Abstract

The author’s purpose is to understand the role divine ideas play as causal principles in Aquinas’s philosophy. His contention is that, although Thomas’s doctrine of ideas is perhaps not the key to an understanding of his metaphysics, it is certainly “ a key to such an understanding” .The book is divided into six chapters. The first chapter seeks to provide a general definition of divine ideas according to Aquinas. Divine ideas are exemplar causes in the likeness of which God produces creatures. Ideas in the strict sense belong to God’s practical or actually practical knowledge. The causality exercised by exemplars is that of formal causality, but because they are productive of things, they entail efficient and final causality, as well. In chapter 2, Doolan examines Thomas’s arguments in favor of the existence of divine ideas. Chapter 3 deals with the question of the multiplicity of divine ideas. Doolan first establishes, against Gilson and others, that Aquinas did indeed hold that there was a multiplicity of divine ideas. He then shows how Aquinas was able to reconcile the diversity of ideas with God’s simplicity. The gist of the solution involves viewing ideas as nonbeings relative to God, who is, of course, ipsum esse. Now the only way non-beings can enter into God is in