Gregory Doolan

In a number of texts throughout his career, Thomas Aquinas identifies different senses of the term ‘esse’. Most notably, he notes that according to one sense, the term signifies the act of existence (actus essendi), which he famously holds is really distinct from essence in all beings other than God. Perhaps surprisingly, he also notes on a number of occasions that according to another sense, the term ‘esse’ can signify that very principle that he says is distinct from the act of existence, namely, essence. In light of Aquinas's semantic theory, this paper investigates how he coherently holds within his metaphysical system that this term ‘esse’ can signify in different ways both essence and the act of existence. More broadly, what it shows is how, for Aquinas, the metaphysician can look to the modes of signification (modi significandi) of terms and as well as their modes of predication (modi praedicandi) to draw careful conclusions about the modes of existence (modi essendi) of real beings. These considerations reveal that in Aquinas's view, although the grammarian and logician in their way are also concerned with these semantic modes, it is not their job to employ them to discern the various senses of the term ‘being’ or the fundamental modes of being. In the end, this is a task for the metaphysician.

Gregory T. Doolan provides here the first detailed consideration of the divine ideas as causal principles. He examines Thomas Aquinas's philosophical doctrine of the divine ideas and convincingly argues that it is an essential element of his metaphysics. According to Thomas, the ideas in the mind of God are not only principles of his knowledge, but they are productive principles as well. In this role, God's ideas act as exemplars for things that he creates. As Doolan shows, this theory of exemplarism is an integral part of Thomas's account of the existence and order of the created universe. It also accounts in part for the freedom of God's creative act. The volume begins with an introduction to Thomas's doctrine of exemplarism and then addresses his arguments for the existence of exemplar ideas within the mind of God. Having established the existence of divine ideas, Doolan considers how Thomas reconciles their multiplicity with God's simplicity. The work identifies the various things for which Thomas posits divine ideas. As Doolan is careful to show, Thomas does not consider all of these ideas to be exemplars because not all of them act as causal principles. After identifying the ideas that do act in this way, Doolan considers how such exemplars can be causes of natural things without compromising the causality of natural agents. The volume culminates with a consideration of the role that the divine ideas play within the structure of Thomas's theory of participation. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gregory T. Doolan, assistant professor of philosophy at The Catholic University of America, is a contributor to Wisdom's Apprentice: Thomistic Essays in Honor of Lawrence Dewan, O.P., and Reassessing the Liberal State: Reading Maritain's Man and the State. This is his first book.

The issue of divine exemplarism is one that Thomas Aquinas addresses from his earliest writings. Just as there are ideas in the mind of the human artisan, he argues, so too there must analogously be ideas in the mind of the divine artisan, ideas in God that act as exemplars or patterns for the things that he makes in their likeness. And Thomas presents these ideas as serving two significant roles: as epistemological principles and as productive or ontological ones. ;This dissertation assumes the existence of God in order to examine the metaphysical implications of divine exemplarism. Granting the theological significance of this doctrine, the dissertation argues that it is nonetheless at heart a philosophical one. According to Thomas, the divine ideas consist in God's knowing his essence as imitable in different ways by creatures. And in knowing these ideas, God knows those creatures. Thus, the divine ideas are epistemological principles. Insofar as God wills that creatures do imitate the divine essence according to the limitations of their respective exemplar ideas, creatures must resemble in some respect and participate in the infinite act of being . Thus, the divine ideas are also ontological principles and complement Aquinas's metaphysics of participation. ;As epistemological principles, the divine ideas account for God's having a proper knowledge of a multiplicity of created things. Without a doctrine of divine exemplarism, Thomas's metaphysics would reduce God to an Aristotelian "thought thinking itself" that thinks only itself: a first principle that is blissfully unaware of the world that it moves. As ontological principles, the divine ideas account for the determination of form and the directedness of nature. Without a doctrine of divine exemplarism, Thomas's metaphysics would either imply that the natural world acts according to chance rather than teleologically, or it would imply that God's creative act results from the necessity of his own nature rather than freely through his intellect and will. Neither of these possibilities, however, is consonant with Thomas's metaphysical thought as a whole. For these reasons, then, divine exemplarism is an essential element of Thomistic philosophy

According to Thomas Aquinas, the ideas in the mind of God serve two distinct although interrelated roles: (1) as epistemological principles accounting for God’s knowledge of things other than himself, and (2) as ontological or causal principles involved in God’s creative activity. This article examines the causal role of the divine ideas by focusing on their relation to natural agents. Given Thomas’s observation that from God’s intellect “forms flow forth (effluunt) into all creatures,” the article considers whether the causality of the divine ideas excludes that of natural agents, or whether both modes of causality can somehow produce one and the same effect.