Thomistic Metaphysics: an Introduction
I interview Dr. Gorman about his new book A Contemporary Introduction to Thomistic Metaphysics.
Dr. Michael Gorman has authored an excellent new book: A Contemporary Introduction to Thomistic Metaphysics.
In this episode, I interview Dr. Gorman about some of the contents of that book, including how Aquinas thinks about composition, fundamentality, and God.
iTunes link here.
A bit late to the party here, but I found the following article helpful when thinking of essences, substantial forms and their relation to nominalism etc:
Hochschild, Joshua (2012). Form, Essence, Soul: Distinguishing Principles of Thomistic Metaphysics. In Nikolaj Zunic, Distinctions of Being: Philosophical Approaches to Reality. Washington, D.C.: pp. 21-35.
I say this specifically because I also was a bit confused when reading Gorman's book and seeing Aquinas mentioned as a Nominalist, or rather I had a bit of difficulty understanding the difference between Gorman's categories of Moderate Realism (Aristotle) and Moderate Nominalism (Aquinas).
Here is my understanding in brief. Very happy to get corrections here.
For Aristotle John the man is an instance of the form Man. Forms don't exist outside of instantiation as they do for Plato, but they really do exist in the world as their instances. The substantial form of John is simply "Man" with its proper accidents set to certain values etc.
For Aquinas however the substantial form of John is not just "Man". Rather it is the unique substantial form of John himself. Within this form we can make the virtual distinction of a subpart: the essence "Man". Those aspects of John's form shared with the substantial form of other men.
So:
Aristotle: Substantial Form = Essence
Aquinas: Substantial Form = Essence + Individuating/Designating part
The "+" here is a virtual composition for Aquinas, although I suspect it is real for Dun Scotus since he allowed a subject to have multiple forms, including one of Haecceity.
Could be wrong here, I'm still a baby Thomist.
Hey Pat, do you put these interviews on spotify anywhere?