![]() ![]() To it were added the names of such luminaries of the thirteenth century as St. Although a severe critic of much of Avicenna's thought, William accepted his teaching on the real distinction and employed it in his De universo creaturarum as a proof of the finitude and dependence of creatures (1.3.26 2.2.8). The first of the scholastics to adopt as his own the position of Avicenna was william of auvergne. averro Ës, it may be noted, disagreed with Avicenna's teaching on this point, reproaching Avicenna for proposing as philosophy what was essentially a theological doctrine of creation. Thus, for Avicenna, essence and existence must be really distinct one from the other and not merely distinct in a rational or conceptual way. Existence comes to an essence under the action of the efficient cause, such as is found in the order of nature in generation-corruption or as is taught in the biblical account of creation. Rather, Avicenna holds that essence, as ideally conceived, involves an element of necessity, whereas it itself is merely possible when viewed in relation to extramental existence. Among the Arab commentators on Aristotle, avicenna first brought the problem into focus by teaching explicitly that existence is a kind of accident of essence, although not in the sense that existence comes to essence as a predicamental accident comes to substance. It may be that he affirms only that the singular essence man experiences is in a state of actual existence, and that this serves to differentiate it from the purely possible essence that man's mind may happen to conceive. Whether his distinction is real or merely rational, however, is disputed (see distinction, kinds of). There seems little doubt that, for Aristotle, essence and existence are distinct concepts, since he holds that "what human nature is and the fact that man exists are not the same thing" ( Anal. The essence of horse exists in this individual horse, with the accretion of its particular qualities and of all other accidental determinations that make it to be this singular existent thing. In his view, essences do not exist in a separated universe but are to be found in the sensible beings of this world, where they have a concrete and singular mode of existence. The rejection by aristotle of this teaching of his master led him to adumbrate the real distinction between essence and existence, if not to affirm it outright. For him, essence alone exists in the strict sense, and this in the world of Ideas all else that is perceived by the senses is merely an illusion and the occasion for referring back to the world of separated substances or essences. ![]() For plato, the problem could not exist, for he conceived essence as the perfect and stable object of the intellect, devoid of the imperfections and changing character of the world of sense. The remote origins of the controversy over essence and existence are to be found in Greek philosophy, although the problem of the precise relationship between the two concepts was never stated there with the clarity to be found in its later formulations. ![]() Thomas Aquinas, sketches the use made of the doctrine in the Thomistic tradition, and concludes with a briefer account of other solutions. This article surveys the historical origins of the problem, examines in detail the solution proposed by St. ![]() The relationship between essence and existence poses a problem that was much discussed and controverted in the thirteenth century and continues to be important in the development of scholastic and Thomistic metaphysics. ![]()
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