Existence as Completeness? Gilson on Scotus, Thomas, and the Real Distinction

I composed this entry with Lukáš Novák in mind. I hope to secure his comments.

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Marco Santambrogio, "Meinongian Theories of Generality," Nous, December 1990, p. 662:

. . . I take existence to mean just this: an entity, i, exists iff there is a determinate answer to every question concerning it or in other words, for every F(x) either F[x/i] or ~F[x/i] holds.  The Tertium Non Datur is the hallmark of existence or reality.  This is entirely in the Meinong-Twardowski tradition.

In other words, existence is complete determinateness or completeness: Necessarily, for any x, x exists if and only if x is complete, i.e., satisfies the property version of the Law of Excluded Middle (tertium non datur).  Now I have long maintained that whatever exists is complete, but I have never been tempted by the thesis that whatever is complete exists.  My intuitions on this matter are Thomistic rather than Scotistic.

According to Etienne Gilson, Duns Scotus held that actually to exist in reality = to be complete:

. . . actual existence appears only when an essence is, so to speak, bedecked with the complete series of its determinations. (Being and Some Philosophers, Pontifical Institute, Toronto, 1952, 2nd ed. , 89)

Actual existence thus appears as inseparable from the essence when essence is taken in its complete determination. (88)

An actually existing essence is, meaning by "is" that it exists, as soon as it is fully constituted by its genus, its species, its own individual "thisness," as well as all the accidents which go to make up its being. (86)

It follows that an actually existing thing is not the result of the superaddition of existence to a complete essence, but is just an essence in its completeness. This implies that there is no distinctio realis. For if an actually existing individual essence exists in virtue of being completely determinate, then there cannot be any distinction in reality between that complete essence and its existence. If Socrates is a wholly determinate essence, then, on the Scotist view as glossed by Gilson, there is no need for anything more to make him exist: nothing needs to be added ab extra.

What we have here are two very different theories of existence.  For the Scotist, existence belong in the order of essence as the maximal determinateness of essence.  For the Thomist, existence does not belong in the order of essence but is situated 'perpendicular' to it. Is there any way rationally to decide between these views? Could there be complete nonexistent objects? If yes, then the Scotist view would stand refuted.  If no, then the Thomist view would stand refuted.

Well, why can't there be complete nonexistent objects?  Imagine the God of Leibniz, before the creation, contemplating an infinity of possible worlds, each of them determinate down to the last detail.  None of them exists or is actual.  But each of them is complete.  One of them God calls 'Charley.'  God says, Fiat Charley! And Charley exists.  It is exactly the same world which 'before' was merely possible, but 'now'  is actual.  The difference is not one of essence, but one of existence.

So, while existence entails completeness, why should completeness entail existence?  

(Other questions arise at this point which are off-topic, for example, why Charley over Barley?  Why Charley over any other world?  Must God have a reason?  And what would it be?  Would it be because Charley is the best of all possible worlds?  Is there such a things as the BEST of all possible worlds?  Why some world rather than no world?  And so on. But these questions are off-topic.  Focus like a laser on the question about the 'nature' of existence.) 

The theological imagery is supposed to help you understand the ontological point.  But we needn't bring God into it. It would also not be to the point to protest that God creates out of nothing, not out of mere possibles.  My concern here is with the nature of existence, not with the nature of  God or of divine creation. All I need for my argument is the possibility that there be maximally determinate individual essences that do not exist.  If there are, then existence is not completeness.  But one man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens. Can either side refute the other?

In the end the dispute may come down to a profound and irresolvable difference in intuitions. 

What say you, Dr. Novak?

Attributed to Robert Frost

Here:

"A liberal is a man too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel” is usually credited to American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963). Frost used the quote in January 1961 (discussing John F. Kennedy, who Frost thought was not this type of liberal) and Frost used it again in January 1962. A popular form of the quotation is: “A liberal is someone who won’t take his own side in a fight.”

William Ernest Hocking (1873-1966) wrote this in his book What Man Can Make of Man (1942): “He lends himself to the gibe that he is ‘so very liberal, that he cannot bring himself to take his own side in a quarrel.’” It is not known where Hocking got the phrase, or if Frost (who was an avid reader) was borrowing from another source.

One can be hobbled by one's virtues. There is something noble about being fair-minded, objective, and considerative of all points of view. It is the way of the philosopher, the lover of objective truth, "the spectator of all time and existence" in a stirring line from Plato's Republic. But before a man is a philosopher, he is a man of flesh and blood, brutally embedded in a brutal world in which he must stand his ground and battle his enemies. He must not allow his noble viewership of life's parade to make impossible  his marching in it.  

Why am I so Happy?

 
Every day there are multiple outrages from the Left as my country turns into a police state. Why should I be happy?
 
Well, I live in Arizona, a destination state if ever there was one, and I have lived here for going on 22 years. Today is another one of those exquisitely beautiful, halcyon, February days in the Sonoran desert. I am sitting here, windows open, shirt off.  My work is going well. My health is good. I enjoy the bliss and security of obscurity while garnering all the recognition I need. I take delight in my wife, and she in me. I have everything I could possibly want materially speaking. I am reaping the benefits of a lifetime of Italian frugality. Each day is my own. The consolations of philosophy are mine. The owl of Minerva is my friend. As dusk descends, he spreads his wings, sheltering me.  More than a consolation, philosophy and the life of the mind remain a reliable source of joy. Boethius wrote philosophy in prison, but I have reason to believe that I won't be tested in that way.  Old age is on my side. The clock is running, the format is sudden death, and though the time control is unknown, I have reason to believe that the flag will fall before a Boethian fate befalls me.
 
Most importantly, I believe that, after our brief sublunary tenure, we continue on as individuals in some way that, from this side, must remain mainly a matter of faith and speculation.  What we do now is meaningful because there is something like a future for us.  To live well we must not only hope within this life but also hope beyond it. If you believe that death spells the utter end of the individual, then I will ask you: whence the meaning of your life? Are you really fulfilled by the little meanings of the quotidian round?  Are you satisfied by yet another repetition of a paltry pleasure, a further concupiscent twitch, another unneeded material possession, one more uptick in your net worth?   Is hitting a little white ball into a hole enough to make you happy?  

A Vocation, not a Job

Heading out the door for a walk, the wife invited me along. I told her I had too much to do, that the clock was running, the format sudden death, the time-control unknown. 

"But you're retired."

I reminded her that philosophy is my vocation.  One can be retired from the largely meaningless job of teaching the unteachable, but one can never be retired from one's vocation in the proper sense of that term.

I hope to have my boots on when the flag falls.

In what state will death find you when the Reaper's scythe cuts you down?  Will it matter? Is that a question that needs to be investigated?

The Stupor Bowl is a Super Bore

Panem et circenses! 

I am no fan of spectator sports.  We have too many sports spectators and too many overpaid* professional louts. I preach the People's Sports, despite the leftish ring of that.

Remove your sorry tail from the couch of sloth and start a softball league with your friends and neighbors. Play volley ball whether in a pool or on dry land. Engage your fellow paisani in a game of bocce. (But don't call it bocce ball. Do you call tennis tennis ball?)

Or take the Thoreauvian high road, leave the People behind, and sally forth solo into the wild. As Henry said, "A man sits as many risks as he runs." Old Henry puts me in mind of Cactus Ed, the Thoreau of the American Southwest.

In Vox Clamantis in Deserto Edward Abbey opines:

Football is a game for trained apes. That, in fact, is what most of the players are — retarded gorillas wearing helmets and uniforms. The only thing more debased is the surrounding mob of drunken monkeys howling the gorillas on.

Was Abbey a racist? That depends on what a racist is. I'll leave it for you to decide what a racist is and whether Abbey was one.

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*Can anyone be 'overpaid'? If enough people like what you sell, and are willing to pay you for it, you may become rich indeed. Think of all the rich schlock novelists. Capitalist acts among consenting adults. That's the libertarian line.  Or do you prefer more government intervention in people's lives? For the record, I am not a libertarian. But I'll take a libertarian over a leftist any day.

Abbey Vox

Paradox and Contradiction between Athens and Benares

Philosophers love a paradox but hate a contradiction.  They love that which stimulates thought but are understandably averse to that which stops it dead in its tracks. 

Mystics love both. Where the discursive road ends, the mystic path begins. The mystic essays to ride contradictions, like so many koans, into the sky of the Transdiscursive.

The radical aporetician stands at the trailhead. Having travelled the road, he peers beyond without stepping onto the trail. He holds yet to reason as to that whose ultimate purpose is to clear the way for what lies beyond reason.

God and Existence: How Related?

A reader asks:

You seem to hold that, if God is identical to his existence, then God is Existence itself. Why think that? Why not think instead that, if God is identical to his existence, then he is identical to his 'parcel' of existence, as it were?
This is an entirely reasonable question. I will try to answer it.
 
First of all, when we say that God is identical to his existence, we mean that there is no real distinction in God between essence (nature) and existence in the way in which there is a real distinction in Socrates (our representative creature) between essence (nature) and existence.  It is the real distinction in Socrates that grounds his metaphysical contingency, while it is the lack of such a distinction in God that grounds his metaphysical necessity.
 
This is to say that God, unlike creatures, is ontologically simple.  In a slogan of St Augustine, God is what he has.  Thus he has his existence by being his existence.  In this one case, the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication coalesce. Why must God be simple?  Because he is the absolute reality.  If your god is not the absolute reality, then your god is not God but an idol.  The absolute cannot depend on anything else for its nature or existence on pain of ceasing to be the absolute.  It must possess aseity, from-itself-ness. 
 
Now Existence is in some way common to everything that exists, though it is not common in the manner of a property or a concept.  Thus God and Socrates have Existence in common.  If God is not identical to Existence, then he is like Socrates and must depend on Existence as something other than himself to exist.  But this violates the divine aseity.
 
Therefore, God is not only identical to his existence, he is identical to Existence itself.
 
Objection:  "If God is identical to Existence, then God alone exists, which flies in the face of the evident fact that there is a plurality of non-divine existents."
 
Reply:   The objection succeeds only if there are no different ways of existing.  But if God exists-underivatively and creatures exist-derivatively, then God's identity with Existence does not entail that God alone exists; it entails that God alone exists-underivatively.
 
The picture is this.  Existence is that which makes derivative existents exist.  If Existence did not itself exist, then nothing would exist.  So Existence itself exists.  It is identical to God.  God is the unsourced Source of everything distinct from God.  God, as Existence itself, is the Paradigm Existent.  God is at once both Existence and the prime case of Existence.
 
In this respect, God is like a Platonic Form in which all else participates.  (It is worth recalling in this connection that Aquinas speaks of God as forma formarum, the form of all forms.)  God is self-existent Existence; creatures are not self-existent, but derive their existence from self-existent Existence.
 
Objection:  "This scheme issues in something like the dreaded Third Man Regress.  If Socrates and Plato both exist by participating in Existence, which exists, then there are three things that exist, Socrates, Plato, and Existence, each of which exists by participation.  If so, there must be a second Existence, Existence-2 that Socrates, Plato and Existence-1 participate in.  But then an infinite regress is up and running, one that is, moreover, vicious."
 
Response:  The Third Man Regress is easily blocked by distinguishing the way Existence exists and the way derivative existents exist.  Socrates exists by participating in Existence; Existence exists, not by participation, but by being (identical to) Existence.
 
There is exactly one case in which existence = self-identity.  This is the case of the Paradigm Existent, which is Existence itself, which is God.  If God is God, then God exists. (Bonaventura) In every other case, existence is not self-identity.  No doubt Socrates is self-identical; but his self-identity is not the ground of his existence.