What It Is to Exist : : The Contribution of Thomas Aquinas’s View to the Contemporary Debate / / Patrick Zoll.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2022 Part 1
• VerfasserIn: Zoll, Patrick,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Quellen und Studien zur Philosophie , 149
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (XI, 228 p.)

One important task of metaphysics is to answer the question of what it is for an object to exist. The first part of this book offers a systematic reconstruction and critique of contemporary views on existence. The upshot of this part is that the contemporary debate has reached an impasse because none of the considered views is able to formulate a satisfactory answer to this fundamental metaphysical question. The second part reconstructs Thomas Aquinas’s view on existence (esse) and argues that it contributes a new perspective which allows us to see why the contemporary debate has reached this impasse. It has come to this point because it has taken a premise for granted which Aquinas’s view rejects, namely, that the existence of an object consists in something’s having a property. A decisive contribution of Aquinas’s theory of esse is that it makes use of the ideas of metaphysical participation and composition. In this way, it can be explained how an object can have esse without being the case that esse is a property of it. This book brings together a reconstruction from the history of philosophy with a systematic study on existence and is therefore relevant for scholars interested in contemporary or medieval theories of existence.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Part I: The Contemporary Debate About the Nature Question -- 1 The Non-Reductive-Object View -- 2 The Reductive-Object View -- 3 The Property View -- 4 The Unrestricted-Domain View -- 5 The Restricted-Domain View -- Part II: The Contribution of Thomas Aquinas’s View to the Debate -- Introduction -- 6 Aquinas’s View on What It Is for a Substance to Exist -- 7 Why Aquinas’s View Can Solve the Problems -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index of Names -- Index of Subjects