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| Saint Thomas Aquinas by Carlo Crivelli, downloaded from Wikipedia |
The video by Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP, was simple and short. He says, "Having discovered that a thing is and what it is, we soon come to find that this thing raises causal questions which it cannot answer about itself. To put it plainly, none of the things procure their own existence." He continues that everything we observe is contingent. Existence only exists naturally in God (that is, the essence of God is existence itself).
Of the selected readings, that of Aquinas should be read carefully, since it is used in the audio lecture. I thought the following were good quotes:
It is clear, therefore, that existence is other than essence or quiddity, unless perhaps there exists a thing whose quiddity is its existence.
And,
But it cannot be that the existence of a thing is caused by the form or quiddity of that thing ─ I say caused as by an efficient cause ─ because then something would be its own cause, and would bring itself into existence, which is impossible.
The selected reading from Gilson also has a couple of quotes I'd like to share: "Such also is the so-called distinction between essence and existence, which it would be better to call the distinction between essence (essentia) and the act-of-being (esse)." And because from our experience we see contingent things that cannot justify their existence:
It is this that is the distinction between essence and the act-of-existing. And because it is profoundly real, it poses the problem of the cause of finite existence, which is the problem of the existence of God.
The audio lecture, "Introduction to Metaphysics Part Two: Transcendentals and the Existence of God" also by Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP, follows the same trajectory: from the distinction between essence and existence to a demonstration of the existence of God. Of course, the lecture will go a little deeper.
During the lecture, Fr. White said, "The mind never dominates being, the mind is invited to understand being." This stands in contrast to the ideas that "knowledge is power" and the "conquest of nature."
At the start of the lecture, Fr. White notes that being transcends the various categories of being. That is, being is beyond these categories, and that all that exists has being. This leads into the discussion of transcendentals: being, unity, truth, goodness, and with Aquinas, he believes that beauty is also included in this list. The following is a brief description of each:
- being (exists in reality, which includes the various categories of being)
- unity (this is understood in a flexible way, but all things insofar as they are things are one)
- truth (intelligibility, what really exists)
- goodness (tending toward perfection)
- beauty (splendor and attraction of form, integrity and proportionality)
He discusses being in actuality and being in potentiality in various modes: movement, operational and substantial (that is, individual substances exist, did not exist in the past, and will cease to exist in the future). So this leads us to understand that everything we experience is contingent and is caused. We know a few things:
- everything around us exists, but is not existence
- nothing is the cause of its own existence
- these things do not account for its own existence by its nature
He goes on to clarify some points about being in the material world:
- found in all things
- not identical with any one essence
- makes each thing distinct from others yet all are related
He then briefly covers three proofs for the existence of God (which are by inference and are certain). Not all these are the tradition five proofs found in the Summa Theologia (he says there are at least nine proofs from all of the works of Aquinas).
- from motion (or ontological change). This is the unmoved mover from the Summa
- existence-essence composition. This is paragraph 80 from the selected reading from De Ente et Essentia
- The tendency toward perfection
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