critique of the ontological argument indicate that existence is indifferent to both the reality of a concept and our understanding of it? Although there is a sense in which it could be stated that esse is not (since it does not subsist in itself), for Aquinas esse is not a mere ens rationis. It has, in a certain respect, priority over essence. Essence, in fact, relates to esse as potency to act.92 “Esse,” Aquinas states in wonder, “is the most perfect, the actuality of every act and the perfection of all perfections.”93 Only if this depth of esse is acknowledged does it become possible to indicate in what sense it does not exist.
As the actuality of every act, esse is common to all finite beings, although it cannot be predicated univocally since “received acts are diverse.”94 This entails two crucial points: first, as “the first of created things” and being present in all existing beings, esse has a quasi-unity of its own.95 Whatever is created is and, as we saw earlier, in causing their proper effects, finite beings also give esse. If esse did not have a quasi-unity, it would lose its priority and become an accident of essence. Furthermore, it would be difficult to say why, contrary to what we learn from originary experience, essence is not the cause of its being if it were true that esse proceeded from it. Second, and here we see the priority of essence over esse, this quasi-unity does not exist independently, floating, so to speak, between God and beings, as the broken mast of a ship floats free on the surface of the ocean. If it were a unity in its own right, esse would be a subject of being and not being itself. And since, in itself, esse is not limited nor can limit itself, if it were a proper unity, esse commune would be nothing but ipsum esse subsistens.96 The gift of being is a real, albeit limited, participation in the divine esse.
Aquinas explains that finite beings participate in the divine ipsum esse subsistens but not by means of formal causality. God is not the esse whereby each singular being exists.97 Whereas God’s esse is being in such a way that nothing can be added, esse commune for Aquinas is something to which nothing is added but to which something could be added.98 The nihil of creation, as we saw, prevents us both from interpreting God’s creative donation in pantheistic terms and from adopting an epistemology that would grant direct contemplation of the divine essence. God is only known through the sign (presence-gift). Esse commune therefore cannot be confused with the divine esse. Rather, esse commune is the divine being as participated in by creatures—and so distinct from them—by means of exemplar causality.99 Within a maior dissimilitudo, finite beings resemble God’s being. For Aquinas, concrete singular being images God’s being in its being (esse, unum), essence (logos), and dynamic order (amor) towards God the source.100 With a unique insight, Aquinas clarifies the similarity and difference between God’s esse and created esse in these terms: whereas God is ipsum esse subsistens, esse commune signifies “something complete and simple but not subsistent.”101 Esse, therefore, can only be predicated analogically from God and singular beings.102
The foregoing reflection on the asymmetrical reciprocity of esse and essence in Aquinas helps us to think afresh the unity proper to the concrete singular in terms of gift and to deepen the meaning of the internality of receptivity in act.103 The union of esse and essence is a mystery of gift precisely because they are given to each other and subsist in the reciprocal gift to each other. In the creative act, God co-creates esse and essence in giving one to the other so that the singular being may be.104 While remaining distinct from and ordered to each other, they are equally responsible for the being of the singular. As Aquinas says, since it does not limit itself, esse commune exists only as limited by essences. To “limit,” however, does not mean that essence has the capacity to possess the perfection of esse in its fullness. As we mentioned, the fact that esse remains a quasi-unity does not mean that essence comes from it or that esse is the ultimate subject of being. At the same time, just as esse does not exist without essence, so essence cannot be itself without esse. Therefore, neither is separated from the other or comes from the other: esse is not a proper accident of essence, nor is essence produced by esse. Thus, they do not enjoy independent existences, and they come together to form a specific finite being.105 Since esse is given to essence as act to potency, the compositum is not a union per accidens (like a horse and its rider) but a substantial one. They are both principles of the one being. Wippel accurately puts it as follows: while esse “actualizes . . . essence . . . , simultaneously the essence principle receives and limits the act of being. . . . Each enjoys its appropriate priority in the order of nature . . . with respect to its particular ontological function within a given entity.”106 The reciprocity of esse and essence does not eliminate the proper priorities of each principle. The difference and the order remain and are what make an inexhaustible whole.
If with Aristotle we acknowledge that the “to be” of a singular being involves a limited participation in act (being-at-work-staying-itself) and, with Aquinas, that form receives esse while at the same time essence limits esse, then the “to be” of every being is this ongoing communication of esse that makes an essence be while, at the same time, esse is received by the essence that esse causes to be. The unity of essence and esse that constitutes every created being is a gift given to the concrete singular that remains in being inasmuch as it ontologically participates in its own being given—this is also why the “singular” gift is perceived in its wholeness only when its relation with God is affirmed. Here we can return to the understanding of act as a complete and open principle. Esse and essence, Schmitz clarifies, are “radically open to each other in the constitution of a single entity. They do not achieve this unity by themselves. If God’s creative act is left out of the picture, it is impossible to explain how a non-existent and merely possible essence can determine the creature’s act of existence.” Each principle is incomplete in itself. It needs the other to be in one concrete singular. Thus, Schmitz concludes, “Each principle is inherently implicated in the other through the causal activity of the First Cause, and by a subordination of the one (potency) to the other (act) rather than by a reciprocity of two complete principles.”107
Interpreting the singular’s unity in terms of gift as the relation between esse and essence requires acknowledging a certain dependency of act on potency. Is it not the case that this relative “dependency” of act on potency, or, in the earlier expression, the “received act,” eliminates the principle of act? Do the mutual dependence of esse and essentia and their asymmetrical reciprocity—that esse is limited by essence, and so receives it in itself, and that essence is actualized by esse while limiting it—jeopardize act altogether? Hegel, in fact, contended that what we here consider an asymmetrical reciprocity between esse and essence, rather than expressing the gift-ness of the concrete singular being, is merely an expression of the law of contradiction. Contradiction, according to Hegel, is abhorred by common thinking. It thus tends to disguise contradiction under “the process of relating and comparing.”108 Yet Hegel claims that everything is “inherently contradictory.” Not by chance, contradiction plays a pivotal role in Hegel’s system: if in the first part of his Science of Logic, the logic of being, contradiction is presented as infinity, in the second, the logic of essence, it is contradiction that illumines the livingness of anything, and hence of the spirit as such.109 The universal, “abstract self-identity is not as yet a livingness” because life is the “power to hold and endure the contradiction within it.”110 Without contradiction there is no movement, only dead identity. “Only when the manifold terms have been driven to the point of contradiction do they become active and lively towards one another, receiving in contradiction the negativity which is the indwelling pulsation of self-movement and spontaneous activity.”111 To the terms Hegel uses (e.g., infinite-finite, father-son) we could add act-potency, esse-essence. The gift-ness of the concrete singular and its sheer dynamic, in his view, would not be anything but the denial of one by the other. Contradiction, Hegel contends, does not indicate imperfection or a defect to be eliminated. On the contrary, it is that which permits absolute activity. While it is undoubtedly fundamental that, as Hegel indicates, in a certain sense a relation always goes both ways—and hence there has to be what we call asymmetrical reciprocity—what is contrary to our view is that the unity’s liveliness of the singular is owed not to the singular’s nature as gift but to the power of the negative. Hegel claims that every thing and notion “is essentially a unity of distinguished and distinguishable moments, which, by virtue of the determinate, essential difference, pass over into contradictory moments.”112 The
