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The Ultimate Reducibility of Essence and Matter to Existence

(Chapter 2 of Essays in Existential Thomism)


James Arraj

The title of this article echoes that of one of the most remarkable and provocative books in the history of
American Thomism, William Carlo’s The Ultimate Reducibility of Essence to Existence in Existential
Metaphysics,[1] which was one of the finest fruits of the 20th century Thomist renaissance in metaphysics in
North America. But its radical nature, the eclipse of Thomism, and the death of its author not long after it
appeared, have rendered it almost invisible, especially the challenge it lay down in regard to matter.

William Carlo was born in Yonkers, New York, studied at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies and
the University of Toronto, went on to teach at St. John’s University, Boston College, and the University of
Ottawa, and was the father of five children. When he was 36 years old he responded to a paper called The
Being of Creatures given by Gerald Phelan at the 1957 meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical
Association.[2] In his short response, he articulated the heart of the metaphysical insights that he was to
elaborate in an article that appeared in the International Philosophical Quarterly in 1964,[3] and in a paper
on matter at the American Catholic Philosophical Association meeting of that same year.[4] And both of
these articles were to be taken up, in large part verbatim, in his 1966 book on essence and existence.

The Ultimate Reducibility of Essence to Existence

Gerald Phelan had realized that the doctrine of creation had played a vital role in the development of
metaphysics in a Christian context. It could even be said to have helped inspire St. Thomas to transform
Aristotle’s world of essences in the light of existence. Fr. Phelan expressed this transformation in a
provocative fashion by replacing the word essence with mode of existence.

"To be, for a creature, is always to exercise being (esse) IN SOME MODE. It is the mode of existence which
limits and restricts the esse. To call it "essence" is all very well, provided essence is not regarded as some
positive thing, but simply the "by which" (quo), or the mode, measure or manner in which the act, esse, is
exercised... What exists is neither the esse nor the mode of its exercise (or essence) but the ens which
results from the placing of a limit upon esse in the very act by which God creates. Just as esse has no
meaning, is inconceivable, except as exercised in some mode, so essence, or the mode of exercise of esse is
inconceivable and meaningless without reference to the act by which it is... By imposing from within the
thing (res) a limitation on its esse (which, incidentally, actively posits aliquid in re) essence positively
restricts the dynamism of the act of being (esse) within the limits of the ontological definition of the being
(ens) or thing (res) which exercises that act."[5]

These remarks served as a catalyst for Carlo to try to explore the relationship between essence and
existence as deeply as possible. The very notion of essence, he felt, so central to Greek philosophy, had
been transformed by St. Thomas who had to express his revolutionary metaphysical intuitions in the
common metaphysical language of his day. "Thus there are two sets of apparently contradictory texts in
Thomas Aquinas. There are those texts where he speaks of essence as somehow possessing an actuality of
its own, as that which receives esse, as that which limits esse. There is the other group of texts where St.
Thomas speaks of essence as non-being, as concreated rather than created, as co-existent rather than
existent."[6] And Carlo is impelled not only to unify these two strands of texts, but to set out to reduce
essence to existence as much as possible.

"We certainly agree with Father Phelan that essences are modes of being, that they are intrinsic
modifications of esse. But when this doctrine is coupled with that of the non-being of essence, what
happens to essence? It is non-ens because it is other than ipsum esse which it receives from another. That
which participates esse has to be non-ens... Essence flows from esse. Esse gives rise to essence. Essence is
the intrinsic modification of the dynamism of actual exercise of the act of being. Why not describe essence,
then, as the place where esse stops, bordered by nothingness?... This doctrine of the non-being of essence
and the ultimate reducibility of essence to esse is, I think, a logical consequence of the interpretation of
essence as a mode of being."[7] And submerged in his preoccupation of the relationship between essence
and existence is a hint of what is to come. Just as in the case of essence, St. Thomas has two strands of
texts about matter. "Matter is pure potency, in the genus of substance. It has an esse, is a similitudo of the
Divine Esse, and finally it is non-being - non-ens."[8] This tension, too, will have to be resolved.

The second response to Fr. Phelan’s paper was by Norris Clarke who put what Phelan was doing in
perspective. Underlying the apparent agreement among Thomists about a real distinction between essence
and existence, he tells us, exists an unexamined divergence between those who look at esse as merely
conferring existence on an essence that already has its formal perfection, and those who find the "positive
content of perfection in a finite being... within the very act of existence itself…"[9] He goes on to indicate
the relationship of Fr. Phelan’s article to the recent Thomist literature, especially that of the Le Saulchoir
Dominican School, and the earlier works of the rediscoverers of an existential Thomism. Fr. Clarke was to
present Carlo’s article to the world and write a remarkable preface to his book.

The general context, then, of Carlo’s work is clear. Drawing on the rich 20th century of existential
Thomism, he is going to try to distill it into some sort of ultimate expression of the relationship between
essence and existence, and he is going to take the insights he has forged in the fire of this reduction and
apply them to the question of matter.

Essences "are intrinsic modifications of esse." Or inversely, "Esse as knowable in its limitation is called
essence and form."[10] "To essence belongs the capacity of contracting esse."[11]

If Giles of Rome and much of the scholastic tradition pictured esse as an ocean, and essences as the
vessels in which its water is poured, Carlo wants to transform this metaphor. Imagine, he tells us, that the
water from one of these vessels is poured out and freezes before it hits the ground, or a stream suddenly
freezes, and we hew it into pieces with an ax. "The shape it assumes is the determination of its own
substance. Essence is not something extrinsic to existence which limits and determines it in the way that a
pitcher shapes its recipient liquid, but essence is rather the place where existence stops. There is nothing
in water which is not water. There is nothing in an existent which is not existence. Essence is the intrinsic
limitation of esse, the crystallization of existence, bordered by nothingness."[12]

"Perhaps it would be more precise to say it (the creature) is an imperfect esse, or even more precisely, it is
constituted as a certain level of perfection, a particular magnitude of esse, an existential quantum, a degree
of being."[13] "Essence gives to being that it is of a certain type or kind. Esse gives to essence its
existence."[14] "Essence is not a positive being apart from the existence of which it is the limitation, but it
is definitely a positive principle of philosophy when understood as the intrinsic limitation of esse. Its
function can be designated by affirmative terms, contraction, refraction, channeling of perfection,
specification, determination."[15] "All essences are modes of esse."[16] "The created essence is not its esse,
it is the intrinsic limitation of esse, the prism through which the intelligible riches and perfections of esse
are refracted and contracted to this kind of being."[17]

Carlo’s central insight is clear. Essence is a mode of esse, and an intrinsic modification or limitation of it; it
is its crystallization or specification, determination, refraction, prism or capacity for contracting existence.
Carlo is setting before our eyes a many-faceted metaphysical gem, but each facet leads us to the luminous
heart of metaphysics. Essence is a certain capacity to exist. It is this or that capacity to exist. Essences don’t
exist. Existents exist. We know essences by abstracting them from existents as the intrinsic limitations of
existence. And we know existence not first in its purity without limit, but in this or that existent about
which we can assert that it exists. But it exists in this or that way or mode.

This doctrine of the relationship between essence and existence that Carlo is expressing in such a forceful
way and with a certain panache is rooted in St. Thomas and the revolution of metaphysics that he brought
about. It is the same insight that can be found in varying ways in the founders of this century’s existential
Thomism like Maritain, de Finance, Gilson, and so forth. But even if we might be willing to follow Carlo
into this land of radical Thomist existentialism when it comes to the relationship of essence to existence,
will we continue to follow him when it comes to the question of matter?
The Ultimate Reducibility of Matter to Substance

If we are to have a truly existential metaphysics, Carlo reasoned, then one of its greatest challenges is to
show how matter, itself, can be reduced to esse, and he envisions it as a bold metaphysical experiment.

Aristotle needed to explain substantial change in which one thing loses its form and gains another. And so
there must be, he reasoned, a substrate underlying this kind of change that remains, and yet is not a form.
But if it is not a form, it must be a pure potentiality, for given the fact that essence is the highest principle,
there is no other conclusion that he could have arrived at. But when Aristotle’s world of essences was
transformed by St. Thomas, this revolutionary transformation did not completely alter how St. Thomas
expressed himself about matter. At times he uses the language of Aristotle, and at times the new language
of esse. In this new world of esse the substrate of substantial change need not be a pure potentiality
because there is something that is not form or essence, yet still is, and that is esse. Thus, there are two
strands of text in St. Thomas, but since they lack complete integration, the Thomist notion of prime matter
has always been an insolvable riddle.

What Carlo is going to try to do is to resolve this tension by reducing matter to esse. But because he is
breaking new ground, the going is harder. Matter is a "deficient esse."[18] It "is the limitation of form, the
place where form stops, in what is basically an immaterial universe."[19] "Matter does not seem to be some
principle standing apart from form, but is rooted in the concrete thing as an aspect of the individual by
reason of its perfectibility."[20] Matter is "the ability of a being to become something other, by an increase
or decrease of esse. Matter as potency, then, might be called the ‘elasticity or plasticity of esse’."[21]
"...Perhaps it (matter) is esse as limited, as, to put it crudely, existential quanta approaching but not
completely, one of the Primal Modes or Stages of esse as unfolding, i.e. essence."[22] "Essence is the
primary limitation, a mode of esse, essence as imperfect esse. Matter signifies a secondary limitation, this
imperfect being as deficient when a point is reached in the descent of creatures from God at which the
esse does not correspond to, is more or less than, one of the Primal Stages of being expressed by the
doctrine of the Divine Ideas."[23] "Essences are the primal stages of esse, and make things to be the kind
of things they are. But within this primal stage there is a secondary stage which enables a thing to be more
or less what it is, to increase in being without becoming other than what it is."[24]

Matter is a deficient or debile esse, an increase or decrease of esse, the plasticity or elasticity of esse. But
Carlo also says matter is the limitation of form, the place where form stops. But this apparent ambiguity
resolves itself when Carlo writes: "St. Thomas calls matter ens in potentia. It is a pure potentia. But does he
mean that there is a pure potency existing as prime matter like the eternal matter of Aristotle, or does he
refer to the simple fact that a substance which is already in existence, still possesses the capacity of being
further perfected? It is, but it is not all that it could be... It would seem that he is referring simply to the
developmental aspect of an already existing substance - the fact that it is capable of further perfection. It is
true that it is the aspect of potentiality, of insufficiency of the existent substance, that is called matter, but it
seems to me that this is as far as Thomas Aquinas would go in asserting the being of prime matter as a
philosophical principle in its proper metaphysical location. When we term matter substance we mean only
the very potency in itself which is nothing but an imperfection of the existing substance, in the order of
substance."[25]

If we describe matter in relationship to form, then existence is in the background. If we describe matter in
relationship to esse, then form is in the background. If we describe it in relationship to substance, then we
are speaking of essences or forms inasmuch as they are oriented to existence. But in Carlo all these ways of
speaking are roughly equivalent.

As strange as Carlo’s ideas on matter may first appear, are they really different from what St. Thomas
writes? It is "that which is in potency to substantial existence."[26] "…[P]otency to substantial existence is
not something outside the genus of substance."[27]

Matter, we could say, is a substantial potency to substantial existence. But what does this mean? Matter is
not potency in relationship to all substances, but an aspect of those substances that fall below a certain
threshold of being, substances that lack a certain intensity of being by which they would be present to
themselves in knowledge and love. In contrast to spiritual creatures, these substances, once existing, can
lose their existence, and in this way they contain a substantial potency to their substantial existence. A
substantial mutability of substance exists in them.

But to see this is difficult because we have to first reverse a deeply rooted attitude in which matter is
somehow something separate which form informs. We imagine it as the hot wax that forms imprint, the
very stuff out of which things are made. Without matter what will undergird substantial change? Without
matter, how can there be many individuals of the same species? And without matter, how will things
spread out in space and time?

Matter is not really destroyed in Carlo’s view of it, but relocated into actually existing substances. And
while I find the idea of matter as pure potentiality somehow satisfyingly mysterious and romantic, it is
fundamentally incoherent and unnecessary.

What exist are substances, whether spiritual or material. But what differentiates them is not that the forms
of the material substances are somehow spiritual, and are diluted and dimmed by informing matter, but
rather, that they are forms whose intensity for being, or capacities for existence, are such that they do not
have an irreversible grasp on existence as witnessed by the fact that they can undergo substantial change.
It is these substances that change in the dynamic field of esse, not forms that are educed from pure
potentiality. All the qualities we are used to giving to matter are better attributed to these substances in
virtue of the fact that they contain a substantial potency to substantial existence.

To follow the flow of Carlo’s language, we might say that matter is a contraction and refraction of form, the
intrinsic limitation of form, the place where form stops below the threshold of spiritual creatures. But
form cannot be understood in abstraction from esse, but rather, as a capacity for it. It might be objected
that this is a much too negative view of matter. What will happen to the richness of matter that is
intimately connected to space and time and the multiplication of individuals of the same species? Have we
bleached the color and vibrancy from the universe by making matter virtually disappear? Quite the
contrary. Matter does not disappear, but rather is seen in its true ontological location in regard to
existence, and in this way it gains in richness.

Essence and matter are not negative in a truly existential metaphysics, but they are totally transparent and
subordinate to existence. Essence is supremely positive inasmuch as it enables all of creation. And matter
is supremely positive because it enables the existence of a whole fascinating order of existents beyond
spiritual creatures.

The Ultimate Reducibility of Matter and Essence to Existence

Carlo spoke of essence as a primal mode, or stage, of esse, and matter as a secondary stage, or limitation.
But that should not mislead us into imagining that there are two separate processes going on. It is the one
and the same act of existence that is contracted by essence and by matter, and there are not two
contractions, but one. When the act of existence is contracted by an essence, which is below the threshold
of spiritual creatures, then we have a concrete individual or material substance. Essence is not first
contracted to essence, and then to matter. It is contracted to a certain kind of essence that contains a
substantial potency to its own substantial existence. As a result of this contraction, multiplicity, substantial
transformation, and space and time blossom forth, and these are the very strategies of matter by which
material substances overcome the low intensity of their substantial existence. We live, not in a universe of
static material objects, but of existents constantly bathed in a dynamic sea of existence, and deeply
interacting with each other.[28]

Notes: 

1. William E. Carlo, The Ultimate Reducibility of Essence to Existence in Existential Metaphysics, Martinus
Nijhoff, The Hague, 1966.
2. The Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, 1957, pp. 118-125.
3. "The Role of Essence in Existential Metaphysics: A Reappraisal," International Philosophical Quarterly, 11,
4, December 1964, pp. 557-590.
4. "The Ontological Status of Matter," in The Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association,
1964, pp. 142-154.
5. Cf. note 2, p. 124.
6. Ibid., pp. 126-127.
7. Ibid., pp. 127-128.
8. Ibid., p. 126.
9. Ibid., p. 129.
10. The Ultimate Reducibility of Essence to Existence, p. 95 and 101.
11. Ibid., p. 103.
12. Ibid., pp. 103-104.
13. Ibid., p. 113.
14. Ibid., p. 114.
15. Ibid., p. 139.
16. Ibid., p. 140.
17. Ibid., p. 140.
18. Ibid., p. 122.
19. Ibid., p. 125.
20. Ibid., p. 126.
21. Ibid., p. 127.
22. Ibid., p. 128.
23. Ibid., p. 130.
24. Ibid., p. 135.
25. Ibid., p. 134.
26. "The Principles of Nature," No. 3.
27. "On the Physics of Aristotle," XV, No. 3. 
28. For more on Carlo, see The Mystery of Matter and Metaphysics and Matter: A Dialogue Between W. Norris
Clark and James Arraj.

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