Giovanni Ventimiglia

In this article I point out that rather than two, as is commonly thought, or indeed one, which is an old idea recently revived by some scholars, Aquinas in fact presents three main senses of being: (A1) being as actus essendi or esse or ‘present actuality’; (A2) being as (real) form or essence; (B) being as the reply to the an sit? (is there…?) question or anitas or ‘there is’ sense. Regarding the relations among these three senses of being I show that: (i) the same logical treatment holds for the form (B) and (A2), since both can and need to be re-written in the form: something is so-and-so (whereas the same process cannot be applied to the A1 sense of being); (ii) the relation between the A1 and A2 senses of being is not a mere relation between distinct elements, but rather a relation among different stages of a single process, namely that between first and second actuality; (iii) the relation between the A (1 and 2) and B senses of being seems to be one of grounding, since the ‘there is’ sense seems to Aquinas to be grounded on the present actuality sense of being as an effect to its cause.

The article analyses in detail, for the first time amongst the philosophical literature on Pererius, the “magna disceptatio” on the distinction, in every creature, between essence and existence as it arises in his work De communibus omnium rerum naturalium principijs et affectionibus. The Jesuit philosopher criticizes the opinion of the Thomists, whom were defending the distinctio realis between essence and existence. His reasoning strategy presents seven arguments against the distinctio realis and five argued answers to the Thomists’ arguments. The interest of Pererius’ discourse lies, firstly in the application of this centuries-old question on theological issue of transubstantiation which was a thorny problem of Reformation and Counter-Reformation; secondly, in calling into question the relationship between the Thomist’s position and Aquinas’ position about the distinctio realis on the basis of affinity of their posi..

Unlike being as act of being, being as true does not seem to belong to the object of metaphysics but only to that of logic. However, according to Aquinas it has a greater extension and universality than the act of being (and it is well konwn that universality is a characteristic of the object of metaphysics). For whereas being as act of being is a passio entis, namely a property of things, being as true is, according to Aquinas (and Frege), a passio enuntiationis, that is a property of propositions, including (true) propositions about negations and non-being, such as ‘non-being is non-being’. Being as true is expressed in terms of ‘it is the case that p’ or ‘it is true that p’, where p can be any (true) proposition. Being as true is made most clearly evident in the affirmative answer to a question, when we say ‘(sic) est’, where ‘est’ refers to the whole proposition put in question, and intends to express the existence of a relation between the content of the proposition and reality, which is in fact the truth.

An overview of current scholarship in ontology places one before two parallel lines that never meet: on the one hand there are essays in so-called “analytic ontology”, on the other hand, there are studies developed within so-called Aristotelian-Thomistic ontology. However, even though it is frequently ignored, there is an interesting philosophical current of thought within so-called “analytical Thomism”, which joins contemporary debates of “analytic ontology” from the perspective of an Aristotelian-Thomistic ontology. The main contributors to this current are P. Geach and B. Miller, who have proposed a new theory about existence, called “two sense theory”. It is a view intermediate between the well known Fregean and Meinongian views, arguing for the possibility of two senses of “exists”: as first- and as second-order predicate. The object of this paper is to present this current of thought, and to evaluate it from the point of view of the history of ontology and of “continental” Thomism.

In this article, I show how “Analytic Thomism” has developed some reflections on the Thomistic transcendentals ens, unum and multiplicitas, in critical dialogue with some contemporary analytic philosophers. The article is divided into three main parts: in the first, I refer briefly to the thought of Thomas Aquinas on the transcendentals ens, unum and multiplicitas and also clarify what “Analytic Thomism” is; in the second, I present the dominant position within contemporary analytic philosophy on the notion of existence in the third, I expound the theory of some “analytic thomists”, which constitutes an alternative to the dominant position, within which there is a rediscovery, in dialogue with both Aquinas and with Frege, of the analogical and transcendental nature of the notions of existence, unity and multiplicity.

Being as truth has a greater extension and universality than being as an act of being in Aquinas’s metaphysics, because it also includes privations and negations. In order to better understand this aspect, it is necessary to examine the role played by logic and, in particular, by the syncategoremata “est” and “non” in the definition of being as truth. This analysis leads to the discovery that being as truth is expressed in terms of an est as a passio enuntiationis and corresponds to the affirmatio or actus compositionis of which contemporary treatises on logic spoke. Can such a passio enuntiationis be a passio entis? In Aquinas’s works there are arguments for and against.

In his work De communibus omnium rerum naturalium principijs et affectionibus Benet Perera deals with the “magna disceptatio” on the distinction in every creature between essence and existence.Perera does not share the theory of the Thomists, who were defending the real distinction between essence and existence. Furthermore, he questions the relationship between Thomists’ and Aquinas’ position about the distinctio realis on the basis of the affinity of their position with that of Avicenna, expressly criticized by Aquinas. The historico-philosophical interest of Perera’s discourse lies in the application of this centuries-old question to the theological issue of transubstantiation. Perera argues that the existence of something cannot fail without the annihilation of the essence of which it is the existence. Hence, he denies that the existence of the species of bread and wine fails in the consecration and denies that only the essence of the species of bread and wine remains.