‘Per se notum’: Die logische Beschaffenheit des Selbstverstandlichen im Denken des Thomas von Aquin

According to the Aristotelian philosophy of science, the principles of demonstration do not themselves need to be proved. Why not? What is peculiar to them? To answer such questions, Scholasticism makes use of a phrase derived from Boethius: the principles are per se nota ( selbstverstandlich in the German translation adopted in this work). Thomas Aquinas in particular addresses in a few passages in his works the conditions that make a proposition per se nota . This work tries to clarify the conditions stated by Aquinas. On the one hand it illustrates the context in which these conditions are introduced, namely the question of the self-evidence of the existence of God; on the other hand, it deals with the historical background and the philosophical prerequisites of Aquinas’s position. The work is intended not only to provide a historically-based interpretation of Aquinas’ thought, but also offer a supply of material to reconstruct an important chapter in the history of ideas.