“To be” o “esse”? La questione dell’essere nel tomismo analitico

An overview of current scholarship in ontology places one before two parallel lines that never meet: on the one hand there are essays in the so called “analytic ontology”, on the other hand, there are studies developed within so-called Aristotelian-Thomistic ontology. However, even when ignored, there is an interesting philosophical current of thought within so called “analytical Thomism”, which participates to the contemporary debates of “analytic ontology” from the perspective of an Aristotelian-Thomistic ontology. The main studies of such current are those of P. Geach and B. Miller, which have proposed a new theory about existence, called “two sense theory”. It is a view intermediate between, and alternative to, the well known Fregean and Meinongian views, arguing for the possibility of two senses of “exists”: as first- and as second-order predicate. The object of this paper is the presentation of such current of thought, and his evaluation from the point of view of the history of ontology and of the “continental” Thomism.