Also, act is perfection, for a thing is perfect in so far as it is If God is pure Act, then God is perfectly intelligible to Himself. The passive mind becomes actualized by the form, which is knowledge. For example, we know the essence of a thing when the intellect abstracts the form from the material conditions of the thing. Hence, God is everywhere without being subject to place.Ī thing is known in so far as it is in act. In other words, God is more immediately present to Jean Paul Sartre than his own mistress, and even more present to Sartre than Sartre was to himself or to us than we are to ourselves. Therefore, wherever there is something, God is more intimately and immediately present to that something than anything else could possibly be. To impart being means to bring something into being from nothing, not from something mediate. There cannot be anything between God and a contingent being. If God alone imparts the act of existing (esse) on contingent beings, then God is intimately and To be in place, that is, subject to place requires quantity and figure. God is not in place, therefore God is not in the universe nor outside of it: In other words, all of human history is present to God there is no future, no past, only present.ĥ. Is simply present without a before and an after. What is eternal is not something that endures forever, time without end. But a Being who is His own Act of Existing cannot be in potency or be subject to anything. ![]() To time, that is, actualized by time (time is an accident, it actualizes the substance in an accidental way). This part is so only in relation to that part. If there are no parts outside of this part, then there is no "this part". If this part of God is Being, then there cannot be anything outside of that part, for outside of being is non-being. Consider, this part of God is not that part of God. But if God is His own Act of Existing, He cannot have parts. The nature is found whole and entire in every part. A block of gold has parts outside of parts, for example the part on the left is outside of the part on the right, yet both parts share in the nature of gold. Also, what is extended has parts outside of parts. God is not a quantity, nor does He have quantity:ĭivisible, and Ipsum Esse cannot be divided into two, as was shown above. (substance) is in potentiality to certain accidents, ie, quantity, quality, when, where, etc. Therefore, there is no prime matter in God, for prime matter is potentiality. If His essence is not in potency to existence, but is His existence, then God is pure Act without any admixture of potentiality. They are not "they" (plural), but one.Īct of Being, then God is Act. What are they? Being Itself, that is, two beings whose essence is to be. What would distinguish the one from the other? It would have to be something Ipsum Esse (God) is His own to be, and therefore exists necessarily. Hence, it follows that Ipsum Esse cannot not be. God is that being whose essence is identical to His existence. ![]() The consequence will be that Miller will look more Aristotelic than he might have thought.Some Implications of God as Ipsum Esse Subsistens I shall underline how the distinction of Thomism is based on, hence in debt with, Aristotle's metaphysical view. I shall show, citing some emblematic arguments for each position, the metaphysical distinction of Thomas Aquinas and its refinement by Barry Miller in section 3. I shall present Miller's interpretative claim on the Aristotelian essentialism in section 2. My aim is to show that Aristotle already distinguished essence and existence and that Aquinas, and then Miller, used the very same Aristotelian concepts. On the other hand, Miller argues that Aquinas' merit is affected by the fault of not having successfully explained such a distinction, so he tries to give a satisfactory definition of it offering a Thomistic refined account. On the contrary, Thomas Aquinas introduced the metaphysical distinction between essence and existence, thereby adding a new sense of being. ![]() Barry Miller, likewise other exponents of the Thomism, sustains that for Aristotle the essence of something captures the entirety of something's being and the other senses of 'to be' are not genuine because are reducible to the essence, namely they are redundant.
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