This article proposes a newly developed dialogue between Thomistic thought and the social sciences by rethinking the ontological status of the relation. It argues that Thomas Aquinas inaugurated an unfinished ontological revolution when he distinguished a third order of reality, secundum relationem, alongside substance and accident. However, he then focused on the constitutive role of relation within Trinitarian theology and did not develop an ontology of relationality in secular and social life. This latter ontology is now being developed in the social sciences that show how social relations constitute an autonomous ontological reality. This autonomy, however, oscillates between an unfounded naturalism and a cultural relativism characterized by a flat ontology in which social relations are reduced to flows of events. At this point, the author argues, an encounter between Thomistic relational ontology and the social sciences can be fruitful, allowing both to overcome classical substantialism, for which society is a set of naturally sociable individuals, as well as modern constructivist relationism, for which society is a purely autopoietic historical construction. By connecting Thomistic theology, especially Trinitarian relationality, with relational sociology, this paper advances the idea of a social ontology capable of addressing the dilemmas of postmodern society.
Pierpaolo Donati (Sun,) studied this question.