Thomas Aquinas against Avicenna: The Origin of the Forms and the Subsistence of the Singular Substance
Abstract
Avicenna's influence on Thomas Aquinas's work is undeniable. Some of his fundamental metaphysical notions are based on Avicennian formulas, which does not prevent him from criticizing severely diverse aspects of the Avicennian doctrine of creation. In several moments of his work, Thomas criticizes, in particular, Avicenna's doctrine according to which the forms of the entities of the sublunary world flow from a superior Intelligence (the dator formarum). Thomas attributes this doctrine to the disability to explain the origin of forms other than by creation. The true solution presupposes, according to Thomas, analyze the generation of composite substances following the Aristotelian principles (Met. VII, 8): what is properly generated is what properly exists, that is to say, not the form, but the compound. Thomas applies this solution to the polemic about the capacity of natural bodies to act – in other terms about the efficiency of secondary causes– and to the question whether creation is mixed within the works of nature – that is to say, whether any created nature at all can create–. In synthesizing the Aristotelian ontology of the primary substance and the creationist metaphysics, Thomas has betted for the subsistence of concrete beings in the world of natural experience.Downloads
References
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