Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus, Secunda Pars Artis Logicae

We shall discuss at greater length in Question 7, On Genus, what must be said about the definition of accidental concretes. For now, we need indicate only what these concrete and abstract terms for accidents are, and how they are predicated.

In accidental concretes, then, we consider three things: namely, the subject, which receives the form and is denominated by it (some call this the substitute); the form, which is received in the subject, affects it, and denominates it; and finally the composite or compound, that third thing resulting from them, which some call the constituted. For example, in “white” we can take the subject itself, which is denominated, or the compound constituted from subject and form, which also includes the form itself, whiteness.

Some, then, understand these accidental concretes in a very different, even reversed, order from the common way of thinking. For authors commonly hold that the abstract of an accident is the accidental form itself, taken without any connotation or signification of a subject possessing it; while the concrete is the accident itself as connoting a subject that possesses it. Likewise, they hold that subject and accident do not yield one being per se, or one quiddity, but a being per accidens. Finally, they hold that an accidental concrete, for example “white,” does not directly signify the aggregate or constituted whole of subject and accident, but formally signifies the form itself, obliquely connoting the subject that has it.

Against this, these authors say that the accidental form itself is not properly what is abstract in relation to the subject: for example, whiteness is not the abstract; rather, that is the aspect by which whiteness is whiteness, such as “whiteness-as-such” or something similar. Thus they distinguish the physical and metaphysical concrete, and likewise the abstract. They say the physical concerns the subject in which the form exists, the metaphysical the form and the aspect of form. Second, they think that an abstract accident, even taken precisely, is truly predicated of the concrete because it is identical with it, though not completely and adequately, as was said in the preceding article about substantial abstracts. Third, they say an accidental concrete can be taken for the constituted or for the substitute. The constituted, resulting from form and subject, they say is predicated quidditatively of its inferiors, as a first or second predicable; taken for the substitute—that is, for the subject possessing the form—it is predicated denominatively of things that have the form, as a fifth predicable. But the constituted is not predicated of the subjects in which the form inheres, since that would predicate a whole of a part, given that the constituted results from form and subject. They say this constituted is definable when an accidental concrete is defined, and is not a being per accidens but per se, since it can be defined by a single definition. They also distinguish aggregate from composite. An aggregate, they say, is a being per accidens, since it says nothing beyond the parts themselves—subject and form—aggregated and joined; a composite, however, is what results from the union of the parts.

NEVERTHELESS, as to the definable character of these concretes, we shall speak in the following Question 7. That an accidental abstract cannot truly be predicated of a concrete is clear from what was said in the preceding article, since the abstract signifies by way of a part in relation to its concrete, which has the character of a whole. The distinction between physical and metaphysical concrete, however, need not concern us much. For it is indeed clear that an accidental form is signified abstractly in relation to its subject, as St. Thomas says in Summa theologiae I–II, q. 53, aa. 2–3, in ch. 7 of On Being and Essence, near the end¹, in Opusculum 42, ch. 19², and in Metaphysics VII, lect. 1³. Nothing is more familiar among authors than that whiteness is called abstract in relation to white, which is concrete: for that is called concrete which signifies a form while connoting what has it, as is most properly found in a subject physically receiving whiteness or another accidental form. To call the form itself a metaphysical concrete in relation to the aspect of form is a highly improper expression. For although an accidental form may be called composed of genus and difference, since it is placed in a category, the form itself is not called a concrete, or something possessing the aspect of form. For what is constituted in the genus or category of accident from genus and difference is a certain accidental form. It is therefore not properly a concrete possessing a form or the aspect of form; for “form,” as form, does not signify a concrete—that is properly called the thing possessing such a form.

IT REMAINS, THEN, that we consider two things here. First, whether the constituted, or result, of a physical subject and accident is a being per accidens. Second, how the predication of an accidental concrete is verified in relation both to its subject, which it denominates, and to its constituted, of which it is predicated essentially. For this predication is denominative: “The body is white”; that one, by contrast, is quidditative: “White is colored,” “this white thing is white.”

As to the first, St. Thomas’s judgment is perfectly clear: from an accident and the physical subject in which it is received there results no quiddity per se, but a being per accidens, as is clear from ch. 7 of On Being and Essence, near the beginning⁴: “From an accident,” he says, “and a subject there does not come to be one per se, but one per accidens; therefore, from their union no essence results, as it does from the union of form with matter.” He says the same expressly in Opusculum 2, the Compendium of Theology, ch. 211⁵. But what is decisive is that in Metaphysics VII, lect. 3⁶, St. Thomas, following Aristotle, poses this very question in these terms. He asks: “Just as fire is a certain composite of matter and substantial form, so there is a certain composition of substances and accidents. We must therefore investigate: since there is a definition of substances composed of forms and matter, does there also belong to any of these composites of accidents and subjects an account of what a thing is—that is, do they have a definition, an account signifying what it is to be? And further, is this very ‘what it is’ in them, which the definition signifies—that is, do they have some quiddity, or something that can answer the question ‘what is it?’ For example, this ‘white man’ is a composite of subject and accident: does a white man, as such, have a what-it-is-to-be? And because someone might perhaps say that ‘white man’ is two things and not one, he adds that what I call ‘white man’ has one name, taking ‘garment’ as an example. The question will then concern this one thing, namely, garment: does it have a what-it-is-to-be, so that we can say what it is to be a garment? For just as the name ‘man’ signifies a composite, namely rational animal, so ‘garment’ signifies a composite, namely a white man.”

Here is the question St. Thomas raises from Aristotle about a constituted or composite of subject and accident. St. Thomas resolves the difficulty from the Philosopher’s words as follows: “He says first that this which I call ‘white man,’ or ‘garment,’ which is posited as signifying this, is not one of the things said in themselves, but rather one of the things said accidentally; for ‘white man’ is one per accidens, not per se.”⁷ He develops this at length there, showing that the union of subject and accident is one per accidens. It is therefore clear in St. Thomas that it is not one per se, but per accidens, and is not definable by a single definition as one quiddity. That he speaks of a constituted, not merely an aggregate of several things, and likewise of a substitute or subject, is plain from his words: he speaks of a composite of accident and subject, not merely two things, and says this composite is one per accidens. Of the subject or substitute itself, St. Thomas adds: “What is white does not have a what-it-is-to-be, but only that of which it is said, namely man or white man.”⁸ Thus, according to St. Thomas, the subject or substitute itself—that of which it is said—signifies something and has a quiddity, but the constituted itself, of accident and subject, does not.

THE REASON FOR THIS is not difficult: the constituted of accident and subject consists of things in different categories, namely substance and accident. These cannot come together in one quiddity and definition, because definition and quiddity consist of genus and difference. Where there are several categories, there are several genera; for a category is a series of genera and species, and different categories have different genera and differences, and consequently different species or quiddities. Therefore, from things in different categories there is not composed one quiddity and one definable thing consisting of one genus and difference; therefore it is per accidens.

See more below, Question 7, article 3, on how an accident is defined in the concrete.

As to the second point, namely how the predication of an accident in the concrete is verified, the whole difficulty lies in explaining how it can have identity with that of which it is predicated, without which there is no true predication. To this, then.

I ANSWER FIRST that it is true that the constituted or composite of subject and accident is not predicated of the subject or constituted itself, but only the intrinsic accident itself. St. Thomas affirms this in Metaphysics VII, lect. 3⁹, where he says: “Not only is being white not the what-it-is of a surface, but neither is the composite of the two, namely surface and whiteness, which is to be a white surface or to be of a white surface. For the quiddity or essence of a white surface is not the quiddity or essence of a surface. If one asks why, one may answer: because this is present to it—that is, when I say ‘white surface,’ something is said which adheres to the surface as extrinsic, not as entering into its essence.” There he hints at the reason why the constituted itself cannot be predicated of the subject itself: the constituted imports something that cannot enter its quiddity or be identified with the subject, namely the accident, which is distinct from the subject. Where the predicate is not identical with the subject, predication is not true, even if both are signified in the concrete.

I ANSWER SECOND that an accident in the concrete, since it imports the form in the nominative and the subject obliquely, can be predicated of something either because it is identical with it on the side of the form, or because it is identical on the side of the connoted subject. When the identification is by reason of the form, the predication is essential, as when you say, “White is colored,” “white is what disperses sight.” But when identification is by reason of the connoted subject, the predication is accidental and denominative, as when one says, “Man is white.” The term “white” is identified with man by reason of the subject it connotes: it imports one having whiteness, and one having whiteness is identified with man. For this reason St. Thomas says in Summa theologiae I, q. 13, a. 12, that in every true affirmative proposition the predicate and subject must signify the same thing in some respect and differ in some respect¹⁰. This is evident in both essential and accidental propositions. For it is clear that man and white are the same in subject and differ in account (that is, in essence): the account of man differs from the account of white. And in Metaphysics VII, lect. 5¹¹: insofar as man is understood in white, man and white are the same; and on this account, he says, one is predicated or said of the other.

Accidental predication, then, is indeed of whole of whole, but it is grounded in the identity or unity of the subject, which is imported into the accidental concrete materially and as connoted. Thus there is sufficient identity for accidental and denominative predication, in which identity is not according to quiddity or the account of the form, but according to denomination and the account of the subject.

But if something is predicated of an accidental concrete that has a connection and identity with the form itself, then the predication is essential. Since whiteness is essentially color, when I say “White is colored,” the predication is essential because it is grounded in the connection and identity of the predicate with the form. For quidditative predicates are also found in accidents themselves; whatever is quidditative of the universal form in the abstract must also be quidditative of that form in the concrete. If the subject is sometimes placed in the definition of an accident, it is not placed there as an intrinsic quidditative predicate, but as something extrinsic to which the accident itself bears a relation. Hence this is called a definition by addition, as St. Thomas says in Metaphysics VII, lect. 4¹². We shall speak further of this in Question 7, On Genus.

THE ARGUMENTS ARE ANSWERED.

First you will object: Accidental concretes are placed by the Philosopher in the categories. Therefore they do not import something that is a being per accidens, but per se; since a being per accidens, not being one, is not placed per se in a category, as we said. Yet such a concrete cannot be placed in the categories of accidents as substitute or subject, since that is a substance affected by an accident, nor as form alone, since then it would be abstract; therefore it is placed as a third constituted of accident and subject.

The first antecedent is clear from the Philosopher in Metaphysics V, ch. 7¹³: “Those things are said to be in themselves which signify the figures of predication.” In enumerating these figures he says, “Some signify quantity, others quality, others relation, etc.”¹⁴ Therefore, according to the Philosopher, the composite of accident and subject is taken as a being per se placed in a category.

THE REPLY is that in that passage the Philosopher takes the concrete by reason of the form, as he himself says in the chapter on substance¹⁵, that “white signifies quality alone.” Hence there he lists some in the concrete, such as how much, what sort, etc., and others in the abstract, such as acting, being acted upon, where, etc. In Metaphysics VII, ch. 4¹⁶, lect. 4 in St. Thomas¹⁷, he lists the same categories in the abstract, saying that “one kind of being signifies a this-something, another quantity or quality.” In Topics III, ch. 1¹⁸, he says that “the just is not placed in a category, but justice”; and so St. Thomas teaches that accidents in the abstract are placed directly in a category, Opusculum 42, ch. 19¹⁹, and On Being and Essence, ch. 7, at the end²⁰. Therefore the constituted of subject and accident is not placed in a category; if the concrete is placed there, it is by reason of the form.

Second you will object: The form of an accident both denominates something and constitutes it; therefore from it there results something denominated and something constituted. The denominated thing is the subject or substitute itself: for it is denominated white by whiteness. But it is not constituted by whiteness, since the constitution of the subject, for example man, is not the same as that of white. Therefore what is denominated is not constituted by the accidental form; another third thing constituted by that form must be designated, and this will be white as constituted. This reasoning seems to be drawn from the Philosopher, Categories, ch. 5²¹, where he says: “Of things that are in a subject, nothing prevents the name from being predicated of the subject, but it is impossible for the account to be predicated.” Therefore the subject is denominated, not constituted, by the accident. Likewise, in Physics I, ch. 3²², he says that “if that which is properly, namely substance, is also the same as white, the essence of white is not, so that it may properly be”; therefore the essence of white is other than the substance it denominates, namely that constituted thing resulting from whiteness and the subject.

The argument is confirmed: what is truly and properly predicated is not only one with the subject but explains everything that is in the subject. But an accidental concrete taken as the constituted explains both subject and form; therefore it is truly predicated of its inferior.

THE REPLY is that the form of an accident does indeed constitute something, but not as a being per se or a “what-it-is,” as the Philosopher says, but as a being per accidens or a “what-sort-of-thing,” as is said in Metaphysics VII, ch. 4²³, lect. 3²⁴ in St. Thomas. Therefore, in relation to the subject in which it inheres, it confers denomination, but not the account itself or quiddity. Hence the Philosopher says that the name (that is, the denomination), not the account (that is, the quiddity), is predicated of the subject. Thus with the subject it constitutes not a quiddity or one being that is a “something,” but a being qualified in some way. Hence it does not follow that it constitutes a third thing per se, but a third thing that is a quality or being per accidens, as was said.

The reply to the Philosopher’s text from Physics I is that its sense is plain: white is not that which truly is—that is, its quiddity is not the substance, which truly is that which it is—but its essence is a quality, which is a “such.” It does not follow, however, that white is a third thing constituted per se from subject and whiteness; rather, it is the subject itself as qualified, which is a being per accidens.

The reply to the confirmation is that the whole constituted of subject and accident, since it is per accidens, can be predicated of another being per accidens; it is not this predication that we are discussing here. If predication per se sometimes occurs between accidental concretes, as when you say “White is colored,” that per se character is considered by reason of the form, which has quidditative predicates, not by reason of a third constituted thing.

The final argument is as follows: Accidental concretes are rightly defined through things in different categories, as when one says, “White is a body that disperses sight”; for such a definition correctly explains its definiendum. Therefore such a concrete is definable, and the subject is placed there in the position of genus and the accidental form in the position of difference, as when one says, “The snub is a curved nose.” Therefore it is either a being per accidens or per se. If per accidens, then it is definable by a single definition; if per se, then there is already a being per se composed of things from different categories, provided one functions as subject and the other as act and form. Indeed, the accident itself in the abstract is also defined through things in different categories, namely by the subject obliquely and the form in the nominative, as when one says, “Snubness is curvature of the nose,” as St. Thomas often says in the cited passages from Metaphysics VII.

The argument is confirmed: a being per accidens is that which cannot be generated by a single generation, but by several. Yet white, hot, or another accident in the concrete can be generated by a single generation. Therefore such a concrete is not a being per accidens.

The inference is sound. The major premise and the minor premise, however, are expressly stated by the Philosopher in Metaphysics VI, ch. 2²⁵, lect. 2 in St. Thomas²⁶. Therefore only an aggregate of several things, such as a heap of stones, will be a being per accidens.

THE REPLY, from St. Thomas, Metaphysics VII, lect. 4²⁷, and On Being and Essence, ch. 7, at the beginning²⁸: When accidents are defined through the subject, whether in the abstract or in the concrete, they are defined by addition—that is, by something added from outside the concept of the essence, namely the subject, since accidents depend on it. But such a definition, which includes things from different categories, is not one per se, that is, explanatory of one quiddity; rather it is one by addition, including something outside its proper genus.

When it is said that it perfectly explains its definiendum, the reply is that it explains it perfectly by addition, not by an essential and quidditative definition alone. Thus a being per accidens is definable by one definition by addition, but not by one definition simply.

Or, secondly, one may say that such a concrete, if defined per se, is defined by reason of the form alone. Then the subject, considered in itself and absolutely, does not enter the definition, but enters as formed by the accidental form itself according to that form’s generic grade in relation to itself according to its specific grade. Thus, when one says “White is a body that disperses sight,” body is not understood absolutely, but as colored, and so it explains the account of the genus; the term “body” is placed as a support, not as entering the quiddity of white. The two solutions should be applied proportionately to the definition of an accident in the abstract when the subject is placed obliquely in its definition. Therefore, things from different categories cannot make up one definition as intrinsic components, though they can as things that terminate or cause it extrinsically, just as potency and act are defined by their order to an object. Yet what results from accident and subject is not definable per se, as was said.

The reply to the confirmation is that “being per accidens” is said in several ways, as in Metaphysics V²⁹, lect. 9 in St. Thomas³⁰, and Metaphysics VI³¹, lect. 2³². Sometimes it is by an accidental concurrence on the side of the subject, or material and formal cause, because the form is an accident; sometimes it is by accidental concurrence on the side of the agent. An example of the first is a white man; of the second, a builder’s being a doctor. What is per accidens on the agent’s side is therefore not brought about by one generation, but by several, because several disparate forms are presupposed in the agent; the Philosopher speaks literally of these. But what is per accidens only on the side of subject and form, if there is one form, can come to be by one generation, though accidentally and in a qualified sense, not simply one—as when something white or musical comes to be by one accidental generation.