"Essenzialismo" o "esistenzialismo"? Nota su Gilson, Heidegger e la metafisica di Suárez

The article aims to question the historiographical and critical category of “essentialism”, with which, especially since the studies of Étienne Gilson, the vicissitudes of metaphysics - from late Scholasticism up to Kant and Hegel - have been interpreted as a progressive reduction of the “actual” or “existential” meaning of being to the notion of “real essence” thinkable without contradiction. The crucial point in this affair is Francisco Suárez’s metaphysics. Such an interpretation of the history of scholastic and modern metaphysics is retraced by taking into account, alongside Gilson’s position, that of Heidegger, who with the French scholar shares at a distance – though in an apparently opposite direction - the idea of a progressive loss of the fundamental question of being in a triangulation between Thomas, Suárez and Descartes. The article thus describes the reflections on the being-essence-existence plexus in both Heidegger and Gilson, and subsequently considers the criticisms made of the Gilsonian notion (and accusation) of “essentialism” as a decisive brand of Suárez’s metaphysics, and the proposal made by some scholars to interpret this metaphysics rather in the sense of a science of the “real” being in constant reference to actual existence (thus as a kind of “existentialism”). In light of this debate, reported precisely because it helps illuminate one of the most important stakes in the history of metaphysics, the author finally proposes his hypothesis about the essence-existence nexus in Suárez, through the concept of “aptitudo ad esse”. The Spanish Jesuit’s profound intention is to respond to the challenges of the post-Tridentine ecclesiastical and secular context by finding within essence itself the point where the creature and God connect in an original way. By this he aims to heal the Lutheran rift between natural and supernatural while avoiding the Pelagian self-referentiality of nature.