| Abstrakt: |
In his super Librum de causis expositio, Thomas Aquinas manages to superimpose his metaphysical structure of reality on that of the Liber de causis, being aware that both metaphysical structures have two important features in common, namely creationism and hierarchism. Aquinas, while commenting on the Liber de causis, brings up his distinction of essence/existence and the Boethian concept of eternity. At the same time, he tries to bring order to the Latin terminology of the Muslim Neoplatonic treatise. On one hand, he expressly reserves the aeternitas/aeternus pair of terms to God. On the other hand, he disambiguates the adjective sempiternus borrowing the distinction perpetuitas ae ter nalis/perpetuitas temporalis from William of Moerbeke's Latin translation of Proclus's Elementatio theologica. Thus, perpetuitas aeternalis and perpetuitas temporalis become the pivotal elements of a metaphysical structure of reality other than that of the Liber de causis. This structure is arranged in a hierarchical order of beings as well as duration, which starts from God↔aeternitas and proceeds through Angels↔perpetuitas aeternalis and celestial bodies↔ perpetuitas temporalis, and finally goes down to terrestrial bodies↔tempus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
