indeed ponders deeply the “noughting” that creation ex nihilo indicates. Nevertheless, by making negativity the pulsating center of the movement of the absolute spirit, as the theological a priori of his philosophy requires, he seems to fall into the unilateral thought he so strenuously criticizes. In Hegel, the movement of the absolute spirit is simply erotic and not agapic. That is to say, absolute spirit, beginning with the emptiness that contains the promise of a fulfillment, posits from itself the difference that is then absorbed by the unity of the absolute Idea. From the beginning, all the way to the Cross, and back to the absolute spirit by means of the spirit within the absolute spirit, absolute spirit does not know an agapic love, that is, the affirmation of the other’s irreducibility. Contrary to Hegel, we can say that the gift of the singular being, its very identity, is perceived in its wholeness when the difference that traverses every being—and which allows us to say that, before God, creatures are indeed nothing—is the expression of a fullness that does not need another to be itself. For Hegel, instead, difference is the progressive and necessary fulfillment of an empty beginning. The fullness of the creative origin, as we see it, since it is the union of eros and agape, can and does decide against existing for itself alone. Difference—in the singular beings and between them and God—should thus be thought of as the gift’s availability to receive and to give. This availability is a permanent dimension of act.114
If our understanding of gift is correct, we can note with F. Ulrich that the difference the gift of being establishes between God and the world does not reside so much in the difference between divine “esse” and esse commune, for the latter also remains simple and complete, but rather, as Aquinas says, in the “non-subsistent” character of esse commune. What this adjective reveals of the dual unity of the created singular (esse-essence) is precisely its constitutive relation with the primordial giver. Non-subsistency points to the mysterious, ineffable wonder of being given to be, of depending on and belonging to the source. The positive understanding of the difference between God and the cosmos, which does not eliminate the difference or read it as contradiction, depends on the underlying idea one has of God, man, and the relationship between them. If absolute act is conceived according to the ideal that is perfect, self-contained, self-thinking thought, potency will always remain a deficiency, and the human being will always be trapped in the attempt to imitate an imaginary, self-subsistent God. If, instead, the one God is, as we saw, the richer unity (koinonia) of eros and agape, capable of creating another who is different from itself, then potency, rather than “something” left behind once esse is given and potency actualized, becomes the singular’s ongoing availability to be confirmed in being.
6. The Singular’s Perseity
The previous sections attempted to show how the category of gift can explain the dual unity of esse and essence in the concrete singular, while it also reveals the asymmetrical reciprocity between the two poles, thereby offering an account of both the contingency and the necessity proper to each created being. We need now to ponder how the perseity (esse per se, ousia) of the concrete singular can be considered in terms of gift. This reflection on substance and its relationship to the other categories that intrinsically inhere in it (traditionally called quantity, quality, relation) intends to show that the singular is both completely given to itself (esse ab) and at the same time, receiving itself, is dynamically oriented to (esse ad) the paternal origin.
Bearing in mind the ontological distinction required by creation ex nihilo, Aquinas rereads Aristotle’s characterization of substance, “to be by nature self-subsistent (kath’auto pephukos),” as “that to whose quiddity it belongs not to exist in another.”115 With this distinction, Aquinas is not rejecting the conception of substance as “to be in itself.” He is rather indicating that a created singular stands in itself (per se, kath’auto) not so much because it is the source of its own existence—this would be the case if esse were an accident of essence—but because it is given to it to be. Thus, for Aquinas, the definition of substance must include the essence (quiddity) and not only esse as in Aristotle (to be by nature self-subsistent).
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