[Thomas Aquinas and modernity - A speculative observation on the history of Thomistic metaphysics]

Thomas Aquinas' philosophical doctrine is undeniably marked by an intellectualist tendency towards abstraction and the isolation of theoretic thought with regard to practical reason. Nevertheless, this penchant, which is not decisive when considering the Thomasean intention as a whole, was emphasized by the Renaissance commentators, followed by their neothomist heirs. Both secretly participated in the reign of the modern "abstractio entis" against Aquinas that began with Occam and Scot. Thus this paradox: the antimodernist claims of the tenors of the first neothomism are shown to be secretly governed by the most fundamental options of the supposed enemy. Beginning with M. Blondel, Saint Thomas' heirs took up again with the Angelic Doctor's originality that his penchant for concept cannot overshadow, and thus Rousselot and his heirs were able to bring to light the basically dynamic and practical dimension of Thomasian epistemology. Heidegger's influence was likewise decisive in rediscovering the absolute "prius" of being over thought in the Thomasian theory of knowing, as in Gilson and Siewerth. There is no future of Thomism without the continuation of this double path that has allowed Aquinas to be delivered from modern abstraction into which the first neothomism had thrown his metaphysics by reducing it to a quantifying epistemology.