Page "Being" Paragraph 36

This is not a rejection of existence by Gilson, a leading modern metaphysician in the classical tradition: " philosophers are wholly justified in taking existence for granted ... and in never mentioning it again ...." In Gilson's view, the participial being is a given, a primitive of experience, not subject to proof or investigation, as it is the grounds of proof.

A thing must be real, or exist, before anything true or proved can be said about it.