Contingency Still Does Not Establish the Real Distinction: A Reply to Mark Pandan

Mark Pandan has responded to my post Contingency Does Not Entail The Real Distinction. Mark’s comments are thoughtful but miss the mark. For example,

“The crucial question is: could we collapse essence to creaturely esse (ens commune) thereby rendering such entity essence-existence non-composite? I think not. If anything has its essence identical to its existence, then to be what it is is to be real. Its nature demands it to exist. If it does not exist, it's not what it is. Since it is what it is, it has to exist. Hence, all essence-existence non-composites have to be necessary.”

But recall the point from my previous article. A creature’s act of existence is not “always and automatically” actual. This is just to say a creature’s act of existence is itself contingent, NOT necessary. Thus, one needs to argue — rather than just reassert — why identifying a creature with its CONTINGENT act of existence (not pure existence) would somehow render that creature necessary. Mark has not addressed this point; he just reasserts the argument I originally criticized. (And the rest of Mark’s article, while interesting, is not particularly germane to my objection.)

For Thomists a creature’s act of existence is that in virtue of which the creature is something rather than nothing. However, a creature’s act of existence (esse) is itself created/dependent. Thus, one cannot say identifying Fido with his existence would make Fido a necessary being (at least not without begging the question) because Fido's existence is itself standing in potency to actualization; Fido would not be being identified with something that is necessarily actual. (In fact, one might wonder if this is a problem for the theory of acts of existence in general: if we posit acts of existence to make Fido distinguishable from nothing, but that act of existence is not itself automatically actual, do we require another act of existence, and so on and so forth? Vicious regress, anyone? I think this problem is solvable, but I’ll save that matter for a later post.)

Think of it this way: Fido's act of existence is obviously identical to itself, yet not automatically existing. It requires actualization of its own. If that’s right, then how does identifying Fido with his act of existence suddenly make Fido a necessary being? The answer is it wouldn’t. Hence why moving from the fact of a creature being contingent to that creature’s existence being really internally distinct from its essence — on the supposition that to do so would render that creature a necessary being — is invalid.

While I thank Mark for his friendly engagement, contingency still does not establish the real distinction.

PS - Final point: a creature’s act of existence is not simply “to exist” but something more like “to be caused to exist.” In other words, we do not and cannot mean the same thing when speaking of Fido exists and God exists. Rather, to put the matter in somewhat clunky fashion, Fido’s existence is something like Fido standing in causal-relation to EXISTS! (God).