L’intuizione intellettuale nel tomismo

The aim of this contribution is to focus on the theme of intellectual intuition in Thomism, critically showing some significant articulations (referring in particular to Maritain, Jolivet, and, above all, to Maréchal). For Thomism, knowledge of the real begins with an intuition of the sensible, and from this initial intuition it allows itself to be guided into its subsequent “synthetic” higher dynamic. On the other hand, the double relation to sensibility and to limited being, downwards, and then to being without limitations, upwards, specifically constitutes that structure of the intellect that the latter has to intuit precisely by seeing the relationship between the different levels and limits of cognitive life. The immediate relationship with the forms of being is an intuitive relationship to the intelligible, which is both the existing being in general and, even if through a reflection on intellectual activity, the existing knowing being.