Cosmological reasoning is an important facet of classical arguments for
the existence of God, but these arguments have been subject to may
criticisms. The thesis of this book is that Thomas Aquinas can dodge
many of the classic objections brought against cosmological reasoning.
These objections criticize cosmological reasoning for its use of the
Principle of Sufficient Reason; its notion of existence as a predicate;
its use of ontological reasoning; its reliance on sense realism; its
ignoring of the problem of evil; and its susceptibility to the critique
of "ontotheology" as famously put forward by Heidegger. All of these
objections receive a reply, showing that Aquinas's De Ente et Essentia
reasoning for God as esse tantum employs a more nuanced understanding
of a thing's existence than is found in Leibniz's classic cosmological
arguments.
Secondly, the book proposes that the kind of reasoning found in
Aquinas's De Ente can be formulated in a more robust version. Prompted
by Aquinas's admissions that philosophical knowledge of God is the
prerogative of metaphysics, the second main portion of the book
extensively illustrates how the more robust version of the De Ente is
the interpretive key for Aquinas's many arguments for God. Hence, the
book should be of interest both to philosophers engaged in cosmological
reasoning discussion and to Thomists interested in understanding
Aquinas's viae to God.
Finally, the deep purpose of the book is to reawaken interest in
Thomistic Existentialism, an interpretation of Aquinas that flourished
in the 1950's in the works of Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and
Joseph Owens. In this interpretation, a particular thing's existence is
the actuality of the thing in the sense of a distinctive actus not
translatable into something else, for example, the fact of the thing or
the thing having form. This book clearly explains how this
interpretation looks at Thomas's metaphysics, and why it helps
illuminate metaphysical realities.
