Proceedings of the Second Symposium of the Dionysius Circle: Platonic Participation without Platonic Forms: Thomas Aquinas on the Key Insight of Dionysius’s De divinis nominibus

According to Aquinas, the Platonic doctrine of participation can be disentangled from a commitment to the theory of Forms which Aristotle attributes to Plato. In this article, I argue that we can learn three important things from close examination of this key insight. First, we can better understand Aquinas’s view of how the participation of an effect in its cause works. Second, the Platonic doctrine of participation can play an important role in explaining and defending Christian doctrines such as the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of divine simplicity. Third, it is possible to combine the Platonic doctrine of participation with Aristotle’s alternative account of forms into a coherent and powerful metaphysical synthesis.