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In scholastic philosophy, Actus Purus (English: "Pure Actuality," "Pure Act") is the absolute perfection of God.
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In scholastic philosophy, Actus Purus (English: "Pure Actuality," "Pure Act") is the absolute perfection of God.
Created beings have potentiality that is not actuality, imperfections as well as perfection. Only God is simultaneously all that he can be, infinitely real and infinitely perfect: 'I am who I am' (Exodus 3:14). His attributes or his operations are really identical with his essence, and his essence necessitates his existence. [1] (Contrast this understanding with the Essence–Energies distinction in Eastern Christian, particularly Palamite, theology).
Charles Albert Dubray, as accepted by Charles George Herbermann, stated that in created beings,
the state of potentiality precedes that of actuality; before being realized, a perfection must be capable of realization. But, absolutely speaking, actuality precedes potentiality. For in order to change, a thing must be acted upon, or actualized; change and potentiality presuppose, therefore, a being which is in actu . This actuality, if mixed with potentiality, presupposes another actuality, and so on, until we reach the actus purus. [1]
According to Thomas Aquinas, a thing which requires completion by another is said to be in potency to that other: realization of potency is called actuality. The universe is conceived of as a series of things arranged in an ascending order, or potency and act at once crowned and created by God, who alone is pure act. God is changeless because change means passage from potency to act, and so he is without beginning and end, since these demand change. Matter and form are necessary to the understanding of change, for change requires the union of that which becomes and that which it becomes. Matter is the first, and form the second. All physical things are composed of matter and form. The difference between a thing as form or character and the actual existence of it is denoted by the terms essence and being (or existence). It is only in God that there is no distinction between the two. Both pairs – matter and form, essence and being – are special cases of potency and act. They are also modes: modes do not add anything to the idea of being, but are ways of making explicit what is implicit in it.[ citation needed ]
According to Thomas Aquinas, God can also be defined as the act of all acts, the perfection of all perfections and the perfect Being. [2] This Being is also called being in the strong sense or intensive Being (Esse ut actus, or Actus essendi ) to distinguish it from being in the weak sense or common being (esse commune) of all created entities. The intensive Being includes every possible determination, thus excludes any other addition, is the highest real perfection; the common being is the highest abstraction and the lowest perfection, universal and totally indeterminate, indifferent to any addition (which neither excludes nor even includes). [3]
The common being is the object of metaphysics, which studies being as being in the universal manner.
According to Father Mondin, the common being is also analogical, like the intensive Being. Otherwise, if the common being were to be preached unambiguously, all entities would be reduced to a single entity. [4] God cannot coincide with the common being because it would be reduced to a mere abstraction existing in the human mind alone. [5]
While the common being is immanent like all the entities which it is abstracted from, instead the intensive Being, who is God Himself, is transcendent. Both of them are trascendental in respect of the nine Aristotelian categories. [6]
An univocal common being is the object of the philosophies of Parmenides and Plato, [7] as well as of Scotus, Suárez, and Wolff. [8] An immanent Being is the object of the philosophies of Plotinus, Hegel and Heidegger. [7]
The most perfect Being (or Esse ipsum subsistens , Being that subsists by itself and not in virtue of other-from-itself), is as strong and powerful, intelligent and free, noble and precious, profound and intimate to creatures, as nobody else can exist.
Hylomorphism is a philosophical doctrine developed by the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, which conceives every physical entity or being (ousia) as a compound of matter (potency) and immaterial form (act), with the generic form as immanently real within the individual. The word is a 19th-century term formed from the Greek words ὕλη and μορφή. Hylomorphic theories of physical entities have been undergoing a revival in contemporary philosophy.
In monotheistic theology, the doctrine of Divine Simplicity says that God is simple.
Mental substance, according to the idea held by dualists and idealists, is a non-physical substance of which minds are composed. This substance is often referred to as consciousness.
Essence has various meanings and uses for different thinkers and in different contexts. It is used in philosophy and theology as a designation for the property or set of properties or attributes that make an entity the entity it is or, expressed negatively, without which it would lose its identity. Essence is contrasted with accident, which is a property or attribute the entity has accidentally or contingently, but upon which its identity does not depend.
Blessed Antonio Francesco Davide Ambrogio Rosmini-Serbati was an Italian Roman Catholic priest and philosopher. He founded the Rosminians, officially the Institute of Charity or Societas a charitate nuncupata, pioneered the concept of social justice, and Italian Liberal Catholicism. Alessandro Manzoni considered Rosmini the only contemporary Italian author worth reading.
Thomism is the philosophical and theological school which arose as a legacy of the work and thought of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the Dominican philosopher, theologian, and Doctor of the Church.
Francisco Suárez, was a Spanish Jesuit priest, philosopher and theologian, one of the leading figures of the School of Salamanca movement. His work is considered a turning point in the history of second scholasticism, marking the transition from its Renaissance to its Baroque phases. According to Christopher Shields and Daniel Schwartz, "figures as distinct from one another in place, time, and philosophical orientation as Leibniz, Grotius, Pufendorf, Schopenhauer and Heidegger, all found reason to cite him as a source of inspiration and influence."
Aseity is the property by which a being exists of and from itself. It refers to the Christian belief that God does not depend on any cause other than himself for his existence, realization, or end, and has within himself his own reason of existence. This represents God as absolutely independent and self-existent by nature. Many Jewish and Muslim theologians have also believed God to be independent in this way. This quality of independence and self-existence has been affirmed under various names by theologians going back to antiquity, though the use of the word 'aseity' began only in the Middle Ages.
In philosophy, potentiality and actuality are a pair of closely connected principles which Aristotle used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, and De Anima.
Metaphysics is one of the principal works of Aristotle, in which he develops the doctrine that he calls First Philosophy. The work is a compilation of various texts treating abstract subjects, notably substance theory, different kinds of causation, form and matter, the existence of mathematical objects and the cosmos, which together constitute much of the branch of philosophy later known as metaphysics.
The Summa Theologiae or Summa Theologica, often referred to simply as the Summa, is the best-known work of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), a scholastic theologian and Doctor of the Church. It is a compendium of all of the main theological teachings of the Catholic Church, intended to be an instructional guide for theology students, including seminarians and the literate laity. Presenting the reasoning for almost all points of Christian theology in the West, topics of the Summa follow the following cycle: God; Creation, Man; Man's purpose; Christ; the Sacraments; and back to God.
Cornelio Fabro CSS was an Italian Catholic priest of the Stigmatine Order and a scholastic Thomist philosopher. He was the founder of the Institute for Higher Studies on Unbelief, Religion and Cultures.
Distinction, the fundamental philosophical abstraction, involves the recognition of difference.
The four causes or four explanations are, in Aristotelian thought, four fundamental types of answer to the question "why?" in analysis of change or movement in nature: the material, the formal, the efficient, and the final. Aristotle wrote that "we do not have knowledge of a thing until we have grasped its why, that is to say, its cause." While there are cases in which classifying a "cause" is difficult, or in which "causes" might merge, Aristotle held that his four "causes" provided an analytical scheme of general applicability.
Actus primus, or first actuality, is a technical expression used in scholastic philosophy.
The argument from degrees, also known as the degrees of perfection argument or the henological argument is an argument for the existence of God first proposed by mediaeval Roman Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas as one of the five ways to philosophically argue in favour of God's existence in his Summa Theologica. It is based on ontological and theological notions of perfection. Contemporary Thomist scholars are often in disagreement on the metaphysical justification for this proof. According to Edward Feser, the metaphysics involved in the argument has more to do with Aristotle than Plato; hence, while the argument presupposes realism about universals and abstract objects, it would be more accurate to say Aquinas is thinking of Aristotelian realism and not Platonic realism per se.
Substantial form is a central philosophical concept in Aristotelianism and, afterwards, in Scholasticism. The form is the idea, existent or embodied in a being, that completes or actualizes the potentiality latent in the matter composing the being itself. For Aristotle, in fact, matter is the basis of all that exists; it comprises the potentiality of everything, but of itself is not actually anything. A determinate thing only comes into being when the potentiality in matter is converted into actuality; this is achieved by the substantial form. It is substantial because it is the principle by which a material kind of thing is recognised as such.
Actus essendi is a Latin expression coined by Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). Translated as "act of being", the actus essendi is a fundamental metaphysical principle discovered by Aquinas when he was systematizing the Christian Neoplatonic interpretation of Aristotle. The metaphysical principle of actus essendi relates to the revelation of God as He Who is, and to how we as humans perceive God’s essence. Aquinas elaborates on the fact that God’s essence is not perceived as sense data; rather, the essence of God can only be understood partially in terms of the limited participations in God’s actus essendi, that is, in terms of what is real, in terms of God’s effects in the real world.
"I Am that I Am" is a common English translation of the Hebrew phrase אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה – also "I am who (I) am", "I will become what I choose to become", "I am what I am", "I will be what I will be", "I create what(ever) I create", or "I am the Existing One". The traditional English translation within Judaism favours "I will be what I will be" because the imperfective aspect in Modern Hebrew is normally used for future tense and there is no present tense with direct object of the verb "to be" in the Hebrew language.
Enrico Berti was an Italian philosopher. He was professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Padua.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Actus Purus". Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company.| | This Catholic Church–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
