Aquinas 101: Lesson Thirteen

Saint Thomas Aquinas by Carlo Crivelli, downloaded from Wikipedia

Lesson 13: Essence and Existence

The video is by Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP.  He starts by asserting that everything is not reducible to one thing (such as when certain Greek philosophers thought that all things were made of the element of fire). He states, "Each essence has material parts, but is also a holistic form. The material parts are organized and made intelligible by the form." He states,

The larger point is that in all the things we experience, there's both form and matter. Reality is not simply built up from the bottom. It's also influenced from the top down. The parts of things have their place within the whole.

Most of the video time is spent on essences, but he summarizes what existence and essence are: "essence answers to what a thing is, while existence, or being, answers to that it is, or the fact that it exists." And he points out that they are related but distinct.

The selected readings were very helpful. The selected reading from Aquinas was extremely helpful, once I slowed down to read it carefully. I would quote most of it, so instead, I'll direct you to the reading. The reading from Feser was also helpful. I thought these two quotes were important:

we can distinguish between a thing's essence and its existence, between what it is and the fact that it is.

And,

But then the existence of the creatures that do exist must be really distinct from their essences, otherwise one could know of their existence merely from knowing their essences.

The audio lecture, "The Distinction of Essence and Existence" by Prof. Edward Feser, sets out to show we can make distinctions between essence and existence, and that this distinction reflects the reality of the outside world (and not merely a product of the mind, such as a logical distinction). He sets out to show this by knowledge (and this mirrors the reading), by contingency, and by uniqueness (that is, there can only be one thing in which its essence is existence). This latter part leads into a discussion of the uncaused cause (which we know as God), and he also unpacks Aristotle's discussion of pure act (which is a different approach, similar to substistent existence itself discussion prior). Then Prof. Feser talks about objections to these arguments. These are grouped into three parts: 1) Anthony Kenny's critique, 2) substitutivity of identicals, and 3) anti-essentialism. About the third, it's not an argument, but it seems true, Prof. Feser said, "you need to be very learned before you start doubting the obvious." It's one of those humorous things about fallen human nature.

This lecture can be found at SoundCloud as part of the set, 7th Annual Philosophy Workshop: Aquinas on Metaphysics.