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BOOK REVIEWS 215 St. Thomas and the Future of Metaphysics; The Aquinas Lecture, 1957. By JosEPH OWENS, C. Ss.R., M.S. D. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1957. Pp. 97. For many years now the leading figures of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, have, in a quasi-collective effort, sought to manifest the properly Thomistic insight into reality. Fr. Owens' Aquinas Lecture presents the latest phase of this continuing endeavor. The position he takes could well have been anticipated. Its model is found in his work on Aristotle's metaphysics (herein briefly sketched), principally with regard to the non-objective character of conceptual knowledge and the strict unity of common being. A suggestion of it was contained in his unavailing attempt to demonstrate the principle of causality (The Modern Schoolman, Vol. 3~) , where he revealed a novel understanding of existence as attained in the judgment. It was also foreshadowed by Etienne Gilson's assertion, in Being And Some Philosophers, that, for St. Thomas, God and being qua are one and the same. It is, moreover, a position openly stated and defended by Fr. Gerard Phelan in an address before the ACPA on the existence of creatures. However, in contrast to this candid approach, Fr. Owens' exposition is marked by reticence. The purpose of his lecture is to establish the unique qualifications of Thomism for primacy among the varied metaphysical doctrines of past and present. Needless to say, the claims entered in its behalf are grounded in the primacy that it accords the act of existence. Thus the lecture is devoted to an analysis of the Thomistic teaching on this act. Many of his judgments here would find ready acceptance-those, for example, that posit the " accidentality " of the creature's existence, its distinction from essence and, what will prove to be most relevant, its finiteness. We read: " Being is other than essence. It is outside the essence, in the sense that it is not contained within the essential principles of finite things.... In this profound sense being is accidental to all things except in the unique though as yet hypothetical case of subsistent being." (p. 44) And: "The act or perfection of being is accordingly limited to and by the essence.... As a limited perfection in creatures it certainly owes its limitation to the finite essence which it actuates." (note 23) Regrettably, other judgments of the author, viewed in their immediate context, possess too great an obscurity either to demand assent or to prompt meaningful dispute. For example, the statement that subsistent being, or God, exists is said to be a "tautology." In explanation, he offers an undoubted tautology: "To say that subsistent being is a real (sic) nature is to mean that it actually exists." But then he adds: "Both subject and predicate coincide in meaning in the statement: 'Subsistent being exists.' " (p. 46, note 48) This judgment is, of course, quite different 216 BOOK REVIEWS from the preceding one; but it, too, is apparently taken as self-evident quoad nos, which would imply that our knowledge of the divine existence is penetrating. This is significant in view of the fact that it is only of the creature's existence that we have proper knowledge. Are we then to assume that its existence and God's are seen as one? Equally puzzling is the following argument concerning the distinction between the finite being's essence and existence: " The Thomistic distinction . . . follows from considering the essence as of itself completely devoid of all being, real or intentional, and then reasoning to the reception of that being from something else and ultimately from subsistent being. Only then has being been established as a nature in reality, a nature that cannot coalesce in reality with any other nature, and so when participated is always other in reality than the nature which it makes be." (note 30) The difficulty here is that the distinction in question appears to be simply equated with ·that between the finite essence and subsistent existence. The· proof begins with a very real distinction between the creature's essence and its existence: the essence is "completely devoid of all being." Yet this distinction is obviously seen as...

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