Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 3, No.

2 (2005): 335400

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Discussion
On Anthony Kennys Aquinas on Being
L AWRENCE D EWAN, OP
Collge Dominicain Ottawa, Canada

I N 2002, Anthony Kenny published a book on St. Thomas Aquinass doctrine of being.1 He presents his aim as follows:
The subject of Being is one of the most important of all philosophical concerns. St. Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest of all philosophers. It will be the aim of this book to show that on this crucial topic this rst-rank philosopher was thoroughly confused. (preface, v)

He also describes what he is doing as writing about a philosopher at his weakest (x). The book takes the form of a chronological survey of Thomass works beginning with De ente et essentia and ending with the Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle.2 Kenny looks at some key texts on being, and ends with the judgment he indicated at the beginning. I hope, here, to offer some ray of hope for the student of St.Thomas, that things may not be quite as bad as Kenny thinks.To do so, I must follow him somewhat in his visits to texts, and indicate not only where I think he is mistaken but also what other texts he might have considered, and, more fundamentally, why he might have trouble with Thomass teachings. It would be absurd to deny that there are disagreements about the meaning of Thomass doctrine of being. Without going outside the classical
1

Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Being (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Reference to this text will be in the body of the article, simply indicating the page number. Actually, a given chapter is named for the work mainly considered in it, but there are small supplementary considerations, as, e.g., in the chapter on the Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics there is a very brief consideration of De substantiis separatis.

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Thomist school, one thinks of the complaint of Banez so heavily insisted upon by Gilson, that when Thomas proclaims that esse is the act of all acts and the perfection of all perfections Thomistae nolunt audire!: The Thomists do not wish to hear it! As regards the doctrine of being, the Thomists have not agreed among themselves.3 Gilson himself assures us that nobody has ever demonstrated the real distinction between essence and esse. That suggests that one of those who most admire Thomas (to use a Kenny-ism) has considerable difculty with his doctrine of being.4 It would also be absurd to deny that Thomas has had, outside the school of his interpreters, many doctrinal adversaries. Moreover, there is certainly development in Thomass presentations, considering his views in morals, ontology, and elsewhere, whether that bears witness to a change in theory or to a change in pedagogical context. The nature of the development has to be judged instance by instance. In general, it has seemed to me that Thomas was always fundamentally Aristotelian, and that, if anything, he became more thoroughly so as he went along; that he beneted from the work of Avicenna and Averroes in this respect, and that he exercised critical discernment about them all. In his earlier work,Avicenna is very prominent: He notably criticizes Avicenna in De potentia in favor of Averroes, as to some creatures having absolutely necessary being;5 but while Avicenna is criticized as regards the accidentality of the act of being in Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics,6 he is praised in the same Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics regarding the inclusion of matter in the essence of material things, and thus as having the authentic view of Aristotle.7 Averroes, while he is praised for his view of the existence of necessary beings in De potentia, is
3

5 6 7

Banez, Scholastica commentaria in primam partem Summae Theologiae s. Thomae Aquinatis. P. 1, Q. 3, a. 4; ed. Luis Urbano, Editorial F.E.D.A. Madrid-Valentia, 1934 (Biblioteca de tomistos espanoles, v. 1. Valentia, 1934), 141a.: Et hoc est quod saepissime D.Thomas clamat, et Thomistae nolunt audire: quod esse est actualitas omnis formae vel naturae, sicut in hoc art. in ratione secunda dicit, et quod in nulla re invenitur sicut recipiens et perfectibile, sed sicut receptum et percitur id in quo recipitur: ipsum tamen, eo ipso quod recipitur deformitur, et ut ita dixerim impercitur. Cf. my paper Etienne Gilson and the Actus Essendi (revised version of 1999 publication), International Journal of Philosophy [Taipei] 1 (2002): 6599. At one moment in his career Gilson thought Cajetan was someone who had truly seen the light, but later, Cajetan fell out of favor with him: cf. Gilson, Compagnons de route, in tienne Gilson, Philosophe de la Chrtient (Paris: Cerf, 1949), 27595, at 293. Gilson is not mentioned in Kennys book. De potentia 5.3.in corp. and ad 12. Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 4.2 (556 and 558). Ibid., 7.9 (1469).

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criticized in Commentary on Aristotles Physics for his failure to understand Aristotle on the cause of being as being.8 We must certainly ask ourselves why the line of argument concerning essence and esse so famously present in De ente et essentia and Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard is not repeated in later works, and notably not in Summa contra Gentiles 2.52.9 In short, we do not have the ideal presentation we all (who are in metaphysics) would like Thomas to have provided. He was not, after all, primarily a metaphysician, but rather a professor of Christian theology,sacra doctrina.10 What I do not think for a moment is that Thomas was confused about being. Form as Cause of Being Kennys rst chapter concerns the De ente et essentia prior to its discussion of immaterial substances. One can hardly fault Kenny for beginning with the De ente, which has been used by some prominent Thomists to present Thomass doctrine of being.11 It is only after his two chapters on the De ente that Kenny comes to speak of the Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. It is regrettable that he completely ignored such fundamental presentations as the probably earlier Commentary on
8

9 10

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Ibid., 8.2 (ed. Maggiolo, no. 974 [4]975 [5]); cf. also Commentary on Aristotles Physics 8.21 (1154 [14]). Cf. also In De caelo 1.6.5, where Averroes is seen to misunderstand the potentiality that belongs to form with respect to being. This most remarkable text is never alluded to by Kenny! I quote it in the next section. Kennys book is not a place to nd out about Thomass history or the nature of his works.Thus, we have the statement that the Summa contra Gentiles is a work not of revealed theology, but of natural theology, and natural theology is a branch of philosophy (81). Even if we limit this, as Kenny presumably intended, to the rst three books, it is quite untrue. Of course, the reasons for its being an untrue description are not of the sort that interest Kenny, but they are solid nevertheless. The title On the Truth of the Catholic Faith is quite truly appropriate. Kenny, after translating the words Summa contra Gentiles as summary or synopsis against unbelievers and mentioning that the most frequently used English translation bears the title On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, opts to keep the Latin. He tells us he will be referring in the notes to the Pera edition (81n1), but he does not mention that that edition bears the primary title: Liber de Veritate Catholicae Fidei contra errores Indelium, i.e., Book concerning the truth of the Catholic faith, against the errors of the unbelievers (it adds seu Summa contra Gentiles in smaller print).Thomas is only interested in the truth that the Catholic faith professes, i.e., the revealed truth. This truth, he tells us, includes two modes: truth that the faith professes and reason can investigate, and truth professed by the faith but beyond the investigatory power of human reason. I think especially of Joseph Owens.

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the Sentences of Peter Lombard 1.8, which, in my judgment, could have saved him some difculties. What I notice rst of all about Kennys presentation of the De ente is that he fails to comment on the introductory passage, which speaks of the hierarchy of being to be discussed.Thomas explains:
But because ens is said absolutely and primarily of substances, and posteriorly and in a somewhat qualied sense of accidents, thus it is that essentia also properly and truly is in substances, but in accidents it is in a certain measure and in a qualied sense. But of substances, some are simple and some are composite, and in both there is essentia; but in the simple in a truer and more noble degree [ueriori et nobiliori modo], inasmuch as they also have more noble esse; for they are the cause of those which are composite, at least [this is true of] the rst simple substance which is God.12

This picture of truer and more noble essence in separate substance, and more noble esse as related to causal hierarchy, should have been noted. We will eventually see Kenny puzzle over Thomass Fourth Way (of proving the existence of a God), claiming that it cannot be about hierarchy of existence. But, indeed, that is just what it is about, just as it is here what the De ente et essentia is speaking of. I will begin with the doctrine that form is the cause of esse. Kenny expresses puzzlement about this already in his chapter 1, and it is repeated in chapter 2. In chapter 1, Kenny raises a question concerning the following:
[I]t is necessary that the essence, in function of which the thing is called a being, be not merely the form nor merely the matter, but both, though the form alone, in its own mode, is the cause of such esse.13

Kenny wonders why matter is omitted from the causal picture, since there is obviously such a thing as material causality. He says that surely the point cannot be that only form is the formal cause.14
12 13

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De ente et essentia c. 1 (ed. Leonine, lines 5363), emphasis added. Ibid., c. 2 (lines 5066), emphasis added: oportet quod essentia, qua res denominatur ens, non tantum sit forma neque tantum materia, sed utrumque, quamvis huiusmodi esse suo modo sola forma sit causa. Cf. Kenny at p. 11 ca n. 18. I would say that the point of the limitation, i.e., in its own mode, is to exclude the idea that the form is the efcient cause of the esse of the thing; i.e., the form alone (excluding the matter) is the cause of being, but only the formal cause, not the efcient cause. Thomas is not saying that the matter is not a formal cause since, as Kenny says, that is too obvious to need saying. Cf. De ente et essentia c. 4 [lines 12735]:

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In Kennys chapter 2, the same point seems to be at issue. Thomas, having argued (De ente et essentia c. 4) that the intelligences or the soul must be immaterial, explains the doctrine of the Liber de causis, that they are forms without matter, by the argument that since form gives being to matter, form can exist without matter (since a cause of being can exist without its effect, but not inversely). Thomas says that if there are forms that cannot exist without matter, this is not proper to form as form, but because these forms are remote from the first cause, which is pure act.15 This troubles Kenny. He does not see form as the cause of esse simpliciter, but only of esse quid, relative to the matter (cf. 31n11; the Latin is Kennys). Already from the point of view of vocabulary Kennys view of is alarming. Thus, in the early treatise De principiis naturae, c. 1,Thomas explains:
Be it known that something can be though it is not, whereas something else is.That which can be is said to be in potency; that which already is, is said to be in act. But being [esse] is twofold: viz. the essential or substantial being of the thing, as for example: being a man; and this is being in the unqualied sense [esse simpliciter].The other is accidental being, for example, that the man is white; and this is being something.16
Omne autem quod convenit alicui vel est causatum ex principiis naturae suae, sicut risibile in homine, vel advenit ab aliquo principio extrinseco, sicut lumen in aere ex inuentia solis. Non autem potest esse quod ipsum esse sit causatum ab ipsa forma vel quiditate rei (dico sicut a causa efciente) quia sic aliqua res esset sui ipsius causa et aliqua res seipsam in esse produceret, quod est impossibile. . . . [Everything which belongs to something either is caused by the principles of its own nature, as capability of laughter in man, of comes from some extrinsic principle, as light in air from the inuence of the sun. Now, it cannot be that being itself be caused by the form itself or quiddity of the thing (I mean as by an efcient cause), because thus some thing would be cause of its very own self, and some thing would launch itself into existence; which is impossible.] The rst cause itself is not termed pure form here in the De ente et essentia, which is indebted here to the De causis; however, in the Summa theologiae I, q. 3, a. 2,Thomas has no qualms about presenting God as through his own essence, form [per essentiam suam forma]. De principiis naturae, c. 1: Nota quod quoddam potest esse licet non sit, quoddam vero est. Illud quod potest esse dicitur esse potentia; illud quod iam est, dicitur esse actu. Sed duplex est esse: scilicet esse essentiale rei, sive substantiale ut hominem esse, et hoc est esse simpliciter. Est autem aliud esse accidentale, ut hominem esse album, et hoc est esse aliquid. [emphasis added] And we see this in many texts throughout Thomass career. Cf. ST I, q. 5, a. 1, ad 1:

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For Thomas, being a what and being unqualiedly go together:That is, esse quid is esse simpliciter. I would say Kenny fails to grasp the existential importance of generation and hylomorphism; a thing that is corrupted ceases to be. Yes, matter is incorruptible, but only in the way that matter is at all.17 The question for me is what Kenny means by esse simpliciter, such that he distinguishes it from esse quid. In the main text, which his note 11 complements, Kenny writes:
When Aquinas says that form gives esse to matter, all that he can mean is that form makes matter to be the kind of thing it is; he cannot mean that it brings matter into existence. When a substantial change takes place, no new matter enters the world, but matter that already existed under one form begins to exist under another. (31)

What this suggests to me is that Kennys word existence really refers to the answer to the question:Does it exist? rather than to the act of being (actus essendi).18 Thomass word esse, though it does the work of signifying the answer to the question:does it exist? (thus signifying the truth of propositions),
cum ens dicat aliquid proprie esse in actu; actus autem proprie ordinem habeat ad potentiam; secundum hoc simpliciter aliquid dicitur ens, secundum quod primo discernitur ab eo quod est in potentia tantum. Hoc autem est esse substantiale rei uniuscuiusque; unde per suum esse substantiale dicitur unumquodque ens simpliciter. And ST I, q. 76, a. 4: forma substantialis in hoc a forma accidentali differt quia forma accidentalis non dat esse simpliciter, sed esse tale, sicut calor facit suum subiectum non simpliciter esse, sed esse calidum. . . . Forma autem substantialis dat esse simpliciter, et ideo per eius adventum dicitur aliquid simpliciter generari, et per eius recessum simpliciter corrumpi. Indeed, while Thomas appeals to the incorruptibility of matter when arguing that God will not annihilate things (cf. ST I, q. 104, a. 4), it is also part of that picture that matter can only be incorruptible as participating in actuality through a form: cf. ST I, q. 46, a. 1, obj. 1 (if you have matter, you must have form and a world), and De potentia 5.7.in toto and ad 11. Cf. ST I, q. 3, a. 4, ad 2. I notice in the above-mentioned review by Jrgen Vijgen that at p. 217 he criticizes Knasas for insufciently distinguishing between esse as actual existence and esse as the intrinsic act of being (actus essendi). Without making any judgment here about Knasas, I would insist that the word existence is ambiguous, and must be used at times not only for the answer to the question does it exist? but also for the intrinsic act of being. My point is that Kenny uses the word existence exclusively for the answer to the question does it exist?

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also signies the things own act which is to be, as meaning the perfection which terminates a things generation.19 It is what characterizes, we may also say, the effect of an efcient cause, which, in giving form to matter, gives the thing its peculiar existence.Thomas speaks of the situation, for example, in Summa contra Gentiles 2.54 (a most prominent ontological text never referred to by Kenny), as follows:
Now, the composition out of matter and form is not of the same sort as that out of substance and being: though each is out of potency and act. Firstly, this is because matter is not the very substance of the thing: for [if that were so] it would follow that all forms were accidents: just as the ancient natural philosophers opined; but rather, matter is a part of the substance. Secondly, because the very act of being is not the proper act of the matter, but rather of the substance as a whole: for being is the act of that concerning which we can say: it is; now, being is not said of the matter, but of the whole; whence, matter cannot be called that which is, but rather the substance itself is that which is. Thirdly, because neither is form the very being [esse], but they [viz. form and esse] stand related in an order: for the form stands related to the very being as light [the quality] stands to illuminating, or as whiteness stands to being white. Then again, because the very being [esse] has the role of act relative even towards the form itself; for it is through this that in things composed out of matter and form the form is said to be the principle of being [principium essendi], viz. because it is the completion of the substance whose act is being itself: just as the transparent is for the air the principle of being actually illuminated, in that it makes [the air] the proper subject of light. Hence, in things composed out of matter and form, neither the matter nor the form can be called the very that which is; nor also [can] the very esse [be called that which is]. Nevertheless, the form can be called that by which it [viz. the substance] is, inasmuch as it is the principle of being; but the substance as a whole is that which is; and the very being [ipsum esse] is that in function of which the substance is called a being.20

19

20

Cf. Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 1.33.1.1.ad 1 on meanings of esse. For the connection of the act of the essence with terminus of generation, cf. e.g., SCG 2.52 and 1.26. SCG 2.54 [in part]: [1287] Quod non est idem componi ex substantia et esse, et materia et forma. Non est autem eiusdem rationis compositio ex materia et forma, et ex substantia et esse: quamvis utraque sit ex potentia et actu.

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The substance as a whole has the act of being. It has it from an efcient cause which confers a new form on matter: In that way, a new mode of substantial existence, that is, a new mode of unqualied existence, for example, being a dog, is conferred on the matter, which previously had some other mode of unqualied existence, as the matter of a quite other substance.The matter in itself is only that which receives unqualied existence from an agent through a form:Thus, in its substance, it is a pure receptive potency for unqualied existence. Indeed, it is never unqualiedly true that the matter is: It participates in the act of being only through form. Because of its precise ontological status and role, the matter cannot exist save as under form. No miracle could bring about pure matter.21 If Kenny thinks of the matter as something having its own act of being, its own existence, he is returning to the error of the ancient naturalists. This is not surprising since, as Aristotle says concerning his notion of primary matter, it is the answer to a most difcult problem. In De generatione et corruptione he shows how difcult it is to conceive of unqualied coming to be, precisely because of the difculty of conceiving of primary matter, that which is potentially a substantial actuality.22 Only when it is realized that such matter
[1288] Primo quidem, quia materia non est ipsa substantia rei, nam sequeretur omnes formas esse accidentia, sicut antiqui naturales opinabantur: sed materia est pars substantiae. [1289] Secundo autem quia ipsum esse non est proprius actus materiae, sed substantiae totius. Eius enim actus est esse de quo possumus dicere quod sit. Esse autem non dicitur de materia, sed de toto. Unde materia non potest dici quod est, sed ipsa substantia est id quod Est. [1290] Tertio, quia nec forma est ipsum esse, sed se habent secundum ordinem: comparatur enim forma ad ipsum esse sicut lux ad lucere, vel albedo ad album esse. [1291] Deinde quia ad ipsam etiam formam comparatur ipsum esse ut actus. Per hoc enim in compositis ex materia et forma dicitur forma esse principium essendi, quia est complementum substantiae, cuius actus est ipsum esse: sicut diaphanum est aeri principium lucendi quia facit eum proprium subiectum luminis. [1292] Unde in compositis ex materia et forma nec materia nec forma potest dici ipsum quod est, nec etiam ipsum esse. Forma tamen potest dici quo est, secundum quod est essendi principium; ipsa autem tota substantia est ipsum quod est; et ipsum esse est quo substantia denominatur ens. Cf. Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 4.11.2; ST I, q. 66, a. 1; Quodl. 3.1.1 (a full discussion). Aristotle says: it is extraordinarily difcult [thaumasten aporian] to see how there can be unqualied coming-to-be (whether we suppose it to occur out of what

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never does and indeed cannot exist separately is there a satisfactory solution to what Aristotle describes as the wondrous difculty. Primary matter exists only as part of the composite of form and matter.23 On the other hand, the peculiar ontological role of form, as the principle of actual being, includes in itself no obstacle to its existing by itself. Its role of formal cause is all that is needed to make the argument that the cause of being can exist without its effect.24 Kenny asks what about material causality and its role as cause of being? The answer to this, I would say, one sees in Thomass Commentary on Aristotles Physics. Matter has a causal role as regards the being of the resulting generated thing inasmuch as that thing must preexist in something else. However, speaking of the resulting thing, just in itself, only the form is the cause of its being.We read:
It is necessary that the causes be four. Because, since a cause is that upon which the being of another follows, the being of that which has a cause can be considered in two ways: in one way, absolutely, and thus the cause of being is the form, through which something is in act; in the other way, according as from potentially a being there is brought about what is actually a being. And because everything which is in potency is reduced to act by that which is a being in act, on this account it is necessary that there be two other causes, viz. the matter, and the agent which reduces the matter from potency into act. Now, the action of the agent tends towards something determinate, just as it proceeds from some determinate principle:
potentially is [ek dunamei ontos], or in some other way), and we must recall this problem for further examination. (317b1820) [Oxford trans: Harold H. Joachim] Thomass paraphrase, In De gen. 1.6 (49 [8]), runs: because even after the preceding determination there still looms a wondrous difculty [mirabilis dubitatio], one must once more attempt [to determine] how unqualied coming to be occurs [sit], whether out of being in potency or how it comes about in any other way. Aristotle, De gen. et corr. 1.3 (317a32318a27); cf.Thomas, In De gen. 1.67. That argument, just by itself, does not establish there does exist any separate form; it is merely about the possibility (in contrast to the case of separate matter). The actual existence of subsisting form is established, for example, by showing that the human soul must be subsistent form, on the basis of the requirements of intellection: cf. ST I, q. 75, a. 2 and 5, but also De ente et essentia c. 4 [lines 840], and in Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 1.8.5.2 and 2.17.1.2. On Thomass use throughout his career of that argument for the possibility, cf. my paper: St. Thomas Aquinas against Metaphysical Materialism, in Atti delVIII Congresso Tomistico Internazionale, t. V, 412434 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1982), 412-34.

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Lawrence Dewan, OP for every agent brings to actuality that which is suitable for itself; and that towards which the action of the agent tends is called the nal cause.Thus, it is necessary that there be four causes. But because the form is the cause of being absolutely, whereas the others are causes of being inasmuch as something receives being, thus it is that in immobile things the other three causes are not considered, but only the formal cause.25

This, of course, as a text from the Commentary on Aristotles Physics, takes a rather restricted, that is, physical, view of the nal and efcient causes, and even a limited view of immobile things, by which Thomas seems here to mean mathematicals. In the perspective of metaphysics, which considers things precisely as beings, one considers the receiving of being where the receiving is not a change, that is, creative efcient causality. Form has an instrumental role, under the creative cause, but matter is strictly in the role of effect.Thus, in De veritate we read:
God causes in us natural esse by creation, without the mediation of any efcient cause, but nevertheless through the mediation of a formal cause: because natural form is the principle of natural esse.26
25

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Commentary on Aristotles Physics 2.10.15 [Maggolo 240], emphasis added: Necesse est autem quatuor esse causas. Quia cum causa sit ad quam sequitur esse alterius, esse eius quod habet causam, potest considerari dupliciter: uno modo absolute, et sic causa essendi est forma per quam aliquid est in actu; alio modo secundum quod de potentia ente t actu ens. Et quia omne quod est in potentia, reducitur ad actum per id quod est actu ens; ex hoc necesse est esse duas alias causas, scilicet materiam, et agentem qui reducit materiam de potentia in actum. Actio autem agentis ad aliquid determinatum tendit, sicut ab aliquo determinato principio procedit: nam omne agens agit quod est sibi conveniens; id autem ad quod tendit actio agentis, dicitur causa nalis. Sic igitur necesse est esse causas quatuor. Sed quia forma est causa essendi absolute, aliae vero tres sunt causae essendi secundum quod aliquid accipit esse; inde est quod in immobilibus non considerantur aliae tres causae, sed solum causa formalis. Cf. also Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 3.2 (346), 3.4 (369), and 3.4 (384), and my paper,St.Thomas, Metaphysics, and Formal Causality, Laval thologique et philosophique 36 (1980): 285316, at 28990. St.Thomas, De veritate 27.1.ad 3 (ed. Leonine, t. 22/3, lines 18286). An important remark is to be found at De potentia 3.1.ad 17. The question is posed: Can God make something out of nothing? The objector reasons that the maker gives esse to the thing made. If what receives the esse is nothing, then it is nothing thatis constituted in existence [esse]and thus nothing is made. If, on the other hand, it is something that receives the esse, then this is not making something out of nothing.Thomas replies: God, simultaneously giving esse, produces that which receives esse: and thus it is not necessary that he work on something already existing. This

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And Thomas says in Quaestiones disputatae de anima:

In substances composed out of matter and form, we nd three [items], viz. matter, and form, and, [as a] third, esse, whose principle is form. For matter, by the fact that it receives form, participates in esse.Thus, therefore, esse follows upon form itself, nor nevertheless is form its own esse, since it is its principle [cum sit eius principium].27 And though matter does not attain to esse save through form, form nevertheless, inasmuch as it is form, does not need matter for its esse, since esse follows upon form itself [cum ipsam formam consequatur esse]; but it needs matter since [cum] it is such form as does not subsist by itself.28

It occurs to me that another way of making my point is to stress that there is no divine idea of matter just in itself. As Thomas says:
Plato, according to some people, held that matter is not created, and so he did not posit that there is an idea of matter, but that matter is a concause [along with God]. But because we hold that matter is created by God, but not without form, it has indeed an idea in God, but not other than that of the composite: for matter, taken as regards its very self, neither has being [esse] nor is knowable.29

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allows us to see that, God being posited on high as agent, we analyse his product, a being, i.e., ens, in which are found together a multiplicity of intelligible ontological factors, such as esse, form, matter, etc., i.e., only by what I would call formal analysis does metaphysics make sense. One should not view the esse of the thing as something that itself has esse and gives it to essence; this is to view it as an agent, i.e., a subsisting thing. Least of all should matter be regarded as itself having esse. I translate cum here as since rather than though because a few lines below it twice clearly means since. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de anima q. 6, lines 22940 (Opera omnia, t. XXIV, 1. Roma-Paris: Commissio Leonina/Cerf, 1996, ed. B.-B. Bazan). On the argument concerning form in this passage, see my paper,St.Thomas Aquinas against Metaphysical Materialism, in Atti delVIII Congresso Tomistico Internazionale, t.V (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1982), 412-34. Thomas, at ST I, q. 15, a. 3, is asking whether all items which God knows have ideas in the divine mind. The third objection holds that whereas God knows primary matter, it cannot have an idea since it has no form.The reply is: Ad tertium dicendum quod Plato, secundum quosdam, posuit materiam non creatam, et ideo non posuit ideam esse materiae, sed materiae [read: materiam] concausam. Sed quia nos ponimus materiam creatam a deo, non tamen sine forma, habet quidem materia ideam in deo, non tamen aliam ab idea compositi. Nam materia secundum se neque esse habet, neque cognoscibilis est.

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Separate Entity: Form without Matter Kennys second chapter considers De ente et essentia 4, on essence as found in separate substance: the human soul, intelligences, and the rst cause.30 Kenny begins (25) by speaking as though we had not been told at the outset of De ente et essentia that essence was to be found more truly in simple substances. In fact, Aquinas does not spring separate substance on us at the beginning of De ente et essentia 4, as a reader of Kenny alone could very well think. He notes that Thomas does not bother to prove the existence of the beings he is speaking of here, but that he does undertake to prove their substantial immateriality. In fact this amounts, in the case of the human soul, whose existence is evident,31 to proving that it is a subsisting form. This has its importance, since Kenny seems immediately to think of Platonism whenever form by itself is mentioned; Thomass route to the existence of subsistent form is not at all Platonic. Opposing here Solomon Ibn Gebirols doctrine that all beings but God must be matter-form composites, Thomas calls the argument he himself uses the strongest demonstration of the philosophers. Kenny questions the arguments adequacy to show that the intellective soul must be immaterial. He accuses (28) Thomas of not distinguishing between sense and intellect here, but Thomas actually does so, mentioning that the intellect considers things in

30

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Kenny, presumably because of the term separate, says [p. 25] that we are discussing the human soul as in an intermediate state, between death and the nal resurrection.This is not so. In fact, we are simply considering the ontology of the human soul, whether in a body or out of a body. Perhaps Thomas starts out with the expression separate substances because he wants to indicate the distance that exists between what Gebirol teaches and what the philosophers teach, calling spiritual beings below God separate, i.e., from matter: cf. lines 511. (Thomas, at this point in the De ente et essentia, is using the vocabulary of the Liber de causis: cf. De veritate 5.9.ad 7, where we are told that the term anima nobilis in the Liber de causis will apply to any rational soul.) In the present chapter, it is clear that it is the operation of the human soul in this present life that is providing the basis for saying anything about intellectual substances: cf. De ente et essentia c. 4 (lines 1322).Thus,Thomas neatly speaks in the chapter of intellectual substances, and especially in lines 17892, where the ontology of the human soul is focused upon. That the existence of the human soul is evident by itself is clear from the fact that in ST I, q. 75, on the essence of the human soul, the rst article does not address the question: Does it exist? Instead, it asks whether the soul is a body: Since soul means rst principle of life in those living things which are in our realm (of corporeal reality), soul exists as evidently as does the distinction between living and non-living thing.

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abstraction from matter and material conditions,32 something not true of sense.33 Kenny also conjectures that Thomas is using some unspoken premise, such as that like is known by like. That of course is something Thomas would hold, but I would suggest that two truly relevant unspoken premises would be (1) that things are received in keeping with the mode of the receiver, and (2) that every agent produces something like itself. I say this because Thomass extremely compact argument neatly includes the roles of both possible and agent intellects.We read:
Of this the strongest demonstration is from the power of understanding which is in them [viz. intelligent substances]. For we see that forms are not intelligible in act save according as they are separated from matter and from its conditions, nor are they rendered intelligible in act save by the power of the intelligent substance, according as they are received in it and according as they are effected by it. Hence, it is necessary that in any intelligent substance whatsoever there be complete immunity from matter, in such a way that it have neither a material part of itself nor even that it have the status of a form impressed on matter as is the case with material forms.34

The separation is from matter and its conditions. The being of actual intelligibles requires reception in something entirely immaterial, in that something is received in accordance with the mode of the receiver.The coming to be of the actual intelligibles requires the sort of agent that can produce such a product:The agent produces something like itself.Thus, we have the respective roles of possible and agent intellect.35 Kenny objects to the very notion of form as applied to the separate substances. In doing so, he says that form was introduced in this book, that is, the De ente et essentia, in relation to the Aristotelian categories:
32 33 34

35

De ente et essentia c. 4 (lines 1315). Cf. the De ente et essentia contemporary text, Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 1.38.1.2. Cf. also SCG 2.82. De ente et essentia c. 4 (lines 1122): Cuius demonstratio potissima est ex virtute intelligendi, quae in eis est. Videmus enim formas non esse intelligibiles in actu nisi secundum quod separantur a materia et a condicionibus eius, nec efciuntur intelligibiles in actu nisi per virtutem substantiae intelligentis, secundum quod recipiuntur in ea et secundum quod aguntur per eam. Unde oportet quod in qualibet substantia intelligente sit omnino immunitas a materia, ita quod neque habeat materiam partem sui neque etiam sit sicut forma impressa in materia ut est de formis materialibus. At p. 26 Kenny says that Aquinas is great on mind, but his remarks here on the roles of agent and possible intellect [the storehouse of ideas and knowledge once acquired] do not suggest he is the best judge.

348

Lawrence Dewan, OP substantial forms being what corresponded in reality to true predicates in the rst category, and accidental forms being what corresponded in reality to true predicates in the remaining nine categories. But it is hard to see how pure form can be explained by reference to predication. (2930)

This is rather odd.This may have been Kennys way of approaching substantial form, but it is clearly not Thomass.There is no doubt that the predicational considerations are helpful, but they require supplementation from more philosophical considerations, such as generation and corruption. Indeed, substantial form is rst actuality relative to matters potentiality. Thus, in the very context,Thomas speaks of form giving being to matter. When we come to Thomass Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics we are told that the predicational approach is only a preliminary, and that when one comes to matter and form, one has introduced the real principles of things; this is done by the physical route.36 Accordingly, the proper approach to form is one that gets us into being as divided by act and potency, and it is no wonder that the term form is used according to priority and posteriority, in order to speak of what is substantial in immaterial beings.37 In the De ente et essentia, in fact, c. 2 begins with the statement that form and matter are known, and gives as example soul and body in man. Thus, it does not really explain form or soul, but takes it for granted that
36

37

On the logical and the physical approaches to essence, form, and matter, cf. Thomas, Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 7.2 (1286287); on the general role of these approaches in metaphysics, cf. Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 7.11 (1535536), and my aforementioned paper: St. Thomas, Metaphysics, and Formal Causality, 293304. Thus in his QD de immortalitate animae, obj. 17 and ad 17,Thomas explains how, even though the human soul is incorruptible, the common denition of soul as form of a natural, organized body is veried.We read: Ad decimum septimum dicendum, quod sicut supra dictum est (ad primum), forma non est corruptibilis nisi per accidens. Unde ex hoc quod anima vegetalis est corruptibilis, non autem rationalis, non sequitur quod aequivoce dicatur utraque: nec tamen oportet quod omnino univoce, nam forma et actus et hujusmodi sunt de his, quae analogice praedicantur de diversis. It is to be said that, as was said above (ad 1), form is not corruptible save through association. Hence, from the fact that the vegetative soul is corruptible, but the rational soul is not, it does not follow that they are called [form] equivocally, nor nevertheless need it be altogether univocally: for form and act and the like are among those items which are analogically predicated of diverse items. [emphasis added] This work is to be found in Leonard A. Kennedy, A New Disputed Question of St.Thomas Aquinas on the Immortality of the Soul, Archives dhistoire doctrinale et littraire du moyen ge, 45 (1978): 2058 (introduction) and 20923 (text).

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there is some acquaintance with such a doctrine as one nds in Aristotles Physics and De anima. Kenny tells us:
Forms are forms of the entity which is the subject of predication: Socratess wisdom is what corresponds to the predicate in the sentence Socrates is wise, and Platos humanity is what corresponds to the predicate in the sentence Plato is human. In the same way, a pure form would be something that corresponded to a predicate in a sentence that has no subject; but this seems close to an absurdity.38 What, we wonder, is the difference between the angelic pure forms that Aquinas accepts and the Platonic Ideas or Forms that he rejects? (30)

What I wonder is why it does not occur to Kenny that he has got things wrong somehow. It is very clear in De ente et essentia 4 that we are working with conceptions that pertain to the study of cognitive beings and the nature of the intellective soul, as presented in Aristotles De anima and commentaries on it. Kennys merely predicational approach will not do. If Kenny really did wonder how Thomass subsisting forms differ from Platonic Ideas, he might have looked at the texts where Thomas explains this. I have not found him doing so in the book.What is clear in the De ente et essentia is that it is on the basis of the argument for the human intellective soul as incorporeal, subsisting and pure form that he develops a discussion of such beings. It is simple enough to nd him explaining his rejection of the Platonic approach to the existence of separate entity.39
38

39

This is very odd for a reader of Aristotle, let alone Thomas Aquinas. As we see in the logical or predicational treatment of a thing and its quiddity, in Metaphysics 7.6 (1031b281032a2), and cf. Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 7.5 (1373375), the thing, i.e., the subject of predication, and its quiddity, i.e., the predicate, are identical, not in just any way, but even notionally. A separate entity is excellent for per se predication, precisely because of the identity of subject and predicate. Cf. Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 7.11 (1536), concerning pure subsistent forms; and Aristotle, 7.11 (1037a33b4).The problem posed by Kenny reminds one of the objection made to predicating anything of God, in that, as Boethius says, pure form cannot be a subject: ST I, q. 13, a. 12, obj. 2; as St.Thomas says, the objector has not taken into consideration the way our minds must approach simple things. Of course, one thinks especially of the relatively late De substantiis separatis c. 2, where Thomas begins by rejecting the Platonic approach at its very root; nevertheless such texts exist at every stage in Thomass career: cf. e.g., In Boeth. De trin. 5.2 and 5.4.The general criticism is best spelled out in ST I, q. 84, a. 1. Nevertheless, one can establish the existence of subsisting form and even of subsisting esse and goodness, and in that way can see a truth in what Plato held: cf. e.g., ST I, q. 6, a. 4.

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Thomas, having argued that the intelligence or the soul must be immaterial, explains the doctrine of the Liber de causis, that it is form without matter, by the argument that since form gives being to matter, form can exist without matter (since a cause of being can exist without its effect, but not inversely, and form gives being to matter).Thomas says that if there are forms that cannot exist without matter, this is not proper to form as form, but because these forms are remote from the rst cause, which is pure act, that is, pure form.We discussed the meaning of this argument earlier. Treatment of the Intellectus essentiae Argument It is true that the argument in De ente et essentia 4 for the distinction between the essence or quiddity of a thing and its esse has occasioned much argument. It is also true that it is an argument that Thomas used only in the rst Parisian period (indeed, while still a Batchelor of the Sentences). Is this to say that it is not valid? I do not think so.40 One source of puzzlement is the examples used, man and phoenix. In parallel texts of the period, sometimes the example is man alone.41 In one text man is omitted and an eclipse is mentioned along with the phoenix.42 As I read the argument, while it clearly has a background in Avicenna (and Algazels presentation of him), it should be seen as using the doctrine of Aristotle in Metaphysics 7, chapters 10 and 15.Aristotle teaches that we can know the denition of man, and yet not know whether the individual man exists.43 Aristotle is speaking of the individual as an individual;
40 41

42 43

Cf. my paper St. Thomas, Joseph Owens, and the Real Distinction between Being and Essence, Modern Schoolman 61 (1984): 14556. Cf. Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 1.8.4.2, where the argument (as to why God is not in any genus), whose subtlety Thomas notes, is traced to Avicenna. Cf. Avicenna, Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina, tr. 8, cap. 4 [S. Van Riet, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1980), tr.VX, 404, especially lines 97100: There, Avicenna is arguing that the rst principle is not in a genus.An objection is made, contending that the rst principle is in the genus of substance: It maintains that the notion of substance is simply being, and not in a subject. Avicenna argues that this is not the notion of substance.That notion is rather of something having a quiddity to which not being in a subject belongs. In order to prove the difference between what he is saying and what the objector contends, he continues: The proof that between the two there is a difference, and that one of them is a genus and the other not, is this: that concerning the individual [substance] of some man of whose existence one is ignorant it can be said that it is that whose being is that it not be in a subject; nor do you say that he now is and not in a subject. [I translate with the help of the editors supplements from the Arabic.] Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 2.3.1.1. Cf.Aristotle, Metaphysics 7.15 (1039b201040a7), and especially 7.10 (1036a28).

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in the 7.10 passage, his example is the individual circle, whether physical or mathematical. The Intellectus essentiae argument bears on this situation. We have encountered essence in our experience. Thus, we already know what we mean by an essence, and what its real requirements are; and so we can formulate the premise that no essence is understandable if one omits a part of it. This should be something one can appreciate with respect to either of the two examples Thomas uses, the man and the phoenix. I generally use the approach of presenting a well-known artifact, the bicycle. We understand the operation and can appreciate what are the essential parts of the thing that make operation possible. It is this grasp of a thing as a coherent viable entity that is meant by understanding the essence. We understand what it would be for it to be missing an essential part. Our conceptions of artifacts are imitations of our conceptions of natural things. However, there is this signicant difference, that what we mean by an essence is tied to that in a natural thing that is a principle of reproduction.44 We also see that the sort of thing we are primarily aware of is destructible.Thus, when the individual is absent, we do not know whether it exists. While Kenny found the argument odd when the example of the man was used, obviously because when no one else is present, still we are always present to ourselves when we are thinking about such things, I see no difculty because I take it that the argument is about knowledge of the essence and knowledge of the existence of the individual, taken as regards such things. If ones own humanity gets in the way of making the point, then by all means substitute elephants. St. Thomas points out elsewhere that if all lions or horses were eliminated, one could still know their essences, speaking of knowledge in the mode of what the thing is.45 Thus, for me, the more problematic example is the phoenix. I pointed out in my paper on the Intellectus essentiae argument that it must be taken as at least a pseudo-essence. Kenny draws from its use, I would say, the conclusion that the argument must be about the meanings of words, not about real essence having real denition. I think the real point is that even
44

45

I would say that it is crucial that our knowledge of essence, as used in the argument, arises from experience of the reproduction of natural things, and is not merely based on predicational considerations. Cf.Thomas, Expositio libri Posteriorum 1.37 (ed. Leonine, lines 17387, Spiazzi no. 330), commenting on Aristotle, 85b15, on the mode of being which pertains to the common nature, in contrast to the existent individual; on the reality of the form which grounds the common nature, cf. Expositio libri Posteriorum 2.20 (lines 18392), concerning Aristotle at 100a7b. SCG 1.66.5.

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pseudo-essences are based on our prior knowledge of real essence.We do not have to know, when we deal with the meaning of a substantial name, whether we are dealing with a real thing or not. We already understand the general sort of thing our words are meant to signify, and that is enough.That is why we can raise a question such as does it exist? It is because we already have words like man, stone, etc., which do not normally require an investigation to see whether there is such a thing, that we can raise such a question about some unknowns. The general situation, with respect to generable and corruptible things, on which our conceptions and language are based, is that we can know what they are and not know whether an individual exists in such a nature. How was the phoenix example used by Algazel? Algazel, presenting a doctrine concerning the necessary being (that is, God), viz. that it is not called a substance, even though it is existent by itself and not existent in a subject, uses the phoenix as follows:
For just as they [the philosophers] have agreed that substance is nothing else but that which is a thing whose being is not being in a subject, that is, that when it will be, it is not in a subject, not that it has in itself being actually: of which thing let an example for you be the animal which is called a phoenix: it is a substance, without doubt, and nevertheless you are in doubt whether [now] it is or is not; and it is similar with many other substances.46

Surely it is chosen because it is the sort of thing about which one is not sure of its existence; yet it is meant to illustrate the case of every substance. This is obviously a reporting of Avicennas doctrine that the meaning of substance, as naming the genus, is that which has a quiddity such that being per se belongs to it, though the quiddity is other than the being. Such a meaning of substance, he teaches, should not be used concerning the Necessary Being, who has no quiddity other than being.Algazel, aiming to show that this is indeed what we think under the name of substance, that
46

Algazel, Metaphysica, J. T. Muckle,CSB, ed. (Toronto: St. Michaels College, 1933), part I, tract. 2 (ed. cit., 57, lines 2530): Sicut enim convenerunt substancia nichil est, nisi id quod res est, cuius esse non est esse in subiecto, scilicet quod cum fuerit non sit in subiecto, non quod habeat esse apud se in effectu. Cuius rei tibi sit exemplum animal quod dicitur fenix quod quidem substancia est sine dubio; tu tamen dubitas si nunc sit vel non, similiter et multe alie substancie [II, no. 11; 57, lines 2530] [In Appendix B, 222, we are told that a variant omits the word nunc in the last line above.]

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is, that we do not include the substances being in act in our so thinking, takes phoenix because it is quintessentially a case of knowing what I mean by substance, and yet not knowing whether the thing exists.47 Of course, with an item such as a phoenix it is not really authentic quidditative knowledge that we have, since we have never encountered such a thing, and do not know whether there is such a nature at all. But even when we have encountered a thing and seen that there really is such a nature, such as a horse, if no horses are in evidence, we do not know whether there are any (though we may have a solid opinion). This situation is the fruit of our experience of the beings with which we live. Accordingly, it is quite in order to argue that since quiddity is a kind of completeness, if we can know one, we can be sure that what we do not know about it does not belong to the quiddity, but is a somehow adventitious associate. And this is true of the existence of that quiddity.48 It is not surprising that Thomas takes this line in De ente et essentia, since it has already been suggested that the essences of the material things he has discussed have being in reality only in individuals.49 However, here in chapter 4 he is no longer aiming to speak of the essences of those kinds of things. In fact, his argument has satised merely for such things, and it is only by going further that he can make his point about separate substances. Could not the essences of the separate substances be cases of pure esse? Accordingly, he now sets out to show that there can only be one case of pure esse, one ipsum esse subsistens.Thus, he will be able to conclude that the conclusion he has just reached applies even to the acknowledged multitude of intelligences that are below the rst cause. And he will then go on to show that they must be caused by that one rst cause. This should be stressed.The Intellectus essentiae argument is not a general argument that proves the real distinction between essence and esse in all
47 48

49

Phoenix here is playing a role similar to centaur in Aristotle, APo 2.1 (89b33), Thomas In Post. An. 1.2 (Leonine lines 100108). If we put the question:Why does Thomas not continue to use this argument? I would suggest that it might be seen as suggesting the idea that the esse of things is an accident, the point on which Thomas criticizes Avicenna in Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 4.2 (556 and 558); instead, he subsequently tends to present the distinction in the light of efcient causality and its implications (cf. e.g., SCG 2.52 in general; and cf. ST I, q. 3, a. 7, ad 1). Cf. also my paper St.Thomas and the Distinction between Form and Esse in Caused Things, Gregorianum 80 (1999): 35370. He also begins to feature the per se relationship between the things form and its esse: cf. my paper Saint Thomas, Form, and Incorruptibility, in Jean-Louis Allard, ed., tre et Savoir (Ottawa: Les Presses de lUniversit dOttawa, 1989), 7790. Cf. De ente et essentia 3 [lines 5272].

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things other than the rst. It only clearly applies to essence as known in generable and corruptible things. Kenny says that the phoenix argument does establish something other than a merely conceptual distinction (36) and that the doctrine, whether or not its formulation is confusing, seems to be true and important (37). He contends that a things essence and a things existence provide answers to questions of totally different kinds (36). He then says:
The query is there a real distinction between essence and existence? should bring us up short like the question In three blind mice is there a distinction between the threeness and the blindness? (36)

Here, I take it that he means that the predicating of existence about a thing is not the predication of a real predicate (just as blindness names a mere absence). Thus, Kenny goes on, not to complain about distinguishing essence from existence, but about making existence the essence in the case of God (37). In so doing, he makes it plain that his recognition of a distinction between essence and existence does not bear upon the distinction meant by Thomas.Thomas was, of course, thinking of the actual existence of the human being as some positive actuality such as is found at the terminus of generation. Form gives being to matter.50 Kenny says:
It is when the doctrine is employed to mark a fundamental difference between creatures and God that it becomes more difcult to comprehend. For it seems that, in the same way that I can have a concept of phoenix without knowing whether or not there are phoenixes, so I can have a concept of God without knowing whether or not there is a God. Atheists, after all, have a concept of God; otherwise they wouldnt know what it was they were denying when they deny that God exists. (37)

Kenny goes right on to say that this, no doubt, is too crude a way of disposing of St. Thomass celebrated thesis. Why say it, then? Is it a bad and misleading point, or does it have some truth in it?
50

As we read in SCG 1.26: Generation, speaking precisely, is the road to being [esse], and corruption the road to not being [non esse]: for form would not be the terminus of generation, and privation [the terminus] of corruption, were it not that form brings about being and privation not being; for, given that some form did not bring about being, what received such a form would not be said to be generated. Cf. also SCG 2.52, a perfect text which associates esse with both the terminus of generation and what is proper to the efcient cause as such.

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In fact, it is a point on which Thomas himself insists when teaching that the existence of a God is not self-evident for the human mind. In other words, such meanings of the word a God as are actually used in the proof of the existence of a God have exactly the same status as phoenix, as far as St. Thomas is concerned. Whether the meaning is rst origin of change, which is changed by nothing or something than which a greater cannot be thought, or even something in which essence and existence are identical,51 a thoroughgoing understanding of what is said does not, in itself, require afrmation that that thing exists. Thus, Kennys point is not merely crude. Mentioning it in the way he has is grossly misleading. In fact, he could only say what he says by ignoring the importance of the last line of Thomass argument:unless perhaps there is some thing whose quiddity is its very own being; and this thing can only be one and rst,52 that is, he is about to undertake to prove that such a thing exists. Or should we speak of it as the last line? In fact, what Thomas has set out to prove is that in beings, which are forms subsisting without matter, other than God, there is a composition out of form and esse. At the present point in his argument, he has brought forward beings that are composites of quiddity and esse, yet there is apparently still room for a being to be its own esse; only by showing that such a being can only be one and rst can he conclude that the multitude of intelligences, spoken of by the philosophers, must be composites of form and esse. Treatment of the One-Only Status of Ipsum esse subsistens In any case, Kenny proposes to follow the steps by which Thomas establishes that in God essence and esse are identical. He rst comes to the contention of Thomas that a thing in which essence and esse are identical would necessarily be one only. (This will serve as the key premise for concluding that the intelligences, whose multiplicity is taken for granted, fall under the judgment of the just seen Intellectus essentiae argument.) We have the passage in which the modes of multiplication of something are examined:
unless perhaps there be some thing whose quiddity is its very esse; and this thing can only be one and rst; because it is impossible that multiplication
51

52

Of course, assuming the proper stance of supernatural faith, which looks at things from Gods own point of view, one can say, with the sed contra of ST I, q. 2, a. 3: Sed contra est quod dicitur Exodi III, ex persona dei, ego sum qui sum. [But on the contrary, there is what is said in Exodus 3 [14], [speaking] in the very person of God: I am Who Am.], i.e., God so truly exists that his very name is I am. Cf. ST I, q. 13, a. 11 (the rst argument in the body of the article). De ente et essentia c. 4 (lines 1035).

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Lawrence Dewan, OP of something be effected save through the addition of some difference, the way the generic nature is multiplied in species; or else by the fact that the form is received in diverse matters, the way the specic nature is multiplied in diverse individuals; or else by the fact that one is all by itself and another is received in something, the way that, if there were a separate heat, it would be other than non-separate heat by virtue of its very separation. Now, if some thing be posited which is esse alone, such that esse itself be subsisting, this esse will not receive the addition of any difference, for then it would not be esse alone, but rather esse and besides that some [particular] form; and much less could it receive the addition of matter, for then it would not be subsisting esse, but rather material [esse]. It remains, then, that such a thing which is its esse, can only be one.53

Kenny uses a variant reading that speaks of a separate color [Latin: color] rather than a separate heat [Latin: calor]. He says he does this only to facilitate discussion in translation, and that the variation does not affect the argument. However, he then gets into discussions of the color of the sky as a modern example of a color that is not the color of anything. He says:
The blue of the sky is not the property of any substance: yet it is a distinct entity from the blue of this thrushs egg, even if it is exactly the same shade. So we can, for the time being at any rate, accept Aquinass schema of three types of multiplicity. (38)

Now, I am sure that Thomas would not accept the example.The point is that even the blue of the sky is taken as extended.Thus, for Thomas, it is a quality received in a quantitative base. Such a base provides multiplication.The blue of one part of the sky is distinct from the blue of another part of the sky. Kenny has not understood Thomass hypothetical exam53

Ibid., c. 4 (lines 10321): nisi forte sit aliqua res, cuius quiditas sit ipsum suum esse; et haec res non potest esse nisi una et prima, quia impossibile est, ut at pluricatio alicuius nisi per additionem alicuius differentiae, sicut multiplicatur natura generis in species, vel per hoc quod forma recipitur in diversis materiis, sicut multiplicatur natura speciei in diversis individuis, vel per hoc quod unum est absolutum et aliud in aliquo receptum, sicut si esset quidam calor separatus, esset alius a calore non separato ex ipsa sua separatione. Si autem ponatur aliqua res, quae sit esse tantum, ita ut ipsum esse sit subsistens, hoc esse non recipiet additionem differentiae, quia iam non esset esse tantum, sed esse et praeter hoc forma aliqua; et multo minus reciperet additionem materiae, quia iam esset esse non subsistens sed materiale. Unde relinquitur quod talis res, quae sit suum esse, non potest esse nisi una.

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ple, and so his understanding of the third mode of multiplication is skewed from the start. Thus, when Kenny reads the rest of the argument, applying the modes of multiplication to the case of esse subsistens, he cannot understand the result. Kenny rightly says that the third case of multiplication will make possible that there be created and uncreated being. He says that if one asks:More than one what? the answer will be ens, which he translates as being (that is,that which is).This is accurate inasmuch as what we are attempting to multiply are the instances of esse, the act of being; and ens signies esse habens. Thus, the point is: If esse must be multiplied on the all by itself (on the one hand) and in a receiver (on the other hand) model, then obviously there can only be one ipsum esse subsistens. (Ipsum esse subsistens is esse habens, we may concede, with the proviso that God is whatever he has.)54 However, Kenny has misunderstood the application to the third sort of multiplication, as we see in his complaint:
[I]n the rst premise the third kind of multiplicity came about because one of the items to be counted was an instance of a property in the abstract, belonging to nothing.55 In the application to esse, the rst item to be counted is not at all abstract; it is not esse with no owner, but esse identical with its owner. So the parallel with color, however charitably interpreted, does not provide the parallel that is needed for Aquinass conclusion. (39)

Now, this is quite wrong. In the rst premise, what is posited in the third case is merely an item taken all by itself.The example is a separate heat (or, if one will, a separate color).That is not supposed to be something abstract at all, if by abstract one is speaking of the abstraction proper to the rst act of the intellect.56 Rather, we are speaking of an actually existing separate heat or color. One sees such a hypothetical entity discussed in one of Thomass early quodlibets:
[B]y a miracle, therefore, it could be brought about that the nature of whiteness subsist without any quantity ; nevertheless, that whiteness would

54 55 56

Cf. SCG 1.23. So also, in ST I, q. 2, a. 3 (the Fourth Way), God is maxime ens. Does Kenny thus mean that the blue of the sky is an abstraction? On the two senses of abstract, as pertaining to the rst (absolute consideration) or the second operation (composing and dividing) of the intellect, cf. ST I, q. 85, a. 1, ad 1.

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Lawrence Dewan, OP not be like this sensible whiteness; rather, it would be a particular intelligible form, along the lines of the separate forms that Plato posited.57

This is the sort of thought experiment Thomas is proposing. In the quodlibet it is indeed compared to a Platonic separate form, but it is also proposed on the basis of a miracle whereby God bypasses secondary causes, such as the quantity which naturally is the immediate subject of color. It should also be noted that it is not the same thing as proposing that there exist the Platonic idea of a material substance: that is the sort of Platonic Idea that Thomas holds is intrinsically impossible.58 As the quodlibetal discussion makes plain,Thomas gives careful consideration to questions of intrinsic impossibility, especially in that he is in the context of the possibility of miracles. Thus, Kennys contention that the argument of Thomas is invalid is wrong. As I have argued elsewhere, the argument for there being only one ipsum esse subsistens works only if esse names something known as intrinsically common, after the manner of a form. It is of this sort of thing that Thomas is providing a list of modes of multiplication: A generically common nature such as animal must have added to it some particular form, such as rational or irrational, and thus one would seem to have the common esse plus form.59 A specically common nature such as
57

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Quodl. 7.4.3, emphasis added: Posset ergo eri miraculo ut natura albedinis subsisteret absque omni quantitate; tamen illa albedo non esset sicut haec albedo sensibilis, sed esset quaedam forma intelligibilis ad modum formarum separatarum, quas Plato posuit. Cf. Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 7.11 (1535536) and 7.9 (1469470); also De veritate 3.1, ad 4. It is still another point that, if per impossibile there were many Platonic Ideas, they would have to be composed of essence and esse. Thomas makes this point in lect. 2 of his In De Hebdomadibus. At p. 80, in concluding his extremely inadequate discussion of Thomass In DH, Kenny makes the complaint: what are those of us who are not Platonists to make of the notion of subsistent immaterial forms? He completely omits reference to the fact that Thomas there explicitly says: it makes no difference, on this score, if we posit those immaterial forms at a higher level than are the natures of these sensible things, as Aristotle maintained: each of them, inasmuch as it is distinguished from the others, is some special form participating in being itself [ipsum esse]; and so none of them will be truly simple. [nihil differt quantum ad hoc, si ponamus illas formas immateriales altioris gradus quam sint rationes horum sensibilium, ut Aristoteles voluit: unaquaeque illarum, inquantum distinguitur ab alia, quaedam specialis forma est participans ipsum esse; et sic nulla earum erit vere simplex.] That the logical considerations such as genus and species require the backing of the real distinction between form and matter I also discuss in my paper St. Thomas,

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man must be multiplied by material individuals, such as Peter and Paul, and thus, if esse were so multiplied, it would be esse in the material mode.The last possibility of retaining a subsisting esse and yet multiplying esse is to have a subsisting esse, on the one hand, and esse received in something other than esse, on the other.All of this supposes that esse names something that is somehow common to all. Now, this is already a point that separates Thomas from Kenny.Thomas is thinking of the sort of act or perfection that the things we most immediately know have by virtue of an efcient cause. An efcient cause has esse and it communicates esse when it produces its effect.60 Indeed, as Thomas implied at the beginning of De ente et essentia, the esse of the cause is more noble that the esse of the effect (the esse of separate substance is more noble than the esse of material substance).To a hierarchy of essences there corresponds a hierarchy of acts of being. Let us repeat the passage from the beginning of De ente et essentia:
[O]f substances, some are simple and some are composite, and in both there is essentia; but in the simple in a truer and more noble degree, inasmuch as they also they have more noble esse; for they are the cause of those which are composite, at least [this is true of] the rst simple substance which is God.61

I would say we need everything that Thomas deploys in such a text: causal hierarchy, hierarchy of esse, hierarchy of essence. A causal hierarchy is understood in terms of grades of natures. And a hierarchy of esse is an integral part of the same picture. Kenny is working with an idea of esse as merely expressing our awareness that an item is found outside of thought.Trees exist and God exists and blindness exists; thus, not a predicate expressing a formal reality in the thing.

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Joseph Owens, and the Real Distinction between Being and Essence, Modern Schoolman 61 (1984): 14556. Cf. SCG 2.52: Since every agent activates [agat] inasmuch as it is in act, therefore it belongs to the rst agent, which is most perfect, to be in act in the most perfect way. . . . Now, the most perfect act [ipse actus perfectissimus] . . . is esse, at which all generation and all change has its terminus: for every form and every act is in potency until it acquires esse.Therefore, to God alone does it belong that he be being itself [ipsum esse] : just as [to him] alone does it belong that he be the rst agent. De ente et essentia c. 1 (lines 5863), emphasis added.

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Ipsum Esse Subsistens Must Exist and Be Causally First, Since an Efcient Cause Is Needed for All Else Kenny already mentions his question as to whether ipsum esse subsistens, the subsisting act of being, expresses a coherent notion (40).And we immediately think: No wonder!given what he means by esse. However, he proposes to put that issue off until after examining the argument for saying that Ipsum esse subsistens must be rst causally. (The argument is not just for the causal primacy of Ipsum esse subsistens; it is primarily an argument for the existence of Ipsum esse subsistens.)62 Kenny looks through the argument, and notes that esse here must mean existence. He says that it depends on the point that nothing can be the efcient cause of its own existence, but he adds in parentheses that the Intellectus essentiae phoenix argument implied that nothing could be the formal cause of its own existence.63 Here again, Kenny is in error.The phoenix argument merely implies that if the phoenix is to exist, its essence cannot be the efcient cause of its existence. A formal causality on the part of the essence is quite conceivable if the thing depends on an outside efcient cause. Thus, as we saw, Thomas teaches in the De veritate:
God causes in us natural esse by creation, without the mediation of any efcient cause, but nevertheless through the mediation of a formal cause: because natural form is the principle of natural esse.64

Thus, God being the efcient cause, formal causality can be seen as the role of form vis--vis the thing as a whole. Kenny should have said that the phoenix argument implies the need for the phoenix, if it is to exist, to have an efcient cause.65 The Coherence of Ipsum Esse Subsistens It is at this point that Kenny begins his discussion of the coherence of the notion of Ipsum esse subsistens. He has not really questioned the validity of
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I agree with Joseph Owens here, against Gilson, that there is a proof of the existence of Ipsum Esse Subsistens in De ente et essentia; cf, my paper St.Thomas and the Existence of God: Owens vs Gilson, and Beyond, in God and Argument, William Sweet, ed. (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1999), 11541. Page 41. Could Kenny mean, here, that there could never be absolute identity between the formal cause and its effect? Thomas would not agree with that, as we see in ST I, q. 39, a. 2, ad 5. St.Thomas, De veritate 27.1.ad 3 (ed. Leonine, t. 22/3, lines 18286). I take it that it is the generability and corruptibility of the things we most readily know that is at once the evidence that they need an efcient cause and the reason why we do not know whether they exist when they are absent.

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the argument of the need for a God. He rather questions the possibility of conceiving of the God it proves as Ipsum esse subsistens.There seems to be an absurdity in saying of anything that its essence is pure existence (41). One cannot reasonably say:There is a God, thats what God is. Now, of course, so put, the point holds. But should it be put that way? Do we not have ample answer in Thomass writings as to why it should not be put that way? The statement: There is a God is the normal expression of the conclusion of a human argument answer to the does X exist? question.66 On the other hand, suppose that we prove that there exists a rst efcient cause, and we say that that is what we mean by a God. Obviously such a being is going to have to have an essence and an act of being. It turns out by subsequent argument that they must be identical. We in fact conclude that such an essence is beyond our comprehension. As for existence itself to be the essence of something, while we can see that the proposition is necessarily true, we cannot comprehend such an act of being, such an existence. Thus, we say that both Gods essence and his existence are beyond our mode of knowing. Of this, we are sure, just as we are sure that they are identical.We can even draw the conclusion that this is the highest mode of identity.67 As for there is a God, if one wishes to envisage God himself considering his own existence, then the same act by which he grasped it would

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Of course, it would also be the expression of a human conviction by someone saying that no argument is needed by the human being in this matter. I have heard Peter Van Inwagen take such a stand. This is well explained in both SCG 1.12 and ST I, q. 3, a. 4, ad 2, both extremely prominent texts. SCG 4.11 is a passage from St.Thomas that shows the ineluctable variety of intelligible roles of the various items in the metaphysical analysis: it has been shown in the First Book (ch. 31) that those things which in creatures are divided are unqualiedly one in God: thus, for example, in the creature essence and being [esse] are other; and in some [creatures] that which subsists in its own essence is also other than its essence or nature: for this man is neither his own humanity nor his being [esse]; but God is his essence and his being. And though these in God are one in the truest way, nevertheless in God there is whatever pertains to the intelligible role [ratio] of [1] the subsisting thing, or of [2] the essence, or of [3] the being [esse] ; for it belongs to him not to be in another, inasmuch as he is subsisting; to be a what [esse quid], inasmuch as he is essence; and being in act [esse in actu], by reason of being itself [ipsius esse]. On the highest mode of identity, cf. ST I, q. 11, a. 4, and ad 3.

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be the act by which he grasps what he is. But we cannot really tune in on that, at least in the present life.68 As Thomas says:
to know being itself subsisting [ipsum esse subsistens] is connatural to the divine intellect alone, and . . . it is beyond the natural power of any created intellect whatsoever.69

Kenny presents his case as one already made by Peter Geach. Kenny says that he believes it is effective in disposing of the notion of subsistent existence (41). In what follows, then, he is merely seeking alternative ways of understanding that God is his own esse, ways that do not involve the nonsensicality just exposed. My contention is that no nonsensicality has been exposedmerely the inability of Kenny and Geach70 to cope with the real doctrine of the text. When one considers the centrality of this point for the entire doctrine of being of St.Thomas, it gives one pause. We need not follow out Kennys effort to offer an alternative doctrine.71 He eventually contends that to say that Gods essence is existence sounds like saying that one knows what the essence of God is. It would sound more respectful, as well as more plausible (45) to say that his essence entails existence. This again is quite misleading. As Kenny must know,Thomas afrms that we know neither what Gods essence is nor what his existence is. That is part of the same doctrine that his essence is his existence.72 Kenny suggests reducing the doctrine to for God to exist is for God to continue to be God, but then observes that this applies to anything. What then happens to the distinction between essence and esse in creatures? Quite so. The real doctrine is that God is Ipsum esse subsistens. Kenny has simply failed to grasp it. He has failed to consider esse as we know it: the perfection of the efcient cause and of its effect.73
68 69

70 71

72 73

On the question whether Paul in his rapture saw the divine essence and whether he was in his body, cf. ST IIII, q. 175, a. 1, and 5. ST I, q. 12, a. 4: cognoscere ipsum esse subsistens, sit connaturale soli intellectui divino, et quod sit supra facultatem naturalem cuiuslibet intellectus creati. Supposing that Kenny has understood him. We should note the Kretzmann link concerning IES as thin, and the absurd contention on Kretzmanns part that Thomas prefers God being his own existence. ST I, q. 3, a. 4, ad 2. An excellent place to see this as the approach to esse is Quaestiones de quolibet 12.4.1 [6], in Leonine ed., t. 252 (Rome/Paris: Commissio Leonina/Cerf,

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Did Thomas Posit Essences of Non-Existent Beings? Kenny, in puzzling over the doctrine that Gods essence is identical with his existence, is led, at page 45, to wonder about the doctrine of the real distinction between them as applied to dogs.We read:
Can we say that Fidos essence and Fidos existence are distinct? If a real distinction between A and B means that we can have one without the other, then it seems that the answer must be in the negative. For a dog to continue to exist is simply for it to go on being a dog, and for a human being to continue to exist is for it to go on possessing its human nature or essence. . . . But would Aquinas agree with the statements we have just made? (45)

Thomas would certainly agree with Kennys statement about a dog continuing to exist and continuing to be a dog; and so also for the case of man.74 This is to say, as we said earlier, against Kenny, that esse quid and esse simpliciter are identical.What Thomas would not agree with is Kennys premise that a real distinction between A and B means that we can have one without the other.75 Anyone thinking that would clearly rightly go on to conclude that essence and existence cannot ever be really distinct.76 However, anyone thinking that would not have arrived at the sort of ontological analysis one nds in Thomas Aquinas. By a real distinction, here, we do not mean one such that each (or even one) of its members is a thing, a subsistent being, or in Latin, a res. Rather, we mean that the distinction is one to be found within the thing and not merely within our minds considering the thing (a mere distinction of reason). Thus, the distinction is called real, that is, pertaining to things themselves. It was not said, in presenting the distinction between a things essence and its act
1996), 4034. See my paper St.Thomas and the Distinction between Form and Esse in Caused Things, Gregorianum 80 (1999): 35370. So true is this that, as Thomas teaches, when a man dies, even though the soul is immortal, the individual man does not exist; the person does not exist:The ceasing to exist of the complete nature is the ceasing to exist of the person. Cf. e.g., Charles De Koninck,La personne humaine et la rsurrection [part 1], LTP 10 (1954). Thus, though we say that God is the subsisting act of being, we do not say that he is existence without essence; we rather say that in him the two are identical. In fact, as we have noted, at the very outset of the De ente et essentia, Thomas makes it clear that essence and esse are both found most truly of all in God. Indeed, this is a classical wrong-headed argument against the real distinction between essence and existence; cf. for example, the attempts to argue against it by Peter Aureol, which I present in my paper St.Thomas, Capreolus, and Entitative Composition, Divus Thomas 80 (1977): 35575.

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of being, its esse, in De ente et essentia, that I can have a real phoenix or man, and not have that things actual existence. The distinction was not proposed on the basis of having the one reality without the other reality. The argument was rather based on the discerning of distinct targets of intelligible necessity within the thing. One may object to such a procedure as such, but one should at least recognize that it was that which was at stake.77 Does that procedure reduce ultimately to nding one of the items without the other? How is essence as completeness discerned, and how does its discernment stand with respect to the existence of individuals? Essence, or its principle, namely form, is seen as that in generable and corruptible individuals whereby the individual maintains itself in being and causes the reproduction of something similar, that is, another selfmaintaining and reproducing individual. It is on the basis of the success in carrying out such operations that we form the conception of the essence, and what it is for the individual to be all there. All of this is recognized even though we also see the perishability of the individual. We thus see what it is to be an essence, and that it is something with a completeness that constitutes its intelligibility: As such, it makes sense (like seeing that a bicycle without one of its wheels needs that other wheel). However, the essence is seen to exist only in the larger context of the perishable individual: Existence is the actuality of the whole individual. It is, indeed, the fact that one distinguishes the essence from the existence only inasmuch as one appreciates the things need for outside help in order to exist. The essence is a principle of existence, but in a generable and corruptible thing it is obviously an inadequate principle of existence:The thing only comes to be through something prior, which is an efcient cause, and one even needs the contribution of outside efcient causes to maintain the thing in existence. All this I would maintain is wrapped up in the experience that I can know what a man is, and not know that this or that man exists. One can very well say that the real distinction of essence and existence within the thing is grounded in the

77

No one who had given the least consideration to the argument regularly used by Thomas to establish the incorruptibility of the rational soul could think that a real distinction implies that one can have one of the components without the other; on the one hand, the form is other than the act of being; on the other hand, the form and the act of being are inseparable: cf. ST I, q. 50, a. 2, ad 3, and I, q. 50, a. 5; I, q. 75, a. 5, ad 4, and I, q. 75, a. 6, and my paper Saint Thomas, Form, and Incorruptibility, in Jean-Louis Allard, ed., tre et Savoir (Ottawa: Les Presses de lUniversit dOttawa, 1989), 7790.

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real distinction between the efcient cause and its effect, and there, indeed, the one can be without the other.78 Kenny has quite another reason for suggesting that Thomas might not agree with what he has just said. Here Kenny becomes a master of suspicion. He tells us that Avicenna, whose inuence is apparent in Thomass De ente et essentia,
may perhaps have believed that there were individual essences of nonexistent beings; that long before Adam and Eve were created there were already such things as the essence of Adam and the essence of Eve, and that the creation of Adam and Eve consisted precisely in God giving existence to these essences, actualizing these potentialities.This was an error which Aquinas, later in life, would explicitly reject as mistaken; but it is not clear whether at this stage he had seen through its confusions. Someone who thinks in this way will regard the relation of existence to essence as being exactly parallel to that of form to matter or accident to substanceall three cases will be in the same way instances of the actualization of a potentiality. And that is indeed how Aquinas speaks in this context. (4546, emphasis added)

Leaving Avicenna aside,79 it is easily seen that in the period when Thomas wrote the De ente et essentia, he was quite clear concerning the ontology of creation as it touches the remarks of Kenny. Kenny is clearly referring to a preexistent passive potency. However, in the Sentences presentation of creation we read:
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Cf. my paper St.Thomas and the Distinction between Form and Esse in Caused Things, Gregorianum 80 (1999): 35370. In the above I have limited myself to speaking about essence as the other member of the composite; eventually one must speak of the matter-form composition of such essence. In that discussion it is clear that the essence itself is a real composite, one of whose members does survive the ceasing to be of the composite; the matter remains, though this is only possible inasmuch as it is under another form. As we have said, the matter is not, in itself, the subject of the act of being. I leave him aside only for simplicity. Thomas, as we see, refers to Avicenna in making the very point we are about to show.While I have myself often seen this claim of Avicenna proposing essences as possibles, which are out there, so to speak, awaiting actual existence, I notice that as anti-Avicennian a Thomist as Beatrice Zedler, following A. Forest, says: in Avicenna the possibles are offered eternally to the divine action because they are not constituted as such by his will. God necessarily thinks his own nature; his liberality is only his acquiescing to this universal order of things that he does not constitute. Cf. my paper:St.Thomas and the Possibles, New Scholasticism 53 (1979): 7685, at p. 76. In that picture, the possibles would have more the role of active potency in God than passive potency awaiting the coming of existence. The difference from Thomas would be rather in the conception of God and his freedom with respect to his ideas.

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Lawrence Dewan, OP [A]ccording to Avicenna there are two sorts of agent: the one natural, which is an agent by means of change, and the other divine, which [is an agent as] giving being [esse], as has been said. And similarly it is necessary to recognize two sorts of product of action or of making: one is through change [effected] by the natural agent: and in the case of all such making it is necessary that a potency precede temporally, and not merely an active potency, but also a passive [potency]: because change is the actuality of what exists in potency. But there is another [sort of] made item, inasmuch as it receives being from the divine agent without [there being involved any] change: and if this made item is new, then it is necessary that an active, not a passive, potency precede, as to both nature and duration, its esse: and from the active potency such a made item is said to be possible with respect to being made. But if it is not new, then the active potency does not precede durationally, but only by nature.80

There is, of course, throughout Thomass career, the doctrine that every nature pre-exists in the potency of the divine nature and in the divine ideas (and also an innity of natures that never will exist in their own being outside the divine essence).81 Thus, it is clear that Thomas already rejects the sort of pre-existing potential essence that Kenny conjured.82 However, since the entire basis for the Kenny suspicion seems to be Thomass use of the word receive to describe the relation between the essence of the creature and its esse,83
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Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 2.1.1.2, ad 1.The distinction within this text between newness of the product of creative causality and non-newness is simply the distinction between a doctrine of the production of an eternal creature and that of a creature with a beginning of duration. At Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 1.36.2.3, ad. 3 and ad. 2, we see that particulars (Peter, Martin) have divine ideas, but not as perfectly as do the composites in function of the form: man, horse. And so, as Thomas reads him, does Avicenna. Kenny continues the passage I quoted from pp. 4546, illustrating Thomass way of speaking with the following text: Everything which receives something from another is in potency with respect to that, and the item which is received in it is its act.Therefore, it is necessary that the quiddity itself or form, which is the intelligence, be in potency with respect to esse, which it receives from God, and that received esse has the role of act. And thus one nds potency and act in the intelligences, though not matter and form, save equivocally. Hence, it is clear that to be affected by,to receive,to be subjected and all like [expressions], which seem to belong to things by reason of matter, belong equivocally to intellectual substances and to corporeal things, as the Commentator says in De anima 3. And because, as has been said, the quiddity of the intelligence is the intelligence itself, therefore its quiddity or essence is the very

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we should note the following passage from very early in Thomass Sentences, speaking of the ontology of angels (and the human soul):
But if it is not esse itself, it is necessary that it have esse acquired from another, which is the case for every created quiddity. And because this quiddity is posited not to subsist in matter, esse would not be acquired for it in another, as with composite quiddities; rather, it will be acquired for it in itself; and thus the quiddity itself will be the thing which is, and its own very being will be that in function of which it is. And because everything that does not have something from itself is possible with respect to that, this sort of quiddity, since it has esse from another, will be possible with respect to that esse, and with respect to that from which it has esse, in which no potency is to be found; and thus in such a quiddity potency and act will be found, according as the quiddity itself is possible and its esse is its act. And in this way I understand a composition of potency and act in angels, and of by which it is and that which is; and similarly with the soul.84

Thomas here uses a slightly more vague acquire rather than receive, but the reason I cite this text is the doctrine of having and not from itself, which are the ontological grounds of the use of such words as acquire and receive in this context. No pre-existence of the essence is envisaged in such usage. Kenny is a victim of failure to abstract from matter and change. This failure on Kennys part is important. On its basis, he conjures a change in Thomass doctrine, as we move from the De ente et essentia to such later texts as he mentions on page 116. Kenny stresses that later in life Thomas insisted against Avicenna
that there can be no individuation without actualization (only what actually exists can be identied, individuated, counted). But once this is made clear, then the real distinction between essence and existence appears unintelligible, or at best vacuous. (46)
thing which is, and its esse, received from God, is that by virtue of which it subsists in natural reality. And for that reason such substances are said by some people to be composed out of that by which it is and that which is, or out of that which is and being, as Boethius says. [emphasis added] The translation of the passage is my own, as are the stresses. Kenny in fact quotes only to just before the words save equivocally. Thomas himself goes on to note that the word receive here is not to be taken in the way that matter receives form. Kenny should have noted this, instead of proposing an exact parallel between essence/existence and matter/form as Thomass thinking. Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 1.8.5.2.

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Here he refers us to page 116, but there we nd Kenny nding no trace of a doctrine we have found he merely dreamt up here on page 46. Kennys Aquinas is far from the real Aquinas. He has exhibited so far no understanding of the real distinction, so it is understandable that he calls it unintelligible. His conception of a necessary separability of one from the other of essence and existence for the distinction to be real is mistaken.85 What does he mean by no individuation without actualization as constituting the change in doctrine? He imagines Avicenna as positing preexistent possibles that are individuals. (This comes out more clearly on page 90, where, in connection with the conception of generables and corruptibles as in themselves possibles with respect to being and not being, and needing a cause in order to be actually, Kenny posits as the generable and corruptible being being discussed my dog Stigger.) Thus, in note 13, page 89, he says that there is no need to discuss merely possible individuals in presenting Thomas (presumably because of what he nds later, at page 116). All of this I nd rather odd, since obviously Thomas has a doctrine of the preexistence of the individual in the divine ideas, just as Avicenna had a doctrine of the preexistence of things in the divine being.Thus, at ST I, q. 15, a. 3, and ad 4, it is clear that there are ideas, in the sense of exemplars, in God of all individuals that are created. Taken as merely in the power and cognition of God, they are possible individuals.The possibility is quite denite and real. The question is why Kenny thinks that the doctrine of De ente et essentia on the distinction between essence and existence involves the preexistence of individuals as possibles. Is it merely the word receive? It would seem so, since it was on the basis of this mistake that Kenny saw the supposed exact parallelism between matter and form, essence and existence. Both of course pertain to the analogy of potency and act, but the parallel is not exact in the Kenny sense. Kenny thinks that a real distinction means that one can have one without the other. That this is not the case with essence and existence should be clear.
85

As I have said, we see the unsuitability of Kennys conception of the essenceexistence composition from the way that Thomas argues for the incorruptibility of the human soul. In his Quaestiones Disputatae de immortalitate animae, ad 5, he distinguishes carefully between matter-form composition and form-esse composition. Esse and form are distinct but inseparable. Moreover, as I have shown in my paper on this, the argument actually derives from the much-maligned (in this respect) Avicenna. I date this text around the beginning of Thomass rst teaching in Italy. For the Avicennian background, cf. my paper Saint Thomas, Form, and Incorruptibility, in Jean-Louis Allard, ed., tre et Savoir (Ottawa: Les Presses de lUniversit dOttawa, 1989), 7790, at p. 87 and n. 37.

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One can understand the desire to have a text which makes it clear that the composition out of essence and esse, a potency and act composition, involves no pre-existence outside of God of the potency in question.And it is entirely possible that one will nd such a text later that was merely presupposed earlier.Thus, I certainly value such a text as QD de anima 6. ad 10: The topic is whether the human soul is composed out of matter and form.The tenth objection runs:
Besides, an agent is necessary for this, viz. that it reduce something from potency to act. But to be reduced from potency to act belongs solely to those things in which there is matter and form. If, therefore, the soul is not composed out of matter and form, it does not need an efcient cause: which is clearly false.

And the reply is:

[I]t is to be said that a thing acting by virtue of change reduces something from potency to act; but a thing acting without change does not reduce something from potency to act, but rather it makes to be in act that which according to [its own] nature is in potency with respect to being [esse], and this sort of agent is creating.86

However, attentive reading of the earlier texts, such as that I have indicated from Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 1.8.5.2, gives the same understanding. It is remarkable that Kenny ignores the end of the chapter, in which we have the conception of the hierarchy of separate entity, a hierarchy in terms of act and potency and proximity to the rst cause, together with the grades of esse and form, right down to the mere perfecting of primary matter by the most material of forms. Investigating this would have suggested more readily the meaning of esse as the effect of the highest efcient cause on lower things through efcient causality and form.The
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QD de anima 6.obj. 10: Praeterea, agens ad hoc necessarium est ut reducat aliquid de potentia in actum. Sed reduci de potentia in actum competit solum illis in quibus est materia et forma. Si igitur anima non sit composita ex materia et forma non indiget causa agente; quod patet esse falsum. And the ad 10: Ad decimum dicendum quod agens per motum reducit aliquid de potentia in actum; agens autem sine motu non reducit aliquid de potentia in actum, sed facit esse actu quod secundum naturam est in potentia ad esse, et huiusmodi agens est creans.

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creator uses form as his instrument in giving being to things. This is hardly a part of the doctrine of being to be neglected. God Is Not in a Genus Kenny does consider what is said of God in the next chapter. He says that Thomas, in reporting that there are philosophers who have said that God has no essence, is saying that this is correct if all it means is that he does not have an essence that is distinct from his esse (46). In fact Thomas says nothing about their being correct. He simply reports what leads some people to make such a statement. I think it is a good moment to repeat that at the very outset of De ente et essentia Thomas taught that essence is found most truly and nobly in God (just as esse is so found there).87 Kenny devotes only one sentence to the point that God is not in a genus. Oddly, he even provides a different argument than the one found in the text he is reading, mentioning Thomass argument only in a footnote. Kenny in his main text says:God does not fall under any genus; no doubt God and creatures are both beings, but being does not denote a genus (4647). Here Kenny is touching upon the second of three arguments given in the ST I, q. 3, a. 5.88 However, the argument that Thomas uses here in the De ente et essentia and that is still given as third argument in the same ST article (and in fact comes rst and second in the Summa contra Gentiles) he nds puzzling.89 The actual text of Thomas runs:
And from this [viz. the fact that Gods essence is his very own esse] it follows that he is not in a genus, since the quiddity or nature of a genus or species is not distinguished in function of the intelligibility of the nature in those things whose genus or species it is, whereas esse is diverse in diverse things.90

Kenny quotes in a footnote only the part of the text I have blackened. His comment, in the footnote, is this: But surely two different species of
87

88 89

90

This is worth pointing out when one is dealing with a critic who seems utterly incapable of appreciating that in God the act of being or existence could be such as to verify in the maximal way what one here calls essence. It is the last of four arguments given on the point in SCG 1.25. Kenny, 47, n. 29.The De ente et essentia argument is related to the point made in the entire Summa contra Gentiles 1.24, that a thing in a genus exists in act only as designated by an essential difference, and in 1.25, the rst three arguments of four. De ente et essentia 5, emphasis added, Leonine lines 814: Et ex hoc sequitur quod ipse non sit in genere; quia omne quod est in genere oportet quod habeat quiditatem preter esse suum, cum quiditas uel natura generis aut speciei non distinguatur secundum rationem nature in illis quorum est genus uel species, sed esse est diuersum in diuersis.

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animalcats and dogs, for exampledo differ in nature and not just in esse. Kenny again has failed to cope with the text.Thomas is not denying that cats and dogs have different natures. If anything, he is afrming it! Take a genus, viz.animal; it is said of both cats and dogs, and if one asks for its meaning, the same reply is given for both.Thus, the nature of the genus, as such, does not differ in those admittedly diverse things, cats and dogs. Again, take a species:cat; it is said of both Sylvester and Krazy Kat. If one asks what is meant by their being cats, the answer is the same for both, yet the two cats are different as to the actuality of being. In short,Thomas is not saying that the specic natures do not differ from each other; he is saying that the species is said in common of the individuals of that species, which individuals differ from each other; and the genus is said in common of the diverse species, which indeed are diverse from each other. To take the genus as divided by its species is to take the genus as it actually exists. The De ente et essentia argument is beautifully spelled out already in the earlier Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 1.8.4.2, and attributed to Avicenna:
The third argument [to prove that God is not in the category of substance], more subtle [than the two previous] is that of Avicenna. Everything which is in a genus has a quiddity differing from esse: for example, a man: for humanity by the mere fact that it is humanity, does not necessitate existing actually [esse in actu]: for humanity can be conceived and nevertheless it remain unknown whether some particular man exists.And the reason for this is that the common item which is predicated of those which are in the genus predicates the quiddity, since the genus and the species are predicated as to what the thing is; but being [esse] is not owed to that quiddity save inasmuch as it is received in this or that. And therefore the quiddity of the genus or the species is not had in common in function of one esse for all, but only in function of one common intelligibility. Hence, it is clear that its esse is not its quiddity. But in God, his esse is his quiddity; otherwise it would happen to the quiddity, and thus would be acquired for him from another, and he would not have esse through his own essence. And therefore God cannot be in some genus.91
91

Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 1.8.4.2: Tertia ratio subtilior est Avicennae. Omne quod est in genere, habet quidditatem differentem ab esse, sicut homo; humanitati enim ex hoc quod est humanitas, non debetur esse in actu; potest enim cogitari humanitas et tamen ignorari an aliquis homo sit. Et ratio hujus est, quia commune, quod praedicatur de his quae sunt in genere, praedicat quidditatem, cum genus et species praedicentur in eo quod quid est. Illi autem quidditati non debetur esse nisi per hoc quod suscepta est in hoc vel in illo. Et ideo quidditas generis vel speciei non communicatur secundum unum esse omnibus, sed solum secundum unam rationem communem. Unde constat quod esse

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Notice how thoroughly this chimes in with the De ente et essentia setting. And Kenny nds it puzzling (47n29)! God is not common being Next Kenny comes to the point about Gods esse not being esse commune. In the De ente et essentia we read:
Nor need it be, if we say that God is being alone [esse tantum], that we fall into the error of those who say that God is that universal being [esse universale] by which any being whatsoever formally is; for this esse which God is is of this condition, viz. that no addition can be made to it; hence, by virtue of its very own purity it is esse which is distinct from every [other] esse. For this reason it is said in the Book of Causes, proposition 9, that the individuation of the rst cause, which is being alone, is through its pure goodness. On the other hand, the common esse, just as in its notion it includes no addition, so also in its notion it does not include exclusion of addition; if that were not so, nothing could be understood to be in which, besides esse, something would be added.92

Kennys problem now (47) is that he cannot see how esse here, as said of God, can mean existence, as the context would seem to require.This is because he focuses on the divine esse, as that to which no addition can be made. He does so because he attempts to formulate what we mean when we say that God exists. Our question must be: Does he distinguish two meanings of God exists?, as, for example, we see in Summa contra Gentiles 1.12.7 and in ST I, q. 3, a. 4, ad 2. In fact, he does not, and that is why he has so much trouble here. He is talking about esse as
suum non est quidditas sua. In deo autem esse suum est quidditas sua; aliter enim accideret quidditati, et ita esset acquisitum sibi ab alio, et non haberet esse per essentiam suam. Et ideo deus non potest esse in aliquo genere. Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 1.8.2.3: expositio primae partae textus, [Mandonnet, 20910] also includes the Intellectus essentiae argument. It even has God in a genus all by himself! (explaining Hilary). De ente et essentia 5 [Leonine lines 1529]: Nec oportet, si dicimus quod deus est esse tantum, ut in illorum errorem incidamus, qui deum dixerunt esse illud esse universale, quo quaelibet res formaliter est. Hoc enim esse, quod deus est, huius condicionis est, ut nulla sibi additio eri possit ; unde per ipsam suam puritatem est esse distinctum ab omni esse. Propter quod in commento IX propositionis Libri de causis dicitur quod individuatio primae causae, quae est esse tantum, est per puram bonitatem eius. esse autem commune sicut in intellectu suo non includit aliquam additionem, ita non includit in intellectu suo praecisionem additionis; quia si hoc esset, nihil posset intelligi esse, in quo super esse aliquid adderetur. [emphasis added]

92

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related to the truth of a proposition, and Thomas here is speaking of Gods act of being as identical with his essence. In fact,Thomas makes this clear when speaking of the esse said commonly of things here: He speaks of it as by which formally every thing is. He is speaking of something formal within the thing itself, and not merely of the esse, which is used in replying to the question: Does it exist?93 The Individuation of the Human Soul Kenny takes a quick look at the doctrine of the individuation of the human soul, as presented in De ente et essentia at this point, which passage of De ente et essentia reads:
[there is no multiplication of individuals within one species in created intellectual substances] save in the human soul, on account of the body to which it is united.And though its individuation depends on the body as the occasion for its beginning, because individuated esse is not acquired by it save in the body whose act it is, nevertheless it is not necessary that, the body being taken away, the individuation perish, because since [the human soul] has absolute esse, by the very fact that individuated esse has been acquired for it inasmuch as it has been produced as the form of this body, that esse remains always individuated. And therefore Avicenna says that the individuation or multiplication of souls depends on the body as far as its beginning is concerned, but not as concerns its end.94

Kenny suggests that Thomas is referring to the idea that the effects of a cause may remain after the cause has disappeared (48). The reason for this judgment is clearly that Kenny is mistranslating. He quotes only part of the argument, and he translates:
cum habeat esse absolutum, ex quo acquisitum est sibi esse individuatum ex hoc quod facta est forma huius corporis, illud esse semper remanet individuatum.
93

94

The distinction in meanings of esse is discussed in more detail than in the De ente et essentia c. 1 in Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 2.34.1.1, on the existence of the bad. Emphasis added. De ente et essentia 5 [Leonine lines 5871]: nisi in anima humana propter corpus, cui unitur. Et licet individuatio eius ex corpore occasionaliter dependeat quantum ad sui inchoationem, quia non acquiritur sibi esse individuatum nisi in corpore, cuius est actus, non tamen oportet ut subtracto corpore individuatio pereat, quia cum habeat esse absolutum, ex quo acquisitum est sibi esse individuatum ex hoc quod facta est forma huius corporis, illud esse semper remanet individuatum. Et ideo dicit Avicenna quod individuatio animarum vel multiplicatio dependet ex corpore quantum ad sui principium, sed non quantum ad sui nem. [emphasis added]

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as:
Though it has absolute esse by acquiring individuated esse as the form of this body, its esse always remains individuated.

Though he uses a capital letter to begin (both in his translation and in the Latin in footnote 31), in fact he is breaking into the sentence. The whole argument is needed so as to stress, rst of all, the fact that the body is the mere occasion for the souls acquiring its individuated being. Thomas obviously carefully chose the word occasionaliter to characterize the role of the body in this situation. It is the occasion because the soul only acquires individuated esse by coming to be as the act of the body; but St.Thomas then hastens to add that this does not entail that its individuation perishes if the body is removed.The reason this is so is:
because, since it has absolute esse, once that individuated esse is acquired for it inasmuch as it is made as the form of this body, that esse will always remain individuated.

that is, the insistence is on the absoluteness of the esse that has been acquired.95 Accordingly, Thomas is not making a reference to the idea that an effect can remain after its cause has disappeared (like a house after the builder leaves?).96 The reason that the soul remains individuated is that the individuated esse it has obtained in being made as the form of this body is an absolute act of being.97 Thus, the soul remains in its own
95

96

97

Armand Maurer, in his translation, On Being and Essence (Toronto: PIMS, 1949), 52, has: Although the souls individuation depends on the body for the occasion of its beginning, since it comes into possession of its individuated act of existing only in the body of which it is the act, it is not necessary that the individuation come to an end when the body is removed. Since its act of existing is independent, once it has acquired an individual act of existing from its being made the form of this particular body, that act of existing always remains individuated. [emphasis added] In fact, as is well-known,Thomass conception of causality is such that the effect cannot remain if the cause is removed.That the builder can leave and the house remain means that the builder is not the cause of being of the house, but only the cause of its coming to be: cf. e.g., ST I, q. 104, a. 1. Notice that translation of St.Thomas can require some adaptability. At De ente et essentia 5, lines 4748, he uses the adjective absolutum in contrast to receptum in order to distinguish the esse of creatures from that of God: Gods esse is all by itself, not received in something. At line 65, he uses absolutum concerning the human souls esse, in order to deny any dependence on the body for its existence.

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being, with a relation to a body. Kenny should have paid more attention to the word occasionaliter. Union with the body is the occasion for the individuation of the soul; the body is not a sort of physical cause of the individuation of the soul. I make this last remark because Kenny says:
This [the idea that the body is the cause of the individuation, but the effect can remain when the cause is no longer there] seems to involve an insouciant passage from one kind of causation to a very different kind. Individuation is surely something logically prior to relationships between physical causes and effects. (48)

Kenny is the one who has introduced the whole system of causes and effects he is placing individuation before. He is simply not coming to grips with the text (having taken the cum for a though instead of a since). He should have looked at such a text as the earlier Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 1.8.5.2, ad 6, as well as the whole article. The individuation of the human soul is not ex corpore, that is, is not caused by the body, though it is acquired in corpore, in the body.98 This concludes our look at De ente et essentia. There really seems no hope for much better from Kenny, but I will touch a few other points just to be sure. A Visit to the Summa contra Gentiles The Anselmian Argument Already, in the remarks on Thomass treatment of the Anselmian argument, we see the Kenny weakness as to Thomass doctrine concerning God as Ipsum esse subsistens. On page 84, concerning Aquinass presentation of Anselms Proslogion 2 argument, rstly, I do not agree with the Kenny criticism of the presentation of the Anselmian argument.While it is true that Thomas, in formulating the argument, does not use the literal form of the self-contradiction that is involved in saying that that than which a greater cannot be thought does not have being outside the mind, he does use the very meaning of God to say that one cannot say it exists only in the mind and not in things. The argument is the same. I would concede that Anselms own formulation is more arresting or dramatic.
98

Of course, later texts are also clear: cf. SC 9.ad 4; and DA 1.ad 2. I would grant that in Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 1.8.5.2, ad 6 there appears to be a minor textual difculty. Near the beginning the text speaks of the individuation as ex corpore, but this is clearly rejected in the detailed explanation.

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Most of all I disagree with what Kenny says about Thomass view of the meaning of the name:that than which a greater cannot be thought. He claims Thomas is saying it is intrinsically incoherent, and Kenny says it is probably the case, like the greatest possible natural number. If Kenny thinks Thomas means this, Kenny is quite wrong. For Thomas, the Anselmian formula has nothing wrong with it, and rightly is said of God (though not as the meaning of the word God). However, the God so characterized is not available to the human mind as an immediately evident existent.The human being needs a demonstration that there is a that than which a greater cannot be thought. When he comes to Thomass point about the existence of God being per se nota in itself but not to us, he accuses Thomas of confusing being with existence (85), but it is he himself who is confused as to the ambiguity of existence.That it be the same item by which one answers the question does he exist? and what is he? is true in the unique case of God. It is also true that we cannot know Gods esse any more than his quiddity.We know his effects and can conclude to the truth that there is a God.And, of course, such a cause must be an extra-mental existent, not a privation, etc.What we know is the truth of the conclusion that couples God and real existence. Eventually we can even conclude that in God there must be identity of essence and existence. Ipsum Esse Subsistens Revisited Kenny rightly spends time on Summa contra Gentiles 1.22, that in God there is no essence other than his esse. Let us examine his discussion of one of the arguments, described by Kenny as Thomass longest argument. He is referring to Pera edition no. 207, the third of the six arguments, based on God being the rst cause, itself having no cause. Thomass argument is actually very simple and one that he often uses. Since the divine essence is simple, if the esse is other than it, it cannot be a part of the essence; it must be a sort of attachment. Such an attachment belongs to a thing only through a cause. If the cause is other than God himself, he will not be the rst cause, itself uncaused. But if the cause is the essence itself, what follows? The essence is [that is, exists] in virtue of that esse.Thus, the essence will be cause of its own existence, something obviously impossible since it would have to be prior to itself. I put the one sentence in italic letters because I notice immediately (100) that Kenny has once more mistranslated the text.The text has: Essentia autem est secundum illud esse. Kenny translates it as The essence is determined by the esse. Obviously, the proper translation is: The essence is in virtue of that esse. And it thus continues: it follows that something is for

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its own self the cause of being.The argument itself should have suggested the translation.99 Now, Kennys problem with the argument has to do precisely with this mistranslation. He asks what is meant by saying that the essence is determined by esse. He interprets it to mean not, clearly, that essence is determined by existence, but that to have a certain essence is to have a certain kind of being, to be in a certain way. Now, again, this is not what Thomas means, even though it is true.This interpretation of Kennys comes down to saying that the essence determines the act of being, something Thomas teaches,100 but that is not his point here. His point here is that through esse the essence is, that is, exists.This is not merely the exists that answers the question is it?This is the actuality of the essence, and is the most perfect act; thus, in Summa contra Gentiles 2, we read:
Since every agent activates [agat] inasmuch as it is in act, therefore it belongs to the rst agent, which is most perfect, to be in act in the most perfect way. . . . Now, the most perfect act [ipse actus perfectissimus] . . . is esse, at which all generation and all change has its terminus: for every form and every act is in potency until it acquires esse. Therefore, to God alone does it belong that he be being itself [ipsum esse]: just as [to him] alone does it belong that he be the rst agent.101

It is the very contribution proper to an efcient cause that is meant by esse. It is the existence of the nature. (On the other hand, the exist that answers the question does it exist? can apply even to blindness and other privations, even though they have no essence and so no act of being or existence.) Kenny read the determination of the essence by esse as not, of course, one of efcient causality; it is a conceptual determination. On the contrary, the esse here is the proper effect of the efcient cause. A thing whose essence is not its esse is a thing that requires an efcient cause in order to be or exist. In fact, the argument Kenny is discussing here, though he does not
99

100

101

The sentence is correctly translated by Anton Pegis: cf. On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Book One: God (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955), 1.22 (para. 6): the essence is through that being. Cf. e.g., SCG 2.52: Esse autem, inquantum est esse, non potest esse diversum; potest autem diversicari per aliquid quod est praeter esse; sicut esse lapidis est aliud ab esse hominis. [The [act of] being, precisely as such, cannot be diverse; but it can be diversied by something which is other than [the act of] being: the way that being a stone is diverse from being a human being.] SCG 2.52 (1279).

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know it, really is a repeat of the argument in the De ente et essentia, c. 4, where Thomas is explicit about it being a matter of efcient causality:
Everything that belongs to something either is caused by the principles of its own nature: as capability of laughter in man, or else comes to it from some extrinsic principle: as light in air from the inuence of the sun. However, it cannot be the case that being itself [ipsum esse] be caused by the very form or quiddity of the thing (I mean, as by an efcient cause), because then some thing would be cause of its own self, and some thing would produce itself in existence [esse]: which is impossible.102

This is the argument again given in rst place in the ST I, q. 3, a. 4 (corpus articuli), absolutely central to Thomass doctrine of being. Thus, once more Kenny has failed to understand the argument. He has not made contact with Thomas Aquinas on this at all. Indeed, after reading the section on Summa contra Gentiles 1.22, I have concluded that Kenny does not understand it at all. His rejection of the arguments is worthless. We now come to c. 23, the topic of which is that in God there is no accident. In it God is spoken of as ipsum esse [that is, Ipsum esse subsistens]. Kenny contends that the thesis has been changed here. Previously (here in Summa contra Gentiles), we were saying that God is his esse, whereas now God is said to be esse itself. It is certainly true that the thesis of the previous chapter was expressed almost entirely as in God the esse and the essence are identical or that God is his esse.We notice there, nevertheless, that the conrmation of the thesis at the end of the chapter, with the citation of Boethius, is that God is ipsum esse and that from him is esse (1.22). Still, does any argument in 1.22 lead one to expect that God is esse itself? If there is one that prepares the reader for this, it is the last, not discussed by Kenny:
Every thing is through this, that it has esse.Therefore, no thing whose essence is not its esse is by its very essence, but rather by participation in something, viz. in esse itself [ipsius esse]. But that which is through participation in something cannot be the rst being [primum ens], because that which something participates in order to be is prior to it.
102

De ente et essentia 4 (lines 12735) [my stress]: Omne autem quod convenit alicui vel est causatum ex principiis naturae suae, sicut risibile in homine, vel advenit ab aliquo principio extrinseco, sicut lumen in aere ex inuentia solis. Non autem potest esse quod ipsum esse sit causatum ab ipsa forma vel quiditate rei (dico sicut a causa efciente) quia sic aliqua res esset sui ipsius causa et aliqua res seipsam in esse produceret, quod est impossibile.

Anthony Kennys St.Thomas on Being But God is the rst being, to which nothing is prior. Therefore, the essence of God is his esse (1.22).

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Even though this merely concludes that God is his esse, it is obvious that esse is here being taken along the lines of a common nature that can exist either in its purity, that is, as an essence, or as something participated.Thus, it emerges that the esse of God is ipsum esse, that is, that it is esse as having the status of an essence. Quite explicitly, this depends on God being proved to exist as the rst being, something established in an argument in 1.13, which Kenny left out of the discussion.There God was seen as maxime ens, that is, the being having most of all the status of a being. Of course, we will get further information about God being ipsum esse as we go along, but it is not true that it did not get into 1.22. Here in 1.23 the point is that there can be no accidents in God.The argument that leads off, and on which Kenny is focusing, is as follows:
Esse itself cannot participate in something which is not of its essence, though that which is can participate in something else. [The reason is] that nothing is more formal or more simple than esse.And thus esse itself cannot participate in anything. But the divine substance is esse itself. Hence, it has nothing that is not of its own substance. Therefore, no accident can inhere in it.103

This is practically a quotation from Boethiuss De hebdomadibus or Thomass commentary on it (already discussed by Kenny). Kenny asks about the meaning of this argument. He says, It cannot mean that God is pure existence, as is widely recognized by philosophers (105). In support of this, seemingly, Kenny refers us to Christopher Hughes, and Norman Kretzmann approving of Hughes. He adds that the reason for this impossibility is not that pure existence would be too thin a predicate (the reason given by the other two), but that it is not a predicate at all. Thomas himself means something which Kretzmann, Hughes, and Kenny have not caught sight of.104 I would again stress the ambiguity of existence, which can mean either the answer to whether it exists or signify the act of the essence.Existence as truth sign is, indeed, too thin.
103 104

SCG 1.23. I criticize Kretzmann and Hughes in Review of Norman Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Theism, in EIDOS 14 (1997): 97121. I will return to them in a forthcoming article in Nova et Vetera, St. Thomas, Norman Kretzmann, and Divine Freedom in Creating.

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It expresses no essence at all. That is why it is said of blindness. On the other hand, the act of existence is the actuality of the essence, and is the most perfect act, as we saw above.105 Kenny says pure esse; this is his translation of ipsum esse, which more literally is esse itself. Still, there is nothing wrong with saying pure esse, provided it is clear that it can be identical with pure essence (and indeed with essence at its most authentic). The expression esse purum does occur once, at least, in Thomass writings, in his Super librum de causis expositio, lect. 9. where the esse of the rst cause is said to be pure rather than participated. Kenny is wondering how to conceive of it. The way, I would say, is to develop a hierarchical picture starting from below (actually, this is already underway with a distinction between potency and act: Act has more of the nature of esse than potency has).106 In fact, an efcient causal hierarchy involves lower and higher modes of esse. Thus, one eventually develops a trajectory toward an act of being that is not received in anything, but rather is pure. One is not supposed to be able to imagine it, as such; it is not an object of imagination. Indeed, as the essence of God, the constant lesson is that it is humanly inconceivable. We know that there is such a thing, but we do not know it in the mode of knowing what a thing is. Thomas presents the overall project of climbing to Ipsum esse subsistens time after time in his writings, from beginning to end of his career.Thus, at the very beginning of the Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, asking whether there is one God,Thomas presents the following argument:
It is necessary that every nature which is found in many instances according to priority and posteriority descend from one rst in which it is had
105 106

SCG 2.52. On the esse had by that which has no essence, and so is thin and no predicate in Kennys sense, cf. ST I, q. 48, a. 1, and 2, ad 2. Cf. SCG 3.7 and 9. De substantiis separatis c. 7: the more something has of the nature of being [de ratione essendi], the higher it is among beings. But it is evident that, while being [ens] is divided by potency and act, act is more perfect than potency and has more of the nature of being: for we do not say of that which is in potency: it is, unqualiedly; [we say that] only of that which is actually. Therefore, it is necessary that that which is higher among beings attain more to act, but that which is lower among beings be closer to potency. (tanto aliquid in entibus est altius, quanto magis habet de ratione essendi. Manifestum est autem quod cum ens per potentiam et actum dividatur, quod actus est potentia perfectior, et magis habet de ratione essendi: non enim simpliciter esse dicimus quod est in potentia, sed solum quod est actu. Oportet igitur id quod est superius in entibus, magis accedere ad actum; quod autem est in entibus inmum, propinquius esse potentiae.) [emphasis added]

Anthony Kennys St.Thomas on Being perfectly: for unity in the effect attests to unity in the source: as all heat originates in one thing which is hottest, which is re. But entity [entitas] is found in many according to priority and posteriority. Therefore, it is necessary that there be one rst most perfect being [ens] from which all beings have being [esse]; and this is God.Therefore, there is one God.107

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This is repeated at the beginning of book 2, where the topic is creation, and it is asked whether there is one rst principle of all things.108 One sees it again in the presentation of the overall metaphysical project in another youthful work,Thomass Commentary on Boethiuss De trinitate.Thomas is explaining that metaphysics is about things that are without matter or change. In order to present a hierarchy of more and more universal causes, he says:
the principles of the accidents are reduced to the principles of substances, and the principles of corruptible substances are reduced to the incorruptible substances, and thus by a stepwise order all beings are traced back to certain principles.And because that which is the principle of all beings must be maximally a being, as is said in Metaphysics 2, therefore such principles must be most complete, and for that reason they must be maximally in act, such that they have nothing or little of potency: because act is prior and more powerful that potency, as is said in Metaphysics 9. And for that reason they must be without matter, which is in potency, and without change, which is the act of what exists in potency.And such are divine things, because if the divine exists anywhere, it exists most of all in such an immaterial and unchangeable nature, as is said in Metaphysics 6.109
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108 109

Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 1.2.1.1.sed contra 1 [Mandonnet, 5960]: omnis natura quae invenitur in pluribus secundum prius et posterius, oportet quod descendat ab uno primo, in quo perfecte habeatur. Unitas enim principiati attestatur unitati principii, sicut omnis calor originatur ab uno calidissimo, quod est ignis. Sed entitas invenitur in pluribus secundum prius et posterius. Ergo oportet esse unum primum ens perfectissimum, a quo omnia entia habent esse, et hic est deus. Est igitur unus deus. In the context the arguments sed contra are approved by Thomas. Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 2.1.1.1 (Mandonnet, 1213): It is the second of three arguments in the body of the article. In De trin. 5.4: principia accidentium reducuntur in principia substantiae et principia substantiarum corruptibilium reducuntur in substantias incorruptibiles, et sic quodam gradu et ordine in quaedam principia omnia entia reducuntur. Et quia id, quod est principium essendi omnibus, oportet esse maxime ens, ut dicitur in II metaphysicae, ideo huiusmodi principia oportet esse completissima, et propter hoc oportet ea esse maxime actu, ut nihil vel

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In short, there is no shortage of presentations of ontological hierarchy based on efcient causal hierarchy in Thomas. I generally begin such discussion by considering how the being up high of a book depends on the being up high of my hand, holding the book on high.The one existence ows from, depends on, the other.This relates to the nature of the book and of the hand, as regards being sources of efcient causality. Kenny, in footnote 32, page 109, concerning Summa contra Gentiles 1.30, on the words we use about God, speaks of Thomas speaking of Platonic subsistent forms. In fact, there is no mention of such beings in the chapter. One must assume that any reference to subsisting form is Platonic for Kenny. Kenny speaks of Thomas ruling out the subsistent form Kenny is speaking of only because of the imperfection of sublunar entities. All this is very hard to make correspond to the discussion in chapter 30.Thomas does say there that our minds have a way of understanding and speaking that is suited to things composed of form and matter.This, of course, is not merely sublunar entities, since for Thomas the heavens were matter/form composites. Thomas teaches that the human soul is a subsistent form, and so are the angels.Thomas certainly is afrming the existence of wisdom, goodness, and being, just in themselves subsisting. This is his doctrine concerning God. Such an entity is not necessarily Platonic.What is rejected by Thomas is the Platonic way of establishing the existence of immaterial reality, whether secondary or supreme. Now, how a things existence is established has a great deal to do with what one ends up talking about. This is presented especially in De substantiis separatis, one of St. Thomass most mature and thorough presentations of ontology. Thomas there rejects the very root of the Platonic approach to separate entity.This is not discussed by Kenny. Obviously, Thomas thinks there is much to commend in Plato, even though he criticizes him.110 Nevertheless, he takes an Aristotelian approach to separate entity, including God. Aristotle, in the Metaphysics, teaches that there is one principle of the entire universe, and that it is
minimum habeant de potentia, quia actus est prior et potior potentia, ut dicitur in IX metaphysicae. Et propter hoc oportet ea esse absque materia, quae est in potentia, et absque motu, qui est actus exsistentis in potentia. Et huiusmodi sunt res divinae; quia si divinum alicubi exsistit, in tali natura, immateriali scilicet et immobili, maxime exsistit, ut dicitur in VI metaphysicae. Thus, in De potentia 3.5 Plato is presented along with Aristotle and Avicenna as among those philosophers who attained to a consideration of universal being and its need of a cause; we see the same thing in ST I, q. 44, a. 1, in Commentary on Aristotles Physics 8.2 [5], and in the De substantiis separatis 3.

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good.111 Its simplicity and primacy certainly would merit it being designated linguistically by the abstract form, as discussed in Summa contra Gentiles 1.30: that is, that it need not merely be called good or the highest good, or the source of all good, but indeed could well be called goodness itself.Thomass general appeal to a philosophical predecessor as regards climbing to being itself subsisting is Aristotle, as presenting a hierarchy of being as being, especially in Metaphysics 2.112 Kenny ends his chapter on the Summa contra Gentiles with 2.28, comparing esse to whiteness, with the idea that whiteness, if separately subsisting, would have all the power of whiteness. Kenny sees this whiteness as a Platonic Idea and concludes that for Thomas esse is a Platonic idea.This is not true. It is certainly true that Thomas sees some truth in Plato speaking about the highest Ideas. However,Thomas does not think that one arrives at the existence of esse subsisting by a Platonic route. One cannot make an adequate judgment of the meaning and suitability of Thomass doctrine of esse without considering how it is arrived at.There is little sign of Kenny ever having done so. As we come to the end of the treatment of Summa contra Gentiles, I repeat that it is amazing that Kenny chose to omit 2.5255, which bear on the most important and fundamental ontological issues. It is interesting that there is no mention of the Qq. de anima, with their many interesting ontological considerations. We also have from this period the Divine Names commentary, of which nothing is said.113
111

112 113

On the rst principle as immaterial and pure act, cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics 12.6 (1071b1722); 12.7 (1072a2426);Thomas, Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 12.5 (249599) and 12.6 (2518); on the rst principle as both end and agent, good and unique, 12.10 (1075a38b1; b810; 1076a34); Thomas, Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 12.12 (26445; 2648 and 266263). Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics 2.1 (993b1931); Thomas, Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 2.2 (28998). Thomass Divine Names is notable, besides the more important reasons, for using the vocabulary of existentia for esse at many points.This is simply because of options exercised by the translation of Dionysius that he is using. It would not be of any signicance were it not that Kenny has trouble understanding that existence can name a formal perfection in things themselves. Cf. for example, DN 5.1(628): Thirdly, to the note of being [essendi] pertains generation, which is change [terminating] at being [esse]; and so [Dionysius] adds that God is generation, [speaking] causally, for all items generated in whatever degree: because he confers generation on all, as is said in Isaiah 66 [verse 9]. And thus it is clear that from the rst existent itself [ex ipso primo existente], which is God, are caused perpetuity [aevum], which is the measure of being, and also substance, which is that which exists through itself [per se existente], and

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A Visit to the De potentia In his chapter on De potentia, Kenny again comes to the argument for God not being in a genus. In De potentia 7.3 it is the rst of the three arguments that interests Kenny, and which he thinks presents esse in a way contrary to what we have been seeing. It runs:
[God cannot be in a genus] because nothing is located in a genus in function of its esse, but by reason of its quiddity; this is clear on this basis, that the esse of each thing is proper to it, and distinct from the esse of any other thing, whereas the intelligibility of the substance can be common; for that reason, also, the Philosopher says that being [ens] is not a genus. But God is his very esse; hence, he cannot be in a genus.114

Now, what bothers Kenny is that we have seen esse presented as most common of all, and the above has esse as diverse in diverse things. Is it common or individual? In fact, the doctrine being presented is not new in the De potentia. It harkens back to De ente et essentia 5, that God cannot be in a genus because his essence is esse, and things in a genus or species must have diversity of essence and esse; this is because esse is diverse in diverse things, whereas a generic or specic quiddity is not distinguished as regards the intelligibility of the nature in the things of which it is predicated.115 And Thomas repeats this in ST I:
All those things which are in one genus have in common the quiddity or essence of the genus, which is predicated of them as to what they are. However they differ in function of being [esse]: for the being of a man and of a horse are not the same, nor of this man and of that man. And thus it is necessary that for whatever things are in a genus, there differs in them being and what it is, that is, essence. But in God these do not differ, as has been shown.116
everything which exists in whatever way [omne existens quocumque modo]; and again, by God is caused that which is the measure of change, and generation itself and that which is generated, and not only are existents themselves [ipsa existentia] caused by God, but also whatever are in existents [in existentibus], such as parts and natural properties and those which in any ways either inhere, as accidents, or have the role of subject, as substances. De potentia 7.3: quia nihil ponitur in genere secundum esse suum, sed ratione quidditatis suae; quod ex hoc patet, quia esse uniuscuiusque est ei proprium, et distinctum ab esse cuiuslibet alterius rei; sed ratio substantiae potest esse communis: propter hoc etiam philosophus dicit, quod ens non est genus. Deus autem est ipsum suum esse: unde non potest esse in genere. [emphasis added] De ente et essentia 5 (lines 814).We saw earlier that Kenny, 47, n. 29, misunderstood this text. ST I, q. 3, a. 5.

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Still, the question is a good one. If both the generic nature and the esse are common, why is it that whereas the generic nature is the same as predicated of two individuals belonging to the genus, the esse of each individual is diverse from the esse of the other? I believe that the answer is to be found in a contrast between particularity of form and universality of form.117 Even though a generic nature is universal, it is a particular nature as compared to the nature of being.118 Being is, as we know, the proper effect of the highest or most universal cause.119 Thus, its proper inuence extends to everything whatsoever that is in the thing, including the matter as individuating.120 Accordingly, esse is the absolutely completive actuality, embracing everything within a thing.121 Thus, it is the subsisting thing as such that is that which itself has esse.122 The particular form is a merely instrumental cause relative to the efcient causes conferring of esse on the thing.And the efcient cause of which we are primarily speaking is not merely the particular cause of generation, but the cause of creation/conservation.123 The act of being has the mode of a nature or essence only in the rst efcient cause, and thus is present only by participation in all else.124 It is diversied by its receivers. Moreover, as the proper effect of the most universal cause, it is most deeply within all its recipients, and so is the proper perfection of the supposit, the thing in its totality, the concrete thing. In material things it thus is diverse numerically from individual to individual. In this way it stands in contrast to particular common natures such as constitute things in genera and species, and which have an intrinsic formal

117

118 119 120 121 122 123

124

Let us recall that esse is what is most formal of all, having the role of an item received in a receiver: ST I, q. 4, a. 1, ad 3, and I, q. 7, a. 1.This relates to the identication of form and rst actuality; it pertains to rst actuality to be in its subject [cf. Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 9.5 (1828)], and esse is most intrinsic of all perfections: ST I, q. 8, a. 1: esse is that which is most within any thing, and most deeply inheres in all, since it is formal with respect to all [items] that are in a thing. ST I, q. 19, a. 6. ST III, q. 66, a. 5, ad 3. ST I, q. 44, a. 2, ad 3. Quodl. 12.5.1. ST I, q. 45, a. 4. Another most helpful text for understanding the doctrine of esse is SCG 3.66, that nothing gives esse save as acting under the inuence of the divine power. This might have helped Kenny. ST I, q. 44, a. 1 and again Quodl. 12.5.1.

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diversity.125 They are considered in themselves inasmuch as they are abstracted from being, and so are predicated commonly of all the relevant individuals. However, when considered according to being, they are seen as individuated by the supposit, just as the act of being is. The argument of the text we are here considering takes the common nature as predicated of the individuals: Thus, it is taken in itself absolutely, and thus is taken as abstracting from the act of being (as was explained in De ente et essentia).126 This is then contrasted with the consideration of the same nature taken according to being, that is, as actually found in the supposit, where along with the act of being it has individual distinction from all other instances of that particular nature. The question raised by Kenny is helpful, though it might have been raised already with the text of the De ente et essentia, which Kenny found puzzling. It helps to bring out the difference between the two sorts of formal and received metaphysical targets of attention, the act of being, on the one hand, and the particular forms, on the other.We nowhere experience the act of being with the kind of intellectual experience we have of particular form. It has the status of essence only in God, who is beyond our properly quidditative knowledge. It obtains diversication only in receivers. It is the proper perfection of the thing taken as complete, that is, the supposit.This, I would say, helps explain why there is the possibility of confusing what is meant by saying that blindness exists and what is meant by saying that existence is the proper effect of the efcient cause and the terminus of generation and all becoming. Both have a certain facelessness, but for different reasons. A Visit to the Summa theologiae Anselm Revisited Kenny (132) declares his primary interest in questions 2 and 3. Let us then see what he does with question 2. He begins by criticizing the rejection of the Anselmian position. Kenny again fails to appreciate Thomass position. Thus, he now says that Thomas fails to consider that the notion of that than which a greater cannot be thought is incoher125

126

I take this point from Johannes Capreolus, Defensiones theologiae divi Thomae Aquinatis [C. Paban and T. Pgues, ed. (Turonibus: Alfred Cattier, 1900), vol. I, 305b306a]. This was a primary teaching of De ente et essentia 3 (ed. Leonine, lines 2672): The nature of man, e.g., absolutely considered, abstracts from every esse whatsoever, in such a way that it does not exclude its having esse happen to it; and it is the nature so considered that is predicated of all individuals.

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ent (133). In fact, as we have already pointed out, Thomass position is that God is indeed that than which a greater cannot be thought; that is what is demonstrated in Summa theologiae I, q. 7, a. 1 (the divine innity of being). This should be clear from the approach, in ST I, q. 2, a. 1, in terms of self-evidence in itself but not to us. Just as the article looks ahead to the doctrine that Gods essence is Ipsum esse subsistens, a point that for us requires demonstration, so also in Thomass notion of God it is clear that he is unqualiedly innite (ST I, q. 7, a. 1), and thus is that than which a greater cannot be thought;127 but for us, the existence of such a thing requires demonstration, not because of the notion, but because of the nature of human access to reality.128 Thomas gives exactly the right answer for someone afrming the metaphysics he does. Admittedly, the appropriateness of his answer is better seen as one goes on to the next article, on what is involved in a demonstration of existence. If there is a genuine question of existence, one must start with the meaning of a name, that is, with a mere verbal formula.129 Thomas thus treats that than which etc. as a verbal formula similar to goat-stag; we know what it means, but we do not know whether there is such a thing, since all we have is a verbal formula. I suggest that Kennys criticisms of Thomass approach here reveal his failure to take seriously the body of the article and its epistemological implications. Kenny actually notes the point about starting with the meaning of a name, not about a genuine what the thing is, where the question is whether the thing exists (134), but he fails to see the relevance of that to the way Thomas handled the Anselmian argument. The Third Way Coming to ST I, q. 2, a. 3, the demonstrations of the existence of a God, Kenny chooses to speak about the third and fourth ways, as pertaining to the theory of being.While we might note that he would do well to pay more attention to the metaphysics of efcient causal hierarchy (which is the very starting point of the second way), let us see what he does do. Pages 135138 are on the Third Way, and indeed on its rst part. Kenny immediately tends to identify it with a Summa contra Gentiles 1.15 argument,130 save that it is not as well expressed! He begins by saying that there is a resemblance, but then slips into identity, saying that this cosmological argument is not as well presented in the later as in the earlier
127 128 129 130

Cf. ST III, q. 10, a. 3, ad 3. Cf. ST I, q. 88, a. 1, and 3; Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 2.1 (27986). ST I, q. 2, a. 2, ad 2. SCG 1.15.

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Summa (135, emphasis added). This already causes me concern, since I hold that the arguments are quite different.131 Kenny tells us that Thomas includes material that would have been better omitted, this of course in the perspective that he is adding to the Summa contra Gentiles argument, rather than making a different argument. The rst suspected fallacious premise that Kenny mentions is:a possible with respect to not being, at some time is not. Kenny asks why there cannot be something that has the power not to exist but as a matter of fact always does exist. He does not enter into any lengthy discussion about this.132 I believe that the answer is to be found in Thomass Commentary on Aristotles De caelo. Thomas introduces the very question that Kenny asks here, and replies that the premise is based on the intrinsic tendency of things to maintain their being with all their strength.Thus, a thing that does cease to be is of a nature that it must cease to be. Accordingly, a possible with respect to not being is not like a possible with respect to sitting down or standing up; those latter are neutral options, but things that cease to be reveal an intrinsic incapacity to remain in being. It should be stressed that the Third Way is asking whether intrinsically necessary substantial being exists, and not just generally about necessity in things. Otherwise, it could not formulate necessary premises about the natures being discussed. The premise in question is akin to it belongs to the nature of things that what can go wrong eventually will go wrong.133 It also is to be taken in the context of eternal existence. We are supposing that the thing has always maintained its existence if it still exists. In any case, Kenny here merely casts doubt on that premise in passing (having said in note 6, page 134, that he has already discussed these two Ways, the third and fourth, in detail in his book on the Five Ways). His focus here is whether it follows that if everything has what he calls the power of not being, then at some time there is nothing. It should be remarked that power is an odd word for someone linguistically sophisticated to choose to translate quod possibile est non esse:Thomas, at any rate, does not say virtus, and power in English normally means active potentiality. Power to not be sounds like the rational agents ability to commit suicide.
131

132 133

Cf. my paper The Interpretation of St. Thomass Third Way, in Littera, sensus, sentential: Studi in onore del Prof. Clemente J. Vansteenkiste, OP, A. Lobato, OP, ed. (Milan: Massimo, 1991), at n. 22. I have criticized his approach to this in my paper: The Distinctiveness of St. Thomass Third Way, Dialogue 19 (1980): 20118. Cf. ST I, q. 48, a. 2, ad 3, ipsa autem natura rerum hoc habet, ut quae decere possunt, quandoque deciant.

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Kenny contends that there is a logical aw in Thomass argument that if all beings are possibles with respect to not being, then, since a possible with respect to not being at some time is not, it follows that at some time nothing was. In order to bring out what he sees as the aw he asks why corruptible beings should not overlap each other, so that each one comes to be and passes away, but there is never any time when nothing at all exists (136). In reecting on this, seemingly, he notes that Thomas contends that the non-being of all would already have occurred.Why, Kenny asks, think the time of general non-existence was in the past rather than the future? Kenny then suggests that Thomas is addressing Aristotelian philosophers who believed that the world always existed. Thomas may be thinking, says Kenny, that a possibility that has not been realized in an innite time is not a real possibility. Kenny says that this too is fallacious, since one cannot argue from each thing has the possibility of corrupting to there is a possibility of everything corrupting (137). Indeed, Thomas here is thinking of an eternal world scenario. As he says in the Summa contra Gentiles, the most efcacious way to prove the existence of a God is on the supposition of the eternity of the world, since that supposition makes it less evident that there is a God. If the world and its change have begun to exist, then the existence of a cause is evident, since nothing brings itself from potency to act, or from nonbeing to being.134 Now, within this picture of eternal generation and corruption, Kenny is suggesting that there might be eternal overlap. However, that is precisely to posit a failsafe system.What guarantees this eternal arrangement? That is, of course, what leads to Thomass conclusion that there must exist a substance not subject to corruption, that is, precisely to account for such a system. As we read, for example, in a passage on quite another subject
If there are many successive agents, that is, one of which acts after the action of another, the continuity of action of these [agents] cannot be caused by some one of them, because none of them always acts; nor by all [of them], because they do not act together; hence, it is necessary that it be caused by some superior [agent] which always acts; just as Aristotle proves in Physics 8 [c. 6 (258b2832)] that the continuity of generation in animals is caused by some perpetually [existent] superior [cause].135
134 135

SCG 1.13. SCG 3.155:Thomas is teaching that a human being needs the help of grace in order to persevere in the good. One should read all of the argument of Aristotle, right to 259a14.

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This is how I read the Third Way. It bears upon the mode of substantial being we most immediately know, namely that of corruptible things.The question he is posing may thus be framed as: Can all substance be corruptible? Is it conceivable that there exist no other mode of substantial being? The law of such being is that it ceases to exist. If one posit that as the sole mode of being, it will apply to all there is. At some time, we can conclude, the all will have ceased to be.136 If one posits a failsafe system, so that while all cease to be, something always exists, one must posit the adequate principle of such a system, and that can only be a necessary being. Otherwise, one must be saying that a system that clearly can fail, and indeed must fail, has eternally succeeded. That reading is in accordance with Thomass argument being a rewrite of the well-known argument of Maimonides. Albert the Great wrote a version of it in his Metaphysics, but I think that Thomass is the most precise statement of the case, and expressed in terms of ontological necessities.137 I nd that the aws Kenny accuses Thomas of committing are not applicable. It is true that if the mode of being of every substance is that of corruptible being, then the entire assembly of individuals engaged in reproduction will not have sufced to maintain reality eternally. Kenny goes on to speak of people suggesting that a universe of temporal beings might be everlasting. I would say, rather, that this is impossible unless one posits, for example, matter as a necessary substance. In fact, Thomas so presents it in ST I, q. 104, a. 4: Matter is incorruptible, in its role of subject of generation and corruption (626a2731). However, the necessary being of primary matter seems to me less evident than the conclusion of the rst part of the Third Way that we are discussing: Therefore, there must be something necessary among things. Of course, if one makes primary matter the uncaused necessary being, one assumes the position of David of Dinant.138 And if one thinks that the existence of primary matter implies that there must be necessary actual being, one is moving in the right direction. In any case, I would say that Kenny has failed to grasp the power of the argument.
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Am I conceiving of the all as a system that is built to fail, or am I conceiving of the all as not truly a system at all, and thus whose failure is accidental? It is the latter that Thomas has in mind in the sort of argument I have indicated (see the previous note), i.e., if reality is made up of reproducers that may well overlap, nevertheless unless the overlap has a substantial source of guarantee, i.e., is a failsafe system, then in the eternal-world perspective it must already have failed. One has posited no cause of the continuity of the agents. See my paper, The Interpretation, mentioned above. Cf. ST I, q. 3, a. 8: David most stupidly identied God with primary matter.

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The Fourth Way Kenny discusses the Fourth Way at pages 139141.139 He tells us:
One thing is immediately clear: If we can talk about degrees of esse, then esse must be something different from existence. . . .Things either exist or they do not; there is no halfway house between existence and non-existence. Of course, things may exist for longer or shorter periods, but they cannot exist to a greater or lesser degree (139).

In a footnote to this (page 139, note 15), he claims that elsewhere in Summa theologiae Aquinas seems prepared to accept that there cannot be degrees of esse. His reference is to I, q. 5, a. 1, obj. 3, and ad 3. Here again Kenny seems unable to cope with the inevitable ambiguities, due to change of context, of metaphysical writing. In the context of 1.5.1, where the issue is whether good adds to a being some reality or a mere notion,Thomas is speaking of the situation within one thing, contrasting its substantial being or existence with its being good. That the substantial being or existence, in function of which a thing is called a being unqualiedly, is not had by that thing in terms of more and less is clear; whereas good is said according to more and less because it is said more properly in function of the perfections added to substantial being. But what about the Fourth Way context, a context of hierarchy of diverse things? Kenny should have seen the difference. Thus, the question is: Can existence be found in a hierarchy of things according to the more and the less, the more noble and the less noble? We might begin with a discussion we have already had reason to visit a few times, the well-known text early in Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, that is, 1.8, thus before the De ente et essentia. Thomas is defending the text of Peter Lombard (and St. Augustine) against misunderstanding. Peter has quoted Augustine on the divine esse, as follows: And who is more [magis est] than he who said to his servant: I am who am? 140 The objector, a Kenny precursor, complains: This seems to be
139

140

I would not translate quite as Kenny does. He translates magis et minus by more or less.Thomas is taking his start from a vision of things actually in hierarchy, the more and the less (my hand is good and my head is better, i.e., has more of the nature of the good.).The expression more or less might, if only unconsciously, suggest a doubt as to whether a thing is good or not. It is better to use the more literal rendering, since it is meant. (The old Dominican translation has this right. The French translation from Editions du Cerf, that of A.-D. Sertillanges, has ou rather than et.) Peter Lombard here is quoting St.Augustine, De trinitate 5, cap. 2 [PL 8 (of Aug.), col. 912]: Augustines own text, taking a rst step in speaking of God, runs:

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said inappropriately, because is [esse] is not susceptible to the more and the less.Thomas replies:
It is to be said that something can be spoken of as more and less in two ways: (1) either as regards the participated nature itself, which just in itself is more intense or less intense in virtue of approach to or distance from a term: and this occurs only in accidents; or else (2) in function of the measure of participating: and in this way even in essential things [in essentialibus] one speaks of the more and the less in virtue of diverse measure of participating: for example, an angel is said to be more intellectual than a human being. Now,141 God purely is [tantum est], he who does not know was or will be, by experiential knowledge so to speak, such that successions of time be experienced in his own being.142
[II 3] Est tamen sine dubitatione substantia uel si melius hoc appellatur essentia, quam graeci ousian uocant. Sicut enim ab eo quod est sapere dicta est sapientia et ab eo quod est scire dicta est scientia, ita ab eo quod est esse dicta est essentia. Et quis magis est quam ille qui dixit famulo suo: Ego sum qui sum, et: Dices liis Israhel: Qui est misit me ad uos? Sed aliae quae dicuntur essentiae siue substantiae capiunt accidentias quibus in eis at uel magna uel quantacumque mutatio; deo autem aliquid eiusmodi accidere non potest. Et ideo sola est incommutabilis substantia uel essentia quae deus est, cui profecto ipsum esse unde essentia nominata est maxime ac uerissime competit. Quod enim mutatur non seruat ipsum esse, et quod mutari potest etiamsi non mutetur potest quod fuerat non esse, ac per hoc illud solum quod non tantum non mutatur uerum etiam mutari omnino non potest sine scrupulo occurrit quod uerissime dicatur esse. [emphasis added] I would say that this doctrine of esse is most important. Notice that it is presented as the act whence essence or substance or ousia gets its name.To an objector who challenges this doctrine that wisdom gets its name from wisely knowing and essence gets its name from esse, Thomas Aquinas replies that Lombard (and Augustine) are speaking in terms of the order of human knowledge, which proceeds from acts to habits; the implication is that esse, the act of being, is the effect of essence. I am taking this further remark as part of the explanation of the is more text, though it also explains the sense of the word know in saying that God does not know past or future. Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 1.8.2.3.expositio textus [Mandonnet, 209]: Et quis magis est quam ille qui dixit famulo suo: ego sum qui sum?Videtur inconvenienter loqui: quia esse non suscipit magis et minus. Dicendum, quod magis et minus potest dici aliquid dupliciter: vel quantum ad ipsam naturam participatam , quae secundum se intenditur et remittitur secundum accessum ad terminum vel recessum; et hoc non est nisi in accidentibus; vel quantum ad modum participandi; et sic etiam in essentialibus dicitur magis et minus secundum diversum modum participandi, sicut Angelus dicitur magis intellectualis quam homo. Deus autem tantum est, qui non novit

141

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We see that we are already very much in the Fourth Way picture. God is being viewed as what Thomas will eventually call ipsum esse subsistens, and is thus existence itself subsisting. In contrast, all else is viewed as participating in existence in a way proportionate to the things substantial nature, as being closer or more remote from the divine:Thus, some things are more and some things are less, whereas God maximally is.143 How is it that Thomas himself clearly sees existence as admitting of the more and the less? We must note, to begin with, that we are saying that the word existence translates both meanings of esse, that is, signifying the true and as signifying the act of being. It appears to us that by existence Kenny really means the esse that signies the true (Blindness exists). Secondly, if one is to understand the act of being as subject to the more and the less, one must view it, in things other than God, as caused by both the form of the thing whose being it is and the efcient cause of the thing whose being it is. Indeed, one must view the efcient cause as conferring existence on the thing by conferring form.144 Within the connes of this review I will merely indicate generally the hierarchical situation in Thomass metaphysics.Thus, if we take the presentation already quoted from In De trin 5.4, we see that the main hierarchy is that between generable/corruptible beings and permanent beings. Being in act is found originally in the efcient cause, and since there can be no procession to innity in efcient causes, most originally of all in the rst efcient cause. If one thing dominates another in the line of efcient causality, this is because its proper nature has a more primary
fuisse vel futurum esse, notitia quasi experimentali, ut scilicet successiones temporum in suo esse experiatur. [emphasis added] Here in Thomass explanation, the defense of the Augustinian quotation makes use of a quotation from St. Jerome, one also included in the same text of Peter Lombard, i.e., the presentation of the divine esse as excluding was and will be. Jerome, Epist. 15.4 (PL t. 1, col. 357). It is interesting, in this regard, to consider the presentation of Peter Lombard himself, who, having quoted a text of Augustine explaining our use of all the tenses in speaking of God, goes on to explain the statement of Jerome that excludes past and future in speaking of God.We see that he rightly speaks of the essentiam sive existentiam of God (Mandonnet, 188); he has no doubt that esse here is existence. Consider the way Thomas argues in Summa contra Gentiles 2.43, where the issue is whether the forms whereby created things have distinction from each other are caused by some angel, God providing merely the matter: Just as esse is rst among effects, it accordingly corresponds to the rst cause as its proper effect. But esse is through form and not through matter. Therefore, the primary causing of forms is to be most of all attributed to the rst cause.

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purchase on actual existence than does the nature of the effect.We thus see grades of participation in actual existence.A things place in the hierarchy of actual existence is proportionate to its essential nature. We see this in Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 2.2.The hierarchy presented is of (1) generable and corruptible things, (2) caused things that never cease to be, and (3) uncaused things.Thus, we read:
the principles of those things which are always, viz. of the heavenly bodies, must necessarily be truest. And this for two reasons. Firstly, they are not sometimes true and sometimes not; and by this they transcend in truth generable and corruptible things, which sometimes are and sometimes are not. Secondly, because nothing is a cause relative to them, but they are the cause of being for the others; and by this they transcend in truth and entity [in veritate et entitate] the heavenly bodies: which though they are incorruptible nevertheless have a cause, not only as regards their being moved, as some have opined, but also as regards their being [suum esse], as here the Philosopher expressly says. (295)

And we have a corollary:

Since the situation is such that those which are to others the cause of being [causa essendi] are most true, it follows that each thing, as it stands towards precisely this, that it is [quod sit], so also it stands towards the fact that it has truth [quod habeat veritatem]. Those things whose being [esse] does not always stand in the same way, neither does their truth remain always. And those whose being [esse] has a cause, also have a cause of their truth. And this is because the being of the thing [esse rei] is the cause of the true assessment [verae existimationis] which the mind has concerning the thing. For the true and the false are not in things, but in the mind, as is said in book 6 of this work. (298) It is surely clear that Thomas is considering a hierarchy of measures of the act of being, that is, of existence, the perfection of the efcient cause and of its effect. Kenny admits that we can arrange things in hierarchies in terms, for example, of beings having cognition and beings lacking cognition. However he says:This provides a scale of beings, not of being. Socrates is not more real than his dog, and his dog is not more real than his cactus (140). On the contrary, as Thomas explains in ST I, q. 14, a. 1, the nature that knows is more ample than the nature that lacks the ability to know, precisely inasmuch as the nature that knows is in a way all things.This is to say that the hierarchy is one in function of measure of being of the things involved. Hierarchy here also pertains to distinguishing what has more of the nature of an efcient cause from what has less of that nature.The efcient causal hierarchy is essentially divided by the members reason and mere nature, a doctrine presented by

Anthony Kennys St.Thomas on Being Aristotle in Metaphysics 9.2, and followed by Thomas in for example, ST I, q. 19, a. 4 (rst argument in the corpus), and I, q. 4, a. 1 (efcient causality and being in act). Kenny is simply unconscious of the existential meaning of natural being.145

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Kenny asks, apropos of the approaching a maximum, whether the maximum is supposed to be ideal or real. Kenny does not seem to appreciate the universality of the method used in Fourth Way.This is perhaps in part because it appeals to the doctrine of the elements, and to re as the source of heat in all hot things.A more sympathetic reader might ask what was at the foundation of this early chemistry. I would say that it is an experience that is universal, and on which all scientic investigation is based.We see it in such devices as sonar (asdic) and radar. We see it in the etymology of investigation (the trailing of an animal by its footprints being deeper or shallower, the trail being hot or cold). It is the experience of the bonre. If one is warm, one is close to the source, the maximum. If one is less warm, one is further from the source. All doctrines of traces follow that schema.146 Thus Thomas can write:
To the extent that something is closer to the cause, to that extent it participates more in its effect. Hence, if something is all the more perfectly participated by some things the closer they get to some thing, this is a sign that that thing is the cause of that which is participated in diverse degrees: as, for example, if some things are warmer the closer they are to a re, this is a sign that the re is the cause of the warmth.147

Now, in the Fourth Way, we are not simply dealing with particular natures and their derivatives.The starting point of the way is a vision of reality in terms of the more and the less in the line of goodness or truth or nobility, what Thomas on one occasion calls universal form.148 It might be as well to mention that these are all aspects of reality presented

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Aristotle, Metaphysics 9.2 (1046a36b24): active power [dunamis] is either linked to rational soul or is merely natural; cf. Thomas, Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 9.2. Efcient causal power is precisely the active dunamis discussed here. See The Works of Aristotle, translated into English under the editorship of Sir David Ross, vol. XII: Selected Fragments (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 8788 (fr. 16): Simp. In De Caelo 289.115. Aristotle speaks of this in the work On Philosophy. In general, where there is a better there is a best. Since, then, among existing things one is better than another, there is also something that is best, which will [p. 88] be the divine. SCG 3.64. ST I, q. 19, a. 6 (136a47b4).

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by Aristotle in terms of being as divided by act and potency.149 Thus, speaking of nobility,Thomas says:
Everything which is, whether substantially or accidentally, is actually, and is a likeness of the rst act, and by virtue of this [situation] it has nobility.Also, what is potentially, by its order towards act, is a participant in nobility: for it is in this way that it is said to be. It remains, then, that each thing, considered in itself, is noble; but it is called lowly [Latin: vile] relative to a more noble [thing].150

Of course, such a text presupposes that one has recognized the existence of a rst in the hierarchy of being in act.This is an efcient causal hierarchy, or a hierarchy of the effects of an efcient cause.151 Clearly, to be a being and to be noble are one and the same thing. There should be no doubt that Thomas is reasoning toward a real, actual maximal in the order of goodness and being and intelligibility and perfection. This means a by nature rst, and so, given that it is the source of goodness for all that is good, it is also the ideal.We are proving the existence of an actual ideal.This pertains to the universality of the forms involved. Kenny asks why the object occupying the maximum point on a scale should cause the other objects to occupy the place they do on the scale. Mount Everest is not the cause of all lesser mountains (141)the asking of this question is a measure of Kennys remoteness from what is being discussed. Kenny is in the realm of corporeal quantity. Thomas is in the realm of quantity of power.152 Kenny notes that Thomas refers to a piece of Aristotles physics to the effect that re is the cause of heat in objects. However, Kenny claims that it is the Platonic doctrine of Ideas that really lls the gap. One wonders why Kenny does not refer to the philosophical text to which Thomas himself explicitly refers in the fourth way. Indeed, it is the only occasion in the ve ways where he explicitly refers to a text. It is Aristotles Metaphysics 2. As is well-known, it is a cornerstone of Thomass approach to being. If we look further into the Metaphysics of Aristotle we see this hierarchy as pertaining to the distinction between being in act and being in potency. Thus, it is important to realize that the Aristotelian doctrine of
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150 151 152

Aristotle, Metaphysics 9, shows (ch. 8) that act is prior to potency, i.e., more noble; that it is better than potency (ch. 9); and that it is truer and more intelligible than potency (ch. 9 and 10). Summa contra Gentiles 1.70. ST I, q. 4, a. 1. On the distinction between quantity of mass and quantity of power, cf. ST I, q. 42, a. 1, ad 1.

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being as divided by act and potency is what might well be called the existentialism of Aristotle.153 A Visit to the Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle I will note only some remarks on book 7. On pages 185187 Kenny looks at Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 7.5. It concerns the question: whether a thing and its essence are identical. Kenny sees a change in terminology, and a new distinction, between the quiddity of Peter and the essence of Peter (187). He says that a new point is that in God there is no distinction between the concrete quiddity and the abstract essence. I would say that Kenny should have considered the procedure of Metaphysics 7 as Thomas explains it. He would then have realized that the section he is commenting on here is the pure logical approach to the question, and that later we will have a different presentation, fully philosophical.We see this spelled out in 7.11 (15351536). As Thomas explains in 7.5 (1375), following up on what Kenny quotes at page 185, note 18, here the thing and its quiddity are one not in just any way, but one in notion [secundum rationem].What that means is that, pace Kenny, we are not really speaking of Peter at all, but of man, the subject of the denition. It is not the individual that is dened, but the species. The distinction that Thomas introduces is between homo and humanitas. He is not speaking about Peter. In 1378 it is said that the quiddity is what the denition signies. Since the denition is predicated of the dened item, the quiddity of man is not humanity, but rather rational, mortal animal. Thomas continues in 1379 to talk precisely about homo, not about Socrates. As he says, homo does not exclude accidents but neither does it include them. That is why he can conclude in 1380, that a thing such as God, having in it no accidents, could have predicated of it both the abstract and the concrete indifferently. Notice that he says this is most evident of all in the case of God. He does not here make it proper to God. My point is that in 7.11 (1536) the passage in 7.5 that Kenny has been discussing is explained as having been about man as abstracting from the singular. Now, in the fully philosophical treatment at 7.11, we nd out that the concrete human being, Peter or Socrates, is not identical with his quiddity. And in this mode of consideration, the realistic mode, the quiddity of Socrates is signied by humanity (1535). Also, it is pointed
153

Here I touch on matters which I have dealt with more fully in my paper,Aristotle as a Source of St. Thomass Doctrine of esse, which can be read on the website of the Notre Dame University Maritain Centre, the Summer Institute papers for the year 2000.

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out that subsisting forms (not just God) have identity of the thing and its quiddity (1536).154 A Visit to On Separate Substances Kenny comes to De substantiis separatis on pages 187188. He focuses on the answer to Gebirol concerning universal hylomorphism. I would say that, considering all his complaints about Platonism in Thomas, he should have said something about the earlier chapters in which Thomas carefully explains the difference between Plato and Aristotle, what he saw them as agreeing on, and what he saw as their limits. Kenny reads the passage he selects as saying that the esse that is identical with God is the esse that is common to all entities (188). This is obviously not what is said. In God esse is universally, and in creatures it is particularly. There is a unity of ratio, as was taught in for example, ST I, q. 4, a. 3, by analogy.The De substantiis separatis text is exceptionally clear. The very response begins by arguing that there can only be one esse subsistens and that is God. What is happening here is that Kenny understands the word universal only as pertaining to predication, whereas it is clearly meant here to signify the mode of being that pertains to causal domination. Thus, for example, in the ST we read:
[I]t is to be said that something is called general in two ways. In one way, by predication, as, for example,animal is general relative to man and horse and to other such items; and so taken, it is necessary that the general be identical essentially with those items relative to which it is general: because the genus pertains to the essence of the species and falls within its denition. In the other way, something is called general as to power, as the universal cause is general relative to all effects: for example, the sun relative to all bodies which are illuminated or changed by its power. And so taken it is not necessary that it be essentially identical with those things relative to which it is general, because there is not the same essence of the cause and of the effect.155
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On the distinction between the two modes of consideration, as presented in Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics 7, cf. my paper St. Thomas, Metaphysics, and Formal Causality, Laval thologique et philosophique 36 (1980): 285316. ST IIII, q. 58, a. 6,Respondeo dicendum quod generale dicitur aliquid dupliciter. Uno modo, per praedicationem, sicut animal est generale ad hominem et equum et ad alia huiusmodi. Et hoc modo generale oportet quod sit idem essentialiter cum his ad quae est generale, quia genus pertinet ad essentiam speciei et cadit in denitione eius. Alio modo dicitur aliquid generale secundum virtutem, sicut causa universalis est generalis ad omnes effectus, ut sol ad omnia corpora, quae illuminantur vel immutantur per virtutem ipsius. Et hoc modo generale non oportet

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For the direct application of this distinction to the study of being as being, consider again In De trin. 5.4.We read:
But just as for each determinate genus there are some common principles which extend to all the principles of that genus, so also all beings, inasmuch as they agree as to being, have some principles which are the principles of all beings. Now, these principles can be called common in two ways, according to Avicenna in his Sufcientia: in one way, by predication : as when I say form is common to all forms, because it is predicated of any one; in the other way by causality : as we say that the numerically one sun is the principle for all generable things. Now, there are common principles of all beings, not only according to the rst way: which the Philosopher in Metaphysics 11 [read: 12] calls all beings having the same principles according to analogy, but also according to the second way : such that there be things remaining numerically the same and the principles of all things.156

This is obviously what Thomas is saying in De substantiis separatis, viz. that God is being itself in the mode of the universal cause of existence. This is his doctrine from start to nish of his career. Kenny never comes in contact with it. It is a mark of the problem of the book that here, at the end, he is unable to understand the word universal as applied to the esse of God. Kenny here also expresses his surprise at Thomas allowing that form can be called both ens and non ens. He sees this as testimony to Thomass dissatisfaction with his theory of being. That Thomas might have experimented with new modes of expression regarding being would not be surprising. Any professor who has to deal with a variety of
quod sit idem in essentia cum his ad quae est generale, quia non est eadem essentia causae et effectus, emphasis added. In De trin. 5.4, emphasis added: Sicut autem uniuscuiusque determinati generis sunt quaedam communia principia quae se extendunt ad omnia principia illius generis, ita etiam et omnia entia, secundum quod in ente communicant, habent quaedam principia quae sunt principia omnium entium. Quae quidem principia possunt dici communia dupliciter secundum Avicennam in sua sufcientia: uno modo per praedicationem, sicut hoc quod dico: forma est commune ad omnes formas, quia de qualibet praedicatur; alio modo per causalitatem, sicut dicimus solem unum numero esse principium ad omnia generabilia. Omnium autem entium sunt principia communia non solum secundum primum modum, quod appellat philosophus in XI metaphysicae omnia entia habere eadem principia secundum analogiam, sed etiam secundum modum secundum, ut sint quaedam res eadem numero exsistentes omnium rerum principia.

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adversarial arguments must vary his language in order to clarify. In fact, there is nothing surprising about the point that form, for example, can be called ens and non ens from two very carefully distinguished points of view.The passage is in entire agreement with what Thomas taught in, for example, Summa contra Gentiles 2.5254 (key texts on being that are not discussed in this book). It merely adds considerations helpful in answering the Gebirol arguments. Conclusion The primary weakness of Kennys outlook is his failure to see the doctrine of the act of being, that is, existence, as related to efcient causality and the terminus of generation. Secondly, I would mention his failure to consider Thomass criticism of Platos doctrine, as necessary for understanding any use Thomas makes of Platonic elements. In the matter of texts considered, it is remarkable that no use was made of Summa contra Gentiles 2.5254, extremely important statements of fundamental ontology. So also, absence of consideration of the role of Aristotles Metaphysics 2.1 is most surprising. All in all, Kenny seems to me to have remained rather remote from the real doctrine of being of St.Thomas. Kenny accuses Thomas of being confused. In the above I have tried to show that, reading the texts he read, Kennys accusation was unjustied. Nor do I think that such an accusation would be justied by reading other texts. However, that does not mean that I do not nd causes for concern about consistency in texts of St.Thomas on being.Thomas did change his techniques for making his point about essence and actus essendi. I am sure he had good reasons for doing so, and that some texts, compared with others, can cause difculty. In particular, there are some texts that speak of the act of being as providing the answer to the question: Does it exist?This is most especially true of Quodl. 2.2.1 (3).157 This is also a view that might be gathered from the general line of what I have called the Intellectus essentiae argument in De ente et essentia. I will address this situation in a forthcoming paper. However, since my main criticism of Kenny is that he fails to distinguish the act of being from the esse that answers the question: Does it exist? I consider it only fair that I note the existence of such N&V texts that can cause trouble.

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Quodl. 2.2.1 [3] (Leonine ed., t. 25-2, Rome/Paris: Commissio Leonina/Cerf, 1996, at pp. 21415). I am even led to wonder whether this text belongs with the generally considered late texts it is placed with.