Transcendental Attributes
- Transcendental Attributes are perfections which all things share in, in virtue of their being.
- They are ‘convertible’ with being – each is a thing’s being in relation either to itself or other beings.
- Being – the reality of a thing
- Essence: what it is
- Act of Existing: what makes it a real thing
- One – the thing as undivided
- Good – the thing as an object of desire
- The perfection of its own being
- The perfection of the being of another
- True – the thing as an object of knowledge; the reality to which a mind conforms
- Thing – being what it is (essence considered in itself)
- Something – being other than everything else
- Beautiful – perfection as an object of knowledge
- Being – the reality of a thing
- Trancendentals are like Platonic Forms in that
- they are shared in by material things more or less completely
- they are the foundation of the reality and intelligibility of what shares in them (which is everything that is)
- Transcendental Good (as Metaphysical Perfection)
- Most obvious Transcendental Attribute in observable reality from which the Fourth Way proceeds (as another a posteriori proof)
- Defined as ‘what each thing (truly) desires’ (should): the due good, or duly desirable
- Not arbitrary or relativistic, because convertible with being
- Each thing’s goodness is the perfection of its own being (metaphysical perfection)
- A thing’s good is what is or contributes to its functioning well
- This well-functioning is determined by the sort of thing it is, i.e., its nature or essence: what it is.
- Incidentally, evil is the privation or lack of (a due) good.
- Not every lack or privation is evil: unseeing rocks are not called blind, and do not suffer an evil.
- Only what is supposed to see (and doesn’t) is called blind and suffers an evil
Thomistic Philosophy Page 