The Dumb OxSanctus Thomas Aquinas
The Scriptorium

Metaphysics · Foundational

On Being and Essence

De Ente et Essentia

The brief, luminous door into Thomistic metaphysics. Here the young master, scarcely thirty, distinguishes being from essence — that small distinction upon which an entire ontology of creation would be built.

are what are first conceived by the intellect, as Avicenna says. But because a small error at the beginning grows vast at the end, we must begin with these. We must know that, as the Philosopher says, being is said in two ways: in one way it signifies the of a thing, in another it signifies the truth of a proposition.

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