aquinas God and Being

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Aquinas, God, and BeingAuthor(s): Brian DaviesReviewed work(s):Source: The Monist, Vol. 80, No. 4, Analytical Thomism (OCTOBER 1997), pp. 500-520Published by: Hegeler InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27903547 .Accessed: 03/09/2012 23:18

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Aquinas, God, and Being

At the beginning of Sein und Zeit, Martin Heidegger raises the

question "What is the meaning of Being?". In a celebrated review of

Heidegger, Gilbert Ryle observes that, though some would quarrel with the assumption "that there is a problem about the Meaning of Being," he, for the moment, will not. Why not? Because, says Ryle, the "question of

the relation between Being qua timeless 'substance' and existing qua

existing in the world of time and space seems to me a real one."1

Other analytical philosophers, however, have been decidedly

unhappy with talk about Being of the sort associated with Heidegger.2 In Logic and Knowledge, for instance, Bertrand Russell declares that "an

almost unbelievable amount of false philosophy has arisen through not

realizing what 'existence' means." And, though Russell has what can

readily be called a "doctrine" of existence, it is one which seems to outlaw most of what we seem to find said about Being in the writings of philoso

phers like Heidegger.3 Hence, for example, Paul Edwards, basing himself on arguments of Russell, roundly declares that "Heidegger's problematic is a pseudo-inquiry and his quest is a non-starter."4

I am no expert on Heidegger, and Edwards may well be right in what he says of him. But "Being-talk" is something to be found in authors other than Heidegger, and we may wonder about its cogency as they develop it.

We may wonder, for instance, how cogent it is as it occurs in the writings of Thomas Aquinas, where "Being-talk" abounds. According to Aquinas, God is "subsistent being" (ipsum esse subsistens) and the cause of the

being (esse) of creatures. Having asked whether Qui Est is the most ap propriate name for God, Aquinas replies that it is since, among other reasons, "it does not signify any particular form, but rather existence itself

(sed ipsum esse)" "Since the existence of God is his essence," says

Aquinas, "and since this is true of nothing else ... it is clear that this name

is especially appropriate to God."5 Aquinas's whole philosophical and the

"Aquinas, God, and Being" by Brian Davies, O.P., The Monist, vol. 80, no. 4, pp. 500-520. Copyright ? 1997, THE MONIST, La Salle, Illinois 61301.

AQUINAS, GOD, AND BEING 501

ological outlook is dominated by this teaching. But is the teaching of any importance or value?

Writers in the Thomist tradition have, unsurprisingly, praised it in

glowing terms. According, for instance, to Fr. Norris Clarke, S.J., "The

crown of the entire Thomistic vision of the universe is the notion of God as infinitely perfect pure Plenitude of Existence, ultimate Source and Goal of all other being."6 According to Etienne Gilson, the notion to which Clarke refers constitutes the true genius and originality of Aquinas and makes him a genuine existentialist.7

Yet this endorsement of Aquinas is not much echoed in the work of

philosophers writing in the analytic tradition. Quite the contrary. In the view of Anthony Kenny, for instance, Aquinas's teaching about God as

ipsum esse subsistens can be described as "sophistry and illusion."8 In the

view of Anthony O'Hear, it is "entirely empty of content."9 According to

C. J. F. Williams, it is thoroughly undermined by the work of Gottlob Frege.10 According to Terence Penelhum, it is evidence for the fact that,

though Aquinas saw that there is something wrong with the so-called "On

tological Argument" for God's existence, he did not see why the Argument fails. Aquinas holds that though God's existence is not "self-evident to us"

(per se notwn quoad nos) it is evident in itself since God's essence and existence are identical. This conclusion, says Penelhum, is philosophical ly suspect. "The distinctive character of the concept of existence," he

explains, "precludes our saying that there can be a being whose existence

follows from his essence; and also precludes the even stronger logical move of identifying the existence of anything with its essence.... To say that although God's existence is self-evident in itself it is not to us, is to

say that it is self-evident in itself, and the error lies here. It is not our

ignorance that is the obstacle to explaining God's existence by his nature, but the logical character of the concept of existence."11

In trying to adjudicate between friends and foes of Aquinas we can start by defending the foes. For, in one way or other, these are often

opposed to Aquinas since they find in him what we might call a "pre Kantian" notion of being, and worries about such a notion are legitimate and well founded.12 Kant insisted that "'Being' is obviously not a real

predicate."13 The thesis is a famous one, but it is not, on the face of it, a

clear one. It is impossible to answer the question whether existence is a

predicate or not before we know what the question means. Yet regardless

502 BRIAN DAVIES, O.P.

of anything Kant says, the thesis that existence is not a predicate can, I

think, be given a clear meaning on the basis of which we can treat it as

correct. Quite simply, we can take it to mean that "_exist(s)" can never

serve to tell us anything about any object or individual. By "object" or "in

dividual" I mean something that can be named. On my account, then, Brian Davies is an object or individual; and to say that existence is not a

predicate is to say that, while there are predicates which do give us infor

mation about Brian Davies "_exist(s)" is not one of them. If "Brian

Davies snores" is true, someone who comes to know this learns something about Brian Davies. "Brian Davies snores" says something about Brian

Davies. This, however, is not the case with "Brian Davies exists."

Or so I want to suggest. But let us consider the question in a thor

oughly Thomistic manner.

My thesis is that it is right to say that "Brian Davies exists" says nothing of Brian Davies, in defense of which I offer the observations of the last paragraph but one.

On the other hand, however (sed contra), there are objections which

might be raised in response to this thesis, objections which can be expressed as follows.14

(1) First, we learn something about somebody or something when we

learn that he, she, or it exists. Suppose I learn that Fred Smith or Jane

Bloggs exists. I have surely learned something about them. Suppose I

discover that Montmartre exists. I have surely learned something about it.

(2) Second, not knowing that someone or something exists is being

ignorant of a truth concerning that person. Queen Elizabeth II does not

know that Brian Davies exists. And here she is ignorant of a fact about

Brian Davies. My mother does not know that the pen on my desk exists.

And here she is ignorant of a fact about it. (3) Third, sentences like "Brian Davies exists" seem to make sense.

The subject is Brian Davies. So it looks as though "exists" tells us

something about him.

(4) Fourth, some things are real as opposed to fictional. To indicate this we can use the word 'exist'. Thus: "President Clinton exists but David

Copperfield does not exist." It follows that there is something that is true of President Clinton which is not true of David Copperfield.

Having raised objections to a thesis he wants to defend, Aquinas

commonly then argues in a positive way for the thesis. Next he replies to


the objections. At this point, therefore, I shall follow that practice. And, to

begin with, I shall try to say why my thesis is true by offering three argu ments.

First, denial of my thesis leads to a paradox which can be avoided

simply by accepting what I say. For if my thesis is false and if "_ exist(s)" serves to tell us something about an object or individual, then (a) assertions like "Fun-loving Welshmen do not exist" are false of necessity, and (b) assertions like "Fun-loving Welshmen exist" are true of necessity.

Why? Because if "_exist(s)" serves to tell us something significant about some object or individual, then denying that "_exist(s)" is truly affirmable of some object or individual is denying that this something sig nificant (expressed by "_exists") is truly affirmed of some object or

individual. But of what non-existent object or individual can "_does not exist" be saying anything significant? The whole point of assertions like "Fun-loving Welshmen do not exist" is to deny that there are any fun

loving Welshmen. So, on the assumption that "_exist(s)" can serve to

tell us something about some object or individual, it looks as though denials of existence must always be false. Yet that thesis surely cannot be

true. Nor can it be true that affirmations of existence are always true?

though this thesis also seems to follow from the suggestion that "_

exist(s)" serves to tell us something about an object or individual. For if, on this assumption, denials of existence are always false, it would seem

that affirmations of existence are always true.

Second, the work done by "_exist(s)" in sentences like "Fun

loving Welshmen exist" is the same work as that done by "some" in

sentences like "Some Welshmen are fun-loving." Nobody, I presume, would take "some" to ascribe any kind of property or characteristic to any

object or individual. But if in such cases the work done by "_exist(s)" is the same work as that done by "some," then "_exist(s)" does not

function so as to ascribe any kind of property to any object or individual. To see the force of this argument, consider the assertion "Fun-loving

Welshmen exist." You may agree that this assertion is true since you know

Ianto and Dewi and Idris?all of them fun-loving Welshmen. But suppose that Ianto and Dewi and Idris suddenly come to be thoroughly gloomy and

anything but fun-loving. Would you feel forced to conclude that there are

no fun-loving Welshmen? Obviously not. "Fun-loving Welshmen exist"

may be true though all the Welshmen personally known to us are as


gloomy as can be. In that case, however, "Fun-loving Welshmen exist"

cannot be construed as telling us something about any particular Welsh man. It is, in fact, equivalent to "Some Welshmen are fun-loving." Nothing is lost by rendering "Fun-loving Welshmen exist" by "Some Welshmen are fun loving."

Now focus on sentences like "Some Welshmen are fun-loving." Un

derstanding the meaning of sentences containing words like 'some' is

achieved by grasping their logical structure. To do this it is helpful to look at the stages by which, as it were, we build up to a proposition of this type.

We might say "Margaret is a smoker." What are we doing as we

produce this assertion? We begin with a name: 'Margaret'. Then, in the

happy expression of A. N. Prior, we try to "wrap it up" in the expression '_is a smoker'.15 The expression '_is a smoker' is in an obvious sense incomplete. It is like a piece of wrapping paper waiting to have something put inside it. And we make something complete by wrapping it around 'Margaret', ending up with a complete and intelligible expression:

"Margaret is a smoker."

We can negate "Margaret is a smoker." How? By using a new

wrapping "It is not the case that_" and wrapping it around "Margaret is a smoker." This new wrapping wraps around the wrapping "_is a

smoker" and the name 'Margaret' around which that wrapping wraps. And, note, the conjunction of these wrappings creates the equivalent of another wrapping?"_does not smoke," which we can wrap round

'Margaret' to say "Margaret does not smoke."

Is it like this with "Fun-loving Welshmen exist?" I say that this assertion is equivalent to "Some Welshmen are fun-loving." But what are

we doing as we build up to this assertion? Could we be going through the same process as that which left us arriving at "Margaret is a smoker?" If

we were, we should be wrapping "_are fun-loving" around "Some

Welshmen." But if that is how we get to "Fun-loving Welshmen exist"

then we ought to get to the negation of this assertion just as we got to the

negation of "Margaret is a smoker," i.e., by wrapping "It is not the case

that_" around "_are fun-loving" and "Some Welshmen." And this

wrapping should produce a new wrapping: "- are non-fun-loving

Welshmen." But it does not. "Some Welshmen are non-fun-loving" is not

the negation of "Some Welshmen are fun-loving." These assertions are

compatible with each other. Nothing in logic tells us that there cannot be

fun-loving Welshmen as well as non-fun-loving Welshmen.


Let us therefore try another approach. To be precise, let us entertain

the thought that in "Some Welshmen are fun-loving" it is "Some

Welshmen" that wraps around "are fun-loving." The thought proves illu

minating. For now we can properly negate "Some Welshmen are

fun-loving" by prefixing it with "It is not the case that_." This last ex

pression will wrap around "Some Welshmen are fun-loving" in the same

way that "It is not the case that_" wraps around "Margaret is a smoker"

to produce a new wrapping: "no Welshmen_" (as in "No Welshmen are

fun-loving"?equivalent to "Fun-loving Welshmen do not exist"). Or, to

repeat what I said above: the work done by "_exist(s)" in sentences like

"Fun-loving Welshmen exist" is the same work as that done by 'some' in sentences like "Some Welshmen are fun-loving." And, if that is true, "_

exist(s)" does not serve to ascribe any kind of property to any object or in

dividual.16

The third argument I offer in defence of my thesis is one derived from comments Frege makes in The Foundations of Arithmetic at a point where he is rejecting the suggestion that numbers are properties of objects. Frege argues that statements of number do not ascribe properties to objects. If he is right, then statements of existence (e.g., "Fun-loving

Welshmen exist") do not ascribe properties to objects. To begin with, Frege draws attention to the difference between

propositions like "The King's carriage is drawn by four horses" and "The

King's carriage is drawn by thoroughbred horses." Going by surface ap pearances, one might suppose that 'four' qualifies 'horses' as does

'thoroughbred'. But that, of course, is false. Each horse which draws the

King's carriage may be thoroughbred, but each is not four. "Four" in "The

King's carriage is drawn by four horses" cannot be telling us anything about any individual horse. It is telling us how many horses draw the

carriage. So, Frege argues, statements of number are primarily answers to

questions of the form "How many A's are there?"; and when we make

them we do not assert something of an object (e.g., some particular horse). He reinforces his point by the example "Venus has 0 moons." If number statements are statements about objects, about which object(s) is "Venus

has 0 moons?" Presumably, none. If I say "Venus has 0 moons," there

"simply does not exist any moon or agglomeration of moons for anything to be asserted of." That is, if 'one' is a property of an object, and if numbers greater than one are properties of groups of objects, 'nought'


must be ascribable to non-existent objects. But to ascribe a property to a

non-existent object is not to ascribe it to anything. Now, says Frege, "In this respect, existence is analogous to number.

Affirmation of existence is in fact nothing but denial of the number

nought."17 And if Frege is right about number, that is correct. Indeed, we

can strengthen the claim. For statements of existence are more than

analogous to statements of number; they are statements of number. As

C. J. F. Williams puts it, "Statements of number are possible answers to

questions of the form "How many As are there?" And answers to such

questions are no less answers for being relatively vague. Nor do they fail

to be answers because they are negative. In answering the question "How

many A's are there?" I need not produce one of the Natural Numbers. I

may just say "A lot," which is tantamount to saying "The number of A's

is not small," or "A few," which is tantamount to saying "The number of

A's is not large." If I say "There are some A's," this is tantamount to saying "The number of A's is not 0." Instead of saying "There are a lot of A's" I

may say "A's are numerous," and instead of saying "There are some A's"

I may say "A's exist." All these may be regarded as statements of number."18

Statements of existence, then, are statements of number. They are answers to the question "How many?", and, considered as such, they do not ascribe properties to objects. From "Welshmen are fun-loving" and "Idris is a Welshman" I can infer that Idris is fun-loving; but from "Welshmen are numerous" and "Idris is a Welshman" I cannot conclude that Idris is numerous. "Idris is numerous" means nothing. From "Readers

of The Monist are literate" and "Mary is a reader of The Monist" I can

infer that Mary is literate; but from "Readers of The Monist are scarce"

and "Mary is a reader of The Monist" I cannot conclude that Mary is scarce. "Mary is scarce" means nothing. By the same token, from "The

number of fun-loving Welshmen is not nought" ("Fun-loving Welshmen

exist") and "Idris is a fun-loving Welshman" I ought not to conclude that

Idris exists. That would be like saying that Idris could be numerous or that Mary could be scarce.

So I continue to suggest that "_exist(s)" can never serve to tell us

anything about any individual. But what of the objections to this thesis noted above? If my thesis can be defended, can objections to it be answered? I think they can, and I shall attempt to reply to them in the manner of Aquinas.


Reply to obj. 1: By themselves, sentences like "Fred Smith exists" or

"Jane Bloggs exists" do not ascribe properties to any individual. The same

goes for sentences like "Montmartre exists." Normally we have no use for

such sentences. We might make sense of them by taking the occurrences

of "_exist(s)" in them as intended to convey what may be asserted by means of expressions like "_is alive" or "_is still a region of Paris" ; and it is true that we succeed in saying something about Fred or Jane when we say that they are alive, just as we succeed in saying something about

Montmartre when we say that it is still a region of Paris. By itself,

however, "_exist(s)" does not serve to tell us anything about any object or individual.

Reply to obj. 2: It is by no means clear that, by themselves, sentences

like "Queen Elizabeth II does not know that Brian Davies exists" make sense. And since "_exist(s)" does not serve to tell us anything about

any object or individual, they cannot be viewed as expressing someone's

ignorance to the effect that some object or individual has a particular property. In context, however, we might make sense of someone who

says, for example, "Queen Elizabeth II does not know that Brian Davies exists." Among other things, Brian Davies (the present author) is the

author of a book called The Thought of Thomas Aquinas. Let us suppose that Queen Elizabeth II knows nothing of such an author and knows nothing about what can be truly affirmed of him. We might try to convey this by saying that she does not know that Brian Davies exists. But we

shall only be able successfully to convey what the Queen's ignorance amounts to by disposing of the expression "_exists" and saying such

things as "Queen Elizabeth II does not know that someone wrote The

Thought of Thomas Aquinas and that the same person was born in

London, is the son of Lillian and Brian Davies, is a philosopher, etc."

Reply to obj. 3: Given the arguments above, we may deny that sentences like "Brian Davies exists" make sense, on the assumption that

"_exists" in such sentences is supposed to tell us something about

Brian Davies. Let us say that a 'first-level predicate' is a linguistic ex

pression such as "_is fun-loving" which serves to tell us something about a specific individual. Hence, we learn something of Fred if we learn that it is true that Fred is fun-loving, so "_is fun-loving" is a first-level

predicate. But we learn nothing comparable when learning that Fred

exists, for reasons given above. "_exist(s)" cannot serve as a first-level

predicate.


Reply to obj. 4: Asserting that David Copperfield does not exist and that President Clinton does, is not to hold that something true of President Clinton is not true of David Copperfield (as being American is true of

Hilary Clinton but not of Margaret Thatcher). If David Copperfield does not exist (if there is and never was any such person) then he does not lack a property possessed by Hilary Clinton. He is not (and never was) there to have any properties. As Peter Geach observes, writing about the assertion

"Cerberus doesn't exist" (i.e., is not real, like Rover): "We are not

pointing out any trait that Rover has and Cerberus lacks; for it would be nonsense to speak of the trait of being what there is such a thing as, and more nonsense to say that some things (e.g., Rover) have this trait, while

other things (e.g., Cerberus) lack it, and are thus things that there is no such thing as."19 As Geach says: "logically our proposition is about a dif

ference not between two dogs, Cerberus and Rover, but between the uses

of two words 'Cerberus' and 'Rover'. The word 'Rover' is seriously used to refer to something and does in fact so refer; the word 'Cerberus' is a

term that we only make believe has reference."20 To say that David Cop

perfield does not exist, then, is to deny that "David Copperfield" names

anything.21 When we make assertions about David Copperfield (e.g., that

he is kind-hearted) we pretend to use "David Copperfield" as a genuine name.

So we may happily take sides with those who want to say that, in the language of Kant, "being" is not a real predicate. But must we therefore

reject what Aquinas says about God as ipsum esse subsistensl Does this

teaching offend against anything I have been arguing above?

One can see why it might be thought to do just that. For Aquinas, God is ipsum esse subsistens since God's essence is esse. Also according to Aquinas, God brings it about that creatures have esse, considered as an

effect brought about by God. How shall we render esse here? The Latin word is the present infinitive of the verb 'to be'. But, as Aquinas often uses it, it is best translated as if it were a kind of noun. And that is how translators of Aquinas often render it. As Aquinas often uses the word, it can literally be rendered as 'the to be'. Normally, though, when Aquinas uses esse in this sense, translators report him as talking about 'being,' which is a perfectly respectable way of translating him. So the teaching that God's essence is esse might be said to amount to the claim that God is being and that if we ask what God is the answer is simply "Being." By


the same token, the doctrine that God brings about the esse of creatures

might be said to amount to the claim that God brings it about that creatures exist, on the understanding that it is a fact about creatures that

they exist (as, for example, it is a fact about some creatures that they are

fun-loving), and that God brings about this fact. If this is how we read

Aquinas then he is indeed guilty of supposing that "_exist(s)" can serve

to tell us something significant of an object or individual. The teaching that God's essence is esse would amount to the claim that just as Ianto, Dewi and Idris are fun-loving, God is being (or existence). The teaching that God is the cause of the esse of creatures would amount to the claim

that there is a property (being, existing) had by creatures?a property

brought about by God. And if this is what Aquinas thinks, then his thinking is decidedly suspect. Self existing is not a property of any indi vidual, how can it be thought that the answer to "What is God?" is "God is existence?". As we have seen, affirmations of existence tell us that

something is thus and so. They can also be viewed as denials of the

number nought. But it hardly makes sense to reply to the question "What

is God?" by saying "God is what something is insofar as it is anything" (where "anything"

= "anything affirmable of some individual"): Nor does

it make much sense to say that "What is God?" is intelligibly answered by saying that the number of gods is not nought.22 And if "_exist(s)" cannot serve to tell us something about any object or individual, it cannot

be a truth about any object or individual that it exists and that God brought this about. God, one might say, can bring it about that something is a dog (Fido), or red (British post boxes), or born in the U.S.A. (Jane Mansfield). But he cannot bring it about that something exists anymore than he can

bring it about that Mary (or Ianto, Dewi, or Idris) is scarce or numerous.

At this point, however, we need to dig a little more deeply into what

Aquinas says about God as ipsum esse subsistens and about God as the source of the esse of creatures. For his teaching on these matters is not to

be disposed of along the lines of the last paragraph. To begin to see why this is so, we can start by noting some of the things which Aquinas says

when he writes of sentences containing forms of the verb 'to be'. Specif

ically, according to Aquinas, the verb 'to be' is used in at least two distinct ways. As he himself puts it: "there are two proper uses of the term 'being' :

firstly, generally for whatever falls into one of Aristotle's ten basic cate

gories of thing, and secondly, for whatever makes a proposition true.


These differ: in the second sense anything we can express in an affirma

tive proposition, however unreal, is said to be: in this sense lacks and

absences are, since we say that absences are opposed to presences, and

blindness exists in an eye. But in the first sense only what is real is, so that

in this sense blindness and such are not beings."23 What does Aquinas have in mind in making this distinction? To put

things loosely, he is distinguishing between sentences which tell us

something about a distinct individual, and sentences which look or sound as though they are doing this, though, in fact they are not. If I say that Pope John Paul II is pious, I am telling you something about a distinct in dividual. But (to use Aquinas's example), I am not doing this if I say that blindness exists. There are, of course, people and animals who cannot see.

But "blindness" is not the name of any individual thing. And that is what

Aquinas wants to say. On his account, existence statements can tell us

something about an individual (e.g., "Pope John Paul II is pious"), or they can tell us something true without telling us something about any indi

vidual (as in "Blindness exists," which is true not because there is

something which can be called "blindness" but because some people and animals cannot see).

What is it that Aquinas takes existence statements to be doing when

they tell us something about an individual? One thing he does not take them to be doing is telling us that the something in question exists. When he says that 'being' can be understood with respect to what falls under Aristotle's ten categories, he does not mean that something can be said to

be 'existing' and that 'existing' can serve to tell us anything significant about it. For Aquinas, one way of distinguishing between individuals is in terms of genus and species. So we can say, for instance, that Fido is a dog and that Sara is a woman. Yet 'is a being', for Aquinas, cannot serve to

help us to distinguish between things and it does not tell us anything about anything. For, on Aquinas's account, it does not signify a way of being (what something is). John Paul II is a man. And Hilary Clinton is a

woman. But, for Aquinas, there is nothing which can be characterized

simply by saying that it is. Following Aristotle, Aquinas agrees that there is no such class of things as things which simply are. 'Being', for Aquinas, is not a generic term. It cannot serve to tell us what something is.24 On his

account, genuine individuals are whatever they are by virtue of what he


calls 'form'. And it is with this notion in mind that he appeals to

Aristotle's Categories. I have a friend who has a cat called Thor. Let me try to tell you about

Thor. Thor is a cat. He is enormously large. He is intelligent. He is

younger than his parents. He lives in New York. He is alive as I write. He

sits down when he eats. He is very hairy. He chases lots of mice. And he

is castrated.

Following Aristotle, Aquinas would say that I have just told you quite a bit about what Thor is. In the Categories, Aristotle tries to classify ways in which we may speak of things. We may say what something is es

sentially (e.g., "is a cat"), or how big it is, or what it is like, or where it is, or what it is doing, and so on. And Aquinas agrees with this kind of clas

sification. For him they are ways of saying what something is. And he

holds that when we say what something is (e.g., "_is a cat," "_is

enormously large," "_ is intelligent"), we are ascribing a form to

something. Forms, for Aquinas, are nothing like the subsistent entities

postulated by Plato, though he thinks that there can be subsistent forms. For the most part, a form, for Aquinas, is what is signified by a predicate

expression telling us something about an individual. Thus, for example, '_is a cat' signifies a form: in "Thor is a cat" it tells us something about

Thor; in "Thor is intelligent" it also tells us something about Thor. Being feline and being intelligent are factors that make up the being of Thor, so

Aquinas would say. If we ask what it is for Thor to be Thor, then, so

Aquinas would say, it is for Thor to be feline, intelligent, and whatever else can be intelligibly and truly affirmed of him. On Aquinas's account, the existence of Thor is reportable by saying what Thor is. "No entity

without identity," says W. V. Quine. Or, as Aquinas puts it, existence is

given by form (forma est essendi principium).25 "Every mode of

existence," says Aquinas, "is determined by some form" (quodlibet esse

est secundum formam).26 For Aquinas, we cannot describe something by

saying that, as well as being feline, intelligent and so on, it also exists. To exist is to be or to have form. Hence, for instance, Aquinas can only make

sense of statements like 'Thor exists' (Thor est) on the understanding that

they tell us what something is. Thor est, said of Thor the cat, means, for

Aquinas, "Thor is a cat." Or, to change the example, according to Aquinas names like 'Socrates' or 'Plato' signify human nature as ascribable to


certain individuals. Hoc nomen 'Socrates' vel 'Plato* significai naturam

humanam secundum quod est in hac mataer?aP On Aquinas's account,

saying Socrates est or Plato est is not to inform people of a property of

existence had by Socrates and Plato. It is to assert what Socrates and Plato

are by nature, i.e., human.

In short, Aquinas is perfectly alert to the dangers of saying that "_ exist(s)" can serve to tell us anything about any object or individual. What we have just seen him saying shows that he could happily agree with the case I made above for existence not being a property ascribable to Ianto,

Dewi, Idris and the like. And that suggests that we should indeed be cautious in supposing that in speaking of God as ipsum esse subsistens, and in speaking of creatures as owing their esse to God, Aquinas is main

taining that there is a property (being, existing) had by creatures?a

property brought about by God, who in some mysterious sense just IS this property.

In that case, however, what does Aquinas mean when he speaks of

God as cause of the esse of creatures and of God as ipsum esse subsistensl A fundamental teaching of Aquinas is that any knowledge we have of God is derived from what we know of creatures. There is no direct human

knowledge of God akin to our knowledge of objects falling within our ex

perience ("knowledge by acquaintance," as we might call it). On his account too, human knowledge of God cannot be something inferred on

the basis of some prior understanding of what God is ("knowledge based on the concept of God," as we might call it).28 According to Aquinas, who in this respect is remarkably empiricist: "The knowledge that is natural to

us has its source in the senses and extends just so far as it can be led by sensible things; from these, however, our understanding cannot reach to

the divine essence_In the present life our intellect has a natural relation

to the natures of material things; thus it understands nothing except by turning to sense images. ... In this sense it is obvious that we cannot,

primarily and essentially, in the mode of knowing that we experience, un

derstand immaterial substances since they are not subject to the senses and

imagination. . . . What is understood first by us in the present life is the whatness of material things . . . [hence] ... we arrive at a knowledge of

God by way of creatures."29 As Herbert McCabe, O.P., nicely puts it,

Aquinas's view is that "when we speak of God, although we know how to use our words, there is an important sense in which we do not know what

they mean. . . . We know how to talk about God, not because of any un

derstanding of God, but because of what we know about his creatures."30


On Aquinas's account, there are philosophical puzzles which arise with

respect to the world of our experience. And these puzzles are our basis for

talking of God.31 So to understand Aquinas on esse as had by creatures, and to understand what he means in speaking of God as ipsum esse sub

sistens, we shall need to start by looking a bit more at what Aquinas thinks

of creatures. And the point we need most especially to note is that

creatures, for Aquinas, are more than the meanings of words.

Suppose I am telling a story about Fred the happy unicorn. We shall assume I am telling the story to a group of children who are enchanted with Fred the happy unicorn from their book reading and television viewing. With this scenario in mind an interesting thing to note is that I can be wrong in what I say about Fred. Suppose I observe that Fred has no horn on his forehead. Any sensible child will rightly correct me. "But

Fred is a unicorn and unicorns have horns on their foreheads," the child

will say. And rightly so. Of course unicorns have horns on their foreheads. The fact can be quickly verified. Just consult a decent dictionary. So I

need to be careful to get things right as I tell my tale of Fred. On the other hand, however, dictionaries which confirm that unicorns

have horns will also tell us that unicorns are mythical animals. So we

might say, a mythical animal does not exist. But in that case how can I be

wrong when telling my story of Fred the happy unicorn? The answer, of course, is that I can be wrong since I can offend against what people can

rightly take to be the meaning of certain words. The word 'unicorn', for

instance, is not a piece of gibberish. It is there in the dictionaries and one can entertain people with stories about unicorns. One can even make

mistakes about unicorns, albeit that unicorns do not exist.

Now suppose we ask what a unicorn is. Our answer will have to be

based on some literary detective work. We shall start, perhaps, with a

standard dictionary; then move to other writings in which 'unicorn' occurs. And, if we are very persistent, we shall, from our reading, have

lots to say about unicorns. Yet there never have been any unicorns. That

is why I say that our answer to the question "What is a unicorn?" will have

to be settled on literary grounds. In trying to answer the question, we are

seeking to learn what people mean by the word 'unicorn'. We are seeking a kind of nominal definition. Knowing what a unicorn is simply amounts to knowing the meaning of a word.

Aquinas is perfectly aware of this fact. He even appeals to it as a

reason for rejecting a famous argument for God's existence based on the

meaning of the word 'God'.32 For him, however, we might know what


something is in a way that goes beyond learning what a dictionary tells us that a word (e.g., 'unicorn') means. For, in his opinion, we might actually

develop a scientific understanding of things and in this way be able to say what they are.

There are no unicorns. But there are lots of cats. And though we shall never be able to study Fred (or any of his fellow mythical unicorns), we can certainly get our hands on Thor and his fellow cats. And (as has

happened), on this basis we can develop an understanding of cats. As

Aquinas would say, we can begin to explain what it is to be a cat. Or, as

we might put it, we can begin to explain what cats actually are?some

thing we cannot do with respect to unicorns and the like since they are not

actually anything. For Aquinas, then, there is a difference between "A unicorn has a

horn on its forehead" and anything that a scientist might come up with as

an account of what cats are. It is this difference which Aquinas has chiefly in mind when he says that creatures have esse. Translators of Aquinas have rendered him as saying that creatures have being. And we need not

quarrel with the translators. The expression habere esse recurs in Aquinas, and I do not know how to translate it except by writing 'to have being' (or 'to have to be' which is clumsy and unintelligible without a lot of learned

footnotes). But such a translation could easily suggest that 'being', for

Aquinas, is a property which something has?as, for example, redness is a property of most British post boxes. And that is not at all what he thinks. His idea is that in truly knowing what, for example, a cat (as opposed to a unicorn) is, we are latching onto the fact that cats have esse. And the best

way of expressing this fact is to say, as Herbert McCabe usefully puts it, that, according to Aquinas: "It is not simply in our capacity to use signs, our ability for example, to understand words, but in our actual use of them

to say what is the case that we have need of and lay hold on the esse of things."33

Given what I have been saying, Aquinas's teaching on esse is

decidedly matter of fact and even pedestrian. For him, we lay hold on the esse of things by living in the world and by truly saying what things are.

We lay hold on the esse of Thor, for example, by noting that Thor is a cat which. . . . We lay hold on esse by being natural scientists exploring our

environment and talking about it as we try to understand it.34 In Aquinas's view, however, our environment itself is a puzzling thing. For how come

the world in which we try to say what things are? At the end of his Tractatus Logico Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein says: "not how the


world is, is the mystical, but that it is."35 For Wittgenstein, how the world

is is a scientific matter with scientific answers. But, so he insists, even

when the scientific answers are in, we are still left with the thatness of the

world, the fact that it is. As Wittgenstein himself puts it; "We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life

have still not been touched at all."36 Aquinas is of the same mind. We can, he thinks, explore the world and develop an account of what things in it are. But we are still left with a decidedly non-scientific question. How come that the world is? From what I have written above, it will be clear that "ising" is not something that Aquinas takes the world to do. For

Aquinas, there is nothing that ises.37 There are cats and dogs and readers

of The Monist. There are all sorts of things to be explored and reported on

by scientists. But, for Aquinas, even the sharpest ear will not tune into

something ising.38 Yet the fact that we can think of things as having esse

is one which Aquinas finds important and suggestive. For he finds it

natural to ask "How come things having esseV, and he thinks of the

question as causal. Or, as we may also put it, Aquinas's view is that, as

well as asking "What in the world accounts for this, that, or the other?", we can also ask "Why any world at all?". How come the whole familiar

business of asking and answering "how come?". And it is here that

Aquinas thinks in terms of God. For him, the question "How come any universe?" is a serious one to which there must be an answer. And he gives the name "God" to whatever the answer is. God, for Aquinas, is the reason

why there is any universe at all. God, he says, is the source of the esse of

things?the fact that they are more than the meaning of words. Consid

ered as such, Aquinas adds, God is ipsum esse subsistens.

Now, however, we need to ask what work this teaching is doing in

the body of Aquinas's writings. It is evidently not attempting to locate

God generically. It is not telling us that God is an is-ing kind of thing. We have seen enough to warn us away from that sort of interpretation, as well

as from any which would take Aquinas to be identifying God with being or existence where that is thought to be a property of objects or individu als.39 In that case, however, what does Aquinas mean when holding that

God is ipsum esse subsistens! The short answer is that in saying that God is ipsum esse subsistens Aquinas means that God is not created. But the

answer needs a little unpacking. To start with we should note how Aquinas himself characterises his

doctrine that God is ipsum esse subsistens. Since the expression seems to

be telling us what God is, one might expect Aquinas to speak of it as part


of an account of God's properties or attributes. But that is not what he

does. We cannot, he argues, know what God is. We must content ourselves

with considering "the ways in which God does not exist, rather than the ways in which he does."40 And it is here that his talk of God as ipsum esse subsistens comes in. It is part of an account of ways in which God does

not exist. To be more precise, it is part of an attempt to note ways in which

God is, as Aquinas puts it, non-composite.

Being composite, for Aquinas, is something that creatures can be said

to be. And there are, so he thinks, various ways in which creatures can be

thought to be composite.41 With our present concerns in view, however, a

point to grasp is that being created is, for Aquinas, a matter of being

composite. Creatures, for Aquinas, are what they are not just because

other creatures have brought it about that they have begun to be and not

just because other creatures play a role in keeping them going. According to Aquinas, creatures are dependent in a deeper sense, which he puts by

saying that their esse is derived. They are dependent in the sense that we

can ask "How come any world at all?". Wittgenstein found it striking that

the world is. And this lead him to silence. Having asked scientific questions, he says, "there is then no question left, and just this is the

answer."42 We cannot speak about what is not a part of the world. And

Aquinas, at one level, agrees?hence his assertion that we cannot know

what God is. He does not intend to suggest that we can claim no

knowledge of God at all. He does, however, think that God is not an object in our universe with respect to which we can have what we would

nowadays call a "scientific understanding." According to Aquinas, we

know what something is (quid est) when we can single it out as part of the material world and define it. More precisely, we know what something is

when we can locate it in terms of genus and species.43 So Aquinas denies

that God belongs to a natural class and that God can be defined on this basis. Yet Aquinas does not at this point lapse into silence. One thing he holds is that we can speak truly by noting what could not possibly be true of whatever it is that accounts for things having esse. And since things having esse are derived, it makes sense, he thinks, to deny that whatever accounts for things having esse is, in the same way, derived. Or, as

Aquinas puts it, in God there can be no composition of esse and essence

(i.e., God is ipsum esse subsistens). For Aquinas, creatures exist by being what they essentially are. Hence, for example, for Thor to be is for Thor


to be a cat. But how come that anything has an essence? Whatever accounts for that, so Aquinas thinks, cannot be something in the world

with some particular way of being. As he puts it, if there is a God then God must be "outside the realm of existents, as a cause from which pours forth

every thing that exists in all its variant forms" (extra ordinem entium

existens, velut causa quaedam profundens totum ens et omnes eius differ entias).44 And this is the heart of Aquinas's teaching that God is ipsum esse

subsistens. That teaching is not an attempt to tell us what God is. It is an

attempt to tell us that, whatever else we might want to say of God, we

must bear in mind that God is not created. Its content is exceedingly

negative (as, so I have argued elsewhere, is Aquinas's "doctrine" of God

in general).45 "Our minds," Aquinas observes, "cannot grasp what God is

in himself; whatever way we have of thinking of him is a way of failing to understand him as he really is."46 And Aquinas takes this teaching to

apply just as much to the assertion that God is ipsum esse subsistens as it

does to other things we say of God.

Yet is it true that God is ipsum esse subsistens! I have tried to

expound Aquinas's teaching so as to indicate that, if nothing else, it is

something of which a modern philosopher might well take account since it accords with what a modern philosopher might well want to say on the topic of existence. I am tempted to say that it is something of which a

modern analytical philosopher might take account; but I cannot really claim to know what makes a philosopher analytic. Whether or not we

agree with Aquinas in his teaching that God is ipsum esse subsistens will depend a lot on whether we can share his puzzle concerning the fact that we can talk of the world and make sense of it in its own terms (that we

can be scientists). It will also depend on whether we find the word 'God' an appropriate one to use when seeking to express such puzzlement and

trying to move on. I think that Aquinas is right to be puzzled as he is. And I find him to make a very good case for invoking the word 'God' when

seeking to talk about the esse of things. But that is matter for another occasion.

Fordham University, New York

Brian Davies, O.P.


NOTES

1. Gilbert Ryle, Collected Papers, vol. I (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971), p. 211. 2. I employ the expression "analytical philosopher" in accordance with the usage

suggested by the article on analytic philosophy in Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

3. Bertrand Russell, Logic and Knowledge (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966), p. 234 and pp. 228-34.

4. Paul Edwards, "Heidegger's Quest for Being," Philosophy 64 (1989), p. 459. 5. Summa Theologiae, la, 13, 11.

6. Norris Clarke, S.J., Explorations in Metaphysics (Notre Dame, IN: University of

Notre Dame Press, 1995), p. 24. 7. Cf. Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (London:

Victor Gollancz, 1961), Introduction and chs. Ill and IV. Gilson on Aquinas is heavily endorsed by E. L. Mascall in Existence and Analogy (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1949).

8. Anthony Kenny, Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 60. 9. Anthony O'Hear, Experience, Explanation and Faith (London; Routledge, 1984),

p. 64.

10. C. J. F. Williams, "Being," in C. Taliaferro and P. Quinn (eds.), The Blackwell

Companion to Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). In What is Existence? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), and in Being, Identity, and Truth (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1992), Williams develops a critique of Thomistic-sounding talk about Being based on the work of Frege.

11. Terence Penelhum, "Divine Necessity," Mind 69 (1960), reprinted in Basil Mitchell (ed.), The Philosophy of Religion (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1971). I quote from

Mitchell's text, pp. 184f.

12. Worries about a "pre-Kantian notion of being," as I call it, certainly preside in the critiques of Aquinas offered by Kenny, O'Hear, Williams, and Penelhum.

13. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (trans. Norman Kemp Smith, London,

Macmillan, 1964), p. 504. 14. In listing these objections I am largely drawing on what I have read by critics of the

thesis I defend. So there may, of course, be other objections of which I an unaware. 15. Cf. A. N. Prior, "Is the Concept of Referential opacity Really Necessary?", Acta

Philosophica Fennica 16 (1963). 16. It has been argued against me that the reason why sentences like "Fun-loving

Welshmen exist" can just as well be rendered by sentences like "Some Welshmen are fun loving" is because of "the tacit assumption that the domain of quantification is a domain of existing individuals. Without this assumption the equivalence would fail" (William Valicella, "Reply to Davies; Creation and Existence," International Philosophical Quarterly XXXI, June 1991). The idea here is that what I want to say about "_exist(s)" only makes sense on the assumption that I am saying what can be said about existing things. If you like, the charge is that "it is precisely because every individual exists that there is no need for the predicate '_exists'" (Valicella, p. 222). But this charge seems to me to miss the point. I am saying that if "Fun-loving Welshmen exist" is something we assent to, we are surely assenting to nothing that cannot be expressed by "Someone is a

fun-loving Welshman." And I am adding that the work done by "_exist" in 'Fun-loving Welshmen exist' is the work done by "someone" in "Someone is a fun-loving Welshman."


And that work is not to ascribe a property to an object or individual. We do not need the language of "domains" to see that this is so. "X is bald" is true if, for example, "John is

bald" is true. "Fun-loving Welshmen exist" is true if, for example, "Idris is a fun-loving Welshman" is true. It is not, I suggest, true because "Idris exists and is a fun-loving Welshman" is true.

17. Gottlob Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, trans. J. L. Austin (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), p. 65.

18. C. J. F. Williams, What is Existence?, pp. 54-5. Readers of Williams will recognize how very indebted I am to him for thoughts on existence.

19. Peter Geach, God and the Soul (London: Routledge, 1969), p. 55. 20. Ibid. 21. You might say it names a fictional character. But this character is no real person (no

real character) and the name we use in purporting to refer to him as if he were a real person is therefore a name only in the sense that within the context of the novel David Copper

field it is used as if it were such, as if it singled out someone of whom truths could be asserted.

22. In Three Philosophers (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961), pp. 88f. P. T. Geach argues that in De Ente et Essentia Aquinas is committed to the view that the answer to the question "What is God?" is, effectively, "There is a God." In The Five Ways (London: Routledge, 1969), Anthony Kenny endorses Geach's reading adding, in opposition to Geach, that

Aquinas never abandoned this view. The mistakes involved in both Geach's and Kenny's reading of Aquinas are helpfully exposed in Stephen Theron's paper "Esse" (New Scholas ticism 53, 1979).

23. De Ente et Essentia 1.1 quote from Timothy McDermott's translation. See Timothy McDermott (ed.), Aquinas: Selected philosophical Writings (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 9If. Aquinas draws attention to the distinction he makes here in several other places. See, for example, (1) his commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book V, lectio 9; (2) Summa Theologiae, la. 3, 4 ad 2; (3) Summa Theologiae, Ia.48, 2 ad 2.

24. Cf. Summa Contra Gentiles I, 24-26; Summa Theologiae 3a, 77, 1 ad. 2 ("Seeing that being is not a genus, existence cannot be of the essence of either substance or

accident"). 25. Summa Theologiae, la, 76, 2.

26. Summa Theologiae, la, 5, 5 ad. 3. Cf. la, 29, 2 ad. 5; Ia.50, 5. Ia, 75, 6; Ia.76, 2; la, 76, 3; Ia, 104, 1. Cf. De principium Naturae, 1.

27. Commentary on Aristotle's "Peri Hermencias, "

I, X.

28. These theses are defended by Aquinas in many places. They are most succinctly defended in Summa Theologiae, Ia, 2,1. For an account of Aquinas on these theses see my The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1992), chs. 2 and 3.

29. Summa Theologiae, Ia, 12, 12; Ia, 88, 1; Ia, 88, 3. 30. Herbert McCabe, O.P., Appendix 3 to vol. 3 of the Blackfriars edition of the Summa

Theologiae (New York: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964). 31. As philosophers, that is. Aquinas has no problem about people talking about God

on the basis of revelation and with no special interest in philosophy. We may, he thinks, believe many things said of God even though we do not know that they are true. For an account of Aquinas on revelation and believing, see my The Thought of Thomas Aquinas, ch. 14. For a detailed discussion of Aquinas and what we can say of God positively, see my "Aquinas on What God is Not." Revue Internationale de Philosophie (forthcoming).

32. Cf. Summa theologiae, la, 2, 1.


33. Herbert McCabe, O.P., "The Logic of Mysticism?I," in Martin Warner (ed.),

Religion and Philosophy (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 45. As we have seen, there is a sense in which Aquinas is prepared to speak of what is the case where what is in question is something lacking, e.g., the ability to see. So he can make sense of "Blindness exists" and the like. But only because in sentences like this (if true) something is being said of something which can be thought of as "having esse** For example, according to Aquinas "Blindness exists" is true if someone is truly unable to see.

34. According to P. T. Geach, Aquinas's talk of esse may be compared with what Frege has in mind when he speaks of Wirklichkeit and of what is wirklich. This, says Geach, is distinguished by Frege from the existence expressed by "there is a so-and-so" (es gibt ein

_). Actuality is attributable to individual objects. The existence expressed by "there is a _" is not (cf. God and the Soul, p. 65). But as far as I can discover, and certainly to go

by Michael Dummett's exposition of Frege in his book Frege's Philosophy of Language, 2nd edn., (London: Duckworth, 1981, ch. 14), Frege's distinction between the wirklich and that which is not wirklich is a distinction between that which is concrete and that which is abstract. Wirklich in Frege means "concrete." Frege nowhere that I know of, suggests that wirklich is an interpretation of 'existent*. He does at times speak of what is wirklich as being capable of acting upon the senses and he adds that what is not such may still be objective. He says, for instance, that the equator is not wirklich though it is objective in that it did not begin to exist only when people started talking of the equator (cf. The Foun dations of Arithmetic, para. 26). But, again, this is not to suggest that wirklich is an interpretation of 'existent*.

35. Tractatus 6.44 (trans. C. K. Ogden, London: Routledge, 1922). 36. Tractatus 6.52.

37. Some famous philosophers seem to have thought otherwise. Descartes, for instance, seems to have thought that he discovered something about himself when discovering that he was (is). Fortunately, Descartes went on to ask what he was.

38. J. L. Austin once mischievously suggested that existing is like breathing, only quieter. Cf. J. L. Austin, Sense and Sensihilia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 68.

39. The critiques of Aquinas offered by Anthony O'Hear, C. J. F. Williams, and Terence Penelhum (see notes 9-11 above) seem to be based on contrary assumptions. O'Hear reads

Aquinas as identifying God with being?considered as a highly general quality which cannot be appealed to as giving us any information as to what God is. Williams assumes that Aquinas is identifying God with existence considered as a property of objects or indi viduals. Penelhum thinks that Aquinas takes "being" or "existence" to be terms able to tell us what God is in the sense that "is human" can tell us what some human being is.

40. Cf. the introduction to Summa Theologiae la, 3. 41. Cf. Summa Theologiae, la, 3.

42. Tractatus, 6.52.

43. Cf. Commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences, I, d.37, p.3, a.3; Sent., I, d. 43, q.l, a.l; Sent., Iv, d.7, q.l, a.3.

44. Commentary on Aristotle's "Peri Hermeneias, "

I, XIV.

45. Cf. my "Aquinas on What God is Not," Revue Internationale de Philosophie (forth coming). Cf. also my "Classical Theism and the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity" in Brian Davies, O.P. (ed.), Language, Meaning and God (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1987).

46. Summa Theologiae, la, 13, 11.

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aquinas God and Being