Aquinas on One and Many

The quest for unity and multiplicity is one of the most important concerns in the history of human thought and has been of unceasing interest since the birth of the history of philosophy to the present day. The same holds true of the writings of St Thomas Aquinas, and this work is devoted to his ideas.

Since the problem of unity and multitude is closely linked to many other key metaphysical issues, such as the doctrine of transcendental concepts, the mode of composition of being qua being, as well as substantial and accidental being, or the doctrine of whole and part, we believe that its proper interpretation will not only clarify some metaphysical problems, but will also contribute to understanding the metaphysical thought of the Angelic Doctor as a whole.

David Svoboda is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the Charles University in Prague and a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague. His scholarly interests include history of medieval, as well as early modern academic philosophy. He is especially interested in the thought of Thomas Aquinas and his followers. He is the author of more than thirty scholarly articles and two monographs, one of which is Metafyzické myšlení Tomáše Akvinského. Od pojmu jsoucna a jednoty k pojmu celku a cásti. (Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas. From the Concept of Being and Unity to the Concept of Whole and Part), Praha: Krystal, 2012.