The Grammar of Esse: Re-Reading Thomas on the Transcendentals

Abstract

THE GRAMMAR OF ESSE: RE-READING THOMAS ON THE TRANSCENDENTALS SIGLA. For ease in argument, Thomas's works will be cited according to the following sigla: DV, De Veritate; Sent, Smiptum on the Sentmices; SCG, Contra Gentiles; ST, Summa Theologiae; InMet, commentary on the 1Vfetaphysics; Quod, Quaestiones Quodlibetales; lnDivNom, commentary on the Divine Names. The number appearing before the siglum indicates a Book or Part number; thus, ' 1 Sent' means the commentary on the first book of the Sentences and '4 SCG' means the fourth Book of the Contra Gentiles. 0 NE OF THE ADVANTAGES of the desuetude into which Thomism has lately fallen is that interpreters of Thomas Aquinas must address fundamentals. The effect of the last decade's convulsions was to break up a discourse within which Thomism figured as something immediate . For such discourse, Thomas was a thinker rather than an artifact; he was an interlocutor, not an instance. But in the immediacy of discourse, peripheral issues often acquired disproportionate force. Familiarity with the basic formulae passed for intelligibility. Today, when scholasticism seems to have the bad odor of an ancien reginie, the interpreter of Thomas must work to secure the first things, the central insights, since it is these that are controverted and misunderstood.1 There is no time for the peripheral and no ground for assuming familiarity. If this is the only advantage of the change of fortune, it is still an important one. The first thing in Thomism is the doctrine of esse. It is first in two ways, as a distinguishing characteristic and as a structuring principle. Its being first as a characteristic needs little demonstration. Even if Giles of Rome is seen as a vulgarizer of 1 Michel Corbin has described the present state of Thomist exegesis with great acuity in Le chemin de la theologie chez Thomas d'Aquin (Paris: Beauchesne, 1974), pp. 26-35. His own solution to the current dilemma-the project of the "lecture speculative "-resembles the present reading in result, but not in justification . 1 MARK D. JORDAN authentic Thomism, he is evidence that the doctrine of esse has characterized Thomism-even constituted it in its uniquenessfrom the earliest days.2 The doctrine of esse serves as centerpiece in the encyclopedic commentary of Capreolus, in the Thomistic fundamentalism of certain Renaissance masters/ and even in the unfortunate " Approved Theses of Thomistic Philosophy ." 4 But if the doctrine about esse has characterized historical Thomism, it is not the case that the doctrine has informed the reflection of Thomists. The twenty-four "Theses" illustrate the inverse relation between doctrinal peremptoriness and reflective appropriation. The more one insists on esse as the shibboleth of some ' true Thomism,' the less room there is for showing how full of questions are Thomas's texts about esse. The force of these questions became apparent in the half dozen works published in the years around 1940 by Fabro, Rahner, Gilson, de Finance and others.5 The questions remain. To insist that the doctrine of esse is characteristic of Thomas's thought can only underscore that its work as a principle has yet to be grasped. As a step towards clarifying this first thing in Thomism, I 2 See the introduction to the edition of his Theoremata de ente et essentia by Edgar Hocedez (Louvain: Museum Lessianum, 1930). The authenticity of Giles's reading of Thomas was challenged as early as Robert Orford's Reprobationes dictorum a Fratre Egidio in primum Senfontiarum (1288-1292). 3 See the essay on Dominic of Flanders by Armando F. Verde, "Domenico di Fiandra, intransigente tomista non gradito nello studio Fiorentino," in Tomismo e antitornismo, Memorie Domenicane, N.S. 7 (1976), 304-21, but particularly pp. 310-311. •The list was published in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6 (1914), 384 ff., and reprinted in the Enchiridion Symbolorum, 32nd ed., ##36fll-!i!4. Its native defects were exacerbated in the exposition of Guido Mattiussi, p;-':1led in the Osservatore and published as Le XXIV tesi della filosofia di S. Tornrnaso d'Aquino (R-0me: Gregorian Univ., 1925); esp. pp. 28-34 and 45-51, where the doctrine of esse becomes almost mechanical. 5 The concurrence of the following books marks something like...