Existence and Possibility
In order to read the main parts of Book I of the Summa Contra Gentiles, it is necessary to place ourselves at the level of abstraction and universality required by the subject. Here, St. Thomas Aquinas deals with the primary origin of all that exists. It is not about imagining a ‘force’ that somehow acts over ‘things,’ since this not only presupposes the existence of the things but also wrongly defines the agent through a transitive notion of ‘force’, when it is clear that the very idea of a transitive movement demands something towards which it transits. It is, instead, about understanding that if ‘existence’ is the state of what exists, it cannot itself exist in this same meaning, as, thus, it would reduce itself to an existent thing among many others.
We should neither understand existence as a sum nor a mass of existing things, as, in this case, it would not have any attribute of its own other than the ones present in the existing things or those that result from their interaction, and, therefore, it would be nothing on its own.
In order to apprehend the notion of existence, you must make an effort of imagination to conceive the total inexistence of whatever it is.
Suppress the cosmos, suppress history, suppress all the real or unreal beings, suppress even the human conscience (starting with your own), and try to conceive what is left. Is it nothingness? Yes, certainly nothingness, but not absolute nothingness, because we know that something exists, and if something exists, it is because it is possible. Once all the existent things are excluded, nothing is left, but it is a nothingness full of possibilities.
If you exclude even these possibilities, you will have declared that all is impossible, but you know that something is possible, since something happened. The nothingness left when all the existing things are suppressed is not exactly nothing, but a beam of possibilities. Which possibilities? All that has been fulfilled and all that can still be fulfilled. This is what we call ‘existence’: the possibility of existing. The possibility of existent things does not exist like they do: it exists independently; they are the ones who depend on it. Furthermore, the possibility infinitely transcends the existing things because it also encompasses all the possible interactions among them.
The set of possible interactions among the existing things cannot be deduced from the sum of all of their attributes because there are accidental possibilities that do not derive from these attributes. For each being’s set of attributes, there is a circle of an immensely more significant set of possible accidents. If possible, these are part of the possibilities contained in that ‘nothingness’ you found after mentally suppressing the totality of what exists.Â
In everyday life, the word ‘possibility’ is used only as a measure of a conjecture that we make over a given being or over a given group of beings. But one thing is the possibility considered at the level of the beings. Another is the possibility considered in itself, above and before the existence of any being. In its first meaning, the possibility is a relationship among beings. In the second one, it is the very constitution of these beings as ‘essences.’
The word ‘essence’ indicates what a being is, independently from its existence or inexistence. As each existing being is something, it has an essence; and as all that exists is necessarily possible, it is forceful to conclude that, at the level of pre-existing possibility, all the essences were already what they came to be in their real existence. Now, among the essences, there are unavoidable logical connections which are independent and prior to the existence of beings that manifest them.
The mathematical beings illustrate this in a splendid way: before any spherical object existed, the points of the surface of the sphere were already equidistant from its center; before a square existed, it was already necessary that, when diagonally cut, the future square would result in two isosceles triangles.
Therefore, if all essences were present in the total possibility before any corresponding being came into existence, we must admit that all the logical connections among all the possible essences were already contained in the total possibility. But among the beings, there are relations that are not exactly illogical but are alien to logic, meaning that they cannot be deduced from the essences: they are accidental relations. If these relations were not contained in the total possibility, they would be impossible, and thus, they would never manifest in existence. Still, as they do, it is necessary to conclude that they were.Â
Ask now how all these essences and all these possibilities were in the total possibility. Would they be there in a confused and random way, only becoming distinct during the existence process? This would be the same as saying that, in the course of their coming into existence, these essences fulfilled a possibility that was not in the total possibility, that is, an impossible possibility. Nevertheless, the essences and their relations, even the accidental ones, are all present in the total possibility, and they are perfectly organized and clear.Â
The nothingness that you find when suppressing all the existing things starts to look less and less like nothing; it is rather the previous order of all possibilities manifested in the course of existence.Â
Ask yourself now if the universal possibility can be conceived only as a theoretical, hypothetical, passive, and defenseless system made of random logic equations or relations without any effective existence. The answer is clear: if there is no total possibility, there are no possibilities at all. The universal possibility does not exist; hence, as a possibility in the minor meaning of the word, as when we say a chess match has the possibility of having either the white or the black as a winner. On the contrary, containing in itself all the possibilities of existence, it encompasses and contains the existence—all of it. Existence derives from possibility, not the opposite. Containing in itself the existence, the possibility can neither be inexistent nor exist as the beings exist. It has a special mode of existence. As the scholastics would say, it exists in an eminent mode (eminenter). By containing the whole existence as well as the inexistence that limits the existence, it is the existence of the existence.Â
Now that this is clear, you can start reading the Summa Contra Gentiles.Â