Ontology, or the Theory of Being

A rigorous defense of scholastic philosophy's enduring relevance to modern thought. P. Coffey argues that the metaphysical problems debated by medieval philosophers, essence and existence, substance and accident, potentiality and actuality, are not mere historical curiosities but live issues still discussed by contemporary philosophers, merely in different language. This textbook on ontology aims to bridge the gap between Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and modern philosophical inquiry, demonstrating that the great scholastic debates about the nature of being remain fundamentally pertinent to any serious thinker grappling with reality's ultimate structure. Written from the perspective of Moderate Realism, the work covers the primary determinations of being, the theory of distinctions, efficient and final causes, and the relationship between nature and person. For philosophy students and anyone curious about where modern analytical and continental traditions inherited their deepest problems, this early 20th-century text reveals that the questions animating medieval scholasticism never truly went away.