Unity by Synthesis

Abstract:

This lecture, given by Francisco Canals Vidal on the day the Universitat Abat Oliba CEU awarded him the degree of Doctor Honoris causa, in 2005, suggests core themes and lines of reflection in order to draw the attention on the doctrinal synthesis of saint Thomas Aquinas, unknown to many thomists, as well. In effect, Aquinas synthesizes dimensions of reality which have been constituted in unity by the divine creative action. Even more, since saint Thomas is a “Christian philosopher” it is not convenient to split his synthetic ability between human natural being and activity, and the constitutives of man’s elevation to the supernatural order of divine filiation and its consummation in the eternal beatitude to which all supernatural and gratuitous gifts given by the divine generosity are ordered. Nevertheless, all these dimensions, assumed with unilateral exclusiveness, have given way in human thought to inadequate options among antithetic stances, which ended up postulating in post-Kantian modernity the dialectics of the opposites as the factor of movement and life of human thought

Key words:

Thomas Aquinas, Thomism, Christian philosophy, Metaphysics