Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R.

BEING

AND N A T U R E S

IN AQUINAS

Rev. JOSEPH OWENS, C.SS.R. (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 59 Queen's

Park Crescent East, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 2C4) is the author of many
books and articles.
He has been an active member in the Metaphysical Society of
America, the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and the Canadian
Philosophical Association.
At various times, he has been president of each of these
organizations.

I.
Undoubtedly there is persistent philosophical tension between being as
the most primitive and impoverished of all human notions, and being as the
infinitely perfect and rich nature of God. The tension pervades the
Aristotelian tradition of metaphysics too profoundly for one "to deny its
existence or to banish it from the mind." It flows over, for instance, into the
Thomistic problem of real distinction between thing and being. Here it poses
the issue sharply. Is being merely the most common aspect of things,
involving no real addition of content? Or has being a real content all its own,
over and above the thing itself? For Aquinas being is identical with essence
in God.i Yet being is other than essence in creatures. What resemblance is
there for him between these two ways of being? Is the being that is other than
essence a nature imperfectly similar to the being that is identical with an
essence? Or is being not a nature in creatures at all? Is it a positive actuality
that in finite things is neither a nature nor a part of a nature?
In both creatures and God being is named by the same word and is
brought in various ways under one and the same concept. Does the alleged
impoverishment of the notion through unlimited extension to all things, then,
still allow being a minimal nature of some kind in finite things? Or is the
concept of being left empty, a blank, a surd, a meaningless object whose name
should be banished from the vocabulary of philosophy? Or is it present for
Aquinas in creatures as an actuality that has in no way the aspect of a nature?
From this angle the problem surely cannot be dismissed "like a nagging
thought." On that initial note of accord with Father Dewan may I go
directly to the basic point of his disagreement with my understanding of the
question in the context of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Dewan's contention is
that the opening stage of Aquinas' argument, as given in the De Ente et
Essentia, ^'should be read as 'quidditatively' as possible, that is, as a universal
The Modem Schoolman, LXI. March 1984

157

demonstration based on the 'natures' of essence and esse'' (Dewan, p. 5.10

12).
My objection to this approach is clearcut. Through conceptualization
the human intellect knows finite things under the aspect of their essences or
natures. We know what a man is and what a phoenix is. This knowledge
gives a grasp of essence sufficient for the purposes of contrasting it with its
being. From the side of essence quidditative approach is accordingly in
order, in the ambit of the present problem.
But have we comparable knowledge that the being we encounter in
observable things is a nature or essence? We are aware that the person in
front of us, the person with whom we are talking, exists in the real world. We
have never had positive knowledge of that type in regard to the phoenix.
Through these judgments we see that being is notably distinct from nonbeing. But is that enough to show us that being is a nature? Does what is
known over and above the notion "man" in the judgment "the man exists," or
over and above the notions "man" and "pale" in knowing that "the man is
pale," appear as a further nature?" It is not originally grasped in the way
essences or natures are known, that is, through conceptualization or simple
apprehension. It is known through judgment, a different activity of the
intellect, a composite apprehension that in speech is expressed by a
proposition.
What is known originally through judgment can of course be
subsequently conceptualized in terms of something else, for instance of
actuality in the concept "the actuality of all actualities," or of perfection in
"the perfection of all perfections," or indefinitely as "something" in the
notion of that which makes a thing be, or as the "fact" that a thing exists. We
have to form a concept of it to have it as a subject for discussion. But we have
' The Latin esse allows translation by cither "to
be" or "to exist," in the way English idiom requires.
In Aquinas there is no philosophical difference between an existential "is" and a predicative "is." See
In Peri Herrn., 1.5. Spiazzi no. 73. In Aristotle this
non-recognition od the Frege-Russell distinction has
been called by Jaakko Hintikka the "unambiguity"
of Aristotelian being. Different as Aquinas' notion
of being is from that of Aristotle, it remains
unambiguous in meaning existential actuality for
both predication and assertions of existence, even
though it is multisignificant from the viewpoint of
the categories and of existence in reality and in
cognition.
2 On the distinction in the Islamic thinkers, see F.
Rahman, "Essence and Existence in Avicenna,"
Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies, 4 (19588), 1-16:

P. Morewedge, "Philosophical Analysis and Ibn

Sina's Essence-Existence Distinction," Journal of the
American Oriental Society, 92 (1972), 425-35. With
regard to the Scholastics, see Etienne Gilson, History
of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New
York: Random H[ouse, 1955), pp. 420-27.
^"In Deo autern ipsum esse est sua quidditas: in
ideo nomen quod sumitur ab esse, proprie nominat
ipsum, et est proprium nomen ejus: sicut proprium
nomen hominis quod sumitur a quidditate sua"
{Sent., 1.8.1.1, SOLUT., E D . MANDONNET, t,
195. Dewan remarks that ''esse... does not, properly
speaking have an essence" (p. 153). Yet it is
undoubtedly an essence in God. The relevant point
is that it is not an essence in creatures, and is not
known by us originally as an essence. Yet Dewan
insists "that we first know existence as *like a
nature'".

no original concept of it. It is not known to us immediately as a nature.

For Aquinas (Sent,, 1.38.1.3, Solut.; ed. Mandonnet, I, 903) knowledge
of the quiddities of things {quidditates rerum) was in this way radically
distinguished from knowledge of their being. Though Aristotle was cited for
the designation of the knowledge of quiddities as "the thinking of indivisible
objects," no basis in his thought was brought forward for real distinction of
being from quiddity. For the Stagirite "one man and being a man and a man
are the same" (Metaph., 4.2.1003b26-27; Apostle translation). Against that
Aristotelian background the question of distinction between being and
essence could hardly be expected to assume any importance till it was
approached by Moslem and Christian thinkers with their tenet of creation,
namely that being was something first received by creatures from God
through creation.2 In the Scriptural revelation of God as / am whom am
(Exod., 3.14) Aquinas saw the sublime truth that God was named in terms of
being. God was thereby named from his quiddity, parallel with the way
"man" is taken from human nature.^ As a nature, being is God. The being
that is immediately known in creatures, then, cannot be a nature. It is not
something that can be known in the way natures are grasped, that is, through
conceptualization. But as known through judgment it may be traced by
demonstrative reasoning to its first cause, where it is subsistent and in
consequence a nature. To show that being is a nature, therefore, is to
demonstrate that God exists. Only then can one see that when received by
any other real thing being has to remain really distinct from the thing it
actuates, if each thing is not to be absorbed in Parmenidean fashion into a
single being.
The being that is received by a real finite nature cannot, in consequence,
be really part of that nature. Emphatically being in creatures cannot be
regarded as a nature, no matter how minimal. This is far from meaning
"that, once it has been seen that existence, in God, is a quid, what something
is, we can then and only then view in a quidditative way the act of existence of a
creature," as this stand is interpreted by Dewan (p. 11.21-24). Rather the
tenet requires that we can never view the existence of a creature "in a
quidditative way" at all. When it is seen in creatures, being has always to be
viewed as an actuality that is other than any finite quiddity whatever, as an
object knowable originally through judgment only and not through
conceptualization.
To sum up on this point, in the opening section of the demonstration in
the De Ente et Essentia the essence is known quidditatively, but the thing's
being is not so known. The demonstration remains universal because it is
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159

based upon the nature of the finite thing and also upon the general notion of
actuality under which the thing's being is conceptualized. Effort to read the
opening section of that argument "as quidditatively as possible" can extend
only to the side of essence. To view the finite thing's being "as quidditatively
as possible" means not to view it quidditatively at all. At no stage of the
reasoning can a finite thing be viewed in the way suggested by Dewan (p.
11.26-27) "as a composite both components of which are 'natures'."
II.
A differently worded though intimately related issue is whether I am
maintaining "the possibility that the real distinction is at first grasped in an
imperfect way, through its signs in the domain of conceptualization and
judgment" (Dewan, p. 4.17-19). For Dewan "this might be called a 'confused
knowledge,' a knowledge of a real distinction not yet clearly distinguishable
from a conceptual distinction" (p. 4.19-21). A linguistic difficulty may arise
here. "Distinct" and "confused" are contraries. To the extent something is
confused it is not distinct, and to the extent it is distinct it is not confused. "A
real distinction confusedly or imperfectly known" (p. 4.23-24) would seem to
imply that the difference between its two terms is known distinctly up to a
point, but without penetrating further into the full meaning of that same
distinction.
Is that the case in the present question? The essence of a man or of a
phoenix is known in a concept that reveals nothing about existence or nonexistence. This concept is distinct from the concept of what has already been
attained through the judgment that the thing exists. The two concepts are
distinct from each other. Accordingly the two teims, thing and being, are
known as conceptually distinct.
Does a more searching examination of this distinction finally make
manifest that the two terms are really distinct from each other? There are
writers who have critically examined the argument and still fail to see that it
does.4 The ultimate ground of the conceptual distinction is the failure of a
finite essence to include being in its concept. No matter how penetratingly
that ground is examined just in itself, the results still remain in the conceptual
order. They reveal nothing more than that the concept of a finite essence
does not affirm or deny the thing's existence. They do not show whether in
reality the thing is identical or not with its being. That question is left open,
no matter how deeply the conceptual distinction is probed.
"Cornelio Fabro, La nozione metafisica di
partecipazione secondo S. Tommaso d'Aquino, 2nd
ed. (Turin: Societa Editrice Internazionale, 1950),
pp. 218-219, notes how Thomist manuals have

160

accepted this initial argument in isolation from what

follows it, while other writers, both proponents and
adversaries of the real distinction, many be found
who argue against its validity.

Each of the two terms of the distinction, thing and being, can of course
be examined more closely in itself and in its relations to other things. The
essence in question can be proven to be really dependent upon something else
for its being, and ultimately upon being as a nature in God. When being has
in this way been demonstrated to exist as a real nature, a new ground for
reasoning to another kind of distinction between being and thing in creatures
has been reached. Because being is a real nature infinite in content it has to
remain really other than anything into which it may be received in the real
world. No longer is failure to include being in the concept of essence the
ground for making a further distinction between the terms. The ground is
now the positive nature of being. Instead of bringing out the implications
confused in a conceptual distinction, this consideration shows that a new
distinction has been reached on a new ground. It is not a distinction between
different concepts of the same thing, but between two entitative components
of that thing. What is meant is not that "the real distinction is atfirstgrasped
in an imperfect way" (Dewan, p. 4.17-18), but rather that it is not grasped at
all in the opening stage of the argument. The conceptual distinction is a
distinction between different concepts of what may or may not be the one and
the same thing. It is not "a real distinction confusedly or imperfectly known"
(p. 4.23-25).
If one wishes to use the notion "directly verified" (Dewan, p. 4.16-17),
the verification here lies rather in the fact that one sensible thing is really
distinct from the others. The sensible things are not absorbed into the
Parmenidean unity of being. Their real distinction from one another
"verifies" that. One may agree "that in order to arrive at the existence of
God, we must know first that a real distinction lies behind the 'conceptual
distinction'" (p. 4.24-26). But that real distinction is the distinction between
individual things and percipients in the sensible world, and not that between
their essence and their being. Without knowledge of the real distinction
between the individuals, one could not know that the sensible things can exist
both in themselves and in the cognition of a knower and are therefore
conceptually different from any existence they may possess. The norm "that
the objects of the conceptual distinction... are not the same as their grounds in
reahty" (p. 4.12-14) is thereby safeguarded, just as in the case of "notional
multiplicity" (p. 4.10-11) where really different individuals share the same
specific and generic forms though without real distinction between the
individual and the generic and specific natures in each.
In the case of the difference between being and thing, consequently, the
further ground for the real distinction prevents agreement with Dewan's
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161

assertion "I see no reason to withhold the designation 'real' from the
distinction as originally known" (p. 12.22-23). Even after the demonstration
of that real distinction has been completed, one may look back at the
conceptual distinction and still find that it gives no intuition of real
distinction between its terms. The real distinction is something to which one
reasons, not something one can behold or envisage. The concepts still yield
only a conceptual distinction, even though on another ground one has
already reached the firm conclusion that there is a real distinction between the
two components. But the conceptual distinction, no matter how closely
examined, does not reveal that fact. The conceptual distinction does not
unfold itself as an imperfectly known or confusedly known real distinction.
Rather, for Aquinas the twofold activity of the intellect through
judgment and conceptualization provides two different cognitional routes
into the sensible world. The problem is whether the two reach what is really
the same object, or whether they arrive at really different objects. Any
observable thinga table, a plant, a catis known both by way of
conceptualization and by way of judgment. Those are two different routes.
By them one knows respectively what the thing is and that it exists. What is
reached by way of conceptualization is the thing's nature. What is reached
by way of judgment is its existence or being. Like morning star and evening
star, these are conceptually distinct objects. In the case of the star, real
distinction or real identity has to be based upon astronomical findings, not
upon further scrutiny of the conceptual distinction. The Countess of
Flanders and the Duchess of Brabant are conceptually distinct, but whether
Aquinas' letter Epistola ad Ducissam Brabantiae {Op. Cm., Leonine ed.,
42.375-378) was addressed to one and the same real person recorded under
those two names, or to two really different persons, has to be settled by
paleographical and historical evidence, and not by perfecting the conceptual
distinction.
III.
Perhaps the rather abstruse issues in the above two sections of this paper,
as they would appear from the viewpoints of current thought, might be
graphically illustrated and driven home by a bit of fantasy. At least it might
help to raise the broad outlines above the mass of detail, and keep the woods
from getting lost in the trees.
History has not recorded the exact words of Christopher Columbus as
he first viewed the land that had been sighted by the watch in the wee morning
hours of October 12, 1492. But one can readily picture the glow of long
awaited triumph as, a faithful Sancho at his side, Columbus would come on
deck to gaze in waking reality on the shoreline of his dreams. "My dear

162

Sancho," one may imagine him saying, "at last we have reached from the east
the Indies that people before us have reached only from the west!"
"Not so fast, Senor Almirante," would come the quick reply from an
analytically trained Sancho, "how can you be so sure that the 'Indies reached
from the east' are really identical with the 'Indies reached from the west'?"
"Tut, tut, Sancho," would the now admiral of the ocean seas rejoin, "I am a
sailor, not a philosopher. The criteria of identity that the philosophers talk
about merely bore me. I have worked as a chartmaker in times when the
sailing business was slack, and I know that experts say I grossly
underestimate the distance westward from the Canaries to China. But unless
someone can first prove to me that there are a thousand nautical miles of
ocean between the 'Indies reached from the west' and the 'Indies reached
from the east,' I will continue to maintain that the two are really the same
thing."
Sancho had to be a patient man. Quietly he would begin his laborious
analysis. "You do recognize, Don Cristobal, that 'Indies reached from the
east' and 'Indies reached from the west' are distinct concepts. Let us agree to
call the Indies reached from the east the 'West Indies,' for they face you from
the west; and the Indies reached from the west the 'East Indies,' for they face
you from the east. Indies should be described from the side of the islands,
not from the way the sailors face them. Y o u see, you have to understand the
logic of our language, else you will be tricked by words. In point of fact, you
have the conceptual distinction already, and as soon as someone can prove to
you the presence of the thousand miles of intervening ocean you will conclude
that the distinction between the two Indies is real. The conceptual
distinction will metamorphose before your eyes into a real distinction."
Columbus would not be impressed. "I think in terms of islands. My
Santa Maria could never be wrecked by crashing against a distinction, yet it
could by crashing into an island. But you hypostatize distinctions as the
object of your discourse, like the majesty of Ferdinand and the majesty of
Isabella walking around in separate persons with only marriage melding the
two majesties into one. To use your language, distinctions are second order
objects. You can metamorphose them to suit your viewpoint of the moment.
But islands are stubborn things. They stand in their own right. They are
what I keep as the objects of my thinking, and I abide by the phrasing that the
two Indies are conceptually distinct. If you could demonstrate the presence
of the intervening ocean I would of course then say that they are really
distinct. If for you that means metamorphosing my conceptual distinction
into a real one, like a caterpillar into a butterfly, so be it. But the
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metamorphosing can take place only after the proof that an ocean intervenes.
Till then, I know the varmint only as a caterpillar."
At that, Sancho would give up. He would content himself with
remarking how beautiful the moonlit night really was.
* * *
Being and thing, then, are objects as conceptually distinct ad "Indies
reached from the east" and "Indies reached from the west." The basis of the
distinction is the same, namely the different routes. For Aristotle and for
Suarez and for numerous others these objects have coincided in the one real
thing. They were different ways of naming or of conceiving the same reality.
In Aquinas they were proven to be really different from each other, but only
after the infinite ocean of subsistent being had played its intervening role in
the long process of reasoning.^
Insofar as any conclusion is implicitly contained in its premises,
knowledge of the real distinction between thing and being may be regarded as
contained in embryo in what is known of the sensible thing through judgment
and conceptualization. The open essence attained in its concept and the real
existence grasped in the judgment provide the grounds for reasoning with
cogency to existence as subsistent and accordingly as a real nature. It is
there, and only roughly, that the simile of metamorphosis applies. The
existence known in sensible things as an object other than any nature has to
metamorphose into the nature of existence in the mind's reasoning about it.
With existence recognized for what it is in its own nature, in
^On the way Aquinas regards Damascene's
"ocean of being (ousias)" see Sent., 1.8.1.1 ad 4m; I,
196. In the body of the article {Quarta ratio; p. 195)
the path to the existence of God follows the same
lines as in the De Ente et Essentia.
^De Ente, c. 4; ed. Leonine, XLIII, 376-377.94
143. A discussion on the reasoning to an efficient
cause may be found in my article "The Causal
PropositionPrinciple or Conclusion"? The
Modern Schoolman, 32 (1955), 159-71; 257-70; 323
39. Even the conceptual distinction between a thing
and its being is the result of a reasoning process. The
same thing is found to exist in the real worid and in
human cognition. Consequently it cannot be
identical with either way of existing. Dewan (pp.
151-153) hesitates to use the term "demonstration"
in this regard. He suggests rather,that the
distinction is knows as a communis animi conceptio.
In the text of In Boeth. de Trin., lect. 2, Calcaterra
nos. 31-32, an immediately evident distinction
between the abstract (see nos. 22; 25) and the
concrete is applied to existents. In simple things the
two differ in their notions, but in composite things

164

they differ really. This is said to follow from what

has been stated earlier (no. 25), where being itself was
shown to be without composition. The tenet that
the distinction in composites is real is accordingly
not presented as immediately evident, but as
following from what had been said. Ergo and ideo
(no. 32) are used for the conclusion.
7 Disp. Metaph., 19.1.20-40; cd. Vivcs, XXVI, 27a33b. The impossibility of existing in virtue of its
own self may readily be called a "real condition" in
the creature. But that need not, and for Suarez does
not, imply that the existence is a really different
component. Aquinas {De pot., 9.1.c) can use the
expression "secundum rem" to describe the
difference between essence and individual in material
substances, since in one real individual the essence is
really separated from the essence in the other
individuals, though it remains notionally the same.
But no real distinction between two components of
the thing is thereby implied. In immaterial
substances, on the other hand, essence and
individual coincide from the view point of reality, for
there is no separation into individuals.

tradistinction to its status as the actuation of some other nature, the

requirement of a real distinction between it and anything it actuates in the
finite world is shown.
But the metamorphosis has to take place in one's thought before the real
distinction between being and thing in creatures can be demonstrated. The
butterfly may be said to be present in the caterpillar, but the conclusion that it
can fly can hardly be drawn from what is recognized in the larva. The simile
limps, because the substantial nature is the same in caterpillar and butterfly
while existence is in no way present as a nature in the finite world.
IV.
Father Dewan finds that two difficulties result from this way of
understanding Aquinas' reasoning. The first of these difficulties "concerns
the validity of the causal argument for the existence of God" (Dewan, p. 6.6
7). The claim is that the precise need for a cause... is the reality of the
distinction between the factors" (p. 151). This is applied obviously enough
to the present problem in the sense that there must be real distinction between
thing and being.
Yet in the context Aquinas makes no mention of a requirement that the
distinction has to be real. In his reasoning in the De Ente et Essentia the
precise need for an efficient cause is rather that the essence of a finite thing
does not contain existence and cannot bring itself into existence.^ This
combined accidental and prior role of existence makes the thing dependent
upon something else for its being, and ultimately upon subsistent existence.
No initial requirement of real distinction between thing and being is brought
into play for launching the demonstration. Aristotle {Metaph., 2.2.994a5-7;
12.6-7.1071b3-1072b30; Ph., 7-8,241b24 ff.) had long before reasoned to a
first efficient cause without making use of a distinction of that kind. Three
centuries after the time of Aquinas, Suarez still could develop his
metaphysical argument for God's existence without requiring that
distinction.^ The existence is real, the dependence is real, the cause is real.
But what ground emerges for the contention that "'cause' in any real sense
cannot enter into the picture without real lack of per se unity between a thing
and its esse'' (Dewan, p. 153) if real lack of per se unity means real distinction
between the components?
If one wishes to term the accidental character of being in finite things a
"real lack of per se unity between a thing and its esse," no basic objection need
arise. Per se refers to what the thing requires in virtue of its own self.
Though from one viewpoint nothing is more essential to a thing than its
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165

being/ in virtue of its own self a sensible thing does not require being in the
real world. It was generated, it is perishable. At one time it did not exist,
and it can still cease to exist. In virtue of its own self it does not necessitate its
union with real existence. That condition is real enough. It is there in the
real thing. But it does not immediately make manifest any real distinction
between the thing and is being. All that is required for real dependence upon
an efficient cause really other than itself is the real dependence shown by the
consideration that its nature does not include being. The demonstration of
the existence of God by way of efficient causality is perfectly secure without
the presupposition of a real distinction between being and thing in creatures.
In the real thing, then, there is no per se unity between what is grasped
through conceptualization and what is known through judgment. But is
what is grasped through judgment an actuality really over and above the
thing? Or is it just the same thing approached in another perspective? The
question can still be asked whether the Indies reached from the east are really
the same thing as the Indies reached from the west. Lack of per se unity in the
case of thing and being does not immediately show real distinction between
the two entitative components.
Dewan's "second difficulty" (p. 153) is even more surprising. Its
concern is not precisely with the existence but rather with the unicity of
subsistent being. The contention is that one can conclude to the unicity of
subsistent being "only by premising a real distinction" (p. 153), understood in
the sense of a real distinction between a finite thing and its being. The nature
of being has to manifest itself from the start: "One sees this need to premise
real distinction when one considers the nature of esse as entering into the
premises" (p. 153).
In this approach, obviously, being has to appear immediately as a
nature. Even more pertinently, it is looked upon as a common feature within
the nature of things: "'Esse' must be the name of something in the nature
of things which, in its own nature, is simple and common" (p. 154).
The general problem had accordingly been phrased: "What if we take
something which we experience as common to many, and attempt to posit it as
existing in its purity: will it still be envisagable as a multiplicity of
individuals"? (p. 154). The particular answer given for the realm of being is:
"If it is simply a name for the concrete thing, then it is 'pure' in every concrete
thing, and is as many as they are" (p. 155).
This reasoning suggests that what is other than a nature can be only a
name. But being, though not originally known as a nature through
conceptualization, is grasped through judgment as an actuality. When that
^..cum nihil sit essentialius rei quam suum esse"
{Sent., 1.8, cxp. lac partis tcxtus; I, 209. Cf.
"Dicendum quod esse per se consequitur formam

166

creature, supposito tamen influxu Dei" (57,1.104.1,

ad im.).

actuality is conceptualized, it gives rise to a concept different from the

concept of any finite nature. It is proven to be conceptually distinct from the
thing it actualizes. Yet it is not thereby held to be really the same as that
thing. Real identity or real distinction will remain open for demonstration.
Prior to the demonstration it is incorrect to maintain with Dewan that
"anyone who denies the distinction of esse from the subsisting thing will say
there are as many instances of ^^^^-subsisting as there are things". People
who deny the distinction need not make being subsist. But after the
conclusion has been reached that being is a nature in God, the consequence
emerges that it could not be a part of any other nature without absorption of
that nature into itself. It has to remain really other than what it actuates. If
it did not stay really distinct, then there would be indeed as many instances of
subsistent existence as there are thingsexactly one.
Reasoning to a conclusion like that, however, is self-destructive and
hardly avoids the ridiculous. But it makes the point of the difficulty quite
clear. Being, if known originally as a nature, is from that viewpoint
comparable with heat or humanity. It is multiple in sensible things, the
starting point of the demonstration. To do away with that multiplicity
would be to saw off the bough upon which one is seated during the whole
reasoning process. But an effort to posit heat or humanity as subsistent in
itself turns out to be impossible. Heat is by its nature an accident, and
therefore cannot subsist in itself. Humanity by its essence requires
individuation through matter. It can subsist only in individuals. It is not an
angelic form, in which species would coincide with individuality. Humanity
does not subsist uniquely as an individual. Conceived on that model, being
would not subsist in any unique instance. It would, if subsistent, subsist in as
many instances as there are subsistent things. But if, on the contrary, being is
not known as a nature in the first premise of the argument, it will not follow
the pattern of a nature when it is known to be subsistent. There is nothing of
its own nature in finite things for absorption into the instance that subsists.
It leaves them all intact, while its own subsistent nature is not multiplied.
The difficulty vanishes, therefore, if being is regarded as originally
known not as a nature through conceptualization but as the object of a
judgment. As a nature, it is not found in any finite thing. Where it subsists it
has to be unique, for it is all-inclusive. Yet it does not thereby render the
existence of other things impossible, destroying the basis upon which the
process of reasoning to it rests. It is not found in finite things as a nature, and
accordingly does not absorb those things into itself as a subsistent nature in
the way an angelic form renders other instances of itself impossible. Rather,
Being and Natures in Aquinas
Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R.

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it makes other natures be, without making them other instances of its own
nature, which is subsistent being.
The unicity of subsistent being is in consequence left untouched, and at
the same time the multiplicity of beings remains safeguarded. Somewhat
ironically, in fact, it is the persistence of taking the real distinction to mean
that a created nature is "a composite both components of which are
'natures'" (Dewan, p. 156) that gives rise to this difficulty about unicity. If
the being that is grasped in creatures through judgment is recognized as
not present in any finite thing as a nature but always as an actuality other than
the nature, the difficulty disappears. The being is then not immediately
conceived as a nature, nor as either really distinct from or really identical with
the thing. Demonstration is accordingly required, and it shows that
subsistent being is unique.
V.
These considerations show how seriously the tenet in Aquinas that being
is originally the object of judgment and not of conceptualization has to be
taken. We have no original cognition of being as a nature. Only through
demonstration can we know that being is a nature, a nature that subsists in
God alone. Outside that unique instance it is never a nature and can never be
viewed quidditatively, even in the most imperfect manner.
To interpret this explanation as though it meant that after the
demonstration of God's existence the various instances of being in creatures
are "now visible as likenesses of a nature" as Dewan^ presents it, leaves it
easily open to misunderstanding. The notion of likeness will have to be
undersood outside the quidditative order, if the term "likeness" is to be used.
When being is conceived as the "actuality of all actualities," the words
themselves indicate likeness from the viewpoint of the more general notion of
actuality, but not from the viewpoint of quiddity. To take being in creatures
seriously as the proper object of judgment is to leave it as quidditative solely
in its primary instance, God. That "truth sublime" (Aquinas, SCG, 1.22,
Hanc autem) still merits careful study and discussion. In that light the real
identity of being with God and its real distinction in creatures is by no means,
as Dewan so laudably recalls in Gilson's phrasing, a topic to be banished
from the mind "like a nagging thought."
'p. 160. Cf. supra, n. 3. A point at issue here is
that likeness between participated being and the
nature of being in terms of actuality does not involve
likeness in terms of reality or thing {res) between
participated being and the nature that participates it.
On the notion of the distinction as between res and
res and the subsequent standard acceptance of that

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terminology, sec J. F . Wippel, "The Relationship

Between Essence and Existence in Late-ThirteenthCentury Thought: Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent,
Godfrey of Fontaines, and James of Viterbo," in
Philosophies of Existence Ancient and Medieval, ed.
Parviz Morewedge (New York: Fordham University
Press, 1982), pp. 138-141.