%0 Journal Article
%T Analogy and the Transcendental Properties of Being as the Key to Metaphysical Science
%A Oliva Blanchette
%J The Saint Anselm Journal
%D 2005
%I Institute for Saint Anselm Studies
%X Metaphysics, as it was first thought of by Aristotle, has to be conceived as a science, but as one that distinguishes itself from all the particular sciences, first by raising the question of the first and most universal causes and secondly by taking as its subject of consideration being simply as being in its most universal and in its most concrete sense as present in experience. This implies that being must be taken as analogous from the very beginning of the investigation, not in the sense that it would diffuse the unity of this science into a mere difference of differences, but in the sense that it would raise this science to a higher kind of unity according to an order of different degrees of being as they relate to a primary analogate as the one to which all relate more or less distantly. To enter more deeply into this analogous subject of consideration one must further distinguish transcendental properties that follow being in its analogous and transcendental sense. In the end, when the question of a first, universal cause of being as being, or of a summit of being that would be totally transcendent, is finally raised, all of this a priori conception of being as analogous according to different degrees with its corresponding degrees of oneness, activity, truth and goodness must be brought into play in relation to things as they come under sense experience as moved, caused, contingent and exhibiting different degrees of perfection in being such as living, sensing and rational consciousness, in order to conclude to the truth of the proposition "God is."
%U http://www.anselm.edu/Documents/Institute%20for%20Saint%20Anselm%20Studies/Abstracts/4.5.3.2h_22Blanchette.pdf