In one of his many books on Aquinas, Anthony Kenny
offers a critical examination of Aquinas's doctrine
that God's essence is identical to his existence. Following several attempts to
try to make sense of Aquinas's doctrine, Kenny tentatively concludes in one
section of his inquiry that the kind of being Aquinas has in mind is being in
the sense of 'common being.' That is, the kind of being that Kenny seems to
have in mind is being in the very general sense of "anything that is
anything."[1]
Or, in other words:
'Esse,' so understood, seems to be either a
predicate variable (to say that x is, in this sense, is to say that for some F,
x is F, i.e., that there is some predicate true of F) or else a disjunction of
predicates (to say that x is, in this sense, is to say that x is either F or G or
H ... and so on through the list of predicates).[2]
If understood in this sense, Aquinas's doctrine
seems to be in trouble. For, as Kenny rightly points out: "...being, so
understood, would be too thin and universal an attribute to be the essence of anything."[3]
Kenny
argues, however, that Aquinas offers a different view of God's being or esse in
the Summa Theologiae, claiming that Aquinas here interprets being in the sense
of 'esse without distinction.' In this new sense, Kenny claims that Aquinas means
'being' in the sense of either 'esse which specifies nothing further' or 'esse
which permits no further specification.' 'Esse which specifies nothing other,'
he continues, is just esse in the sense of common being, in the sense of
meaning previously discussed. 'Esse which permits no further specification,'
however, is the unique being or esse that belongs to God.
Having
located Aquinas's identification of God's esse in this sense, Kenny proceeds to
criticize it on the grounds that:
... if the esse which denotes God's essence is like
the esse which is predicable of everything, except that it does not permit the
addition of further predicates, then it is a predicate that is totally
unintelligible.[4]
The "if" in the antecedent of Kenny's
conditional seems to me especially important in trying to clarify what exactly
Aquinas means. One reason not to think that by 'esse which permits no further
specification' Aquinas simply means "esse which is predicable of
everything, except that it does not permit the addition of further
predicates," is because the distinction would seem arbitrary and thus
question-begging, having no other substantive difference between it and the
alternative distinction by which to ground or to justify the distinction. And,
as perhaps a general rule, if a philosopher of Aquinas's stature seems to say
something absurd to this degree, one might consider rechecking one's work.
But
a more substantive reason for regarding 'esse which permits no further
specification' in Kenny's sense as a mistaken reading is that it also ignores
the fact that, in addition to identifying God's being as identical with his
essence, Aquinas also, through his adherence to Divine Simplicity, identifies
God's essence as identical with his power, his wisdom, etc. And in no obvious
sense is 'power' the same thing as 'common being' in the sense Kenny has
identified. Thus, in what follows, I will try to offer an alternative reading
of 'esse which permits no further specification' which makes better sense of
the term than Kenny thinks it has.
In
the process, I will also offer a general discussion of Aquinas's understanding
of Divine Simplicity, and tie it together with the sense of 'esse without
further specification' that I take Aquinas to have in mind. In this last
respect, I believe one way in which one might arrive at some understanding of
Aquinas's doctrine of God's existence being identical with his essence is to
begin from where his first 'proof' for the existence of God ends: the First
Way. My intuition here is that the correlative notions of act and potency can
shed light on what Aquinas has in mind. My starting point is Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles, and though there
are differences in Aquinas's presentation of the material from that found in his
Summa Theologiae, I do not believe
the differences will have a significant impact on my discussion. I choose it
merely because Aquinas seems to offer more explicit detail and argument for the
views he advances than those that appear in the ST.
1.2
From Prime Mover and Beyond
One
consequence of Aquinas's First Way, that is, from his argument that God is Prime Mover, if successful, is
that in God there is no potency whatsoever. For "the being whose substance
has an admixture of potency is liable not to be by as much as it has potency;
for that which can be, can 'not' be."[5]
What Aquinas means to say in this passage I think is that insofar as a thing has potency in some respect, it is
possible for that thing, with respect to that with which it has potency, to be
corrupted. One consideration that makes this reading likely is that the passage
in question is located immediately following Aquinas's argument that God is
eternal (in the sense of being everlasting, or such that he is never corrupted),
based, in turn, on the view he takes himself to have established that God is
immovable.
Indeed,
following the line I have just quoted, he argues that:
But God, being everlasting, in his substance cannot
not-be.
And if something is everlasting, he continues to
argue, it is thereby immutable because (a) what is everlasting is not in time,
and (b) what is not in time cannot possibly change. And if something cannot
possibly change, moreover, it is by definition immutable. Now change, for
Aquinas, is simply the reduction of something from a state of potency with
respect to F to a state of actuality with respect to F.
But
God is not in potency with respect to anything F, because God is perfectly
actual with respect to any perfection F* and not in potency with respect to
anything that is not a perfection (e.g., God is not potentially orange). Hence,
in God there is absolutely no potency whatsoever. From this, he also concludes
that God has no matter, because anything with matter, he argues, is necessarily
in potency with respect to something.[6] He
also believes his arguments concerning act and potency with respect to God show
that there is no composition in God. For, he argues, several things that come
together to form the parts of one thing are united if and only if the things
are potentially united with respect to that union.[7] But
God has no potency at all, or so Aquinas has argued; therefore, God cannot be
composite.
Having
attempted to establish this last conclusion, Aquinas moves on to argue that if something has no composition,
it is necessarily identical with its own essence. His argument here is as
follows:
Since everything possesses its own essence, if there
was nothing in a thing outside its essence all the thing is would be its
essence. But, if something were not its essence, there should be something in
it outside its essence. Thus, there must be composition in it.[8]
Aquinas's argument seems to be this: necessarily,
everything that is has an essence,
i.e., that in virtue of what it is. But
if something is composed or has composition, it has something that is not its
essence in addition to its having its essence. Now it is not the case that God
has any composition. Therefore, God
has nothing but his essence. And if God has nothing but his essence, it follows
that God just is his essence or is identical with his essence.
1.3
God's Essence is Identical with His Existence
The
last portion of Aquinas's argument I think is the most difficult to follow, and
is the part that most directly concerns what I want to say in response to
Kenny's objection. From the conclusion that God just is his essence, Aquinas
concludes that God's existence is identical to his essence. In the Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas offers
several arguments for this last point, but the one that seems to shed the most
light on what he has in mind is the following:
Being, furthermore, is the name of an act, for a
thing is not said to be because it is in potency but because it is in act.
Everything, however, that has an act diverse from it is related to that act as
potency to act; for potency and act are said relatively to one another.[9]
Taking in mind what Aquinas has said with respect to
God's being purely actual such as to have no potency with respect to any
perfection F, his reasoning in light of the last passage seems to be this. If
something is such as to be only potentially F* such that F* designates
existence, it follows that it lacks existence. For, obviously, something exists
only inasmuch as it is actually F*. But if something's act of F* is distinct
from that thing's essence, it follows that this thing has composition insofar
as there is something added to its essence, namely, its act of existence or its
act of F*. Necessarily, however, God lacks any composition. So, Aquinas
concludes, there is no distinction between God's essence and God's act of
existence.
Another
way of illustrating what Aquinas has in mind can be got at by examining the way
in which he thinks that anything except God must possess F*. If a creature,
say, an angel, possesses F*, it possesses F* if and only if it receives F* from
God. God, in other words, brings the angel from being only potentially F* to
being actually F*. That is, God conjoins the angel's essence to an individual
act of existence, the act of which itself originates from God. But because the
angel's individual act of existence is something "external" to its
essence, it is a fortiori something accidental or incidental to its essence; it
is possible for the angel not to exist. As it is God and God alone who causes
the angel's individual act of existence, moreover, it is God and God alone who
can take away its individual act of existence.
Now,
it is not the case, Aquinas thinks, that God possesses existence or F* in a
merely incidental way like the angel possesses it. Rather, he thinks God
possesses F* such that God necessarily possesses it. But, then, F* cannot be
something external to God's essence, in the way that it is external to the
angel's essence. Therefore, he argues, it must be included in God's essence. But Aquinas has also already argued that there
can be no composition in God's essence; hence, he concludes, because there
cannot be composition in God's essence, there cannot be anything in God's essence. So, therefore, God's
existence is the same as his essence.
Yet
another way of trying to make sense of what Aquinas is trying to suggest,
perhaps, is found in another argument he gives for the conclusion that God's essence
is the same as his existence:
Every thing, furthermore, exists because it has
being. A thing whose essence is not its being, consequently, [exists] not
through its essence but by participation in something, namely, being itself.
But that which is through participation in something cannot be the first being,
because prior to it is the being in which it participates in order to be.[10]
The point I believe Aquinas is trying to make here
is simpler than his (admittedly complex) language seems to suggest: either God
exists through himself or he exists through something else. Now, if he exists
through something else, he is not the First Being. But, Aquinas clearly
believes, this is false. So, he concludes, God exists through himself. The
basic idea behind his reasoning on this point, therefore, might not be as
convoluted as it seems. But, admittedly, it is still not clear what Aquinas
means in saying that God exists through himself.
1.4
Further Clarification
So,
Aquinas's reasoning that God must
exist through himself might be clearer than previously, but this still does not
give clarity to what God's existing through himself means. One first step
towards an attempt to elucidate Aquinas's meaning here might go as follows. By
the law of excluded middle, it is necessarily true that either it is the case
that there is something that exists or it is not the case that there is
something that exists. Now, clearly, the former is true. On one end of the
scale of things that exist, it is safe to conclude that there is at least one
thing that exists. On the other extreme, grouping together every 'thing' that
exists, one may designate the totality of 'things' that exist as "the
universe." However, Aquinas believes, on the basis of his arguments for
God's existence, that the universe is brought into existence by something else,
namely, God. And, clearly, if this is true, God cannot be part of the universe,
because God cannot be the cause for
his own existence. So, in addition to the universe, there is that in virtue of
which the universe exists -- God.
For
the sake of convenience, then, one can divide all things that exist into one of
two sides of a dividing line: God on one side; and the universe on the other
side, the relationship between the two being, among other things, that of cause
to effect. However, this means, in Aquinas's terms, that every 'thing' but God
has the cause of its existence in
God, i.e., it participates in
existence inasmuch as it participates
in God's existence. But God does not, Aquinas insists, participate in anything
in virtue of which he receives his being.[11] Nor
is there any 'thing' such as existence
or being, whatever this would mean,
that exists without God or which has its existence prior to or apart from God.
So God, he concludes, exists through himself. More than this, God just is his existence.
Nor,
Aquinas thinks, is being or existence somehow incidental to what God is insofar
as God is pure act, this conclusion having been proved, Aquinas believes, from
the First Way. For, in arguing that in God there are found no accidental
qualities, Aquinas argues that:
For being cannot participate in anything that is not
its essence, although that which is can participate in something. The reason is
that nothing is more formal or more simple than being itself, which
participates in nothing. But the divine substance is being itself, and
therefore has nothing that is not of its substance.[12]
For Aquinas, simplicity,[13]
it seems, is a perfection insofar as simplicity indicates a lack of potency.
But something lacks potency only inasmuch as it is in actuality or act. And if
something lacks potency with respect to something F, then it follows that it is
actually F. Moreover, if it lacks potency full stop, it is fully or purely in
act. So God is simple, then, for Aquinas, because God is purely actual or pure
act. But, as Aquinas also argues in this passage, God is simple because he is being, i.e., because he is his own
being. Now, is it possible that God's being simple in these two senses is
merely a coincidence? It intuitively does not seem very likely. And if this
reading is right, it allows one to elucidate, at least in part, Aquinas's claim
that God is his own being or his own existence, which, admittedly, is not at
all an easy claim to understand, in terms of his claim that God is pure act,
which is perhaps somewhat easier to understand. In particular, it offers a way
to try to make sense of Aquinas's claim that God exists through himself.
Moreover,
it seems plausible to try to interpret Aquinas's claim that God cannot have any
accidents in light of the idea that this would necessarily lead to the
actualization of some potency in the divine substance. And this, in fact, is
what one should expect Aquinas to say if my reading of him up to this point is
correct. And indeed this is the very point Aquinas argues in the passage
following the one I recently quoted, and this makes sense especially if one
parses actualization in this context as something's giving being to the divine
substance.
That
this method I have proposed for elucidating Aquinas's notion of existence or
being as it pertains to God's essence is appropriate can perhaps be made more evident
from a lengthy passage from Aquinas's disputed questions On the Power of God:
What I call being, esse, is the most perfect of all:
and this is apparent because the act is always more perfect than the potency.
For a certain form is not understood to be in act unless it is said to be. For
humanity or fieriness can be considered either as latent in the potentiality of
matter or in the power of an agent, or even just in the mind; but by having
esse, it actually comes to exist. From which it is clear that what I call esse
is the actuality of all acts, and therefore the perfection of all perfections.
And to what I call esse nothing can
be added that is more formal, which determines it, in the way that the act
determines the potency: for esse, taken in this manner, differs essentially
from something to which an addition can be made by way of determining.[14]
Within the first sentence, Aquinas explicitly links
being and act through God's possessing act in the sense of possessing a
perfection; in fact, he claims that it is "the most perfect of all." And
he follows this a few lines later with the claim that esse is "the
actuality of all acts, and therefore the perfection of all perfections." Esse,
then, in the sense in which God is his own esse, is the fullest and most
perfect expression of act, and it is in this sense that Aquinas wants to
identify God as perfectly in act.
That
is to say, there is absolutely no potency in God, because no 'thing' could act
upon God such as to determine God in some way or another, as this would be to
determine God's 'being' in one way or another: "for esse, taken in this
manner, differs essentially from something to which an addition can be made by
way of determining." And no addition can be made to God because God
possesses being in the fullest sense possible. One way God's fullness of being
is made apparent, moreover, is his lack of potency with respect to the various
perfections that characterize God. God does not have power; God simply is his
power. God does not have wisdom; God just is his wisdom.
Thus,
in response to Kenny's questions concerning Aquinas's doctrine that God's
existence is his essence, one can safely respond that Aquinas does not mean
esse without further specification as general esse (the kind that everything
has) plus an arbitrary restriction against further specifying the God's esse. Rather,
what he means is something like being or esse in the sense of being without
restrictions or limits that something has in virtue of its having been
specified as one particular sort of being, which, by its nature, is necessarily
restricted on the limits of its power, knowledge, goodness, and even its being.
As Te Velde expresses the point:
The 'esse' of God is not received in a distinct
essence, but is fully determined through itself. In God the esse is, so to
speak, completely 'essentialized' according to the full potential of its
perfection so that God contains in his simple 'esse' all the perfections of
things.[15]
God, then, possesses the fullness of being in a way
which creatures necessarily lack. Having arrived at some idea of God via the
knowledge that he is pure act, Aquinas proceeds to eliminate any and all
imperfections that restrict the fullness of God's 'esse.'
And
in a sense, the perhaps clearest way of getting a clear idea of what God must
be, for Aquinas, is to conceive of God's esse as such that it necessarily lacks
any potency whatsoever. As Te Velde again expresses the point better than I
can:
Let us take as an example the notion of divine
infinity. As such, in-finity means the negation of being finite, or being
limited ... The other kind of infinite -- the negative infinite -- has the
character of perfection: it consists in the negation of the limitation a
particular form undergoes by being received into something indeterminate and
potential.[16]
Understood in this sense, I contend that Kenny's
complaint does not succeed against Aquinas because it misconceives what he
means by 'esse which permits no further specification.'
[1] Anthony Kenny, Aquinas. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1980), 57.
[2] Kenny, 57.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Kenny, 58.
[5] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, translated, with
an introduction, and notes by Anton C. Pegis, F.R.S.C. (Notre Dame and London:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 100.
[6] Aquinas, 101-102.
[7] Aquinas, 103.
[8] Aquinas, 116.
[9] Aquinas, 120.
[10] Aquinas, 120-121.
[11] As Te Velde notes, there is the
concept of esse formale in Aquinas, or the common principle of being which is
shared by all beings. But, as Te Velde also notes, this is not the sense of
being that Aquinas is trying to communicate when he claims that God is his own
being. (Rudi Te Velde, Aquinas on God:
The Divine Science of the Summa Theologiae. [Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate
Publishing Limited, 2006], 87.)
[12] Aquinas, 120.
[13] Simplicity in the sense of a
lack of composition.
[14] The translation and my first
coming to learn of the passage itself are from Te Velde, 87.
[15] Te Velde, 85.
[16] Te Velde, 82.
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