Actuality of the Metaphysics of the Thomist esse

Authors

  • Hervé Pasqua Université Côte d’Azur (CRHI)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17421/2498-9746-06-04

Keywords:

Being, Sein, Being-there, Dasein, Ens, Essence, One, Difference, Identity, Heidegger, Thomas Aquinas, Eckhart

Abstract

The Thomistic metaphysics of the esse and the Heideggerian thought of the Sein meet in the same rejection of the reduction of the being conceived as a being reduced to its essence, to its representation, to a “discourse on the being”, characteristic of the modern metaphysics of subjectivity. The two philosophers are separated, however, in that Heidegger distinguishes and opposes being and essence — that is to say, being reduced to the discourse on being — whereas Saint Thomas Aquinas distinguishes being and essence without separating them and unites them without confusing them in being. It follows that for the first one the being is reduced to the being without essence, to the being-there (Dasein), to the ek-sistence, in a world without meaning, whereas for the second one the being exercises of right an act of being contracted by an essence. In this article, we try to see to what extent the key of this difference between the doctrines does not come down to the relation that they establish between the being and the unity. Either the One is beyond being and asserts itself as a force of  expulsion of all that is, or the One is an indetachable property of being, a transcendental, allowing the being to in-sist in being.

Published

2021-05-09

Issue

Section

Studies and seminars