| Breaking through the Augustinism tradition,finding a way of accommodation between Aristotelianism and Christian belief,and responding to the challenge of Arab philosophers are the subject of the time that Thomas Aquinas faced.Thomas consciously undertook the historical mission,carefully considered the philosophical theories of predecessors,selectively absorbed the reasonable core of Aristotle’s doctrine of ousia,combined with Boethius’ s division of "esse and ens",and constructed the foundation for Substantia Theory based on ontology.In medieval scholasticism,substantia was separated from the category system and became the independent object of metaphysical thinking.Thomas Aquinas explored the substantia on the basis and premise of metaphysical ontology.He understood esse as existence activity and defined essence as making things “ what it is”.As the combination of esse and essence,form and material,substantia is a thing that has esse but does not exist in another subject,and its own essence cannot be found in any other substantia.Aquinas fundamentally uses the relationship between esse and essence,material and form to make a new explanation and interpretation of the hierarchy,category and structure of the substantia.He divided the substantia into three hierarchies from top to bottom: substantia separate,created intellectual substantia and substantia composite.The substantia separate specifically refers to God,and its esse and essence are the same;created intellectual substantia refers to the substantia immaterialis,which does not contain material,only contains form,so its essence is form;the essence of substantia composite is form and material.Apart from God itself,other substances exist with the esse of God,with the distinction between esse and essence,and esse takes precedence over essence.Under the background of Christian theology,Thomas’ substantia theory is the important support of ontology,which radiates creative light.He divided the matter in detail,and explained the principle of individuation by designated matter and uniquely made the genus and species metaphysical interpretations.He liberated the reason to a certain extent by combining the discussion of the universal with the rational thinking.In his opinion,God as a creator giving a transcendental metaphysical vision to Greek Philosophy.In the transcendental creator,the various categories of substantia are unified and constructed as a unified foundational knowledge system.Through speculative philosophy,Thomas had constructed the ideological framework of Scholasticism in the middle ages.Thomas’ theory of substantia has a profound influence in his era,consolidating the Christian belief,improving people’s understanding of nature,and reconciling the tension between belief and rationality.In the end,the thought of substantia has its specific inheritance and development in the process of extension,and the theory of substantia has a profound and far-reaching impact on the development of modern philosophy objectively. |
