David Svoboda Book order

Relations belong to the fundamental philosophical concepts, for everything that exists relates to something. This leads us quite naturally to think about relations themselves. In our book we consider relations against the background of the issue of change. We draw on the Aristotelian but also the Platonic traditions of thought, which for centuries have tried to come to terms with Aristotle's thesis that there is no change with respect to relations. We critically examine and ultimately reject this certainly surprising claim. As a part of our own solution to this difficulty, we propose a particular reconstruction of the Aristotelian categorial schema that allows us to properly grasp not only ordinary changes but also relational changes. The book is systematic in nature; in dialogue with many great philosophers, we seek a true solution to our difficulty, using in particular the resources of contemporary analytic philosophy.

The quest for unity and multiplicity is one of the most important concerns in the history of human thought. Since the origins of the history of philosophy up to the present, we can observe more or less unceasing interest in the issue. The same holds of the writings of Thomas Aquinas, to whose conception this work is devoted. 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 not only can clarify some partial metaphysical problem, but will also contribute to understanding the metaphysical thought of the Angelic Doctor as a whole.