Really Distinguishing Essence From Esse

Medieval Skepticism,
and the Claim

to Metaphysical Knowledge
Proceedings of the Society for Medieval

Logic and Metaphysics
Volume 6
Also available in the series:
Volume 1: The Immateriality of the Human Mind, the Semantics of Analogy, and
the Conceivability of God
Volume 2: Categories, and What is Beyond
Volume 3: Knowledge, Mental Language, and Free Will
Volume 4: Mental Representation
Volume 5: Universal Representation, and the Ontology of Individuation
Volume 6: Medieval Skepticism, and the Claim to Metaphysical Knowledge
Volume 7: Medieval Metaphysics, or is it "Just Semantics"?
Volume 8: After God, with Reason Alone—Saikat Guha Commemorative Volume
Volume 9: The Demonic Temptations of Medieval Nominalism

Medieval Skepticism,
and the Claim
to Metaphysical Knowledge
Edited by
Gyula Klima and Alexander W. Hall
Proceedings of the Society for Medieval

Logic and Metaphysics
Volume 6
Medieval Skepticism, and the Claim to Metaphysical Knowledge
Volume 6: Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics,
Edited by Gyula Klima and Alexander W. Hall
This book first published 2011
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2011 by Gyula Klima and Alexander W. Hall and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-4438-3371-1, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-3371-4

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
Alexander W. Hall
Siger and the Skeptic ................................................................................... 5

Antoine Côté
Côté’s “Siger and the Skeptic” .................................................................. 27

Charles Bolyard
Applied Logic and Mediaeval Reasoning: Iteration and Infinite Regress

in Walter Chatton ...................................................................................... 33
Rondo Keele
Comments on Rondo Keele, “Applied Logic and Medieval Reasoning:

Iteration and Infinite Regress in Walter Chatton” ..................................... 53
Jack Zupko
Response to Professor Zupko .................................................................... 59

Rondo Keele
Kenny and Aquinas on Individual Essences.............................................. 63

Joshua P. Hochschild
Really Distinguishing Essence from esse .................................................. 79

David Twetten
How Aquinas Could have Argued that God is Really Related

to Creatures.............................................................................................. 129
Thomas Ward
God’s Knowledge of Individual Material Creatures according

to Thomas Aquinas.................................................................................. 145
Scott M. Williams
vi Table of Contents
Appendix ................................................................................................. 161
Contributors............................................................................................. 163
REALLY DISTINGUISHING
ESSENCE FROM ESSE*
DAVID TWETTEN
Given the developments in contemporary analytic philosophy over the last

thirty years, one no longer need apologize for theorizing about essence.
Metaphysics in general, of course, is once again an acceptable philosophical
project. Many analytic philosophers defend such counterintuitive positions
as the Platonic reality not only of Universals but also of Propositions; a
Counterpart Theory affirming the genuine existence of every possible
world; and an Unrestricted Mereology affirming that this letter e taken
together with the last breath of Shakespeare constitute as much a single
entity as do you. After the resuscitation of such medieval theories as
haecceity and middle knowledge, the call for a doctrine of Aristotelian
essence to found a Kripkean essentialism should seem a modest claim.1
Of course, as philosophical developments bring the medievals into

conversation with contemporaries, they also introduce such in-house
disputes as those over the reality of the common nature and the plurality of
*
The author and editor would like to thank The Catholic University of America
Press for permission to reprint “Really Distinguishing Essence from Esse,” which
appears in Wisdom’s Apprentice: Thomistic Essays in Honor of Lawrence Dewan,
O.P., ed. Peter A. Kwasniewski (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2007), 40-84.
1
Baruch Brody, “Why Settle for Anything Less than Good Old-Fashioned
Aristotelian Essentialism?” Nous 7 (1973): 351-64; Gyula Klima, “Contemporary
‘Essentialism’ vs. Aristotelian Essentialism,” in Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in
the Thomistic and Analytic Traditions, ed. J. Haldane (Notre Dame, 2002), 175-94.
Klima is quick to observe that a metaphysical theory of essence will have to be
accompanied by revised theories of predication and semantics. See Gyula Klima,
“The Changing Role of Entia Rationis in Medieval Philosophy: A Comparative
Study with a Reconstruction,” Synthese 96 (1993): 25-59; Gyula Klima, “Ontological
Alternatives vs. Alternative Semantics in Medieval Philosophy,” European
Journal for Semiotic Studies, 3 (1991): 587-618. For a defense of Realism, see
Michael Jubien, Contemporary Metaphysics: An Introduction (Oxford, 1997).
80 Really Distinguishing Essence from Esse
substantial forms. I wish to consider one such dispute, that over the ‘real
distinction’ between essence and esse,2 most famously ascribed to Thomas
2
When speaking of Aquinas, I normally retain the Latin term esse rather than use a
translation or paraphrase such as “being,” “existence,” “act of existence,” or “act of
being,” each of which, though defensible, is destined to raise objections where
there should be none. In this practice, I intend esse not in every sense, but in one of
the four significations distinguished by Aquinas following Aristotle; see Thomas
Aquinas, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum [=Sent.], ed. P. Mandonnet and M.
Moos (Paris, 1929-1947), 1, d. 33.1.1 ad 1 (quoted below in n. 94); Aquinas, In
duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio [=In Met.], ed. M.-R.
Cathala, R. Spiazzi (Turin-Rome, 1950), 5.7, lect. 9. According to this
signification, esse, as the verbal noun corresponding to est just as running (currere)
corresponds to runs (currit), signifies an act, “that by which it is said [of
something] that it is” (Questiones de quolibet [=Quodl.] 9.4.1c, ll. 117-121, in
Aquinas, Opera omnia: iussu impensaque, Leonis XIII. P.M. edita [Rome, 1882-],
vol. 25; Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles [=SCG], ed. C. Pera et al. (Turin-
Rome, 1961), 2.54, n. 3 [Secundo autem]), or “. . . that it is in act” (Sent. 1, d.
8.1.1c; Sent. 2, d. 3.1.1c); “the act of an existing x insofar as it is a being” (Sent. 1
d. 19.2.2c); “that by which [x] subsists in the nature of things” (Aquinas, De ente et
essentia 4, ll. 163-64, in Opera omnia, vol. 43) or “by which each thing formally
is” (De ente 5, ll. 27-28); “that which first falls in the intellect through the mode of
actuality absolutely speaking; since ‘est’ said simply signifies actually to be, . . .
[signifies] the actuality of every form” (Aquinas, Expositio libri Peryermenias [=In
Peryerm.] 1.3, lect. 5, ll. 393-399, in Opera omnia, vol. 1.1*). Esse, then, pertains
to the question ‘whether x is’ and is not an essential predicate of a thing; Aquinas,
Quaestio disputata de spiritualibus creaturis [=QDSC] 8 ad 3, ll. 340-349, in
Opera omnia, vol. 24.2. As a result, “that which has esse is rendered an actually
existing thing;” Quaestiones disputatae de potentia Dei [=QDDP] 7.2 ad 9, in
Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae, ed. P. Bazzi et al. (Turin-Rome, 1953), vol. 2.
As some of these texts indicate, Aquinas at times uses ‘existens’ or ‘existentia’ as
synonymous with this signification of ‘ens’ or ‘esse’; see also, for example,
Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate [=QDDV] 1.2 ad 3, in Opera omnia,
vol. 22; SCG 2.84, n. 17 (Secundo quia); Aquinas, In librum beati Dionysii De
divinis nominibus expositio, ed. C. Pera (Turin-Rome, 1950), 2 (73-75), lect. 6, nn.
216-18; c. 4 (188), lect. 14, nn. 474-475; c. 5 (284), lect. 3, nn. 669-73; c. 6 (286-
287), lect. 1, nn. 678-79; In Peryerm. 1.6 (17a26-29), lect. 9, ll. 63-70; In Met. 7.17
(1041a27-32), lect. 17, nn. 11, 13-14 (1658, 1660-1661); In De generatione et
corruptione 1.2, lect. 4, n. 4 (29), in Aquinas, In Aristotelis libros De caelo et
mundo, De generatione et corruptione, Meteorologicorum expositio, ed. R. Spiazzi
(Turin-Rome, 1952). Nevertheless, since in many contemporary contexts, ‘exists’
and ‘existence’ have a debased sense, I shall use, where possible, ‘is’ and ‘to be’ to
translate est’ and ‘esse’; or, I shall use ‘actually to be’ to specify this one among
the four senses of ‘to be’. For the purposes of this paper, it remains an open
question whether ‘esse as the act of all acts, perfection of all perfections’ (QDDP
David Twetten 81
Aquinas.3 No contemporary philosopher untouched by ‘Thomism’

entertains the plausibility of such a theory, yet I wonder whether it will not
be required in a revived Aristotelian theory of essence. After all, there
already are philosophers who defend ‘is’ or ‘existence’ as a predicate,
perhaps even as a first-order property or actuality.4 I write, then, assuming
that it is possible—although it is no mean feat—to defend Aristotle’s
7.2 ad 9) signifies more than ‘the act and perfection by which all other features—
whether logically or really other—are or have esse’.
3
I use the terminology ‘real distinction’ between ‘essence and esse’ (=‘Real
Distinction’) as familiar labels. Aquinas speaks literally only of a “real diversity”
or “real composition” (Sent. 1, d. 13.1.3c; QDDV 27.1 ad 8), although he also says
that esse “differs in reality” (differt re) from that of which it is the act (Sent. 1,
d. 9.2.2c); that esse and ‘that which is’ “really differ” (differunt realiter) or are
“really other” (aliud realiter), as opposed to that which “differs in conception”
(differunt secundum intentiones) or to that which is “really one and the same”
(unum et idem realiter); Thomas Aquinas, Expositio libri Boetii De ebdomadibus
[=In De ebdom.] 2, ll. 198-220, in Opera omnia, vol. 50.2. Cf. Joseph Owens,
“Aquinas’ Distinction at De ente et essentia 4.119-123,” Mediaeval Studies 48
(1986): 264-87, at 266-73; Cornelio Fabro, “Circa la divisione dell’essere in atto e
potenza secondo San Tommaso,” in Esegesi tomistica (Rome, 1969), 109-36;
Cornelio Fabro, “Neotomismo e neosuarezismo: una battaglia di Principi,” ibid.
137-278, at 190-97. Some, of course, claim that Aquinas affirms only a conceptual
distinction; see Francis Cunningham, Essence and Existence in Thomism: A
Mental vs. “the Real Distinction”? (Lanham, MD, 1988). Aquinas does not hold
that esse and essence are two subsisting things as if we should then ask with Giles
of Rome, Can God cause one to be without the other? But ‘something’, ‘thing’ and
‘real’ for him are terms that transcend the categories, as does ‘being’; cf. Sent. 1, d.
8.5.1-2; Sent. 2, d. 37.1.1c; QDDV 1.1c, ll. 129-150. I take ‘real’ in ‘real
distinction’ to mean ‘in the nature of things’, prior to an act of the mind (without
necessarily being separable in reality). Ultimately it would be preferable to speak
of a ‘real distinction between the individual substance (or supposit) and its esse’;
cf. SCG 2.52-54; Quodl. 2.2.1c, ll. 73-76; 2.2.2c, ad 1-2, ll. 93-102, 145-149, 154-
158. Yet, even when Aquinas makes such precisions he also speaks of a
“composition of essence and esse;” cf. Quodl. 2.2.1, ll. 5-12, 73-76; 2.2.2c, ll. 99-
100.
4
Cf. thinkers as disparate as Henry Leonard, “The Logic of Existence,”
Philosophical Studies 7.4 (1956): 49-64; J. L. Mackie, “The Riddle of Existence,”
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 50 (1976): 247-67; Peter
Geach, God and the Soul (Oxford, 1981), 65-74; Gareth Evans, The Varieties of
Reference, ed. J. McDowell (Oxford, 1982), 345-48; William L. Craig, “Is
Presentness a Property?,” American Philosophical Quarterly 34.1 (1997): 27-40;
Barry Miller, The Fullness of Being: A New Paradigm for Existence (Notre Dame,
2002).
theory of form and matter.5 In Aquinas’ version of the Aristotelian theory,

remember, form and matter together comprise ‘essence’. Given form and
matter, is it necessary to affirm esse or ‘to be’ as a further ontological
principle of real substances—as another feature of our ontology besides
essences and properties? Thomists are, in the main, the philosophers who
will answer, yes. I maintain that they give this answer usually without
hearing the major objection of the non-Thomist against them. I call this the
Aristotelian’s ‘Question-Begging Objection’. Aquinas himself fails to see
the force of this objection, hence fails to develop an argument immune to
it, hence fails to prove, as I show, that ‘to be’ is really other than the
matter-form composite that is. I propose an alternative argument that
addresses the objection, an argument inspired by Aristotle’s philosophy
and modeled on some neglected argumentation of Aquinas. Something
similar to my argument is needed to meet the Question-Begging
Objection. Finally, I suggest that the difficulty of refuting this objection
and of establishing the Real Distinction reveals that what is at stake are
first principles—which can be defended only with probable arguments or
with arguments showing that their rejection entails the absurd.
I. The Question-Begging Objection

The form of this objection will not be foreign to readers of Aquinas since
it is the same as that of the leading objection that Aquinas himself levels
against Anselm’s ‘Ontological Argument’. For Anselm, That Than Which
Nothing Greater Can Be Thought (TTW) is not TTW if it does not exist in
reality; for if it does not exist in reality, then something greater than it can
be thought, namely, the same thing existing both in the mind and in reality.
(1) Suppose that one thinks of TTW, as is possible.

(2) TTW, then, exists in the mind.
(3) But TTW existing both in the mind and in reality is greater than
TTW existing only in the mind.
(4) Therefore, if TTW exists only in the mind, then TTW is not TTW
(because a greater is thinkable).
(5) Consequently, TTW exists both in the mind and in reality.
5
For a contemporary defense, see James Ross, “The Fate of the Analysts:
Aristotle’s Revenge,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical
Association 64 (1990): 51-74.
David Twetten 83
In Aquinas’ judgment, the real problem with this argument is that it begs
the question.6 Most contemporary critics attack Steps (1) through (3),
whereas Aquinas concedes that it is possible to think of TTW, and that if
TTW is thought, it exists in the mind.7 For him, the problem lies in Step
(4). The contradiction derived there, that TTW is not TTW, results only if
one has already assumed:
(6) TTW exists in reality.
As Aquinas puts it, that TTW is not TTW is no problem for one for whom
there is no TTW in reality in the first place. That a centaur is not a centaur,
we may say, or that a square-circle is not a square-circle is of no
consequence outside logic. For Aquinas, then, the conclusion that either
TTW exists in reality or it is not TTW depends on the question-begging
assumption that there is in reality a TTW in the first place.
Aquinas introduces a number of arguments in defense of a real distinction

between essence and esse. They each involve the general structure: given
that things have essences, and given that there is also in reality the actual
being or esse of those essences, it follows, for a series of reasons, that esse
in things must be really other than their essence. Imagine the reaction of
the Aristotelian, who can agree with Aquinas that form and matter are
really distinct principles within extramental reality.8 But Aristotle, as
6
SCG 1.11, n. 2 (Nec oportet): “[N]on enim inconveniens est quolibet dato vel in
re vel in intellectu aliquid maius cogitari posse, nisi ei qui concedit esse aliquid
quo maius cogitari non possit in rerum natura.” See also Sent. 1, d. 3.2 ad 4; ST
I.2.1 ad 2.
7
Aquinas’ concession of Step (3) is only implicit. But in one place he apparently
concedes what in any case one must concede who grants Steps (1) through (3): that
if TTW is thought, it cannot consistently be thought not to exist, and so must be
thought to exist. Still, it follows not that it exists in reality but only that while
thought, it must be thought to exist in reality. See Thomas Aquinas, Lectura
romana in primum Sententiarum Petri Lombardi, ed. L. E. Boyle, OP, and J. F.
Boyle (Toronto, 2006), d. 3.1 ad 2. On this reading, just as only if TTW is thought
does it follow that either it must be thought to exist in reality or it is not truly TTW
in thought; so only if TTW exists in reality does it follow that either it must exist in
reality or else it is not truly TTW, but only TTW in thought.
8
Aristotle in Metaphysics Z.17 famously identifies individual essence or to ti ēn
einai with a substance’s form. Aquinas ascribes to Aristotle, based on Metaphysics
H.1-2, 6, the doctrine that essence includes both form and matter. Aquinas takes
the conclusions of Metaphysics Z to be provisional insofar as the investigation is
preliminary to that of Book H; see In Met. 8.1, lect. 1, n. 1 (1681); Lawrence
nearly everyone today agrees, never theorized about to einai as really

distinct from matter and form. The Aristotelian can concede, as Thomas
can concede in the case of Anselm’s TTW, that the reasoning from
premise to conclusion in the various arguments for a Real Distinction is
valid. Nevertheless, the conclusion depends on one’s already having
granted, in addition to the familiar substance-level constituents of
Aristotelian ontology—namely, matter and form—a third constituent of
one’s ontology: esse, the actuality of essence. For the Aristotelian,
however, the to einai or ‘to be’ of material things is nothing apart from
form and matter: the term merely signifies the actualized composite of the
two. The ‘to be’ of material things is nothing but whatever comprises their
essence, however ‘essence’ is explicated, whether as individual form
alone, as form and matter, or as the actuality of form in matter. There is no
esse in the Thomist sense as an ontological actuality beside matter and
form, beside whatever actuality essence already has of itself. If there is no
‘Thomist esse’ in the first place, runs the objection, there is no need to
affirm a real distinction between essence and esse. All of Aquinas’
arguments beg the question by assuming that there is ‘to be’ as the
actuality of an essence in potency to it, that there is Thomist esse.9
Whether or not this Question-Begging Objection holds must depend on an

examination of Aquinas’ arguments, to which we shall turn in Part II.
Here, however, we may address some initial Thomist reactions. The
Thomist asks: how can one question that there is esse or ‘to be’ in the
world? Is that fact not obvious? The Aristotelian agrees that it is evident
that things ‘are’ but disagrees that their ‘to be’ requires more ontological
resources than those of Aristotle. After all, was Aristotle blind to the fact
that things are? And yet, he affirmed no more than form and matter in
accounting for their ‘to be’. If Aristotle did not affirm an ontological act of
‘to be’ to explain why things are, then it is not obvious that such an act is
necessary. To this many Thomists have a ready response: the Aristotelian
thinks of ‘to be’ as a state that can be conceptualized and therefore
reduced to the static principles of form and matter. That things ‘are’ is not
known in the concept of what they are, but is known only in a distinct act
Dewan, “St. Thomas, Metaphysics, and Formal Causality,” Laval théologique et

philosophique 36 (1980): 285-316, at 293-94.
9
The objection need not charge Aquinas with explicitly starting from the
assumption of the conclusion, namely, that there is a real distinction between esse
and essence. Rather, the objection charges that Aquinas assumes without proof the
side of the real distinction that is in contention, namely, esse. The objector accepts
essence.
David Twetten 85
of the mind, the act of judgment. Hence, that things are is not reducible to
the conceptualizable principles of form and matter.
Now, the most sophisticated statement of this Thomist reaction will

acknowledge that one is not thereby allowed to affirm a real distinction
between the essence of things and the act by which they are.10 Still,
whatever their ‘to be’ is, it would seem that it cannot be the object of a
concept, and therefore that it cannot be reducible to essence, form, or
matter, each of which can be conceptualized. The Aristotelian counters
that if ‘to be’ here is a feature of reality that is not reducible to matter and
form but is necessary so as to account for the actuality of material things,
then this ‘to be’ is being affirmed as really distinct from essence either by
a question-begging assumption or merely on the basis of our mental acts.
One may as well label the latter basis the “Judgment of Esse Argument”
for the Real Distinction. The problem with such an argument is not only
that it is not found in Aquinas, but also that its acceptance would
ultimately make one wonder why Aquinas has criticized Anselm’s
Ontological Argument. In effect, the “Judgment of Esse Argument” would
be a variation of the “Understanding of Essence Argument,” to which I
shall turn first: as if from an understanding of an essence as matter and
form and from the judgment that an essence is, one can know that ‘to be’
is not essence. Yet, if one can reason thus from one’s mental acts, why
cannot one infer from a property of TTW-as-thought, that it must be
thought to be in reality, to the parallel property of TTW in reality: that it
must be in reality? For, one would be inferring from a property of ‘to be’-
as-thought to a property of ‘to be’ in reality: that it is other than essence.
10
For this acknowledgment (not this reaction), see Joseph Owens, “Aquinas on
Being and Thing,” in Thomistic Papers, vol. 3, ed. L. Kennedy (Houston, 1987), 3-
24, at 10-13; cf. also n. 36 below. For Owens, existence as known through
judgment prior to the Real Distinction is not esse as actuality or perfection, which
is conceptualizable, but is the composing or synthesizing of matter and form or
substance and accident reflected in the (non-propositional) ‘judgment’ that ‘x is’—
a judgment that is always temporally simultaneous with, though naturally prior to,
conceptualization; Joseph Owens, “Aquinas on Knowing Existence,” Review of
Metaphysics 29 (1976): 670-90, at 678, 681-2; Joseph Owens, “Judgment and
Truth in Aquinas,” in Owens, St. Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God:
Collected Papers of Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R., ed. J. Catan (Albany, 1980), 34-51, at
35, 43-44, reprinted from Mediaeval Studies 32 (1970): 138-58; Joseph Owens, An
Elementary Christian Metaphysics (Milwaukee, 1963), 47-55, 73-75; Joseph
Owens, Cognition: An Epistemological Inquiry (Houston, 1992), 168-70, 181, 192-
96.
All I wish to suggest now is that the Question-Begging Objection is not

easily dismissed. But suppose that the objection does turn out to hold,
what are the consequences for Aquinas’ thought? The Aristotelian will
charge Aquinas with having introduced highly dubious innovations into
the heart of Aristotle’s philosophical theory.11 ‘To be’ as actuality emerges
in the history of ideas only in the Neoplatonic effort to describe the One
beyond Being, beyond intelligibility, beyond Essence.12 Neoplatonists
came to concede that the First actually exists, even though it is beyond the
Form of Being itself; that is, that there is ‘to be’ beyond essence. Aquinas
participates in an old tradition of blending elements of Aristotle with
Neoplatonism,13 and his principal inspiration for the theory of a really
distinct ‘to be’ appears to be Avicenna.14 What is especially new in
Aquinas is the adoption of the esse-essence dichotomy within the Christian
project of faith seeking reason, inherited from Augustine. Aquinas uses ‘to
be’ as act in his defense of such theological doctrines as the creation of the
world ex nihilo and the immortality of the human soul. But, our
Aristotelian will argue, Aquinas misleadingly presents his most original
claims as conclusions that are philosophically justifiable. In Aristotle’s
philosophy the major metaphysical player is the individual essence, to ti ēn
einai. The ‘to be’ of a thing is expressed in its definition, and ‘the what it
was to be’ or essence is a thing’s individual form.15 Once Plato’s beard has
been trimmed, the ontology sufficient to account for all extra-mental ‘to
be’ comprises solely matter, form, and various accidents. Esse or to einai
as an act of ‘to be’ really distinct from to ti ēn einai is unnecessary and
therefore superfluous. I would hasten to add that if such esse is not
philosophically justifiable, it should not be offered as helpful to theology,
where it seems to be in no way required for belief. The real distinction
between essence and ‘to be’ has long pitted Thomists against other
11
For the charge developed in this paragraph, see especially Hans Meyer, in
Thomas von Aquin: Sein System und seine geistesgeschichtliche Stellung, 2nd ed.
(Paderborn, 1961), 103, 120-26, 131-33.
12
See especially the work of Richard C. Taylor, “Aquinas, the Plotiniana Arabica,
and the Metaphysics of Being and Actuality,” Journal of the History of Ideas 59
(1998): 217-39.
13
See especially Alain De Libera, “Albert le Grand et Thomas d’Aquin interprètes
du Liber de causis,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 74 (1990):
347-78.
14
Cf., for example, Anton Pegis, “St. Thomas and the Origin of Creation,” in
Philosophy and the Modern Mind (Detroit, 1961), 49-65.
15
For a contrast of Aristotle and Aquinas, see Armand Maurer, “Form and Essence
in the Philosophy of St. Thomas,” in Being and Knowing: Studies in Thomas
Aquinas and Late Medieval Philosophy (Toronto, 1990), 3-18.
David Twetten 87
theologians. If the Question-Begging Objection is correct, it seems

opportune to jettison the distinction once and for all.
II. An Existential Crisis: The Failure of Aquinas’ Proofs

A major task in Aquinas scholarship is to catalog Thomas’ arguments for
philosophical theses according to a systematic order that he himself would
recognize. We have made great strides in the last fifty years, but the recent
book by John Wippel deserves special recognition in this regard.
According to my count, there appear to be at least nine different kinds of
the over forty individual arguments that Aquinas offers, or that Aquinas
scholars have defensibly understood him to offer, on behalf of the real
distinction between esse and essence. In arriving at this number I make no
claim to be exhaustive, but I rely mainly on the previous lists of such
leading scholars as Cornelio Fabro, Leo Sweeney, Joseph Owens, and
John Wippel.16 In what follows, I reclassify, rename, and reduce Aquinas’
arguments to their essential steps, listing them roughly in chronological
order, so as to assess his preferred arguments in light of the Question-
Begging Objection. I begin with the three stages in Chapter 4 of the early,
purely philosophical work, De ente et essentia. These three stages can and
have been taken to correspond to three different and separable arguments,
although in the De ente itself they constitute one whole in which each
subsequent argument builds upon the one prior to it.17
A. The “Understanding of Essence Argument” and the First Stage of

De ente 4.
The De ente presents the fullest version of a form of argument that stands
on its own in at least one other place, in Aquinas’ early Scriptum on
16
They themselves are indebted to, among others, Norbertus del Prado, De veritate
fundamentali philosophiae christianae (Freiburg/CH, 1911), 23-70; M.-D. Roland-
Gosselin, Le “De ente et essentia” de S. Thomas d’Aquin (Paris, 1926; repr. 1948),
187-89; Joseph De Finance, Être et agir dans la philosophie de saint Thomas
(Rome, 1960), 94-107.
17
Three arguments are both distinguished and united, for example, in Cornelio
Fabro, “Un itinéraire de saint Thomas: L’Établissement de la distinction réelle
entre essence et existence,” in Esegesi tomistica, 89-108, at 94, 99, reprinted from
Revue de Philosophie 39 (1939): 285-310; Cornelio Fabro, La nozione metafisica
di partecipazione secondo S. Tommaso d’Aquino, 2nd ed. (Turin, 1950), 218-19.
Lombard’s Sentences.18 According to many interpreters, Aquinas intends

in this First Stage of De ente 4 to establish no more than a conceptual
distinction between essence and esse. But if the argument is to be taken in
defense of the Real Distinction, as would appear prima facie to be the
case, and as the passage from the Scriptum suggests, it may be restated as
follows.
(1) Whatever does not belong to the understanding of a thing’s

essence must be distinct from that essence.
a. For, no essence can be understood without its parts.
(2) Hence, [if such a feature belongs to a thing,] it must enter into
composition with it [as really distinct from it, whether the feature
is caused by the essence itself or] comes to it from without.19
(3) But one can understand what is a human or a phoenix (or an

eclipse; Sent. 2, d. 3.1.1) without knowing whether it has ‘to be’
(esse) in reality.
(4) Therefore, the ‘to be’ of an essence [that exists] enters into
composition with it as [really] distinct from it.
There are a number of problems with this argument, some of which can be
resolved. Here I am interested only in the Question-Begging Objection.
The argument proceeds from the absence of our knowledge of ‘to be’ or
esse in knowing essences to the presence of esse as really distinct from
essence. But the argument presupposes that esse is something that must
belong to the essence of a thing in order that it be. Esse as act of an
essence is assumed to be part of our ontology. Consequently, the absence
from an essence of its esse leaves that essence nonexistent. Thus, there is a
tacit Step (5) between Steps (3) and (4) that may be spelled out thus:
18
Aquinas, De ente 4, ll. 94-103; Sent. 2, d. 1.1.1c; Sent. 2, d. 3.1.1c (for this
passage as a “God to Creatures Argument,” see below, n. 45). In three other early
passages, though not again after 1260, Aquinas employs in a comparable way the
principle that esse is not found in the understanding of a thing. See Sent. 1, d. 8.3.3
expos.; Sent. 1, d. 8.4.2c; QDDV 10.12c, ll. 174-178.
19
For this step, see De ente 4, ll. 94-96, 127-130. The De ente makes no distinction
between Steps (1) and (2); I have added material in brackets to bring out the
argument, on the assumption, again, that a Real Distinction is intended.
David Twetten 89
(5) ‘To be’ (esse) is a feature that must belong to essences in order
that they be.
The Aristotelian objector, however, denies Step (5). For the Aristotelian, it
is not the case that things exist because of a ‘to be’ that, in the words of De
ente 4, ‘belongs to’, ‘comes to from without’, ‘enters into composition
with’, or ‘is received by’ essence and that thereby actualizes that essence
so as to be. ‘To be’ for material things is simply for form to actualize
matter. For an essence to have its constituent parts is for it to be. The
Aristotelian, then, can explain one’s ignorance of ‘to be’ in knowing
essence merely by appealing to individual matter. Knowing what a
whooping crane is does not tell me whether one is, because individual
material instances are not known in knowing essences. Whether there are
whooping cranes is known only by perceiving individual instances of that
species. One need not affirm a really distinct ‘to be’ to explain the
difference between knowing a species and perceiving its instances. As a
result, the Aristotelian’s ontology is sparser here than the Thomist’s,
requiring only form, matter, and the relevant acts of knowing universals
and particulars.
B. The “Hypothetical Essence That Is Esse Argument” and the Second

Stage of De ente 4.
Most interpreters agree that the First Stage of De ente 4 fails to establish a
real distinction between essence and esse. John Wippel is well known for
his vigorous defense of the Second Stage,20 and he has recently isolated
and identified the argument of this Stage as a distinct form of argument for
the Real Distinction.21 On at least six other occasions, four in mature
20
John Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington, 1984),
107-32; see also Scott MacDonald, “The Esse/Essentia Argument in Aquinas’s De
ente et essentia,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 22 (1984): 157-72.
21
John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being
to Uncreated Being (Washington, 2000), 137, 143, 150-57. For the Second Stage
as an independent argument, cf. Fabro, “Un itinéraire,” 97-99; La nozione
metafisica, 219, 221. Wippel groups under this category six instances of the “God
to Creatures Argument” as categorized by Leo Sweeney, “Existence/Essence in
Thomas Aquinas’s Early Writings,” Proceedings of the American Catholic
Philosophical Association 37 (1963): 97-131. Although four of these affirm God as
actually existing, not as a mere hypothesis as in the De ente, the logic of their
argument, based on the uniqueness of subsistent esse, does not require this
affirmation, as Wippel observes (Metaphysical Thought, 136-37, 151-55, 585); for
their reasoning, see below, nn. 41-44. Nevertheless, I include in the “Hypothetical
works, Aquinas offers what could be taken as an explicit instance of this

form of argument. The version in the De ente begins by testing an
hypothesis that will be affirmed with proof in the Third Stage.
(1) Suppose that there is something in which esse (‘to be’) is not
other than essence, but whose essence is its own esse.22
a. This would be ‘esse itself’,23 that is, subsisting esse,24
which is not received in another, but is ‘esse alone’ (esse
tantum).25
b. Such a thing cannot participate in anything else; for, esse
is the ultimate act, which is participable by all but does
not itself participate in anything else.26
Essence That Is Esse Argument” only those seven passages that actually proceed
without the explicit affirmation of God’s actual existence. In fact, of the nearly
twenty instances of the “God to Creatures Argument” that can claim to be
complete (besides De ente 4), most have a similar argumentative structure to that
of arguments based on the mere hypothesis of God. And, all but one argue from
the fact that nothing but God can be its own esse, or esse itself. Even where this is
not explicitly defended within the argument, in most cases it could be taken to have
been previously established systematically within the work in question. In other
words, if any instance of the “God to Creatures Argument” that employs the actual
existence of God should be grouped with the Second Stage of De ente 4, a good
case could be made that nearly all of them should be so grouped. Yet, the “God to
Creatures” approach is well attested in Aquinas and is worth retaining as a distinct
mode of arguing, a point that I develop below, in Section II.K.
22
Aquinas, De ente 4, ll. 103-126, specifically ll. 103-114; cf. Sent. 1, d. 8.5.2c;
Thomas Aquinas, In octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis expositio [=In
Phys.], ed. P. M. Maggiòlo (Turin-Rome, 1950), 8.10, lect. 21, n. 13 (1153).
23
In Phys. 8.10, lect. 21, n. 13 (1153); In De ebdom. 2, ll. 216-258, specifically ll.
218-220. The latter passage forms an integral part of an argument that I present
separately below, in Section II.E.
24
De ente 4, l. 115; In Phys. 8.10, lect. 21, n. 13 (1153); SCG 2.52, n. 5 (Item. Si).
25
De ente 4, ll. 114-117. It needs to be explained why esse could not be merely
one conceptually distinct feature of a first essence even though not a really distinct
feature; this feature could be unique to it, ‘its own’. In other words, why must an
existing essence in which there is no Real Distinction be identical to esse itself? It
also needs to be explained whether identifying an essence with ‘its own esse’ is a
necessary and/or sufficient step prior to identifying an essence with ‘esse itself’.
Cf. Sent. 2, d. 3.1.1c: “Alia autem natura invenitur de cujus ratione est ipsum suum
esse, immo ipsum esse est sua natura.”
26
Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de anima [=QDDA] 6 ad 2, ll. 268-
277, in Opera omnia, vol. 24.1. Cf. also In De ebdom. 2, ll. 85-102, 249-251. This
David Twetten 91
(2) All other things are distinct from this hypothetical being.
a. For, something either is or is not its own esse, esse
itself.27
i. But if there is something that is not its own
esse, it must acquire its esse from another;
hence, in itself it is possible with respect to
esse.28
b. Also, there could be only one thing that is its own esse.
i. For, it could not remain ‘esse alone’ and be
pluralized in any conceivable way of
pluralizing, such as by adding a differentia, or
by being received in some subject, such as in
matter.29
ii. Also, it would be similar to a separate form,
which would be unique.30
iii. Also, subsistent esse must be infinite and
therefore unique.31
c. Also, to be caused belongs to other things but cannot
belong to subsistent esse. Otherwise, to be caused would
step, just as Step (3.a), below, n. 33, forms a “Hypothetical Essence That Is Esse
Argument through Participation,” an argument that in QDDA 6 ad 2 does not
expressly use uniqueness. For this form of argument, cf. below, nn. 48-49, and
below, Sections II.H-J.
27
Sent. 1, d. 8.5.2c; In De ebdom. 2, ll. 219-220, 249-251; In Phys. 8.10, lect. 21,
n. 13 (1153). The argument in these passages based on Step (2.a) can be called the
“Hypothetical Essence That Is Esse Argument through Disjunction,” which is
completed by Step (2.a.i), (2.b.ii), or (3.a).
28
Sent. 1, d. 8.5.2c. For what Aquinas regards as Avicennian reasoning from
‘being caused’ to the Real Distinction, see below, n. 73.
29
De ente 4, ll. 105-121; In De ebdom. 2, ll. 249-258. In these passages together
with those in the following two notes is found the “Hypothetical Essence That Is
Esse Argument through Uniqueness,” comprising Steps (1) and/or (1.a), and (2.b),
perhaps together with Steps (2.a) or (3.b). For this form of argument, cf. below, nn.
41-42.
30
Thomas Aquinas, Super Librum de causis expositio [=In LDC], ed. H. D. Saffrey
(Louvain, 1954), 4, pp. 29.27-30.30, at 29.27-30; In Phys. 8.10, lect. 21, n. 13
(1153); cf. De ente 4, ll. 110-113. For this step, cf. below, n. 43.
31
In LDC 4, p. 30.18-20. This step is completed by Step (3.b). For this form of
argument, cf. below, n. 44.
belong to ‘a being qua a being’, implying an infinite

regress of caused causes.32
(3) Therefore, in all other things there must be a [real] distinction
between essence and esse.
a. For, esse’s being participated by diverse natures allows
for a plurality.33
b. Also, esse that is received by essence is finite and
therefore admits of a plurality.34
For years I, much as Wippel, taught that this Second Stage successfully
moves beyond a mere conceptual distinction to establish a real distinction
between essence and esse. But I was thinking as does a Thomist, not as
does my Aristotelian objector. According to the Question-Begging
Objection, why must we think that what lacks a Real Distinction must
have Thomist esse in the first place? Another way of putting the objection
is to ask, Why does Step (1), the supposition of something lacking the
Real Distinction, imply Step (1.a), that such a thing must be ‘pure’ or
subsistent esse? Are there not alternative ways of lacking a real distinction
between esse and essence, for example, by being pure essence? In such a
case, ‘pure essence’ would be instantiated, so that the proposition ‘pure
essence exists’ would be justifiable, but one need not ask whether an
ontological property ‘to be’ is identical to that essence—whether it is pure
‘subsistent to be itself’.
Or, even were one to grant subsistent ‘to be’, why affirm in Step (3) that
all other things also have ‘to be’ in the sense required; namely, as an
actuality over and above what they are? Why not say that such things are
judged to be, but that to account for this judgment one need not affirm in
reality any feature other than their essence?35 Even if there were a
32
SCG 2.52, n. 5 (Item. Si). The argument of this passage, constituted by Steps
(1.a) and (2.c), is singular in Aquinas’ corpus, a “Hypothetical Essence That Is
Esse Argument through Causality,” relying on neither uniqueness nor
Participation. For other arguments through causality, see below, Section II.G and
n. 73.
33
In LDC 4, p. 30.2-8, 28-29; In De ebdom. 2, ll. 234-250; cf. In Phys. 8.10, lect.
21, n. 13 (1153). This step is implicit in QDDA 6 ad 2. Cf. above, n. 26.
34
In LDC 4, p. 30.18-30. This step is the completion of Step (2.b.iii); cf. above, n.
31.
35
Cf. Daniel Utrecht, “Esse Means Existence,” in Saints and Scholars: Studies in
Honor of Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, ed. R. A. Herrera, et al. (New York, 1993), 87-
94, at 87: “It is one thing to say that something exists. It is something else to say
David Twetten 93
subsistent ‘to be’, then, that ‘to be’ would not compete with other things
whose ‘to be’ is likewise taken to be indistinct from their essence; for,
such things ‘have to be’ only in the sense that their essence is judged to be
instantiated. Thus, the Aristotelian can insist that ‘to be’ is simply for there
to be form instantiated in matter—and that Thomist esse is nowhere in the
picture. Joseph Owens has leveled a similar objection against Wippel’s
reading of this Second Stage: “Nothing has been introduced to show that
existing adds a positive content of its own over and above the quidditative
content of the thing.”36 Without ‘to be’ in the picture as an ontological
component, the objector is not compelled to draw the consequence that
there can be only one instance of what lacks a composition of essence and
esse. Instead, for the objector, all things lack this composition.
C. The “God to Creatures Argument” and the Third Stage of De ente

4.
Joseph Owens defends the view, which he ascribes to Thomas, that it is

possible to prove a real distinction between being (esse) and essence only
after the proof for the existence of God, after the proof, that is, of ‘being as
a nature’. For Owens, the definitive “God to Creatures Argument” is found
in De ente 4 in the Third Stage, which after proving that esse as a nature
exists, concludes to a Real Distinction.37 In any case, it is widely agreed
that it exists because it ‘has’ something called esse actuating it. . . . The Thomist
needs to show how he knows there is such an act.”
36
Owens, “Aquinas’ Distinction,” 282. Of course, Owens’ point is a different one:
he rejects the Second Stage only because, for him, it operates with a concept of
esse, not with esse grasped in judgment, and its reasoning ends as it begins with
purely mental distinctions; see Joseph Owens, “Stages and Distinction in De ente:
A Rejoinder,” The Thomist 45 (1981): 99-123, at 108-10, 114-21. Only after the
esse that is grasped in judgment is known to exist as a nature as in the Third Stage
is it possible to establish the Real Distinction. Nonetheless, the reasoning of the
Third Stage relies on that of the Second; ibid. 109; Elementary Christian
Metaphysics, 101 (although it could also use the infinity of pure being, as in ibid.
103, 106-8). And, Owens sees the first two stages as part of one continuous
argument for the Real Distinction; ibid. 68-71, 77-82, 101-8; “Aquinas’
Distinction,” 276, 281, 286. In fact, according to Owens, each of the two Stages
could be separated out and taken as concluding to the Real Distinction after it is
known that God exists whose being is a nature; Joseph Owens, “Quiddity and Real
Distinction in St Thomas Aquinas,” Mediaeval Studies 27 (1965): 1-22, at 19.
37
Owens, Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 71-75, 101-8, 351; for the Third
Stage as an independent argument, cf. also Fabro, “Un itinéraire,” 104; La nozione
metafisica, 220. Owens’ reading of the Third Stage, as beginning only with a
that the “God to Creatures Argument” is well attested in Aquinas. Apart

from the De ente, there are at least nineteen instances of the argument,
most of which are drawn from eight different mature works. I distinguish
three general versions of this argument: some versions argue in a
particular way through Uniqueness or Participation, whereas another
version is Simplified. Paradigmatic of the “God to Creatures” approach is
the argument of Summa theologiae I.44.1c. Aquinas, having already
systematically shown that God exists, that his esse is identical to his
nature, and that there can be only one thing that is subsistent esse, now
argues that therefore everything other than God is not identical to its esse
but must participate in esse and must consequently be caused by the first
unparticipated esse, the creator. In fact, most instances of the “God to
Creatures Argument” are introduced to distinguish creatures, especially,
immaterial or everlasting ones from the divine: angels, the human soul, or
celestial bodies. For the present purposes, I reduce the various versions of
the “God to Creatures Argument” to three steps, while I indicate within the
first two steps the directions taken by the different versions.
(1) As is shown elsewhere, something exists that is its own ‘to be’ or
esse, that is esse itself or esse subsistens.38
a. God alone is such a thing.39
conceptual distinction between a thing and its being, faces the interpretative
problem that the reasoning in De ente 4 appears to involve the reception of real
esse from another. If, as is true, an argument could be mounted without such
reasoning, that argument would still have to address the Question-Begging
Objection, as must any “God to Creatures Argument.” In other words, what entitles
one to infer from the judgment that God exists to the fact that God’s esse is a
nature? Precisely at this point esse as an ontological act is introduced. Why is not
God understood merely as pure form, which is judged to exist without introducing
any further ontological components? The Third Stage at this point runs the risk of
arguing from a mental operation to reality in a way that Owens himself has sharply
criticized; see Joseph Bobik, “Some Disputable Points Apropos of St. Thomas and
Metaphysics,” New Scholasticism 37 (1963): 411-30, at 425.
38
All instances of the “God to Creatures Argument” have some version of this
step, affirming one or more of these designations of God—whether through proof
or not. ‘Subsisting esse’ by itself in Aquinas, Quodl. 12.4.1c, ll. 16-26 (1272)
grounds a distinct version of the “God to Creatures Argument;” see below, n. 49.
On the classification of arguments using something whose essence is esse, see
above, n. 21.
39
Apart from the aforementioned Quodl. 12.4.1c, all instances of the “God to
Creatures Argument” use some version of Step (1.a), which affirms divine
David Twetten 95
i. For, God as the sole first cause is the most

perfect and actual thing, and to such a thing
alone belongs to be actual in the most perfect
way, to be esse itself.40
b. Further, there can be only one God, only one thing that
is its own esse or esse subsistens.41
i. For, since esse as such cannot be diversified, if
it subsists, nothing can be added to it to
diversify or pluralize it.42
ii. Also, it is one, as is a common nature
considered in itself or taken to exist by itself.43
iii. Also, subsistent being must be infinite,
possessing the fullness of being.44
otherness. Simplified versions of the argument, or those that argue through

Participation, may not use Step (1.b), which affirms divine uniqueness; for these
see below, nn. 45, 48-49.
40
SCG 2.52, n. 7 (Item. Cum). I count this passage as a “God to Creatures
Argument Simplified” because it offers no defense of Step (2); cf. below, n. 45.
Still, it implies that all things other than God acquire esse and as such are in
potency; also, that anything that is first in potency, then in act is completed only by
the perfect act of esse, which God alone is. To this extent the passage is similar to
the “God to Creatures Argument through Participation and Becoming” of Quodl.
12.4.1c, ll. 16-26; see below, n. 49.
41
Step (1.b) affirms not merely divine otherness but unicity, the target of the
Second Stage of De ente 4, which serves as the model for the “Hypothetical
Essence That Is Esse Argument.” I refer to the general argument based on the step
as the “God to Creatures Argument through Uniqueness,” which is completed by
Step (2), Step (2.a) or even (2.b), and some version of Step (3). In addition to the
variations of this argument mentioned in the next four notes, I include Thomas
Aquinas, Compendium theologiae [=CT] 1.68, ll. 18-30, in Opera omnia, vol. 42;
Aquinas, De substantiis separatis [=De sub. sep.] 9, ll. 102-118, in Opera omnia,
vol. 40; cf. SCG 2.15, n. 5 (Item. Quod).
42
SCG 2.52, n. 2 (Si enim). Step (1.b.i) together with Step (2.a) forms the “God to
Creatures Argument through Uniqueness Proper.” For a similar form of argument,
see above, n. 29. For Roland-Gosselin (Le “De ente,” 188), Aquinas develops this
argument in light of Avicenna’s proof of the uniqueness of the necessary being.
43
SCG 2.52, n. 3 (Amplius natura); also Quodl. 7.1.1 ad 1, ll. 143-159 (1256);
QDSC 1c, ll. 357-408; ST I.44.1c; Thomas Aquinas, Questiones disputate de malo
16.3c, ll. 164-174, in Opera omnia, vol. 23; De sep. sub. 8, ll. 164-187; Quodl.
3.8c, ll. 37-48 (1270). This step forms the “God to Creatures Argument through
Uniqueness of a Common Nature.” For the reasoning, see above, n. 30.
(2) But other beings exist, whose essence is not esse itself.45
a. For, there is a plurality of other beings,46 whose esse is
received, contracted to what receives it, and as a result is
limited.47
b. Also, when some feature, in this case, esse, belongs to
something according to its own nature, it belongs to all
others only by participation.48
44
This step together with some version of Step (2.a) forms the “God to Creatures
Argument through the Uniqueness of Infinite Esse,” used in SCG 2.52, n. 4 (Adhuc.
Impossibile); QDSC 1c, ll. 357-408. For this argumentation, cf. above, n. 31.
45
All instances of the “God to Creatures Argument” use Step (2), but some argue
simply through it and Step (1.a) alone: Sent. 1, d. 8.5.1c; Quodl. 7.3.2c (1256);
Quodl. 9.4.1c, ll. 115-121 (1257); SCG 2.52, n. 7 (Item. Cum); cf. ST I.47.1. This I
call the “God to Creatures Argument Simplified.” One “God to Creatures
Argument” is unique, defending Step (2) by means of the “Understanding of
Essence Argument:” Sent. 2, d. 3.1.1c. Hence, I do not introduce it here as a
special form of the “God to Creatures Argument,” but instead I refer the reader to
Section II.A above. This passage, just as Sent. 2, d. 1.1.1c, uses reasoning of both
the First and Third Stages of De ente 4—although the two passages use different
parts of the Third Stage: the passage from Distinction 1 argues for the existence of
subsistent esse, whereas that from Distinction 3 offers proof that all things other
than God, including angels, have essence really distinct from esse.
46
This point is barely made explicit, but is used by all of the passages that reason
through Step (1.b); see above, nn. 41-44. The conclusion of the Third Stage in De
ente 4 reasons thus (especially on Owens’ interpretation), relying on the conclusion
of the Second Stage; see De ente 4, ll. 121-126; 143-145.
47
Quodl. 7.1.1 ad 1, ll. 143-159; QDSC 1c, ll. 357-408.
48
This step, together with Step (1.a) forms the “God to Creatures Argument
through Participation,” whose purest form is found in SCG 2.52, n. 8 (Amplius.
Ipsum); see also Thomas Aquinas, Expositio libri Posteriorum 2.7 (92b8-11), lect.
6, ll. 43-50, in Opera omnia 1.2*; cf. Sent. 2, d. 16.1.1 ad 3; Sent. 2, d. 37.1.2c; In
Phys 8.10, lect. 21, n. 14 (1154); and especially In De ebdom. 2, ll. 234-250,
recorded in Step (3.b) in Section II.E, below, where participation in esse is
ascribed to any determinate form, including Aristotle’s separate substances, as a
condition for its distinction from other things. In other places, the argument is
formed with some version of Step (1.b), using uniqueness; hence I call it the “God
to Creatures Argument through Uniqueness and Participation:” in fact,
participation is defended in this version almost exclusively as an alternative to the
uniqueness of subsistent esse. This argument is found in CT I.68, ll. 18-30; ST
I.44.1c; De malo 16.3c, ll. 164-174; De sep. sub. 9, ll. 102-118; and Quodl. 3.8c, ll.
37-48; cf. SCG 2.15, n. 5 (Item. Quod). The same argument is found in one
“Hypothetical Essence that is Esse Argument:” In Phys 8.10, lect. 21, n. 13 (1153).
David Twetten 97
c. Also, things ‘most’ come to be in act by participating in

the first, pure act: subsisting esse.49
(3) Therefore, in other beings esse and essence are really distinct.
a. Consequently, in such things (i) esse as an act must be
caused by another and is received by an essence that is
in potency to it, so that (ii) quod est is other than ‘quo
est’.50
b. Also, such things participate in being.51
Given these three steps, it is easy to see that the “God to Creatures
Argument” is vulnerable to the Question-Begging Objection at exactly the
same points as was the “Hypothetical Essence That Is Esse Argument.”
Step (1) assumes Thomist ‘to be’ or esse in assuming that God is his own
esse or esse itself. Leo Sweeney has put the objection strikingly: “Granted
that the divine essence is esse, still for that statement to be meaningful one
must have a prior recognition of what esse is and of what being is. Whence
comes that recognition?”52
But even if one admits Thomist esse in Step (1), is it necessary to affirm
Thomist esse in Step (3)? Grant, according to Step (2), that other beings
exist whose essence is not esse itself. How does it follow that they are not
mere essence, but that they also have a really distinct esse? In two versions
of the “God to Creatures Argument,” Aquinas even adds a step between
Steps (2) and (3):
For arguments through Participation, see above, n. 26, and below, sections II.H-J,
in addition to the following note.
49
Quodl. 12.4.1c, ll. 16-26. This step forms a “God to Creatures Argument” that
does not use divine otherness or uniqueness, but is completed, instead, only by
Steps (1) and (3.b). The resulting argument, distinct from the one identified in the
previous note, is a “God to Creatures Argument through Participation and
Becoming.” On this argument, see Lawrence Dewan, “St. Thomas and the
Distinction between Form and Esse in Caused Things,” Gregorianum 80 (1999):
353-70. For similar reasoning, cf. above, n. 40.
50
Step (3.a.i) is found in Quodl. 7.3.2, ll. 24-35; and 9.4.1, ll. 115-121; Step (3.a.ii)
is found in Sent. 1, d. 8.5.1c; whereas many passages witness both (a) and (b):
Sent. 2, d. 3.1.1c; De ente 4, ll. 147-166 (Third Stage); De sep. sub. 8, ll. 164-187;
Quodl. 3.8c, ll. 37-48.
51
Participation in the “God to Creatures Argument” may be a consequence of
rather than a means to establishing the Real Distinction, as for Step (2.b): QDSC
1c, ll. 357-408; cf. In LDC 4, pp. 29.27-30.18-30.
52
Sweeney, “Existence/Essence in Aquinas’s Early Writings,” 130.
(4) But everything that is has ‘to be’ (esse).53
The Aristotelian rejects Step (4) in Aquinas’ sense: there is no ‘to be’ or
esse as a component to be had. That esse is a component of reality to be
possessed must be proved and not merely assumed. A similar difficulty
arises for the version of the “God to Creatures Argument” that uses
Participation: does it not presuppose that esse is a component of things that
is really distinct from essence or substance? Only if so is it necessary to
affirm a distinct participation in esse as opposed to a thing’s participation
in substance.
D. The “Genus Argument.”
Aquinas alludes many times to a doctrine that he ascribes to Avicenna,

that the essence of whatever is in a genus must be distinct from its esse. In
at least seven passages, including from the Summa theologiae and three
other mature works, Aquinas presents the reasoning behind this
conclusion. In each of these seven passages, he must intend not a
conceptual, but a real distinction. Admittedly, in none of these seven is
Aquinas systematically investigating the metaphysical composition of
creatures: in all but one he is taking up the question whether God’s
essence falls into a genus. Nonetheless, in four instances, including in De
ente et essentia 5, he explicitly uses the “Genus Argument” to conclude to
a Real Distinction in all things other than God.54 The “Genus Argument”
can be captured in the following five steps.
(1) [Every essence, with one possible exception, has at least one
genus that is predicated essentially of it (namely, its ultimate
category), and there is no real distinction between an essence and
its genus.]55
53
De sub. sep. 8, ll. 183-184: “Omne autem quod est esse habet;” Quodl. 12.4.1c,
ll. 23-26: “Unde esse est completiuum omnis forme, quia . . . habet esse cum est
actu; et sic nulla forma est nisi per esse.” See also the quotation below, in n. 65;
and SCG 1.22, n. 9: “Amplius. Omnis res est per hoc quod habet esse.”
54
Sent. 1, d. 8.4.2c; De ente 5, ll. 5-14; QDDV 27.1 ad 8; ST I.3.5c. The other three
passages are CT 1.14, ll. 12-19; SCG 1.25, n. 4 (Item. Quidquid); QDDP 7.3c. Cf.
the allusion in Sent. 2, d. 3.1.1 ad 1; Thomas Aquinas, Super Boetium De trinitate
6.3c, ll. 133-137, in Opera omnia, vol. 50.
55
A step of this kind is presupposed in Aquinas’ reasoning.
David Twetten 99
(2) But whatever is identical to a class as such, whether to genus or

species, belongs to every member of that class.56
(3) Therefore, any essence that is really identical to its ‘to be’ or esse
will be identical in esse to everything else in whatever class is
predicated essentially of it.
(4) This has absurd consequences:
a. No genus or class will have within it a plurality of
essences that actually are (SCG 1.25).
b. Also, either each individual thing that is will be identical
to every other, or no two things that are will be of the
same kind (cf. De veritate 27.1 ad 8).
i. For, the ‘to be’ or esse of each thing is proper
to it and distinct from the esse of anything
else.57
(5) Therefore, the essence of everything in a genus or class must be
really distinct from its esse.
Everyone acknowledges the problem with this argument, which lies in

concluding from Steps (4.a) and (4.b.i) to Step (5). Grant, in other words,
that there are many distinct individuals within each genus. The argument
proves only that there must be some really distinct principle to distinguish
two things that actually are and that belong to the same genus. Still, is ‘to
be’ or esse as an ontological component necessary to make them distinct,
or does not individuating matter alone suffice? Whatever is the source of
individuality is also the source of pluralization within a class. And, the
Aristotelian can say that this is matter, not Thomist esse. To assume that it
is esse is to beg the question, as Wippel has pointed out:
But as it first appears in the argument, esse may signify nothing more than a
particular actually existing member of a generic or specific class, that is, a
particular concrete existent. One cannot yet assume what remains to be
proved, i.e., that esse already signifies an act principle which is really
distinct from the essence principle of each particular substance.58
56
De ente 5, ll. 10-13; SCG 1.25; ST I.3.5c.
57
QDDP 7.3c; De ente 5, ll. 13-14.
58
Wippel, Metaphysical Thought, 161.
E. The “Simplicity of Esse Argument:” The Exposition of Boethius’

De hebdomadibus 2.
Cornelio Fabro is well-known for having identified a “Participation

Argument” (or mode of argument) for the Real Distinction, which Fabro
considers the most important foundation for the distinction in Aquinas.59 I
see only two instances of the “Participation Argument” that can claim to
completeness, that can claim to give grounds for participation in esse
without presupposing the Real Distinction, and that appear to be actually
intended by Aquinas to establish the Real Distinction. Most versions of the
so-called “Participation Argument” turn out to be versions of the “God to
Creatures Argument,” as I have pointed out.60 Still, one other argument
employs non-participation as a key part of its reasoning and uses
Participation language, although it cannot be reduced to the “Participation
Argument.” I name the unique and important argument of the (possibly
early, but probably late) Exposition of Boethius’ De hebdomadibus the
“Simplicity of Esse Argument.”
(1) ‘To be’ (esse) is simple.

a. For, ‘to be’ is not a subject either of ‘to be’ or of
accidents.61
b. Also, ‘to be’ does not participate in anything else—
whether logically, as in something more universal or in
59
Fabro, La nozione metafisica, 217, 222, 243-44. According to Fabro,
Participation is used in a fully systematic way in Aquinas’ arguments for the Real
Distinction only in the mature works, such as in the last argument of SCG 2.52
(ibid. 217, 221); yet, this use represents not a new argument, but merely a
modification of earlier arguments (ibid. 243; but cf. below, nn. 67, 88). Only in
later writings, however, does Fabro take up the apparent consequence that
Aquinas’ Exposition of Boethius’ De hebdomadibus, as opponents of the Real
Distinction have charged, is itself marked by Avicenna’s ‘extrinsicist’, dynamic
causal reasoning (ibid. 217, 222, 227). As Fabro later observes, the Exposition
evidences the logical and formal character of Boethius’ non-intensive notion of
esse, and we see Aquinas there actually contradicting his own metaphysics, for
example, in agreeing with Boethius that “esse is not yet;” Cornelio Fabro, “La
problematica dello esse tomistico,” in Fabro, Tomismo e pensiero moderno (Rome,
1969), 103-33, at 104-8, reprinted from Aquinas 2.2 (1959): 194-225; Cornelio
Fabro, Participation et causalité selon S. Thomas d’Aquin (Louvain, 1961), 268-
80.
60
For these versions, see above, n. 48.
61
Aquinas, In De ebdom. 2, ll. 48-63, 114-146, 204-212.
David Twetten 101
something concrete versus abstract, or ontologically, as

in a substantial form or in an accident (ll. 68-113, 207-
209).
(2) But if ‘that which is’ is composed of matter and form, it is
obviously not simple.62
(3) Or, if ‘that which is’ is not composed of form and matter, either
it is absolutely simple or it is in some other way composed (ll.
216-230).
a. But if ‘that which is’ is absolutely simple, so that its
essence is identical to its ‘to be’, there can only be one
such (ll. 216-219, 249-258).
b. Or, if ‘that which is’ is without matter yet is not
absolutely simple, it must have form that is other than,
that enters into composition with, and that participates in
‘to be’ so as to be pluralized and to be distinguished
from that which is absolutely simple (ll. 219-249).
(4) Therefore, in every case but one, simple ‘to be’ is really distinct
from ‘that which is’.
Aquinas explicitly draws attention to the fact that the early stages of this
argument, as he discovers it in Boethius, conclude merely to a conceptual
distinction between esse and essence, not to a real distinction (ll. 36-39,
198-220). For, the early stages focus on properties of language, on the
‘modes of signifying’ of words and concepts. ‘Esse’ (‘to be’) unlike ‘that
which is’, says Thomas, signifies in an abstract rather than in a concrete
mode; ‘esse’ signifies as ‘that by which’ rather than ‘that which’, and as a
formal part rather than as a subject whole.63 Accordingly, we do not say
that ‘to run’ (currere) runs or that ‘to be’ (esse) is, but ‘what runs’ (id
quod currit siue currens) runs and ‘that which is’ (ens siue id quod est) is.
Similarly, we do not say that a human is humanity or that ‘that which is’ is
‘to be’ or esse itself. It follows that ‘to be’ is conceptually distinct from
‘that which is’, although not that it is really distinct, observes Thomas.
At the same time, Aquinas believes that his argument establishes a Real
Distinction merely by introducing ontological components in place of ‘that
62
In De ebdom. 2, ll. 206, 209, 212-213.
63
In De ebdom. 2, ll. 39-45, 48-65, 87-102, 116-146.
which is’, namely, form and matter. Given a form-matter composite,

argues Aquinas, it is evident that its ‘to be’ insofar as it is simple is really
distinct from the composite that is ‘that which is’. But has Aquinas
managed to evade the Question-Begging Objection? Granted, as the
Aristotelian concedes, that all material things are form-matter composites,
why do they have or why must there be in them, in addition, simple ‘to be’
as an ontological component? Why can simple ‘to be’ not be merely a
term or predicate that we ascribe to them? Aquinas introduces no
argument to show that simplicity must be a property not only of language
or concepts, of the verb ‘is’ and ‘to be’, but also of some feature of reality.
F. The “Limitation of Esse Argument.”
John Wippel first named this as a distinct form of argument in Aquinas’

corpus.64 It is found in germ in at least three passages in Aquinas,
including in the Summa contra gentiles, although two of the passages do
not propose to prove the Real Distinction, and the third cannot as such be
ascribed to Aquinas insofar as it is an ‘argument sed contra’. Despite the
infrequency of the “Limitation of Esse Argument,” its reasoning is entirely
consistent with Aquinas’ doctrine on esse and his Principle of the
Limitation of Act by Potency. Given that, it is striking that Aquinas does
not give preference to an argument that, if it succeeds, is the simplest and
most cogent of all Aquinas’ arguments for the Real Distinction. At the
same time, this argument is perhaps more obviously susceptible than any
other to the Question-Begging Objection. Hence, it is of special interest
here. Was Aquinas aware of the vulnerability of this argument?
(1) All things [except one] must have ‘to be’ (esse) that is finite.65
a. [For, only one thing can be ‘to be’ itself.]
64
Wippel, Metaphysical Themes, 157-61; Metaphysical Thought, 170-76; yet the
argument was previously identified by Battista Mondin, St. Thomas Aquinas’
Philosophy in the Commentary to the Sentences (The Hague, 1975), 52. See also
Giles of Rome, Theoremata de esse et essentia, ed. E. Hocedez (Louvain, 1930), V
and XX, 24.21-25.18, 141.16-142.16. The argument was recognized by
renaissance scholastics as central to Aquinas’ exposition; see Cajetan, In De ente et
essentia D. Thomae Aquinatis commentaria, ed. M.-H. Laurent (Turin, 1934), 5, q.
12, n. 100.
65
“Omnis creatura habet esse finitum;” Aquinas, Sent. 1, d. 8.5.1 sc. See also
above, n. 53. I modify Step (1) and add Step (1.a) to show that the reasoning as
such does not depend on the actual existence of God. It is evident, in any case, that
all bodies are finite.
David Twetten 103
(2) But ‘to be’ that is not received in something subsists as absolute
and infinite.66
a. For, as is true of any form, ‘to be’ is of itself common,
so that it is limited only by being received in some
subject.67
(3) Therefore, ‘to be’ must be received in something other than it so
as to limit it.68
(4) Or, therefore, ‘to be’ must be limited by something other than it
that is in some way its cause [formal].69
(5) [Consequently, ‘to be’ and the essence that receives and limits it
are really distinct.]
This argument sharply reveals its dependence on a principle implicit in

Step (1): that all things have Thomist ‘to be’ or esse.70 If this is denied, as
by our Aristotelian objector, then the argument fails. The Aristotelian can
agree that things have finite being, can even accept in theory the Principle
of the Limitation of Act by Potency. But why cannot the finitude of things
be accounted for by the fact that form is received in matter in the case of
material things? And, if a plurality of immaterial forms is admitted,
66
Sent. 1, d. 8.5.1 sc; SCG 1.43, n. 8 (Amplius. Ipsum). Cf. also n. 44 above.
67
See Sent. 1, d. 8.2.1c: “[E]sse enim recipitur in aliquo secundum modum ipsius,
et ideo terminatur, sicut et quaelibet alia forma, quae de se communis est, et
secundum quod recipitur in aliquo, terminatur ad illud; et hoc modo solum
divinum esse non est terminatum, quia non est receptum in aliquo, quod sit
diversum ab eo. . . . [I]llud enim in quo non est esse absolutum, sed terminatum per
recipiens, non habet esse perfectum sed illud solum quod est suum esse: et per hoc
dividitur esse aeternum ab esse rerum immobilium creatarum, quae habent esse
participatum, sicut spirituales creaturae.” Cf. also ST I.7.1c; I.7.2c. Notice that
Fabro grounds his own résumé of the “Participation (Mode of) Argument” on the
finitude of all created substance; see above, n. 59; Fabro, La nozione metafisica,
243-44; cf. also Cornelio Fabro, “Sviluppo, significato e valore della ‘IV via’,” in
Esegesi tomistica, 351-85, at 366-69, reprinted from Doctor Communis 1-2 (1954):
71-109. In fact, Fabro’s exposition of esse as act in which all things participate as
in a ‘separate perfection’ seems to fit well with the passage from Sent. I, d. 8.2c
quoted above (cf. Fabro, Participation et causalité, 195-202). Perhaps he does not
invoke it because it uses ‘dynamic’ terms of ‘reception’ rather than merely terms of
static Participation.
68
Aquinas, Sent. 1, d. 8.5.1 sc; cf. also De sub. sep. 8, ll. 255-273.
69
SCG 1.43, n. 8 (Amplius. Ipsum).
70
See above, n. 53.
distinction within the plurality can be preserved by the finitude of the

forms alone: each form has a different definition, as does each prime
number, for Aristotle.
G. The “Effect to Cause Argument.”
One other explicit defense of the Real Distinction is well-known since it

falls within Aquinas’ catalog of seven arguments for the Real Distinction
in spiritual substances in Summa contra gentiles 2.52. Nonetheless,
scholarly lists of Aquinas’ arguments typically fail to classify it
distinctly.71 This is probably because, not unlike the “Limitation of Esse
Argument,” it is obviously vulnerable to objections, including the
Question-Begging Objection.
(1) Substance belongs to each thing through itself, not through

another.72
(2) But ‘to be’ (esse) belongs to each created [or caused] thing
through another.73
71
Thomas Dillon, The Real Distinction between Being and Essence in the Thought
of St. Thomas Aquinas, Notre Dame diss. (Notre Dame, 1977), 215, lists this as a
fifth argument beyond the standard four summarized by Sweeney; cf. also Roland-
Gosselin, Le “De ente,” 188: “proofs from the nature of created being;” Fabro, La
nozione metafisica, 214-15, 220-21. The argument was central in medieval and
renaissance Thomism; cf., for example, Norman Wells, “Capreolus on Essence and
Existence,” Modern Schoolman 38 (1960): 1-24.
72
Aquinas, SCG 2.52, n. 6 (Amplius. Substantia).
73
For other places where such causal reasoning is reflected, see above, nn. 28, 40,
and 49, as well as Step (2) in Section II.H below, and Steps (1.a) and (4.b) in
Section II.J; for causal reasoning in general, cf. above, n. 32. Aquinas’ “Effect to
Cause Argument” grows out of his reading of Avicennian arguments regarding the
possible versus necessary being—according to which arguments a caused thing is
only possible in itself and must receive esse from another in order to be; see
Sent. 1, d. 8.5.2c; Sent. 2, d. 1.1.5 ad sc 2; ST I.3.7 ad 1, but especially QDDV 8.8c,
ll. 121-126: “Omne autem quod aliquid non habet a se ipso sed ab altero, est ei
praeter essentiam suam; et per hunc modum probat Avicenna quod esse cuiuslibet
rei praeter primum ens est aliquid praeter essentiam ipsius quia omnia ab alio esse
habent; In Met. 4, lect. 2, n. 9 (556): “[Avicenna] dicebat, quia in qualibet re quae
habet esse ab alio, aliud est esse rei, et substantia sive essentia eius.” See especially
Avicenna, Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina, ed. S. Van Riet
(Louvain-Leiden, 1977-1980), vol. 2, 8.3, pp. 395.12-396.28; cf. 8.4, pp. 400.7-
402.47. Notice, though, that Avicenna’s reasoning here, if it can be taken as a
proof of the Real Distinction, proceeds from God to creatures. Fabro takes it as
David Twetten 105
a. Otherwise, ‘to be’ [would belong to each such thing

through itself, and] would be uncaused.
i. [For, x is uncaused if it does not depend on
another so as to be, just as for substance P to be
a substance needs no cause.]74
(3) Therefore, the ‘to be’ of each caused thing is really distinct from
its substance
The Aristotelian may admit, of course, that ‘being caused’ requires a really
distinct cause. But the objector denies that ‘being caused’ implies that esse
or ‘to be’ as an ontological component other than form and matter comes
to belong to what is caused, as in Steps (2) and (2.a). Instead, why cannot
a substance’s being caused ‘to be’ merely mean that its matter is actualized
by form, without introducing Thomist esse at all? Then the argument
shows that effects depend for their being on causes, not that they receive
really distinct esse or being from their causes.
H. The “Participation Argument:” ST I.75.5 ad 4.
As mentioned in Section II.E, I see only two instances of an argument

through Participation in Aquinas, which I present in Sections H and K.
The other purported instances either rely on the hypothetical or actual
existence of God, or they assume outright Participation as an ontological
reality, that is, they assume a participant and a really distinct esse
participated by it.75 One of the two instances, that from Summa theologiae
I.75.5 ad 4, is nothing more than the core of the “God to Creatures
crucial that Aquinas departs from Avicennian causal and ‘extrinsicist’ lines of
argumentation for the Real Distinction, such as mark Aquinas’ early works, in
favor of ‘static and intrinsicist’ lines through Participation; Fabro, Participation et
causalité, 216; cf. Mario Pangallo, L’essere come atto nel tomismo essenziale di
Cornelio Fabro (Roma, 1987), 34-37, 49-52. As Pangallo observes, however,
Aquinas’ shift is not as absolute as Fabro suggests; ibid. 36. Of course, the second
half of Fabro’s Participation et causalité develops in Aquinas’ mature thought a
causal line of reasoning subsequent to the Real Distinction that owes something to
Avicenna but is completely rethought in terms of intensive esse; cf. Fabro,
Participation et causalité, 341, 381-88, 431-41.
74
The brackets contain one way of completing the argument. For this step, cf.
Aristotle, Metaphysics Z.17, 1041a15-24. For a cause as that from which the esse
of another follows, see Thomas Aquinas, De principiis naturae 3, ll. 76-79, in
Opera omnia, vol. 43.
75
See above nn. 26, 48-49.
Argument through Participation,” extracted from its starting point

assuming God’s existence. This passage is the “Participation Argument” in
its pure form.76
(1) [No created form is subsistent ‘to be’.]77

(2) [Therefore,] any created form participates in ‘to be’ or esse.
(3) But everything that participates is compared to that in which it
participates as potency to act, an act limited by the capacity of
what receives it.
(4) Therefore, every created form is composed of esse as act and
essence as receiving it.
I have already raised the difficulty with the “Participation Argument” in
discussing the “God to Creatures Argument through Participation.” Step
(2) seems to beg the question. It assumes that ‘to be’ or esse is a
component of things that can be or must be participated in. But one can
admit that created forms are beings and deny that they participate in esse
as an ontological component distinct from form. Whatever Participation
such things have, then, would be purely logical and would presuppose no
Real Distinction—a possibility that Aquinas expressly allows in the
Exposition of Boethius’ De hebdomadibus 2.78
J. The “Participation in Ens Argument:” Quodlibet 2.2.1.
The second instance of an argument through Participation is worth

considering separately because of its singular form: the argument found in
a famous passage from the late Quodlibet, question 2 (1269). What makes
this passage unique? It can claim to be a strong argument for the Real
Distinction because it begins with participation as a fact about predication
alone. I believe that Aquinas is aware that to assume ontological
participation in esse is to assume a Real Distinction, and he does not
intend passages where such an assumption is made, thought-provoking and
76
Compare the version of this argument in Giles of Rome, Theoremata V, 25.19-
26.5: were a creature its own unparticipated esse, it would be entirely simple.
77
I add Step (1) to show that the argument, although it uses ‘created form’, need
hinge only on there being something other than subsistent esse—whether or not
such a thing is seen as caused.
78
Aquinas, In De ebdom. 2, ll. 36-39, 55-113, 198-206; cf. also Step (3) in the
following Section.
David Twetten 107
suggestive as they are, as self-standing arguments. The same cannot be

said, however, of the following five steps of Quodlibet 2.2.1.
(1) Everything [except one possible thing] is said to be ‘a being’

(ens) in a participative sense.79
a. For, no caused thing is subsistent ‘to be’ (esse).80
(2) But whenever one thing is said of another in a participative sense,
there be must something besides that which is participated; in this
case, namely, besides ‘to be’ (ll. 46-52).
a. [This distinction will be conceptual if the participation is
only logical; but if the participation is not logical, the
distinction will be real and the participation ontological.]81
(3) A being’ (ens) can be said of ‘substance’ or ‘accident’ in a
participative, yet essential sense, as the more of the less universal;
this is logical participation, implying no Real Distinction (ll. 52-
54, 67-72).
(4) But ‘a being’ can be said of an efficiently caused thing only in a
participative and accidental sense, not in an essential sense.82
a. For, ‘a being’ (ens) is not a genus or a difference.
b. Also, no efficiently caused essence ‘is’ by definition or
explains its own ‘to be’.
79
Quodl. 2.2.1c, ll. 33-37. Aquinas contrasts “predicatur per participationem” or
“predicatur participative” with “predicatur essencialiter;” for the distinction, see In
Met. 7.4, lect. 3, n. 23 (1328). Aquinas elsewhere contrasts properties possessed
“participative” with properties possessed “integraliter,” “originaliter,” “plenarie,”
and “secundum suam plenitudinem.”
80
“[N]ulla enim creatura est suum esse, set est habens esse;” Quodl. 2.2.1c, ll. 37-
38. I modify Steps (1) and (1.b) to make it clear, contrary to first appearances, that
the argument need not presuppose either God’s actual existence or the Real
Distinction, unlike for Wippel, Metaphysical Thought, 169; cf. 105. Aquinas need
maintain only the negative claim that nothing caused is subsistent ‘to be’, and the
argument does not need divine creation. As is clear from Step (4), “habens esse”
need not be taken by itself to signify an esse really distinct from the habens, any
more than “animal” predicated in a participative sense of “human” need signify a
really distinct animality; cf. Aquinas, In De ebdom. 3, ll. 58-68. Aquinas has not
yet ruled out logical participation, much as a species participates in its genus.
81
Step (2.a) is implied by Aquinas’ use of Step (3).
82
Quodl. 2.2.1c, ll. 54-66. For the proposition that a caused being or ‘creature’ is
called ‘a being’ as participating ‘to be’ or esse, see also Sent. 2, d. 16.1.1 ad 3.
i. Hence the questions ‘whether it is’ and ‘what it

is’ are different.
(5) But by applying Steps (2) and (2.a), accidental participation
therefore implies that a thing’s essence is [really] other than its
‘to be’ (esse), which is ‘accidental’ or beside the essence, but
which comes to belong to it. Such participation must be
ontological (ll. 73-75).
The argument has intriguing features. It recognizes the difference between
participation as found in language and as found in reality; only the latter
requires a real distinction between participant and what is participated.
Also, the argument seems to use causality in order to establish a real
participation and a real distinction. Thus, from the fact that something is a
creature (ll. 37-38) or is efficiently caused, the argument infers in Step (4)
that it is called ‘a being’ (ens) in an accidental, participative sense, and
therefore that it has ‘to be’ (esse) as a really distinct feature. Nevertheless,
as in the case of the “Effect to Cause Argument,” does the “Participation
in Ens Argument” not beg the question by assuming that to be caused is to
receive ‘to be’ as an ontological component other than form and matter?
What amounts to the same, can one assume that the only other kind of
participation besides essential participation is ontological, as in Step (2.a)?
It seems that Averroes himself, according to Aquinas’ own account here,
admits an accidental predication of ‘to be’ that introduces only
conceptually distinct ‘to be’: that affirms only ‘to be’ ‘in the sense of
propositional truth’, as in ‘Socrates is’ (ll. 63-66). Even Aquinas admits
that the proposition ‘God is’ signifies for us only ‘to be’ in the sense of
truth, an accidental predicate.83 In this life we cannot know God’s nature,
hence nor the esse that is identical to his nature. The term ‘is’ in ‘God is’,
then, seems to be an accidental predicate, conceptually distinct from ‘God’
without implying any Real Distinction in God. Why can one not hold that
the same is true for other predications of ‘is’, such as those in question in
the argument?
K. Summary Observations
All nine of Aquinas’ arguments for the Real Distinction that we have
reviewed seem vulnerable to the Question-Begging Objection. Aquinas
seems never to have been aware of the objection. At the same time, his
Exposition of Boethius’ De hebdomadibus shows his awareness of the
83
See ST I.3.4 ad 2; QDDP 7.2 ad 1.
David Twetten 109
sharp difference between reasoning that establishes only a conceptual

distinction, and reasoning that establishes the Real Distinction. And, there
is some evidence that over the course of his career, Aquinas embraced less
and less the ‘logical reasoning’ of the “Genus” and “Understanding of
Essence” Arguments in favor of ‘metaphysical’ reasoning, such as has
been distinguished by Fabro.84
It appears to me that Aquinas did originally believe that his “Understanding

of Essence Argument” and the First Stage of De ente 4 established a Real
Distinction. But he does not repeat this reasoning in the mature works, and
this practice appears to be deliberate. He continues to use the “Genus
Argument” until 1265, but not as his preferred argument for the Real
Distinction. The “Simplicity of Esse Argument” of the Exposition of
Boethius’ De hebdomadibus, much as the “Participation in Ens Argument”
of the late Quodlibet 2, begins ‘logically’ with properties of the words
‘esse’ and ‘ens’, although it must be said that both make a transition to
ontology: by introducing matter and form in the Exposition of Boethius’
De hebdomadibus 2, and by introducing the contingency of a creature in
the Second Quodlibet. The comparatively less logical, more ontological
reasoning of the “Hypothetical Essence That Is Esse” and “God to
Creatures” Arguments appear to be preferred by Aquinas if mere numbers
are considered. I see no good reason to think, however, that Aquinas in the
mature works regards the “God to Creatures Argument” as standing on its
own, as does the “Hypothetical Essence That Is Esse Argument.” I would
argue, in other words, that on the most plausible reading of the De ente
and the Summa theologiae alike, Aquinas thinks it is first necessary to
prove the Real Distinction in material things prior to proving both God’s
existence and the identity of God’s esse and essence; afterwards these
conclusions can be used to show that all things other than God, notably, all
everlasting or immaterial things, must be caused by God by receiving esse
as something really distinct from their essence. This is the singular role of
the “God to Creatures Argument” and the reason for its frequency.
A final point could be made concerning the “God to Creatures” and

“Hypothetical Essence That Is Esse” Arguments. Much of the central
reasoning in the different versions of these arguments does not depend on
the actual or possible existence of God and could be extracted from this
context to form an independent argument for the Real Distinction. Aquinas
has already made this extraction in the case of the “Effect to Cause” and
“Participation” Arguments, and less clearly in the case of the “Limitation
84
Fabro, La nozione metafisica, 215-222; see below, n. 88.
of Esse Argument.”85 In my view, however, the reasoning of these

arguments is even more obviously vulnerable to the Question-Begging
Objection after the extraction is made.
III. Help from Aristotle

If Aquinas’ own arguments for the Real Distinction fail to meet an
Aristotelian objection, in what sense do I speak of receiving “help from
Aristotle?” The greatest names in Thomist scholarship have seen the need
for help, I believe, but have found it in Scripture and/or in Plato. For
Étienne Gilson and Cornelio Fabro alike, Aquinas fails to demonstrate the
Real Distinction only in the sense that he never tried to demonstrate it in
the first place. Gilson denies that anyone has ever proved the Real
Distinction, and he cites what approximates the Question-Begging
Objection as the reason that a proof should not even be attempted: “[A]ll
the arguments one can use to establish the distinction between being and
essence in Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine presuppose the prior recognition of
the notion of the ‘act of being’ (esse).”86 For Gilson, Aquinas came to the
Real Distinction in a theological rather than in a purely philosophical way,
proceeding from God to creatures, reflecting on the words of Exodus 3:14:
‘I am Who Am’.87 Similarly, Fabro denies that the Real Distinction can be
known through intuition, judgment, or deduction.88 It is reached only in a
85
Cf. above, nn. 48-49, 66, 72-75.
86
Étienne Gilson, Elements of Christian Philosophy (Garden City, N.Y., 1960),
130. See ibid. 128: “[N]o one has ever been able to demonstrate the conclusion
that, in a caused substance, existence is a distinct element, other than essence, and
its act.” Cf. also Étienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,
tr. L. Shook (New York, 1956), 82.
87
Gilson, Elements of Christian Philosophy, 130-35.
88
Fabro, Participation et causalité, 75, 79-81; Cornelio Fabro, “Notes pour la
fondation métaphysique de l’etre,” in Fabro, Tomismo e pensiero moderno, 291-
317, at 292, 312, 314, reprinted from Revue thomiste 2 (1966): 214-37; cf. Luis
Romera, Pensar el ser: Análisis del conocimiento del “Actus Essendi” según C.
Fabro (Bern, 1994), 99-100. Notice the evolution in Fabro’s thought and
expression on this issue. In his 1939 article on the Real Distinction, he defends
both what he calls the ‘logico-metaphysical argument’ of the First Stage of De ente
4, and the two ‘metaphysical arguments’ of the Second and Third Stage; Fabro,
“Un itinéraire,” 94-97. In the 1950 revision of La nozione metafisica, 217-22, 243-
44, Fabro still distinguishes Aquinas’ two logical arguments (De ente 4, First
Stage, and the “Genus Argument”) from two early metaphysical arguments (De
ente 4, Second and Third Stages), though the logical arguments must not be taken
to stand on their own (ibid. 219); but Fabro favors Aquinas’ third and subsequently
David Twetten 111
dialectical analysis89 that starts from the intensive act of being, which is
also identifiable with God.90 The first source of this properly Thomistic
developed mode of metaphysical argument, couched in Participation, such as is

offered in the last argument of SCG 2.52. In 1954, Fabro highlights the centrality
of three moments of the ‘dialectic of participation’ for Aquinas’ metaphysics of the
creature, within which dialectic the argument through participation becomes for
Aquinas the exclusive way to demonstrate the Real Distinction; Fabro, “Sviluppo
della ‘IV via’,” 368-69. By contrast, Participation et causalité in 1960 does not
speak of ‘an argument’ or ‘demonstration’ for the Real Distinction, except in
reference to Aquinas’ original Avicennian reasoning; see Participation et
causalité, 216, 625. For three stages of development in Fabro’s thought on the Real
Distinction, beginning with La nozione metafisica, see Pangallo, L’essere come
atto, 43-48, 67, 147-49. Only in the final stage, reacting to existentialism, does
Fabro criticize and renounce the use of ‘existence’ as an unphilosophical term;
ibid. 149. In this final stage, Fabro takes existentia to be a term of anti-Thomistic
origin, foreign to the semantics of Thomistic metaphysics, whose appearance in
Henry of Ghent and Giles of Rome is a landmark in the ‘forgetfulness of being’
lamented by Heidegger; Cornelio Fabro, “Platonismo, neoplatonismo, e tomismo,”
in Fabro, Tomismo e pensiero moderno, 435-60, at 449; Cornelio Fabro, “Il nuovo
problema dell’essere e la fondazione della metafisica,” in St. Thomas Aquinas,
1274-1974: Commemorative Studies, ed. A. Maurer et al. (Toronto, 1974), vol. 2,
423-57, at 454-55.
89
Fabro, Participation et causalité, 73-75, 479, 625. Fabro speaks there of a
‘metaphysical reflexion’, ‘resolutive dialectic’, or ‘theoretic resolution’, but
elsewhere of a ‘dialectical’ or ‘transcendental resolution’; Cornelio Fabro,
“L’Emergenza dello esse tomistico sull’atto aristotelico: Breve prologo,” in L’Atto
aristotelico e le sue ermeneutiche, ed. M. Sánchez (Rome, 1990), 149-77, at 174,
176. For the stages of the resolution and its evolution in Aquinas, see also Fabro,
“La problematica dello esse,” 107-10; Participation et causalité, 79-83; 195-244.
90
Sometimes Fabro suggests that he does not intend to reduce his approach to the
Real Distinction to a simple “God to Creatures Argument,” even when he accepts
such an argument (Fabro, La nozione metafisica, 192-205, 243-44; Participation et
causalité, 35, 76, 83, 198-202); yet, insofar as his ‘resolution’ begins from pure
act, which is identified with esse, which therefore must exist and must exist
separately and uniquely, the identification of this esse with God is natural (cf. ibid.
198-208; “La problematica dello esse,” 109-10). Elsewhere Fabro is explicit about
the “God to Creatures” approach: Cornelio Fabro, “Elementi per una dottrina
tomistica della partecipazione,” in Esegesi tomistica, 421-48, at 433, reprinted
from Divinitas 11 (1967): 559-86; Cornelio Fabro, Introduzione a san Tommaso:
La metafisica tomista e il pensiero moderno, 2nd ed. (Milan, 1997), 89-90 (the 1st
ed. appeared in 1983). Observe, though, that Participation et causalité focuses not
on the Real Distinction, but on the emergence of ‘esse as act’ and on the
subsequent dynamic causality and semantics in Aquinas’ thought. Fabro’s most
thorough account of the ‘foundation’ of the Real Distinction at the final stage of
his own development is found in “Notes pour la fondation métaphysique de l’etre,”
analysis is thus Genesis and Exodus, but it subsequently proceeds with

Dionysius and the Platonic metaphysics of Participation to see all other
essences as participating in this intensive act.91
Both Gilson and Fabro end by denying that the Real Distinction can be
known through proof. But their approach to the Real Distinction leaves it
open, again, to the objection that the distinction is a theological or
Neoplatonic accretion, unjustifiable on philosophical grounds. As both
Gilson and Fabro would admit, the Real Distinction is not per se known:
from the understanding alone of essence, substance, or form, on the one
hand, and of ‘to be’, on the other, it is not obvious that in reality outside
the mind, ‘form’ is other than ‘to be’. To say otherwise will raise the
Question-Begging Objection. The Real Distinction, I conclude, needs to be
defended by argument but cannot be deduced from prior principles without
assuming ‘to be’ as an ontological component, without assuming ‘esse’ in
the Thomist sense. In this situation, it appears that one must resort to
indirect argumentation such as through effects or through a reductio ad
absurdum. Are there any impossible consequences for one who would
affirm Aristotelian principles but reject really distinct esse? I submit that
where he explicitly does not appeal to God at the moment of the ‘foundation’, but
only subsequently in completing the causal account; Fabro, “Notes pour la
fondation métaphysique de l’etre,” 291-93, 309-14.
91
Fabro, Participation et causalité, 15, 51, 169, 198, 207-208, 216-19, 229, 537. It
does not contradict Fabro’s position to add that the ‘first moment’ of Thomist
metaphysics is the Aristotelian concept of act; for, the ultimate foundation of the
newly emergent esse ut actus versus the potency of essence is the Platonic notion
of Participation; Fabro, Introduzione a san Tommaso, 85, 91. Giacon criticizes
Fabro’s acceptance of a biblical origin and of a “God to Creatures” approach in his
account of the Real Distinction; Carlo Giacon, “S. Tommaso e l’esistenza come
atto: Maritain, Gilson, Fabro,” in Giacon, Itinerario tomistico (Rome, 1983), 137-
65, at 162-63. Late Fabro seems to have changed his position, insisting that
Aquinas differs from previous Christian thought in that the evidence of the event
of creation for him is founded on esse as act, rather than vice versa; Fabro,
“Intorno al fondamento dell’essere,” in Graceful Reason: Essays in Ancient and
Medieval Philosophy Presented to Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R., ed. L. Gerson (Toronto,
1983), 229-37, at 237. In any event, Fabro’s account of the Real Distinction turns
on his establishing that there is an esse as act containing all things intensively at a
transcendental level, whereas essences at the predicamental level have this act only
by Participation. The intensivity of esse is what makes it possible to establish the
Real Distinction, whereas all other accounts take esse in a ‘logical’ or ‘formal’
sense as containing merely the minimal base of what makes something to be
(existence). So thin a notion of esse makes the Real Distinction vulnerable to
objections such as those of Descoqs or the Question-Begging Objection.
David Twetten 113
the Aristotelian Question-Begging Objection helps us by leading us to

reconsider Aristotle’s notions of essence and form, which notions underpin
the Real Distinction and without which the distinction cannot be drawn
with any philosophical cogency.
A. Aristotle’s Conceptual Distinction
The first point that needs to be made, which I cannot defend at length here,
is that Aristotle himself maintains a conceptual distinction between mere
‘to be’ and ‘that which is’.92 Thus, Aquinas, insofar as he begins his
discussions of the Real Distinction by first establishing a conceptual
distinction, as in the Exposition of the De hebdomadibus, follows Aristotle
even more than he follows Boethius or Avicenna. It is often observed that
Aristotle identifies essence or to ti ēn einai with being or to einai, as in the
formula to kuklōi einai (the being of a circle), used for the essence of a
92
One may find strong defenses of the position—and not merely to favor
Aquinas—that there is no hint of an existential notion of ‘to be’ in Aristotle, that
‘to be’ always means ‘to be so and so’, as in the statement of the principle of non-
contradiction; see Joseph Owens, “An Aristotelian Text Related to the Distinction
of Being and Essence,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical
Association 21 (1946): 165-72, at 164; see also G. E. L. Owen, “Aristotle on the
Snares of Ontology,” in New Essays on Plato and Aristotle (New York, 1965), 69-
95; Alfonso Gomez Lobo, “The So-Called Question of Existence in Aristotle, An.
Post. 2.1-2,” Review of Metaphysics 34 (1980): 71-90. Still, many today ascribe to
Aristotle propositions that affirm existence; see Milton Munitz, Existence and
Logic (New York, 1974), 59-62; David Demoss and Daniel Devereux, “Essence,
Existence, and Nominal Definition in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics II 8-10,”
Phronesis 33 (1988): 133-54; Thomas D’Andrea, “Essence and Existence in
Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics,” in Saints and Scholars, 15-21; Owen Goldin,
Explaining an Eclipse: Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics 2.1-10 (Ann Arbor, MI,
1996), 52-71; Jaakko Hintikka, “On Aristotle’s Notion of Existence,” Review of
Metaphysics 52 (1999): 779-805, at 785-90; David Charles, Aristotle on Meaning
and Essence (Oxford, 2000), chs. 2-3; and David Charles, “Some Comments on
Prof. Enrico Berti’s ‘Being and Essence in Contemporary Interpretations of
Aristotle’,” in Individuals, Essence and Identity: Themes of Analytic Metaphysics,
ed. A. Bottani, et al. (Dordrecht, 2002), 109-26. Linguistic studies reveal an
existential sense for einai in classical Greek and in Aristotle, although Aristotle
does not articulate a concept of existence or distinguish it carefully from other
senses of einai; A. C. Graham, “‘Being’ in Linguistics and Philosophy: A
Preliminary Inquiry,” Foundations of Language 1 (1965): 223-31, at 223-24, and
Charles Kahn, “The Greek Verb ‘To Be’ and the Concept of Being,” Foundations
of Language 2 (1966): 245-65, at 247-48, 265.
circle.93 Admittedly, to einai in the principal sense for Aristotle means

essence, a sense that Aquinas himself admits as one of three main senses
of esse.94 But Posterior Analytics 2 holds that the question ‘whether x is?’
is different from and prior to the question ‘what is x?’; that the ‘to be’ of a
thing in this sense is other than its substance.95 Accordingly, Aristotle
93
Aristotle, Metaphysics Z.10, 1036a1-19; for to ti ēn einai, see H.3, 1043b1-4.
94
See especially Aquinas, Sent. 1, d. 33.1.1 ad 1: “Sed sciendum, quod esse dicitur
dupliciter. Uno modo dicitur esse ipsa quidditas vel natura rei, sicut dicitur quod
definitio est oratio significans quid est esse; definitio enim quidditatem rei
significat. Alio modo dicitur esse ipse actus essentiae; sicut vivere, quod est esse
viventibus, est animae actus; non actus secundus, qui est operatio, sed actus
primus. Tertio modo dicitur esse quod significat veritatem compositionis in
propositionibus, secundum quod est dicitur copula: et secundum hoc est in
intellectu componente et dividente quantum ad sui complementum; sed fundatur in
esse rei, quod est actus essentiae. . . .”
95
For Owens, the question ‘whether something is’ in Posterior Analytics 2 in fact
asks about a thing’s generic or quasi-generic character: Joseph Owens, The
Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics: A Study in the Greek
Background of Mediaeval Thought, 3rd ed. (Toronto, 1978), 289-94; or about its
logical possibility: Joseph Owens, “The Accidental and Essential Character of
Being in the Doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas,” in Owens, St. Thomas Aquinas on
the Existence of God, 52-96, at 59. The work of Graham, Hintikka, Kahn, and
Suzanne Mansion helps elucidate the difficulty to which Owens points, even while
it admits an existential sense to einai in the Posterior Analytics. For Graham,
“‘Being’ in Linguistics,” 224-25, einai in the existential sense in Posterior
Analytics 2 is a great exception in the corpus, and Aristotle must signal its use by
adding haplōs (2.1-2, 89b33; 90a5, 10-12, 33; De Sophisticis Elenchis 5, 166b37-
167a7); elsewhere in Posterior Analytics 2, einai may include existence but cannot
merely be translated by ‘exists’ since it also may imply a predicate, whether a
thing’s essence or properties (2.7, 92b20-25). Similarly, Hintikka, “On Aristotle’s
Notion,” 785-87, ascribes to Aristotle the valid inference from ‘Homer is human’
to ‘Homer is’ in a jointly existential and essential sense—a fused Aristotelian sense
supported by Riek Van Bennekom, Journal of the History of Philosophy 24
(1986): 1-18, but opposed by Russell Dancy, “Aristotle and Existence” in The
Logic of Being: Historical Studies, ed. S. Knuuttila and J. Hintikka (Dordrecht,
1986), 49-80, at 59, 64-67; cf. also Richard Ketchum, “Being and Existence in
Greek Ontology,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 80 (1998): 321-32.
Contrary to the suggestion of Posterior Analytics 2.1-2, then, Aristotle offers
no existential syllogisms—which are impossible since being is not a genus; yet
existence can form part of the middle term; Jaakko Hintikka and Ilpo Halonen,
“Aristotelian Explanations,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 31
(2000): 125-36, at 132. For Kahn, “The Greek Verb ‘To Be’,” 248-49, 263-65,
although einai has an existential sense, there is no universal concept of existence,
such as would allow it to be a subject of predication, either in classical Greek or in
David Twetten 115
states: “The whatness of a human [ti estin anthrōpos] is other than that a
human is [to einai anthrōpon]. . . . ‘To be’ [to einai] is not the substance of
anything, since ‘a being’ [to on] is not a genus.”96
But why, once again, must even Aristotle himself hold that ‘to be’ is
distinct from whatness not only conceptually but also ‘in the nature of
things’, as Thomas would say?97 We can ask this question without begging
it precisely because of the conceptual distinction between what and
whether x is. We may ask, Can the principles of form and matter alone
(and their efficient and final causes) ‘account for actually to be’, that is,
explain what it is about x that constitutes x’s actually being at all, in
addition to explaining what x is? Do form and matter and the causes of
becoming alone account for why x’s actually being, x’s ‘actually to be,’
differs from x’s non-being or only potentially being? Notice that this is not
Aristotle’s question. Aristotle asked only, What brings it about such that x
comes to be or ceases to be? whereas the question now is, What is it about
x that ‘accounts for its actually to be’ while it is?
B. A “Form-Matter Argument” for the Real Distinction Inspired by

SCG 2.54
I propose an argument of my own for the Real Distinction based on an

examination of Aristotle’s notions of form and matter. The inspiration for
my argument is Aquinas’ dichotomous procedure in Contra gentiles 2.54.
Aquinas’ reasoning there should not be regarded properly as an argument
for the Real Distinction, which distinction he presupposes as established
two chapters before. Instead, Aquinas argues that the real composition of
substance and esse that has already been proved cannot be identical to the
composition of matter and form. Thomas gives two reasons why matter is
Aristotle, and such a concept is not found in or required by Aristotle’s conceptual

scheme, as is indicated by Metaphysics Delta 7. By contrast, Suzanne Mansion, Le
jugement d’existence chez Aristote, 2nd ed. (Louvain, 1976), 253-74, explains that
the question ‘whether x is’ plays a central role in Aristotle’s scientific method,
since scientific knowledge, though of the universal, attains, not merely abstract
universals, but real essences of things already judged to be. Yet, Mansion admits
that ‘that x is’ in Aristotle’s example of geometrical objects really means ‘that x
can be constructed based on the principles of geometry’ (ibid. 263); whereas for
Charles, the point is that a triangle can be proved to exist; Charles, Aristotle on
Meaning and Essence, 58-75. For an alternative position to Mansion’s, see Mario
Mignucci, La teoria aristotelica della scienza (Firenze, 1965), 58-60.
96
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 2.7, 92b10-13.
97
Aquinas, In Peryerm. 2, lect. 2, ll. 35-40.
not substance, then two reasons why form is not esse. I adopt his reasons
regarding matter, and I adopt his format, while modifying it to generate the
trichotomy required. The Question-Begging Objection must be met
ontologically by showing through a reductio ad absurdum that neither
matter alone, nor form alone, nor matter and form together can ‘account
for actually to be’. Once again, I assume that matter and form are
principles of the real, and I argue as follows.
(1) If Aristotle does not need really distinct ‘actually to be’, then
form and matter alone ‘account for actually to be’ (assuming that
‘actually to be’ does not merely name an extrinsic relation).
(2) But, first, matter alone as matter cannot account for ‘actually to
be’.
a. For, matter alone is pure potency; but what is in potency
as such is not yet.98
b. Also, matter alone does not explain why things come to
be, since pure potency, which is not yet, cannot as such
act.
c. Also, we do not say that matter alone is, but that the
composite is; if matter alone in the genus of substance
were to be, then all form would be accidental.99
(3) Second, form alone as form cannot account for ‘actually to be’.
a. For, although form is actuality, form as form in material
things ‘is not’.
i. For, otherwise, the form of material things
would not need matter to be.
ii. Also, just as for Aristotle form does not come
to be, but only the composite, so form as such
in material things does not have ‘actually to
be’,100 but only the composite.101
98
Cf. SCG 1.16, n. 7 (Item. Videmus).
99
SCG 2.54, nn. 2-3. See also below, nn. 122-123.
100
See below, nn. 122, 124. That the composite alone, unlike matter or form by
themselves, is “separate not only in formula (logos), but also absolutely speaking
(hapls),” see Aristotle, Metaphysics H.1, 1042a29-31; that the composite
properly acts, not the soul or intellect, see De anima 1.4, 408b13-15; 3.8, 432a1-3.
David Twetten 117
b. Also, form alone does not explain why things come to

be. Otherwise, material substances would not need
separate moving causes.
c. Also, even if the cause of coming to be were nothing but
the cause of form’s being actualized in matter, the
source of continuing to be cannot be form alone.
i. For, otherwise, the form of material things
would never be destroyed, as in the case of
‘separate form’, but would continue to be after
the destruction of the composite.102
(4) Third, form and matter together cannot alone account for
‘actually to be’.
a. For, either form and matter account for it insofar as each
as such ‘actually is’, contra Steps (2.a), (2.c), and (3.a).
b. Or, they account for ‘actually to be’ by form’s
actualizing matter, making one substance.103 But if so,
form alone as form accounts for ‘actually to be’,
contrary to Step (3).
i. For, only what is actual as such can account for
‘actually to be’.
1. But the only actuality by which matter
as in potency is actualized by form as
act is the act of form.104
2. Also, there is no real distinction
between form and ‘matter just insofar
as it is actualized’; for, since nothing
can be both in potency and act in the
same respect, matter just insofar as it
is actualized is solely in act.
Consequently, the only actuality in the
101
I reverse the argument found in Aquinas; see below n. 122, in addition to
Aquinas, QDDP 6.3c.
102
See below, nn. 112, 113.
103
Aristotle, Metaphysics H.2, 1042b9-11; H.6, 1045a14-33, b16-24; De anima
2.1, 412a7-11.
104
This actualization simply results from form as form; see below, nn. 117-120.
Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics H.6, 1045a14-33, b16-24.
actuality of matter by form is the

actuality of form.
(5) Therefore, form and matter alone do not account for ‘actually to
be’.
(6) But since ‘actually to be’ must be accounted for, there must be
some component that accounts for it that is really distinct from
form and matter.
What has been accomplished by this argument? The most compelling
‘purely Aristotelian’ account of the ‘actually to be’ of material things may
appear to be prima facie that ‘actually to be’ is nothing but form and
matter together, that is, form’s actualizing matter thanks to moving and
final causes in the case of composite things.105 The “Form-Matter
Argument” seeks to reduce this third member of the trichotomy to one of
the previous two, namely, to the position that form alone accounts for
‘actually to be’. First, that matter alone accounts for ‘actually to be’ seems
obviously false: since matter is pure potency, whereas ‘actually to be’,
whatever it is, is an actuality. But on the same grounds, second, the
‘actually to be’ of the composite cannot be reduced to the composite itself
insofar as it includes matter, which is in potency.106 The form-matter
composite accounts for ‘actually to be’ only insofar as the composite is in
act. But just insofar as it is in act in the genus of substance, the composite
is form: there is no real distinction in composites between form and
‘matter just insofar as it is actualized’.107 Consequently, if ‘actually to be’
is the very actuality of matter by form, this is, again, no other actuality
than the actuality that is form.108 Hence, either ‘actually to be’ is reduced
105
Cf. the reduction of Siger of Brabant, Quaestiones in Metaphysicam, ed. W.
Dunphy (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1981), Introduction, q. 7 (Munich reportatio), 45.114-
20: esse is either form, matter, the composite, or an accident. Of course, the
Aristotelian would hold that ‘actually to be’ is form alone in the case of the
separate first substances or prime movers—which are not under consideration here.
106
Notice the similarity between this approach and Aristotle’s reduction of ousia to
form, not matter or the composite; Aristotle, Metaphysics Z.3, 1029a7-33.
107
Cf. Aquinas’ view that the soul is what makes the body to be a body, and that
matter ‘is’ only because substantial form makes it actually be; Aquinas, ST I.76.4c,
ad 1; I.76.6c; De ente 2, ll. 135-150. See also Christopher Hughes, “Matter and
Actuality in Aquinas,” in Thomas Aquinas: Contemporary Philosophical
Perspectives, ed. B. Davies (Oxford-New York, 2002), 61-76.
108
It may be thought that this is Aquinas’ position, as the following points
suggests. (1) Through form, which is the act of matter, matter is made a being in
act and ‘this something’; Aquinas, De ente 2, ll. 31-35; ST I.29.2 ad 5; I.66.1c.
David Twetten 119
to the actuality of form alone,109 or, if ‘actually to be’ does not merely
name a thing’s relation to an external cause, the argument reaches its
conclusion: ‘actually to be’ is accounted for only by an actuality that is
really distinct from both form and matter.
Can form alone, then, in the third place, account for ‘actually to be’? If so,
the Aristotelian finds that form has been substantified or partially
Platonized as what ‘is’ on its own, and that a central Aristotelian tenet has
been denied: that form ceases to be upon the destruction of the
composite.110 For if form alone accounts for ‘actually to be’, why should
the form of material things, any less than the form of the immaterial prime
movers, ever cease to be?111 As Aquinas himself argues, any form of a
(2) Thus, form gives esse to matter, which receives it; Sent. 3, d. 1.1.1 ad 3.
(3) Similarly, the soul gives living to the body, that is, ‘to be’ for what is alive;
QDSC 1 sc 4, ll. 231-237; 3c, ll. 405-412; 11 ad 14; ll. 421-428. (4) Hence, the
only ‘to be’ that matter or the body has is through form; De ente 4, ll. 41-50.
(5) Form also gives ‘to be’ to the body; QDSC 3c, ll. 408-409; 6 ad sc 6, ll. 430-
431. (6) Thus the soul makes—formally, not efficiently—the substance to be, the
body to be, and the animated body to be; Thomas Aquinas, Sentencia libri De
anima 2.1, lect. 1, ll. 265-288, in Opera omnia, vol. 45.1; Quodl. 1.4.1 ad 2, ll.
111-118. (7) The ‘to be’ that the body has is the same as the soul’s ‘to be’; Sent. 1,
d. 15.5.3c. (8) By being given substantial ‘to be’ from the soul, the composite is
generated, and the body is constituted in the genus of substance; Sent. 4, d. 44.1.1
qc 1 ad 4; ST I.76.4c. Nonetheless, in other places it is clear that for Aquinas the
‘to be’ given by form, although only one for form and matter, is really distinct
from both form and matter; see De ente 4, ll. 185-192. ‘To be’ is a per se
consequent of form, the result of form, just as is a property; see also below, nn.
116, 119, 121. Form as form gives matter its ‘esse specificum’; see below, n. 120.
Notice also soul’s relation to divine esse in human nature hypostatically united to
the divine; ST III.17.2c.
109
This view can be found among Aquinas scholars. For Hans Meyer, Thomas von
Aquin, 133, on Aristotelian principles form is so close to esse that a Real
Distinction is impossible; furthermore, even Thomas and Albert hold that form is
actus essendi.
110
See, for example, Aristotle, Metaphysics H.3, 1043b19-21.
111
For a defense of the view that all form is everlasting, although not without
actualizing the thinnest slice of matter, see James Ross, “Together with the Body
That I Love,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 75
(2001): 1-20. I owe this argument to the suggestion of Lawrence Dewan. Hints of
such reasoning can be found in Dillon, The Real Distinction, 183; Fabro, “Notes
pour la fondation métaphysique de l’etre,” 293; Giles of Rome, Theoremata XII,
68.2-8; 75.23-77.13.
composite that ‘is’ on its own right will be everlasting;112 only if form ‘is’,
not through itself, but through the distinct ‘to be’ of the composite, can it
cease to be.113
112
Aquinas, Quodl. 10.3.2 ad 3, ll. 146-151: “[A]nima [intellectualis] esse suum
communicat corpori, quod quidem ita acquiritur anime in corpore ut secundum
ipsum subsistere possit, quod non est de aliis formis; et sic ipsum esse anime fit
esse compositi, et tamen manet, composito destructo.” Thomas Aquinas, De
unitate intellectus 1, ll. 644-653, in Opera omnia, vol. 43: “Forma igitur que habet
operationem secundum aliquam sui potentiam uel uirtutem absque
communicatione sue materie, ipsa est que habet esse, nec est per esse compositi
tantum sicut alie forme, sed magis compositum est per esse eius. . . . non autem
oportet quod destruatur ad destructionem compositi illa forma per cuius esse
compositum est, et non ipsa per esse compositi.” Cf. also the relation of form and
‘to be’ in the following. ST I.50.5c: “si ipsa forma subsistat in suo esse, sicut est in
angelis, ut dictum est, non potest amittere esse.” QDDA 14c, ll. 179-183: “Si igitur
sit aliqua forma que sit habens esse, necesse est illam formam incorruptibilem
esse: non enim separatur esse ab aliquo habente esse nisi per hoc quod separatur
forma ab eo. Vnde si id quod habet esse sit ipsa forma, impossibile est quod esse
separetur ab eo.” Notice the objection that if form is the source of ‘to be’, then
subsistent form cannot be caused; QDDP 6.6 ob 4. Given the Real Distinction,
Aquinas easily handles the objection without denying that form is a source of ‘to
be’.
113
Sent. 2, d. 19.1.1 ad 2: “Si vero forma non habeat esse absolutum in quo
subsistat, sed sit per esse compositi, tunc ex quo compositum desinit esse, oportet
quod forma etiam esse amittat, et per accidens corrumpatur.” Sent. 4, d. 49.2.3 ad
6: “Sed forma quae non est per se subsistens . . . non habet esse nisi inquantum est
actus talis subjecti.” SCG 2.91, n. 5 (Item. Si): “Formae autem quae sunt in
materiis, sunt actus imperfecti: quia non habent esse completum. Sunt igitur
aliquae formae quae sunt actus completi per se subsistentes, et speciem completam
habentes.” QDDA 14c, ll. 169-179: “Manifestum est autem quod esse per se
consequitur formam: unumquodque enim habet esse secundum propriam formam.
Vnde esse a forma nullo modo separari potest. Corrumpuntur igitur composita ex
materia et forma per hoc quod amittunt formam ad quam consequitur esse; ipsa
autem forma per se corrumpi non potest; set per accidens, corrupto composito,
corrumpitur in quantum deficit esse compositi quod est per formam, si forma sit
talis que non sit habens esse, set sit solum quo compositum est.” De unitate
intellectus 1, ll. 630-650: “Forme igitur que nullam operationem habent sine
communicatione sue materie, ipse non operantur, sed compositum est quod
operatur per formam; unde huiusmodi forme ipse quidem proprie loquendo non
sunt, sed eis aliquid est. . . . Et similis ratio est de formis substantialibus que
nullam operationem habent absque communicatione materie, hoc excepto quod
huiusmodi forme sunt principium essendi substantialiter. . . . Et ideo destructo
composito destruitur illa forma que est per esse compositi.”
David Twetten 121
In short, in accounting for ‘actually to be’ with Aristotle’s principles of

substance, it seems necessary to allow for the possibility of ceasing to be
without ascribing this to form or matter alone. Accounting for ‘actually to
be’ must be detached from form as such—which is really identical to
‘form as the actuality of matter’—and cannot be ascribed to matter or to
what is composed of matter as such. Either ‘actually to be’ is a mere
relation, accounted for by something entirely extrinsic, as I shall consider
in a moment, or it must be a third component, ‘given’, so to speak, through
form to the composite of form and matter under the influence of extrinsic
efficient and final causes.114
In Aristotelian philosophy it is correct that wherever there is form, there is

‘actually to be’, and vice versa.115 For Aquinas, it is correct that esse
always accompanies form, following it as its principle.116 Hence, to
identify form as that to which ‘actually to be’ is reducible is the ‘right
mistake’ to make. But ‘actually to be’ cannot be reduced to form as such.
Certainly, form is not the ‘source whence is to be’ (as if it were hothen hē
archē tou einai), whether at the outset, at the continuation, or at the
cessation of ‘actually to be’. In what sense, then, is it accountable for
‘actually to be’? Form as such is the actuality of matter, the source of
unity, unity of action, and intelligibility in the body.117 It is the formal
114
I am thinking of the Avicennian tag forma dat esse materiae, which is not
surpassed by Thomas as containing only Aristotle’s predicamental notion of being,
as is sometimes suggested (Fabro, Participation et causalité, 266, 357, 630), but is
integral to Aquinas’ exposition and refers to ‘actually to be’, even though it does
not express the Real Distinction; see above, n. 108. Notice also that even in
Aquinas the efficient ‘cause of being’ (causa essendi) as opposed to the ‘cause of
becoming’ is the cause of form as such, as opposed to the cause of why this matter
has this form; Aquinas, ST I.104.1-2.
115
QDDA 14c, ll. 171-172: “esse a forma nullo modo separari potest.”
116
See, for example, ST I.90.2 ad 1: “[I]n anima est sicut materiale ipsa simplex
essentia, formale autem in ipsa est esse participatum, quod quidem ex necessitate
simul est cum essentia animae, quia esse per se consequitur ad formam.” QDDA
6c, ll. 232-235: “Sic igitur esse consequitur ipsam formam, nec tamen forma est
suum esse, cum sit eius principium.” See also In Met. 4.2, lect 2, n. 11 (558).
117
Note especially the following: “[Q]uia omnes formae, sive accidentales, sive
substantiales, quae non sunt per se subsistentes, sunt, quantum est de se,
communes multis;” In Met. 7.15, lect. 15, n. 13 (1618). “Forma autem per seipsam
facit rem esse in actu, cum per essentiam suam sit actus; nec dat esse per aliquod
medium. Unde unitas rei compositae ex materia et forma est per ipsam formam,
quae secundum seipsam unitur materiae ut actus eius. Nec est aliquid aliud uniens
nisi agens, quod facit materiam esse in actu, ut dicitur in VIII Metaphys.;” ST
I.76.7c.
cause of the ‘to be’ of the whole, ‘shaping’ what is. It is the formal cause
of ‘to be in the sense of essence or of what x is’,118 but it is not what as
such ‘accounts for actually to be’. As Aquinas puts it in an underused
passage, form as form is not non-being but is act; yet, compared to ‘esse in
act’, form is a non-being, which ‘is’ only by participating in esse.119 Form
tells us not whether x is, but what the being of x is, what kind of ‘to be’ x
has.120 Form is that through which a thing has the ‘actually to be’ that it
has. Yet, for Aquinas, ‘actually to be’ is the actuality, not of matter, but of
the whole substance, a consequence of form, the very act of separate form
or of the form-matter composite so that it ‘is’, just as living is the act of
the soul.121 Thus, insists Thomas, just as neither matter alone nor form
alone comes to be, as Aristotle showed,122 so neither matter alone123 nor
118
Aristotle, Metaphysics Z.17, 1041a27-32, b12-31; H.2, 1043a2-12.
119
Aquinas, De sub. sep. 8, ll. 236-244: “Si igitur per hoc quod dico ‘non ens’
removeatur solum esse in actu, ipsa forma secundum se considerata est non ens,
sed esse participans. Si autem ‘non ens’ removeat non solum ipsum esse in actu
sed etiam actum seu formam per quam aliquid participat esse, sic materia est non
ens; forma vero subsistens non est non ens, sed est actus qui est forma
participativus ultimi actus, qui est esse.”
120
De unitate intellectus 1, ll. 493-495: “[A]nima per se ipsam est actus corporis
dans corpori esse specificum.” Sent. 1, d. 49.1.1 qc 1 ad 6: “[L]icet homo ex anima
et corpore consistat, tamen esse specificum habet ex anima, non ex corpore, quia
forma cujuslibet rei est principium esse ejus specifici.” See also Sent. 4, d. 36.4 ad
3; d. 44.2.2 qc 1c; d. 44.2.3 qc 1c; In De an. 2.1, lect. 1, ll. 285-288; QDDA 9c, ll.
293-295; QDSC 2c, ll. 264-272; 4c, ll. 178-190.
121
See, for example, Sent. 1, d. 23.1.1c: “[C]um esse consequitur compositionem
materiae et formae, quamvis forma sit principium esse, non tamen denominatur
aliquod ens a forma sed a toto. . .” Quodl. 9.2.2c, ll. 41-43, 58-63: “Alio modo esse
dicitur actus entis in quantum est ens, id est quo denominatur aliquid ens actu in
rerum natura. . . . Esse ergo proprie et uere non attribuitur nisi rei per se
subsistenti. Huic autem attribuitur esse duplex. Unum scilicet esse resultans ex hiis
ex quibus eius unitas integratur, quod est proprium esse suppositi substanciale.”
Super Boetium De trinitate 5.3c, ll. 102-105: “[Ipsum esse rei] quidem resultat ex
congregatione principiorum rei in compositis, uel ipsam simplicem naturam rei
concomitatur, ut in substantiis simplicibus.” See also SCG 2.55, n. 3 (Amplius.
Quod); ST I.50.5c.
122
Aristotle, Metaphysics Z.8, 1033a24-b26; Z.9, 1034b8-16. Aquinas, ST I.65.4c:
“Sed sicut probat Aristoteles in VII Metaphys., id quod proprie fit, est compositum,
formae autem corruptibilium rerum habent ut aliquando sint, aliquando non sint,
absque hoc quod ipsae generentur aut corrumpantur, sed compositis generatis aut
corruptis, quia etiam formae non habent esse, sed composita habent esse per eas,
sic enim alicui competit fieri, sicut et esse.” SCG 3.69, n. 21 (Rationes autem):
“Cum enim ad hoc aliquid fiat ut sit, sicut forma non dicitur ens quasi ipsa habeat
esse, sed quia per eam compositum est; ita nec forma proprie fit, sed incipit esse
David Twetten 123
form alone within the composite actually is.124 The composite alone ‘is’,
not its principles, by an act distinct from either matter or form, by an act
consequent upon form, and therefore by an act distinct also from the form-
matter composite itself.
This conclusion, however, rests on excluding an alternative that was

mentioned above but not addressed in the “Form-Matter Argument”
properly speaking. Why cannot ‘actually to be’ be ‘accounted for’ by
something entirely extrinsic to the form-matter composite, while it itself is
the mere relation of a thing to its cause, a relation that belongs to but is not
really distinct from the thing caused? This is the alternative put forth
shortly after Aquinas’ death by Henry of Ghent, in reaction to Giles of
Rome. For Henry, no creature has esse considered absolutely in itself, but
only insofar as it is considered in relation to its ultimate cause—as an
effect and as a likeness of the divine esse.125 Therefore, ‘to be’ is not
something added as though to something else that already is, but is simply
the creature itself insofar as it is related as an effect to the divine essence
in the order of efficient causality, just as essence is the creature itself as
related by way of likeness to the divine essence in the order of formal
causality. To exist, Henry would say, is simply for a thing to be posited
outside its causes. No less than the greatest critic of the Real Distinction,
Francisco Suárez, has shown the inadequacy of this alternative, however.
To say of a thing ‘it is’ predicates not something relative but something
‘absolute’ of the thing, observes Suárez.126 Otherwise, to say that God is
would also be to introduce a relation to a cause. It remains that if we must
account for ‘actually to be’ by something other than form, ‘actually to be’
must be a really distinct component intrinsic to things that are.
per hoc quod compositum sit reductum de potentia in actum, qui est forma.” See
also ST I.110.2c; QDDP 3.8c; Thomas Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de caritate 12
ad 20, in Quaestiones disputatae, vol. 2; Thomas Aquinas, De operationibus
occultis naturae, ll. 142-147, in Opera omnia, vol. 43; In Met. 7.8, lect. 7 (1033b7-
8), n. 7 (1423).
123
Sent. 3, d. 6.2.2 ad 1: “[F]orma facit esse; non ita quod illud esse sit materiae
aut formae, sed subsistentis;” Sent. 1, d. 8.5.2c; d. 8.5.3, exp.; De ente 2, ll. 51-66;
In Met. 7.3, lect. 2, n. 23 (1292).
124
In addition to the texts of Aquinas cited in n. 122, see De ente 2, ll. 51-66;
Quodl. 9.2.2c, ll. 51-59; De unitate intellectus 1, ll. 633-634.
125
Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet 10.7, ll. 145-159, in Henry of Ghent, Opera omnia
(Leuven, 1979-), vol. 14; Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet 1.9, ll. 89-92, in Opera
omnia, vol. 5.
126
Francisco Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae 31.6.17-18, in Francisco Suárez,
Opera omnia (Paris, 1856-1877), vol. 26.
C. A Return to the Question-Begging Objection
Unquestionably, the Aristotelian should and will object. Why speak of

‘actually to be’ or ‘accounting for actually to be’ in the first place as if
there were something ‘real’ other than form, form in matter, and their
accidents? Does not the very project of the “Form-Matter Argument”
tacitly beg the question as do all of the other arguments of Aquinas? Why
the urgent need to account for ‘actually to be’ as if the reality of form and
matter were not enough?
To this point I have presented the Question-Begging Objection as if it

were unassailable. The objection helps us see that one cannot prove the
real distinction between ‘actually to be’ and essence without showing the
real distinction between form and ‘actually to be’, as Aquinas has not
sufficiently done. The objection causes the Thomist to return to first
principles. But should one expect of an argument for the Real Distinction
that it exclude altogether from the picture ‘actually to be’, that it start with
form and matter alone and seek to show that they are not the exhaustive
principles of substance? Under this scenario, an argument for the Real
Distinction becomes impossible before it begins. Aquinas would respond,
I believe, that ‘actually to be’ has always been in the picture and cannot be
excluded, but that this fact, rather than begging, mandates the question,
mandates the inquiry into whether form accounts for ‘actually to be’.
Aquinas cites many times in his own name the Avicennian formula that ‘a
being’ is the first concept that falls into the mind.127 Admittedly, the
temporally first concept, which is also the most universal,128 contains
confusedly all other things within it, unlike the philosopher’s systematic
formula ‘a being qua a being’. Nonetheless, Aquinas is committed to the
fact that what first falls into the mind (ens) signifies and names something
through its esse in the primary sense, through its ‘actually to be’, namely,
through its ‘to be’ in the sense of ‘that by which it is versus is not’, ‘that
by which it actually is versus only potentially is’.129 Present at the
beginning of intellectual life, just as at the beginning of philosophy, is the
127
E.g., Aquinas, ST I.5.1c.
128
ST I.85.3.
129
For the meaning of ens see In Peryerm. 1.3 (16b20-26), lect. 5, ll. 355-376. For
the primary sense of esse, see ibid. ll. 394-405.
David Twetten 125
distinction between what is and what is not.130 Parmenides mistakenly

identified ‘a being’ with ‘that which actually is’, yet even for Aquinas, it is
a per se known first principle that ‘a being’ (in one sense of the word)
is.131 In light of the original intellectual grasp of ‘actually to be’, even a
child can judge that x is or is not. Form is introduced late in the intellectual
life, just as it is introduced well after Parmenides by Plato and Aristotle, to
account for the unity behind perceptible reality and behind corporeal parts
and their action. Form is a highly questionable philosophical principle, as
any empiricist knows. Most of those who reject the Real Distinction do so
because they do not take form seriously. Given form, however, as has been
our procedure from the outset, one must ask, is this ‘late arrival’ really
distinct from ‘actually to be’ which preceded it?
This question does not presuppose the Real Distinction, does not
presuppose an ‘actually to be’ that is really distinct from form, does not
assume ‘esse in the Thomist sense’. The knowledge of ‘human’ and
‘animal’ precedes the knowledge of ‘rational’. Once the concept of
‘rational’ is achieved, one asks, is rationality really distinct from
humanity? Aquinas will answer, no, without giving up on the fact that
there is something in reality corresponding to both, that each has a
foundation in reality.132 Similarly, to ask whether ‘actually to be’ is really
distinct from form is to remain open to the possible answer: no, although
each has a foundation in reality. To ask this question does not beg it. I
have argued that Aquinas’ nine kinds of argument for the Real Distinction
fail to remain open to the answer ‘no’ by assuming without proof ‘actually
to be’ as an ontological component that is the act of form, that is, by
assuming Thomist esse. To this extent I have admitted both the thrust of
the Question-Begging Objection and that it has landed a blow. But it
would be unwarranted for the objector to exclude all talk of ‘actually to
be’. To assume that ‘actually to be’ has some foundation in reality does
not beg the question by assuming Thomist esse. It would be odder to deny
this foundation because of posterior difficulties than it would be to deny
that there is a real foundation for ‘humanity’ because of difficulties with
‘rationality’. Rationality is a highly doubted and dubious concept; the
radical empiricist and scientific realist alike even reject humanity. Form
(and essence) is far more subject to doubt than rationality; but if form is
130
Sent. 1, d. 24.1.3 ad 2; In Met. 4.2, lect. 3, n. 2 (566); 10.3, lect. 4, n. 15 (1998).
For the foundation of the principle of non-contradiction, the first judgment, on ens,
see In Met 4.3, lect. 6, n. 10 (605).
131
QDDV 10.12 ad 3. For the multiple senses of ens, see In Met. 5.7, lect. 9.
132
Sent. 1, d. 19.5.1c; QDDV 21.1c, ll. 94-110.
conceded, the question whether ‘actually to be’ is form (or essence) is

precisely what needs to be asked.
At the same time, the ultimacy or primacy of ‘actually to be’ indicates the
difficulty faced by the project of ‘proving’ the Real Distinction. The
project rests on a first principle, and first principles cannot be proved, but
have to be defended dialectically. To this extent Gilson and Fabro are
correct to question the very project of a proof of the Real Distinction.
‘Actually to be’ and that things actually are must be defended dialectically
as ontologically and epistemically primary. In drawing attention to
‘actually to be’ as such, the Scriptural notion of creation ex nihilo, I would
argue, has only helped highlight principles that were already obvious.
On the other hand, Aquinas scholarship has been correct to emphasize the
essential and central role of the “God to Creatures” approach in Aquinas.
Once form has been really distinguished from ‘actually to be’ in material
composites, Aquinas’ conclusion that God is ‘actually to be’ itself can take
on an ontological significance. As a result, once the Real Distinction is
established for material things, the “God to Creatures Argument” can
establish cogently that for all things except one (whether possible or
actual), including for all immaterial beings except one, ‘actually to be’ is
really distinct from essence. The universal scope of the “God to Creatures
Argument,” not the evidentness of its starting point, is the reason that
Aquinas frequently employs it.
IV. Résumé
The project of arguing for the Real Distinction begins only after essence
and form have been accepted to account for what is. Is form or are form
and matter together the same in reality as ‘actually to be’? The majority of
Aquinas’ nine kinds of arguments for the Real Distinction are cogent
except insofar as they fail to address precisely this question. Form is so
close to ‘actually to be’ that Aquinas fails to worry sufficiently about
detaching one from another.
I propose an argument that compensates for this lacuna by reducing the

alternatives to absurdity. The argument proceeds “from effects” to their
explanation, where the effect to be explained is just the ‘actually to be’ of
the form-matter composite, initially understood as conceptually distinct
from the composite itself. The question is, what real principle within the
composite might account for its ‘actually to be’? By a process of
David Twetten 127
elimination, the argument shows that the conceptually distinct 'actually to

be' can be accounted for only by some principle really distinct from form
and matter. ‘Actually to be’ cannot be form and matter together; for,
matter is only in potency, and ‘actually to be’ cannot be matter’s
actuality—which is nothing but form. It cannot be form because what form
brings to the corporeal whole is not needed and is not wanted once that
whole ceases to be. What form brings properly as form is not ‘actually to
be’—even if wherever there is form there is ‘actually to be’, and it is only
because of form and through form that composites with really distinct
matter ‘are’. If ‘actually to be’, then, signifies something ‘absolute’ and
not merely the relation of a thing to its cause, it follows that it must be an
intrinsic, really distinct component of a thing. Consequently, if form as a
philosophically explanatory principle can be defended and must be
restored, ‘actually to be’ will also need to be defended and restored so that
we do not lose sight of what came first. This is the lesson that Gilson and
Fabro continue to teach us.
I conclude that the real distinction between being and substance, although
not drawn by Aristotle, is a natural development required by his
philosophical principles weighed against reality. The actuality of form
cannot be identified in reality with ‘actually to be’. Form does not of itself
bring ‘actually to be’ to corruptible things. This is not the role of formal
causality. Otherwise, the forms of material things should ‘be’ forever. To
protect against this consequence, ‘actually to be’ must be seen as really
distinct from form. If things do have Aristotelian essence, it must be really
distinct from their ‘to be’.133
133
I am very grateful to Stephen Baldner, Jeffrey Brower, Lawrence Dewan, Owen
Goldin, Sebastián Kaufmann, Gyula Klima, Cyrille Michon, Stephen Pimentel,
Thomas Prendergast, Brian Shanley, Thomas Sullivan, Richard Taylor, Roland
Teske, Gregory Traylor, John Wippel, Yu Wong, and Michael Wreen for help and
suggestions at various stages in the composition of this paper. . I would also like to
thank the Catholic University of America Press for permission to publish online a
substantially similar paper to that forthcoming in Wisdom’s Apprentice: Thomistic
Essays in Honor of Lawrence Dewan, O.P., ed. Peter A. Kwasniewski
(Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007). A full
description of the book on the CUA Press website may be found at
http://cuapress.cua.edu/BOOKS/ viewbook.cfm?Book=KWIA

Really Distinguishing Essence From Esse

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Really Distinguishing Essence From Esse

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Really Distinguishing Essence From Esse

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Medieval Skepticism,

and the Claim

Proceedings of the Society for Medieval

Volume 2: Categories, and What is Beyond

Volume 3: Knowledge, Mental Language, and Free Will

Volume 4: Mental Representation

Volume 5: Universal Representation, and the Ontology of Individuation

Volume 6: Medieval Skepticism, and the Claim to Metaphysical Knowledge

Volume 7: Medieval Metaphysics, or is it "Just Semantics"?

Volume 8: After God, with Reason Alone—Saikat Guha Commemorative Volume

Volume 9: The Demonic Temptations of Medieval Nominalism

Gyula Klima and Alexander W. Hall

Proceedings of the Society for Medieval

This book first published 2011

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Copyright © 2011 by Gyula Klima and Alexander W. Hall and contributors

ISBN (10): 1-4438-3371-1, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-3371-4

Siger and the Skeptic ................................................................................... 5

Côté’s “Siger and the Skeptic” .................................................................. 27

Applied Logic and Mediaeval Reasoning: Iteration and Infinite Regress

Comments on Rondo Keele, “Applied Logic and Medieval Reasoning:

Response to Professor Zupko .................................................................... 59

Kenny and Aquinas on Individual Essences.............................................. 63

Really Distinguishing Essence from esse .................................................. 79

How Aquinas Could have Argued that God is Really Related

God’s Knowledge of Individual Material Creatures according

Appendix ................................................................................................. 161

Given the developments in contemporary analytic philosophy over the last

Of course, as philosophical developments bring the medievals into

Aquinas.3 No contemporary philosopher untouched by ‘Thomism’

theory of form and matter.5 In Aquinas’ version of the Aristotelian theory,

I. The Question-Begging Objection

(1) Suppose that one thinks of TTW, as is possible.

(6) TTW exists in reality.

Aquinas introduces a number of arguments in defense of a real distinction

nearly everyone today agrees, never theorized about to einai as really

Whether or not this Question-Begging Objection holds must depend on an

Dewan, “St. Thomas, Metaphysics, and Formal Causality,” Laval théologique et

Now, the most sophisticated statement of this Thomist reaction will

All I wish to suggest now is that the Question-Begging Objection is not

theologians. If the Question-Begging Objection is correct, it seems

II. An Existential Crisis: The Failure of Aquinas’ Proofs

A. The “Understanding of Essence Argument” and the First Stage of

Lombard’s Sentences.18 According to many interpreters, Aquinas intends

(1) Whatever does not belong to the understanding of a thing’s

a. For, no essence can be understood without its parts.

(3) But one can understand what is a human or a phoenix (or an

B. The “Hypothetical Essence That Is Esse Argument” and the Second

works, Aquinas offers what could be taken as an explicit instance of this

belong to ‘a being qua a being’, implying an infinite

C. The “God to Creatures Argument” and the Third Stage of De ente

Joseph Owens defends the view, which he ascribes to Thomas, that it is

that the “God to Creatures Argument” is well attested in Aquinas. Apart

i. For, God as the sole first cause is the most

otherness. Simplified versions of the argument, or those that argue through

c. Also, things ‘most’ come to be in act by participating in

(4) But everything that is has ‘to be’ (esse).53

D. The “Genus Argument.”