San Tommaso e il pensiero moderno ed. by Pontificia Accademia Romana di S. Tommaso d’Aquino (review)

BOOK REVIEWS San Tommaso e il pensiero moderno, ed. Pontificia Accademia Romana di S. Tommaso d'Aquino Rome: Citta Nuova Editrice, 1974. Pp. 334. Paper, lire 5,000. I This volume is the third in a four-volume series of essays published by the Pontificia Accademia di S. Tommaso to honor the thirteenth century thinker on the seventh centenary of his death. It consists of fifteen articles . Ten are in Italian, two in Spanish, and one in German. It is divided into three sections. Of these the first is concerned with the foundations of the metaphysics of Aquinas. The second and by far the longest has for its heading "St. Thomas and the Great Modern Problems." The third treats of Aquinas in confrontation with Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre and Josef Pieper. No general introduction or further explanation of its purposes is offered. II In the opening article Etienne Gilson, "Observations on Being and its Notion," replies to a charge made by the late Jacques Maritain. Gilson, Maritain wrote, is so fascinated by the intuition of being that he has rejected the concept of existence. Gilson (p. 8) affirms that this is still his way of thinking, and undertakes to explain his own understanding of the terms. His model for an intuition of existence is the grasp of it as a nature in the beatific vision of God. This grasp is denied to the human intellect in its present state, with which alone the article is concerned. Because existence as men know it is not a something, it cannot be said to exist. Hence the concluding sentence: " The intuition of an object of which one cannot properly say that it exists is ill conceived." (p. 17) Yet existence is explicitly termed " immanent cause of that which it makes be " (p. 10) and (p. 13) "immanent formal cause". The sensible existent is the "effect" (p. 11) in which existence is made manifest. The article emphasizes throughout that the proper object of the human intellect is quiddity, and that no quiddita:tive apprehension of existence can be had. It places beyond conceptual knowledge the understanding of the intelligible principles. These give rise to judgments, not concepts. (p. 15; cf. p. 11) From this viewpoint the first principles· of reason may be called intuitions , if for no other reason than to distinguish them from conclusions. (p. 11) What Gilson is obviously opposing is an intuitive concept (" con153 154 BOOK REVIEWS cept intuitif, source des autres "-p. 15) from which other abstract concepts could arise. What is to be thought of this approach to the problem? No explicit mention is made of Aquinas's tenet that human intellection is basically twofold, namely the apprehension of a thing from the viewpoint of its nature and the apprehension of it from the viewpoint of its being. Both of these are required concomitantly for the knowing of an existent. If the requisite for an intuition is the immediate apprehension of an existent, then of course the term " intuition " cannot be applied to human knowledge of existence, since, as the article makes clear, the existence of sensible things is not itself an existent. Aquinas, it is true, does not prefer " in tuition " for the immediate apprehension of existence in judgment (but see texts cited in Bogiolo's article, present volume, p. 47, n. 18). Yet does not the ordinary use of the term " intuition " today bear rather on the immediate grasp of what is the case? Only with difficulty, one might suggest , may it be refused to the immediate apprehension that takes place in judgment. But that is where the intuition of existence is found for Maritain, with whom the discussion is here being held. Gil11on's article refers to judgment in terms of saying (p. 15) , posing and affirming (p. 16), rather than of apprehending. This one remark, however, need not impede appreciation of the article as a whole. Couched in quiet humor, it abounds in penetrating observations arising from a long lifetime of reflection on the topics. It repays very careful reading, and a number of its remarks are worth committing to memory. Especialy the Thomistic tenet that God remains utterly unknown is handled with exceptional...