Luca Gili

Jean-Baptiste Gonet, O.P. (c. 1616–1681), articulated a distinctly eternalist philosophical framework in his Clypeus Theologiae, wherein he maintained that God’s eternity encompasses past, present, and future entities in a mode of real coexistence. According to Gonet, divine eternity serves as the ontological measure of all things, and God apprehends past and future entities in their actual reality rather than merely as intentional objects, a position that diverges from earlier philosophical interpretations. Gonet sought to reconcile this eternalist perspective with the doctrines of creation in time and human free will. He did so by introducing a nuanced distinction in the interpretation of the verb “coexists” within the proposition “past/future entity x coexists with God.” When the verb is understood in relation to temporal reality, x is conceived as non-existent; however, when interpreted in reference to divine eternity, x is understood to possess real existence (in re), rather than existing solely as a conceptual entity within the divine intellect. Gonet’s system represents a rare and sophisticated attempt to integrate a Christian metaphysical framework with an eternalist ontology. This paper will examine the core arguments developed by the French Dominican, analyzing their implications within both theological and philosophical discourse.

Thomas Aquinas maintained that God foreknows future contingent events and that his foreknowledge does not entail that they are necessarily the case. More specifically, he stated that if God knows a future contingent event, this future contingent event will be necessarily the case de sensu composito, but not de sensu diviso. After emphasizing the unified nature of Aquinas’ notion of necessity, we propose an interpretation of his theses by restating them within the framework of non-normal modal logics. In this framework, the K-axiom does not hold, i.e. the necessity operator does not distribute over the material implication. Moreover, assuming that Aquinas rejected the K-axiom is not only consistent, but also leads to a logical framework that allows us to understand other theses maintained by the Doctor Angelicus. In particular, we argue that Aquinas’ remarks on the principle of non-contradiction rest on an impossible worlds semantics for non-normal modal logics.

Aristotelian philosophers have been always puzzled by the ambiguous status of essences: it is not clear whether an Aristotelian should admit that an essence, taken in itself, is real, even though essences do not exist over and above particular things, as Platonists posit; furthermore, it is not clear whether an Aristotelian should endorse the view that essences have a certain unity, even if they are taken in themselves, namely, by abstracting from the individuals of which they are essences. I tackle Thomas Cajetan’s analysis of this problem: this analysis is more sophisticated than that developed by Aquinas—whose texts had been commented upon by Cajetan. Cajetan distinguishes two senses of “real” and of “unity,” in order to speak of the reality and of the unity of essences, taken in themselves, though not endorsing a Platonist’s ontology. I suggest that his solution is appealing for the contemporary debate about this problem.

In this paper I examine Aquinas’s commentary on a text of Aristotle in which the type of order between substance and accidents is discussed. I claim that Aquinas maintains that there cannot be any reference to sensibility, despite any prima facie interpretation of Aristotle’s texts, according to which it could be thought that substance is temporally prior to accidents and, hence, that we must presuppose a perceivable change in the world on the basis of which it is possible to consider something temporally prior to something else. This interpretation – which is possible on the basis of Aristotle’s texts – would be a misinterpretation, according to Aquinas. Aquinas’s assumption is philosophically worthwhile because it confi rms that every metaphysical proposition must abstract from sensibility

Wie kann Gott die Zukunft kennen, wenn zukünftige Dinge nicht wirklich sind? Gäbe es eine Zeit, wenn im Universum keine Veränderungen stattfinden würden? Wie können wir unabhängig von der Reihe der Zeitpunkte eine Richtung in der Ordnung der Veränderungen erkennen? Aquin beantwortet alle diese Fragen in seinem Kommentar zur Physik des Aristoteles. Ihm zufolge gibt es nur Wesenheiten, die sich in der Gegenwart befinden. Die Gegenwart ist nichts anderes als das Zwischenstück zwischen vergangenen und zukünftigen Punkten auf der Linie der Zeit. Die Zeit wiederum ist ontologisch von der Veränderung abhängig, aber obwohl sie ihr Maß ist, ist sie unabhängig vom Verstand: Die Zeit ist das, was ein sich veränderndes Ding geeignet macht, von einem möglichen Verstand in einer Reihe von aufeinanderfolgenden Stufen verstanden zu werden. Dieser revolutionäre Kommentar bleibt den Nuancen von Aristoteles' Text dennoch treu und stellt einen Meilenstein in der mittelalterlichen Reflexion über die natürliche Welt dar. Dieses Buch untersucht die zentralen Ideen, die Aquin in seinem Kommentar zu Aristoteles' Physik darlegt.

This dissertation includes an introduction, five main chapters, and a conclusion. In the chapter “The Definition of Change”, I expound Aquinas’ account of change. I maintain that Aquinas’ account is meant to describe both spiritual and material changes. Hence, the hylomorphic account of change as the passage from form-less matter to enformed matter is unable to describe all changes. Contrary to Brower, I suggest that Aquinas’ favorite model involves a passage from potentiality to actuality. In addition, I state that ‘change’ is identical to the second potentiality/first actuality of a process that includes three steps, a first potentiality, a second potentiality, and a second actuality. In the chapter on “Aquinas, Presentism, and Adverbialism”, I analyze the semantics of propositions that describe changing processes. I maintain that Aquinas subscribed to the view that past and future tense statements can have a truth-value. Chapter 4 is devoted to the so-called principle of plenitude, i.e. the thesis that all possibilities are realized at some point in the future. Aquinas is believed to have subscribed to the principle, whereas Aristotle’s texts are much more disputed. In this chapter, I offer a new interpretation, according to which Aristotle accepted a restricted version of the principle of plenitude, but Aquinas rejected the principle in all its formulations. In chapter 5 “Aquinas on Future Contingents”, I expound Aquinas’ theory of future contingents events. In this chapter, I make two claims. I state that Aquinas’ theory entails that future events do not exist, according to the ‘actual’ sense of existence. My second claim is about the logic of future contingents. I claim that Aquinas’ argument is logically sound, but presupposes that the so-called K-formula is not a tautology of Aquinas’ modal system. In chapter 6 I expound Aquinas’ definition of time. I maintain that Aquinas’ definition is not circular and time is distinct in both definition and in essendo from change. I conclude by stating that time has extra-mental existence.