Abstract

Since Vatican II a new breed of Thomism has emerged on the scene, in effect superseding the two streams of neo-Thomistic thought which blossomed in the wake of Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni Patris, namely, Aristolelian Thomism, a movement which remains within the conceptual horizon of form and matter, and Existential Thomism, which insists upon pushing beyond hylomorphism to the ontological depth dimension of the actus essendi, the nonformal act responsible for suffusing the composite being with real existence. Taking its inspiration from Kant, the ascendancy of Transcendental Thomism seemed to be the logical response to the inadequacies of neo-Thomism, mired as it was in naive realism and furthermore incapable of rising to the Infinite Being on the basis of a scrutiny of finite sensible composites. But this transformation of the Thomistic landscape, Knasas warns us, “is a disaster for Thomism itself”. We would be better off to return to the Existential Thomism proffered by Gilson, Maritain, and Owens.