Before you leave...
Take 20% off your first order
20% off
Enter the code below at checkout to get 20% off your first order
Discover summer reading lists for all ages & interests!
Find Your Next Read

As this essentialistic account of being shaped itself into a tradition, Aquinas' understanding of being as the first and fundamental act by which every other metaphysical principle is made real was forgotten. At best, existence was taken for the bare fact, the being-there, the state of actual essence as distinguished from the state of possible essence through the intervention of efficient causality. At worst, existence was tolerated as a troublesome intruder which nevertheless had to be shown in, assigned a place, and then quickly "reduced" to the status of essences. Nor is that view any happier which would avoid these extremes by holding a parity between essence and esse or would understand an esse metaphysics as an "inverted essentialism." Philosophical reflection which is riveted upon the act of being eventually grasps epistemology, philosophy of man, ethics, etc., from a perspective irreducibly different in method from that of a system centered on the limits and kinds of being as first principles.
-From the Introduction by Benjamin S. Llamzon
Thanks for subscribing!
This email has been registered!
Take 20% off your first order
Enter the code below at checkout to get 20% off your first order