How Arabian Philosophy Contributed to Transform Metaphysics into Ontology

• Authors: Lisowski A.
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

Medieval Arabian metaphysicians of the 10th and 11th centuries (Al-Farabi and Avicenna) identified being conceived as the subject of metaphysics with an essence so thoroughly indeterminate that it was impossible even to contemplate its definition. That was an approach radically different from the essentialist metaphysics of Aristotle, and even more conspicuously it was different from the metaphysics of the act of existence as proposed by Thomas Aquinas, where the process of abstraction was not conducive to identification of being with a concept of utmost generality and inherently unsusceptible to particular determinations. The Arabian concept of the totally indeterminate essence (esse commune) had strong influence on Duns Scotus (end ut equvocum ??) and consequently, through the followers of Duns' metaphysics in the 16th and 17th century on several schools, such as traditional Thomism (Thomas de Vio Caietanus and John of Saint Thomas), Jesuit philosophers (Fonseca and Suarez) and ontology as the 'first philosophy' of Christian Wolff. The fundamental premises of ontology that identifies being with internally consistent, indeterminate nature persisted until the second half of the 20th century in contemporary versions of the 'classical Thomism', on the one hand, and in the reconstructions of 'fundamental ontology' meant as a substitute of the classical Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics on the other hand.

Keywords

EN

AL-FARABI; ARISTOTLE; AVICENNA; ESSENCE - EXISTENCE; METAPHYSICS; SUAREZ; THOMAS AQUINAS; WOLFF

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk
• Journal: Przegląd Filozoficzny. Nowa Seria
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 1(61)
• Pages: 155-169
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Lisowski A.

• A. Lisowski, Uniwersytet Kardynala Stefana Wyszynskiego w Warszawie, ul. Dewajtis 5, 01-815 Warszawa, Poland

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

08PLAAAA03827655