Etienne Gilson

While there is an absence of treatises devoted to the question of ens ut primum cognitum, there is no shortage of brief and implicit treatments; indeed, nearly every Thomist of the past seven centuries seems to have at least something to say about the notion that being is the first of our intellectual conceptions. Most recent Thomist thinkers—including Gilson—assume this ens to be nothing other than the ens reale of things entitatively considered, operating as they do out of a framework within which realism and idealism are presumed to be exhaustive and mutually exclusive attempts to answer the question of human knowledge. It is the intent of this essay to examine how Gilson arrives at his position, which he calls “metaphysical realism,” and to point to some of the difficulties it entails.

L'intuizione sensibile però non garantisce l'esistenza del soggetto.
Si crede che essa ce ne dia garanzia perché l'oggetto e normalmente la causa di una conoscenza di questo genere; ma Dio può sempre produrre un dato effetto senza passare attraverso la sua causa seconda, e può sempre creare una cosa separatamente da un'altra; si può quindi avere un'intuizione sensibile di ciò che non esiste.
In questo caso non si tratta di un'intuizione vera e propria, ma di una credenza nell'esistenza di ciò che non esiste.
Poiché non abbiamo alcun mezzo di scoprire questa differenza, il coefficiente di incertezza che intacca la nostra conoscenza non se ne trova diminuito.
Ma queste tesi non intaccano la conoscenza scientifica filosofica.

IL CRISANESIMO E LA FILOSOFIA
LA BIBBIA
MONOTEISMO
CREAZIONISMO
ANTROPOCENTRISMO
IL COMANDO DIVINO
PROVVIDENZA PERSONALE
IDEE BIBLICHE SULL’UOMO E IL SUO DESTINO
PECCATO ORIGINALE
FEDE E SPIRITO
EROS GRECO - AMORE CRISTIANO
RIVOLUZIONE DEI VALORI
IMMORALITÀ E RISURREZIONE
IL NUOVO SENSO DELLA STORIA E DELLA VITA DELL’UOMO
PENSIERO GRECO E MESSAGGIO CRISTIANO
PROBLEMI DOTTRINALI E FILOSOFICI
VECCHIO TESTAMENTO
FASI DEL PENSIERO PATRISTICO
I PROBLEMI FONDAMENTALI
TESTO DI MEDITAZIONE DELLA FEDE
FILONE D’ALESSANDRIA
ALLEGORIA
SVOLTA NEL PENSIERO OCCIDENTALE
ESSERE INCORPOREO
CONOSCENZA DI DIO
CREAZIONISMO
NATURA DELL’UOMO
LEGGE MORALE
LA FEDE
ITINERARIO A DIO
GNOSTICISMO
MARCIONE DA SINOPE (85 - 160 d.C.)
BASILIDE (120-140 d.C.)
VALENTINO (135-160 d.C.)
SANT’IRENEO
I PADRI GRECI E LA FILOSOFIA
ARISTIDE
GIUSTINO MARTIRE
TAZIANO L’ASSIRO
ATENAGORA DI ATENE
TEOFILO DI ANTIOCHIA
LA SCUOLA DI ALESSANDRIA
CLEMENTE ALESSANDRINO
ORIGENE
L’ETÀ AUREA DELLA PATRISTICA
EUSEBIO DI CESAREA
ARIO
CONCILIO DI NICEA
I GRANDI DI CAPPADOCIA
GREGORIO DI NAZIANZO (GREGORIO IL TEOLOGO)
SAN BASILIO
GREGORIO DI NISSA
NEMESIO
SINESIO
TEODORETO
GLI ULTIMI GRANDI PADRI DELLA CHIESA
DIONIGI
MASSIMO DI CRISIPOLI o IL CONFESSORE
GIOVANNI FILOPONO o GIOVANNI IL GRAMMATICO
GIOVANNI DI DAMASCO o GIOVANNI DAMASCENO
I PADRI LATINI E LA FILOSOFIA
TERTULLIANO
MINUCIO FELICE
ARNOBIO
LATTANZIO
SANT’ILARIO DI POITIERS
SANT’AMBROGIO
MACROBIO
CALCIDIO
MARIO VITTORINO
SANT’AGOSTINO
BOEZIO
CASSIODORO
ISIDORO DI SIVIGLIA
MARTINO DI BRACARA
PAPA GREGORIO I o GREGORIO MAGNO
BEDA IL VENERABILE
DALLA RINASCENZA CAROLINGIA AL X SECOLO
LA TRASMISSIONE DELLA CULTURA LATINA
GIOVANNI SCOTO ERIUGENA
LA FILOSOFIA NEL IX E X SECOLO IN OCCIDENTE
LA FILOSOFIA NEL SECOLO XI
DIALETTICI E TEOLOGI
ROSCELLINO
ANSELMO DI CANTERBURY
LA SCUOLA DI CHARTRES
BERNARDO DI CHARTRES
GILBERTO DE LA PORRÉE
TEODORICO DI CHARTRES
GUGLIELMO DI CONCHES
PIETRO ABELARDO
LA MISTICA SPECULATIVA
SAN BERNARDO DI CHIARAVALLE
GUGLIELMO DI SAN TEODORICO
ISACCO STELLA
UGO DI SAN VITTORE
RICCARDO DI SAN VITTORE
ALANO DI LILLA
NICOLA DI AMIENS
LA FILOSOFIA ARABA
AL-FARABI
AVICENNA
AL-GHAZZALI
AVEMPACE
ABUBACER
AVERROÈ
FILOSOFIA EBRAICA
ISHAQ AL-ISRAĀĪLI
SA’ADYĀH BEN YŌSĒF DI FAYUM
SHELŌMŌH IBN GEBĪRŌL
MŌSEH BEN MAIMÔN (MOSÈ MAIMONIDE)
LA FILOSOFIA NEL SECOLO XIII
SAN BONAVENTURA
I MAESTRI DI OXFORD
ROBERTO GROSSATESTA
TOMMASO DI YORK
RUGGERO BACONE
ALBERTO MAGNO
TOMMASO D’AQUINO
RUGGERO DI BRABANTE
GIOVANNI DUNS SCOTO
GUGLIELMO D’OCKHAM

This is an analysis of Mondrian's Broadway Boogie-Woogie following Maritains theory of Art and Aesthetics in his book Creative Intuition. This paper analyzes the birth of this piece of art starting from the very moment of conception in the pre-conscious of Mondrian's art work untill the sharing of the "I" of the viewer

The author discusses St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s understanding of paradisus claustralis—the monastic life of union with the Divine Will. Specifically, he tries to answer the question whether divine love can be taught according to the method proposed by St. Bernard. He makes his way through a whole thicket of artificial obstacles erected around it in order to show the whole positive contribution of history to the understanding of St. Bernard’s mystical theology.

Le concept d’art et de beauté de É. Gilson garde toujours sa valeur et demeure d’actualité car, d’une manière particulièrement riche et polyvalente, il enseigne et inspire la discussion. Ceci est important aujourd’hui, parce que la manière classique de pratiquer la philosophie s’effondre et que l’art perd sa continuité dans la tradition occidentale. Bien que son point de vue sur l’art et la beauté sont moins bien connus que les ouvrages consacrés à l’histoire de la philosophie, à la métaphysique ou à l’épistémologie, le temps est venu de ce que nous appelons l’esthétique d’Étienne Gilson. Elle entraîne une réflexion plus approfondie sur les valeurs fondamentales de notre culture.

The article aims at presenting the life and work of Étienne Gilson (1884–1978)—a historian of philosophy, medievalist, renewer of the scholastic tradition, proponent of a return to the original doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas, and philosopher. It is focused on selected areas of Gilson’s philosophical interest, such as: medieval philosophy, the history of philosophy, existential Thomism, atheism, literature and art. In the final analysis, Gilson appears as a firm advocate of philosophical realism which makes it possible to find a way out of contradictory explanations of the world, and allows man to live in openness to the voice of God’s revelation that constantly flows from reality.

Dans "Le Transcendantal : réceptions et mutations d'une notion kantienne", dir. C. Bouriau, A. Feneuil et Y. Meessen, Nancy, Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 2018, p. 151-160.

Est-il possible de revendiquer le réalisme en philosophie sans contradiction ? Cet article envisage la question à partir de la controverse entre Étienne Gilson et les néo-thomistes pendant les années 1930, avec en perspective les débats contemporains autour du "réalisme spéculatif".

In this paper, I demarcate the three main stages of development of Étienne Gilson's doctrine concerning Christian philosophy through an examination of some of his key works, treated in chronological order. Thus, I proceed to explicate how Gilson's doctrine developed from its gestational stage in the 1920s, through the first Christian philosophy debate of the 1930s, into its second phase of birth and infancy from the 1930s through the early 1950s, ending with its third period, that of maturity, in the later 1950s and 1960s. Furthermore, I note that implicit throughout those three stages are conceptions of Christian philosophy as existing in two modes: one as the philosophical component present within theology, and the other as, properly speaking, outside of theology-though by no means outside of the influence of Christianity. Additionally, Gilson's influence upon St. John Paul II's treatment of Christian philosophy in Fides et Ratio is addressed. The paper culminates in a demonstration of how Gilson's mature doctrine regarding Christian philosophy is relevant as a guide for the pursuit of Christian philosophy in this, our Third Christian Millennium.

In this paper I will delineate the psychological operations and faculties required for linguistic apprehension within a Thomistic psychology. This will require first identifying the proper object of linguistic apprehension, which will then allow me to specify the distinct operations and faculties necessary for linguistic apprehension. I will argue that the semantic value of any linguistic term is a type of incidental sensible and that its cognitive apprehension is a type of incidental sensation. Hence, the faculties necessary for the apprehension of any linguistic term’s semantic value will be the cogitative power and the intellect. The cogitative power, because it is the faculty of particular intentions, and the intellect, because it is the faculty of universal intentions.

The paper discusses Anselm’s thought as Christian philosophy in light of positions developed during the 1930s French debates about Christian philosophy, specifically the complementary positions of Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain. I argue that, understood by reference to the frameworks of Gilson’s early (1931-33) position and Maritain’s position, Anselm’s thought would not only be a Christian philosophy but also a model of Christian philosophy. Gilson’s later (1934-37) position, however, held that Anselm’s thought should not be considered to be Christian philosophy. I argue that his later position has several weaknesses, and that his first position provides the more adequate assessment of Anselm.

I this article I tackle a series of questions related to beauty and aesthetic perception in Aquinas. Many of these questions orbit what we should make of Aquinas's claim "Pulchra enim dicuntur quae visa placent" (ST I.5.4ad1)

In the first part, I focus on beauty in Aquinas. A surprising amount of literature has been written on Aquinas's relatively scattered remarks about beauty. Drawing upon this erudite literature, I note some important hermeneutical worries about approaching these various remarks and present a summary of Aquinas's view that beauty pertains to what exhibits claritas and proportio. Perhaps the most controversial topic in this literature concerns the transcendental status of beauty in Aquinas. Again, I address some exegetical concerns about the nature of this question, and try to articulate a non-anachronistic version of the question. I then examine Jan Aertsen's well-known criticisms of exponents of the view that beauty is a transcendental for Aquinas. I demonstrate that Aertsen’s objections and arguments are not persuasive, are far from decisive, and were adequately anticipated and resolved by the interpretations of Umberto Eco and others. Indeed, it is Aertsen who has failed to address adequately the cogent interpretations of his predecessors, who rightly defend the thesis that beauty is a transcendental in Aquinas.

Transcendental beauty pertains to beauty as it is in itself (quoad se), but aesthetic beauty pertains to instances of transcendental beauty as it is manifest to us humans (i.e., quoad nos). In the second part of the essay I focus in on a specific kind of aesthetic experience, namely, that of aesthetic perception, and I look to the importance of Aquinas's doctrine of per accidens sensation by the cogitative power and intellect for understanding beauty as a per accidens sensible grasped by aesthetic perception. I then turn to investigate the way in which aesthetic perception, a cognitive operation, involves a form of pleasure, an appetitive operation.

I conclude with some speculative remarks on the importance of aesthetic virtues and cultivating an aesthetics of everyday life.

Bonum is a primitive notion that is known in the very act of experiencing desire or appetite. It is, therefore, an undeniable fact that many things—substances, qualities, actions—exercise an attraction and can be characterized as “good.” By reflecting on bonum we come to realize that ens is by no means a static reality: it has an internal dynamism by which it possesses intrinsic perfection and thus is able to act on other entia. Moreover, this operari is always for the sake of an end (omne agens agit propter finem) and at the same time is always for the sake of the suppositum that acts. In short, ens is always in action, and it acts in order to reach its own fulfillment or (for spiritual beings) happiness. The fact can be established by simple recognition; the purpose of this paper, however, is to discover the metaphysical foundation for the tendency to self-fulfillment. I will show that a metaphysics based on a conception of actus essendi as an intensive act, or—as the title suggests—as a virtus essendi that is the source of all the proper perfections of an individual substance (suppositum), provides the basis for an answer to this problem. The actus essendi, the radical and original act of a substance, is composed and co-created with a radical potency that I will call essentia ut potentia essendi, which determines, limits, and measures the actus essendi. Since the actus essendi is act, which is by nature generous, fecund, and expansive, it cannot be completely contained by the essence. Therefore, it tends to flow forth, first in a necessary way into the esse of the substance and the accidentia propria, and then into operari, which constitutes its final expansion. Actus essendi, or esse ut actus (which is the radical act), is therefore distinct from esse in actu (which is the “fact” of being that is proper to predicamental ens). Hence, there is a profound communion between esse and agere, for it is precisely the expansiveness of the actus essendi that explains the tendency of ens to act for its self-fulfillment: every suppositum seeks to let its actus essendi expand into the greatest “quantity” of esse in actu that its essence allows.

ETIENNE GILSON’S PHILOSOPHY OF ART
A Systematic Presentation of "Painting and Reality,"
"The Arts of the Beautiful," and "Forms and Substances in the Arts"

Joseph Houser, LC

Some of Etienne Gilson’s most original and least studied philosophical works are his three books on philosophy of art: "Painting and Reality," "The Arts of the Beautiful," and "Forms and Substances in the Arts." In them he proposes a vision of art as a making or production, which fits perfectly into a philosophy of being as act.
In "Painting and Reality" he first approaches the problem of art from a phenomenological perspective. He distinguishes three modes of existence of paintings: physical, artistic, and aesthetic. He then shows the validity of the Aristotelian notions of matter and form when applied to a work of art (and more specifically paintings), and the role that each plays in the genesis of the work by the artist.
In "The Arts of the Beautiful," Gilson begins by arguing that art belongs to the order of making (“poiesis” as he would say) and not of knowledge. The fine arts consist in the production of objects “expressly willed and conceived in view of their beauty alone.” Philosophy of art, the philosophical reflection on this productive activity of man, must thus be distinguished from “calology” (the study of beauty as a transcendental of being) and aesthetics (the study of how works of art affect the subject, or how we react to the work).  He argues that art is not primarily a “message carrier,” whether interpreted as intuition (either a privileged view of the world, or a creative intuition of the artist) as expression (either of the artist himself or in general), or symbolism. Further, while art is materially imitative, that is not its constitutive function or primary goal. Rather, art stems from the natural fecundity of being. Artists create because they want to add new beauty to the world. While historically art was submitted to knowledge due to the prevalence of a static essentialism, the proper answer to the modern revolt against nature is found in the context of a metaphysics of creation, which leaves room to the creative freedom of artists to produce beings in imitation of God’s free creative act.
As a kind of test and confirmation, these theories are applied to the major arts in "Forms and Substances in the Arts." In architecture, painting, music and poetry, these ideas are applied in a variety of ways, all of which however are ultimately compatible with the concept of art as the production of beauty qua beauty. This study concludes with our evaluation of the philosophical fecundity of Gilson’s concept of art, as well as of the possible limits of his proposal.

El siglo XX será recordado por los grandes avances científicos y tecnológicos, la conquista del espacio, el uso masivo de las computadoras y las telecomunicaciones, el desarrollo de economías a escala mundial y por una notable expansión de la cultura y del mundo universitario; pero también, por las guerras mundiales, la amenaza de una aniquilación nuclear, los genocidios, la enorme desigualdad social, la crisis ecológica; los interrogantes y debates en torno a la genética y el futuro biológico de la humanidad y del planeta mismo. Todas estas realidades se reflejaron en la filosofía de ese siglo. Este libro hace un recorrido por las principales obras y autores que han marcado el pasado inmediato de la filosofía. Con un lenguaje accesible, se muestran las propuestas fundamentales que dieron pie al prestigio académico y social de estos pensadores, y se expone un modelo hermenéutico para enfrentarse a los textos clásicos.

The term “participation” as I am are concerned with it in this thesis signifies the package of relations forming a structure of dependence between the manifold of inferior subjects and the higher source of their similitude or nature. Thomistic participation is most properly understood as the expression of the dependence relation of creatures to God, a relation exemplified by a metaphysical structure open to analysis by the thinker sufficiently trained in the general science of created being (metaphysics). Participation is the way in which created beings are related to God and receptive of divine causality—the most superior and most transcendental type of cause.
      This study, in examining key sources and some principle texts of the Angelic Doctor, will bring to light his mature doctrine of participation as a synthesis operating on two mutually interpreting planes of thought: the philosophical, where he synthesizes the principle metaphysical concerns of Plato and Platonism (pagan Greek, Islamic, Jewish, and Christian sources) with the critical revision of Plato that is the achievement of Aristotle; the theological, where the Angelic Doctor grants a metaphysical certification to fundamental Christian commitments about God: his essential goodness, radical simplicity, and his ultimate and total causal power with respect to creatures.
      For Aquinas, creation means that all but God is creature, and that the creaturely nature of the world definitively saturates the world and everything in it. By means of an analysis of the metaphysical structure of being and beings in terms of participation Aquinas arrives at a conception of a God who, as the first and supreme cause of the world, is both transcendent of it and immanent in it, such that the world is a manifold of created natures at once utterly under divine governance and free in their own order.

While there is an absence of treatises devoted to the question of ens ut primum cognitum, there is no shortage of brief and implicit treatments; indeed, nearly every Thomist of the past seven centuries seems to have at least something to say about the notion that being is the first of our intellectual conceptions. Most recent Thomist thinkers—including Gilson—assume this ens to be nothing other than the ens reale of things entitatively considered, operating as they do out of a framework within which realism and idealism are presumed to be exhaustive and mutually exclusive attempts to answer the question of human knowledge. It is the intent of this essay to examine how Gilson arrives at his position, which he calls "metaphysical realism," and to point to some of the difficulties it entails.

A retrieval of Neoplatonism is a powerful, widely, and significantly present, but little recognised, feature of twentieth-century French philosophy, theology, and spiritual life.  It begins about one hundred years ago with Henri Bergson (1859-1941) with whom also its purposes and the modifications Neoplatonism undergoes in being adapted to the contemporary world begin to show.  There are two major characteristics: it is generally opposed to the Western metaphysical tradition insofar as this is understood to determine modernity. It is also generally anti-Idealist, endeavouring to link the sensuous and corporeal immediately with an unknowable first Principle, a descendent either of the Neoplatonic One-Good or what is ineffably beyond that. This second characteristic sets the twentieth-century retrieval in opposition to that in the nineteenth century and even to the ancient and medieval Neoplatonisms generally. On both accounts this Neoplatonic retrieval has an ambiguous relation to Augustine, to the Augustinian tradition, and to “the unspoken but rampant neo-Augustinianism of twentieth-century French philosophy” ( Jacob Schmutz).
The persistence of this neo-Augustinianism may be gathered from Jean-Luc Marion’s inaugural lecture as Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Chicago: Mihi magna quaestio factus sum: The Privilege of Unknowing,” just published in the Journal of Religion. Set under a text from Augustine, it connects the unknowability of the human to that of God in order to oppose late medieval and modern ontology and the contemporary objectification of human life.
The lecture distinguishes three stages in the relations between this neo-Neoplatonism and this neo-Augustinianism. First with Maurice Blondel (1861-1949), their projects are identical. Second with Henri de Lubac (1896-1991), there is a strong criticism of the Augustinian tradition together with an endeavour to hold to Augustine as sharply distinguished from his late medieval and modern followers. The reason for this differentiation is that de Lubac discovers the late medieval and modern Augustinian tradition to be at the origins of the problems with modernity for which he is seeking a solution. Third with Jean Trouillard (1907-1984), Henry Dumery, Stanislas Breton (1912-2005), and others, there is a criticism of Augustine himself as a source for what is causing the destruction of transcendent religion in Western Christendom. Jean-Luc Marion’s position mixes a number of these moments and the lecture closes with some remarks about it.

Resumen Desde Tomás de Aquino se indagará al hombre como " minor mundus " o microcosmos. Al hombre, inmaterial y orgánico a la vez, se lo considerará como un pequeño mundo y se analizará su constitución integral en relación con el gran mundo o macrocosmos. Se mostrará cómo el pensamiento de Tomás de Aquino no es ni un espiritualismo exacerbado ni un angelismo descarnado y cómo lo corporal no es dejado de lado ni infravalorado cual elemento ciego a Dios o como algo caduco y opaco al pensamiento. Finalmente, se expondrá que la noción del hombre como " minor mundus " no sólo puede ser considerada desde lo inmaterial sino también desde otros aspectos que hacen a su consistencia ontológica. Se comparará la completitud del hombre con la del cosmos, encontrando semejanzas y desemejanzas que permitan tener una visión más exhaustiva de su misma integridad y totalidad.

L’Europa sembra in crisi ma non ogni crisi è anche un declino inevitabile. Al fine di comprendere se il genio europeo od occidentale abbia un futuro è necessario descrivere la genesi e lo sviluppo storici di questo improprio “continente culturale”, rinvenendo la tipicità di tale genio, e osservare quale sia lo stato di salute di cui esso ancora possa godere attualmente: pur lontani da ogni pessimismo, i dati non sembrano incoraggiare l’analista, alla luce dell’impoverimento filosofico che affligge la cultura europeo-occidentale. L’unica via d’uscita sarebbe il recupero ermeneutico della tradizione filosofico-politica che ha caratterizzato tale cultura, di cui oggi sembra essersi smarrita la memoria, ma v’è da capire se e quando un tale recupero sarà possibile.

This paper defends Plotinus from Etienne Gilson's interpretation of Neoplatonism in Being and Some Philosophers.  I note the various ways that Plotinus' metaphysics seem to anticipate the thought of Thomas Aquinas, including: the primacy of activity in Plotinus, that the first principle is infinite and above all being (on/ens), that the One is the efficient and final cause of all things.  Much of this material is presented in a more sophisticated form in my MA thesis.

This paper compares the views of Étienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Thomas Aqui-
nas on the order in our knowledge of being. While Gilson and Maritain maintain that
esse and the actus essendi are what are first known, Aquinas maintains consistently that
it is the existent thing or the ens itself that is first known. The paper proceeds by first
laying out the positions of Gilson and Maritain as evidenced in their respective works
Being and Some Philosophers and Existence and the Existent. Then, it manifests what
in their positions is correct and in what they err. And finally, it argues that ens is the
first thing known by appealing to the proper object of the intellect, the order between
the acts of the intellect, and the intellect’s mode of procedure. In the course of these
arguments, the primary authoritative sources used are the works of Aquinas.

This paper presents an analysis of North American Thomists, specifically according to their consideration of the place of the doctrine of the divine ideas in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. The thesis is that this consideration can be compared according to the respective weight given to Plato and Aristotle by these thinkers in their approach to Thomas. The more that these Thomists tend to elevate the role of Aristotle and minimize that of Plato, the less they consider the doctrine of the divine ideas to have a meaningful place in the thought of Thomas. The reverse is likewise true, in that the greater their appreciation of Platonic and Neoplatonic influences on the thought of Thomas, the greater the place North American Thomists give to the divine ideas in the thought of Thomas, even holding them to be an integral and indispensible part of his system.

En el presente escrito se narra de modo breve la vida del filósofo francés Jacques Maritain, teniendo como foco de atención los eventos más importantes de la vida del pensador respecto de su trabajo intelectual en la filosofía. Además, se muestra la obra principal del autor de manera esquemática de acuerdo al área o campo filosófico al que pertenece.

This paper will argue that the order and the unity of St. Thomas Aquinas’s five ways can be elucidated through a consideration of St. Thomas’s appropriation of an Avicennian insight that he used to order and unify the wisdom of the Aristotelian and Abrahamic philosophical traditions towards the existence of God. I will begin with a central aporia from Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Aristotle says that the science of first philosophy has three different theoretical vectors: ontology, aitiology, and theology. But how can all three be united into a single Aristotelian science? In his Metaphysics of the Healing, Avicenna resolved the impasse by taking the ontological vector as the subject of metaphysics. He then integrated the question of the four first causes into the penultimate stage of his demonstration for the existence of God, thereby placing aitiological and theological questions among the ultimate concerns of a unified Aristotelian metaphysics. In the five ways, St. Thomas integrated Avicenna’s Aristotelian search for the first four causes into the last four of his five ways, by showing that each of the four aitiological orders terminate in an ultimate first cause that we call God. Finally, by appending the proof from the Physics to the beginning of the five ways, St. Thomas was able to show that the ultimate aim of both natural philosophy and metaphysics is the divine first principle, which is the beginning and subject of sacra doctrina.

The author argues in this paper that a sound investigation into the study of knowledge reveals that the so-called “critical problem” of modern philosophy is merely contrived, based on false premises, and does not present a genuine challenge to the justification of objective knowledge, inasmuch as the problem can be reduced to absurdity and is based on gratui­tous assumptions about the nature of knowledge and the knowing subject.

Is it necessary for all Christians – including Christians who are metaphysicians with demonstrative knowledge of God’s existence – to hold by faith that God exists? I shall approach this apparently straightforward question by investigating two opposing lines of interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’s own response to this question. I shall begin with two texts from Thomas that motivate two incompatible theses concerning Thomas’s doctrine of the harmony of faith and reason with respect to the existence of God. Next, I shall clarify the salient points of disagreement between these two interpretations of faith and reason in Thomas Aquinas before examining dialectically a number of arguments in favor and against the respective theses of these two interpretations. In the final section I shall argue that the results of our dialectical inquiry reveal that the initial disagreement between the two positions is not irresolvable. Accordingly, I shall conclude by proposing two revised versions of the initial theses that emphasize the compatibility of these two interpretations of Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of the harmony of faith and reason.