1. NATURALEZA DE LOS ARMONICOS
2.2 FILTROS PASIVOS
Having stressed the abstractive cognition of ens, and this as the very ground of metaphysics (to use Fabro’s expression), or the seed of meta- physics,20 I wish in conclusion to face up to what seems to be the diffi culty
of the position.
16. The composition of something with esse is a composition of the type: “itself and something else,” i.e. the whole thing (“itself”) has the role of component with esse; cf. Quodl. 2.2.ad 1. In line with this, I say that it is primarily form which is known in ens (form here having the role of the whole, even though the confused knowledge of esse is also present). Cf. also my paper, “St. Thomas, Capreolus, and Entitative Composition,” Divus Thomas 80 (1977), p. 368, n. 27.
17. Cf. SCG 1.23.2 (ed. Pera, 214): “Nothing is more formal or more simple than esse.” Clearly, form is meant to lead toward the simplicity of esse.
18. See also above, n. 14. 19. Cf. CM 2.1 (para. 8):
Et quod quantum ad aliquas res diffi cultas contingat in cognoscendo veritatem ipsa- rum rerum ex parte earum, patet. Cum enim unumquodque sit cognoscibile inquan- tum est ens actu, ut infra in nono huius dicetur, illa quae habent esse defi ciens et im- perfectum, sunt secundum seipsa parum cognoscibilia, ut materia, motus et tempus propter esse eorum imperfectionem, ut boetius dicit in libro de duabus naturis. [That in the case of some things the diffi culty as to knowing the truth about them arises from the things themselves, is clear. For since each thing is knowable inasmuch as it is ens
actu [a being in act], as will be said below in book 9, those things which have defi cient
and imperfect esse are, just in themselves, scarcely intelligible; such as matter, move- ment, and time, on account of the imperfection of their esse (as Boethius says in the book On the Two Natures).]
20. St. Thomas’s terms, “seminaria,” i.e. seed-plots (ST 1–2.63.1: 1038b30–31), and “se-
mina,” i.e. seeds (ibid., a. 2.ad 3: 1040a25), suggest the movement of the generator in the
(1) The problem seems to be that ens includes in its notion esse, and that esse cannot be known through abstraction. Rather, since corporeal things have esse only in the concrete, only a concrete mode of knowing will be a knowledge of esse. Now, as so stated, the reasoning is hard to take seriously. One might as well say that the mode of the known in knowing must be the same as the mode of the known in its own being. This St. Thomas denies.21 What abstractive knowing does not consider is the mode of being which both form and esse have in things. However, is there not
a difference between form and esse to be considered? We can know the form without that mode of being, but can we know the esse if we leave out of consideration the mode of esse? Is not a failure to consider the modus
essendi a failure in our consideration of esse itself? In short, we seem to re-
quire the non-abstractive ways of knowing so as to conceive adequately what existence is, i.e. to know it in its distinction from that with which one might confuse it.22
This is true. We do need the non-abstractive ways of knowing in order to answer the question: what existence is, i.e. to formulate the conclusion that a thing is not its own esse. We do not have that sort of knowledge of
esse in our abstraction of ens. St. Thomas’s care to treat separately, though
in parallel, the cases of man and angel in ST 1.12.4.ad 3 emphasizes this fact.
But (2) we can also pose the problem in this way: how are we to con- ceive of the intellect’s movements of conversion toward the phantasms, of refl ection toward the singular material thing? Are these to be seen as purely automatic movements, instilled in us from on high (as we said of the fi rst operation of the agent intellect)? Or are they to be seen as ne- cessitating in us a “higher vantage point,” neither merely of the singular, nor merely of the universal, but prior to and encompassing both? Or are we to conceive of these obviously natural operations as also themselves
sequels to the abstractive moment of our intellectual life? Surely this last.
Is not the very use of the words “indirect” and “refl ection” (ST 1.86.1: 535b45–36a8) a solid indication that they must be conceived as in some way products of the abstractive moment? And must this not mean that the very nature of the abstraction, as manifested by its fruit, ens, is such as to instigate such a movement? I take this to mean that we must envisage the notion of ens as having (a) universal applicability and (b), because it is an abstraction, an absence of discontinuity with that from which it is ab- stracted. It is, in its own nature, apt to light up the dark recesses of mat- ter: i.e. it is knowledge of act as act.23
21. Cf. e.g. ST 1.84.1.
22. I am here applying to knowledge of esse the doctrine of modes of knowing the intel- lective soul, presented in ST 1.87.1: 540b36ff., especially 541a18–22.
23. See above, notes 10 and 12.
Thus, when St. Thomas explains that it is by one same intellectual power that we know the objects of science and the objects of opinion, i.e. necessary things and contingent things respectively, he says that it is ac- cording to one same object-constituting aspect [ratio obiecti] that they are known, viz. according to the aspect of ens and verum. The intellect per- fectly knows the necessaries, which have perfectum esse in veritate: it attains to their quiddity, whereby it demonstrates proper accidents concerning them. It imperfectly knows contingent things: just as they have imperfec-
tum esse et veritatem. Contingents and necessaries agree in the common
aspect: ens, which the intellect considers. The one instrument, the notion of ens, is used by the agent intellect24 for its penetration into its entire
fi eld (ST 1.79.9.ad 3: 490b23–50, and cf. 1.86.3, in toto).
There is already present, in ens, a confused knowledge of esse, because of the proportion of ens to esse. And it is this character of ens which makes it the starting point of metaphysics. But it is only subsequently, through the experience of our need for the indirect, concrete ways of knowing in order to attain things as they properly have esse,25 that we eventually form
a notion of what esse is, namely a participation in the nature of the fi rst cause lying at the upper limits of our experience of form.
24. Cf. Quaestiones de anima 5 (at the end of the corpus); still, the notion of “instrument” is least satisfactory for ens, of all the principles, since prior to ens, the agent intellect can- not be conceived as knowing, but only as illuminating.
25. Intellectual knowledge of things precisely as existing demands conversion toward the phantasm (ST 1.84.7: 522a10–14). Knowledge of the singular (and the object of our intellect has esse only in individual matter: ST 1.12.4) is indirect intellectual knowledge (ST 1.86.1). On the relation of our original apprehension of ens to the “judgment of exis- tence” (i.e. the intellectual judgment), cf. Jean-Hervé Nicolas, O.P., “Chronique de philoso- phie,” Revue thomiste 48 (1948), 546–547.