UDC

111.1

Authors

Dmitriy A. Fedchuk
Far Eastern Federal University;
ul. Sukhanova 8, Vladivostok, 690950, Russian Federation;
e-mail: fedchukd@list.ru

Abstract

In the Middle Ages, the understanding of the primacy of metaphysics in relation to other sciences (physics, doctrine of the soul, and ethics) was based on the idea of unity of being and its knowledge. Thomas Aquinas’ epistemology points to a correlation between the unity of cognitive faculties of thinking, its various acts, unity of science, and unity of being. The unity of knowledge is preserved through the unity of one and the same form, which exists both in the thing and in the mind. This refers to the unity of knowledge, which is correlative to the unity of being. St. Thomas Aquinas suggests a classification of sciences based on a certain type of relationship between the subject of science and its relation to matter. The primacy of metaphysics as a divine science lies in the fact that other types of knowledge adopt its most general principles. The three speculative sciences involve three types of mental operations: separatio corresponds to metaphysics, abstraction of the form from matter and consideration of essence correspond to mathematics, and abstraction of the general from the particular, to physics. The divine science, or metaphysics, is primary in relation to other sciences, because it investigates being as being and the principles of its existence. It is a question of res divinae, divine things, which, with the help of metaphysics, can be knowable not only through the consequences in the finite being, but also in the way they manifest themselves. The mind combines multitude into unity by way of discursive consideration; intellectual knowledge, using metaphysics and theology, contemplates the truth in its unity and simplicity. This is how mediaeval philosophy of the 13th century represents the unity of being, thinking and the science of being.

Keywords

St. Thomas Aquinas, classification of sciences, unity, being, unity of being, unity of knowledge, unity of science, abstraction

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