Prof. Dr.
Horst Seidl (Lateran Univ., Rom)
From Existence to Essence
in the Aristotelian-Thomistic Tradition
The title of this paper indicates a
traditional topics which has been criticized by modern thinkers who see the
existence and essence in opposition, like that between concrete and abstract.
Further the meaning of essence itself becomes problematic. However, they use
the two terms no longer in their original meanings, by neglect of their
sources. Therefore it seems to me useful to re-examine some classical texts
which show existence and essence in their original meaning and in their
complementary connection with each other.
The first part of this paper sets out,
briefly, modern problems concerning existence and essence, to which the second
part takes position. The third part brings in, then, the traditional doctrine of
existence and essence of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and explains why for them
the two terms are not opposite but complementary.
a) in rationalism:
Descartes'
general doubt about the existence of the external things, which may be
perhaps a mere illusion so that there remains as sole evident existence only
that of the thinking I: cogito ergo sum; sum res cogitans.[1] In order to justify the natural sciences and
to recognize again the existence of the external world, Descartes takes, then,
a long detours, which leads to his rationalism of theological form. He assumes
that there are three ideas in the soul (an innatistic assumption): res cogitans,
res extensa, Deus, and that in God's mind there are all sciences, together
with the ideas or essences of all things of this world. Hence, philosophy, when
occupied with the thoughts of God, can understand how by God's creation the
ideal essences of the things of this world come into existence. In this way the
existence, which before was a doubtable sensible datum becomes now a rational
derivative of the essences.
The new meaning of existence is found
again in Spinoza and Leibniz, further in Baumgarten, a disciple of the latter,
who declares in his Metaphysica that the existence of things is
complementary to their essence: existentia est est complexus affectionum in
aliquo compossibilium i. e. supplementum essentiae sive possibilitatis
internae….[2]
b) in empiricism:
Before I pass to Kant, I have to take in
account, briefly, the other philosophical school, opposite to the rationalistic
one, namely empiricism. It is the continuation of the ancient empirical and
sceptical school (Pyrrho, Protagoras, Sextus Empiricus), taking, at the
beginning of Modern Times, a fresh start with Francis Bacon. In his Novum Organon he intends to
liberate the sciences from their form in which tradition offered them, that is
– in his view - from sterile metaphysical speculations and
empty dialectical disputes. On the contrary, he re-organizes the natural
sciences with the method of experiment in order to make them useful, that is:
to study the nature of things, to detect and to use the forces hidden in
nature, for ameliorating the human conditions of life on earth.
In this frame, the "existence"
of natural things has only the meaning of their sensible empirical fact.
Revising the Aristotelian Organon, he excludes the formal and final
causes as mere "idols", and with these the essences of things. What
remains is matter and its motions the laws of which have to be researched.
David Hume, working out ― in the line of Bacon,
Hobbes and Locke ― the empiricist theory, builds up human knowledge on
the base of sense-perception, starting with the first sensible impressions,
which are followed by images and ideas, accompanied by the reflection from the
side of reason which puts in order the empirical material (by selection,
combination, comparison etc.). In this position it is clear enough that
"existence" of things can mean only their empirical fact, and that
their "essence" becomes meaningless.
c) in Kant:
Kant
agrees with Descartes' doubt about the existence of the external things. Even,
he takes it for totally unknowable and eliminates the "Ding an sich",
will say: everything existing in itself, independently from the subject. But he
refuses also the rationalist theory of the existence as derivative of the essence,
understood as an intellectual concept. On the contrary, he separates "existence"
or "being" from "essence", in the well-known statement, Kritik
der reinen Vernunft:[3]
"Sein
ist offenbar kein reales Prädikat, d. i. ein Begriff von irgend etwas, was zu
dem Begriffe eines Dinges hinzukommen könne …" (Being is obviously no real
predicate i. e. a concept of something, which could be added to the concept of
a thing).
Instead he
declares now "being" as a position ("Setzung") of the
object qua phenomenon in our consciousness, concerning the status of the
subject before the object qua phenomenon. He uses the example with the 100
Thalers which can exist in my money-chest or only in my thought, what makes a
decisive difference. Anyway, the "existence" of the Thalers does not
add an essential predicate to them.
In doing so, Kant re-discovers, so to
speak, the distinction of the tradition between existence and essence, not
being aware of it. However, he does no longer understand "existence"
in realistic sense, as the tradition did and takes it - with his Copernican turn - for something in the subject. Here
it assumes two meanings, a sensible and an intelligible one (like in Descartes):
1. In the
first meaning "existence" is the sensible datum of the material in
the sense-perception (Sinnesanschauung) or in the "sensitive
consciousness" (sinnliches Bewusstsein);
2. in the
second meaning "existence", now pronounced as "being", is
the "position" (Setzung) of a "transcendental object", on
the whole (überhaupt) in the "transcendental consciousness".
d) in the time after Kant:
From post-kantian thinkers I would like
to mention only Gilson, Husserl and Heidegger, concerning our topic of
existence and essence. Étienne Gilson
who has written a monographic work on it, tries to overcome the so-called essentialism
in modern rationalism, which gave priority to the essences of things, deriving
from them existence, and introduces a Christian existentialism with an absolute
priority to existence of things, which is withdrawn from any rational analysis.
On the contrary, existence of all things (from stones, plants, animals to human
beings and God) is a "fait brut", an impenetrable bloc. The only access
we have to it is a feeling of reality, or a common sense, which arrives at an
evidence in the Christian belief of existence as creation by God.
Edmund Husserl,
in his phenomenology separates completely existence from essence,
considering the existence of external things as a mere thesis (Daseinsthese) of
an empirical fact which he puts into brackets (eingeklammert), interesting only
the natural sciences, not philosophy. After this "phenomenological
reduction" he concentrates his attention on the pure phenomena of things in
us (following Kant's trascendentalism) in order to construe ― by our
vital intentionality of our consciousness ― our "Lebenswelt"
(world of life) and to arrive (going beyond Kant) to an intuition of essences
(Wesens-schau) in it.
Martin Heidegger
installs an existentialism, based on the human existence, describing its
characteristic features by means of Husserl's phenomenology, which should
substitute man's essence, declaring that the essence of man is his existence (in:
Was ist Metaphysik?: "Das Wesensverhältnis
des Menschen" ist das zur "Offenheit ['Da'] des Seins.").
Contemporaneously to these schools the
English empiricism has entered in new schools like the positivistic one of
Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper. They exercise a hard criticism
on scholastic metaphysics, especially on their doctrine of substance and
essence of things. They consider the empirical things as phenomena, the only
objects of our knowledge, and discredit any substance and essence as obscure
metaphysical things behind the empirical ones, refuting them as non-sense.
After my short survey of modern view-points
I try to review them in the following way:
a) regarding the rationalistic
argument:
Regarding the Cartesian irreconcilable
dualism between res cogitans and res extensa my objection is that
Descartes speaks of both as
existing. Hence the common use of the term "existence" for the
external things and the internal thinking soul must indicate some common
feature. Therefore it is impossible to put them in opposition as if they would
have nothing in common. Moreover existence has in its original meaning an
evidence so that the existence of the external things is equally evident as the
existence of the internal soul. It is impossible to doubt the one and to hold
the other as evident.
Also
in our individual biographic development we acquire first, already in
childhood, an understanding of existence in contact with external things and
only later, when the ego is taking shape in growing reflection, we attribute
analogously existence also to the thinking I.
Hence Descartes' dualism is due to the
absence of the analogy of being which concerns a common mark in object and
subject.
I may
only mention that in Duns Scotus, too, the analogy of being is neglected.
Without entering in the problematic, it seems to me that this neglect is caused
by the fact that, notwithstanding his theological dedication to God as direct
object, Scotus continues philosophizing on the Being of God, which becomes
univocally the only true one, in comparison with which all other being (of the
creatures) is equivocal. On the contrary, the traditional analogy proceeds
inductively from the being of the things of this world, towards always one
principle ― on the different levels of reality ― "versus
one" (pròs hén, ad unum), until it arrives
finally to the first transcendent principle, God.
Further on, in Descartes neither the
definition of matter as res extensa, nor that of the soul as res
cogitans ist satisfying, because for matter extension is only an attribute,
not its essence (as physics teaches us, visible extended matter can be
transformed in energy), and with regard to the soul, again thinking is an
attribute of it, not its essence, because thinking is a second act, different
from the first act of soul's ontological being.
Traditional
philosophy has a far deeper insight when putting material and formal cause in
the relationship of potency and act.
For the rest, although Descartes speaks
of the soul as substantial, he reduces, in fact, its substantial being to the
act of consciousness.
b) regarding Kant's argument:
Let us go now to Kant. I consent with
his reflection upon "the condition of the possibility of experience",
leading him to the "transcendental consciousness", which differs from
knowledge and experience, because it is its condition. However, unfortunately,
he understands, then, consciousness in the Cartesian sense as reflection of the
thinking I, whereas it should be understood in the traditional sense as simple
intuitive-receptive act which grasps the being / existence of things.
It was a mistake of Kant to deny any
intellectual intuition (intellektuale Anschauung) to human beings, having in
mind certain Platonists of his time who claimed an intellectual intuition of
Platonic essences of things.[4] Certainly we do not dispose on such
an intuition. But nevertheless the simple act of consciousness (in the
traditional sense), with which the intellects grasps the being / existence of
things, is intuitive-receptive, not discursive, nor an act of "position".
For
the rest, it is equally false when modern scholars (in a Kantian trend) accuse
Thomas Aquinas of an "intuitionism". Indeed Thomas teaches expressly
that we arrive to a knowledge of the essence of things vix magno studio,
will say by discursive processes (of definition).
In summary, the reflection of the
thinking I is a discursive operation, namely the beginning of self-knowledge,
accompanied already by the simple self-consciousness, or self-awareness,
self-presence, of the intellect.
Carl
Leonhard Reinhold, the defender
of Kant, has used the argument that we can never go beyond our consciousness,
when we try to represent the things as being outside of us, because such a
representation remains always inside our consciousness. However, the fault of
this argument consists in the wrong concept of consciousness as reflection.
Indeed, in the reflection the subject returns to himself, includes himself,
"locks up" himself in his interiority, secluding himself from the
exterior world. On the contrary, consciousness (in the traditional sense) is
open to all beings whatsoever, external things as well as the intellect itself.
According to the knowledge which it accompanies ― whether of external or
internal being ― it differentiates in object- or subject-consciousness,
self-consciousness.
Consciousness,
from conscientia, means originally a "concomitant knowing",
which concerns being, being one, being real, being good of things etc., and
accompanies all discursive knowledge. Unfortunately Descartes, using the term conscientia,
gives to it the meaning of reflection of the thinking I, what is mistaken,
because this reflection is an discursive act, namely from the beginning
self-knowledge. With regard to sensible data, Kant speaks (with the
empiricists) of sensitive consciousness (sinnliches Bewusstsein). However, this
term is self-contradictory. Senses have no knowing (scire).
With regard to the two meanings which in
Kant existence or being assumes, namely as sensible-empirical and as thinkable
(as "position" of the transcendental object in relation to the
subject), it can have neither the one nor the other meaning; for existence is
not a sensible fact, but an intelligible act of given things; and the being / existence
of things is no position of our intellect, but is given to us so that it must
be received by our intellect, in the simple intuitive-receptive act of consciousness.
Seen
more closely, we can accept ― with the tradition ― that the
representation of the external object in the intellect is a position in it,
because constituted by the intellect in itself (Aristotle: not the stone is in
the soul, but its form). In Kant, however, after the elimination of the
external thing in itself (Ding an sich) from our knowledge, the internal
representation becomes now the object qua phenomenon, ― what is
inacceptable; indeed, as already the tradition has seen, the internal cognitive
content is only the medium quo of our knowledge of the external object,
never the object itself.
By our
natural consciousness of reality we comprehend the being / existence of things,
present to us, in our everyday life. Modern thinkers have criticised it as naïve.
We shall discuss this later, in part 3).
I
find still convincing the argument of Heinrich Jacobi who criticises the elimination of the "thing in
itself" (Ding an sich) as contradictory. He argues that without the thing
in itself one cannot enter in Kant's system of Critique of pure reason,
and with the thing in itself one cannot remain in that system. Indeed, the
elimination of "the thing in itself" presupposes in us, the readers,
a (let my say) natural, immediate understanding of the expression "thing
in itself". But as soon as we actualize this expression we grasp it so
evidently, that its elimination becomes impossible. In effect, even if we doubt
all things in what they are, we cannot doubt that there is something "in
itself" before our mind, because we cannot doubt before nothing.
Jacobi's
criticism was directed only against Kant's doctrine of God as mere
"ideal". Against this Jacobi claimed a realistic religious experience
(referring to a mystical friend, called Asmus) and, in doing so, he gave an
important contribution to a philosophy of religion.
c) regarding the empiricist argument:
Passing to the empiricist school, I can
understand partially Bacon that he eliminates the formal and final causes from
the research of the natural sciences, because these are focused only on the
material conditions of things, and here there are no formal, nor final causes.
Indeed, these enter only in the realm of living beings (according to the
tradition). The error in Bacon consists in the fact that he reduces the entire
nature, including living beings, to the mere material level.
Empiricism has been worked out in detail
by John Locke (Treatise concerning
human understanding) who founds it systematically on sense-perception,
relying on the thesis, ascribed to Aristotle:
nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit
in sensu.
To this Leibniz has answered (Nouveaux
essais sur l'entendement humain):
excipe:
nisi intellectus ipse.
By this
answer Leibniz reveals the problem in empiricism and gives the solution: that
intellect belongs to the condition of experience; it is the subject also of
sense-perceptions. It is not the senses which perceive sensible thinks and
judge about them, but the intellect with the senses. And the intellect knows
itself directly, not via sense-perceptions, nor by abstraction from them. This
clarification (relying on tradition) has overcome empiricism completely.
Indeed, the simple self-perception or
self-awareness of intellect, in its self-presence, is an intellectual act, not
a sensitive one, because intellect is no longer sensible.
In
Kant we find the division between sensitive and transcendental consciousness,
between the empirical and the intellectual subject, in consequence of his
tentative to combine the two opposite schools, empiricism and rationalism.
However this tentative is very odd, because the two schools are incompatible.
The two divisions are false, too. Certainly there are two different principles
in our soul: the sensitive and the intellectual one, but there is only one
subject of all our activities, sensitive and intellectual, namely the intellect.
In other words: the sensitive nature in man is no autonomous instance, like in
the other animals, but integrated in the rational soul and subject to reason or
intellect.
In
Kant's position, according to its empiricist part, only the empirical subject
is given to himself in the so-called "inner sense" (of time), whereas
the intellectual (transcendental) subject no longer; he can only think himself
as existing thing in itself, but is not given to himself realistically.
Intellect is no longer present to himself, what contradicts his consciousness
of real self-presence, which is, at no rate, empirical, sustained by senses.
David Hume
has elaborated the empiricist theory so that the only base of our knowledge
from which it starts is sense-perception, with the first "impressions"
of sensible objects upon our senses. The existence of them becomes evident,
thanks of these primary impressions. However this explanation falsify the true
evidence which only our intellect can testify, referred to the simple act of being
of the empirical things which is no longer sensible, but intelligible (as mentioned
above). Strong sensitive feelings refer always to sensible material data (like
red, or cold, or hard etc.). However, the simple being of things, in their
formal presence, has no colour, no sound, no smell, no taste. Only intellect is
aware or conscious of it, none of the senses.
d) regarding post-kantian arguments:
Considering thinkers after Kant, until
our time, I should limit myself only to a few:
Étienne Gilson opposes existence and essence, because he refuses the
rationalist speculation of ideal essences without concrete existence, giving absolute
priority to the latter. I cannot enter here in discussion of his position.
Instead let us consider only an interesting argument which expounds what he
calls the "dilemma of realism", in the following form:[5]
On the one side, it is typical for
realism to grasp reality in immediate and evident manner. Insofar, however, for
Gilson realism remains below the rational level of philosophy and needs a
philosophical foundation. Without this it would be unacceptable. On the other
side, every philosophical foundation would take away the immediate character of
realism, and would lose it at all. The dilemma can be formulated also in this
way: Without critical reflection realism would remain on an irrational level of
sentiments, whereas with a philosophical foundation it becomes an idealism.
However, this argument has two implications
which are questionable:
1. that our
everyday natural realism, without philosophical reflection, is irrational or
emotional;
2. that
philosophical reflection has to procure a critical foundation. However, both
implications are not necessary, nor even acceptable.
Ad 1.
Natural realism, without philosophical reflection, must not rely on irrational
feelings, but effectively relies on the natural immediate consciousness of real
being, which is not sensible, but intelligible (as explained above).
The
author does not profit from the traditional distinction between ratio
and intellectus, reason and intellect. The former is discursive, the
latter intuitive. Thomas[6] appreciates the use of these terms,
offered by a long tradition, and states that the intellect as broader faculty
embraces that of reason. Indeed, all discursive operations start from certain
data, which have to be grasped intuitively, and finish in complex relations of
knowledge which must be again unified intuitively. The being of things, as a
primary datum, must be grasped intuitively by intellect, just with the simple
act of consciousness.
Ad 2. When immediate realism is taken over by philosophical reflection,
the latter must not be critical. It is only after Descartes and Kant, that
philosophising means eo ipso critical thinking — which is a false
premise, of sceptical provenance. Reflection originally is an affirmative
thought returning to something given, in our case: to the being of things. We
shall see later, with which reflection tradition has justified it.
Gilson therefore, in order to speak of
reality, without using critical reflection (which would take away realism at
all), claims for the common sense of reality which is a certain
belief in it.
He
confronts himself with different conceptions of reality, that of English empiricists
(Reid and others) and that of Neo-scholastics (Lammenais, Liberatore). The
latter oscillate between the meaning of common sense as comprehension of first
axioms (above all the law of non-contradiction, the law of the excluded middle)
and (more or less recognized) conventions about the world, man and God which
rhetoric uses before the public.
The author develops the concept of sens
commun towards a certainty of the existence of things, which is put in
existential feelings, life-experience, and finally in Christian religious
belief (the existence of things as creatures of God). Now, we can surely agree
that men undergo all these psychic activities, but for philosophy, especially
in its gnoseological discipline, the only relevant instance is that of simple
consciousness, which grasps the being of things, and is the accompanying
condition of all psychic activities.
Regarding Edmund Husserl, I wish to remark that being / existence of the
external things is not a question of an opinion about a sensible fact which we
could neglect and "put into brackets". On the contrary, it is an
intelligible act of all things which, corresponding to our immediate consciousness,
can never be "put into brackets", because the latter accompanies all
our cognitive activities, experiences, opinions etc. Therefore the being of
things has become the entrance-door of traditional ontology.
Husserl[7] follows the Cartesian dualism, between res
extensa and res cogitans, and divides, accordingly, the
whole history of philosophy in objectivism and subjectivism. The former covers
Ancient and Medieval Times and part of Modern Times, the latter starts only
with Hume, Kant and psychological thinkers until himself, Husserl, who declares
his phenomenology as "radical subjectivism". However, we have already
noticed the fault in Descartes' dualism, caused by lack of the analogy of
being. Indeed, as we have stated above, being of things, already as simple
existence, is not a sensible fact of material objects, but an intelligible act
which is found analogously in objects as well as in subject. We have to
recognize it, or we lose realism.
Further it does not make sense to speak
about essence and intuition of essence (Wesensschau), when the basis of
essence, the substantial being of real things is taken away. What Husserl calls
abusively "essence" consists only in characteristic features of
phenomena. In truth, however, the essence does not appear "leibhaft"
(embodied) in phenomena, but is the intelligible form of the being of things.
Phenomenology
has its value in analysing and describing psychic phenomena ― Husserl
called it "transcendental psychology" ―, but it cannot
substitute the traditional ontology, which starts from the simple being of
things.
Concerning Heidegger's utterance that man's essence is his existence, my
comment would be like this: Since Heidegger[8] disqualifies the traditional ontology of being
as "a superficial opinion of being" (eine oberflächliche Seinsmeinung)
and disregards the scholastic term of being as "empty" (leer), he
re-installs his fundamental ontology by filling up "being" with the
rich existential experiences, historical living events (Erlebnisse), like a
hidden destiny etc. However, by this procedure existence becomes the essence of
man, and the simple existence is lost.
In completion of my survey I have to
answer briefly Russell's and Popper's criticism on Western
metaphysics which they see represented mainly in Plato's doctrine of the two
worlds, the sensible one and that of the ideas, substantialized concepts,
without substantial reality. They are not aware that Plato distinguished between
the concepts in our mind and the ideas as real formal causes on the side of the
things. The separation of them from the material phenomena does not make him an
idealist. For the rest, already Aristotle has corrected the separation,
retaining the formal causes in the empirical things themselves. Russell and
Popper ignore Aristotle's correction and own doctrine of substance, which
distinguishes, according to the categories of substance and accidents, between
substantial and accidental being of things. Certainly, if one identifies being
with a sensible material fact, in an empiricist and nominalistic way, the
categorical distinctions become meaningless. There remain as objects only
phenomena. However, then it becomes also questionable to speak of phenomena,
without substances which appear in phenomena.
In summary, substance in Aristotle is
not some metaphysical obscure thing behind the empirical thing, but is the
empirical thing itself, seen under its aspect of substantial being (according
to the first category).
My short survey on modern positions
about existence and essence has shown that these terms end in problems which
make it necessary to address ourselves to their sources. I limit myself to some
texts in Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.[9]
a) Being as the most evident:
We have mentioned above that the
traditional term of existence is connected with the immediate realism, relying
on the simple natural consciousness of the real being of things.
In
fact, realism means 1. that we recognize the priority of things (res) before
our knowledge, and 2. that our knowledge receives its determination (measure,
norm) from the things, not vice versa.
The
1. aspect concerns the existence of things, independently from the subject; the
2. aspect the essence of things, which is the very object and source of
knowledge of the human intellect.
There has
remained the question how to defend the traditional realism of being against
the objection that it is naïve. However, this modern criticism ignores that
already Aristotle justifies his statement of the being of things as evident by
a fundamental reflection in his epistemology.[10] There he puts the question what is presupposed
in order to acquire knowledge, and arrives to the answer that this is the being
of the objects in every domain of knowledge, more precisely: their being under
the aspects of being-there (existence) and being something. The two aspects
answer to the two questions: whether a thing is, and what it is.
Thomas Aquinas ― by mediation of
Avicenna, the great Persian commentator of Aristotle's Metaphysica
― has taken up this doctrine[11] and brings the Aristotelian reflection to this
result that the being is the most known to our intellect:
illud quod
primo intellectus concipit quasi notissimum … est ens.
This
beautiful statement expresses that the being is immediately known, even most
known, not an acquirable knowledge. But the statement itself is the result of
an epistemological reflection. Hence the classical realism, on the one side, is
immediate, but, on the other not naïve, because justified by a profound
reflection.
It is
noteworthy that the reflection of the presupposition of all acquirable
knowledge includes also the reflection itself, so that this reflection goes beyond
itself, recognizing its own ontological foundation in the being of everything.
In so
far this reflection is more profound than the Cartesian which ends in the
reflection itself as last foundation of our knowledge.
The
corresponding act which grasps being, is the simple receiving act of intellect
(in Greek noeÎn, in Latin intelligere), contacting
being in what is given in all categories. Cfr. Metaph. IX, 10. Thomas
indicates it precisely in this way:[12]
intelligere
autem dicit nihil aliud quam simplicem intuitum intellectus in id quod sibi est
praesens intelligibile
…intuitum
qui nihil aliud est quam praesentia intelligibilis ad intellectum, quocumque
modo, sic anima semper intelligit se et Deum.
This simple
act by which intellect perceives the being of things, we have called above
consciousness, in this original meaning.
To
return again to Gilson's dilemma of realism, I would like to underline this:
When we want to reflect on the evidence of the being of things, the reflection
arrives at this being only as most evident or does not have reached it at all.
He who wants to speak about being can do it only through the traditional reflection,
which for the first time has set out it thematically, or cannot speak about it
at all.
Therefore
it seems to me unacceptable, when Heidegger, in Einführung in die Metaphysik,
speaks from the start of "beings" (Seiendes) and "the
being" (das Sein), and puts "the being" into question, which
meaning it could have for us, without first having given account to himself and
to the reader, from where these terms originate. Indeed, they are not words of
our everyday language, as he suggests. He ignores that "beings" (tò
ón) and "the being" (tò eînai) have their origin in
philosophical reflections of Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle. Hence he has no
right to use them. Or in other words: He abuses the term "being",
filling it up with existential experiences.
b) From existence to essence:
Aristotle's Metaphysics
introduces its object, namely "being qua being", with reference to
the epistemological reflection on Anal. post. Indeed, whereas all
other, single sciences presuppose the being of their objects, Metaphysics
has no further object in addition to them, but deals with that formal presupposition
of the other sciences, that is: with the being of their objects, now declared
thematically as "being qua being": under the two aspects of
being-there and being-something. Aristotle underlines then that it concerns
substance, the primary being according to the first category, which is or
exists substantially.
Aristotle's Metaphysics, starting
with this object, book IV and VI, proceeds then, book VII foll., in direction
of the causes by which beings are. As those the four causes: material, formal,
moving and final cause, are set forth.
The first approach to them is via the
consideration of the essence of things, by the question: what things in
themselves (per se) and identically are, taking away all accidental
features. In correction of Plato's concept of essence (the idea) which considers
it under the universal form, the tí estin, Aristotle considers essence
of things with regard to their being and coins the new term: tò tí ên eÎnai. The question is no longer: What is
the thing?, but: What is the proper being of each individual? that is: its
essence. Hence Aristotle conceives the essence as the form under which each
thing specifically is what it is (e.g. the horse a horse, the human being a
human being).
By this the connection of existence and
essence becomes manifest; further also by the procedure of the definition.[13] It begins with the question whether the thing
(to be defined) is or not, and going on with the question what it is. For we
can search for the essence of a thing only when it exists and is observable.
Further on, the being of the thing (to be defined) is a presupposition of its
definition and must not enter in it, "the being is not the essence of
anything":[14]
tò d' eÎnai ouk
ousía oudení.
Here we
have the source-text of the distinction between existence and essence. Usually
the term "the being" (tò eÎnai) in the text is translated with "existence"
what is right, because it corresponds to the context, with the question whether
the thing (to be defined) exists. Nevertheless the term eÎnai, "being", is open for the
connection with ousía, the verbal substantive of eÎnai. The term ousía can mean
substance (e.g. Socrates) and also the essence (of Socrates), what depends on
the context.
Metaph., book VII, deals with
essence, chap. 4-12, from the view-point of definition, but passes then, chap.
17, to the view-point of causes, so that the question: What is the thing (to be
defined)?, is modified to the question: Why belongs this to that, namely a
formal or final cause to this matter?
Indeed, it makes a great difference,
whether we study a thing, looking only to its matter, or also to its formal or
final cause. As the text here (and in Physics, book II) explains, things
are more than only their material parts, what holds true especially in living
beings, which are endowed with a life-principle, a soul.
Thomas has apprehended from Aristotle
the methodical procedure from the initial object, the being, towards the causes
by which it is, towards the essence, in the metaphysical sense, and has
accomplished it in his writing: De ente et essentia, which is in large
extend a commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, book VII.
c) The essence as the causes of
things:
In Aristotle's epistemology the
definition, which proceeds with genus and specific differences, is closely
combined with induction, the way of finding the generic and specific causes,
namely the material and the formal causes.
Unfortunately
modern criticism on the Platonic an Aristotelian method of defi-nition has
totally ignored that it is orientated to the search of causes. Let us take the
simple scholarly example with the definition of man as "biped animal".
Beginning with the genus "animal", the definition must find those specific
differences which divide the genus exhaustively in two domains. This succeeds
with the two differences "aquatic animals" and "terrestrial animals",
which indicate two essentially different modes of life, with two completely different
organisms.
The
next pair of differences, regarding the terrestrial animals, namely the
"winged animals" and the "pedestrian animals" concern again
essential differences in mode of life and biological organisation, and the same
holds with the third pair of differences, regarding the pedestrian animals in
"multiped" and "biped animals". The latter are combined
with an upright position, effecting the larger form of the brain and the
transformation of the anterior feet in arms and hands for the specifically
human functions. The exterior morphology manifests the efficiency of a formal
and final cause, a psychic principle of life.
Further
more it is noteworthy that every pair of specific differences is made with the
eye on the being of the object in question ― in our example: man ―
and conveys a decision of being or not being: being aquatic or terrestrial, being
winged or pedestrian, being multiped or biped. Hence, the example shows also
the connection of essence with being.
From this results that the essence of
things consists in their constitutive causes.
Thomas, following Aristotle, has
expressed essence as that by which a thing is what it specifically is: essentia
est id quo res est.
d) Potency and act, regarding
essence:
In the metaphysics of both thinkers the
material and the formal cause are defined by potency (dýnamis) and act (enérgeia).
These two terms express two modes of being and are complementary to each other
like the undetermined / determinable and the determining principle. They have
been introduced in Aristotle's Physics in order to define movement,
namely as the passage of the natural thing in movement from potential to actual
being.
This presupposes in the moving thing two
causes which are responsible for its potentiality and its actuality: These are
the material cause, on the one side, and the formal, efficient and final cause,
on the other.
Thomas Aquinas is familiar with this
doctrine, namely that the essence or the decisive formal cause gives the act to
the composed thing of matter and formal cause: forma dat esse rei.
However, there rises now a new problem ― which goes beyond Aristotle
― asking from where the essence has its act. Essence cannot have it by
its own, but must have received it from a transcendent cause, from God. Under
this new theological aspect essence is related to its being as potency to act.
This Thomistic doctrine of essence as
potency has influenced largely Modern rationalism and idealism, where potency
becomes the possibility of thoughts so that essence, as thinkable possibility,
ends in opposition to being as act. Yet the modern misunderstanding ignores
that Thomas' doctrine of the essence as potency vis-à-vis actual being does not
contradict or substitute the Aristotelian doctrine of the essence as
act-principle, because the two doctrines belong to two different dimensions.
The latter concerns the relation of formal cause and matter, immanent in the
natural things, the former, instead, concerns the transcendent relation of the
formal cause to a first divine cause, from which it receives its actual being.
e) Essence as being in the divine
substance:
In Aristotle's Metaphysics, book
XII, which is his natural theology, the first transcendent cause of being of
all things is determined is immaterial, pure act (without any potency). This
means that its essence is identical with its actual being.
Thomas has assumed this doctrine in the
first part of his Summa theologiae, teaching that in God his
essence is identically his being: in Deo idem est essentia et esse, God
is essentially ipsum esse subsistens. Modern criticism puts this in
question, ignoring that this statement is made of the first cause, the divine
substance, which presupposes the whole foregoing metaphysics. Whereas in all
beings the being differs from their essence, in God in an unique exception both
fall into one. The expression "ipsum esse" may not be isolated from
its metaphysical context and put then into question what it could mean, as Heidegger
does.
In
the discussion Prof. Sousedik pointed out that existence should be considered
in connection with the logical operations of our judement about existence, as
reflected in Frege. My conference has not set out this reflection. It was
concerned only with the realistic, immediate comprehension of existence of
things, as Aristotle and Thomas have expounded. Indeed, evident is, according
to them, that which can only be comprehended as true, or not at all, so that
the possibility of falsehood is excluded. The immediate comprehension of the
existence of things is the presupposition for all reflection, also the logical
one, which comes later.
[1] R. Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, Paris 1641.
[2] A. Baumgarten, Metaphysica, Halle 1779, Pars I, cap. 1, sect. 3, § 55.
[3] I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Riga (2. Aufl.) 1787, B 626.
[4] Cfr. the late
writing of Kant: Von einem neuerdings erhobenen vornehmen Tone in der
Philosophie, von 1796.
[5] See Étienne Gilson, Réalisme thomiste et critique de la connaissance, from 1939; later edition, Paris 1986.
[6] Thomas Aquinas, De verit. q. XV, a. 1.
[7] See Edmund Husserl, Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, von 1936.
[8] See Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, von 1935. Cfr. my treatise: Heideggers Fehlinterpretation antiker Texte, Bonn 2005.
[9] See, more in detail, my treatises: 1. Sein und Bewußtsein. Erörterungen zur Erkenntnislehre und Metaphysik in einer Gegenüberstellung von Aristoteles und Kant, Hildesheim 2001; translated in Czech language: Horst Seidl, Bytí a vědomí. Gnoseologie a metafysika v klasické a moderni tradici, Vyšehrad, 2005; 2. Realistische Metaphysik. Stellungnahme zu moderner Kritik an der traditionellen Metaphysik, Hildesheim 2006; translated in English language: Metaphysics and Realism, Roma 2008.
[10] See Aristotle, Analytica posteriora, book I, chap. 1-2.
[11] Thomas Aquinas, in De veritate, quaest. I, art. 1.
[12] Thomas Aquinas, I Sent., dist. 3, q. 4, a. 5.
[13] See Anal. post. II, 4-10.
[14] Ibid., , ibid. II, 7, 92b 14.