In this article the author discusses Dennis F. Polis’ defense of the compatibility of biological evolution and Thomistic metaphysics. Some of Polis’ methodological and metaphysical arguments are examined and it is explained why they are unfaithful to the Thomistic tradition of metaphysics. There is a discussion of why metaphysics can, within certain parameters, critique the science of evolutionary biology, as well as a discussion of the role of metaphysics in the hierarchy of the sciences. The relationship between biological species to (...) the notion of species in philosophy, including related metaphysical topics, such as essences and Divine ideas in God, is discussed. It is determined that Polis’ view suffers from a kind of relativism and nominalism that is incompatible with the moderate realism of Aquinas. Some of Aquinas’ key existential insights in metaphysics are discussed in this context as well. In addition to being corrective, this essay helps point the way to a better defense of the compatibility of biological evolution and Thomistic metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper explores the Aristotelian context of the real distinction between existence and essence thought to be posited in Thomas Aquinas’ early workDe Ente Et Essentia. In doing so, the paper situates its own position in the context of contemporary scholarship and in relation to the contemporary trend to downplay Aristotle’s influence in Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy. The paper argues that re-readingDe Ente Et Essentiain this way sheds new light on some of the crucial debates in contemporary Thomist scholarship, particularly with (...) respect to the analogous relation between potency and act: essence and existence, the distinction between conceptual and causal explanation, and the relationship between philosophy and theology in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

Aquinas’ famous comments in his early Scriptum on the Sentences (In I Sent., d. 38, q. 1, a. 3) regarding the intellect’s apprehension of essence and esse have traditionally been interpreted as grounding Aquinas’ doctrine on the judgment of esse. For Aquinas, it appears, what the intellect apprehends in a simple concept is essence. Since esse, for him, is not an essence, it cannot, on the received view, be the object of conceptualization. Therefore, esse is grasped by the intellect only (...) in judgment. The claim that no genuine concept of esse is possible, however, is inconsistent with Aquinas’ theory of signification. A term’s signification is constituted, at least in part, in its “signing relation” with some “concept” in the mind. If, as on the traditional reading, there is no concept of esse, the term ‘esse’ is left without signification. To respond that the term ‘esse’ signs, not a concept, but the judgment in which esse is apprehended is in direct conflict with Aquinas’ claim elsewhere that no term, including ‘ens’ and ‘esse’, signifies a judgment. I propose an alternative interpretation to In I Sent., d. 38, q. 1, a. 3, one that allows for the possibility of a conceptual apprehension of esse. The alternative reading explains Aquinas’ remarks there in light of the theoretical context of the discussion, in particular the theory of propositions and their objects. I show how and why Aquinas develops a distinctive theory of the object of the proposition, that it is concerned with “the esse of a thing” as a complex. Although this complex includes the simple act of being, as for the traditional position (contrary to its major critics), it cannot be reduced to anything simple. Despite the Sentences’ affirmation of a real distinction between a thing’s esse and essence, to which correspond two different operations of the intellect, it does not follow that the human intellect cannot conceive esse, just as it conceives essences, in a simple conception. (shrink)