ABSTRACT
The precise role of existence as related to judgment has increasingly engaged the attention of Thomistic metaphysicians in recent years. The thesis can be expressed as follows: St. Thomas' articulation of the principles entering into unity of judgment demands the exercise of judgment of negation when these judgments are metaphysical. Under any other supposition the Thomistic esse of general metaphysics is contradicted by the Thomistic teaching on judgment as a special topic within Aquinas' noetic. The Thomistic metaphysician must deny the entire structure to being even as he insists on the being-true of the predications exercised by a man with the metaphysical habitus. Thomism is beyond the conventional attack launched by Kantians and neo-positivists and the genius of Aquinas was such that the principles in question were already operating in his own metaphysics. The non-subsisting or "non-existing' paradox of the Thomistic esse removes it from any dialectic because only objects can enter into the "in-itself, outside-of-itself, and in-and-for-itself" of Hegelianism.
