Interpretations on the divine exemplarism according to Thomas Aquinas: an aproximation to its levels of significance
Keywords:
exemplarism, creation, participation, Thomas AquinasAbstract
Thomas Aquinas develops the doctrine of creation through three fundamental notions: production, distinction, and government of beings. Regarding the distinction, Aquinas affirms that God is the exemplary cause of the order of the world. In this sense, he explains that the divine intellect establishes the measure of all creatures based on immutable ideas, just as the ratio of an architectural whole includes at the same time that of the parts that constitute it. As operating principles, divine ideas promote the emergence of an effect by way of an imitation of what is understood. In this sense, Aquinas points out that the similarity of beings is imperfect, because it multiplies the goods that, in God, are given simply and undividedly. Some interpreters affirm that the Tomasian texts suggest two different levels of similarity, which is problematic due to two questions raised by exemplarism: one of them concerns the way in which the causal status of the archetypes conceived by the divine intellect and, the other, to the way in which the imitation of creatures is understood in view of such models. This work aims to study these levels of comprehension through a textual and critical analysis of both the sources and the specialized bibliography.
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