Subsistence

SUBSISTENCE. - It generally indicates the consistency and sufficiency of reality that substance (v.) obtains through the possession of its essential and real principles.

S. therefore constitutes the mode of being of the individual substance that is complete in itself, in opposition to the inherence that is proper to accidents: « illa enim subsistere dicimus, quae non in alio sed in se existunt » (Sum. Theol., 1st, q. 29, a. 2, c; cf. q. 75, a. 2 ad 1).

S. is therefore the actuality of substance as such: « Ratio substantiae est quod per se subsistat » (St. Thomas, In III Sent., dist. 6, q. 1, q. 1, a. 1 c), so that s. coincides with the individual substance existing through itself. As the actuality of substance, s. is realized in different beings according to their respective ontological structure. In God s. consists in the possession, in simplicity and fullness, of being as pure actuality (cf. Sum. Theol., 1st, q. 13, a. 11). And since the perfection of being is, for St. Thomas, graduated according to the independence that substance has with respect to matter, s. belongs principally to spiritual natures that have no matter in themselves but are pure forms: such are the angels, called for this reason « subsistent forms » (ibid., 1st, q. 3, a. 3, c). The human soul (v.) too, although it is the substantial form of the body, must be recognized as endowed with s. insofar as it exercises the operations of understanding and willing that manifest it to be of a spiritual nature (ibid., q. 75, a. 2; cf. Q. de anima, a. 14).

To define the terminology precisely, one may therefore distinguish: a) essence (v.) or nature (v.), which is the formal constitutive element of any thing whatsoever; b) the « primary substance », that is, the real individual or « hypostasis » or « suppositum », which is the concrete reality existing in its ontological sufficiency (cf. Quodl., II, q. 2, a. 2, c); c) s. expresses the actuality of that primary substance, whereby it exists in itself and is distinguished from abstract essences or « secondary substances » existing only as concepts in the mind, and in reality through the individuals that realize them; d) the person (v.) adds to s. the dignity of a rational nature.

The development of the notion of s. coincides with that of reality: for Plato the universal species and genera subsist because they constitute the « in itself » of the real, withdrawn from the becoming of sensible appearance (cf. Resp., 476 A ff.). In Aristotelian metaphysics, if in reality s. belongs to the individual substance, it is nevertheless the effect of the « form » and it is therefore the species as such that subsists amid the vicissitudes of physical contingencies, while individual beings are born and die (Met., VII, 3 1028 b 36-1029 a 2). In Neoplatonism s., indicated by the term ὑπόστασις (the Aristotelian meaning of the term is foreign to the metaphysics: cf. H. Bonitz, s. v. in Index Aristot., Berlin 1870, 801 b 35-802 a 8), corresponds to indefectible existence, ἀνακλείπτως ὑπόστασις, which the emanations obtain in the derivation from the One (cf. Proclus, The elements of theology, ed. E. R. Dodds, Oxford 1933, prop. 84, 94; pp. 78, 6; 84, 24 and passim). With s. Moerbeke translates the title of Proclus's opuscule, lost in the Greek text, on the problem of evil: De malorum subsistentia, and rightly so, as Cousin observes, because « bona habent ὑπόστασιν, mala παρ' ὑπόστασιν », insofar as « bonum species, malum sine specie ac velut privatio » (Procli opera..., I, Paris 1820, p. 188). In its original Greek meaning, therefore, s. as ὑπόστασις is « foundation », both in the transitive sense from ὑρίστημι and in the intransitive sense from ὑρίσταμαι: in the ontological sphere, if it belongs to the singular substance with respect to accidents, it is also proper - for Plato as for Aristotle - to the universal essence with respect to individuals. Greek philosophy therefore stands for the real identity of οὐσία and ὑπόστασις, of s. or ὑπόστασις with substance (primary and secondary).

This identification is found again in the Greek Fathers and passed into the condemnation of Arius by the Council of Nicaea (Denz-U 54), but after the Council the precise meaning of s. as primary substance is clarified thanks to St. Athanasius, sanctioned by the formula: μία οὐσία, τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις (cf. Athanasius, De incarn. et contra arianos, 10: PG 26, 1000 B; μία γὰρ θεότης καὶ εἰς θεὸς ἐν τρισὶν ὑποστάσεις). At this point the transition begins in theology from s. as οὐσία-ὑπόστασις to that of « person-πρόσωπον », but, as is well known, among the Greek and Latin Fathers there was not always a perfect understanding on this point: the oscillating use of the terms οὐσία-ὑπόστασις is prolonged in heated polemics and conciliar discussions. The uncertainties are overcome when, thanks to the activity of the Cappadocians in the East, one arrives, with Pope Damasus, at the identification of ὑπόστασις with πρόσωπον in his approval of the common formula elaborated at the Council of Constantinople (381), which treats the two expressions as equivalent: ἐν τρῷ τελεῖοις ὑποστάσεσις and ἐν τρῷ τελεῖοις προσώπους (in Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Eccl. hist., V, 9; PG 82, 1216 BC). In the Latin world ὑπόστασις is translated as subsistentia by Rufinus of Aquileia (d. 410) in his Hist. eccl. (I, 29; PL 21, 499 C-500 A) and the usage becomes ever more constant in the West. The exception is precisely Boethius (v.), who remains with the Greek usage of ὑπόστασις = primary substance, which passed into his definition of « person »: « rationalis natura individua substantia » (cf. De duabus naturis, cap. 3: PL 64, 1343-44. Cf. Sum. Theol., 1st, q. 29, a. 1-2 and especially the Prooemium of the Contra errores graecorum, ed. De Maria, III, Città di Castello 1886, p. 411 ff.).

Scholasticism, especially from the 16th century onward, agitated the problem concerning the constitutive principle of s., which has been resolved in the various schools in conformity with their respective metaphysics of substance. In the neo-Thomist school, after a prevalence of the opinion of Cajetan (v.), who placed the principle of s. in the formal line, there is a return to the traditional position of Capreolus (v.), in which, in conformity with the Thomist distinction of essence and act of being in creatures, this principle is given by the esse as actus essendi, which is the proper act of substance.

Cornelio Fabro