The ontological argument of contiguity in the intuition’s possibility in human knowledge according to Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

The ontological contiguity argument, used in several passages of the Thomistic Opera Omnia, shows the existence of a metaphysical affinity among beings in the universe. According to it, reality is hierarchically understood as a sequence of entities that are sorted in descending cascades until the last grade: each lower level entity is originated in the attenuation of the immediately level entity. That argument is present in the context of human knowledge, as the human soul “touches” the being that immediately precedes it by participating in its ultimate perfection, more precisely in his intellectual capacity. Contiguity appear in Aquina’s speculations on human faculties and their own elements and objects. This particular study, in addition to a specific human gnoseological analysis, requires comparing the knowledge possibilities by the entities that make up the hierarchical chain of creation. Thus, we can see the junctions that link each level being with that of the previous and subsequent one, as suggested by this principle.