Essence
| Latin | Essentia; quidditas; natura |
|---|---|
| Treatise | De ente et essentia c. 1; Summa theologiae I, q. 3 |
| Controlling authority | Catechism 199–221; Lateran IV |
| Doctrinal standing | God is simple and creatures have natures; essence as potency to esse is Thomistic |
| School | Thomism |
Essence is that whereby a thing is what it is, the inner measure of a being's kind, called quiddity when expressed in a definition and nature when considered as the principle of operation.[1]
That whereby a thing is what it is
The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article on essence and existence describes essence as that whereby a thing is what it is, the equivalent of Aristotle's to ti en einai. It is the radical ground from which the properties of a thing emanate. As furnishing an answer to the question What?, essence is equivalent to quiddity, and as St. Thomas remarks, the essence of a thing is that which is expressed by its definition.[1][2]
De ente et essentia, chapter 1, distinguishes the names. Essence names the being as what it is. Quiddity names that essence as signified by the definition. Nature names it as principle of operation. Form names it as the specifying act, especially in corporeal things. These are not four realities stacked in the subject. They are one principle considered under different relations. A horse is a horse by its essence, defined as such by its quiddity, and acts as a horse by its nature.[3]
Physical and metaphysical complexity
In corporeal substances the real or physical essence results from the union of matter and form. Man's physical essence is body and soul. Apart from abstraction, body and soul exist as the constituents of this man. The logical or metaphysical essence is the composition of genus and difference, animality and rationality, which the mind abstracts. Both considerations are about the same man. Confusing them produces either a denial of real composition or a projection of mental parts into the thing as extra entities.
Created spiritual substances have physically simple essences, free from matter and form, yet they remain composite in that their essences are the result of genus and difference and are not identical with their existence. God alone is unique and utterly simple essence, free from all composition, physical or metaphysical, and identical with his existence. That last claim is the hinge between this article and the treatise on divine simplicity.[3][4]
Immutability of the what, mutability of the who
Essences as such are said to be immutable, indivisible, and necessary: man as man does not become non-man while remaining man, and the definition rational animal is not a fashion. This is not the claim that physical essences cannot begin or cease, or that they cannot be decomposed into constituents, or that individuals are not subject to accidental change. God alone is immutable in every sense. Created essences begin, cease, and are multiplied in individuals.
Catholic doctrine requires stable natures. Otherwise there is no natural law, no species to be assumed in the Incarnation, no reason for the sacraments to have determinate signs. Lateran IV and Dei Filius close a world without a Creator and a Creator without a world distinct from himself. They do not define the scholastic list of synonyms. They do require that what a thing is is not a flux of labels.[5]
Essence as potency to existence
In creatures, Thomists treat essence as potency with respect to the act of existing. The essence measures and limits esse. It is not a separately existing possible world waiting in a warehouse. It exists only as actualized, or as an object of a mind. In God there is no such potency. His essence is his esse. The school thesis of a real distinction is one way of stating creaturely dependence with metaphysical precision.
Other Catholic schools have used formal or conceptual distinctions where Thomists insist on a real composition. Those debates are intramural. They do not reopen the dogma that God is simple and creatures are caused. Fides et Ratio commends a philosophy of being that can speak of essences without reducing them to linguistic conventions. Essence in Thomism is that philosophy's name for the what of the real.[6]
References
- Back to citation occurrence 1.0 Back to citation occurrence 1.1 Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), Essence and Existence — Public-domain account of essence as that whereby a thing is what it is, existence as its actuality, and the disputed real distinction in creatures.
- Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, question 3, article 4 — Primary treatment of divine simplicity, including the identity of essence and existence in God and the received existence of creatures.
- Back to citation occurrence 3.0 Back to citation occurrence 3.1 Thomas Aquinas, De ente et essentia, chapters 1 and 4–5 — Primary early treatise on essence, quiddity, and the real distinction of essence and existence in substances other than God.
- Back to citation Catechism of the Catholic Church, 199–221 — Authoritative confession of the one God, his simplicity, fullness of being, and the identity of his essence with his existence.
- Back to citation Fourth Lateran Council, Firmiter credimus — Conciliar confession of the one Creator, the Creator-creature distinction, and the greater unlikeness in every likeness between Creator and creature.
- Back to citation John Paul II, Fides et Ratio — Encyclical on the harmony of faith and reason, the enduring value of Aquinas, metaphysical realism, and legitimate philosophical plurality within Catholic faith.