On Substance within the Thomistic tradition

Substance is a certain category of being. They’re also known as basic beings that every other being relies on to be studied. Without substance, you cannot study other beings.

A universal is something that is shareable, something for which there are examples or instances. An example of this can be humanity that is shared between me and my Friend. It’s shared, and it’s something we have in common.

An individual is something that isn’t common nor shareable in this way; it itself is an instance. Instances or individuals are instances of universals, but nothing is ever an instance of a particular. For example, someone can be like me, but they nor can anything be an instance of Me.

Regarding independence, substances are independent, but this does not mean that they don’t depend on anything in any way. An independent substance isn’t absolutely independent; it just means that the substance depends, but in a special manner. That which the subject is dependent upon in a special manner is something that isn’t essential to the subject. For example, a cat’s fur color must be in it. But the Cat isn’t related in that way to anything; it may belong to a pack, but it can easily exist without being part of that pack.

Unity of substance. The misconception of a unified substance exists as such. Let’s use grains of sand vs me. Each grain of sand is one individual substance; when they’re piled up, they don’t become one substance. They remain as x (depending on how many grains) amount of substances. I have parts, and my parts are more unified than the grain of sand is, and I’m unified in such a way that I am one thing. My parts don’t move individually, which leads to me doing an action, for example, when I run, my right leg doesn’t move first and then my left, rather I act as one single agent. A substance in that sense is a “sub-stance”, something that sub-stands or stands under something else. An easy example to visualize what I’m saying here is me and my skin, my skin depends on me — it leans on me, so it supports me. Substances are what features or properties exist in and depend on.

To know what a being is, you need to ask first what is a being, and consequently, you need to be talking about something that’s unified [remember the grains of sand vs me example from earlier]. If a being isn’t unified, then it’s not a being but a collection of beings. Organisms seem best suited to fit our description of substances. They’re independent, unified individuals. These organisms are really bland and pretty much nothing else can be described as such, since essentially everything apart from organisms has accidents, whether that be essential or non-essential.

By using scholastic terminology, we call the non-important features accidents and the important ones essential. For the noun version, accidental features = accidents and essential features = essences. If I have a feature, but I can exist without having that feature = then that feature is an accident. If I have a feature that I can’t exist without = that feature is an essential feature.

Thomists reject modal theory due to it being non-traditional and also its possible for a substance to have an accidental feature which the substance can’t exist without. That being said, modal theory is simply the theory of essence and accident according to which an accident is whatever can change about a thing or whatever could have been different about it. Perhaps the best classical example of this can be laughter. No human can exist without being able to laugh (yes, this applies to even the Debbie Downers who still have the potency to laugh if they, by some miracle, have never laughed in their life or even if it’s blocked by brain damage). These sorts of accidents are called necessary accidents. The reason why Aristotelians don’t call essential attributes “essences” is that they’re not the core of what a human is. Non-essential accidents are called contingent accidents, in case you didn’t know.

In contrast to the modern modal theory, Thomists and Aristotelians hold to the foundational view. Those who hold to the foundational view will say that dependence on God isn’t essential but a necessary accident (track back to earlier where I defined what necessary accidents are). Yes, I can’t exist without depending on God, but this dependence isn’t an element of my nature, rather something that belongs to me on account of my nature or a result of my nature. Hence, it is not essential but rather a necessary accident. The foundational view on essence distinguishes necessary features from essential features, and this has created the room to be able to say that dependence on God lies outside the substance’s nature, although it’s still necessary for a substance.

Refutation of a common objection to the foundational theory:

Claim:“Socrates is human — a rational animal — because he’s an animal. Therefore, according to the foundational theory, his being human is non-foundational; therefore, it’s accidental, not essential. But it’s false to say that being human is accidental to Socrates. Therefore, the foundational theory is false.

Rebuttal:Based on the erroneous idea that animality and rationality are 2 distinct features which give rise to a third feature (humanity). Socrates is human, which is a rational in an animal way and rational in an animal way. Now we move onto determinates and determinables. Colored = determinable because it’s not a specific, determinate, definite color. Scarlet = specific, determinate color. There are both determinate and determinable predicates, but there are no true determinable properties; only determinate properties. Hence, any predicate that’s determinable isn’t really the name of a true property or feature. Rather, it’s a predicate that we use when we want to draw attention to solely a part of a true determinate property. An animal does not name some property that a German Shepherd has in addition to having the property of being a German Shepherd. On the contrary, when we speak of a German Shepherd, it names that dog’s nature in a way that we focus on the part of what of what goes into being a German Shepherd (powers of sensation and appetite). <- what was said here about “animal” in the German Shepherd also can be applied to humans, and this is a sufficient reason to refute/respond to the objection against the foundational theory of essence. Being animal is not a property separate from the property of being human; it’s just an aspect of it.

In adopting the foundational approach over the modal approach, the number of essential features becomes much less because many of the features that the modal approach says are essential are counted as accidental on the foundational approach. An easy example of this is in the modal view, where it is essential to Socrates that he be human and also that he be able to laugh. Laughing isn’t essential in the foundational view since it’s a proper accident. A “proper accident” is something that necessarily flows from the essence but is not part of the definition. Therefore, adoption of the foundational view brings one closer to the notion that everything has 1 essence. An analogy that eases the notion of essential features being foundational goes as follows: a house builds on and adds to the foundation of the house; the first story is an addition to a house that’s already there. A house’s foundation, on the contrary, does not build on or add to a house in any way; until the foundation is there, there’s no house at all. This goes to say that a foundational feature doesn’t build on a deeper-level feature or anything and add to it; the feature constitutes an object in the first place. When a feature comes to be, the object itself comes to exist for the very first time as a thing having that feature and not an object that’s already in existence comes to possess that feature. If Reese (my cat) had more than one foundational-level principle, then she’d be more than one thing.

We now encounter a new issue regarding the necessary properties and whether they are in themselves or not. Reese has 4 legs. Her essence is to be a feline, to be a cat it involves having 4 legs. Now the issue with this statement is regarding the cats that don’t have 4 legs and are still considered cats. Would those who affirm the statement say that having 4 legs is part of the definition of a cat hence making the non 4 legged cat “not a cat”? Or that since x is a cat and it doesn’t have 4 legs therefore having 4 legs isn’t part of the essence of a cat. Both are problematic for those who don’t hold to the foundational view. The former is wrong since Reese is a cat and the latter is wrong because having 4 legs is important to what a cat is. The way out of this issue is redefining ‘essence’. Now this refinement doesn’t involve eliminating things from the essence, rather simply rethinking how the formulation works. For example, instead of saying that it’s essential to cats that they have 4 legs, we can say that it’s essential to cats that they should have 4 legs. It’s essential for the kitty that they be the kinds of things that ought to have 4 legs. This means that not having 4 legs and being a cat is a defect for that being, not that the cat isn’t a cat or that the essence is affected by the defect. When people speak about what essences are they conflate it with what it ought to be and this is where most of the erroneous interpretations come from (example above with the Cat and missing leg).

Substances are basic beings. If substances are as I have defined them earlier than basic beings (substances) are individual, unified, and independent beings. Not every being fits this description, because to be a being is either 1. To be a substance or 2. To be related to a substance in any way. Non-basic beings have already been covered earlier, substances having accidents. Some philosophers speak of substances as if there’s features waiting to be assembled into the substance. To clarify what I’m saying here, just think of spare parts at an automobile store for your car. The car = substance, the spares = features. Philosophers also tend to treat possibilities as if they were things, substances, or something substance-like. Now the reason for why they do this is perhaps an innate human tendency to reify it (meaning to treat it as if it were a thing even though it isn’t). Nonetheless, we must resist this temptation since it’s erroneous. One explanation of this tendency is the nature of language; when we use sentences with subjects and predicates and in the most natural examples of these types of phrases, the subjects name substances. Ex: “Reese is brown” subject-term = Reese -> names a substance. Furthermore we use the same kind of phrase when speaking of non substances. Ex: “Reese’s color is pleasing to the eye”, very close to making the color be a substance or a kind of substance. We tend to assimilate non-substances to substances and to avoid this we must keep substance at the center of metaphysics–to keep basic beings as our reference point.

Saying not all beings are substances leads us into analogy which is a crucial point in Thomistic philosophy. Ex: The word “healthy” can be used in a plethora of ways. A cat is healthy, a sample of urine is healthy, x type of food is healthy. Now we can see that the word healthy isn’t being used the same in these 3 different scenarios. Saying that a cat is healthy = all its physiological systems are functioning. This does not apply to the case of food since we’re not saying the food has an appropriate blood pressure, when we speak of the food being healthy we mean that it contributes to being healthy. Similarly the case of the urine sample being called healthy means that it’s a sign of health. If the word healthy was used in the same manner in the 3 different cases then it’d be called univocal instead of analogy. If it were used differently and completely unrelated then it’d be called equivocal. Apart from the case of God the word being can be used analogically. A substance is a being, and so is an accident, but they are beings in different yet related cases. Substance = being in primary sense. Accident = being in secondary sense. The former stands on its own and the latter are what they are only in relation to the primary sense.