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BEING
AND N A T U R E S
IN AQUINAS
I.
Undoubtedly there is persistent philosophical tension between being as
the most primitive and impoverished of all human notions, and being as the
infinitely perfect and rich nature of God. The tension pervades the
Aristotelian tradition of metaphysics too profoundly for one "to deny its
existence or to banish it from the mind." It flows over, for instance, into the
Thomistic problem of real distinction between thing and being. Here it poses
the issue sharply. Is being merely the most common aspect of things,
involving no real addition of content? Or has being a real content all its own,
over and above the thing itself? For Aquinas being is identical with essence
in God.i Yet being is other than essence in creatures. What resemblance is
there for him between these two ways of being? Is the being that is other than
essence a nature imperfectly similar to the being that is identical with an
essence? Or is being not a nature in creatures at all? Is it a positive actuality
that in finite things is neither a nature nor a part of a nature?
In both creatures and God being is named by the same word and is
brought in various ways under one and the same concept. Does the alleged
impoverishment of the notion through unlimited extension to all things, then,
still allow being a minimal nature of some kind in finite things? Or is the
concept of being left empty, a blank, a surd, a meaningless object whose name
should be banished from the vocabulary of philosophy? Or is it present for
Aquinas in creatures as an actuality that has in no way the aspect of a nature?
From this angle the problem surely cannot be dismissed "like a nagging
thought." On that initial note of accord with Father Dewan may I go
directly to the basic point of his disagreement with my understanding of the
question in the context of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Dewan's contention is
that the opening stage of Aquinas' argument, as given in the De Ente et
Essentia, ^'should be read as 'quidditatively' as possible, that is, as a universal
The Modem Schoolman, LXI. March 1984
157
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based upon the nature of the finite thing and also upon the general notion of
actuality under which the thing's being is conceptualized. Effort to read the
opening section of that argument "as quidditatively as possible" can extend
only to the side of essence. To view the finite thing's being "as quidditatively
as possible" means not to view it quidditatively at all. At no stage of the
reasoning can a finite thing be viewed in the way suggested by Dewan (p.
11.26-27) "as a composite both components of which are 'natures'."
II.
A differently worded though intimately related issue is whether I am
maintaining "the possibility that the real distinction is at first grasped in an
imperfect way, through its signs in the domain of conceptualization and
judgment" (Dewan, p. 4.17-19). For Dewan "this might be called a 'confused
knowledge,' a knowledge of a real distinction not yet clearly distinguishable
from a conceptual distinction" (p. 4.19-21). A linguistic difficulty may arise
here. "Distinct" and "confused" are contraries. To the extent something is
confused it is not distinct, and to the extent it is distinct it is not confused. "A
real distinction confusedly or imperfectly known" (p. 4.23-24) would seem to
imply that the difference between its two terms is known distinctly up to a
point, but without penetrating further into the full meaning of that same
distinction.
Is that the case in the present question? The essence of a man or of a
phoenix is known in a concept that reveals nothing about existence or nonexistence. This concept is distinct from the concept of what has already been
attained through the judgment that the thing exists. The two concepts are
distinct from each other. Accordingly the two teims, thing and being, are
known as conceptually distinct.
Does a more searching examination of this distinction finally make
manifest that the two terms are really distinct from each other? There are
writers who have critically examined the argument and still fail to see that it
does.4 The ultimate ground of the conceptual distinction is the failure of a
finite essence to include being in its concept. No matter how penetratingly
that ground is examined just in itself, the results still remain in the conceptual
order. They reveal nothing more than that the concept of a finite essence
does not affirm or deny the thing's existence. They do not show whether in
reality the thing is identical or not with its being. That question is left open,
no matter how deeply the conceptual distinction is probed.
"Cornelio Fabro, La nozione metafisica di
partecipazione secondo S. Tommaso d'Aquino, 2nd
ed. (Turin: Societa Editrice Internazionale, 1950),
pp. 218-219, notes how Thomist manuals have
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Each of the two terms of the distinction, thing and being, can of course
be examined more closely in itself and in its relations to other things. The
essence in question can be proven to be really dependent upon something else
for its being, and ultimately upon being as a nature in God. When being has
in this way been demonstrated to exist as a real nature, a new ground for
reasoning to another kind of distinction between being and thing in creatures
has been reached. Because being is a real nature infinite in content it has to
remain really other than anything into which it may be received in the real
world. No longer is failure to include being in the concept of essence the
ground for making a further distinction between the terms. The ground is
now the positive nature of being. Instead of bringing out the implications
confused in a conceptual distinction, this consideration shows that a new
distinction has been reached on a new ground. It is not a distinction between
different concepts of the same thing, but between two entitative components
of that thing. What is meant is not that "the real distinction is atfirstgrasped
in an imperfect way" (Dewan, p. 4.17-18), but rather that it is not grasped at
all in the opening stage of the argument. The conceptual distinction is a
distinction between different concepts of what may or may not be the one and
the same thing. It is not "a real distinction confusedly or imperfectly known"
(p. 4.23-25).
If one wishes to use the notion "directly verified" (Dewan, p. 4.16-17),
the verification here lies rather in the fact that one sensible thing is really
distinct from the others. The sensible things are not absorbed into the
Parmenidean unity of being. Their real distinction from one another
"verifies" that. One may agree "that in order to arrive at the existence of
God, we must know first that a real distinction lies behind the 'conceptual
distinction'" (p. 4.24-26). But that real distinction is the distinction between
individual things and percipients in the sensible world, and not that between
their essence and their being. Without knowledge of the real distinction
between the individuals, one could not know that the sensible things can exist
both in themselves and in the cognition of a knower and are therefore
conceptually different from any existence they may possess. The norm "that
the objects of the conceptual distinction... are not the same as their grounds in
reahty" (p. 4.12-14) is thereby safeguarded, just as in the case of "notional
multiplicity" (p. 4.10-11) where really different individuals share the same
specific and generic forms though without real distinction between the
individual and the generic and specific natures in each.
In the case of the difference between being and thing, consequently, the
further ground for the real distinction prevents agreement with Dewan's
Being and Natures in Aquinas
Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R.
161
assertion "I see no reason to withhold the designation 'real' from the
distinction as originally known" (p. 12.22-23). Even after the demonstration
of that real distinction has been completed, one may look back at the
conceptual distinction and still find that it gives no intuition of real
distinction between its terms. The real distinction is something to which one
reasons, not something one can behold or envisage. The concepts still yield
only a conceptual distinction, even though on another ground one has
already reached the firm conclusion that there is a real distinction between the
two components. But the conceptual distinction, no matter how closely
examined, does not reveal that fact. The conceptual distinction does not
unfold itself as an imperfectly known or confusedly known real distinction.
Rather, for Aquinas the twofold activity of the intellect through
judgment and conceptualization provides two different cognitional routes
into the sensible world. The problem is whether the two reach what is really
the same object, or whether they arrive at really different objects. Any
observable thinga table, a plant, a catis known both by way of
conceptualization and by way of judgment. Those are two different routes.
By them one knows respectively what the thing is and that it exists. What is
reached by way of conceptualization is the thing's nature. What is reached
by way of judgment is its existence or being. Like morning star and evening
star, these are conceptually distinct objects. In the case of the star, real
distinction or real identity has to be based upon astronomical findings, not
upon further scrutiny of the conceptual distinction. The Countess of
Flanders and the Duchess of Brabant are conceptually distinct, but whether
Aquinas' letter Epistola ad Ducissam Brabantiae {Op. Cm., Leonine ed.,
42.375-378) was addressed to one and the same real person recorded under
those two names, or to two really different persons, has to be settled by
paleographical and historical evidence, and not by perfecting the conceptual
distinction.
III.
Perhaps the rather abstruse issues in the above two sections of this paper,
as they would appear from the viewpoints of current thought, might be
graphically illustrated and driven home by a bit of fantasy. At least it might
help to raise the broad outlines above the mass of detail, and keep the woods
from getting lost in the trees.
History has not recorded the exact words of Christopher Columbus as
he first viewed the land that had been sighted by the watch in the wee morning
hours of October 12, 1492. But one can readily picture the glow of long
awaited triumph as, a faithful Sancho at his side, Columbus would come on
deck to gaze in waking reality on the shoreline of his dreams. "My dear
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Sancho," one may imagine him saying, "at last we have reached from the east
the Indies that people before us have reached only from the west!"
"Not so fast, Senor Almirante," would come the quick reply from an
analytically trained Sancho, "how can you be so sure that the 'Indies reached
from the east' are really identical with the 'Indies reached from the west'?"
"Tut, tut, Sancho," would the now admiral of the ocean seas rejoin, "I am a
sailor, not a philosopher. The criteria of identity that the philosophers talk
about merely bore me. I have worked as a chartmaker in times when the
sailing business was slack, and I know that experts say I grossly
underestimate the distance westward from the Canaries to China. But unless
someone can first prove to me that there are a thousand nautical miles of
ocean between the 'Indies reached from the west' and the 'Indies reached
from the east,' I will continue to maintain that the two are really the same
thing."
Sancho had to be a patient man. Quietly he would begin his laborious
analysis. "You do recognize, Don Cristobal, that 'Indies reached from the
east' and 'Indies reached from the west' are distinct concepts. Let us agree to
call the Indies reached from the east the 'West Indies,' for they face you from
the west; and the Indies reached from the west the 'East Indies,' for they face
you from the east. Indies should be described from the side of the islands,
not from the way the sailors face them. Y o u see, you have to understand the
logic of our language, else you will be tricked by words. In point of fact, you
have the conceptual distinction already, and as soon as someone can prove to
you the presence of the thousand miles of intervening ocean you will conclude
that the distinction between the two Indies is real. The conceptual
distinction will metamorphose before your eyes into a real distinction."
Columbus would not be impressed. "I think in terms of islands. My
Santa Maria could never be wrecked by crashing against a distinction, yet it
could by crashing into an island. But you hypostatize distinctions as the
object of your discourse, like the majesty of Ferdinand and the majesty of
Isabella walking around in separate persons with only marriage melding the
two majesties into one. To use your language, distinctions are second order
objects. You can metamorphose them to suit your viewpoint of the moment.
But islands are stubborn things. They stand in their own right. They are
what I keep as the objects of my thinking, and I abide by the phrasing that the
two Indies are conceptually distinct. If you could demonstrate the presence
of the intervening ocean I would of course then say that they are really
distinct. If for you that means metamorphosing my conceptual distinction
into a real one, like a caterpillar into a butterfly, so be it. But the
Being and Natures in Aquinas
Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R.
163
metamorphosing can take place only after the proof that an ocean intervenes.
Till then, I know the varmint only as a caterpillar."
At that, Sancho would give up. He would content himself with
remarking how beautiful the moonlit night really was.
* * *
Being and thing, then, are objects as conceptually distinct ad "Indies
reached from the east" and "Indies reached from the west." The basis of the
distinction is the same, namely the different routes. For Aristotle and for
Suarez and for numerous others these objects have coincided in the one real
thing. They were different ways of naming or of conceiving the same reality.
In Aquinas they were proven to be really different from each other, but only
after the infinite ocean of subsistent being had played its intervening role in
the long process of reasoning.^
Insofar as any conclusion is implicitly contained in its premises,
knowledge of the real distinction between thing and being may be regarded as
contained in embryo in what is known of the sensible thing through judgment
and conceptualization. The open essence attained in its concept and the real
existence grasped in the judgment provide the grounds for reasoning with
cogency to existence as subsistent and accordingly as a real nature. It is
there, and only roughly, that the simile of metamorphosis applies. The
existence known in sensible things as an object other than any nature has to
metamorphose into the nature of existence in the mind's reasoning about it.
With existence recognized for what it is in its own nature, in
^On the way Aquinas regards Damascene's
"ocean of being (ousias)" see Sent., 1.8.1.1 ad 4m; I,
196. In the body of the article {Quarta ratio; p. 195)
the path to the existence of God follows the same
lines as in the De Ente et Essentia.
^De Ente, c. 4; ed. Leonine, XLIII, 376-377.94
143. A discussion on the reasoning to an efficient
cause may be found in my article "The Causal
PropositionPrinciple or Conclusion"? The
Modern Schoolman, 32 (1955), 159-71; 257-70; 323
39. Even the conceptual distinction between a thing
and its being is the result of a reasoning process. The
same thing is found to exist in the real worid and in
human cognition. Consequently it cannot be
identical with either way of existing. Dewan (pp.
151-153) hesitates to use the term "demonstration"
in this regard. He suggests rather,that the
distinction is knows as a communis animi conceptio.
In the text of In Boeth. de Trin., lect. 2, Calcaterra
nos. 31-32, an immediately evident distinction
between the abstract (see nos. 22; 25) and the
concrete is applied to existents. In simple things the
two differ in their notions, but in composite things
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being/ in virtue of its own self a sensible thing does not require being in the
real world. It was generated, it is perishable. At one time it did not exist,
and it can still cease to exist. In virtue of its own self it does not necessitate its
union with real existence. That condition is real enough. It is there in the
real thing. But it does not immediately make manifest any real distinction
between the thing and is being. All that is required for real dependence upon
an efficient cause really other than itself is the real dependence shown by the
consideration that its nature does not include being. The demonstration of
the existence of God by way of efficient causality is perfectly secure without
the presupposition of a real distinction between being and thing in creatures.
In the real thing, then, there is no per se unity between what is grasped
through conceptualization and what is known through judgment. But is
what is grasped through judgment an actuality really over and above the
thing? Or is it just the same thing approached in another perspective? The
question can still be asked whether the Indies reached from the east are really
the same thing as the Indies reached from the west. Lack of per se unity in the
case of thing and being does not immediately show real distinction between
the two entitative components.
Dewan's "second difficulty" (p. 153) is even more surprising. Its
concern is not precisely with the existence but rather with the unicity of
subsistent being. The contention is that one can conclude to the unicity of
subsistent being "only by premising a real distinction" (p. 153), understood in
the sense of a real distinction between a finite thing and its being. The nature
of being has to manifest itself from the start: "One sees this need to premise
real distinction when one considers the nature of esse as entering into the
premises" (p. 153).
In this approach, obviously, being has to appear immediately as a
nature. Even more pertinently, it is looked upon as a common feature within
the nature of things: "'Esse' must be the name of something in the nature
of things which, in its own nature, is simple and common" (p. 154).
The general problem had accordingly been phrased: "What if we take
something which we experience as common to many, and attempt to posit it as
existing in its purity: will it still be envisagable as a multiplicity of
individuals"? (p. 154). The particular answer given for the realm of being is:
"If it is simply a name for the concrete thing, then it is 'pure' in every concrete
thing, and is as many as they are" (p. 155).
This reasoning suggests that what is other than a nature can be only a
name. But being, though not originally known as a nature through
conceptualization, is grasped through judgment as an actuality. When that
^..cum nihil sit essentialius rei quam suum esse"
{Sent., 1.8, cxp. lac partis tcxtus; I, 209. Cf.
"Dicendum quod esse per se consequitur formam
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it makes other natures be, without making them other instances of its own
nature, which is subsistent being.
The unicity of subsistent being is in consequence left untouched, and at
the same time the multiplicity of beings remains safeguarded. Somewhat
ironically, in fact, it is the persistence of taking the real distinction to mean
that a created nature is "a composite both components of which are
'natures'" (Dewan, p. 156) that gives rise to this difficulty about unicity. If
the being that is grasped in creatures through judgment is recognized as
not present in any finite thing as a nature but always as an actuality other than
the nature, the difficulty disappears. The being is then not immediately
conceived as a nature, nor as either really distinct from or really identical with
the thing. Demonstration is accordingly required, and it shows that
subsistent being is unique.
V.
These considerations show how seriously the tenet in Aquinas that being
is originally the object of judgment and not of conceptualization has to be
taken. We have no original cognition of being as a nature. Only through
demonstration can we know that being is a nature, a nature that subsists in
God alone. Outside that unique instance it is never a nature and can never be
viewed quidditatively, even in the most imperfect manner.
To interpret this explanation as though it meant that after the
demonstration of God's existence the various instances of being in creatures
are "now visible as likenesses of a nature" as Dewan^ presents it, leaves it
easily open to misunderstanding. The notion of likeness will have to be
undersood outside the quidditative order, if the term "likeness" is to be used.
When being is conceived as the "actuality of all actualities," the words
themselves indicate likeness from the viewpoint of the more general notion of
actuality, but not from the viewpoint of quiddity. To take being in creatures
seriously as the proper object of judgment is to leave it as quidditative solely
in its primary instance, God. That "truth sublime" (Aquinas, SCG, 1.22,
Hanc autem) still merits careful study and discussion. In that light the real
identity of being with God and its real distinction in creatures is by no means,
as Dewan so laudably recalls in Gilson's phrasing, a topic to be banished
from the mind "like a nagging thought."
'p. 160. Cf. supra, n. 3. A point at issue here is
that likeness between participated being and the
nature of being in terms of actuality does not involve
likeness in terms of reality or thing {res) between
participated being and the nature that participates it.
On the notion of the distinction as between res and
res and the subsequent standard acceptance of that
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