Esse Primum Creatum in Albert the Great’s Liber de Causis et Processu Universitatis

ESSE PRIMUM CREATUM IN ALBERT THE GREAT'S LIBER DE CAUSIS ET PROCESSU UNIVERSITATIS That Albert the Great (ca. 1200-1280) was interested in the conception in Liber de Causis, Prop. 4, of esse as primum creatum 1 is attested to by his commenting upon it in his earliest down to his latest treatises.2 For example, in Summa de Creaturis, composed before 1243, Albert interprets Prop. 4 of the Liber (" Prima rerum creatarum est esse, et non est ante ipsum creatum aliud ") in such a way that esse pertains to cognition rather than to the actual world: esse or ens is first in the sense that it is the concept beyond which the resolution of other concepts cannot go and, accordingly, ens is not entirely convertible with bonum, verum or unum (Summa de Creaturis, Pars I, Tr. 1, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2; XIX, 7d) .3 When writing the 1 See Otto Bardenhewer (ed.), Die ps.eudo-aristotelische Schrift Ueber das reine Gute bekannt unter dem Namen Liber de Cau..-is (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1882), p. 166: "Prima rerum creatarum est esse, et non est ante ipsum creatum aliud." For Bardenhewer's translation of the Proposition from Arabic, see ibid., p. 65: " Das erste der geschaffenen Dinge ist '., ratio, intellectus; 2.1.4, p. 440a-b: esse, vivere, sentire, intelligere; 2.1.13, p. 455b: esse, vivere, sentire, intelligere; 2.1.19, p. 465d: esse, vivere, sentire, ratiocinari. See 2.3.5, pp. 553d sq., for an explanation of how esse, vivere and intelligere "complectuntur omnia quae sunt: vivere enim per incrementum et nutrimentum vegetabilibus est esse, vivere autem per sensum sentientibus est esse, et vivere per intellectum intelligibilibus est esse." On the triad of esse, vivere and intelligere in other authors see P. Hadot, "Etre, vie, pensee chez Plotin et avant Plotin," Les sources de Plotin (Geneve: Fondation Hardt, 1960), pp. 105-157; A. H. Armstrong, "Eternity, Life and Movement in P1otinus' Account of Nous," Le Nioplatonisme (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1971), pp. 67-76; R. T. Wallis, Neoplatonism (New York: Charles Scribn.er's Sons, 1972), pp. 66-67, 124-25, 130, 132-33; Stephen Gersh, KINESIS AKINETOS: Spiritual Motion in the Philosophy of Proclus (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973), pp. 20-22 and 78-80; idem, From lamblichus to Eriugena: An Investigation of the Prehistory and Evolution of the Pseudo-Dionysian Tradition (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978), pp. 47, 87-88, 143 sqq.; E. R. Dodds, Proclus: Elements ESSE PRIMUM CHEATUM 639 all those perfections are there in their rationes (since such is the way in which the lower is present in the higher), and yet each is completely one with God and with the others, each is there according to the divine manner of being rather than its own (thus privations are there nondeficiently, motions immutably, compositions simply, matter immaterially , sensibility nonsensibly); moreover, all those perfections are there as acts since an agent must be in act the acts which he causes and God is the agent causing those acts in subsequent existents; consequently, because God is uncreated Esse, He causes the act which is esse primum creatum; because He is Life, He causes esse to be the act which is vivere; because He is Light, He causes vivere to be the act which is [intelligere and its offshoot], sentire. If our re-presentation of Albert's solution is accurate, he has cleverly sidestepped the two traps set in #1 insofar as he conceives of esse, vivere and other intelligences as acts and, secondly , of the divine nature as containing the perfections even of His effects in the visible world but in an invisible and spiritual way.73 But he still must account for how God's causality works. This account he finds partially in Aristotle's dictum that act comes from act since an effect's act arises from the act of its cause (#4) . Take the case of an architect's designing and building a of Theology, pp. 252-54; L. J. Rosan, The Philosophy of Proclus (New York: Cosmos, 1949), pp. 97-98; Pierre Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1968), Ch. IV: " La triade intelligible...