In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

456 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY or PHILOSOPHY 34:3 JULY 1996 of reflection about rhetorical practices that I suspect Aristotle was trying to elicit in his own time and that Garver is trying to elicit in his. DAVID J. DEPEW California State University, FuUerton Fran O'Rourke, Pseudo-Dionysius and theMetaphysics ofAquinas. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999. Pp. xvi + 3oo. Cloth, $8o.oo. The importance of doctrines found in the Latin translations of the late fifth-century Greek works of pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite for the formation of the theological and philosophical thought of Thomas Aquinas is obvious to anyone well-versed in the texts of Aquinas. However, it is by no means obvious how Aquinas read, understood , and transformed the Christian Neoplatonic theology of this apparent disciple of Proclus or Damascius so as to make it an integral part of his understanding of God and creation. O'Rourke rightly conceived his task as twofold: first, the texts of Dionysius must be properly understood; second, the interpretation and use of these by Aquinas can itself be assessed and appreciated in its own thirteenth-century context . In the first part of the book he examines the question of knowledge of God, with one chapter devoted to Dionysius and a second devoted to Aquinas's use of "Dionysian Elements" in discovering God. Part Two examines their teachings on the "Transcendence of Being and Good" in chapters 3 and 4. Part Three contains three chapters on the "Unity of Divine Causation in Dionysius": "Transcendent Causality and Existence," "Dionysian Elements in Aquinas' Notion of Being," and "Goodness of GOd as Subsistent Being." The last of the book's four parts concerns creation in Dionysius and related matters, such as emanation, causation, freedom, etc., in Aquinas. The aim of the book is succinctly expressed by O'Rourke in his preface, namely, "to show that, in the encounter of Aquinas with Dionysius, there emerges an integral and comprehensive vision of existence, a vision embracing the finite and the infinite, depicting the universe in its procession from, and return to, the Absolute, and according to each grade of reality, including man, its place in the hierarchy of being" (xv). This book is certainly welcome for its effort to deal with a great many of the metaphysical concerns in Aquinas's use of Dionysius throughout his many works. Still, it lacks substantial discussion of important formative influences on the thinking of Aquinas from the work of Avicenna (with respect to abstraction, efficient causality of existence, and the essence/existence distinction), Boethius (on esseand id quod est), and Albert (whose lectures on Dionysius Aquinas heard). Nevertheless, the author moves without this directly into discussion of important related metaphysical concerns in the most important parts of this work, Parts Two and Three, concerning the teachings of Dionysius and Aquinas on being or existence (essein the Latin, to einai in the Greek). For Dionysius, as the author remarks, "God is the One and the Good beyond Being" (7o). Yet He is appropriately denominated as Being insofar as He can be named from the characteristic most widely caused by Him in creatures: GOd is known as Being BOOK REVIEWS 457 only causaliter. Herein lies the chief difference between the teachings of these thinkers and the central issue upon which any book on their metaphysical theologies must focus. For, in contrast to Dionysius, Aquinas holds that He Who Is (Qui est) is the most appropriate name of God and that this name is not merely said causaliter but rather as rightly denominating the very essence of God. Earlier O'Rourke correctly notes that the thought of Dionysius is transformed when taken over by Aquinas and that "this is rooted in the new meaning which Aquinas discovers in the notion of being or esse" (56). Yet, rather than pursuing Aquinas's sources for this notion in Avicenna, Boethius, the Liber de causis, Aristotle, Albert, William of Auvergne or others, O'Rourke is content to follow Fabro in holding Dionysius to be the primary source (181). This is certainly a matter for more critical discussion. Employing the Platonic methodology of abstraction to grasp the thearchic processions out of which creation is constituted, Dionysius considers Being...

pdf

Share