The Metaphysical Presuppositions of Being-In-The-World - by Caitlin Smith Gilson (Paperback)

About the Book

Brings Aquinas and Heidegger into dialogue and offers an original and comprehensive rethinking of the nature of temporality and the origins of metaphysical inquiry. >

Book Synopsis

The Metaphysical Presuppositions of Being-in-the-World brings St. Thomas Aquinas and Martin Heidegger into dialogue and argues for the necessity of Christian philosophy. Through the confrontation of Heideggerian and Thomist thought, it offers an original and comprehensive rethinking of the nature of temporality and the origins of metaphysical inquiry.

The book is a careful treatment of the inception and deterioration of the four-fold presuppositions of Thomistic metaphysics: intentionality, causality, finitude, ananke stenai. The analysis of the four-fold has never before been done and it is a central and original contribution of Gilson's book. The four-fold penetrates the issues between the phenomenological approach and the metaphysical vision to arrive at their core and irreconcilable difference. Heidegger's attempt to utilize the fourfold to extrude theology from ontology provides the necessary interpretive impetus to revisit the radical and often misunderstood metaphysics of St. Thomas, through such problems as aeviternity, non-being and tragedy.

Review Quotes

"I am unaware of any previous successful attempt to confront Heidegger's massive critique of metaphysics at such depth and range. Dr Smith-Gilson's conception of the four-fold intentional presupposition at the heart of metaphysics is an original conception of great merit and her work will be of immense interest to scholars of Heidegger, St Thomas, and well as to epistemologists and metaphysicians across a wide spectrum."- Prof. Juan Andres Mercado, Associate Professor of Modern Philosophy, The Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, Italy.

"The confrontation between Classical and Heideggerian understanding of Being shows Smith Gilson's superb capacity to get into the mind of philosophers of different schools of thinking and mastering their philosophical language. With great balance, this book neither merges the two in some facile reconciliation, nor makes Heidegger a straw man with which to beat modernity in favor of a 13th century theology, but highlights the similarities and differences of their conceptual frameworks, without getting stuck in terminological equivocalness. The reader will find in these rich and dense pages a sound and substantial dialog between Heidegger's philosophical standpoint and medieval metaphysics." Prof. Francisco Fernandez Labastida, Pontificia Universita della Santa Croce, Italy

"This work gives a needed voice to the still-true and still misunderstood pre-modern understanding of man, world, being, and God. Where the earlier Thomistic revivals confronted modernity by employing scholastic terminology to restate its vision, Dr. Smith-Gilson's work of retrieval confronts, at the highest intellectual level, modernity and especially its phenomenological presentation, with the words of philosophy simpliciter. This work is an apologia for the Thomistic vision of man, God, and being which is not itself apologetic or defensive. This is a profound and difficult work, but one that richly rewards the reader who gives himself to its meditation." Herb E. Hartmann, Professor of Philosophy, Southern Catholic College, GA, USA

About the Author

Caitlin Smith Gilson is Chair of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Ohio, USA.