Aquinas on Resolution in Metaphysics

AQUINAS ON RESOLUTION IN METAPHYSICS MICHAEL TAVUZZI, O.P. Angeliaum University Rome FOR AQUINAS a sequence of thoughts, even if interconnected in some manner, does not DJutomatically constitute a scientific discipline. To justify a daim to scientific status such a sequence will have ito he characterized by those properties which raise mere thinking to the level of reasoning : it wiH have to proceed rationabiliter,. in all senses of the term. The sequence wiM havie to he concerned with a 1corresponding obiectum speculabile, with a universal concept or ratio.1 It wi11 have to be endowed with a direct object of in1 " Et ideo oportet scientias speculativas dividi per differentias speculabilium , in quantum speculabilia sunt." In Boethii de Trin., q. 5, a. l; "... scientia est de aliquo dupliciter. Uno modo et principaliter, et sic scientia est de rationibus universalibus ..." In Boethii de Trin., q. 5, a. 2, ad 4um. The term ratio in Aquinas has a remarkable multiplicity of senses. L. Schutz, ThomM-Lexikon (reprinted N.Y., 1957), pp. 679-690, enumerates eighteen principal significations. Without going into detail, I would like to point out that I am employing the term ratio in the sense of a universal concept (Schlitz's 'i '). This is not the universal concept taken as a particular psychological fact or mental event, with the ontological status of an accident inhering in the rational soul as in its subject, but rather the universal concept in the sense of its notional content, taken as a particular psychological fact. The term ratio, therefore, denotes the notional content which: (l) represents the intellect's understanding of the nature or essence which is instantiated in a multiplicity of particulars (the nature or essence is itself denoted by the term ratio according to another of its senses, Schlitz's sense 'k '); (2) is endowed with the intentio universalitatis whereby the multiplicity of particulars in which the corresponding nature or essence is instantiated falls under the concept as its genus or species; (3) is verbally expressed by a definition. This sense of the term ratio is, of course, not to be confused with that wholly different sense (also of great importance for an understanding of metaphysical resolution) whereby it denotes tbe intellect's 199 ~00 MICHAEL TAVUZZI, O.P. vestigation, with ·a proportionate subiectum scientiae, which is at foast formally distinct from that of any other scientific discipline. Aquinais affirms thrut this is indeed the case with the sequence of interconnected reasonings which consititutes the science of metaphysics. In the Prooemium to the oommentary on the Metaphysics of A~istotle, he states that metaphysics is concerned , in the first place, with being as sUJCh-with being as being and the properties which are immediately consequent upon it.2 The diroot subject matter of metaphysics, its obiectum spooulabile as such, is the ratio which is the content of the concept of being in general (ens commune) and which is instantiated in everything which falls under this quasigeneric concept. But just how does the mind have access to this obiectum speculabile? How does the intellect form the concept of being in geneml and sei:z;e its content? After aH, the 1 content of this concept which e~resses the " nature " of being as such, the ratio entis, is neither readily nor immediately gmsped by ,the intellect. If it were, there wouM indeed be no need for the discipline of metaphysics. Just how then does the intellect attain it? This question represents the crucial probfom of the very possibility of the science of metaphysics as envisaged by Aquinas. Aquinas is ce:vtainly aware of this and in the same Prooemium does not neglect to answer it. The content of the concept of being in general, the obiectum speculabile of metaphysics, is attained by means of a process of resolut:io.8 In this paper I shall examine this process of metaphysical resolution. I shall first trace Aquina;s's gradual clarification of the nature of resolutive reasoning by commencing with its most primitiv