Le nombre six est-il Créateur ou créature ? Indifférence des essences et exemplarisme dans la doctrine thomasienne de la création

Is the number six creator or creature ? Indifference of essences and exemplarism in Aquinas’ doctrine of creation. By Pasquale PORRO. Among the various quodlibetal questions of Aquinas’ first Parisian regency, we find one (Quodl. VIII, q, 1, a 1, Easter 1257) particularly interesting from a philosophical point of view, but under a title which, at first glance, conceals its true content: the number six, according to which it is said all creatures were realised, is it creator or creature? The reference is obviously to the six days of creation according to Genesis, and more specifically to the exegesis that St. Augustine had proposed in his De Genesi ad litteram (in particular IV, 7, 14); but, in actual fact, for Aquinas the article is a good occasion to resume and reorganise the Avicennian doctrine of the indifference of the essences that he had already used since the beginning of his production, for instance in his De ente et essentia. In Aquinas’ exemplarist conception, the essence or nature, insofar as it is thought by God, precedes its absolute consideration, its physical instances in singular realities, and the intelligible being it receives, through sensible experience, via the human intellect. In this way, Aquinas gives the impression of "re-Platonising" a theory that Avicenna had elaborated to circumvent the Platonist and Neoplatonic doctrine of universals (even though Avicenna himself had not abandoned a form of exemplarism with regard to the role of the intelligences). A final remark concerns the primacy of species over individuals, which Aquinas draws from his previous conclusion and states very clearly in the following article of the same quodlibetal question.