Being and Essence

Albertists strongly opposed the claim of Thomists that there is a real distinction between being (ens or esse) and essence (essentia). As Denys the Carthusian reported in his commentary on the Sentences, it was the depth of the Albertist’s response to the Thomists on this issue which caused him to switch from the Thomistic to the Albertist side. According to the Albertists, it is fundamental to the sententia ofAristotle that the substantial form and nothing else conveys being to the thing determined by this form. This being is not attributed to the thing from the outside, but flows from the substantial form, which is itself a substantial part of the thing. The essence and the being of the thing are no more distinct than the significates of a respective noun and verb: the former highlighting the thing of the act and the latter the act of the thing, as for example the noun ‘‘walk’’ signifies a distance walked or to be walked, and the verb ‘‘walk’’ the moving or traveling this distance. A similar point had already been made by Dietrich of Freiberg against Thomas Aquinas. According to the Albertists, it was Averroes who, against Avicenna, made clear that this was how Aristotle needed to be understood. That being is given by the substantial form does not mean that the form is a completely independent source of being. The substantial form is only the principle of the formal being. Besides this form there is the agent, which acts from without as an efficient cause and produces the thing, thus bringing it from non-being into being. According to Aristotle, the agent is really distinct from the thing produced, as the efficient cause is not part of the thing in the way that the formal cause is. In this sense, and only in this sense, the Albertists maintained, can one speak of a real distinction between the thing and the being of the thing caused from without. If that is what the Thomists intend, then there is no real opposition between the two schools. If however the Thomists speak of the being as conveyed by the form, then they truly depart from the Aristotelian tradition, according to the Albertists.