Aquinas’s Fourth Way of Demonstrating God’s Existence: From Virtual Quantum Gradations of Perfection (Inequality in Beauty) of Forms Existing within a Real Genus

• Authors: Redpath Peter A.
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The chief aim of this article is to show that St. Thomas Aquinas’s Fourth Way of demonstrating God’s existence can only be made precisely intelligible by comprehending it as a real, generic whole in light of its specific organizational principles. Considered as a real, generic whole, this argument is one from effect to cause (from a real order of more or less perfectly existing generic, specific, and individual beings [habens esse] more or less perfectly possessing generic, specific, and individual ways of being within qualitatively different, hierarchical, orders of existence to a first cause of this order of perfections). In addition, this article maintains that, to comprehend this complicated argument, readers mush be familiar with philosophical principles that St. Thomas repeatedly uses throughout his major works, but with which most of his contemporary students tend to be unfamiliar. Consequently, a secondary aim of this paper is to introduce readers unfamiliar with them to some of these principle so that they may be able better to comprehend what St. Thomas is saying in this demonstration and in other teachings of his as well.

Keywords

EN

Thomas Aquinas; fourth way; God; existence; genus; species; individual; principle; analogous predication; unity; number; virtual quantity; privation; perfection; resistance; receptivity; opposition; contrariety

• Publisher: International Étienne Gilson Society
• Journal: Studia Gilsoniana
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 681-716

Dates

published

2019-08-20

Contributors

author

Redpath Peter A.

• Aquinas School of Leadership, Cave Creek, AZ, USA

References

• Aquinas, Thomas. Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, 2 vols. Translated by John P. Rowan. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., Inc., 1961. Html-edited by Joseph Kenny, O.P. with addition of Latin and Greek. Available online at: https://dhspriory.org/thomas/Metaphysics.htm. Accessed Dec. 2, 2018.
• Aquinas, Thomas. De Ente et Essentia. Translated as Aquinas on Being and Essence: A Translation and Interpretation (1965). Adapted and html-edited by Joseph Kenny, O.P. Available online at: https://dhspriory.org/thomas/english/DeEnte&Essentia.htm. Accessed Dec. 2, 2018.
• Aquinas, Thomas. Quaestiones Disputatae De Potentia Dei. Translated by the English Dominican Fathers. Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1952, reprint of 1932. Html-edited by Joseph Kenny, O.P. Available online at: https://dhspriory.org/thomas/QDdePotentia.htm. Accessed Dec. 2, 2018.
• Aquinas, Thomas. Summa theologiae. New York and London, United Kingdom: Blackfriars, 1967.
• Galilei, Galileo. Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences. Translated from the Italian and Latin into English by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio. With an Introduction by Antonio Favaro. The University of Adelaide: first published by Macmillan, 1914; the web edition published by eBooks@Adelaide; last updated Wednesday, December 17, 2014. Available online at: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/g/galileo/dialogues/complete.html. Accessed Dec. 2, 2018.
• Gilson, Étienne. Painting and Reality. Published for the Bollingen Foundation, Inc., Bollinges Series 35. New York: Pantheon Books, 1957.
• Redpath, Peter A. A Not-So-Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 2 vols. St. Louis, Mo.: En Route Books & Media, 2015 and 2016.
• Redpath, Peter A. The Moral Psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas: An Introduction to Ragamuffin Ethics. St. Louis, Mo.: En Route Books & Media, 2017.

Identifiers

ISSN

2300-0066

ISSN

2577-0314

DOI

10.26385/SG.080326