Formal Infinity, Perfection, and Determinacy in the Metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

The paper is an exploration in the field of Aquinas’s metaphysics of form. The overall aim is to see how certain features that Thomas attributes to form, as form, fit together and present themselves at various levels and in various modes: substantial and accidental, material and immaterial, cognitive and physical, intentional and real, and created and divine. Particular attention is given to two essential properties of form, perfection and determinacy, and to how these relate to a characteristic that Thomas ascribes to forms considered absolutely or just in themselves; namely, their being, in one way or another, common to many and even somehow infinite. The paper concludes with a conjecture about the community of substantial form in a bodily substance.