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

Introduction The present collection of papers, the earliest of which originally appeared in 1980, has been selected from more than a hundred published over the years. If there is a dominant theme in these thirteen, it is the centrality of form in metaphysics. I hope to publish subsequently collections on the doctrine of the act of being, and on natural theology. The general outlook in these papers is fairly uniform, and so I am placing them in a somewhat systematic, rather than chronological, order: from the general to the particular, and from principles to conclusion. I begin with a paper providing a kind of caveat. It focuses on the objectivity and certainty, yet the difficulty for the human mind, proper to metaphysics. While every human being possesses the seed of metaphysics , not all possess the soil in which it can grow. The very first article of the first question of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae speaks of how rare real metaphysical knowledge of divine things is, and how necessary it is that we have the benefit of revelation as regards the very conclusions of this natural knowledge. The second paper is a general statement of the metaphysical task, an overall conception of the science, presented in some detail. As will be seen, I insist not only on the need to begin with sensible, material things, but also on the need to establish the existence of a higher mode of being , absolutely imperishable substance. The field of the science is hierarchical , including the contingent and the necessary. It is such a field that constitutes the spiritual trampoline or launching pad, leading to the consideration of something still higher, the highest cause, the first principle. The third and fourth papers have much in common. That on “the seed of metaphysics” was an eye-opener for me. The subject, of course, is an inevitable one for the metaphysician, bearing as it does on the knowledge which one must possess at the outset, in order for metaphysics to be possible. The teaching of Thomas Aquinas is clear, that our first intellectual knowledge bears upon what is expressed by the words “a being” or “that which is” [Latin: ens], but the analysis of this situation is something else. The paper’s title, as originally published, used the term “ground” rather than “seed”; this was in conformity with Cornelio Fabro’s paper ix (which I criticize), but I have since often wished I had used the more Thomistic word “seed.” Hence, the change here. My research for this led to my close reading of the ST 1-2 on the formation of our intellectual knowledge as a self-perfecting process. I use this doctrine again in the paper opposing the so-called “River Forest School” of Thomists; while I argue against them on the basis of Thomas’s Commentaries on Aristotle (the River Forest contention being that one there finds Thomas’s philosophy best expressed), the ST 1-2 teaching on self-development and the nature of its seed really seem to go to the heart of the matter. I might add that what I am saying does not appear to me to square with the view of those, such as Jacques Maritain, who distinguish between “first known” being and the “being” which is the subject of metaphysics. The fifth paper still has us very much at the level of our original knowledge . Against the background of the Humean skepticism which forms so important a part of the modern philosophical tradition, a right conception of our intellectual awareness of causal connection is most salutary. I have placed an analogy paper next. On the one hand, we are still in the zone of beginnings, since, of course, Thomas teaches us that the very first of all predicates, “a being,” is an analogical term.1 Furthermore, this feature of our metaphysical knowledge is the basis for the reduction of the discussion to substance as primary, the issue we will look at next. The analogy paper stresses the dominant role of the metaphysical mind regarding the principles of all sciences, metaphysics itself included. “Substance” names what presents us most of all with the aspect of being , yet it is terribly neglected. I attempt to recall myself (and, if need be, the reader) from obliviousness to this reality. Thomas’s teaching on the substantial form—and in particular the soul, as present as a whole in every part of the body—I see as the best means of taking us...

Share