A Note on Diversity and Difference

A NOTE ON DIVERSITY AND DIFFERENCE T HE PURPOSE OF this note is to delve into a problem resting in the borderline area between logic and metaphysics . Although it certainly has to do with words, it is not primarily an exercise in linguistic analysis in the sense of common language analysis. Neither should it be construed as primarily an historical work, even though reference is made to certain historical figures to whom the question of the meanings of the terms diversity and difference was of special importance . My purpose, rather, is to discuss as concisely as possible the following alternatives with respect to the mutual logical relations between diversity and difference: Is diversity the genus and difference its species? or Are diversity and difference two species of some higher genus? or Are diversity and difference members of different genera? The importance of the answer given to these questions is brought out very well by Professor Joseph Owens in his A.n Elementary Christian Metaphysics.1 As part of his discussion of the way the human mind apprehends being, the author has reason to differentiate diversity from difference with respect to the difference between a thing and its being. The being of sensible things, he states, "is not just different in every case and at every moment, but is diverse in the fullest sense of the term. Things are said technically to be different if they coincide in a specific or generic trait while they are distinct through some further characteristic. ' Diverse ' is a wider term and applies also to things that do not coincide in any specific or generic feature." Noting the difference between these two terms is of great importance in the correct understanding of an authentic Thomistic philosophy of being, even though such a distinction is not generally made in colloquial speech. In 1 (Milwaukee, 1963), p. 5!!. 472 A NOTE ON DIVERSITY AND DIFFERENCE 478 opposition to several other important thinkers of the past Aquinas did not regard being as a genus. Being is not a universally common nature of some especially shallow comprehension present in all that is and grasped by means of a single concept. Rather, the being of each individual essence is not only really diverse from that essence but diverse with respect to every other instance of essence and existence. This diversity can and must be apprehended separately in each and every case, and in each successive period of time, by means of judgment. As Fr. Owens states elsewhere," Being is diverse in every instance, yet is most common to all things." 2 And," To signify the actual existing, it has to be referred back in every separate instance to a judgment in which being is grasped in its actual diversity." 8 Now, what would happen if the being of things was not diverse but only different? If such were the case, being would have to be viewed as some sort of thing, a super-genus, an especially denuded essence, underlying all that is. In fact, not just underlying in some prime matter sense but actually identified with all that is as a genus is identified with its species. Being would be the genus for everything. This view of being is productive of two main results.' One would be Pantheism, a polite form of atheism. This follows directly from taking being to be a genus, indeed the genus, for everything that is. As a genus, being becomes a unifying principle for every one of its subdivisions. Just as being animals is what makes men and dogs alike, so being in the genus being would make all beings alike. In the end, everything would be identified with everything else under the same summum genus. Indirectly, regarding being as a genus leads to the affirmation of nonbeing as an extramental reality if one wishes to explain •" Diversity and Community of Being in St. Thomas Aquinas," Mediaeval Studies, 22 (1960), p. 801. • Ibid., p. 802. Cf. "The Causal Proposition Revisited," Modem Sckoolman, 44 (1966-1967), p. 150, note 12. • See E. Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers (2nd ed., Toronto, 1952), ch. IV. 474 F. F. CENTORE change. One could, of course, accept the univocity of being...