COMMENTARY ON ARISTOTLE’S MATAPHYSICS
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
Translates by John P. Rowan
1961, U.S.A. Dumb Ox Books
ST. THOMAS’S PROLOGUE 6
BOOK I: INTRODUCTION TO FIRST PHILOSOPHY - thstory of Metaphysical Inquiry 8
LESSON 1: The Dignity and Object of This Science 8
LESSON 2: Wisdom Considers Universal First Causes and First Principles 18
LESSON 3: The Nature and Goal of Metaphysics 23
LESSON 4: Opinions about the Material Cause 28
LESSON 5: Opinions about the Efficient Cause 34
LESSON 6: Love and Hate as Efficient Causes of Good and Evil 39
LESSON 7: The Views of the Atomists and the Pythagoreans 42
LESSON 8: The Pythagorean Doctrine about Contraries 46
LESSON 9: The Opinions of the Eleatics and Pythagoreans about the Causes of Things 50
LESSON 10: The Platonic Theory of Ideas 56
LESSON 11: A Summary of the Early Opinions about the Causes 62
LESSON 12: Criticism of the Views about the Number of Material Principles 66
LESSON 13: Criticism of the Pythagoreans’ Opinions 73
LESSON 14: Arguments against the Platonic Ideas 76
LESSON 15: The Destruction of the Platonists’ Arguments for Ideas 82
LESSON 16: Arguments against the View that Ideas Are Numbers 86
LESSON 17: Arguments against the View that the Ideas Are Principles of Being and Knowledge 92
BOOK II: THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH AND CAUSES 98
LESSON 1: The Acquisition of Truth: Its Ease and Its Difficulty 98
LESSON 2: The Supreme Science of Truth, and Knowledge of Ultimate Causes 102
LESSON 3: The Existence of a First Efficient and of a First Material Cause 104
LESSON 4: The Existence of a First in Final and Formal Causes 109
LESSON 5: The Method to Be Followed in the Search for Truth 113
BOOK IN: METAPHYSICAL PROBLEMS 116
LESSON 1: The Need of Questioning Everything in the Search for Universal Truth 116
LESSON 2: Questions Concerning the Method of This Science 118
LESSON 3: Questions Concerning the Things with Which This Science Deals 120
LESSON 4: Are All the Classes of Causes Studied by One Science or by Many? 123
LESSON 5: Are the Principles of Demonstration and-Substance Considered by One Science or by Many? 129
LESSON 6: Are All Substances Considered by One Science or by Many? Does the Science of Substance Consider the Essential Accidents of Substance? 132
LESSON 7: Are there Certain Other Substances Separate from Sensible Things? Criticism of the Different Opinions Regarding the Objects of Mathematics 134
LESSON 8: Are Genera Principles of Things? And If So, Does This Apply to The Most Universal Genera or to Those Nearest to Individuals? 140
LESSON 9: Do Any Universals Exist Apart from the Singular Things Perceived by the Senses and from Those Which Are Composed of Matter and Form? 147
LESSON 10: Do All Things Have a Single Substance? Do All Things Have the Same or Different Principles? 151
LESSON 11: Do Corruptible and Incorruptible Things Have the Same or Different Principles? 154
LESSON 12: Are Unity and Being the Substance and Principle of All Things? 161
LESSON 13: Are Numbers and Continuous Quantifies the Substances and Principles of Sensible Things? 166
LESSON 14: Are there Separate Forms in Addition to the Objects of Mathematics an4 Sensible Things? 171
LESSON 15: Do First Principles Exist Actually or Potentially, and Are They Universal or Singular? 173
BOOK IV: BEING AND FIRST PRINCIPLES 175
LESSON 1: The Proper Subject Matter of This Science: Being as Being, and Substance and Accidents 175
LESSON 2: This Science Considers Being and Unity. The Parts of Philosophy Based on the Divisions of Being and Unity 180
LESSON 3: The Same Science Considers Unity and Plurality and All Opposites. The Method of Treating These 184
LESSON 4: First Philosophy Considers All Contraries. Its Distinction from Logic 187
LESSON 5: Answers to Questions Raised in Book IN about Principles of Demonstration 192
LESSON 6: First Philosophy Must Examine the First Principle of Demonstration. The Nature of This Principle. The Errors about It 195
LESSON 7: Contradictories Cannot Be True at the Same Time 200
LESSON 8: Other Arguments Against the Foregoing Position 207
LESSON 9: Three Further Arguments Against Those Who Deny the First Principle 211
LESSON 10: The Procedure Against Those Who Say that Contradictories Are True at the Same Time 215
LESSON 11: The Reason Why Some Considered Appearances to Be True 218
LESSON 12: Two Reasons Why Some Identify Truth with Appearances 219
LESSON 13: Change in Sensible Things Not Opposed to Their Truth 223
LESSON 14: Seven Arguments against the View that Truth Consists in Appearances 226
LESSON 15: Refutation of the View that Contradictories Can Be Shown to Be True at the Same Time. Contraries Cannot Belong to the Same Subject at the Same Time 230
LESSON 16: No Intermediate between Contradictories. How Heraclitus and Anaxagoras Influenced This Position 235
LESSON 17: Rejection of the Opinions that Everything Is True and False, and that Every thing Is at Rest and in Motion 239
BOOK V: LEXICON of PHILOSOPHICAL TERMS 243
LESSON 1: Five Senses of the Term “Principle.” The Common Definition of Principle 243
LESSON 2: The Four Classes of Causes. Several Causes of the Same Effect. Causes May Be causes of Each Other. Contraries Have the Same Cause 247
LESSON 3: All Causes Reduced to Four Classes 251
LESSON 4: The Proper Meaning of Element; Elements in Words, Natural Bodies, and Demonstrations. Transferred Usages of “Element” and Their Common Basis 256
LESSON 5: Five Senses of the Term Nature 259
LESSON 6: Four Senses of the Term Necessary. Its First and Proper Sense Immobile Things, though Necessary, Are Exempted from Force 264
LESSON 7: The Kinds of Accidental Unity and of Essential Unity 268
LESSON 8: The Primary Sense of One. One in the Sense of Complete. One as the Principle of Number. The Ways in Which Things Are One. The Ways in Which Things Are Many 275
LESSON 9: Division of Being into Accidental and Essential. The Types of Accidental and of Essential Being 279
LESSON 10: Meanings of Substance 283
LESSON 11: The Ways in Which Things Are the Same Essentially and Accidentally 285
LESSON 12: Various Senses of Diverse, Different, Like, Contrary, and Diverse in Species 288
LESSON 13: The Ways in Which Things Are Prior and Subsequent 293
LESSON 14: Various Senses of the Terms Potency, Capable, Incapable, Possible and Im possible 298
LESSON 15: The Meaning of Quantity. Its Kinds. The Essentially and Accidentally Quantitative 305
LESSON 16: The Senses of Quality 308
LESSON 17: The Senses of Relative 311
LESSON 18: The Senses of Perfect 317
LESSON 19: The Senses of Limit, of “According to Which,” of “In Itself,” and of Disposition 320
LESSON 20 : The Meanings of Disposition, of Having, of Affection, of Privation, and of “To Have” 324
LESSON 21: The Meanings of “To Come from Something,” Part, Whole, and Mutilated 330
LESSON 22: The Meanings of Genus, of Falsity, and of Accident 338
BOOK VI: THE SCOPE of METAPHYSICS 344
LESSON 1: The Method of Investigating Being as Being. How This Science Differs from the Other Sciences 345
LESSON 2: The Being Which This Science Investigates 352
LESSON 3: Refutation of Those Who Wished to Abolish the Accidental 358
LESSON 4: The True and the False as Being and Non-Being. Accidental Being and Being in the Sense of the True Are Excluded from This Science 365
BOOK VII: SUBSTANCE, ESSENCE, AND DEFINITION 369
LESSON 1: The Primacy of Substance. Its Priority to Accidents 369
LESSON 2: Substance as form, as Matter, and as Body. The Priority of form. The Procedure in the Investigation of Substance 376
LESSON 3: What Essence is. The Things to Which It Belongs 383
LESSON 4: The Analogous Character of Definition. Its Applicability to Accidents 389
LESSON 5: The Relation of Essence to Thing in Essential and in Accidental Predication 395
LESSON 6: Becoming—by Nature, by Art, and by Chance. The Source and Subject of Becoming 402
LESSON 7: The Composite and Not the form is Generated. The Ideas Are neither Principles of Generation nor Exemplars 411
LESSON 8: Generation by Art and by Nature or by Art Alone. Generation of Composites, Not Substantial or Accidental Forms 417
LESSON 9: Parts of the Quiddity and Definition. Priority of Parts to Whole 424
LESSON 10: Priority of Parts to Whole and their Role in Definition 430
LESSON 11: What Forms Are Parts of the Species and of the Intelligible Expression 435
LESSON 12: The Unity of the Thing Defined and of the Definition 444
LESSON 13: Rejection of Universals as Substances 451
LESSON 14: Rejection of Universals as Separate Substances 458
LESSON 15: Three Arguments Why Ideas Cannot be Defined 462
LESSON 16: Composition in Sensible Substances. Non-Substantiality of Unity and Being. Plato’...
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