Question Three. Whether Material Substance is Individual, or the Reason for Individuating Another, through Actual Existence

59. I ask third, without arguments, whether material substance is individual, or the reason for individuating another, through actual existence.

I. The Opinion of Others

60. The statement is made that it is,a because, from Metaphysics 7.13.1039a3-7, ‘act determines and distinguishes’, so ultimate distinction is through ultimate act; but the ultimate act of individuals is according to the being of existence, because anything other than this is understood to be in potency to it.

a.a [Interpolation] About the third, namely whether material substance is individual through actual existence or whether something else is the reason for individuating, without arguments; the statement is made that material substance is individual and singular through actual existence.

II. Rejection of the Opinion

61. Against this:

First, because what is not distinct or determinate of itself cannot be the first distinguisher or determiner of something else; but the being of existence, in the way it is distinguished from the being of essence, is not distinct or determinate of itself (for the being of existence does not have its own differences besides the differences of the being of essence, because then one would have to posit a proper ordering for existences other than the ordering for essences), but the being of existence is determined precisely by the other’s determination; therefore it does not determine anything else.

62. On this basis one can argue in another way: because that which presupposes the determinateness and distinctness of something else is not the reason for distinguishing and determining itself; but existence, as it is determinate and distinct, presupposes the order and distinctness of essences; therefore etc.

63. And if it be said that existence presupposes every distinctness other than the one that is for individuals, but that it causes the distinctness that is as it were for an individual - on the contrary: in the ordering in a category there exist, when whatever is no part of the ordering is removed, all the things that per se pertain to the ordering, because, according to the Philosopher in Posterior Analytics 1.20.82a21-24, ‘in any category a stand is made upwards and downwards’. Therefore just as the highest in a genus is found precisely by considering it under the idea of essence, so the intermediate genera and species and differences are found in this way; the lowest, namely the singular, is also found there, with actual existence altogether removed - as is plainly evident, because ‘this man’ does not formally include actual existence any more than ‘man’ does.

64. Further, there is the same question about existence - by what and how it is contracted so as to be a ‘this’ - as there is about nature, for if the specific nature is the same in several individuals, it has an existence in them of the same idea: following the way the proof that specific nature is not a ‘this’ goes in the solution to the first question [nn.29-30], it can in the same way be asked what existence is a ‘this’ by (because it is not of itself a ‘this’), and so to give existence as what nature is a ‘this’ by is not sufficient.

III. To the Argument for the Opinion

65. On this basis I say to the argument for the opinion [n.60] that act distinguishes in the way it is act, but accidental act distinguishes accidentally, just as essential act distinguishes essentially. Accordingly I say that the ultimate distinction in ordering in a category is individual distinction, and individual distinction is through an ultimate act pertaining per se to the ordering in the category - and therefore I concede that this act distinguishes ultimately, but by a distinction that is outside the whole per se ordering in the category. This distinction is as it were somehow accidental; even though it is not truly accidental, yet it is subsequent to the whole of the ordering by quidditative being; in the way then that it is act it distinguishes, and in the way it is ultimate act it ultimately distinguishes.