Creation and Metaphysics: A Genetic Approach to Existential Act

98 Pages·1970·4.42 MB·English

by  Herve J. Thibault S.S.S. (auth.)

CREATION AND METAPHYSICS
A GENETIC APPROACH TO EXISTENTIAL ACT
CREATION AND METAPHYSICS
A GENETIC APPROACH TO EXISTENTIAL ACT
by
HERVE J. THIBAULT, S.S.S.
Springer-Science+Business Media, B.Y. 1970
ISBN 978-94-017-5084-4 ISBN 978-94-017-5082-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-5082-0
© 1970 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands in 1970.
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
To
C. T.
He who considers things genetically and originatively. ..
will obtain the c1earest view of them.
(Aristotle, Politics, 1,2, 1252a24)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE IX
CHAPTER I: The Inversion of Metaphysics 1
1. A Genetic Method 1
2. Creation in metaphysics 4
CHAPTER II: The Irreducible Value of Esse 11
1. The existential judgement 14
2. The separation of Esse 17
3. From the Fact of Existence to Existential Act 21
C!IAPTER III: Two Views of Creation 25
1. Avicenna 25
2. Averroes 29
C!IAPTER IV: Creation and Existential Act 39
1. The Long Trek 41
2. The Controversy over the Eternity of the W orId 46
3. The Immediacy of Creation 53
CHAPTER V: The two Orders of Causality 58
1. The Conservation of Beings in Esse 60
2. Universal causes 64
3. Universal instrumentality 66
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 69
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 73
NAME INDEX 82
SYSTEMA TIC INDEX 84
PREFACE
During the last twenty-five years or so, studies in Thomistic existentialism
have repeatedly indicated that the notion of creation played a decisive role
in St. Thomas Aquinas' view of existence as an existential act or actus es
sendi. The importance for metaphysics of this view of existence as act war
rants an investigation of the relation between creation and actus essendi;
for St. Thomas is the only one, in the history of philosophy, to have con
sidered existence as an act-of-being. This study will be limited to the early
works of St. Thomas. By the time of the Summa Contra Gentiles, he had
reached the key positions of his metaphysics. And the first fifty-three chap
ters of the Summa Contra Gentiles were written in Paris before June, 1259;
the rest was completed in Italy before 1265.1 The project was therefore con
ceived by St. Thomas during the first period of his career. How the notion
of creation enabled him to transform the Aristotelian metaphysics of essence
into a metaphysics of esse can be seen from three sections of the Summa
Contra Gentiles.
Although primarily a theological treatise, the Contra Gentiles never
theless accomplishes a radical metaphysical transformation of Aristotelian
ism by shifting the whole perspective from esse in actu per formam to actus
essendi. Seen from the perspective of existential act as the absolute perfec
tion, metaphysics is raised to a strictly transcendental plane of consideration.
Admittedly, the Contra Gentiles was not written primarily to effect this
change, yet the change pervades the whole work. In Book I, chapters 13-22,
St. Thomas methodically passes from the consideration of God as Prime
Mover to the "sublime truth" that He is Self-subsisting Esse or Pure Act of
existence. In Book TI, chapters 15-22, he shows that God alone can create,
correcting an earlier opinion which he had defended in the Commentary on
the Sentences conceming the possibility of angels acting instrumentally in
1 Cf. A. Gauthier, Saint Thomas d'Aquin. Contra Gentiles (Paris: P. Lethielleux,
1961), Vol. I, pp. 33-34. 59; A. Walz, "L'Aquinate a Orvieto," in Angelicum. XXXV
(1958), 181.
x
PREFACE
creation.2 In Book In, chapters 64-76, the main proof of God's all-encom
passing knowledge and providence is the totality of His causality. None of
these three points is found in AristotIe.3 Creation makes a1l the difference
between the Judeo-Christian and the Greek world views.
The effect of this transformation, as far as an existential understanding of
being is concemed, can be seen in the complete change it introduced in St.
Thomas' theory of the analogy of being. In the De Veritate, 2, 11, he admit
ted only an analogy of proportionality between God and creatures through
fear that analogy of proportion would compromise the infinite distance be
tween the Creator and the creature and so tend to a univocal view of being:
finiti ad infinitum nulla est proportio. By the time of the In Boeth. de Trin.,
I, 2, c, he had reached the conclusion that analogy is based on degrees of
participation, secundum magis et minus, involving creative causality. Hence,
he reversed his position: est proportio creaturae ad Deum ut causati ad
causam. By itself, proportionality is insufficient. Were proportionality the
key to the understanding of being, we should be left with an unexplained
pluralism: with resemblances which are not accounted for. It is creation
which binds being.4 Proportionality is only a starting point, disclosing paral
lel essence / existence relationships among predicamental beings; but its ex
planation is found in the causal resemblance of creatures to their Creator
from whom they hold their esse. Everything that exists, exists by virtue of an
existential act or actus essendi which it holds from the Creator who is sub
sisting esse.5
There is no certainty as to when, where, or how St. Thomas reached this
2 In 11 Sent., I, 1, 3 (ed. Mandonnet, 11, p. 53), and In N Sent., V, 1,3 (ed. Moos,
p. 209, n. 56).
3 Cf. A. Mansion, "Le Dieu d'Aristote et le Dieu des chretiens," in La philosophie
et ses problemes, Recueil d'etudes offert aRegis Jolivet (Paris: Em. Vitte, 1960),
pp. 21-44.
4 Cf. G. Klubertanz, St. Thomas Aquinas on Analogy (Chicago: Loyola University
Press, 1960), pp. 27-29, 94-100. B. Montagnes, La doctrine de ['analogie de fetTe
d'apres saint Thomas d'Aquin (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1963), pp. 81-93.
5 St. Thomas shows how the notion of "act" is extended to existence in the foUow
ing steps: (1) the origin of the notion of act from operations and activity; (2) the ex
tension of the notion of act from activity to the substantial form which is the principle
and also the term of activity; (3) the transposition of the notion of act from form to
existence. Cf. In Meta., IX, 5 (ed. Spiazzi, nn. 1826-27): Actus enim est de primis
simplicibus; unde definiri non potest. Sed per proportionem aliquorum duorum ad
invicem, potest videri quid est actus. Ut si accipiamus proportionem aedificantis ad
aedificabile, et vigilantis ad dormientem, et ejus qui videt ad eum qui habet oculos
clausos cum habeat potentiam visivam ..., et similiter per separationem ejus quod
est praeparatum ad illud quod non est praeparatum, sive quod est elaboratum ad id
quod non est elaboratum. Sed quorumlibet sie differentium altera pars erit actus,
et altera potentia. Et ita proportionaliter ex particularibus exemplis possumus venire
PREFACE XI
conclusion that existence is an existential act. The communion of faith and
reason in the theologian that St. Thomas was, and above all his reticence
about hirnself. make it difficult to trace the evolution of his thought on this
point. Certainly, his reflections on the secret name of God revealed in Exo
dus, 3: 14, as weIl as his readings in Boethius, Dionysius, the Book on Causes,
Avicenna, and his early effort to correct the universal hylomorphism of
Avicebron, all contributed to his theory of existence as existential act or
actus essendi. The works of C. Fabro, A. Forest, E. Gilson, J. de Finance,
A. Hayen, R. Henle, J. Bofill have shown that it was by way of convergence
from many angles, theological, metaphysical, epistemologieal, that St. Tho
mas concluded that esse is absolute act. All agree, however, that creation
played a decisive role. In the circumstances, the aim of this study is to seek,
especially in the early works of St. Thomas, a link between creation and
existential act.
Now it is a well-known fact that St. Thomas always defended the possi
bility of a philosophical demonstration of creation, and that he equally de
fended the impossibility of a rational proof of the temporal origin of the
universe. It should be possible, then, to extract from the writings of St. Tho
mas a theory of creation which is neither biblical nor theological, since the
biblical notion of creation includes inception in time, but purely metaphysi
cal, and which bears directly on existential act.
This work is neither an historical nor a textual study of St. Thomas.6 Our
task is limited to presenting one approach - a genetic approach - to ex
istential act. A genetic method starts with esse commune and not with ens in
communi. The existence of the things which compose the universe is the
datum, and a genetic method seeks to account for existence as such (Chap
ter I). The insufficiency of physical processes of transformation and trans
rnutation to account for existence, precisely because they presuppose some
potential already existing, points to the need of a transcendental cause of
esse (Chapter II). The first part of the argument consists in passing from the
ad cognoscendum quid sit actus et potentia. De Potentia, 1, 1, c: Nomen actus prima
fuit attributum operationi ..., exinde fuit translaturn ad formam, inquantum forma
est principium operationis et finis. Ibid., 7, 2, ad 9: Quae1ibet forma signata non in
telligitur in actu nisi per hoc quod esse ponitur. Nam humanitas vel igneitas potest
considerari ut in potentia materiae existens, vel ut in virtute agentis, aut in intellectu;
sed per hoc quod habet esse, efficitur actu existens. Unde patet quod hoc quod dico
esse est actualitas omnium actuum, et propter hoc est perfectio omnium perfectionum.
8 C. Fabro, Participation et causalite selon s. Thomas d'Aquin (Louvain: Publi
cations Universitaires, 1961) contains an extensive historical study; L. Sweeney, "Ex
istence/Essence in Thomas Aquinas's Early Writings," in Proceedings 01 the American
Catholic Philosophical Association, XXXVII (1963), 97-131, started a textual study
of the various lines of argument advanced by St. Thomas to establish that existence
is an act.