THOMAS AQUINAS: NEGATIVE PHILOSOPHY
I am not of the opinion that the timeliness of St. Thomas’s doctrine rests on the fact that it too is “existentialist.” It can, however, be demonstrated that this common concern of all the Existentialisms finds in St. Thomas’s teaching both a positive correspondence and a specific corrective.
Let me speak first of the positive correspondence. Medieval scholastics in general and St. Thomas in particular tend to be represented as though they were the first thinkers to achieve the ideal of a closed philosophical system. The Summa is taken as an example of the claim of human intelligence not only to construct an enclosed system of knowledge, but what is much more, to bring even the truths of revelation into a lucid and closely interrelated structure by means of rational proofs. The historical growth of this false and misleading picture is not easy to follow. No doubt many factors cooperated to produce it, and these factors have acted and reacted on one another. Opponents as well as followers have contributed to the misconception: not only the mistrust of natural reason characteristic of Augustinianism during the Reformation period, but also the efforts of Neo-Scholasticism to preserve its master, Thomas, from every taint or charge of agnosticism are responsible.
Curiously enough, it is rarely noticed that the Summa Theologica is unfinished. The normal explanation offered is that its author died so early a death. “Snatched away by death he had to leave his work incomplete,” this or similar notes appear in the editions of the In actual fact, St. Thomas refused to conclude the work because of his own inner experiences. “I can write nothing more: all that I have hitherto written seems to me nothing but straw.” This surely indicates that its fragmentary character belongs to the total implication of the Summa If one does not consider this point and regards Thomas as some kind of forerunner of the systematic thinkers of modern Rationalism (Christian Wolff, the philosopher of the German in fact claimed Thomas as his predecessor and felt in closer communion with him than with his own immediate teacher, Leibniz), it will come as a highly surprising experience to find in St. Thomas a sentence such as the following: essentialia rerum sunt nobis the essential principles of things are unknown to
Such a proposition is not only far removed from the neat, well-rounded perfection of a rationalistic system, it also paraphrases a notion of philosophy that formally excludes the idea of a closed system. Since the distinguishing mark of a philosophical question is that it is an inquiry into those very principia into the “essences” of things together with their deepest roots and their ultimate significance, this sentence of St. Thomas (not the only instance of its kind) makes us understand that a philosophical question cannot be answered in fully sufficient form. It cannot be answered in the same sense in which it was asked. We now realize why St. Thomas in his commentary had nothing to oppose to the passage from Aristotle’s Metaphysics which declares that the problem of Ousia or Reality, the problem of the essences of things, is one that “in the past, today and always, was, is, and will continue to be asked and which means that here is a problem that will never be finally and irrevocably solved. And one understands that Thomas can say with Aristotle: The knowledge which is pursued in the philosophical doctrine of Being, that is, the knowledge about the essence of things, is not given to man as his possession but only as a kind of “loan,” non ut possessio sed sicut aliquid
How, we ask ourselves, can such knowledge, which is held as a “loan,” be expressed concretely? In the form of conjecture and allusion? Metaphorically or essayistically? Least of all, doubtless, in the form of a scholastic system which by its very nature has the character of a permanent possession rather than that of a loan.
It seems hardly necessary to point out here once again to what extent a fundamental postulate of contemporary philosophical thought finds its correspondence and confirmation in the work of the “Universal Doctor” of Christendom; to what extent this philosophia negativa of St. Thomas is timely, timely in the sense of being a positive correlate. To make this evident is not a question of exalting St. Thomas. We are not engaged in his defense. This is no matter of apologetics. What matters is the initiation of a fruitful dialogue between the and the traditional wisdom of the Occident—a dialogue in which sterile controversies apt to flare up among the late followers of “isms” might be dissolved and out of which might grow the readiness to accept the negative counterform of timeliness, St. Thomas’s corrective “No” addressed to our time.