BEING, ENTITY. - In ordinary language they can be synonyms. In philosophical reflection they are usually taken as concrete and abstract: "ente" is said of that which has being, of everything that is in any way. For all speculative systems the concept of being is the simplest and most initial: controversies begin when it comes to specifying its mode of presenting itself to consciousness, according to which each system takes a position in order to attribute to it that content and that structure which corresponds to its own interpretation of reality. For philosophies of the empiricist type, the presenting of being and its content coincide entirely with the presenting and the content of experience. For rationalist philosophies, being is given without residue and expressed adequately through concepts (dogmatic rationalism) or resolved into the activity of thought (idealism). In the first form of rationalism, being is known and determined according to a real "a priori" (innatism, ontologism); in the second, according to a logical-functional "a priori." Thus the reference to the problem of being gives the exact orientation for every system, which recognizes and qualifies itself, in character and method, by the "beginning" it takes regarding the concept of being. For example, Hegel's position that being, pure being, is identical with nothing, and therefore a simple dialectical moment (Encycl., § 86 add.), on the one hand forces the Scotist-Suarezian-Wolffian concept of being (as genus generalissimum), and on the other gives to the principle of "a priori synthesis" the full expansion that Kant kept restrained by the noumenon, which was still real being opposed to thought.
Aristotle always starts from the observation that being is said in many ways (τολικαγία). The principal ones are: real being and logical being (Met., V, 7, 1017 a 31); the first constitutes the structure of material and spiritual entities; the second is being "as truth and falsity" of the copula of judgment. Real being in turn is divided into being per se and per accidens (Met., V, 7, 1017 a 8); a division by which it is intended to distinguish in predication what belongs to an entity according to its essence from what is in any way found associated with it. Real being per se, considered in its fundamental determinations, is divided according to the "figures of the categories" (Met., X, 10, 1051 a 35; Top., I, 9, 103 b 27 ff.); considered in its fundamental modes, into "act and potency," the binomial that ultimately summarizes the Aristotelian conception concerning the structure of the entity and the nature of becoming (Met., IX and X).
The entity in act is substance or accident, finite or infinite, that is, creature or Creator (St. Thomas, De ente et essentia, especially II, 4-5). In this classification, as is easy to see, the multiplicity of meanings reveals an order of intrinsic subordination, which is twofold: first, in that the following pair deepens and embraces the content of the principal element of the preceding pair, and then in that precisely in each pair one of the elements dominates over the other, which finds itself dependent, in its order, on that one (Met., IV, 2, 1003 a 33).
Consequently, the concept of entity, although it has the poorest and most indeterminate content ("something that is"), signifies it while holding together the various modes of which it is predicated, and therefore is virtually the richest concept. The comprehension of this virtuality is the task of metaphysics (v.), which has as its object "being as being" (Met., IV, 1003 a 27), and the various types of realistic metaphysics indicate the various methods of developing the comprehension of being. It has been noted (W. D. Ross) that in the Aristotelian classification there is an absence of existential being (the act of existential being), which appears instead expressly in St. Thomas (In I Sent., dist. 33, I, 1 ad 1). In pagan philosophy, which does not know creation, the act of being coincides concretely with being substance, quantity, quality, etc.; in Christian philosophy the act of being is the proper effect of God, communicated to creatures according to a participation (Quodlib., XII, q. 5, a. 5) measured by the degree of perfection of the essence of each. The entity therefore is split (in concept) and is composed (in reality) of essence and of the act of being:
the First Cause, which is Pure Act, has no essence
and therefore is not an entity - but is Being per se
subsistent. Thus the notion of being applies also
to accident, to potency and to creature: but
first and foremost being belongs to substance,
to form and to the Divinity, from which those, respectively, have their being what they are.
The notion of being therefore is not predicated of
beings in one way, but differently according to the different
ways in which they realize the act of being. In Aristotle the problem of analogy (v.), which becomes central in that part of traditional theology that has
its fulcrum in patristics, with Pseudo-Dionysius, and, in
scholasticism, with St. Thomas, is only hinted at, since
he organized his metaphysics on this side of a theory
of creation. He distinguishes at the beginning in Cat., 1
(1 a 1-12) between equivocal terms (ἀγώνα) and univocal
(ἀγώνα), and in Top. (1, 15, 106 a 9) between terms that
are said in only one sense (ἀγώνα) and those that are
said in several senses (ἀγώνα). In the Metaphysics the term ἀγώνα recurs
expressly, ἀγώνα especially
"ἀγώνα" to indicate the mode of predication
that is not reduced to genus and species (V, 9, 1018 a 13);
it is attributed to the one (V, 6, 1016 b 32 ff.) and consequently also to the entity and its other attributes,
to causes (VIII, 2, 1043 a 5; XII, 3, 1071 a 7), to act
(IX, 1048 a, 37-b 16). For Aristotle predication
according to analogy expresses a certain positive relation, in difference from pure equivocity; but it is a matter of a relation
of subordination that could be called "ascending," and
not on the same plane as univocal predication says.
Aristotle indicates it as a relation of movement
of "one thing toward another" (ἀγώνα ἀγώνα δὲ ἕνα ἔχει
ὡς ἕλλα πρὸς ἄλλο; Met. V, 6, 1016 b 34). It seems that
Aristotle knew only the analogy, as it will later be called by
the scholastics, of proportion or of
attribution and to have almost confined it within the predicamental sphere. He says in fact: "In every category of being
there is an analogous term, as the straight in length,
the plane in surface, the odd number perhaps in the field
of numbers, and the color white among the different colors" (Met., XIV,
6, 1093 b 17-21). What was not a simple relation of
any kind, except insofar as it presupposed a deeper one of strict
dependence: what Aristotle profoundly and as the first had shown in the relation
between cause and effect and the different causes among themselves, between substance
and accident, between act and potency: therefore in the whole ambit
of finite being. The relation to infinite Being, Aristotle
seems to have conceived only as ascending analogy,
insofar as all beings, in tending to their own perfection,
aspire to God as "term of love" (ὡς
ἐγώνα). Met., XII, 7, 1072 b 3) and God is said to be
precisely ἀγώνα τὸ πρῶτον (ibid., 1072 b 1).
The Greek commentators have therefore rightly
prolonged these hints into a sketch of a theory. Porphyry, who summarizes a tradition, distinguishes in this
kind of terms two series or forms: a) those that are
said with respect to a single origin (ὡς ἑνός), as
"medicinal" of a book, of a drink, of a (surgical) iron...;
b) those of things that tend to one
same end (πρὸς ἑν), as "healthy," for example, of grain,
of walking, of reading, etc. An analysis still elementary,
but which preserved the solidarity of analogical predication
with causal dependence.
In Christian thought, the Fathers who made use of analogy (such as Pseudo-Dionysius) dwelt preferably on the metaphysical moment of likeness to God. It was Scholasticism, engaged with logic, that took an interest in the problem of the predication of being. And since, through creation, creatures obtain from God their own consistency of being, some affirm that "ente," being intrinsic to creatures, is predicated in a univocal way of God and of creatures almost as a supreme genus (Scotus, Arriaga), and at least we can (setting aside the differences among the various beings) have of "ente" a single supreme concept common to both (Suárez). In Thomism, on the other hand, analogy has been firmly maintained, as the expression of modes of being irreducible under the unity of a concept, or at most only incompletely so. But the Thomists themselves then divide: some, following Cajetan, give as the formula of analogy a "simpliciter" dissimilarity and a likeness only "secundum quid"; others instead (Blanche, Balthasar), more faithful to tradition and to the thought of the Angelic Doctor, use the formula "secundum rationem partim eandem et partim diversam" (In XI Met. lect. 3, n. 2197; cf. ibid., In IX, n. 1768; In VII, nn. 1334-38; Sum. Theol., 1°, q. 13, a. 4; De Pot., q. 7, a. 7).
This formula is expressed in its ultimate metaphysical purity in the following terms: "Non dicitur esse similitudo inter Deum et creaturas in forma, secundum eandem rationem generis aut speciei, sed secundum analogiam tantum; prout scil. Deus est ens per essentiam, et alia per participationem" (Sum. Theol., 1°, q. 4, a. 3, ad 3). This relation of participation, constitutive of analogy, is naturally configured according to the ontological grade of the terms in relation: substance and accident, intrinsic and extrinsic causes, act and potency, etc. Thus "ente" subsists in the relations that it founds and that then move it to its completion.