Mysticism and metaphysics: in behalf of onto-teo-logical interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas

Straipsnyje nagrinėjamas mistinį patyrimą aprašančių terminų vartojimas ir reikšmė Tomo Akviniečio raštuose. Kalbos analizė leidžia išryškinti kai kuriuos ontologinius ir epistemologinius tomistinės mistikos aspektus, parodančius metafizikos onto-teo-loginės interpretacijos galimybęThe article deals with the use of language in Thomistic mysticism. The problem of mystical language educes some ontological and epistemological aspects of Thomistic metaphysics. The research investigates the possibility of onto-teo-logical interpretation of Thomistic metaphysics, based on the historical evaluation of the Existential and Transcendental Thomism, especially of Pierre Rousselot, Étienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, and on the solid contribution to Contemporary Thomism by such Postmodern religious thinkers as John D. Caputo, Jean-Luc Marion, and Gianni Vattimo. Due to Rousselot and Transcendental Thomism, Thomas Aquinas is commonly viewed as the founder of the “intellectual mysticism” of the Dominican tradition. In the same time, Thomas’s mysticism is strongly experiential and metaphoric, being tied to Pseudo-Dionysian mystical tradition in which God as unknowable and unspeakable, nevertheless appears on the elevated phenomenal level, possibly expressed only in metaphorical language. In the article, the use of the notions extasis and raptus in Summa Theologiae and The Commentary on Second Corinthians is analyzed. The notions of extasis and raptus as used in Summa Theologiae are discussed in connection with the natural human apprehensive power as consisted of sensation and cognition. The extasis is presented as a kind of a “displacement” and “elevation” of both and the raptus as a supplement of the extasis. Mystical experience is in some sense “natural” to man; it does not corrupt a natural power of apprehension but perfects it, being “suitable” to it. In the theological context of The Commentary on Second Corinthians, attention is paid to the use of the notion of intellect as a special part of the human apprehensive power, capable of the immediate knowledge of the actual being as presentia.[...]Filosofijos katedraVytauto Didžiojo universiteta