Możliwość samozagłady świata. Metafizyczne dociekania św. Tomasza z Akwinu w "Kwestiach dyskutowanych o mocy Boga".

The undertaken considerations in the presented article belong to the broader context of metaphysical analyzes concer­ning one of the aspects of the creative action of the Absolute, which is the pre­servation of the world in existence (con­servatio mundi). This issue is considered from the perspective of created substan­ces and therefore it is expressed in the question of whether they have the pos­sibility of non-existence, which, based on Thomas Aquinas’ creatio ex nihilo the­ory, is tantamount to the question of whether they were created by God in de­structible natures and as such they aim at to self-annihilation. The negation in the substantial order of the disposition to non-existence in contingent beings seems to justify the conclusion that the­ir duration is founded not only in the di­vine act of preserving in existence but al­so in their inherent nature, which is oriented rather towards being than non­-being. In order to solve the problem for­mulated in this way, in the first place, the principles responsible for the de­structibility of beings will be analyzed, then the considerations focus on the ne­cessity of the existence of created sub­stances, and the whole is completed by the presentation of the relation between contingency and destructibility