THE ACTUS ESSENDI METAPHYSICS OF CREATION

Aquinas held that there is a real distinction between being (esse) and essence (essentia) in creatures. After proving this real distinction, Aquinas typically adds a phrase describing this relation between essence and existence as that of potency to act. What does he mean by "potency" in this context? It surely isn't the typical use of the term as used in substance-accident or matter-form. I contend that Aquinas is stretching the typical usage of potency and act, using the terms in a manner somewhat contrary to their usual usage. Opponents of Thomism, attacked the real distinction by exploiting the typical usage of the potency-act distinction. As a result, development was needed in understanding the notion of potency and act as used within the real distinction. This paper traces that history.

2018

Summa metaphysicae ad mentem Sancti Thomae, Essays in Honor of John F. Wippel (ed. T.S. Cory and G. Doolan), 2024

In this chapter I propose to raise and to resolve a difficulty about Thomas’s metaphysics of potency and act. The difficulty concerns their application to another metaphysical distinction of his, the well-known distinction between essentia and esse, essence and being, in all created entities. The core of the difficulty is how Thomas characterizes creaturely form. On the one hand, he often presents form as a kind of act. On the other, he sometimes describes created form as a kind of potency. It is a receptive potency for the act that is being itself, esse, or (as he occasionally calls it) actus essendi. So the question is evident. If, as Aristotle teaches, potency and act somehow divide some field, namely entity, how can one thing be both? Does created form really stand on both sides of the division? After stating the problem in some detail, I sketch the sort of resolution of the difficulty that I think many Thomists today would give, and I raise a problem about it. Then I present my own resolution.

Aquinas on Passive Powers, 2021

Aquinas thinks that if we want to understand causal interactions between material substances, we cannot focus exclusively on agents and their active powers. In his view, there are also passive potencies which enable material substances to be acted upon. He claims that for every type of active potency, there is a corresponding passive potency. This article aims to clarify Aquinas's views about the passive potencies of material substances. It recovers his thinking on three key questions: First, what is the basis or source of a material substance's passive potentialities? Put otherwise, what constituents of material substances explain why they have capabilities for being acted upon? Second, how are a material substance's passive potencies identified and distinguished from one another? Lastly, are passive potencies for undergoing action the same as a substance's potencies for existing in determinate ways? For example, is a pot of water's potentiality for being heated the same as its potentiality to be hot?

2007

I am grateful for the help of many. My friends and family have supported me in intangible ways during the journey to completion. Special thanks and gratitude are due my wife, Meaghan, and children, Gregory and Emelia. In addition to their patience, love and support, they are a daily source of joy and rejuvenation.

This paper offers a case against the atomistic monism of Democritus and presents the dynamic interplay between act and potency as a compelling alternative to atomism. Starting with the act-potency distinction, I move on to discuss form, matter, and substance as examples of the act-potency distinction in the natural world. I conclude by drawing attention to Aquinas' own discover of the act-potency distinction in immaterial substances as found in his work De Ente et Essentia. The study of act and potency moves from the pure potency of prime matter to the pure actuality of God.

Thomas Aquinas’ work on the act and potency principle is rich and complex. Furthermore, his synthesis regarding the limitation of act by potency should not be labeled as purely Aristotelian, but as Clarke tried to prove, should be “Aristotelianism specified by Neoplatonism.” In all of these, it was also demonstrated that Thomas Aquinas is worthy of careful study and inquiry. Above all, one should remember that he is a devout Christian; as such, his love and passion for the truth should be admired and emulated.

This M.A. thesis develops a view of causation in terms of powers. It is argued that a powers account of causation is superior to Humean accounts, and a version of a powers account is presented. The theory of causation presented in this thesis focusses on fundamental particles and their powers. An essentialist view of powers is adopted: powers are individuated by their manifestation conditions and manifestation types, combined with the objects they are instantiated in. The type of manifestation as well as the conditions under which a power will manifest are therefore essential to any power. This thesis explicitly aims at an account of causation that is in accord with science. As a test case, in chapter 3 the account is applied to gravitational attraction as an example of causation between fundamental objects.

The Uncreated Energies in the Early Fathers. From the Apostolic Fathers to St. Maximos the Confessor

The tradition of the Orthodox Church the teaching regarding the uncreated Energies of God as taught especially by St. Dionysius the Areopagite, the Cappadocian Fathers, and St. Maximos among others, and which St. Gregory Palamas defined in a more precise way, and defended, in the fourteenth century, against Varlaam and Akyndinos (who claimed that God is absolutely transcendent and that we cannot partake of Him) is of great importance for the Orthodox Church. On this paper we will focus exclusively in what is the meaning of the word energy in St. Paul, and what is the teaching of the Apostolic Fathers and the early Fathers regarding God's energies. The importance of the teaching of the uncreated energies is fundamental to understand how God is simultaneously transcendent and immanent, incomprehensible and comprehensible, above any name, and possessing every name. In other words the teaching of the uncreated energies is necessary to understand how we can know and partake of God, and be deified in Him, through His Energies. If God did not have Energies then He would be absolutely transcendent and incommunicable in His Essence, for His Essence is beyond any knowledge and inaccessible. Definition of energeia According to the Greek English Lexicon of Liddel and Scott, energeia is: "ενεργεια : 1. Activity, operation, esp. of divine or supernatural action; magical operation. 2.Pl. Cosmic forces…3. Actuality."1 The term energeia was invented by Aristotle and he used it with the

I Introduction: The capacity for change and the capacity for action Phidias, in producing a sculpture, is acting. He is producing a sculpture by producing changes in stone, through movements and changes in his own body. We change things in part because we are things that can act on other things, and which in turn possess the capacity to be acted on. In short, we are changing things. But action also requires an end towards which motion or change are directed by our decision to act thus and so: in Phidias' case the finished statue. These requirements are inscribed into the capacity for actions, as a subclass of capacities for change. Our capacity for action places us firmly in the world of material bodies. On the surface, in Metaphysics  5, Aristotle does not discuss action-he simply discusses the capacity for change quite generally. The background to these reflections on  5 is that Aristotle thinks, that a changing world is necessary for action. To give an account of action we need to refer to capacities for change and their actualisation. Furthermore, the agent must be part of this changing world, and able to have an effect on it. Some events that we would call "actions" have the status of changes in Aristotle's Metaphysics. Correspondingly, the capacity for action is a capacity for change, and the action is a change. It is sometimes said that Aristotle has no proper place in his ontology for human action; but the claim I wish to present in this paper is that he does. 1 This suggestion can be buttressed by the physical theory of De anima and De motu animalium. Indeed, the 1 This paper is a revised version of that given at the Sorbonne on 8 th November 2003. I am indebted to the discussion on that occasion, especially with P-M. Morel, D. Lefebvre, M. Crubellier and B. Besnier. It is a pleasure to record my gratitude for the invitation to speak and for the ensuing discussion. T. Buchheim's, J. Hübner's and M. Burnyeat's criticism was also invaluable. Books of the Metaphysics (Met.) are referred to using the usual Greek letters. Chapters of  are referred to either as e.g. Ch. 3, or as  3.