Metaphysics

On Being and Essence

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Thomas Aquinas

1252

An early treatise written while Aquinas was a student in Paris, examining the most fundamental concepts of Aristotelian metaphysics: essence, existence, form, matter, genus, and species. Its central argument — that in all creatures essence and existence are really distinct, while in God alone they are identical — became the cornerstone of Thomistic metaphysics. Dense and precise, it shows Aquinas already working out the philosophical tools he would deploy across his entire career.