity of the human being with the divine being and therefore pantheism.
Some have wanted to see in idealism the foundation and the very condition of possibility of realism, and in these a first approach to the real, introductory to the critical vision of reality, which would be given by idealism. However, as Maritain rightly says, after a tight refutation of idealism, between realism and idealism, one must choose as one chooses between truth and falsehood [20], as we must choose between our ego making itself God and God creating our ego.
Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP
Fontanellato, March 7, 2024
Source:
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/lavventura-della-metafisica-parte.html
[1] Some Treatises of Thomistic Metaphysics: Tommaso Maria Zigliara, Ontology, in Summa philosophica, Beauchesne, Paris 1926; Vincenzo Remer, Ontology, Edizioni della Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Rome 1932; Jacques Maritain, Sept leçons sur l’être et les premiers principes de la raison spéculative, Téqui, Paris 1934; Josephus Gredt, Metaphysica, in Elementa Philosophiae aristotelico-thomisticae, Herder&Co., Freiburg im Breisgau 1937, 2 vols.; Sofia Vanni Rovighi, Metaphysics, vol. II of Elements of Philosophy, Editrice La Scuola, Brescia 1962; Paul-Bernard Grenet, Ontology, Paideia Editrice, Brescia 1967; Marie-Dominique Philippe, Being. In Search of a First Philosophy, Editions P. Téqui, Paris 1972; Tomás Alvira-Luís Clavell-Tomás Melendo, Metaphysics, Le Monnier, Florence 1987; Adriano Alessi, Metaphysics, LAS, Rome 1989; Abelardo Lobato, Ontology, Edizioni dell’Angelicum, Rome 1981, 2 vols.; Battista Mondin, Metaphysical Ontology, ESD Editions, Bologna 1999; Saturnino Muratore, Philosophy of Being, San Paolo Editions, Milan 2006; Tomas Tyn, Metaphysics of Substance. Participation and Analogy Entis, Fede&Cultura Editions, Verona 2009.
[2] Cf Umberto Degl’Innocenti, The Problem of Person in the Thought of St. Thomas, PUL Editions, Rome 1967; Aimé Forest, The Metaphysical Structure of the Concrete according to Saint Thomas Aquinas, Vrin, Paris 1956.
[3] For this reason, the First Vatican Council defines God as "a singular substance" (Denz.3001).
[4] In XII libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio, l.II,c.I, lect.II, n.298, Marietti Publishers, Turin-Rome 1964, p.85.
[5] Ibid., n.343.
[6] If that were the case, how would animals recognize things as they are?
[7] For this reason, theologians like Lutherans, who want to do theology without using metaphysics, do not do theology but ideology, mythology, anecdotal, and storytelling.
[8] With this, we have the connection to the biblical concept of wisdom (hokmà) around which the wisdom books are gathered, that creative Wisdom, which is the same divine Logos. Therefore, anyone who claims, like Luther, to oppose the metaphysics of Aristotle and St. Thomas to biblical wisdom, shows that he has not understood either.
[9] Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Prooemium.
[10] L'Isola di Patmos Editions, Rome 2019.
[11] There is no need to resolve being in time as Heidegger does to appreciate the temporality of being, since not only temporal being exists, but also eternal being. This is what Edith Stein points out to Heidegger with her powerful study Finite Being and Eternal Being. For an Elevation to the Sense of Being, Città Nuova, Rome 1988. Becoming is not an alternative to being, but it is nothing other than becoming being, which is expressed in the tenses of the verb "to be."
[12] Commentary on Aristotle's Peri Hermeneias, Book I, c.III, lect.V, nn.70-72, Marietti Editions, Turin 1964, pp.28-29.
[13] See the Canon of the Mass "In eterno Tu Sei nel tuo regno di luce infinita"; "From everlasting to everlasting You are, O God" (Psalm 90:4).
[14] See the passages of Thomas quoted by Cornelio Fabro in Thomism and Modern Thought, Libreria Editrice della Pontificia Università Lateranense, Rome 1969, pp.111-113.
[15] This does not preclude, as is done in natural theology and as Scripture does, that nominal predicates can and must be attributed to God (goodness, eternity, omnipotence, infinity, wisdom, immutability, etc.), but the mere being may suffice because, in the divine being, there is everything and every perfection.
[16] Note 12.
[17] Cf Benôit-Marie Simon, Is There an "Intuition" of Being? ESD Editions, Bologna 1995. The Author examines the positions of Garrigou-Lagrange, Maritain, and Father Marie-Dominique Philippe.
[18] Summa Theologica, I, q.85, a.2.
[19] Ibid., q.14, a.4.
[20] Distinguish to Unite. The Degrees of Knowledge, Desclée de Brouwer, Bruges 1959, p.195.