Alain Contat

La pensée de saint Thomas d’Aquin est communément considérée non seulement comme l’une des grandes synthèses de la théologie catholique, mais aussi comme l’une des plus importantes doctrines métaphysiques de l’histoire. Cette deuxième affirmation recèle pourtant une série de paradoxes considérables, car les écrits de l’Aquinate semblent contenir de notables différences sur des points-clefs de la philosophia prima, en particulier selon qu’il s’agit de commentaires sur Aristote ou d’ouvrages théologiques. Nous dressons ici l’inventaire de ces apories, puis nous présentons les deux voies qui s’offrent à l’esprit face à celles-ci. La première est celle de la déconstruction ou dissolutio, dans la ligne de Michel Foucault ; elle prétendrait dresser un constat d’incohérence qui réduirait à néant toute la spéculation thomasienne sur l’ens inquantum ens. La seconde, en revanche, est celle de la resolutio, pour laquelle la diversité des textes manifeste des complémentarités plutôt que des contradictions insolubles. Nous justifions pour conclure cette dernière approche, et nous exposons ses implications quant à l’architecture de la métaphysique.

This study, on Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine on the transcendentals, is both epistemological and metaphysical. From the epistemological point of view, we want to determine if and how the sequence subiectum / principia subiecti / passiones subiecti can be applied to ens qua ens and to the transcendentals. Our investigation concludes that the five transcendentals – res, unum, aliquid, verum, bonum – are effectively founded on the principles of ens, and that the last four are counted among the properties that are predicated per se secundo of ens, even though they do not add anything real to their subject, but rather only a negation or a relation of reason. From the metaphysical perspective, we want to clarify, in the most precise way possible, the additio rationis proper to each transcendental, and then explore the nexus that links each of them to the esse of ens. What results is that the transcendentals are ultimately founded on the act of being that is the terminus of the metaphysical resolutio, and that each transcendental explicates an aspect of esse considered as perfectio omnium perfectionum.

In this study, we have sought to establish if and how the metaphysics of participation can offer a valid instrument for the “hermeneutics of reform in continuity”, which Pope Benedict XVI encouraged for a correct understanding of Vatican II. Using the ontology of Cornelio Fabro and the ecclesiology of Charles Journet as inspiration, we have studied and organized under this light five great novelties of the Council: 1. the “subsistence” of the Church of Christ in the Catholic Church, which alone has the totality of the means of salvation, refers to “ecclesiality per essentiam”; 2. The presence of “elements of sanctification” beyond the visible limits of the Catholic Church manifests the reality of an “ecclesiality per participationem”; 3. the “strains of truth”, at work in the non-Christian communities and denominations are interpreted as means that manifest the participability of the human condition to Christic Revelation; 4. civil liberty in religious matters, results from the transcendence of the human person with respect to the State in this sphere; 5. the existence of a twofold subject of supreme magisterial and jurisdictional power in the Church, constitutes a very particular case of univocal participation in the same perfection.

This study intends to present, analyse and evaluate the fairly divergent interpretations elaborated by experts studying St. Thomas, from the 1930s onwards, with regard to his doctrine of analogy, particularly in the transcendental context of the question of God. With this purpose in mind, it proceeds in three stages. In the first place, we offer an inventory of the successive positions adopted by St. Thomas on this matter, from the Scriptum to the Summa theologiae. Secondly, we study the theories of analogy of Maurilio Texeira-Leite Penido, Johann Baptist Metz and Cornelio Fabro, highlighting the very close link between these theories and the respective ontologies of these authors. In this way, we bring out the connection between the way each author understands the Thomasian esse and the way his thought reflects upon analogy. In the third place, we outline the development of the historiographical reconstructions of the problem which have emerged in the time from the end of the Second World War up to our own days. This brief reconstruction provides us with criteria of judgment to undertake a historical and a theoretical evaluation of the three positions investigated in the second part.

This study analyzes the way in which contemporary Thomistic metaphysics has dealt with Heidegger’s Denken. To make the investigation more precise and systematic, two methodological choices were made. In the first place, three Thomists were chosen that, on the one hand, addressed the thought of Heidegger at length, but that, on the other, hail from three different cultural areas and illustrate three profondly different theoretical positions within the framework of Thomistic thought: the French Dominican Maurice Corvez, the German Jesuit Johann Baptist Lotz, and the Italian Stigmatine Father Cornelio Fabro. In the second place, the comparison between the Thomistic metaphysics of esse and the Heideggerian meditation on Sein was structured around two coordinates: first, the relationship between Dasein and being, second, the relationship between “to be” and a being, the Thomistic analogon of which are the relationship between ens as primum cognitum and the being of things, and that between esse and ens in the thing itself. In this way, the study presents three opposing configurations of Thomistic ens, and therefore three very different evaluations of Heideggerian thought. For Corvez, and for the Thomism proper to the Dominican tradition, real ens is the realization of a formal act by an existential act, the latter being strictly proportioned to the former; for this reason, the composition of essence and esse does not imply any ontological difference between ens and the being by which it is. What results is a fundamentally negative evaluation of Heidegger’s reflection. From the perspective of “Transcendental Thomism”, finite ens is conceived of as the real limitation of an esse that consciousness anticipates as the ideal totality of possibles, such that the ontological difference is grasped as the constitutive nucleus of both reality and thought. For this reason, Lotz offers a positive judgment on Heidegger’s work, yet points out that an ultimate foundation of being on Ipsum Esse Subsistens is lacking. According to Fabro, ens is seen as a synthetic plexus that unites a specifying essence and an intensive act of being, and underscores the “emergence” of the latter over both the content of the thing and the act that thinks of ens. For this reason, he concedes that Heidegger’s presentation of the ontological difference is a powerful stimulus for the metaphysical problem, but holds that it cannot be considered as a valid solution to that same problem.