ABSTRACT
Anthony Kenny claims in Aquinas on Being that when it comes to the topic of being, “this first-rank philosopher was thoroughly confused”1 and that it is “not possible to extract from his writings a consistent and coherent theory.”2 Indeed after closely examining Aquinas’s most important works, Kenny concludes that there are at least twelve different senses of esse at play in these texts. They are (1) specific existence, (2) individual existence, (3) substantial being, (4) accidental being, (5) common being, (6) actual being, (7) absolute being, (8) intentional being, (9) fictional being, (10) possible being, (11) predicative being and (12) identical being. The problem is that Aquinas failed to forge them into a “coherent overall account of being.”3 Kenny believes that there are three reasons for this failure. Firstly, Aquinas failed to recognize the difference between being and existence, particularly specific existence and the other types of “is.”4 Secondly, Aquinas failed to see that his theory of spiritual substances as pure form, based as it is on an untenable Platonic theory of Ideas, is incoherent. Thirdly, Aquinas identifies God with subsistent being, which catches him on the horns of a dilemma; either he makes God identical to common being, wherein God becomes the thinnest possible predicate, or God is absolute being, which leads to the absurdity that God’s name is an ill-formed formula.
