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Thirteen  Aristotelian Existentialism and Thomistic Essentialism to; dV eivnai oujk oujdenij Post. Analy., II, 7, 92b13–14 In this chapter I do not intend to defend what has been called the “Identity Thesis,” that is, that Thomas was Aristotle, but I will continue to play the odd man out to the extent of urging that we should regain Thomas Aquinas’s own enthusiastic regard for Aristotle and take more seriously Thomas’s readings of the man he called the Philosopher.1 When we do we will find many of the assertions made about the deep differences between Thomas and Aristotle difficult to defend. I am here chiefly concerned with the way in which such divisions of the house affect natural theology, and of course it is here that Thomas’s grasp of esse enabled him to speak of haec sublimis veritas, namely, that ipsum esse subsistens is as close as we can get to a proper name for God. Aristotle, it has been thought, cut himself off from the possibility of such a realization by failing to recognize that in everything other than God there is a composition of essence and existence. Since Etienne Gilson is the chief champion of the view that there is a chasm on this matter between Aristotle and Thomas, and since his stature as a Thomist is beyond question, I will take his statement of the difference as sufficient for my purposes here. 293 1. On the Identity Thesis, see Kevin Flannery, S.J., Acts Amid Precepts: The Aristotelian Logical Structure of Thomas Aquinas’s Moral Inquiry (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001). “At a recent conference a speaker referred only half-jestingly to the ‘McInerny Identity Thesis’—i.e., the idea, attributed to Ralph McInerny, that Thomas was Aristotle. McInerny has played the odd man out for a good number of years among ‘traditional’ Thomisits by defending a slightly less radical form of the thesis attributed to him” (xi). 294 Thomism and PhilosophicalTheology What is being according to Thomas Aquinas? In a first sense, it is what Aristotle had said it was, namely, substance. For indeed it is true that being is substance, although it may also be true that being entails something more, over and above mere substantiality . In other words, it may be that Aristotle has left something out while describing being, but what he has seen there, is there. The presence, in Thomism, of an Aristotelian level on which being is conceived as identical with ousia, is beyond doubt, and, because Aristotle is in Thomas Aquinas, there always is for his readers a temptation to reduce him to Aristotle.2 If the claim were simply that there is more in Thomas than in Aristotle, it would be easy to accept, and, in part in least, Gilson seems to be saying only that. He is discussing the famous passage in Book IV of the Metaphysics in which Aristotle is establishing the mutual implications of being and one: whatever exists is one, whatever is one exists.3 In drawing our attention to this passage, Gilson observes that just prior to it Aristotle has established that there is a science of being as being and of whatever belongs to it as being because there is a fundamental reality to which all the ways of being refer, and that is ousia. “The intention of Aristotle in this passage is therefore clear: Metaphysics shall deal with ‘oneness’ as it deals with ‘being,’ because oneness and being are simply two other names for reality (ousia) which both is, and is one in its own right. If there is a doctrine of the identity of being and substance, this is one, and Averroes was well founded in thinking that he was vindicating the authentic thought of Aristotle when he criticized Avicenna for teaching that existence was to the essence of reality, if not exactly an accident, at least a happening.”4 As Gilson reads the passage from Aristotle, “being” and “one” are two names for ousia, which is and is one. But ousia does not occur 2. E. Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1952), 158. 3. “If, now, being and unity are the same and are one thing in the sense that they are implied in one another as principle and cause are, not in the sense that they are explained by the same definition (though it makes no difference even if we suppose them to...

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