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Note also the appendix: A corrective to Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas’ misreading of Aquinas’ philosophy in his book, Islam and Secularism.
A. Definition of terms “Existence” and “Essence”
In classical metaphysics, “essence” refers to what a thing is – its defining characteristics or nature. “Existence,” on the other hand, refers to the fact that a thing is – its actuality or the act of being.1 F.C. Copleston gives a careful explanation of the distinction and relationship between “essence” and “existence”: “Essence is that which answers the question what a thing is; it is substance considered as definable…Existence, on the other hand, is the act by which an essence or substance is or has being…Essence is the potential metaphysical component in a thing (it is that which is or has being, the quod est), while existence is the act by which essence has being (it is the quo est). This distinction is not, be it noted, a physical distinction between two separable things; it is a metaphysical distinction within a thing… And inasmuch as the substance, considered as essence, is that which has being, that of which we say that it exists, it can be said to ‘receive’ existence. But these ways of speaking are not meant to imply either that existence is something apart from an essence or that an essence has objective reality apart from existence. The distinction between them is a distinction within a concrete finite being” F.C. Copleston, Aquinas (Penguin, 1955, 1975), p. 101. Etienne Gilson notes that philosophers who were influenced by Greek philosophy treated essence as primary, with existence being a secondary or accidental attribute. Gilson critiques Platonic-Aristotelian and medieval Islamic philosophers like Avicenna and modern rationalist philosophers like Descartes and Kant for subordinating existence to essence.
Étienne Gilson’s book, The Elements of Christian Philosophy (Doubleday, 1960) offers a lucid exposition of his argument that “existence” (esse) is more fundamental than “essence” (essentia) within the framework of Thomistic thought which Gilson deploys to critique of certain trends in medieval and modern philosophy. For Gilson, Aquinas’s insight was revolutionary because it inverted the traditional emphasis on essence. Gilson lays out his argument that existence is more fundamental than essence in his book, The Elements of Christian Philosophy.
B. Historical context: Philosophy of essentialism, that it, essence–dominated metaphysics
Gilson notes that medieval Christian and Islamic philosophers, particularly those influenced by Platonic-Aristotelian tradition, prioritized “essence” over “existence.” They all began with essence. Then they sought to analyze it and discover in it existence. Essence was seen as the core of reality – the “whatness” of a thing – while existence was treated as secondary or as an accidental property of a being. Gilson notes that no matter how far they went with the analysis of essence, it never included existence. Therefore, they concluded that existence is foreign to essence.2Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (Uni. NotreDame, 1956, 2002), p. 37.
Gilson critiques essentialism for two reasons. First, essentialism leads to abstraction, treating existence as a secondary property added to essence. This neglects the dynamic and foundational role of existence in making essence real.3Gilson critiques “essentialism” because it seeks to read off reality based on different categories of substance or essences and their modifications, regarded as abstract mind-dependent constructs. In contrast, the existential philosophy of Gilson (and Aquinas) argues that knowledge of reality must be based on experience of the concrete act of existence of things and explains the existence of real things which change and which come into being and pass away. Gilson’s essentialism must not be confused with contemporary essentialism which regards essences as having mind-independent reality, that is, they are not just abstract mental constructs or linguistic conventions. As such, Aquinas is both an essentialist in the contemporary sense and an existentialist in Gilson’s sense. Second, essentialism fails to address the deeper metaphysical question: Why is there something rather than nothing?
C. Aquinas’ metaphysical shift in philosophy of existence-essence
Gilson emphasizes that Thomas Aquinas introduced a groundbreaking insight into the philosophy of existence : existence is not merely a property of essence but is the act that makes essence real. That is to say, existence is metaphysically prior to essence.
It is acknowledged that Aquinas adopted the insight that existence is distinct from essence from Avicenna [Ibn Sina]. Aquinas explains in his youthful treatise On Being and Essence, “ Whatever is not included in the understanding of an essence or quiddity is coming to it from outside, entering into composition with the essence; for no essence can be understood without its parts. But every essence can be understood without even thinking about its existence, for I can understand what a man or a phoenix is, and not know whether it actually exists in the nature of things. Therefore, it is clear that existence is distinct from essence, unless, perhaps, there is a thing whose quiddity is its own existence.”4Gyula Klima, “Thomas Aquinas on Being and Essence,” in Gyula Klima, Medieval Philosophy: Essential Readings Commentary (Blackwell, 2007), p. 240.
However, for Islamic philosophers like Avicenna and al-Farabi, “existence is not a constituent character, it is an accidental necessity.” Likewise, al-Ghazali writes, “It is therefore clear that being belongs to the order of accidents. Avicenna had made the act-of-being an accident of essence, but Aquinas makes it the very root and core of being. Aquinas critiques Avicenna accordingly, “Esse does not come from essentia, but essentia comes from esse. We do not say of any object whatsoever that it is because it is a being, but we say, or should so conceive it, that it is a being because it is. It is for this very reason that the act-of-being is not an accident of essence: ‘The act-of-being is the most intimate [inward] element in anything, and the most profound element in all things, because it is like a form in regard to all that is in the thing.’ Between the Avicennian extrinsicism and the Thomistic intrinsicism of existence, no conciliation is possible. To pass from one to the other is not to achieve an evolution but a revolution.” 5Gilson, Christian Philosophy of Aquinas, pp. 38-39. Gilson adds, “What separates Avicenna from St. Thomas is that, in Avicenna, existence is the ultimate act of essence, whereas it is its prime act (actus primus) in the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas.”6Gilson, Christian Philosophy of Aquinas, p. 447.
D. Existence as the source of reality
In Elements of Christian Philosophy, Gilson emphasizes that existence is what makes a thing real. While essence defines what something is, only existence determines that it is.
– Existence as Act: According to Aquinas, existence is not just a static attribute but an act (actus essendi, act of being) that actualizes essence. Existence is not derived from essence but is the foundation of all being. Without existence, essence remains merely potential or mere abstraction; it remains merely potential or conceptual, with no reality.
– Dependent Essences: For any finite being, its essence does not explain its existence. A being’s essence (e.g., being human) does not inherently include the fact that it exists. Thus, existence must come from an external source – a ultimately, God, who is pure existence itself (ipsum esse subsistens).
– Primacy of Existence: In metaphysical terms, existence is the “act” that underlies and sustains all essences. Essence becomes meaningful and real only insofar as it participates in existence.
For Gilson, any philosophy that ignores the primacy of existence reduces reality to conceptual frameworks and overlooks the dynamic, contingent nature of being. By prioritizing existence, Gilson reorients metaphysics to focus on being as dynamic and relational rather than static and definitional. It is existence which distinguishes beings as actual rather than merely potential or conceptual. Correlatively, judgment is the intellectual act where the mind apprehends existence – not as an abstract concept but as a thing which really exists. The intellect determines whether or not that which is perceived in simple apprehension corresponds to reality. It is judgment which connects the intellect to the external world, and roots knowledge in existence.
E. God as the being of pure existence or act who grounds all other beings.
Finite beings are a composition of essence and existence. Their essence does not contain within itself the reason for their existence. For finite beings, essence depends on existence, which itself ultimately derives from an external source, God who is the pure act of existence. The fact that God is pure act of existence is foundational to Aquinas’ insight that existence is not a contingent or secondary aspect but the very ground of reality.7Hence, while Aquinas uses Aristotelian categories such as substance and accidents, form and matter, act and potency, his understanding of the pure actuality of God ensures that his focus is not on “essence” or what a thing is, but on “existence”, considered as the act of existing.
Central to Gilson’s argument is Aquinas’s conception of God as the only being whose essence is identical to existence. This means that God exists necessarily, while all other beings derive their existence from God. God is ipsum esse subsistens (self-subsistent existence), the only being in which essence and existence are identical. All other beings derive their existence from God. This dependency underscores the primacy of existence, as it is the divine act of being that sustains all created things.
F. Existence as the core of Christian metaphysics of God and creation
Gilson integrates his argument into the broader framework of the Christian doctrine of creation. He asserts that the Christian understanding of creation ex nihilo (creation from nothing) aligns with the primacy of existence. Finite beings do not possess existence inherently; it is conferred upon them by God. This theological perspective reinforces the Thomistic view that existence precedes and grounds essence.
Gilson believes his argument is rooted in biblical revelation, specifically the self-revelation of God at the burning bush in Exodus 3:13-14. “Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.”
E. L. Mascally explains, “His [Aquinas] starting-point is the “metaphysic of Exodus,” the revelation of the name of God as “I am that I am…and the conception of God as ipsum esse subsistens, subsistent being itself, is fundamental to his whole discussion of the divine nature.”8(E.L. Mascall, He Who is (Libra Book, 1943, 1966), p. 13. Mascall adds, “St. Thomas’s great work as a Christian metaphysician was to purge philosophy of the last traces of Platonic essentialism and to affirm with complete and deliberate clarity that God is not merely the ens perfectissimum [the most perfect being], the Supreme Being in the order of essences, but maxime ens[the most important, maximal being], that which supremely is. [There is] little doubt that St. Thomas’s radically existential interpretation of Qui est [who is it?], as signifying not a static perfection but the absolutely unlimited Act and Energy, is thoroughly in line with Hebrew thought; it is this that underlies his assertion that God is pure act.”9E.L. Mascall, Existence and Analogy (Libra Book, 1949, 1966), pp. 51-52.
G. Conclusion
For Gilson, the primacy of existence determines how we understand reality. It moves philosophy away from abstraction and toward a dynamic understanding of being as rooted in the act of existence. In placing existence as the ground of metaphysics and theology, he underscores the contrast between Christian existential philosophy with the essentialist philosophy drawn from Platonic-Aristotelian thought (this includes pre-Thomistic Christian and Islamic medieval philosophy) and modern philosophies. For Gilson, only through the primacy of existence can we fully account for the reality of contingent beings and their dependence on God as the source of all existence.
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Appendix: A corrective to Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas’ misreading of Aquinas’ philosophy
Our exposition of Aquinas’ thesis on the primacy of existence over essence provides a corrective to Malaysia’s premier philosopher, Naquib al-Attas’ claim that Aquinas’ misguided notion of distinction between existence and essence led to the development of nominalism (or Ockhamism) which denies the ontological reality of universals and asserts that universals are merely names (nomina) or abstract concepts.10Strictly speaking, Ockham’s view should be described as conceptualism rather than nominalism. Nominalism denies the real existence of universals; universals are merely names or conventional linguistic constructs. Conceptualism also rejects universals as existing independently in the external world. They are mental constructs or representations based on similarities or shared features observed among individual objects. Note that the mind plays an active role in forming universals by abstracting common features. Conceptualism represents the middle ground between realism (which posits independently existing universals) and nominalism (which denies the ontological or epistemological significance of universals entirely). This denial results not only in doubts about the existence of objects but also the existence of God and ultimately gives birth to Western secularism.11Note that Naquib asserts that Aquinas’ distinction of essence or quiddity from existence is based on a misunderstanding of Avicenna’s position since for medieval Islamic philosophers, essence and existence are not radically separated; rather, they are unified in a manner that reflects the interconnectedness of all creation with the Creator. However, the fact remains that existence for Avicenna (as he was read by Western philosophers in the 13th century) is not a constituent of the essence of anything, that is, existence is an accessory accident which must be conferred upon a thing by an external cause in order that it may exist. The validity of historical interpretation of Avicenna may remain an open question, but the logical implications of Avicenna’s view as understood then were correctly drawn out by Aquinas. Naquib writes,
Since a distinction was made between necessary being and contingent being, and with reference to the creatures their being necessary is in thought and not in actuality, a real distinction was thus made between essence and existence in creatures.…This distinction between essence and existence in creatures was apparently made on the basis of Thomas Aquinas’ observation, which in turn seems to have been based on a misunderstanding of Avicenna’s position, that every essence or quiddity can be understood without anything being known of its existing, and that, therefore, the act of existing is other than essence or quiddity. The only Being whose quiddity is also its very act of existing must be God…William of Ockham, less than a hundred years later, to draw the far reaching conclusion that if every essence or quiddity can be understood without any thing being known of its existing, then no amount of knowledge could possibly tell us whether it actually existed. The conclusion drawn from this was that one would never be able to know that anything actually exists… Ultimately this trend of philosophy naturally led to consequences resulting in the casting of doubt also on knowledge of the essence of the creatures, and not merely its existence. The epistemological consequences of doubting the existence and essence of objects created the ‘problem of God’.12Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism 2e (ISTAC, 1993), pp. 9-10.
The doubt and detachment of God from the natural world undermines the metaphysical unity and coherence of reality. The resultant fragmented and desacralized nature allows only for an empirical or materialistic-based science which serves as the intellectual framework of the modern secular order. Furthermore, the terms of knowledge used in Christian theology, intellectus (sapiential knowledge) and ratio (scientific knowledge) often do not conform with each other. Naquib asserts,
Christian theology suppressed the sapiential role of the intellect and stressed the scientific role of the purely rational, which can only operate on nature devoid of spiritual significance and follow its own naturalistic logic to its final conclusion. Once the rational became more or less severed from the intellectual, the world of nature is seen as a material, physical object with no connection with the spiritual reality and truth underlying it… Rational philosophy and theology, without the intellectual criterion, naturally led to doubt about the existence of objects as Ockham, deriving from the Thomistic metaphysics of being, was to demonstrate soon after. In the development of science in the West, the logical result of this rationalism and secularization of nature was highlighted by the Copernican revolution in physics in which the decentralization of the earth in the cosmos brought repercussions that reduced the importance of man himself therein. It finally led to man being deprived of cosmic significance; he became terrestrialized and his transcendence was denied him.13Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism, pp. 35-36.
In short, modernity and secularism did not begin with the epistemological skepticism of Descartes. Instead, it began when the adoption of Aristotelianism severed Christianity from the spiritual reality and truth which underlie nature. Aquinas’ ontological misconception of the distinction between essence and existence exacerbated the disconnect and the inevitable fruit of nominalism destroyed certainty in knowledge. This trajectory culminated in the rise of the secular worldview that brings devastation to Christianity in the West
However, with all due respect, we have to judge Naquib’s charge against Aquinas to be problematic:
First, we trust that our exposition of Aquinas’ view on the distinction and inseparable relationship between essence and existence in finite existing beings has provided sufficiently evidence to show that Naquib’s charge rests on a simplistic, if not distorted reading of Aquinas metaphysics. Furthermore, Naquib’s claim of the disconnect between intellectus (simple understanding) and ratio (discursive reasoning) in Aquinas’ epistemology is debatable. Indeed, for Aquinas intellectus apprehends universal truths or the foundational principles of reason, and grasps the essence of things intuitively while ratio processes and connects ideas discursively and logically. But both intellect and reason complement one another. Reason relies on the intellect to provide the first principles, while the intellect benefits from the analytical and organizing power of reason. In short, the intellect apprehends divine truths through faith while reason helps to organize and systematize these truths. Aquinas offers a coherent and adequate theory of knowledge and cognition. Naquib can only misrepresent Aquinas’ theory when he approaches it through Islamic lenses instead of analyzing Aquinas’ theory on its own terms.
Second, Naquib fails to distinguish the significant philosophical differences between Aquinas and Ockham. For example, for Aquinas, God’s will and actions are coherent and rational since they flow his perfect wisdom. In contrast, Ockham’s stress on God’s omnipotence and absolute freedom to the point of God possibly acting contrary to reason and natural law gave birth to a philosophy of voluntarism which sometimes borders onto arbitrariness.
Third, Naquib’s assertion also rests on questionable historical foundations. In laying the blame of secularism squarely on Aquinas rather than Ockham and nominalism, Naquib ignores the protracted historical controversy between the Dominicans (Thomist realists) and Franciscans (Ockhamist nominalists).
Finally, Naquib’s discussion actually masks the complexity of the debate between social analysts who advocate competing theories of the origins of modernity and secularism. For example, 1) Etienne Gilson stressed that the founders of modernity borrowed essential ideas from their medieval predecessors, 2) Karl Löwith argued in Reason in History that modernity is essentially the secularization of Christian ideals, 3) Hans Blumenberg in The Legitimacy of the Modern Age rejected Kant’s idea of modernity as the triumph of reason and saw modernity as a [Nietzschean?] self-assertion of humanity with newfound techno-rational power to reoccupy an empty world after the destruction of medieval civilization and 4) Charles Taylor in The Secular Age identifies many “vectors” of secularization. This include a) disenchantment of the world which rids nature of spiritual and magical nature elements, b) the replacement of the “porous” self which is vulnerable to spiritual forces with a “buffered” self which is independent, rational and disengaged, c) the emergence of expressive individualism with the autonomous individual who regards spirituality or religion as private quest for personal authenticity, d) the rise of the “immanent frame”, that is, a social imaginary where reference to transcendence is unnecessary since the natural/immanent order is complete and self-sufficient for understanding reality, etc.
The complexity of the debate should remind us to eschew dogmatic assertions when we theorize about the origins of modernity and secularism.
This appendix is also published as a separate post at: Link –
A Corrective to Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas’ Misreading of Aquinas’ Philosophy in his Book, “Islam and Secularism”