Existential Relation as Principle of Individuation

The Thomist 72 (2008): 67-106 EXISTENTIAL RELATION AS PRINCIPLE OF INDIVIDUATION STEPHEN A. HIPP Mount St. Mary's Seminary Emmitsburg, Maryland ACCORDING TO BOTH Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, the problem of the person is fundamentally a problem of individuation, since individuation-understood as embracing incommunicability, completeness, and singularityconstitutes personhood.1 Patristic and medieval reflection on the Christian doctrine of the Trinity posited the special category of relation as the formal principle of personal distinction in God. In this article, I wish to revisit the problem of individuation as approached by medieval Scholasticism, with special attention to Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Henry of Ghent. My intent is to advance relation as a candidate, even in the context of composite substances, for the distinctive (individualizing) aspect of supposital perfection.2 I shall here treat the concept of 1 Aquinas, STh I, q. 29, aa. 1-2; III, q. 2, aa. 1-2; III, q. 16, a. 12, ad 2; Quodl. 2, q. 2, a. 2; De Pot., q. 9, a. 2; III Sent., d. 5, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2; Albert the Great, I Sent., d. 23, a. 6, ad 2 (in B. Alberti Magni Ratisbonensis episcopi, ordinis Prtedicatorum, Opera omnia, ed. A. Borgnet, 38 vols. [Paris: Vives, 1890-99], 25:599; all references to Albert, unless otherwise noted, are taken from this edition); I Sent., d. 25, a. 1, quaest. 3-4 & ad quaest. 3-4 (Borgnet, ed., 25:625-28); I Sent., d. 25, a. 3, ad quaest. (Borgnet, ed., 25:632); III Sent., d. 5, a. 15, sol. (Borgnet, ed., 28:115); see Stephen A. Hipp, "Person" in Christian Tradition and in the Conception ofSaint Albert the Great: A Systematic Study ofIts Concept as Illuminated by the Mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation, Beitriige zur Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters (Munster: Aschendorff, 2001), 343-49. 2 The distinction, however, is somewhat unnecessary for the purposes of this article, which aims to identify a principle of supposital distinctiveness that can be applied to both material and immaterial created substances. 67 68 STEPHEN A. HIPP individuality in a broad sense convertible with the notion of numerical unity or distinctive existence, and not in the restricted sense of signifying the multiplication of logical inferiors with respect to a species (i.e., the division of a species into subjective parts) and the quantitative factors ordinarily associated with that. The so-called problem of individuation concerns the establishment ofthe causes and principles of individuality-consisting both in the relation of distinction from others and indivisibility into a multiplicity of like natures3-in an effort to acquire scientific knowledge of the fundamental makeup of the individual thing. An enormous amount of literature, ancient and contemporary, is devoted to this question, and the theories span a broad spectrum of often incompatible metaphysical standpoints. But their common objective was to determine which of the essential or inhering components of a given body is responsible for its being this individual among many. Is it the matter? the form? the particular collection of accidents? some combination of the foregoing? or something else again? A synthetic overview of the historical development of the problem is not possible within these 3 There is no reason to suppose that the distinctive notion of individuality is opposed to the unitive (nondivisible) notion, such as it has sometimes been treated (cf. the contrast made by Jorge Gracia in his introduction to Individuation in Scholasticism, The Later Middle Ages and the Counter-Reformation, 1150-1650 [New York: SUNY Press, 1994], 2). Godfrey of Fontaines saw the properties of both divisibility from others of like species (strictly numerical unity related to quantity} and indivisibility in itself (ontological or transcendental unity) as rooted in that by reason of which a thing is undivided in itself. Peter of Auvergne likewise distinguished unity of being from strict numerical unity without excluding the possibility that the principle of one can, in some cases, be the principle of the other (though neither necessarily implies the other). Similarly, James of Viterbo treats the cause of both individual (ontological) unity and numerical unity (pertaining to intraspecific subjective parts) as one and the same. Cajetan does the same. See...