Thomas Aquinas, the real distinction between esse and essence, and overcoming the conceptual ...

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College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Theses and Dissertations
6-2010
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Andrew Thomas LaZella
DePaul University, [email protected]
Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd
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LaZella, Andrew Thomas, "Thomas Aquinas, the real distinction between esse and essence, and
overcoming the conceptual imperialism" (2010). College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and
Dissertations. 32.
https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/32
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Thomas Aquinas, The Real Distinction Between Esse and Essence, and Overcoming the
Conceptual Imperialism of Metaphysics

A Thesis

Presented in

Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

June, 2010

By

Andrew Thomas LaZella

Department of Philosophy

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

DePaul University

Chicago, Illinois
Copyright 2010
Andrew Thomas LaZella
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ii
Contents

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………….v

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………..vii

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1

Chapter I. Problematizing the Question: Thomas Aquinas and the Real Distinction of
Esse and Essence in Created Beings..……………………………………………24

Section 1: Ens and Essentia in De Ente et Essentia……………………………...26
Section 2: “Intellectus Essentiae” and the Real Distinction in De Ente IV……...36
Section 3: Esse as Otherwise than Essence in De Ente IV—Sed Contra………..49
Section 4: Esse as Otherwise than Essence in De Ente IV—An Existential
Response……………………………………………………………….68
Section 5: A Real Distinction? Terminological Clarification……………………86
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….90

Chapter II. Esse Beyond De Ente..………………………………………………………93

Section 1: The Argument from Participation…………………………………….94
Section 2: An Argument from Act and Potency………………………………..119
Section 3: Real Otherness in the Summas………………………………………125
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...132

Chapter III The Non-Reciprocal Communion: Analogy as the Bond of Being Between
Ipsum Esse Subsistens and Esse Commune……………………………………..139

Section 1: Maxime Ens and Ipsum Esse Subsistens…………………………….144
Section 2: The Identity of Esse and Essence in Ipsum Esse Subsistens………...161
Section 3: Eminent Causation…………………………………………………..173
Section 4: Analogical Predication………………………………………………186
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...200

Chapter IV. The Essential Ground of the Universe: The Divine Intellect and the
Ordered Totality of the Universe………………………………….....................208

Section 1: Emanation and Derived Necessity…………………………………..210
Section 2: The Status of Creatures Prior to Creation…………………………...218
Section 3: Creation as Ordered Multiplicity……………………………………246
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...264
iii
Chapter V. The Existential Ground of the Universe: Creation and the Giving of
Being……………………………………………………………………………267

Section 1: Creation as Participation in Esse……………………………………270
Section 2: God’s Existential Monopoly………………………………………...282
Section 3: God as the Formal Esse of Creatures?................................................291
Section 4: The Ambiguities of Participation in Esse…………………………...303
Section 5: The Illumining Light of Being………………………………………312
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...332

Chapter VI. Conceptualism without Imperialism and the Collapse of the Existential
Project…………………………………………………………………………..337

Section 1: Analogical Concept Laundering—A Case for the Univocity of
Being beyond Conceptual Imperialism……………………………….339
Section 2: Being and Judgment…………………………………………………378
Section 3: Providence, Esse as Gift or God as Patron?.......................................394

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………408

iv
Acknowledgements

Although to express my full debt of gratitude, I would need to compose a far greater
tome than the one that follows, I wish to return an inadequate account of such debt to the
following, but by no means exclusive, list of individuals without whom such a project
would not have been possible:
First of all, I wish to thank my friend and mentor Rick Lee, whose contributions not
only to this project, but more broadly to my apprenticeship in medieval philosophy
remain incalculable. I can only begin to express my gratitude for his incredible generosity
not the least of which were the many hours he spent reading and discussing medieval
texts with me.
In addition, I would like to thank my committee members Michael Naas and Sean
Kirkland, who kindly traversed the technical nuances of scholastic disputes and offered
invaluable perspectives on the project. Their philosophical excellence always kept me
asking philosophical questions. Also, I owe thanks to Richard C. Taylor of Marquette
University, whose scholarship I have long admired and who graciously offered support as
an outside reader on my dissertation.
My friends and colleagues in the philosophy department at DePaul have made
graduate school and life as a graduate student not only a bearable, but an incredibly
enjoyable, experience. The wonderful faculty of the philosophy department at DePaul has
served as a constant model for both philosophical excellence and departmental
collegiality. In addition, I owe a great debt of thanks to Mary Amico and Jennifer Burke,
who have always been there to offer their support.
v
It is difficult for me to imagine ever having pursued a career in academia, or having
believed in myself as an academician, without the friendship and inspiration of Don
Boese. He took a chance on an academically uncultivated high-school student and has
continued to inspire and shape my academic formation.
Without the love and guidance of my family, my parents Bonnie and Dave LaZella
and my brother Mike LaZella, this project would not have been possible. I thank them for
believing in me enough to support my decision to pursue philosophy. Their support
remains ongoing, and I can gladly say they all “lived long enough” to see this project
reach completion.
Finally, to my partner Melissa Wollmering, to whom I cannot begin to express my
gratitude, I can only dedicate this project.

vi
Abstract

“Thomas Aquinas, The Real Distinction Between Esse and Essence, and Overcoming
the Conceptual Imperialism of Metaphysics” treats the relation between thought and
being within medieval metaphysics, especially as it relates to the distinction between
essence and existence. The dissertation argues against a prominent strand of Thomistic
interpretation (i.e., Existential Thomism), which holds that Aquinas’s real distinction
between whatness (i.e., essence) and thatness (i.e., existence) constitutes a rupture with
the dominant essentialism of metaphysics. I contend such a distinction, which would
make existence into an act of being irreducible to the categories of conceptual thought
and knowledge, introduces a signifier that, in its primary and proper signification of God,
deprives creatures of the very perfection it was introduced to signify (i.e., actual
existence). It thus fails to identify an ontological perfection in creatures really distinct
from the intension and extension of the concepts “substance” or “thing.” I then turn to the
thought of Duns Scotus to show that the mere identification of existence with essence
does not entail “conceptual imperialism.” Although situated in the period of medieval
scholasticism, such a study resonates with more contemporary philosophical critiques of
the limitations and presuppositions of metaphysical knowledge and intelligibility.
vii
In his The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics: A Study in the Greek
Background of Mediaeval Thought, Joseph Owens notes an unforeseeable consequence
of Aristotle’s cursory treatment of being per accidens as unscientific. Set against the
dominance of ‘being in the categories,’ ‘being per accidens’ nearly falls to the status of
“non-being” for Aristotle. Although Aristotle begins the Metaphysics with the oft-cited
“being is said in many ways,” being per accidens comes to occupy a marginal role in this
text—treated in a few short chapters of Book Epsilon—and an increasingly marginal role
in the ensuing tradition of metaphysics, both which tend to think being around substance.
Being per accidens is that realm of being, Aristotle states, with which no science,
whether theoretical, practical, or productive (poietike), need bother.1
In what might be read as a marginal issue in the history of philosophy, Owens
identifies an important move in the direction of medieval “existentialism,” even though
unrecognized and unintended by the Philosopher himself:
From the viewpoint of the much later distinction between essence and the act of existing,
this treatment [of being per accidens as unscientific] must mean that Aristotle is leaving
the act of existence entirely outside the scope of his philosophy. The act of existing must
be wholly escaping his scientific consideration. All necessary and definite connections
between things can be reduced to essence. The accidental ones do not follow from the
essence. They can be reduced only to the actual existence of the thing. There is no reason
in the essence of a carpenter why he actually is a musician. The reason has to be
explained in terms of the actual existence of the two habits in the same man. Likewise,
the results of free-choice cannot be explained in terms of essence. They form an
existential problem.2

1 See Aristotle, Metaphysics 2 vol. trans. Hugh Tredennick (Cambridge: The Loeb Classical Library 271,
287, 1933-1935), 1026b4-7.
2 See Joseph Owens, The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics, 2nd ed, rev. (Toronto, Canada:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1963), 309; and Ibid., “The Accidental and Essential Character of
Being in the Doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas,” Mediaeval Studies XX (1958): 19-23.
1
The essence of the carpenter can render no reason why she is also a musician. “Without
why,” accidental being stands outside the necessary and definite connections governed by
the domain of essence. Science (scientia) grounds beings by offering an account of the
reason why: she is risible because she is human. Her human essence explains certain
properties such as being capable of laughter. An account is thereby rendered. The fact of
her also being a musician and a carpenter, however, cannot be derived from her human
essence. Not all carpenters are also musicians. Such a fact, Owens explains, can only find
ground as a matter of actual existence. The domain of the existential problem does not
offer itself to scientific considerations as it is without why. Thus, actual existence as
“being per accidens” suffers from groundlessness.3

3 In terms of understanding the existentiality as the heart of all predication, Owens elsewhere
acknowledges: “The problem, however, becomes more difficult in the case of predicates that remain within
the category of substance, and in general wherever the predicate is a generic characteristic of the subject.
‘Socrates is a man,’ for example, or ‘Man is an animal,’ may seem at first sight beyond the need of
existential synthesis and above the conditions of time. Yet there is nothing in the nature of ‘man’ that
requires it to be found in Socrates.” Joseph Owens, An Interpretation of Existence (Milwaukee: The Bruce
Publishing Company, 1968), 34. Owens on multiple occasions notes Aquinas’s unmarked move to equate
‘being as the truth of propositions’ with ‘being per accidens.’ At first, this equation may seem unwarranted
as ‘being as the truth of propositions’ covers both substantial and accidental being. But Owens defends
Aquinas’s conjoining of being per accidens and being as the truth of propositions. He states: “Of these the
first two ways listed in Book E of the Metaphysics were being per accidens and being in the sense of the
true. Being per accidens meant that something happens to be found with something else, as for instance in
the statement ‘The carpenter is a musician.’ There is nothing in the nature of the carpenter as such that
requires him to be a musician. That he is a musician is entirely accidental to the fact that he is a carpenter.
The verb “is,” accordingly, expresses in this case something accidental to the nature of the subject as such.
It expresses being per accidens. It of course presupposes being per se, for it is concerned with the principal
type of being, namely as found in any of the categories. It is concerned with a carpenter and with music,
both of which are types of being that are found in the predicaments. But the being expressed by the verb in
this proposition is not a type of being found in any of the categories. It is something over and above any
predicamental being. It is per accidens in regard to the principal type of being, that is, the being that is
limited to the necessary grooves of the categories.” Owens, “The Accidental and Essential Character of
Being,” 4. Owens’ reason for aligning the two types of being (ens) is that it allows him to demonstrate that
we humans grasp esse not through the intellect’s operation of simple apprehension (as we would grasp an
essence or a normal predicamental accident such as “hot” or “white”) but through the complex operation of
judgment. Thus, our intellect does not immediately intuit esse, but demonstrates it through the formation of
propositions derived from the simple essences grasped in the first operation. This is why Owens rejects
intellectus essentiae as constitutive of the “real distinction” between essence and esse, as though such an
argument that relies on the simple operation of intellectus could reveal the distinction between the two. See
below Chapter I Section 4; Also Chapter VI Section 2.
2