I. Act & Potency; The Analogy of Being; The Putative “thinness” of Esse

Before moving to consider more rarified problems, most of which flow from Fregean preoccupations, it is important to point out the remarkable failure of Dr. Kenny to fathom certain essential elements of the metaphysical teaching of Aquinas actually implicit throughout his entire corpus of work: the relation of act to potency; the doctrine of the analogy of being; and the richness rather than “thinness” of esse.

Regarding essence as potency in relation to esse as act, Kenny indicates throughout most of the book that he supposes this to mean that essence must somehow spookily “pre‐exist,” that it must be antecedent to esse as a potency floating around “waiting” to be actualized. But of course, Thomas never taught any such thing, nor is this what his teaching means.

Possibility is a wider category than potency, for potency refers to an intrinsic principle of a being and not merely to a relation between a cause and what it is within the power of the cause to effectuate. Granted that in second act – the sort of act involved when first we say we “potentially” move and then come “actually” to move – the potency is prior, this is only because this potency itself presupposes the actual being of the thing which has the potency. This also pertains to the question of “hierarchy” in being, or diverse grades of the perfection of esse. For Aquinas, esse is the act of being whose internal measure and – in finite things – limit, is essence. Hence it is simultaneously true that in one sense either a thing is or it isn’t (so that either there is an actual being or not) and also that esse actualizes according to the ratio or measure of the essence of the thing of which it is the act of being such that different beings manifest the perfection of esse in different degrees (esse is proportionate to essence).Footnote ⁴ But significantly, the potential principle – essence – is a real potency precisely because of the priority of act, which of course here means the absolute priority of esse(for within the being – in which act and potency are simultaneously brought aboutFootnote ⁵– esse is most formal and actual).

For Kenny to suppose that for essence to be potency is for essence to “preexist”esse is a large mistake. Moreover, even when he cites Aquinas correctly on the point, he seems not to fathom what is being said – perhaps because his conceptual reservations along Fregean lines, with which we shall be coping later, simply do not permit him to follow what Aquinas argues. Hence after evincing incomprehension of this point through two‐thirds of his book, Dr. Kenny quotes St. Thomas Aquinas from De potentia dei to the effect that “esse cannot be determined by something else as potentiality is determined by actuality, but rather as an actuality is determined by a potentiality.”Footnote ⁶ But even here his response is veiled –“This is a difficult passage to understand”Footnote ⁷ and “It is only by a very careful choice of examples, in any language, that one can say that the verb ‘to be’ or one of its equivalents is used to mark the actualization of a potentiality”.Footnote ⁸

Earlier we find such lines as “Later in life Aquinas was quite clear that creation does not involve the actualization of any pre‐existent potentiality.”Footnote ⁹ But of course at no stage in his life was he particularly unclear about this: potency need not be antecedent to act, since act is absolutely prior to potency, a decisively important teaching of St. Thomas throughout his work.Footnote ¹⁰ Likewise expressive of this erroneous reading of the language of act and potency are the following comments of Dr. Kenny:

This passage clearly evidences a failure to come to terms with Thomas's metaphysics of esse, which is a metaphysics of the supremacy of act, absolutely speaking, and also relatively and analogously within every order.Footnote ¹² Hence as esse is to essence, so is form to matter, and so is accident to substance – not because, as he puts it, for someone who thinks in terms of act and potency “all three cases will be in the same way[my emphasis – SL] instances of the actualization of a potentiality,”Footnote ¹³ for each is patently distinct from the rest. Rather, each is analogically speaking – not merely by analogy of pros hen equivocation, but by analogy of proper proportionality – the actuation of a potency.

In the course of a difficult and dense examination of St. Thomas's metaphysics, it is not the least omission that the analogy of being, as distinct from the character of analogical discourse about God, is nowhere treated.Footnote ¹⁴ Whether this omission flows simply from the antecedent difficulty in making sense of Thomas's account of esse, so that further consideration is judged not to be warranted, or whether it flows from a tendency to insist upon logical univocity to such an extent as to carry this into the metaphysical realm, proper, may be left to further consideration. But the failure to treat of the analogy of being in a book which greatly depends on the claim that the doctrine of esse mingles diverse senses of esse lacking internal unity, intelligibility, and coherence, is a serious omission. This omission likewise touches Dr. Kenny's claim that there is a “thin” notion of existence which applies in precisely the same fashion to everything. “Same” here may reflect merely logical univocity, but then we have exited the ontological order, which is to say that then Dr. Kenny would be writing at cross‐purposes with the account he wishes to explicate. In fact, although esse is universally predicable this is not equivalent to esse being univocally predicable. The failure here is clear in Dr. Kenny's text:

But, sed contra, the actus essendi or act of being is indeed “universally indulged” by everything that is: but “universally” does not mean “univocally” save in the sense that the analogy of proper proportionality yields a species of logical univocity sufficient to constitute the middle term of a syllogism. Here again, the doctrine of being is treated as a study of second‐intention, which is first a misreading of St. Thomas, and second, a drastic philosophic error. Of course, one cannot quite refrain from noting with respect to Ryle's quoted observation, that there is no particular reason why principles of being, like analytic practitioners, should make noise.

Referring to an argument in De potentia dei to the effect that esse is a single common effect, and that esse is the proper effect of God, Kenny comments:

But for esse to be common is not necessarily for it to be univocally common. That is to say, for esse to be affirmed of many does not mean that what is attributed to each thing by the predicate esse fails to correspond with the subject of which it is affirmed. Supposing we were to speak of “form” as common to all substances: would we suppose therefore that all forms were the same? No. Similarly, for esse to be the most necessary, most formal, and most universal perfection of things, is not for it to be “the thinnest possible kind of predicate”– any more than for substantial form to be universally affirmed of physical substances is for substantial form to be “the thinnest possible kind of predicate”. This is simply a bad argument: it requires that Kenny prove that esse is not necessarily correlated with, proportioned to, and measured by, that of which it is the esse, an argument he nowhere undertakes although it is logically necessary to the conclusion he draws.

But there is no treatment of the analogy of being in this work, although there is a (necessarily) more limited treatment of analogical discourse about God. Indeed, as will be seen below, error regarding “specific existence” seems to engender a general disinterest in analogical knowledge of being in behalf of purely univocal strategies of knowing. But the loss of analogicity is indeed, also related to the erroneous view of esse as “thin” because universal, where “universal” is mistakenly taken to be tantamount to “univocal”. And the loss of the richness of esse is clearly entailed by the loss of the sense of the absolute priority of act vis à vis potency. For if the actuality of a thing is not distinguished from potency it becomes more plausible to predicate esse– the act of being – as though act were itself in potency to be perfected by some higher principle: as though act were merely a “thin” notion perfected by that of which it is predicated (and of which it is the act), which is the very opposite of Thomas's teaching.

Failure to understand the absolute priority of act in St. Thomas's teaching gravely distorts this teaching. For this reason it is important to establish the distinction of act and potency in philosophy of nature, before these terms come to be re‐thematized in relation to the wider and transcendental horizons of the science of being qua being. Potency is not the less potency for not being antecedent, but rather the opposite is true: potency presupposes act, in this case, the actus essendi or existential act.

B. Whether being is Merely the Negation of Nought, and Other Difficulties of Logicism

It is helpful here briefly to engage certain confusions present in Kenny's work, most but not all of which seem consequent upon acceptance of the Fregean logical schema as a metaphysical norm. For reasons of space, I shall list these discretely together with a response to each.

a) Being is not merely the “negation of nought”. The famed proposition of Frege quoted by Dr. Kenny is worthy of express and primary consideration, as demonstrating the absurdist implications of logicism run amuck. Here is the text as he quotes it from Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic§54:

Clearly the first part of this proposition says something different from what follows. To be told that existence is merely analogous to number is not equivalent to what follows, namely the proposition that “existence is in fact nothing other[my emphasis‐SL] than a denial of the number zero.”

Denial of the number zero does nothing to identify anything but quantity, and as Aristotle quite rightly argues, quantity is an accident of being. For example, let us take the unitary conception of the unicorn. It is a conception to which the number “1” may apply, as it does when we say: this is one concept, and if we add to it the concept of the Phoenix that is 2 concepts. But the number in itself says nothing about being one way or the other (perhaps no one is so much as thinking about either).

This is simply to note Frege's Platonism, which of course exerts a powerful influence on Kenny's analysis insofar as it suggests that either we have a subsistent form or we have nothing.

That quantity is only an accident of being is sufficiently demonstrated by pondering one of Zeno's paradoxes – that which indicates that we cannot walk from point A to point B, because that would entail moving half the distance between A and B, which would entail moving half the distance of half the distance, and so on ad infinitum, requiring one to cross an infinite series of divisions: but an infinite series of divisions cannot be crossed. Of course, from this we rightly infer not that we cannot walk to the post office, but that no putative infinite series of divisions need be crossed in order to do so: because we can perform operations upon number(such as unending division) that cannot be performed upon physical beings.

But further, consider what is lost by the Fregean consideration. The negation of negation is, in a real subject, equivalent to something positive. If I say that “you do not not have a nose” that is equivalent to “you have a nose”– because here we are referring to a real subject. But supposing God knew that “there is no creaturely negating because there is no creature”. That is a negation of negation, but as it concerns no real subject it posits precisely nothing whatsoever in reality. Similarly, the “negation of nought” signifies precisely nothing unless it be understood as referring to a real being, and that it refer to a real being is – as witness the example of “no creaturely negating because no creature”– not sufficiently indicated by the “negation of the number zero”.

After all, we can negate the number zero in the same way as indicated in the example: there is no number zero because there are no numbers. If someone should say: “yes, but is there still in the absence of creation not for you one God?” The answer is: transcendental unity is not numerical unity. With transcendental unity we may say there is one, and there is another, but we cannot say there are “two” in any way that implies material continuum. Further, the absence of being is not chiefly the absence of unity, for unity is defined by a being's indivisibility from itself, which clearly is to say: being is prior to unity. Granted there is – as Frege suggests – an analogy or comparison between the absence of zero and being, it is stark nonsense to claim that “An affirmation of existence is in fact nothing other[again, my emphasis – SL] than a denial of the number zero”.

b) There is in Kenny's work something similar to the Suarezian notion that to be a principle of being must mean: to be a subsistent thing, or at least to be in some way intrinsically actual.Footnote ¹⁸ One might also discern here a soupçon of the concern with Thomas's teaching often associated with Scotus, namely that for the unity of essence to depend upon a superordinate principle is for it to be imperiled or implicitly denied. Thus Kenny writes:

I.e., only if essence subsists independently does Kenny suppose that it makes sense to speak of essence as a principle of being. Earlier there was occasion to note Kenny's difficulty in coping with the real distinction of act and potency as it pertains to esse. But what could be clearer than the incomprehension of Thomas's teaching expressed in the proposition that ‘essence must have being to itself’? And this proposition is implicitly and actually asserted in the words of Kenny (“this seems to make sense only if the common nature is something extra‐mental like a Platonic idea”– the essence must, like a Platonic idea, be a subsistent) as though it were a self‐evident axiom. But for Thomas it is the contrary axiom that is true: act is not self‐limiting, but is limited only by a corresponding potency.Footnote ²⁰ Hence since the existence of any finite thing is precisely limited, it must be because and insofar as esse is limited in relation to a certain capacity to be which is both a limit(in finite being) as well as a measure.Footnote ²¹ I.e., regarding essence, Thomas is precisely arguing that it has unity as it has being, namely through the superordinate and superessential principleFootnote ²² of esse.

c) There is what at least seems to be a pseudo‐problem of negative existential propositions putatively ‘solved’ by the Fregean schema. Here again one must let Dr. Kenny speak for himself:

The quotation above is a muddle. But let us begin by asking, in the expression “There is no x such that x is an extra‐terrestrial intelligence”: what, precisely, is “x”? Clearly x is a stand‐in for “being” or “thing”. So the phrase is not different from “there is no extra‐terrestrial intelligence” or “nothing is an extra‐terrestrial intelligence” or “no being which is an extra‐terrestrial intelligence exists”. But of course we do not literally mean that “nothing” is logically equivalent in definition with “extra‐terrestrial intelligence” so that if we ask what is meant by “extraterrestrial intelligence” the answer is “nothing”– as though Frege's earlier proposition might have been that “existence is nothing other than the negation of extra‐terrestrial intelligence”. By “nothing” we mean: none exists. Nor is existence primarily an issue of quantity although if someone wishes to say that “for x to exist is also for x to be indivisible from itself, i.e. for x to have unity” this is true: as an implication of its prior being. At the end of the day, what conundrum, then, is avoided? One still needs to know the supposition of terms, i.e., to know that although we have a nominal definition of extra‐terrestrial intelligence that in fact we have as yet not discovered in actual nature what is normally conjured by this phrase.

Thus the conceptual payload of the Fregean schema appears to dissipate into a sociological observation, i.e., the proposition that “for some philosophers after Frege, it is customary to speak in such and such ways”– perhaps an adequate description of the practices and protocols of those who persist in approaching ontological questions with an exclusively logical apparatus, just as some people may ingest soup using only a fork (although, one might add, the latter in achieving diminished but genuine contact with the soup exhibit a comparative margin of success vis à vis the former).

d) We have already pointed out Kenny's failure to do justice to the notion of esse as actuation of a capacity to be – a capacity that does not antecede esse nor enjoy some quasi‐entitative status prior to measuring and limiting the actual existence of the thing whose capacity to be it is. However, Kenny misprizes possibility in a way similar to that in which he errs about potency, as though to speak of possible individuals were to speak of entities. In fairness, there may be reason to cast this aspersion in the direction of Avicenna, but in and of itself the idea of individual possibility is a necessary idea: before Kenny (an individual if ever there was one) existed, there was only, vis à vis the divine power, a possible individual.Footnote ²³

Possibility, as also noted above, is a notion of wider extension than potency, but neither possibility nor potency of itself denotes entity. Existential possibility simply designates that, in relation to God, some effect is possible. Since all effects are singular even if not “individual” in the material sense (even subsistent forms, according to Thomas, have their own distinctive esse; and even universal concepts exist in some mind or other), it necessarily follows as a matter of course that there are possible individuals(unless we wish to say that they are impossible: but even disagreeing with Dr. Kenny's analysis as I do, it would seem not only impolite but erroneous to suggest that he is being impossible). Kenny writes:

Now, what are we to make of “there was no such entity as a merely possible Stigger” since Stigger is an entity and “possible Stigger” is equivalent to “possible entity”– unless Kenny wishes to conclude that Stigger was, prior to his coming to be, impossible? Or, perhaps he is using a 3‐valued logic, and holds that Stigger's coming to be was neither possible nor impossible but…something else? Moreover, and manifestly, possibles do not “wait” because they do not do anything. Hence Kenny's words on this point do not, to this author, make sense.

e) The issue of the putative “thinness” of esse has already been considered above. But inasmuch as this may be suggested by thoughts of “specific existence” it is perhaps helpful to remind ourselves, before turning to “f” below, that for esse to be universal is not for it to be undifferentiated or univocal or “thin”– all of which would require further premises and arguments which Kenny does not supply.

f) There is a certain mystagogy regarding “instantiation”. Kenny claims that all it means for “x to exist” where “x” is a possible nature or ‘type’– what he calls a claim of specific existence, as in ‘there arc extra‐terrestrial intelligences’– is the affirmation “that a particular concept is instantiated”.Footnote ²⁵ But what does “instantiated” mean? It means that one or more subjects defined by the nature exist, for existence is not plausibly treated merely as a quantitative issue. I.e., to say of some kind of thing that “there is one” is to affirm not only number, but the real subject of number; and if we consider not number but transcendental unity, then even more clearly is it the case that this presupposes being.

g) The idea of specific existence is not the idea of “nonindividual” existence but rather a confused, imperfect signification of the actual existence of things of a certain nature. A mystagogy of “instantiation” cannot cloak the datum that the existence of a kind, type, or nature, is nothing other than a general reference to the existence of one or more actually existing individuals. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as “specific existence” among physical things: because species exist only in the mind, and only then because of the immaterial, intentional mode of being that essence enjoys in the mind. Rather individuals with natures exist, as does likewise the intellectual cognition of these natures with the consequent immaterial and intentional mode of being of the nature cognized. Among physical things species are not subjects of being. The very idea of “specific existence” is, then, misleading.

When we ask of some “kind”– that is, of some real or possible essence– whether it is, and answer in the affirmative, we are implicitly affirming one or more subjects of being distinct from the essence, for the essence is not the subject of being and indeed cannot be the subject of being in a physical thing. It is Socrates, not humanity, that exists, although it is true that that whereby Socrates is human is humanity. If we do not know the particular actually existing things that possess the nature in question, but only indirectly know that there are some (one or more), then we are merely signifying unknown actually existing things in a confused and general way. But we are not entitled to reify this confused and general way of signifying unknown things possessed of a nature, as if there is a confused and general existence. There is only a less perfect and more confused manner of signifying individual existence. The element of “fusing together” in a certain order, here, may reach to analogical cognition, which is not that of a nominalistic heap, and is well‐expressed by Yves Simon in the following words:

But, it might be said, this notion of specific existence pertains to unknown beings within a species, whereas analogy pertains only among species. To the contrary, although there is univocation in the predication of essence within a species, the proper subject of being is a subsistent which in physical reality is a singular, and these material individual subsistents of the same nature each enjoy an existence proportioned to them not simply qua essence, but qua their singularity. Hence, it appears that in this sense esse is analogous even within a species. When we say that blade of grass A exists in exactly the same way that does blade of grass B, this is true as regards essence, but not true simpliciter, because, simpliciter, blade of grass A is not blade of grass B nor vice versa, and esse is proportioned to each individually diverse subject which is.

Yet even should the view that esse is analogous within a species be false, it remains true that the notion of “specific essence” is comparable to analogous knowledge in that it refers confusedly and imperfectly to actually existing individuals(for to say “there are instantiations of X” is to say that the different subjects in which X is to be found exist, while yet – given that one does not expressly cognize these actually existing individuals – they are only confusedly, imperfectly, and generally signified).

Even should we think of “specific existence” as merely a quantitatively indeterminate reference to individual existence, this still counts as an imperfect and general cognition of individual existence. Indeed, the necessary and sufficient truth condition of “There are some Monarch butterflies” is to be found in one or more individually existing Monarch butterflies. A proposition that affirms that there are one or more individually existing Monarch butterflies can hardly pass itself off as not affirming individual existence. In this last case, clearly, we might take ourselves to be dealing merely with a more remote, imperfect, and general knowledge of individual existenceFootnote ²⁷– whereas, with analogy, while the knowledge is imperfect and general it also “fuses together” diverse elements in an ordered relation to a common ground on the basis of affirmations and negations.Footnote ²⁸But clearly in either case the insistence upon “specific existence” as not being a real predicate is an insistence upon univocality to the point of the loss of real contact with ontological evidence. I.e., insofar as we prefer to deny the confused and general signification of individual existence rather than to admit that there is genuine knowledge which ineluctably involves an element of unclarity, the clear and distinct ideas of Descartes ride again.

The lack of any genuine consideration of the doctrine of the analogy of being in Kenny's book was earlier noted. Now we are in a position to see why: the mathematician's penchant for logical univocity is being driven to the very point of obscuring knowledge of the real, lest one admit that there is a logically less perfect knowledge of the real which though it does not fit the mathematician's habitus, nonetheless offers intellective contactus with being.

There is a name for this preference for univocity at the cost of losing insight into the real: unabashed and imperial reductionism. Its status is not improved by topical references to what those who are ignorant either of analogically abstractive knowledgeFootnote ^29/Footnote ³⁰ or of merely general reference to individual existence within a species think of it. I.e., if “modern” or “contemporary” thinkers “customarily” suppose things which are not the case, then other thinkers – perhaps fated to be construed as non‐contemporary even whilst they live – will need offer criticism, even at the risk of falling out of the official Oxfordian listing of bona fide contemporaries.

h) Hence, the invocation of the mantra of mantras, “to be is to be the value of a bound variable”(i.e., there is an X such that X is Z), and Kenny's lamentation that the claim that God is pure unbounded esse is merely an “ill‐formed formula”Footnote ³¹(i.e., “God is Pure Esse” as merely “for some X, X…” which is “a quantifier with a bound variable attached to no predicate”Footnote ³²), are found to hinge more generally on an erroneous understanding of the real predication of existence. For implicit in the mantra is the claim that “specific” existence is a second order property of concepts: For deer to exist is for there to be one or more Xs where X is a deer – i.e., for there to be deer putatively is not about individual existence but about “instantiation” and “specific existence”.

But the “to be” of specific existence is only a confused and imperfect reference to actually existing things of a certain nature – it confusedly signifies one or more individual existences. And a confused and imperfect reference to actually existing things is not merely a second‐intentional property of a concept, but rather an imperfectly and confusedly known first‐intentional property of things.

We do not naturally and directly know either the essence or existence of God. But we do know the truth of the proposition that there is such a reality that its essence comprehends the entire perfection of esse such that no addition is possible. The failure in Kenny's treatment pertains to the natural signification of the terms “essence” and “existence” which found the rational motion of inference to God, and not in any properly logical issue. I.e., it is implicitly Kenny's view that esse is not the most formal perfection but, as has been seen above, that it is “thin”. Thus when it is affirmed that esse is found in its infinite perfection in God, this is for Kenny a vacuous proposition.Footnote ³³ But this is only because he fails to see that esse is proportioned to, and correlated with, the essence of each thing that is. Just as form is universal to substances while not being “thin” so esse as belonging to all that is, but as most formal in the ontological sense, is universal but not “thin”: an analogous perfection. As Thomas argues,Footnote ³⁴ a small mistake in the beginning is a large one in the end. Inasmuch as Kenny fails to fathom being as intrinsically analogous from the start, the doctrine of God whose articulation it permits must remain to him terra incognita.

C. The Intellectus Essentiae Argument in De ente et essentia

While regrettable, Kenny's loss of the natural foundations of the doctrine of the real distinction of essence and existence in his treatment of the intellectus essentia(or knowledge of essence) argument in De ente et essentia is eminently comprehensible. Most contemporary accounts of this argument, whether they be analytic or more historical minded, alike tend to focus excessively on the logical rather than the ontological character of the discourse. In this respect, Kenny's work is actually superior to that of others for whom, despite the clear‐cut first‐intentional language of the argument, the whole argument regards only conceptual rather than real distinction of essence and esse. Kenny rightly resists this reading.Footnote ³⁵ Yet, no less than most other contemporaries, he is put on the wrong scent by St. Thomas's famed illustration of the phoenix.

In the famed passage, which among other things deploys the Phoenix illustration, and is known as the intellectus essentiae argument – an argument proceeding from the knowledge of essence – Thomas writes:

It is true that the phoenix example is distracting, inasmuch as essence as referring to a possible that God might create is (in the case where no such thing is found in actual nature) distinct from essence as this last refers to a real principle of being in this given created order. But, as will be shown, the character of the argument may be sustained quite apart from this element.

It is worth noting that there is some reason for Thomas to advert to the phoenix example. Because without esse no essence will be, and inasmuch as anything that God may possibly cause – which is to say, anything which is not intrinsically contradictory or contrary to divine wisdom – is such that God knows what its essential principle would be, there is some sense in speaking of substances that God could create and of their essences as possibles in relation to the divine power. Clearly we do not say that prior to creation that which is created is impossible either in its singularity or in its essential nature.Footnote ³⁷

The phoenix example highlights this truth that quiddity is not simply of itself actual, as it includes existence neither as an essential note of an essence nor as one of the formal parts of the essence, nor as identical with essence. I.e., read in the way suggested above, one can make some sense of the illustration of the phoenix as indicating what one might call a “quidditative possibility” in relation to the divine power.Footnote ³⁸

Nonetheless, clearly essence as a real principle of being in the actually existing universe is a better metaphysical and epistemic starting point for us than is an imaginary being. For while God can create anything that is not intrinsically contradictory, we only know what God causes or even might cause in relation either to real evidence of actual nature or to supernatural revelation. This is to say that even our knowledge of the possible presupposes prior contact with actual being, and that we abstract essences from actually existing things. Hence what is naturally possible on the supposition of a given order of nature is distinct from what is absolutely possible to the power of God, and our reasoning regarding the real must proceed on the basis of the first. I.e., our reasoning most fruitfully begins with what is naturally possible on the supposition of the given order of nature: on the basis of essence as a real principle of actual being, or actualized essence. For we do not know all the ways in which God is imitable, do not know all that is possible to God, and know whatever we do know in relation to the order of being and nature actually caused by God. This is a proposition clear from Thomas's general insistence on the priority of act, and also from the structure of De ente et essentia itself (wherein essence is considered as derivative of that being which is divided by the ten categoriesFootnote ³⁹).

For these reasons, the abstraction of essence from actual being must take methodological precedence over essence identified as a possible in relation to God, although the second is indeed implied and required by the first. To bear Thomas's meaning, the Phoenix example presupposes the prior case of abstractive cognition of essence derived from real being in the actual created order established by God along with the complementary judgment that essence is a potential principle in relation to supervening existential act: which is perhaps why it is the second rather than the first illustration provided by St. Thomas.

Nothing in the consideration of the phoenix example obviates the point that the intellectus essentiae argument commences with the prior consideration of one physical or material essence found in actual nature apart from the mind – man – followed by consideration of one material essence considered as a possible in relation to divine power – the phoenix. Why is it significant that these are material essences? The reason is that the very subject matter of chapter four of De ente et essentia concerns separate substances or subsistent immaterial forms. But throughout his life St. Thomas held that we have no quidditative knowledge of separate substances. It follows that the direct and originative contact we have with essence and existence, and with potency and act more generally, must derive from sensible being. We cannot get in the conclusion what is not implicitly in the premises from the start, and the premises derive from the knowledge of material quiddity. Accordingly, if essence and existence – and, for that matter, potency and act more generally – cannot be known as really distinct in the sensible beings proportionate to our knowing powers, then there will be no hope of distinguishing them in separate substances whose quiddities are unknown to us. The argument in De ente et essentia that if there were a being in whom essence and esse were identical there could only be one, because the hypothesis excludes potency and all the real bases of plurifiability include potency, will later enable Thomas to universalize the real distinction of essence and existence. But this argument requires that essence and existence already be known as principles of being that are really distinct in advance, lest they be merely chimerical terms applicable to nothing.

As already seen, Kenny (in my view, correctly) judges that Thomas intends the intellectus essentiae argument to yield a real rather than conceptual distinction. That is, the language here is first‐intentional language – his conclusion is that “being is other than essence or quiddity” and not simply that “being is other than the concept of essence or quiddity” although this too is true. Yet Kenny proceeds to write:

This is both partially true and seriously misleading. The problem with Kenny's remarks, is that it ignores a most fundamental issue in play – one which appears elsewhere in Thomas's writing quite conspicuously, and which is actually implicit in the teaching of De ente et essentia regarding our knowledge of the “parts” of essence. Later, in the Summa theologiae and elsewhere, he will define the proper object of the human intellect as quiddity found in corporeal matter, arguing that every faculty is per se directed to a proper object such that about its proper object properly speaking a faculty cannot fail for as long as it exists (although it may fall into error regarding accidental or circumstantial surroundings of its proper object – the origin of an entire species of bar jokes).Footnote ⁴¹

To say that quiddity as found in corporeal matter is the proper object of the human intellect is not to say that we enjoy a quasi‐Cartesian all‐in‐one glimpse of essences which gives us their specific differences – for as noted Thomas held that regarding physical things in general we do not properly cognize their specific differences. What, then, is the sense of this teaching that the proper object of the human intellect is material quiddity? Clearly it is that there is a generic adequation of the intellect to material essence, such that (as it is put in the passage quoted above from De ente) we know the generic parts of material essence: form and matter. This is a decisively important proposition, for insofar as X is said to be the proper object of a faculty, there must exist a most formal and generic adequation of the intellect to this object, such that we know what it means to say that material quiddity is the proper object of the intellect. Elsewise Thomas is saying that “we‐know‐not‐what” is the proper object of the intellect, which is hardly plausible.

St. Thomas writes (in Sth.I.84.7.resp.) that “the proper object of the human intellect, which is united to a body, is a quiddity or nature existing in corporeal matter; and through such natures of visible things it rises to a certain knowledge of things invisible.”Footnote ⁴² The latter point is as conspicuous as the former – we rise to a certain knowledge of separate substances – the very subject matter of the fourth chapter of De ente et essentia in which the intellectus essentiae argument appears – from the knowledge of material quiddity.

In q. 85, article 6 of the prima pars of the Summa theologiae(in Sth.I.85.6.resp.) Thomas argues that:

He goes on to write in his response to the first objection that “in the absolute consideration of the quiddity of a thing, and of those things which are known thereby, the intellect is never deceived.”Footnote ⁴⁴ But clearly if existence were part of material essence, and yet when we knew material essence we did not know existence, we would be deceived. It follows that existence is really distinct from material essence.

It clearly does not alter or distort the text to hold that the knowledge of the parts of essence in physical things requisite to the intellectus essentiae argument in De ente et essentia is generically adequated and definitive of material quiddity – that selfsame quiddity found in corporeal matter which is the proper object of the intellect about which the intellect cannot fail.Footnote ⁴⁵ Indeed, the argument gains in force insofar as it is read in this manner. To indulge the liberty of quoting a work in which I pursue the generic adequatio of intellect to material quiddity more fully:

But clearly existence is not the form of any finite physical nature; nor is it the matter (which is a potential principle, whereas esse is the actuality of every form or nature, as Thomas constantly assertsFootnote ⁴⁷). Further, in this light it becomes clear that the argument is not based merely upon the “meaning of a word,” and that it is based upon inerrant evidence available to all – the evidence of the proper object of the intellect which founds certain judgment with respect to the “parts” of material quiddity. While this is not to say that everyone will develop hylemorphic theory or even suppose it to be true, it is to say that the inceptive constituents of this theory are first presented to the intellect in its perception of material quiddity as such, awaiting only further development from the principles so vouchsafed (i.e., the “parts” of material essence) to the conclusions about these parts (e.g., that matter cannot be without form, etc.). Hence the argument could not be founded on more certain evidence.

Yet, if esse is neither form nor matter, could it not be a hidden or unknown essential attribute or note of the essence? As has been mentioned, St. Thomas makes clear that he does not think we can attain knowledge of the specific differences of the essences of natural things.Footnote ⁴⁸ This might be taken as a fatal flaw in the argument. For if by “parts of essence” were meant the “definitory notes of the essence”– as “rational” and “animal” are definitory notes of the essence “man”– then, since St. Thomas himself does not think (as witness his comments in the fifth chapterFootnote ⁴⁹) that in this sense we know the parts of the essences of most physical things, it might seem that existence could be an occult note of the essence escaping our knowledge.

As an exegetic point, clearly Thomas cannot have intended in the immediately preceding chapter to claim that we possess sufficient knowledge of the “parts” of essence to conclude to a distinction of existence and essence in physical things, and then continued to argue in the very next chapter that we do not know the parts of most physical things taken in exactly that meaning. But this does not sufficiently answer the objection. It is an objection Thomas does not take up, and it is not difficult to see why – for it is rendered nonsensical by the very understanding of form and matter in sensible beings. But it may be taken up and easily dispatched.

Were esse an occult, hidden definitory attribute or note of essence in physical things, then the selfsame thing would simultaneously contain an essential principle of potency (i.e., matter) whereby it could be transformed and cease to be the kind of thing it is while also possessing an essential principle whereby it must necessarily exist without essential transmutation (i.e., esse understood as an attribute of the essence): and this is to posit an internally self‐contradictory essence. This is quite different from a thing including the potency of matter to cease to be the kind of thing it is while nonetheless being preserved through the supervening agency of an extrinsic principle – as, say, God might indefinitely preserve a peach from corrupting. Rather, it is to posit an essence that is as internally self‐contradictory as the idea of a square circle, and which is intrinsically impossible. Of course were esse an essential note this would also have the curious effect of rendering all the other definitory notes of the essence to be formally non‐existent: yet another reason why existence cannot be said to be a hidden or occult definitory note of essence.

It follows then that we do, indeed, possess the evidence of real distinction of essence and existence in finite things requisite for the further stages of the argument in the fourth chapter of De ente et essentia, which conclude sequentially that if there were a being in which essence and existence is one there could only be one, and that therefore a fortiori in all other beings essence and existence are distinct. For the only real evidence of plurification in being indicates that this requires potency, such that it could not be predicated of a hypothetic being whose essence measures not a limited degree of the perfection of actual existence but rather is identical with the full perfection of actual existence insusceptible of any addition.Footnote ⁵⁰ It is then only a short step to the existential proof for God, which proceeds from the real distinction of essence and existence throughout finite being.

If this general approach to the intellectus essentiae argument is correct, then to be fixated on the illustration of the phoenix as though the primary instance of our contact with essence is not abstractive from actual physical things, is to misconstrue the nature of the intellectus essentiae argument, and for that matter also to miss the only point of the phoenix example itself.