William Carlo, Thomist Metaphysician Extraordinaire William Carlo Thomist Metaphysician Extraordinaire William Carlo was born in Yonkers, New York, studied at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies and the University of Toronto, went on to teach at St. John's University, Boston College, and the University of Ottawa, and was the father of five children. In his short response, he articulated the heart of the metaphysical insights that he was to elaborate in an article that appeared in the International Philosophical Quarterly in 1964, and in a paper on matter at the American Catholic Philosophical Association meeting of that same year. The Ultimate Reducibility of Essence to Existence in Existential Metaphysics , and it is on this book that his metaphysical reputation rests. Here he tries to advance the great 20th century renaissance of the metaphysics of St. Thomas by radically reducing essence to existence and matter to substance. Carlo is setting before our eyes a many-faceted metaphysical gem, but each facet leads us to the luminous heart of metaphysics.
Essence is a certain capacity to exist.
It is this or that capacity to exist. Essences don't exist. We know essences by abstracting them from existents as the intrinsic limitations of existence. And we know existence not first in its purity without limit, but in this or that existent about which we can assert that it exists. But it exists in this or that way or mode.