Capítulo 5: Diseño de un espacio de coworking
5.2 Memoria descriptiva
Does the doctrine of formal causality apply only when one is speaking of composites of matter and form? Is the proper doctrine of formal cau- sality expressed by the formula: “form gives being to matter” [forma dat
esse materiae]?18 While such a situation is more readily grasped by us, and
has great importance for St. Thomas’s presentation of fundamental on- tology, its ultimate service to metaphysics is to isolate the peculiar roles of form and esse in any fi nite being. As long as form is seen as that by which the agent’s infl uence is appropriated to the effected thing, form is “result- ing” in esse, and so is causal.
Thus, we see that in his Commentary on the Metaphysics, replying to the question: by virtue of what causes does metaphysics demonstrate, Thom- as answers:
...every substance either is a being [ens] through itself, if it is form alone, or else, if it is composed out of matter and form, it is ens through its form; hence, inasmuch as this science undertakes to consider ens, it considers most of all the formal cause.19
The argument is clear: the cause (hence, the repeated use of “through” [per]) of ens is form: i.e. if a thing is itself form, then it is ens through itself, and if a thing is a composite of matter and form, then it is ens through
17. DP 7.2.ad 10 (in part).
18. This formula, which can be found, e.g., in De ente, ch. 4 (lines 41–50), seems, as a formula, to stem from Ibn Gebirol, Fons vitae, IV, 10 (cf. ed. Clemens Baeumker, Beiträge
GPM, Band I, Heft 2–4, p. 234, lines 13–14). The irony of the situation is that Gebirol
(who does embrace the doctrine himself) put it in the mouth of the student who wishes to use it to argue that form can exist without matter, and Gebirol goes on to reply that this is impossible because form is precisely the unity of the matter. Thomas Aquinas makes his own (in the De ente, and elsewhere) the argument of Gebirol’s student against Gebirol.
19. CM 3.4 (ed. Cathala, 384); and cf. chapter 8 above, at n. 26.
form. Thus, a survey of the modes of ens (simple and composite) reveals the universal causality of form vis-à-vis ens.
In the same context, St. Thomas tells us that the metaphysician makes no demonstrative use of the material cause, since it is not a cause of ens in its entire community, but only a cause of mobile being. Now, clearly, if formal causality obtained only inasmuch as form gives being to matter, the same limitation to mobile being would apply to formal causality.20
In another work, St. Thomas makes clear that in the case of formal causality, a thing can be cause of itself. He says:
...the prepositions “out of ” [ex] and “from” [de] do not signify the formal causal relationship, but rather the effi cient or material causal relationships. Now, these latter causes are always distinct from that of which they are the causes: nothing is its own matter, nor is anything its own active principle. Still, something is its own form, as is clear regarding all immaterial things.21
Hence, we are not wrong in seeing causality in the form which is through itself an ens.
However, as it seems to me, we should keep fi rmly in mind still anoth- er doctrine of St. Thomas, if we are properly to understand formal cau- sality, viz. that “it is for this reason that something is said to be ‘caused,’ i.e. because it has a cause of its being [esse].”22 If form is cause of itself,
and cause of its being ens, this is because, in fi nite things, it gives to itself what is other than itself, namely its own esse.
That esse is the per se result of form as form in no way compromises the doctrine that form, in all beings other than the fi rst, participates in
esse, and stands related to esse as potency to act. Rather, formal causality,
in fi nite things, consists precisely in the potency to esse. To say that form is potential relative to esse does not mean that form as form, just in itself,
can be or not be. As St. Thomas says, one should not be deceived by the
20. CM 3.4 (384), and cf. chapter 8 above. 21. ST 1.39.2.ad 5.
22. In Post. An., 2.7 (471). We should notice the argument of St. Thomas here; he says:
The reason for this, viz., that it is the same thing to know “what it is,” and to know the cause of the very “is it?” is this: that it is necessary that there be some cause of ”the thing is” [rem esse]: for something is called “caused” because of this, viz., that it has a cause of its esse. Now, this cause of being [essendi] either is identical with the essence of the thing itself, or is other than it. Identical indeed, as form and matter, which are the parts of the essence; but other, as the effi cient cause and the end: which two causes are in a way the causes of the form and the matter: for the agent operates on account of the end, and unites the form to the matter.
The point here is that all causality is of esse, and all causality is in a way reducible to the causality of esse by essence: that is why to know “what the thing is” is to know the cause of “the thing exists.”
equivocation of the word “potency.” Not all potencies are to opposites (as
to being and not being). Some potency is entirely to esse and not to non
esse.23
Conclusion
What is the importance of the insistence that esse follows upon form as such? I would say that it pertains to the doctrine that metaphysics treats of beings as being [ens secundum quod ens],24 where “ens” signifi es what is
most profoundly a thing’s own. In a genuine doctrine of being, one must be speaking of what is wholly at home in the thing.25
This is in line with the predominance in Thomas Aquinas’s metaphys- ical vision of the absolutely necessary being of creatures. In the over- whelming majority of creatures, intrinsic absolute necessity of being pre- vails.26 And even contingency, as to substances, is a case of “failing eventu-
ally,” i.e. “always working, until one day...”27 Thus, it pertains to the very
intelligibility of ens that it have as differences the necessary and the con- tingent (or possible), and recognition of this is required if one is to grasp God as cause of beings as beings, with the sublimity which this involves. Thus, we read:
...that-which-is, inasmuch as it is that-which-is [ens inquantum ens est], has God himself as its cause: thus, as that-which-is is subject to divine providence, so also are all the properties [accidentia] of that-which-is inasmuch as it is that-which-is, among which are the necessary and the contingent...28
And:
...the divine will is to be understood as standing outside the order of beings [ut
extra ordinem entium existens], as a cause pouring forth that-which-is in its entirety
23. CP, 8.21 (ed. Maggiòlo, 1153). 24. CM 4.1 (529–530).
25. This seems to me to be the sense of St. Thomas’s criticism of Avicenna, at CM 4.2 (558), which argues that ens is said per se of the thing [res], as naming the very same thing, because though it is named “ens” from esse, and esse indeed is other than the essence, yet
esse is something of the essence’s own. The name “ens” is not being applied in virtue of
a merely outside infl uence, but in virtue of something which is, as it were, constituted
through the essential principles. This point holds even though esse itself, in caused things,
transcends the form, and is the infl uence of what is proper to a higher nature; cf. Quodl. 12.5.1 (presented in the Conclusion of chapter 11, below).
26. SCG 2.30 (fi rst three paragraphs). On the question of number, cf. ST 1.50.3 and 1.112.4.ad 2.
27. Cf. CM 6.2 (1188), and my paper: “Being per se, Being per accidens, and St. Thomas’ Metaphysics,” Science et Esprit 30 (1978), at pp. 174–175. Cf. also In De caelo, 1.20 (ed. Spi- azzi, 258), and my “The Distinctiveness of St. Thomas’ ‘Third Way,’” Dialogue 19 (1980), at pp. 203–205.
28. CM 6.3 (1220; cf. also 1222).
[totum ens] and all its differences. Now, the possible and the necessary are differ- ences of that-which-is...29
To an objector who argues that creatures cannot last forever, because no accidental unity can last forever, and the act of being [esse] is acciden- tally united to the creature, Thomas replies:
...esse is not called an “accident,” as if it were in the genus of accident, speaking
of the esse of the substance: for it is the act of the essence. Rather, [it is called an “accident”] by a certain similarity: because it is not part of the essence, as neither is an accident [part of the essence]. If, nevertheless, it were in the genus of acci- dent, nothing would prevent its lasting interminably: for per se accidents inhere in their substances necessarily, and thus nothing prevents them inhering perpetu- ally. Accidents, however, which inhere in their subjects per accidens in no way en- dure forever, according to nature. But the substantial act of being of the thing [ipsum esse rei substantiale] cannot be something of that order: because it is the act of essence.30
Clearly, esse is too intimately united to the thing to be even a predica- mental accident, let alone a predicable accident, i.e. a per accidens associ- ate. If it were an accident in the predicamental sense, it would have to be a property. However, its mode of unity with the thing is greater than that. It is the act of the essence. If the Aristotelian demonstrative schema limps at all as regards form and esse, it is that esse is too intimate to form to be a mere property.
29. In Perih. 1.14 (ed. Spiazzi, 197); cf. also ST 1.48.2 (ed. Ottawa, 305a41–45) and 1.22.4.ad 3.