Joseph Owens Livres

Joseph Owens presents an introduction to metaphysics designed to develop in the reader a habitus of thinking. Using original Thomistic texts and Etienne Gilson's interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas, Owens examines the application of metaphysical principles to the issues that arise in a specifically Christian environment. From a starting point of external, sensible, non-human beings, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics focuses in the questions of existence and the nature of revealed truths. Following his historical introduction to metaphysics, Owens provides a general investigation of the first principles and causes of being, and a study of knowledge and of the divine nature and attributes in light of natural reason.

Aristotle's Gradations of Being was edited from the papers of the late Joseph Owens. Some fifty years after his groundbreaking book, The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics, Owens turned again to consider the central themes in Aristotle's conception of a science of being or "first philosophy." Reflecting on a half-century of scholarship, and drawing on his own extensive publications in Greek and medieval philosophy, Owens sets forth in a step-by-step meticulous argument his own interpretation of Aristotle's account of substance, essence, and the gradations of being. Owens writes extensively of the different but complementary approaches of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.He discusses the many facets of the Aristotelian notion of "form," including its role in a realistic epistemology. This monograph, edited by Owens's colleague and former pupil, Lloyd P. Gerson, includes a complete bibliography of Owens's writings as well as works critical of Owens's readings of ancient and medieval philosophers. It will serves as an excellent introduction to one of the most influential interpretations of the Aristotelian metaphysical tradition of the past century.About the Joseph Owens, C.SS.R., was professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto and the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies