Toma de Aquino, De ente et essentia / Despre fiind și esență

Thomistic philosophical-theological reflection on the human intellect’s comprehension of being and essence through language culminates in the affirmation that in God, essence is identical with being. The logical and ontological trajectory followed by the Dominican thinker includes key distinctions: separate substances, in which essence differs from being and is identical with form; composite substances, in which essence differs from being and coincides with the matter-form compound; and accidents, whose essence is incomplete and relative, as it includes their subject in the definition. The central aim of the De ente et essentia is to grasp the essence of the supreme Being and of other beings through a discourse that makes knowledge possible by analysing the meanings of the names that signify being. The central role of essence in this ‘grammar of being’ underlies the ontological solidarity among different levels of reality, from the highest to the lowest.