What It Is to Exist

What is being? This question is among the oldest and most perplexing metaphysical issues. Contemporary discussions of it are burgeoning, but there is a wide difference in attitudes towards it between philosophers in the analytic and the continental traditions. Through a careful analysis of the thought of Thomas Aquinas, this outstanding book clarifies and resolves some of the current controversies. Using the important new light his work sheds on Aquinas's foundational metaphysics, Patrick Zoll advances significantly the contemporary discussion of being. In consequence, he also succeeds in building an impressive bridge between analytic and continental approaches to this metaphysical question. Eleonore Stump, Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy, Saint Louis University The philosophical question of existence, or of what it is for things to exist, is nearly as old as the discipline of philosophy itself. However, the topic is addressed in new and intellectually rigorous ways in recent analytic philosophy. This excellent book argues convincingly that in this contemporary context, Aquinas' treatment of existence is of surprising relevance, decisive importance, and conceptual acuity. Aquinas rightly sees that existence cannot be either a nature (since existence is common to all natures) or a mere property. What it is, then, for things to exist? In a way that is at once clear and accessible as well as thorough and reasonable, Patrick Zoll explores this question in such a way as to cast great light on a contemporary debate, based on wisdom of the past, and a remarkable renewal of understanding of Aquinas for today. Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP, Rector of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas (Angelicum), Rome Zoll provides a valuable, independent, and innovative research contribution to metaphysics. He asks the question - what is it for that which exists to exist, i.e., what does the existence of an object consist in? He canvasses five contemporary views and compares them to a Thomistic view, finding, in the end, that the ontological scorecard favors Thomism. Analytic metaphysicians and students of scholastic philosophy both have a great deal to learn from this important book. Timothy J. Pawl, Professor of Philosophy, University of St. Thomas