The Semantics, Metaphysics and Theology of the Eucharist Gyula Klima Setting up the problems When in a Roman Catholic church during mass the priest utters the words: “This is my body”, the substance of the bread is supposed to be turned into the body of Christ to be consumed by members of his flock in the rite of Holy Communion. This may appear to be a fairly straightforward and relatively uncontroversial description of an everyday miracle that everybody familiar with Western culture knows about. Yet, when we come to think of it, this relatively uncontroversial description gives rise to a huge number of highly contested questions that may come under the headings listed in the title of this lecture: semantical, metaphysical, and theological. Actually, it may sound a little surprising that there even are semantical issues involved here: after all, don’t we at least understand quite well the words used in and describing the ceremony? Upon reflection, however, it turns out that there are some rather baffling issues even concerning who and what exactly are referred to by the words of the priest: who says what about what? When the priest says: “This is my body” he certainly cannot be talking ex persona sua, talking about himself and his own body, which is definitely not what he offers to his flock. But is he then speaking in the person of Christ, quoting his words at the last supper? Well, since Christ was not speaking in English, or Greek or Latin for that matter, the priest is not quoting his words, but is rather recalling what Christ said, probably in Aramaic. But then wouldn’t the demonstrative pronoun uttered by the priest have to refer to the bread Christ held in his hand and not to the one the priest holds up? Well, perhaps this much should be enough to whet the appetite of anyone semantically inclined for Milo Crimi’s lecture, in which he is going to address such issues as they arose in the historical context of medieval scholasticism, indeed, in the technical context of the medieval theory of reference, namely, the theory of supposition. However, mentioning this historical theoretical context also highlights the fact that there is more semantic trouble involved in interpreting the rite than just the semantics of the words used or mentioned by the priest. In the very description of what constitutes the miracle, namely, the conversion of the substance of the bread into the body of Christ, while its species, its sensible accidents remain the same, we are bound to use some technical terms of scholastic metaphysics. Thus, without the clarification of the meanings of these terms, we may easily miss the point of the doctrine. But, to add to our troubles, it is not enough if we just provide some intuitive descriptions of what is meant by these unfamiliar words by simply using more familiar ones. For in the intervening intellectual history not only terminologies have changed, but so have the entire conceptual frameworks providing their meanings. Indeed, the very idea of how our words latch onto what they are supposed to express has changed. In other words, the construal of the basic semantic relations among words, concepts, and things themselves have become reinterpreted many times in many different schools of thought. It is only some parts of this conceptual tangle that we can attempt to untangle here, especially in the lectures of Josh Hochschild, Giovanni Ventimiglia, and Dave Twetten, as well as in the second half of the present lecture, when I will illustrate these problems through Aquinas’ treatment of the concrete issue of the continued existence of the species of bread and wine without inhering in a substance, and some of the historical, conceptual ramifications it yielded. But besides this “problem of persistence” of the accidents of bread and wine, we shall have to delve also into other specifically metaphysical problems engendered by the miracle. How is the body of Christ really there, how can it be in Heaven and on several altars at the same time (the “problem of real presence”)? What happens to the substance of the bread and the wine (the “problem of conversion”)? Just to mention a few, the most salient purely metaphysical issues. However, even those lectures of this conference that will directly address these purely metaphysical issues, will also have to take into account the conceptual changes I just alluded to, especially given the fact that some of these conceptual changes were themselves catalyzed by the problematic of the Eucharist. We shall see this amply illustrated in the lectures of Turner Nevitt, dealing with Aquinas, Richard Cross, discussing Scotus, Calvin Normore, focusing on Ockham and Wyclif, Noah Hahn, confronting issues raised by the Eucharist in Lutheran scholastic metaphysics, and Dániel Schmal, analyzing Descartes’ struggles with the problem of real presence. But, of course, all this history, with all its conceptual changes, is the history of a theological issue, which itself was articulated in a number of different ways in different traditions in different regions, in the context of different rituals. This variety of traditions is going to be illustrated, not without reference, though, to the above-mentioned semantical and metaphysical issues, in the lectures of György Geréby and István Perczel, dealing with the Greek tradition, Benedetta Contin, presenting the Armenian tradition, and Alex Treiger, bringing in the Christian Arabic tradition, to set the stage for the more detailed discussions of the Western scholastic tradition and its historical conceptual ramifications leading up to the present time. But challenges in our present time are not restricted to dealing with the conceptual tensions between traditional articulations of the mystery and our modern conceptual framework. In our present conceptual framework, we have our own specifically theological challenges as well, as will be illustrated by the talks of Ross McCullough and Andrew Pinsent. Well, this is at least one way to systematize the rich program ahead of us. Indeed, the volume stemming from this meeting will be even richer, highlighting more aspects of the miracle of the Eucharist, as you can see from our list of participants, listing not only our presenters in the program, but also our non-presenting discussants and contributors to the volume. (Eucharist Conference Participants and Abstracts) Aquinas on the “the problem of persistence” In the rest of this lecture, then, I will present as it were “a case study” of one metaphysical problem stemming from the Roman Catholic interpretation of the miracle, namely, the persistence of the accidents of bread and wine without their substance, as handled by Aquinas. What follows is a somewhat “retooled” version of a lecture I gave at Notre Dame in 1997: “Natural Necessity and Eucharistic Theology in the Late 13th Century”; University of Notre Dame, October 10, 1997. In the meantime, several other treatments of Aquinas’ solution of the problem have cropped up, but perhaps not paying so much attention to the influence of the Avicennean interpretation of Aristotle, set against Averroes’ that prevailed at the time in the Arts Faculty of the University of Paris, provoking the (in)famous condemnations of 1277. See e.g. Paul J. J. M. Bakker, “La Raison et Le Miracle: Les Doctrines Eucharistiques (c. 1250- c. 1400.),” PhD Dissertation, Nijmegen, 1999Edward Schillebeeckx, L'économie sacramentelle du salut : réflexion théologique sur la doctrine sacramentaire de saint Thomas, à la lumière de la tradition et de la problématique sacramentelle contemporaine, trans. Benoît-Dominique de la Soujeole (Studia Fribourgensia 95) (Fribourg: Academic Press, 2004). For shorter pieces, see Reinhard Hütter, “Transubstantiation Revisited: Sacra Doctrina, Dogma, and Metaphysics,” in Ressourcement Thomism: Sacred Doctrine, the Sacraments, & the Moral Life, ed. Reinhard Hütter and Matthew Levering (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America, 2010), pp. 21-79; Bruce D. Marshall, “The Whole Mystery of Our Salvation: Saint Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharist as Sacrifice,” in Rediscovering Aquinas and the Sacraments: Studies in Sacramental Theology, ed. Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais (Chicago, IL: Hillenbrand Books, 2009), pp. 39-64. In his Commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas sets up the problem as follows: “… whoever separates the definition from the definitum posits two contradictories to be true at the same time. For the very thing that is a man is a rational, mortal animal. And so, if a man is posited to be and not to be a rational, mortal animal, then a man is posited to be and not to be. But the definition of an accident is that it is in a substance; therefore, even in the definitions of single accidents one has to posit a substance. Thus, since God cannot make contradictories true at the same time, He cannot even make an accident without a substance.” Praeterea, quicumque separat definitionem a definito, ponit duo contradictoria esse simul vera: quia hoc ipsum quod est homo, est animal rationale mortale; et ita si ponatur esse homo et non esse animal rationale mortale, ponitur esse homo et non esse. Sed definitio accidentis est quod inest substantiae; unde etiam in definitione singulorum accidentium oportet quod ponatur substantia. Ergo cum deus non possit facere contradictoria simul esse vera, neque facere poterit quod accidens sit sine substantia.” 4SN, d. 12, q. 1, a. 1a, obj. 2 In order that we can fully appreciate the strength of this argument as well as the reply Aquinas provides to it, we should dwell a little bit on some of its assumptions not quite spelled out in the argument itself. The first, commonly endorsed presupposition is that God cannot make contradictories true. As is well-known, this was understood to not impose any limitation on divine omnipotence, in the sense of not placing any lack of power in God. A nice illustration of this doctrine can be found in a booklet by Armandus de Bellovisu, one of Aquinas’s immediate disciples, entitled Explicationes Terminorum Theologicorum, Philosophicorum et Logicorum. Armandus de Bellovisu: Explicationes Terminorum Theologicorum, Philosophicorum et Logicorum, Wittebergae, 1623, p. 28: “… et illud quod non potest facere dicitur impossibile, non propter defectum divinae potentiae, sed propter defectum rei factibilis quae non est capax. Sicut magister in theologia de potentia absoluta potest docere theologiam, sed quod non possit docere asinum non est defectus potentiae in magistro, sed est defectus asini, qui non est capax doctrinae.” Armandus’s analogy is that just as the fact that a teacher cannot teach a donkey theology does not involve any defect in his teaching abilities, but rather a defect in the donkey’s ability to receive knowledge, so the fact that God cannot make contradictories true does not involve any defect in his creative power, but rather a defect in the contradictories’ ability to receive being. The second, also universally accepted assumption is that the quidditative definition of a thing signifies the thing’s nature. The third common assumption is that denying of a thing something that is involved in the thing’s quidditative definition results in a contradiction: because positing a thing in existence to which its quidditative definition applies is positing the thing’s nature in existence, since the thing’s nature is nothing, but the determination of its existence (say, a cat’s nature determines a cat’s existence to be a cat-life, as opposed to, say, a dog-life, etc.). But then, taking away anything that belongs to this determination would destroy the existence thus determined; so, the thing posited to be existing in this nature could not exist in this nature, which is a contradiction. The fourth assumption is that “something which is in a subject” [quod est in subjecto], or some equivalent formulation [such as ens in alio], is the quidditative definition of an accident, or at least a description having the force of a quidditative definition, based on what Aristotle says at the beginning of his Categories. These assumptions obviously entail that the claim that an accident exists without a subject is contradictory, and hence that it cannot be made true even by divine power. But this conclusion would mean that the miracle of the Holy Eucharist would be impossible; therefore, one of these assumptions has to be discarded by a theologian. However, none of these assumptions is easily dismissible. Eliminating the first would go directly against the first principle, the principle of non-contradiction. Rejecting the second would be contrary to what is meant by a quidditative definition. Denial of the third would again be contrary to what it means to have something involved in the thing’s quidditative definition. And finally, rejecting the fourth would seem to undermine the very point of the Aristotelian distinction between substance and accident. Aquinas’s solution Yet, Aquinas’s reply takes aim at this last assumption. He first points out that the usual way of quoting the definition of substance and accident is in conflict with Avicenna’s conclusion according to which the existence of a thing cannot figure in its definition. (We shall hear more about this point in David Twetten’s lecture.) Then, on the basis of this observation, Aquinas moves on to show what should be regarded as the correct interpretation of the definition of substance, and, correspondingly, that of accident. Finally, he points out that with this understanding of the definition of accident there is no contradiction involved in the claim that an accident miraculously exists without a subject: “… as Avicenna proves in his Metaphysics, ‘[something] existing in itself’ is not the definition of ‘substance’: because this [description] does not present its quiddity, but its being, and its being is not its quiddity, for otherwise it could not be a genus. And this is so, because ‘being’ cannot be common in the way a genus is common, since the singular things contained in a genus are different by their being. Rather, the definition or quasi-definition of a substance is that it is a thing that acquires or demands being [esse] not in something else. Likewise, ‘[something] existing in a subject’ is not the definition of an accident, but rather it is that it is a thing that demands being in something else. And this is never separated from an accident, nor can it be separated. For the thing that is an accident, by reason of its quiddity, always demands to be in something else. But it can happen that a thing does not get what it demands by reason of its quiddity, because of the action of divine power. Thus, it is clear that making an accident without a substance is not separating the defnition from its definitum. And if sometimes this is said to be the definition of accident, it should be understood in the above desribed way, because, for the sake of brevity, authors occasionally do not provide a complete, proper definition; rather, they just touch on the things from which one can gather the definition.” “Ad secundum dicendum, quod sicut probat Avicenna in sua Metaph., per se existere non est definitio substantiae: quia per hoc non demonstratur quidditas ejus, sed ejus esse; et sua quidditas non est suum esse; alias non posset esse genus: quia esse non potest esse commune per modum generis, cum singula contenta in genere differant secundum esse; sed definitio, vel quasi definitio, substantiae est res habens quidditatem, cui acquiritur esse, vel debetur, ut non in alio; et similiter esse in subjecto non est definitio accidentis, sed e contrario res cui debetur esse in alio; et hoc nunquam separatur ab aliquo accidente, nec separari potest: quia illi rei quae est accidens, secundum rationem suae quidditatis semper debetur esse in alio. Sed potest esse quod illud quod debetur alicui secundum rationem suae quidditatis, ei virtute divina agente non conveniat; et sic patet quod facere accidens esse sine substantia, non est separare definitionem a definito; et si aliquando hoc dicatur definitio accidentis, praedicto modo intelligenda est definitio dicta: quia aliquando ab auctoribus definitiones ponuntur causa brevitatis non secundum debitum ordinem, sed tanguntur illa ex quibus potest accipi definitio.” 4SN, d. 12, q. 1, a. 1a, ad 2-um There are a number of points in this passage that must not escape our attention if we want to understand properly the significance of Aquinas’s solution. First of all, St. Thomas does not reject here any of the philosophical assumptions listed above exclusively on the basis of the conflict between the claim they entail and an unquestionable theological conclusion. Rather, this conclusion only signals for him that there must be something wrong with at least one of these assumptions, whence it has to be revised in the light of further careful, philosophical analysis. So, it is not a faith-trumps-reason-style pseudo-solution, which was actually the attitude of the Latin Averroists, those alleged free thinkers of Aquinas’ time. Cf. Klima, G. “Ancilla Theologiae vs. Domina Philosophorum: Thomas Aquinas, Latin Averroism, and the Autonomy of Philosophy”, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 26: What is Philosophy in the Middle Ages? Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (SIEPM) Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1998; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co., pp. 393-402. The philosophical analysis in question is provided by Avicenna, a non-Christian philosopher, and an outstanding Aristotelian authority. (To be sure, it has to be noted here that Siger of Brabant, in his commentary on the Metaphysics, when he considers Avicenna’s relevant arguments, quite flatly states that the authority of Avicenna should not be given credence here, since his position is based on error.) “Ad auctoritatem Avicennae dicitur quod non est ei credendum quoniam erravit.” Siger de Brabant: Quaestiones in Metaphysicam, (ed. A. Maurer), Louvain-la-Neuve: Éditions de l’Institute Supérieur de philosophie, 1983, Introductio, q. 7, p.35. The details of the Avicennean argument indicated by Thomas are difficult to interpret, but the gist of the idea seems to be quite clear. Suppose that what the term ‘substance’ signifies, the quiddity of substance as such, is the same as what the term ‘being’ signifies in all substances. Then the term ‘substance’ would be common to all substances in the same way as the term ‘being’ is. However, since ‘being’ cannot be a genus, in that case ‘substance’ would not be a genus either, which is false. Hence, if all the other premises are true, then we have to reject the initial assumption, namely, that what the term ‘substance’ signifies, the quiddity of substance, is the same as what the term ‘being’ signifies in all substances. The only questionable premise, namely, that ‘being’ is not a genus, is briefly justified by the following consideration. A generic term signifies something that is common to all individuals that fall under it. But the term ‘being’ signifies not what is common to all individuals that fall under it, but it precisely signifies that on account of which they differ from one another, namely, their being. Therefore, the term cannot be common to all these individuals in the way a genus is. Well, perhaps, one might have qualms about this argument to the effect that according to Aquinas a genus does not signify one common thing any more than the term ‘being’ does, and so the alleged difference — namely, that while the genus signifies something common to all its inferiors, the term ‘being’ signifies something that distinguishes these inferiors — cannot serve to establish the distinctness of what they signify. But perhaps we can quickly allay such worries by pointing out that even though what the genus signifies is not one common thing, but rather the individualized natures of the things that fall under it, nevertheless, these things, insofar as they fall under the genus do not differ from one another on account of these individualized natures. On the contrary, the individualized natures signified in the individuals by the genus are precisely the reason why all these individuals fall under the same genus. On the other hand, given the convertibility of unity and being, these beings, each one of them, are individuals distinct from one another precisely on account of the fact that they have distinct acts of being, and these distinct acts are precisely what is signified in them by the term ens. But all these issues will be carefully discussed in David Twetten’s lecture, so I leave the matter there. In any case, whether or not the argument as presented here is conclusive sub specie aeternitatis, its conclusion certainly allows a more sophisticated analysis of the usual formula of the definition or quasi-definition of accident. For if what the definition of an entity signifies in this entity is one thing, and what the term ens signifies in the same entity is another, then a formula containing ens in place of the generic term of a definition cannot be regarded as a definition signifying the quiddity of this entity. Consequently, it is wrong to construe the quasi-definitions of substance and accident, namely, ens per se and ens in alio, respectively, as consisting of the quasi-generic term ens, and the quasi-differences per se and in alio. But it is only this understanding of these formulae that would allow the objections to the doctrine of the holy Eucharist to proceed, for it is only this understanding of these formulae that would entail that an accident without a subject would have to be an entity that lacks something from its quiddity, namely, an inherent act of being (esse inhaerens), the act of being in a subject (esse in subiecto). So, the point of Aquinas’s rejection of our fourth assumption above is that the usual formula, or any equivalent formulation, cannot be taken as a quidditative definition of accident, provided it is interpreted as signifying the act of being of accidents, and specifying what kind of act it is. His reason for this rejection is not the conflict with a theological doctrine, but the general Avicennean consideration concerning quidditative definitions, according to which such definitions cannot signify (by their quasi-generic term) and specify (by their quasi-difference) the kind of act of being that the entity to which such a definition applies is supposed to have. But this solution is obviously incomplete until one tells what, then, the correct definition of accident is, or rather, what the proper understanding of the usual formula should be. What Aquinas provides here as an answer is in perfect agreement with the requirement that a quidditative definition should signify the quiddity of the thing defined (that is to say, of the thing to which the definition applies). He says that ens in alio should be interpreted as signifying a thing which by its nature demands an act of being in something else. Obviously, in this reply everything hinges on how we understand the phrase res cui debetur esse in alio, which, taking into consideration its context as well, I translated in my previous sentence as ‘a thing which [by its nature] demands an act of being in something else’. The crucial question here, therefore, is how we should understand the possibility that a thing can lack something demanded by its nature, as opposed to the impossibility and self-contradiction that a thing could lack something from its nature. As is usually the case with difficult metaphysical questions, a relatively well-understood, mundane example can be helpful here in clarifying the relevant conceptual relationships. One such example is provided by what Aquinas says about how the nature of heavy bodies demands that they should be down, that is, near the center of the universe, which, nevertheless, does not mean that it would entail a contradiction for a heavy body to be up, that is, removed from the center. As he writes: “Nothing prohibits something not to have the cause of something in its nature, which nevertheless it has from some other cause. For example, a heavy body does not have it from its nature that it should be up, however, it does not involve a contradiction for a heavy body to be up, but it would involve a contradiction for it to be up by its nature …” “Nihil enim prohibet aliquid non habere in sua natura causam alicuius, quod tamen habet illud ex alia causa: sicut grave non habet ex sua natura quod sit sursum, tamen grave esse sursum, non includit contradictionem; sed grave esse sursum secundum suam naturam contradictionem includeret.” De Unitate Intellectus , c. 5 So, for a heavy body to be up is not incompatible with its nature. What would be incompatible in this way would be for the heavy body to lack from its nature the disposition to be down, when nothing forces it to be up. Clearly, Aquinas’ point is that when something that is involved in the nature of the thing is merely dispositional, then there is no contradiction involved in the fact that a powerful external agent can overcome this natural disposition, and can force the thing in question to be in a way in which it would not be, were it not for the contrary action of this agent: “That something fails to be in its natural and requisite disposition can only come about only by reason of a cause dragging it outside its disposition: for a heavy body is moved upward only by something throwing it ...” “Quod autem aliquid deficiat a sua naturali et debita dispositione, non potest provenire nisi ex aliqua causa trahente rem extra suam dispositionem, non enim grave movetur sursum nisi ab aliquo impellente...” ST1 q. 49, a. 1. So, a powerful agent can overcome what is dictated by the thing’s natural disposition in that it may force the thing to have an actual property which without the influence of the agent it would not have. However, if the disposition itself is involved in the thing’s nature, so that eliminating that disposition would destroy the thing’s nature, then this disposition is inseparable from the thing even by an infinite power. The reason for this is that the separation in the sense that the thing would still exist while its nature is destroyed would involve the contradiction that the thing should both exist and not exist, since the destruction of the thing’s nature is nothing but the destruction of the thing itself, given that the act of being of the nature of the thing is the act of being of the thing itself. Now, applying these considerations to the case of the accidents maintained by divine power without their subjects, we can explicate St. Thomas’s solution in the following manner. When the substance of the bread is converted into the body of Christ, and thereby it ceases to be the subject of its accidents, the accidents can be maintained in their existence by divine power in the same way as heavy bodies can be kept in place by a force pulling them upwards even when they lose their support. For example, the roof of a house could be kept up in the air by a helicopter even if the walls that supported the roof were destroyed by an earthquake. Clearly, such a situation would not entail any contradiction whatsoever. The roof would not cease to be a heavy body, and thus it would still preserve its natural disposition to fall when it is unsupported, even if it actually does not fall, because of the force keeping it from following what is demanded by this disposition. Indeed, that it did not lose this disposition is clearly demonstrated by the fact that it still needs the force to keep it from falling. Had it lost this disposition, it would not need the force to keep it from falling. For to have this disposition is precisely to behave in the way demanded by the disposition, provided that nothing interferes, and thus not to have it is not to behave in the way demanded by the disposition, even when nothing interferes. But the same goes for the accidents without their subject in the miracle. Given the fact that they are accidents, they have a nature that involves a disposition demanding that they should exist in a subject, given that their being is being in a subject (their esse is inesse), at least dispositionally. Therefore, anything that would take away that disposition would destroy that nature, and thus the accident itself, whence to posit an accident in being without that natural disposition would be to posit contradictories. However, this does not mean that the accident cannot be preserved in its being, leaving that natural disposition intact, and yet without the actual realization of what that disposition demands, given the fact that the actual demand of that disposition can be overcome by a greater power. There are, therefore, two crucial points in Aquinas’s solution. The first is a negative point, stating that the usual definitional formula is not to be understood as defining what kind of entities accidents are in terms of specifying what sort of act of being such kind of entities must actually have. The other is an affirmative point, which states that the customary formula should be understood as defining accidents by specifying their nature in terms of a disposition which demands a certain kind of being. To have that disposition involved in the nature of the thing, however, means only that if nothing interferes with the natural operation of the thing, then the thing will have what is demanded by that disposition, namely, an inherent act of being. But this is not incompatible with the case when there is an all-powerful agent that does interfere with the natural operation of the thing and sustains it in a non-inherent act of being. However, even if this solution may work, it is important to note here how heavily it relies on an Avicennean interpretation of Aristotle, including the famously controversial thesis of the real distinction between essence and existence. No wonder, then, that the Latin Averroists of the Arts Faculty of Aquinas’ time, who flatly rejected Avicenna’s approach, took a fideistic stance to the issue of the Eucharist. “Unde sophistice quidam arguunt credentes naturali ratione ostendere et demonstrare quod causa prima possit facere quod accidens existat sine subiecto illius accidentis, propter hoc quod causa prima est causa omnium causarum mediarum accidentis inter ipsam et accidens, et ideo sola facere possit quod existat accidens, quamquam accidenti nulla existat aliarum causarum accidentis; et cum substantia sit aliqua causa accidentis, poterit facere ut sine substantia subsistat accidens. Ratio, ut manifeste apparet, deficit secundum ea quae prius dicta sunt. Ut tamen sane intelligatur, sciendum est quod primariam causam posse facere accidens existere sine subiecto illius accidentis confitemur. Hoc tamen est non propter istam rationem: est enim oratio conclusa peior seipsa non conclusa.” Les Quaestiones super Librum de Causis de Siger de Brabant, ed. Marsala, A., Publications Universitaires: Louvain, Béatrice-Nauwelaerts: Paris, 1972, p. 41. Furthermore, Aquinas’ handling of the problem of the persistence of accidents is clearly dependent on his interpretation of what the Aristotelian description of accidents signifies. Nevertheless, the issue here is not just a matter of mere semantics. For the question is not whether by a clever reinterpretation of our terms we can turn an originally contradictory claim into a non-contradictory one. The question rather is whether in keeping with the original intention of the Aristotelian description, one is still forced to conclude that attributing non-inherent existence to accidents is contradictory or not. But then, this naturally leads to the further question of whether the original Aristotelian intention should be interpreted as defining accidents in terms of specifying the kind of act of being these entities have, or rather as defining them in terms of their nature, which, being the kind of nature it is, demands inherent existence. And it is at this point that the question will directly attach to the general problem of the real distinction between essence and existence. For given that a quidditative definition signifies the essence of the thing defined, the question in fact is whether the significatum of the definition in this thing will be the same as, or distinct from, what the terms ‘ens’ and ‘esse’ signify in the same thing, and thus whether the definition directly provides a specification of the kind of esse the thing has, or rather only a specification of the thing’s nature, which then would determine the kind of esse it requires. Indeed, through these considerations, the issue is also closely related to the question of the analogy vs. univocity of being. In any case, from Siger’s discussion in the Metaphysics-commentary it seems to be quite clear that he regards the difference between the rationes essendi of substance and accident as the ultimate foundation of the claim that the notion of being is analogous, whence it cannot be a genus. However, since he rejects the real distinction thesis, he still cannot go along with Aquinas’ solution of the problem of persistence. By contrast, if one were to allow that the esse of an accident is an act of being in the same sense as the act of being of a substance is, regardless of whether the accident actually inheres or not, then the contradiction would not even pose a threat, for then the miracle would simply consist in “detaching”, as it were, the relation of actual inherence from the accident in question, while maintaining its unchanged being in its unchanged nature (which actually may be the same item in reality), since this unchanged nature accounts only for the aptitude to have this relation or mode of inherence “attached” to it, if no greater power “detaches” it. Now this, unless I’m thoroughly mistaken, is Scotus’s approach to the matter. In any case, this is the conception of the inherence of accidents he advances in his Metaphysics-commentary. Joannis Duns Scoti Opera Omnia, t. 7, Quaestiones subtilissimae super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, Parisiis, apud Ludovicum Vivès, 1893, lb. 7, q, 1, pp. 350-355. But, luckily, we have Richard Cross here, who can straighten me out concerning this issue. In any case, in his Metaphysics-commentary, Siger established the accidents’ absolute dependence on substance on the basis of rejecting what he took to be Avicenna’s error in interpreting Aristotle. Siger de Brabant: Quaestiones in Metaphysicam, (ed. A. Maurer), Louvain-la-Neuve: Éditions de l’Institute Supérieur de philosophie, 1983, Introductio, q. 7, p. 34, ll. 30-40. Cf. “Ad aliud, quod similiter fuit medium Thomae (ScG, II, 52), dicitur quod esse per se subsistens, quod est maxime proprie esse et actualissimum, illud est unum tantum, scilicet Esse Primum. Esse tamen posterius et causatuum, quod accedit ad naturam potentiae, non est unum sed plura, secundum quod sunt plura entia causata. Et tu arguis quod esse illud, secundum quod esse est, non est multiplicatum; ergo multiplicatur per aliquid cuius est esse illud. Et dicendum quod bene argueres si esse in omnibus entibus causatis esset unius rationis: tunc enim non multiplicaretur nisi per aliquid additum sibi. Nunc autem non est unius rationis in omnibus entibus. Et ideo ex sola multiplicatione rationis essendi multiplicatur esse in entibus. Nec potest ratio essendi multiplicari per aliquam rationem sibi additam, quia non est aliqua ratio sibi addita. Omnis enim ratio est essendi ratio. Ex hoc enim probat Aristoteles IIIo hujus quod ens non potest esse genus.” Ibid. pp. 36-37. And yet, it was precisely Avicenna’s “essentialism” that allowed Thomas to interpret this dependence in terms of an aptitude to inhere rather than in terms of actual inherence. But Aquinas’s solution is also radically dependent on his Avicennean thesis of the real distinction and the doctrine of the analogy of being, both of which are rejected by Scotus. So, an interesting historical-hermeneutical question stemming from these considerations is the following: exactly how could this new type of solution emerge? What conceptual changes took place between Thomas’s and Scotus’s time that allowed such a radical reinterpretation of the fundamental Aristotelian distinction between substance and accident? Again, we can rely on Richard Cross for addressing these questions for us. What brought down the 13th-century “cathedral of thought”? But the further, really intriguing lessons we may learn from such investigations concern the broader issues I indicated at the beginning of this paper. For what is really interesting in the apparently ever greater “autonomy” that accidents seem to have gained through their “reification” in the discussions of the theologians of the late 13th and early 14th centuries is that the semantics of the discourse concerning these easily “detachable” accidents is very much like the semantics of the discourse concerning simple substances (such as angels). But this, it would appear, might provide a perfectly good motivation for attempts to simplify the semantics of discourse concerning all mundane entities along these lines. Indeed, this was the tack taken by William Ockham, thereby directly pointing the way toward “the great semantic schism” of the later Middle Ages, caused by the emergence of 14th-century nominalism, to be presented in more detail to us by Calvin Normore, also pointing the way of Ockham’s nominalist heritage toward Luther, to be taken even further by the talk of Noah Hahn. In fact, Ockham’s great Parisian systematizer, John Buridan, pointed out that the (both semantically and metaphysically very much opposed) Scotist and Ockhamist answers to the problem have the common implication that theologians in general have a concept of accidents radically different from that of Aristotle. Buridan, J., Quaestiones in Aristotelis Metaphysicam: Kommentar zur Aristotelischen Metaphysik, Paris, 1518; reprint, Frankfurt a. M.: Minerva G.M.B.H., 1964, lb. 4, q. 6. For an interesting discussion, see Bakker, P.J.J.M., “Aristotelian Metaphysics and Eucharistic Theology: John Buridan and Marsilius of Inghen on the Ontological Status of Accidental Being,” in: J. M. M. H. Thijssen and J. Zupko (eds.), The Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy of John Buridan, Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 2001 (Medieval and Early Modern Science, 2), pp. 247–264. For on the Ockhamist theory of concepts, endorsed and further developed by Buridan himself, any categorematic concept is either absolute or connotative. But on his analysis, Aristotle’s concept of any accident, even as conceived by means of a concept expressed by an abstract term, such as ‘whiteness’, must be connotative, for any whiteness on Aristotle’s conception must be the whiteness of something. However, on the theologians’ conception ‘whiteness’ is an absolute term, expressing an absolute concept. Thus, Ockham and the rest of Christian theologians on Buridan’s Ockhamist analysis do not have the same conception of accidents in general that Aristotle himself did. Therefore, given the foundational character of the distinction between substance and accident in Aristotelian metaphysics, Aristotle and the theologians cannot be regarded as having the same conceptual idiom. So, even if Ockham was not the religious heretic, philosophical skeptic, or general destroyer of the scholastic synthesis that later (mostly Catholic) critics of his nominalism tend to depict him as, there is something in Ockham’s nominalism that, viewed from the perspective of later conceptual developments, definitely points in the direction of these developments. In particular, Ockham’s nominalism points in the direction of the modern separation of religious (theological) and secular (philosophical and scientific) discourse, the synthesis of which was one of the most important achievements of the great metaphysical theological systems of the 13th century, especially, of the system of Thomas Aquinas. But the picture is quite intriguingly similar on the other, let me say, realist side of the story. From Scotus through Scotists through Wyclif to Hus, we also have a quite clearly traceable line of conceptual developments, to be highlighted for us in the conference volume by Ian Levy (who, unfortunately, cannot participate in this meeting because of his teaching duties). So, to conclude with getting back to my “case study”, I should say that although such a case study may be interesting in itself, the more fundamental rationale for this study of Aquinas’ solution, along with the allusions to some of its opponents, as well as the historical, conceptual ramifications of the different solutions of his later opponents, is that it can bring into sharp focus certain basic conceptual tensions already within the larger conceptual unity characteristic of the 13th century. Indeed, such conceptual tensions are especially worth considering if we try to detect those original “hairline cracks” in the 13th-century “cathedral of thought” which later on grew into the ever wider “cracks” and “fissures” that eventually allowed it to be brought down by a series of ideological and social “quakes” of the turbulent late-medieval and early modern period. 11