Primo Cadit in Intellectu Ens: Gilson, Maritain, and Aquinas on Knowing Being

Abstract

The author compares the views of Étienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Thomas Aquinas on the order in our knowledge of being. While Gilson and Maritain maintain that esse and the actus essendi are what are first known, Aquinas maintains consistently that it is the existent thing or the ens itself that is first known. The paper proceeds by first laying out the positions of Gilson and Maritain as evidenced in their respective works Being and Some Philosophers and Existence and the Existent. Then, it manifests what in their positions is correct and in what they err. And finally, it argues that ens is the first thing known by appealing to the proper object of the intellect, the order between the acts of the intellect, and the intellect’s mode of procedure. In the course of these arguments, the primary authoritative sources used are the works of Aquinas.

Keywords

• gilson
• maritain
• thomas aquinas
• existentialism
• essentialism
• epistemology
• knowledge of being
• intellect
• ens
• esse
• actus essendi