In De ente et essentia D. Thomae Aquinatis commentaria

Whether being is said primarily of substance and secondarily of accident, or univocally of both.

This question asks whether being is said primarily of substance and secondarily of accident, or univocally of both. Five matters are treated: first, the title; second, Scotus’s opinion; third, arguments against it; fourth, St Thomas’s opinion; fifth, replies to the opposing arguments.

Regarding the first, something may be predicated primarily and secondarily in two ways: according to the being of the predicate, or according to its proper account. A predicate is analogical according to being when it has being more perfectly in one thing than another; thus every genus is predicated primarily and secondarily of its species. The Commentator says that this does not destroy the unity of the genus. That is not the question here: it is self-evident that being is more perfect in substance than in accidents, and is predicated primarily and secondarily in this sense.

A predicate is analogical according to its proper account when it is predicated of one without reference to another, but of another only with reference to the first. Thus healthy is predicated of an animal without reference to diet, medicine, or urine, but of these only with reference to the animal. An animal is healthy without qualification; urine is healthy because it signifies health in an animal, diet because it preserves health, and medicine because it causes it. The present doubt is whether being is predicated absolutely of substance but only relatively of accidents—equivalently, whether substance, insofar as it is being, does not include accident, while accident, insofar as it is being, includes substance. Everyone grants that accident as accident includes substance; the dispute with Scotus concerns accident as being.

Regarding the second, Scotus maintains: Being is univocal to substance and accident, God and creature. He proves it thus. Every intellect certain about one concept and doubtful about diverse ones has a concept about which it is certain distinct from the concept about which it is doubtful. Anyone can be certain that God or a proper passion is being while doubting whether it is finite or infinite, substance or accident. Therefore the concept of being is distinct from these concepts, and is included in neither by itself but in both; hence it is univocal. The major is evident from the terms; experience supplies the minor.

Second: if being is not univocal, God cannot naturally be known by us through any simple concept; but this is false. No concept can be produced in our intellect unless it is contained essentially or virtually in an object shining in the phantasm. A concept non-univocal to God and to that object is contained in it neither essentially nor virtually; therefore every simple concept we have of God is univocal with the creature, and consequently with the concept of being.

Third: every metaphysical inquiry about God proceeds by considering the formal account of something, removing the imperfection it has in creatures, retaining that formal account, and attributing supreme perfection to it in God. Therefore every inquiry about God presupposes that the intellect has the same univocal concept acquired from creatures.

Fourth: if being is not univocal to substance and accident, substance cannot naturally be known by us; but this is false. Since substance does not immediately move our intellect to an act concerning itself, but only sensible accident does, we could have no quidditative concept of substance unless one could be abstracted from the concept of accident; but no such concept can be abstracted unless being is univocal to accident and substance.

The assumption that substance does not immediately move our intellect is proved thus. Whatever moves the intellect by its presence can be naturally known by the intellect through its absence when the intellect is moved; sight, for example, knows darkness when light is absent because sight is then not moved by light. Therefore, if substance immediately moved the intellect to an act concerning it, its absence could be naturally known; and one could know that consecrated bread lacks the substance of bread, which is plainly false.

Fifth, authorities are cited. Aristotle, proving that the cause of being and truth is maximally being and true, assumes that whatever is maximally itself is said of others insofar as it inheres in them univocally. Thus being is univocally said of the cause of being, God, and of other things. Avicenna likewise says that substance and quantity have no common intention except being, of which some are quasi-species and others quasi-proper accidents. He also gives the argument from certainty and doubt. Algazel reports that some held being to predicate no concept other than its inferiors, saying that the being of accident is nothing other than the being of substance. Many other arguments are omitted, since they prove only the otherness of the concept of being, not its univocity.

Regarding the third, first: no univocal thing has, in the account of its univocal nature, more than another univocal thing. Substance and accident are per se univocals under being. Therefore accident has nothing more than substance in the account of its univocal nature, being.

The reasoning is sound, but its conclusion false; therefore one premise is false. It is not the major, which follows from the antepredicaments, but the minor, which is the opposing party’s conclusion. Its falsity is shown in the seventh book of the Metaphysics, where substance is said to enter the account of accident insofar as it is being; the Commentator says that sitting and standing are not beings without substance. Yet accident does not enter the account of substance insofar as it is being. Antonio Trombeta himself concedes that substance enters the definition of accident insofar as it is being. Thus Scotus may apparently answer the argument by glossing Aristotle, though the gloss destroys the text; Trombeta cannot answer it without contradicting his own concession.

Second: being is a univocal quid-predicate of many specifically diverse things, included quidditatively in no difference; therefore it is a genus. The consequence follows from the definition of genus. The first two parts are Scotus’s own; the third is proved thus. If being were included in a non-ultimate difference, adding that difference to the genus would be nugatory. This is false, since being would be posited twice, once as genus and once as difference.

Scotus’s response that “rational animal,” like “white animal,” is not nugatory does not address the point. One thing is to speak of being in its common account, under which the things above are univocal, and another to speak of being as particularized. Being taken formally in the account of whiteness cannot denote the first part of the account of animal. Since it is taken univocally in the same way, saying “rational animal” remains nugatory—indeed, by the same reasoning, so does “white animal.”

If someone says that being is not included quidditatively in rational and white, but in rationality and whiteness, this still yields our principal point: being is not quidditatively included in any difference. Rationality is not a difference but the principle of a difference, according to Avicenna; a difference is predicated of a species, rationality is not.

Third: being is univocal to substance and accident; therefore being explicitly enters the account of substance, and hence explicitly enters the definition of man. This is inconvenient and contrary to Aristotle and the common way; therefore being is not univocal. Every univocal superior explicitly enters the essential account of its inferior, as animal enters the account of man. Since substance enters man’s definition, and its account includes being, being ought explicitly to enter man’s definition. Scotus confirms this by holding being to be the first distinctly known, because it enters the quidditative concept of everything as the first quidditative predicate.

Regarding the fourth, note the difference between the univocal, pure equivocal, and analogical. Univocals have a common name and an absolutely same account; pure equivocals have a common name and an absolutely different account; analogates have a common name and an account partly same and partly different. Animal and medicine are analogates under healthy: both are called healthy, but an animal has health whereas medicine causes health.

There are two kinds of analogates: according to a determinate relation of one to another, and according to proportionality. Substance and accident are analogates of the first kind under being; God and creature are of the second, since the distance between them is infinite. In the first kind, the posterior is defined through the prior, as accident insofar as it is being is defined through substance. In the second it is not: creature as being is not defined through God. The first kind has a common name and an account same and different in a qualified sense because the posterior regards the prior; the second has this qualified sameness through identity of proportion.

Substantial form and matter and accidental form and matter are analogates under form and matter. Substantial form is to substance as accidental form is to accident; matter of substance is to substance as matter of accident is to accident. In both cases the proportion is identical while the natures differ. The Commentator expresses this in the twelfth book of the Metaphysics, and Aristotle more clearly in the first book of the Ethics.

With these preliminaries, I posit two conclusions. First: Being is said analogically of substance and accident in both modes of analogy. Second: Being is said of God and creature only in the second mode. The first follows especially from the first argument against Scotus, and from Aristotle and the Commentator, who say that being is not one but related to one. The principles of the categories are alike only proportionally; what has no identity except proportion lacks univocal unity. This authority must be noted against Scotists who grant both analogical being and univocal identity, whereas Aristotle grants only proportional identity.

The second conclusion is now proved by St Thomas’s authority in the questions on truth. In examining how created knowledge is analogous to divine knowledge, he expressly says it is analogous in the second mode, not the first. Thus being is said of God and creature proportionally: as God is related to his being, so creature is related to its being. The formal concept of being is one, representing unequally the being of substance and accident, God and creature; the objective concept has only the unity of determinate proportion or of proportionality. Such unity suffices for a scientific object, so being need not be univocal in order to have properties and ground contradiction.

Regarding the fifth, replies are made in order.

To the first: if the argument proves anything, it proves otherness of concept, not univocity, as Scotus himself says. We readily concede this, as does Avicenna, who denies that being is a quidditative predicate but grants that it expresses another concept.

To the second, the consequence is denied. Virtual containment may mean either that a cause contains its effect by its power, or that an effect contains the power of its cause by participating in it. On the latter meaning the minor is false: every effect virtually contains God, and what contains in this way need not be prior but is necessarily posterior. If the word is pressed, the major is false, since there are three modes of containment: essential, virtual, and participative.

To the third, even granting the antecedent, the consequence is denied; analogy of the formal account suffices.

To the fourth, the consequence is denied. It falsely assumes that substance does not move the intellect through its proper species. The quantity and accidents in the Eucharist act and are acted upon as substance would be if present: just as they receive substance’s mode of being without a subject, they receive its acting and being acted upon. Thus many sensed hosts generate in the intellect the intelligible species and quidditative cognition of bread’s substance, and nourish as bread would; worms and ashes arise from consecrated hosts no less than from unconsecrated ones.

To the fifth, the middle term, when compared with one extreme as its opposite, takes on the other. Thus, although being is not univocal to substance and accident, it is not pure equivocal either, but analogical. Avicenna and Algazel therefore do not contradict this position: they establish otherness of concept, not univocity. ¹

Some substances are simple and others composite, and in both there is essence. In simple substances essence and being are identical; in composite substances essence and being differ, since being is received in matter and form.

Here substances are compared with one another in this conclusion: simple substances are more perfect than composite ones. This is not because they have a different kind of essence, but because their essence is subsistent and gathers all their perfection together indivisibly.

For this reason, since the essences of simple substances are more hidden from us, we must begin with composite essences, proceeding from what is easier to know. In composite substances form and matter are known, as soul and body in man. Neither alone can be called essence: matter is not the principle of cognition, nor does it determine a thing to species or genus; this is done only by what makes it actual.

Therefore beware Scotus’s opinion that simplicity is a perfection simply. Simplicity neither signifies perfection simply nor imperfection simply; it is a negation of composition. Immaterial substances are more perfect through subsistent simplicity, while our inquiry properly begins with composite substances because their essences are more accessible.

Perfect simplicity, according to Anselm’s Monologion XV, is what is better in each thing than its incompatible opposite. It requires two conditions: it must express perfection, and that perfection must be better in the individual being than anything incompatible with it. Relation and negation are excluded for failure of the first condition; reasoning, laughter, and barking are excluded for failure of the second, since they are better in an individual nature, not in being as such. “Not itself” must be understood as incompatible, not contradictory; otherwise every positive thing would be a perfection simply. Simplicity fails the first condition because it is a negative predicate.

Against Scotus one may argue that no perfection simply is preserved in relation as relation, whereas simplicity is preserved in relation as relation: the relation to God is utterly simple, and every ultimate difference of relation, according to Scotus, is simple. Therefore simplicity is not a perfection simply.

Moreover, what is divided into quantified and non-quantified is not a perfection simply, since that would imply that something non-quantified is a perfection simply. Simplicity is divided into relative and absolute simplicity; relative simplicity is non-quantified.

If one says that formally taken relation is not simple, but that simplicity is predicated of it denominatively, the argument remains. Relative simplicity is either a property or intrinsic mode of relation; neither can be more perfect in being than its subject. Therefore relative simplicity is not quantified and cannot be a perfection simply.

The same can be argued if simplicity is called a mode, though that seems less consonant with the truth. Immaterial substances are therefore more perfect not merely by simplicity, but by subsistent simplicity, which unites in itself, indivisibly, all the perfection they possess.

Since their essences are more hidden from us, we must begin with the essences of composites, so that instruction may proceed from what is easier. In composite substances form and matter are known, as soul and body in man. Neither alone is essence. Matter alone plainly is not essence: a thing is knowable through its essence and is placed in species or genus through it, while matter is not a principle of knowledge and determines nothing to species or genus except through what makes it actual. The second part of the chapter declares what essence is in composite substances and first establishes negatively that matter alone is not the essence of a composite substance. It proves this in two ways. First, the essence of a composite substance is its principle of knowing; matter alone is not its principle of knowing, since act, not potency, is the principle of knowledge.

Second, essence is that by which a thing is placed in genus and species; matter alone cannot do this, because what places a thing in species must be actual, whereas matter alone lacks actuality.

Essence cannot be form alone either. Essence is what the definition signifies, and the definitions of natural substances signify not only form but matter; otherwise natural and mathematical definitions would not differ. Matter is not added to the essence as something outside it, for that mode belongs to accidents, which do not possess a perfect essence. Hence the definition of a natural substance includes matter and form. ²

Here the second negative conclusion is established: the essence of a composite substance is not form alone. What is signified by the definition is the essence; form alone is not signified by the natural definition, since natural definitions signify form and sensible matter, whereas mathematical definitions signify form alone, that is, form without sensible matter.

One might answer that “signified by a definition” has two meanings: as a part of the defined thing, or as the subject bearing it. On this account a natural definition signifies form alone as the defined thing, while matter is signified as what bears the quiddity.

The text answers that what belongs to accidents because of the imperfection of their essence does not belong to specific substances. Receiving something outside its essence in a definition belongs to accidents because of that imperfection; therefore it does not belong to specific substances. The major follows from the terms, and the minor from the seventh book of the Metaphysics.

Although a part-form, such as the soul, can also be defined through something outside its essence, this is truly proper to accidents. Definition belongs to things in the direct line of a category possessing a complete species; since definition is composed of genus and difference, only accidents among beings with complete species are definable through an addition. The soul is defined through something outside its essence insofar as it shares the nature of an accident by being in another.

Nor can essence signify a relation between matter and form, or something added to them. Such a thing would necessarily be an extrinsic accident and would not be the principle through which the thing is known. These are all properties of essence. Through form, the act of matter, matter becomes an actual being and a this-something. What supervenes does not give matter being simply, but being such, as accidents make a thing actually white; therefore acquiring such a form is not generation simply, but generation in a qualified sense.

The third negative conclusion is: the essence of a composite substance is not a relation between matter and form, nor anything added to the composite of matter and form. Every such relation or addition is an extrinsic accident, while no essence of a composite substance is an extrinsic accident. Whatever comes to a being already simply and makes it formally such is an accident of an extrinsic nature; a relation between matter and form and every addition to the composite do precisely this.

The minor is explained by the fact that substantial form coming to matter gives being simply and makes this-something, whereas generation terminating in substantial form is generation simply, and generation terminating in accidental form is generation in a qualified sense. When Socrates’s matter acquires substantial form, Socrates is said simply to come to be; when, already formed, it acquires magnitude, Socrates is not said simply to come to be, but to become large.

The second argument is that no addition, whether the intervening relation or anything consequent upon the composite, is the proper a priori principle of complete knowledge of the composite substance. But the essence of a composite substance is the proper a priori principle of its complete knowledge. Therefore essence is not such an addition. It remains that the name essence in composite substances signifies what is composed of matter and form. This agrees with Boethius, who says that ousia signifies the composite; with Avicenna, who says that the quiddity of composite substances is the composition of form and matter; and with the Commentator, who calls the nature of generated species a middle, namely a composite of matter and form. Reason agrees: the being of a composite substance belongs neither to form alone nor matter alone, but to the composite itself. Essence is that according to which a thing is said to be; hence it must be both, although form alone is in its way the cause of this being. As sweetness is caused by heat digesting moisture, yet a body is called sweet from the taste embracing both, not from heat alone, so a composite is called being from what embraces both principles. The fourth affirmative conclusion is: essence in composite substances signifies the composite of matter and form. This follows from Boethius, Avicenna, and the Commentator, and from the argument that what denominates a composite substance as being through a complete principle is the composite. A thing constituted from several principles is not such through one principle alone, but through what embraces them all. A composite substance is constituted from matter and form; therefore it is a being through the composite embracing both. The example of flavors makes the point clear, while the claim that form alone causes being will be explained below.