A. The Opinion of Henry of Ghent

47. Here the statement is made that individuation in created things is done by double negation - see this opinion in [Henry] Quodlibet 5 q.8. “It is necessary then that the cause of individuation be something negative or positive-relative; but not positive-relative, because the relation would necessarily be founded on the thing itself as made and so as determinate in a supposit; so the cause must be some negative condition. One must therefore say that in specific created forms...the reason for individuation...is negation, whereby the form itself., as it is the term of the making, is made altogether undivided in the supposit and individual and singular by privation of all divisibility (per se and per accidens), and divided from any other thing whatever. This negation, indeed, is not simple but double, because it is a remover of all multiplicability and diversity from within and of all identity from without. And this double negation altogether formally determines the idea of the form, by which determination an absolute supposit over and above the essence of the form is constituted. Thus, therefore, only by the determination of negation as to form.does the individuation and constitution of a supposit come, as by its formal idea, completely to be.” ⁴⁸

48. But against this opinion:

First I expound the meaning of the questions moved about this matter [sc. the six listed in the interpolation to n.1, and dealt with at nn.1, 43, 59, 66, 129, 142]; for I am not asking by what a nature is singular or individual if these terms signify a second intention (for then a nature would exist by a second intention formally and exist effectively by the intellect causing that second intention, namely by its bringing ‘this nature’ to ‘nature’ as a subject-able to a predicable); and I am also not asking about the real numerical unity whereby a nature is one in this way (for a thing is formally one by numerical unity, whether the unity converts with being or is in the genus of quantity or states a privation or something positive); but, because there is in entities something incapable of division into subjective parts, that is, something ‘to which its being divided into several things, each of which things is it, is formally repugnant’, the question being asked is not whereby it is formally repugnant (because it is formally repugnant by repugnance), but by what, as by proximate and intrinsic foundation, this repugnance is in an entity. Therefore the meaning of the questions about this matter is ‘what is it in this stone by which, as by proximate foundation, its being divided into several things each of which is it is simply repugnant’ - which division is the sort proper to a whole universal into its subjective parts.

49. Understanding the questions in this way, then, I prove that there is not anything formally individual in the way this position [n.47] seems to posit.

First, because nothing is simply repugnant to any being through a mere privation in it but through something positive in it; therefore being divided into subjective parts is not repugnant to a stone - in that a stone is a certain thing - through any negations.

50. Proof of the antecedent: because however much negation may take away the proximate potency for acting and undergoing, so that thereby the being which the negation is in is not in proximate potency to anything - yet it does not posit in that being a formal repugnance to anything, for, when the negations are removed, possibly or impossibly (since they do not exist), such a being would stand along with the opposite of the negations, and so along with what it is said to be repugnant to, which is impossible.

An example of this: if a substance be understood to be a non-quantum, it is not divisible (that is, it is not able by proximate potency to be divided), yet being divided is not repugnant to it, because then receiving a quantity would be repugnant to it, a quantity by which it could be formally divided; therefore, while the nature of the same bodily substance stands, being divisible is not repugnant to it. Likewise: if ‘not having sight’ takes away the proximate potency for seeing, yet it does not create a repugnance to seeing, because the positive nature (where this negation was) can stand, and the opposite of the negation can, without repugnance on the part of the nature, be present in it.

51. So can it be argued in the issue at hand: although he [sc. Henry] posits nature to be ‘of itself one and individual’,Quodlibet 5 q.8, “Now there is another form which, as to thing and nature, is one and undivided in itself, and it is divided from a different form in the way that, with nothing formal being added to it, it subsists in supposits - the way it is the form of any most specific species, whose unity is only according to reason; ‘undivided’ I say, as far as concerns it of itself, in respect of subjective parts... But any specific form does not of itself and by its nature admit division into supposits but is simple, and it exists whole in whatever it exists in;” “An individual form (as humanity or ass-ness) is of itself and by its nature simple and indivisible, in that of itself and by its nature it does not have parts that differ in form, the way the form of a genus does - which differs in this respect from the form of a species, that the form of a genus.of itself and by its nature is divided through parts that differ in form, and it does not have a natural unity of itself but only according to reason and conception of the intellect; but the form of a species is of itself and by the nature of species individual in form, having of itself a unity terminated at the same time in the being of nature and in the intellect.” ⁴⁹ yet never will being formally divided be repugnant to nature through some negation posited in it, and so never will there be in things any positive being that will be completely individual.

52. And if an instance is in any way made against the first proposition of this argument [n.49], I will at least assume this proposition: ‘no imperfection is repugnant to anything formally save because of some perfection’, which perfection is some positive thing and a positive entity; but ‘to be divided’ is an imperfection (and for that reason it cannot belong to the divine nature);     therefore etc     .

53. Again, a thing is not by a negation formally constituted in a more perfect entity than is the entity presupposed by the negation (otherwise the negation would be formally some positive entity); but primary substance (according to the Philosopher in Categories 5.2a11-15) is most of all substance, and is also more substance than is secondary substance; therefore primary substance, insofar as it is distinguished from secondary substance, is not constituted formally in the entity of primary substance by negation [n.46].

54. Again, that of which a singular is the singular is predicated of the singular in the first per se mode of predication; but of some being taken under negation no entity is per se said by reason of the whole subject, because the whole is not per se one (if it is said by reason of a part, then a superior is not being predicated of an inferior but the same thing of itself).

55. Further, although this position [of Henry, n.47] seems to be false in itself because of the arguments already given [nn.49-54], yet, if the individual is understood to be constituted in the entity and unity of singularity through negation, the position seems altogether superfluous and not to respond to the question, because even when it is posited the same question remains:

For about the double negation that it posits I ask what the reason is that the negation belongs to the thing. If the position says that this double negation is the per se cause, no response is made to the question; for the question is what makes the opposites of these negations to be repugnant, and consequently what makes these negations to be present in the thing.

56. Likewise I ask where the negation comes from, since it is of the same idea in this thing and in that thing. For just as there is a double negation in Socrates, so there is a negation of a double idea in Plato; why then is Socrates singular by this singularity (a proper and determinate singularity) and not by the singularity of Plato? It is impossible to say unless one finds what this negation is a negation by, and this cannot be anything other than something positive.