Abstract
"Just as, according to his bodily nature, man naturally desires the pleasures of food and sex, so, according to his spiritual nature, he naturally desires to know", says Thomas Aquinas. If this desire to know is not in vain, if knowledge follows from our nature, the "integration problem" (Peacocke) of metaphysics and epistemology does not arise. Rational beings (such as we are) are made for knowledge, and reality is made to be known. The Scholastic doctrine of the identity of the knowing and the known makes explicit the natural overlap between epistemology and metaphysics. But isn't this adopting an epistemic providentialism that makes knowing too easy? Can we have metaphysical confidence in our ability to attain knowledge, especially knowledge of essences?
