Actus essendi

Actus essendi is a Latin expression coined by Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). Translated as "act of being", the actus essendi is a fundamental metaphysical principle discovered by Aquinas when he was systematizing the Christian Neoplatonic interpretation of Aristotle. The metaphysical principle of actus essendi relates to the revelation of God as He Who is (Ex 3:14), and to how we as humans perceive God’s essence. Aquinas elaborates on the fact that God’s essence is not perceived as sense data; rather, the essence of God can only be understood partially in terms of the limited participations in God’s actus essendi, that is, in terms of what is real, in terms of God’s effects in the real world.

Overview

Aquinas saw that in any subsisting extramental (existing outside the mind) thing, one finds a couplet of metaphysical principles: one is the "essence" which makes the subsisting thing to be what it is, the other is the actus essendi which gives the subsisting thing and its essence actual existence.

The observation that individual subsisting things display instantiations of a particular essence led Aquinas to postulate that what gives actual existence to a subsisting thing and to its essence – the actus essendi – is unique, in the sense that the perfection of actus essendi cannot be said to be common in the way an essence is said to be common.

Subsisting things instantiating the essence of horseness (real horses), for example, are said to be similar because of their horseness. The essence of horseness is what makes horses the same under a common category.

However, subsisting things instantiating the perfection of actus essendi are said to be different on account of their actus essendi. The possession of actus essendi is what makes a subsisting thing unique and distinct from all other subsisting things.

Thus, in what actually exists as a subsisting extramental thing, there is an essence which makes the subsisting thing what it is (a horse, for example), and the actus essendi which makes the subsisting thing a real, individual, existing thing.

Aristotle didn't have the notion of actus essendi. In fact, the contribution of Aquinas to the philosophy of being is precisely that he discovered that all Aristotelian acts were in reality "potency" with respect to the actus essendi.

Aquinas saw the metaphysical principle of actus essendi as the "act of all acts, the perfection of all perfections",[1] and "a proper effect of God".[2] The metaphysics of Aristotle did not reach that far.

Accordingly, Pope John Paul II stresses in his teachings that the philosophy of Aquinas is the philosophy of the actus essendi, "whose transcendental value paves the most direct way to rise to the knowledge of subsisting Being and pure Act, namely to God."[3] Aquinas defined God as the "Ipse Actus Essendi subsistens", the subsisting act of being.

See also

References
  1. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae De potentia, question 7, article 2, ad 9. See also Summa theologiae, part I, question 4, article 1, ad 3; and Summa contra Gentiles, book II, chapter 54, no. 5.
  2. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, book III, chapter 66, no. 4. See also Summa theologiae, part I, question 45, article 5, corpus.
  3. Pope John Paul II, "The Angelicum Address", speech delivered at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas Angelicum in Rome on 17 November 1979. The original, in Italian, was published in Acta Apostolicae Sedis 71 (1979): 1472–1483. English translations are available in L'Osservatore Romano English Weekly Edition (17 December 1979): 6–8; and in Angelicum 57 (1980): 133–146.

Sources
  • Cornelio Fabro, "Participation", New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Gale, 2003) 10:905–910.
  • Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter "Fides et ratio", 14 September 1998, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 91 (1999): 5–88.
  • Natale Colafati, L'actus essendi in San Tommaso D'Aquino (Messina, Italy: Rubbettino Editore, 1992).
  • Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Letter "Inter munera Academiarum", 28 January 1999.
  • Pier P. Ruffinengo, "L'ipsum esse non e ancora l'actus essendi di San Tommaso", Aquinas: Rivista internazionale di filosofia 38 (1995): 631–635.

Further reading
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