What It Is to Exist: The Contribution of Thomas Aquinas's View to the Contemporary Debate

One important task of metaphysics is to answer the question of what it is for an object to exist. The first part of this book offers a systematic reconstruction and critique of contemporary views on existence. The upshot of this part is that the contemporary debate has reached an impasse because none of the considered views is able to formulate a satisfactory answer to this fundamental metaphysical question.

The second part reconstructs Thomas Aquinas’s view on existence (esse) and argues t...