| Summary: | This article describes how certain Thomists understand the concept of a neutral (i.e. assumption free) starting point, and outlines their arguments in favour of it. To be sure, within current epistemology, their position is considered outdated and unpopular: apart from Thomists, nobody would now argue that there is a privileged, assumption free starting point for philosophy. (After all, it is generally thought that any such thing would simply fail to yield determinate results, at least where human cognition or knowledge is concerned.) This article, though, poses, and seeks to answer, the question of whether the Thomistic position is intended merely as a methodological commitment, or also as a stage in the pragmatic construction of a metaphysical theory. In the light of a discussion that confronts this with some points from contemporary philosophy of science concerning the theorizing of experience and the assumptive character of scientific knowledge, the author puts forward the following hypothesis as a point of departure for further inquiry: that philosophy itself be understood as a paradigm, in the sense that it be taken to function as a benchmark - a model responsible for organizing human experience as a whole. The considerations presented are of a theoretical-cognitive character, with no claims made regarding the issue of the correct starting point for philosophy.
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