This paper explores the Aristotelian context of the real distinction between existence and essence thought to be posited in Thomas Aquinas’ early workDe Ente Et Essentia. In doing so, the paper situates its own position in the context of contemporary scholarship and in relation to the contemporary trend to downplay Aristotle’s influence in Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy. The paper argues that re-readingDe Ente Et Essentiain this way sheds new light on some of the crucial debates in contemporary Thomist scholarship, particularly with (...) respect to the analogous relation between potency and act: essence and existence, the distinction between conceptual and causal explanation, and the relationship between philosophy and theology in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

Goldbach’s conjecture, if not read in number theory, but in a precise foundation theory of mathematics, that refers to the metaphysical ‘theory of the participation’ of Thomas Aquinas, poses a surprising analogy between the category of the quantity, within which the same arithmetic conjecture is formulated, and the transcendental/formal dimension. It says: every even number is ‘like’ a two, that is: it has the form-of-two. And that means: it is the composition of two units; not two equal arithmetic units, but (...) two different formal-transcendental units, which are, in arithmetic, two prime numbers. (shrink)

A Thomistic metaphysics of participation in being offers an account of rationality that is more complete and coherent than that of nonreductive physicalism. It is a reasoned understanding of how an embodied intellectual subject shares in being and intellectual life. This metaphysical framework supports an understanding of rationality as a participated power, and an essential property of human nature empowering persons to know reality and make choices accordingly. Human fulfilment in truth and love is a consequence of the grounding of (...) the transcendentals of truth and goodness in being. In contrast, nonreductive physicalism reduces rationality to processes and subjective experiences and can offer no priority between human material and spiritual fulfilment. Although a Thomistic metaphysics of participation in being has been effectively absent from Anglo-American hylomorphic philosophy of mind, this paper suggests it is time to reassess the benefits it offers. (shrink)