To Gilson, St. Thomas's is preeminently the doctrine of existence. In fact, by positing esse as first in reality, St. Thomas succeeded where other philosophers failed: that by which anything was really real was unum for Plato, substance for Aristotle, essence for Avicenna. So that the fundamental problems Gilson sets out to solve are: What is it to exist? and How does man know esse? As Gilson sees it, the esse of St. Thomas is ultimate act in relation to every other act, including the form of any thing; thus the essence or substance of a thing is a potency relative to its esse. Hence esse belongs to the level of efficient cause, while essence is formal cause determining or fixing esse at some particular point of being. Within essence, form is supreme as the act of matter; but essence is merely possible until actualized by esse, so that esse is actus omnium actuum and perfectio omnium perfectionum. In short, existence is the heart of reality. This primacy of esse is at once a guarantee that any being is ontologically stable even if contingent, that essence is harmoniously related to esse, and that being is dynamic, always tending by its operations to completion. Such are the main lines of Gilson's metaphysics. As for the problem of knowing esse, Gilson draws upon Thomistic texts to develop a noetics in which man, substantial union of body and spirit, can know by his intellect immediately and spontaneously the very existence of a thing which he perceives by the senses. In some mysterious way the composite structure of beings is matched by simple apprehension (grasping essence or quiddity) and judgment (grasping esse), and this duality in both object and subject is expressed in the noun and verb or language. Esse is itself no quiddity and cannot be concept, but it is intelligible, for in judgment we determine that something is or is not, while in simple apprehension we determine the something which is. Because Thomism takes existents as its object, and posits esse as the core of reality and establishes it first in being, Gilson sums up Thomism in the word "existential." With esse as the keystone of its arch, then, Thomism has singled out the transcendent element making all things real; moreover, by knowing existing things of the concrete material world man is led to deduce Esse Pure and Infinite. Thomistic metaphysics and noetics finds a proper term only in natural theology. In teaching this existentialist view of St. Thomas, Gilson seems to provide a valid and beautiful interpretation, which has met favour from other contemporary Thomists.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/10573 |
| Date | January 1955 |
| Creators | Ebner, Hermes Pius. |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 146 p. |
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