Banca de DEFESA: SAULO MATIAS DOURADO

Uma banca de DEFESA de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : SAULO MATIAS DOURADO
DATE: 12/03/2026
TIME: 09:30
LOCAL: https://conferenciaweb.rnp.br/ufba/defesas-ppgfufba
TITLE:

Making Science of the Undefinable: Dionysius the Areopagite in the Reading of Thomas Aquinas

KEY WORDS:

Thomas Aquinas, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, epistemology, language, triplex via.

PAGES: 149
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: Filosofia
SUBÁREA: História da Filosofia
SUMMARY:

We seek to understand why Thomas Aquinas found it necessary to assimilate Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite as an authority and how this assimilation enabled the composition of a Neoplatonic thought-matrix within an Aristotelian scientific framework. Thus, we aim to formulate a theological science based on the premises of the via remotionis as transcendence, through the epistemological possibility of analogy and metaphor. The incorporation of Dionysius does not appear as an extrinsic or merely devotional element, but as a response to an internal requirement of the Thomistic project itself, which needed conceptual instruments capable of treating separate realities and the Divine Principle according to an epistemological regime adequate to its transcendence. In this sense, we reconstruct the genealogy of the reception of the Corpus Dionysiacum from its origins to its intellectual elevation in the 13th century, showing how the systematic reading undertaken by Albert the Great was decisive in consolidating Dionysius as a philosophical-theological authority and in preparing the horizon upon which Aquinas could operate his own reelaboration.

By confronting Albert the Great’s commentaries on The Divine Names with those of Thomas Aquinas, the properly epistemological questions of theology become visible. While in Albert there is a predominance of the symbolic and hierarchical exposition of Dionysian thought, in Thomas this material is reorganized within a theory of knowledge that articulates operations of the intellect, the centrality of judgment, and the distinction between essence and being (esse). From this configuration, the lineage of the Areopagite’s thought is understood as integrated into a theological science that proceeds through proportional affirmations, without the pretension of a direct apprehension of the Divine essence, but rather of a reintegration with the One as Principle.

Thomas embraced Dionysius holistically, making him the third most cited author in his entire corpus, and his theology was structured also upon celestial hierarchy and negative theology. Based on this reading, we unravel the triplex via to show how, from the impossibility of stating what God is, an affirmative path opens, founded on causality, analogy, participation, and eminence. The via remotionis (way of negation) occupies a decisive structural position, for it establishes the internal limit of every theological affirmation. By removing from God not only imperfections but also the finite modes of signifying inherent to concepts extracted from the sensible, the negative way prevents divine names from being understood according to a univocal or quidditative regime. The apophatic function does not suspend knowledge but prepares it, preserving the ontological difference between the Divine Principle and created beings, and ensuring that every affirmation remains ordered toward the transcendence of the Divine essence. Negation is established as the condition of possibility for affirmative theology, as it delimits the reach of the intellect to the plane of being and causality, opening the space in which analogy, participation, and eminence can ground true judgments without reducing the Absolute to the measure of the human concept.

The via causalitatis (way of causality) grounds theological affirmation by recognizing that the perfections present in created beings proceed from a First Principle that communicates them according to the order of participation. This causal relationship establishes an analogical regime of signification, in which perfections are affirmed of God as the fountal cause and of beings as effects, according to diverse proportions of being. Analogy ensures that divine names possess a real reference to the Principle and express the ontological difference between the simple mode of Divine subsistence and the participated mode of creatures. The via eminentiae (way of eminence) elevates this recognition by affirming that the causally recognized perfections subsist in God in a supereminent manner, according to a degree of being that corresponds to the simplicity and plenitude of the Principle. Thus, causality, analogy, and eminence jointly structure a theological affirmation proportional to the human mode of knowing and ordered toward the intelligibility of the transcendent. The recognition of the limit of language leads not to the suspension of discourse, but to the constitution of a theology proceeding through proportional inferences and symbols.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Presidente - 1615874 - MARCO AURELIO OLIVEIRA DA SILVA
Interna - 1728816 - ROBERTA MAGALHAES MIQUELANTI
Externo à Instituição - ALFREDO CARLOS STORCK - UFRGS
Externo à Instituição - ANTONIO JANUNZI NETO - UEFS
Externo à Instituição - CARLOS EDUARDO DE OLIVEIRA - USP