Abstract

This paper examines the way in which some Greek philosophical ideas have been interpreted in the Middle Ages and analyses the equivocal historical heritage of the most important concepts of the Thomas Aquinas’s theory on being and essence. The author begins by presenting a short history of this theory, especially of the relation between the Thomistic and the late Greek Platonist philosophical terminology. Then, he discusses the relation between form and act of being to Thomas Aquinas and the difference between these Thomistic ideas and the apparently similar concepts that can be found in the classical Aristotelian tradition