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‘Metaphysics of the Exodus’: Debating Platonic Versus Christian Traces in St Thomas’ Concept of Being

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Abstract

This paper critically analyzes the deconstructive tendency that some authors have shown against the so-called Metaphysics of Exodus, promoted by philosophers such as Étienne Gilson. The most original notion in Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy is that being (esse) is said to derive not from the Bible as Gilson claims, but from Neoplatonic sources of pagan ambience, such as the author of the De causis (Proclus) or the Dionysius Areopagite. We carry out an analysis of the status quaestionis by showing, contrary to the critics of the ‘Metaphysics of Exodus,’ that this deconstructive tendency is unfounded and untenable.

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Notes

  1. Answer given by Heidegger in a lecture given at the University of Zurich, in 1951, to a student who asked him, ‘Can being and God be identified?’. Grasset 1980: 333–334.

  2. Cf. Plotinus, Enneads, VI 8, 22, 1. 1–15; VI 9, 5, 1. 24–46. The author comments: ‘The first Principle is called One, but not in the sense of a predicate.’ St. Thomas in Sum. theol., I, q. 40, a. 1, ad 1: ‘Quia vero divina simplicitas excludit compositionem subjecti et accidentis, sequitur quod quidquid attribuitur Deo, est eius essentia.’ De Vogel 1960: 341, note 2. Another comparison coined by De Vogel between Thomas and Plotinus can be seen in the identification between the will and the divine essence. The texts are: Sum. theol., I 19, a. 1; Plotinus, Enneads VI 8, 13, 1. 5–8. Also the identification of the divine goodness and its essence: Sum. theol. Ibid.; Enneads VI 8, 1. 27–33 and V 5, 13, 1. 1–11.

  3. I note an important detail that the author highlights in her exposition. She says: ‘It is clear, then, that being is distinct from essence or quiddity.’ After the word being, she adds a footnote where she explains that she refers to the word being ‘in the sense of existence, but I have preferred to translate the term “esse” as being’ (Vanni Robighi 1973: 51, note 11).

  4. That the good is prior to being in the order of foundation in the areas of causality, cf. Aertsen 2000: 359, and morality, cf. Aertsen 2000: 356, is a highly debatable thesis, above all from a Thomistic perspective.

  5. Did Gilson’s thinking evolve on this point or did Aertsen find a more complex approach by gathering more and better information in the whole corpus gilsonianum? This is, for example, the thesis of S. Filippi on this detail, cf. Filippi, 2015: 99, note 2.

  6. ‘From whence it follows that this which I call being is the actuality of all acts, and is therefore the perfection of all perfections.’.

  7. The author speaks of metaphysics as a ‘science of essence,’ identifying esse with existentia.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, I+D Noésis, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain

    Manuel Alejandro Serra Pérez

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Pérez, M.A.S. ‘Metaphysics of the Exodus’: Debating Platonic Versus Christian Traces in St Thomas’ Concept of Being. SOPHIA (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-024-01006-0

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