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Analysis Of St. Thomas Aquinas De Ente Et Essentia

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The very nature of being has been on the minds of philosophers for thousands of years, from pre-Socratic times to Plato, Aristotle and on. It has been a question addressed by minds such as Boethius, Avicenna, and St. Thomas Aquinas during the middle ages. Thomas Aquinas was famously knowns as the ‘angelic doctor’ as he focused a great deal of his area of study on the existence of God and of Angels. This essay then will seek to examine Aquinas’s work De Ente et Essentia (On Being and Essence) and how Aquinas views the natural order of being and essence, as well as his focus on God and the spiritual.
Aquinas begins his work, De Ente et Essentia, by identifying the concepts of intellect according to Acicenna, which are being and essence and further went on to explain the necessity to look at being and essence in relation to genus, species, and difference. He then goes on to describe being as having two definitions, the first being that ‘being’ is broken down into the ten categories, which were formulated by Aristotle, and thus placing limits on that which can possess ‘being’ …show more content…

This being the exception solely in the case of a being whose essence was its existence, meaning its very nature is to exist. This being would not conform in the same way as other being in the three ways in which being is able to multiple: by genus dividing into species, species differentiating into individuals, and through disguising what is distinct and what is received by another substance, for example heat as it may come from an independent source like the sun or be transferred to another substance like a human warming in the sunlight. Yet, as a being whose essence is existence, it would be impossible for it to multiple in such a way, as it does not contain the addition of either matter or form which will be discussed in more

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