Figure 2 - from "Being and Participation: The Method and Structure of Metaphysical Reflection according to Cornelio Fabro Vol I"

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In his works, Fabro offers various descriptions and quasi-definitions of participation, recognizing at the same time, that it is an analogical

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The balancing of Platonic and Aristotelian principles means that St. Thomas’s metaphysics is neither Platonic to the exclusion of Aristotelian metaphysics, nor Aristotelian to the exclusion to Platonic metaphysics. As Fabro writes: “In this sense Thomism can be called a Platonism, provided it is understood as a Platonism which is structured upon Aristotelian metaphysics. Therefore, it can also be called an Aristotelianism which has assumed, as a foundation, the Platonic participation. More exactly, then, Thomism is “Thomism’, that is, it is the metaphysics of the act in which, as never before, the opposite exigencies of act and of content are brought together and established’”**°. To conclude, the originality of the Thomistic synthesis is found in its ability to assume, correct, retain, integrate and surpass the thought of those who preceded him. The Neo-Platonic tradition is assumed and surpassed “by the elevation of the ens-esse over and above the Good and by the consequent emerging synthesis of essentia-esse and of the formal- exemplary causality of Plato with the formal-efficient causality of Aristotle’**’, The more important points of the combination of Platonic and Aristotelian principles that Fabro holds are at work in the Thomistic synthesis can be visualized as follows:

dialectical ascension we see the following structure of metaphysical reflection emerge in NMP:

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This itinerary is affirmed in later texts when Fabro speaks about the resolution or reduction of accidental acts and forms to substantial ones and these into the act of being, which founded on God, who is Pure Act. As well, there is an implicit parallel between this itinerary and the development of the notion of esse (from an initial notion of esse as esse commune to a structural, methodological notion of esse to a terminal notion of intensive esse as the act of all acts and perfection of all perfections). being (act and potency, substance and accidents), but the process of metaphysica emergence of one of the terms over the other or the “ potency: [...] of the real d Absolute of that act which does not involve, by de foundation and the very hierarchy of beings suppose an absolute primacy” of act over (Metaphysics, IX, 8, 1049 b5). In the end, the ultimate foundation emands being understood and placed in the Infinite and in the finition, any ulterior reference [rimando]: this is the essential demand of metaphysics. The historical difi ference and opposition between the differen metaphysics is born from the divergence and diversity in resolving the above mentioned tensions; but it should ultimate and 160 and the ultimate foundation should be pure Act”. be held firm, so that one can speak of metaphysics, which is the highest knowledge, insofar as it relates all to the foundation of act

Jason Mitchell

Being and Participation: The Method and Structure of Metaphysical Reflection according to Cornelio Fabro Vol I

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