Evaluating the Metaphysical Realism of Étienne Gilson

• Authors: Brian Kemple
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

While there is an absence of treatises devoted to the question of ens ut primum cognitum, there is no shortage of brief and implicit treatments; indeed, nearly every Thomist of the past seven centuries seems to have at least something to say about the notion that being is the first of our intellectual conceptions. Most recent Thomist thinkers—including Gilson—assume this ens to be nothing other than the ens reale of things entitatively considered, operating as they do out of a framework within which realism and idealism are presumed to be exhaustive and mutually exclusive attempts to answer the question of human knowledge. It is the intent of this essay to examine how Gilson arrives at his position, which he calls “metaphysical realism,” and to point to some of the difficulties it entails.

Keywords

EN

realism; critique; metaphysics; being as first known; ens reale; Thomas Aquinas; epistemology

• Publisher: International Étienne Gilson Society
• Journal: Studia Gilsoniana
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 363-380

Dates

published

2015-12-30

Contributors

author

Brian Kemple

• University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas, USA

Identifiers

ISSN

2300-0066