Galluzzo

Gabriele Galluzzo

Aquinas on Mental Being*

My concern in this paper is Aquinas’s understanding of the nature of mental be-ings, and more particularly of purely mental beings, by which I mean things thathave no existence as such outside the mind but only therein. The traditional sto-ry has it that Aquinas’s treatment of purely mental beings was mainly driven bysemantic considerations, i.e. by the necessity of accounting for the reference ofsubject- and predicate-terms denoting inexistent objects1. One implication ofthe traditional picture is that mental beings, in so far as they serve to respond tosemantic concerns, turn out to be difficult to accomodate into an ontology main-ly centred on the notion of existence, in an ontology, in other words, which can-not avail itself of a Meinong-style treatment of inexistent objects and so does notassign to them any mind-independent status. My purpose in this paper is not todeny the significant role played by semantic considerations in Aquinas’s treat-ment of inexistent objects. What I intend to do, by contrast, is to counterbalancethe traditional view by showing that Thomas attempts at times to provide a uni-fied doctrine of being in which mental being and purely mental being in partic-ular count as forms of being. As texts will prove, such a doctrine of being shouldbe mainly understood as an extension of Aristotle’s so-called theory of focalmeaning so as to cover also beings that have no particular place within Aristo-tle’s ontological framework. Regarding mental objects as part of a general doc-trine of being has the advantage of enabling us to distinguish different kinds of

«Quaestio», 10 (2010), 83-97 • 10.1484/J.QUAESTIO.1.102327

* A substantial draft of this paper has been presented at the conference Prospettive Tardo-Medievalisull’Intenzionalità (Later Medieval Perspectives on Intentionality). Convegno Internazionale di Storia del-la Filosofia Medievale, Parma, 10th-12th June 2009. I wish to thank Gyula Klima and Claude Panaccio fortheir comments and suggestions.

1 See for instance: G. KLIMA, The Changing Role of Entia Rationis in Medieval Semantics and Ontol-ogy: A Comparison Study with Reconstruction, «Synthese», 96 (1993), pp. 25-58; ID., On Being andEssence in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science, in S. KNUTTILA / R. TYÖRINOJA / S.EBBESEN (eds.), Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy. Proceedings of the Eighth Interna-tional Congress of Medieval Philosophy (S.I.E.P.M.), vol. 2, Luther-Agricola Society, Helsinki 1990, pp.210-221.

84 Gabriele Galluzzo

purely mental objects and analyse their differences. In particular, I shall singleout three kinds of purely mental object: (I) privations and negations; (II) possi-bles and, finally, (III) impossible objects. The main difference among the threekinds of object, I shall argue, does not consist in their status as intentional ob-jects, i.e. as objects of thought, but rather in their different ontological ground,which is somehow projected back on mental objects when taken as beings in gen-eral and not as intentional beings. The ontological point of view, therefore, willcontribute to explain the different truth-conditions of sentences containing termsthat denote the different kinds of object on my list.

I. Let me start off with a familiar idea, which Aquinas expounds in many dif-ferent places both in his theological works and in his commentaries on Aristo-tle2. ‘Being’ – Aquinas says – is spoken of in two different ways and according-ly there are two different senses in which things can be said to be. In one way,being is that which is divided according to the ten categories. In this first senseof ‘being’ those things can be called beings that fall within one of the ten cate-gories, those things in other words that exist in the extra-mental world, be theysubstances or accidental properties of substances. According to another sense,by contrast, ‘being’ signifies the truth of a proposition. A proposition is true infact either when we say of something that is the case that it is the case or of some-thing that is not the case that it is not the case. As Aquinas usually explainsthings, a mental proposition is true either when our intellect asserts of two thingsthat are in fact conjoined that they are conjoined or when it asserts of two thingsthat are not in fact conjoined that they are not conjoined3. Asserting that twothings are conjoined is called compositio, whilst asserting that they are not con-joined is called divisio and so truth is standardly connected with mental compo-sition and division. According to the second sense of ‘being’, therefore, every-thing is said to be about which we can form a true proposition, whether affirma-

2 Cf. for instance: THOMAS DE AQUINO, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, II, d. 34, q. 1, a. 1, ed. R.P.Mandonnet, 2 vols., Lethellieux, Paris 1929, vol. II, p. 872 (see also: Scriptum super libros Sententiarum,I, d. 19, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1, ed. Mandonnet, vol. I, p. 488; I, d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1, ed. Mandonnet, vol. I, pp.765-766); THOMAS DE AQUINO, In Duodecim Libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Expositio, V, lect. 9, ed. M.-R. Cathala / R. Spiazzi, Marietti, Turin-Rome 1964, nn. 895-896.

3 For an introduction to Aquinas’s doctrine of truth that also touches upon some of the issues I dealwith in this paper, see: J.A. AERTSEN, Truth as Transcendental in Thomas Aquinas, «Topoi», 11 (1992), pp.159-171. See also: J.F. WIPPEL, Truth in Thomas Aquinas, «The Review of Metaphysics», 43 (1989/90),pp. 295-326; G. GALLUZZO, Il tema della verità nell’Expositio Libri Peryermenias di Tommaso d’Aquino,«Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale», 11 (2000), pp. 217-257. For papers dealing inparticular with Aquinas’s understanding of mental true propositions and mental judgements see: J. OWENS,Judgement and Truth in Aquinas, «Mediaeval Studies», 30 (1970), pp. 138-158; J. MCNICHOLL, On Judg-ing, «The Thomist», 38 (1974), pp. 768-825; ID., On Judging Existence, «The Thomist», 43 (1979), pp.507-580; P. LEE, Aquinas on Knowledge of Truth and Existence, «The New Scholasticism», 60 (1986), pp.46-71. Most of these articles also tackle the problem of the existential import of true propositions.

Aquinas on Mental Being 85

tive or negative. Significantly, Aquinas remarks that all that can be called beingin the first sense of being can be called being also in the second sense, the senseconnected with truth4. The thought here is simply that we form true propositionsnot only concerning things that have no existence in the extra-mental world, butalso – and we may say especially – with regards to things that exist outside themind. Not everything, by contrast, that is called being according to the first sensecan also be called being according to the second one. We say many truths aboutthings that have no existence in the extra-mental world: we can truly say, for in-stance, many things about blindness, but blindness does not exist as such in theextra-mental world in that it is just the lack of a positive property, having sight.

Thus, Aquinas’s general idea seems to be clear enough. There is a broadsense of mental being (i.e. being connected with the truth of a proposition) whichcovers everything about which we can form a true proposition and so both extra-mental beings and beings that exist only in our mind. There is also, however, anarrower sense of mental being which includes only things that exist in our mindbut not also in the extra-mental world. Before dealing specifically with mentalbeings in the narrow sense, i.e. purely mental beings, let me say something aboutone remark of Aquinas’s that may slightly perplex us. That is, the claim that ex-tra-mental beings count as beings according to both senses of ‘being’, i.e. ac-cording to the categorial sense of being and according to being connected withtrue mental propositions. Since both a mental proposition and its parts are men-tal entities, it is not clear how categorial beings can be at the same time extra-mental entities and parts of a mental entity such as a true proposition. The prob-lem, however, is more apparent than real. For one thing, all that Aquinas couldmean is that the parts of a true proposition – and in particular, as we shall see,the subject-term – can refer both to things that exist in the extra-mental worldand to those that exist only in the mind. For another thing, Aquinas expousesAvicenna’s doctrine of essence, according to which an essence has two basicways of existence, i.e. in the extra-mental world as an individual and in the mindas a general concept. According to this view, therefore, extra-mental things andthe concepts representing them are two modes of existence of one and the sameessence, even if it is somehow hard to define exactly the kind of ‘sameness’ in-volved here. Admittedly, Avicenna’s account is mainly built around the essenceof substances and hence should be expanded so as to account for mental propo-sitions including subject- and predicate-terms referring to accidents. In princi-ple, Avicenna’s conceptual machinery should work in the case of accidents aswell. The essence of an accident as well, in other words, should have two differ-

4 Cf. THOMAS DE AQUINO, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, II, d. 34, q. 1, a. 1, ed. Mandonnet, vol.II, p. 872.


ent modes of existence, in the extra-mental world where it exists as a property ofa substance and in the mind, where it exists as a universal concept, i.e. the con-cept of a property of a substance. And it should be one and the same essencethat exists in one way and in the other. Of course, the essence of an accident isa derivative kind of essence, an essence that structurally depends on the essenceof a certain kind of substance. This, however, should make no different as to itshaving two different modes of existence, while remaining one and the sameessence. Standardly, Aquinas seems to assign some kind of esse, i.e. existence,to accidents as well, but it is not entirely clear whether the esse of accidents isdistinct form that of their subjects. Still less clear is whether the existence of ac-cidents should be thought to be really distinct from their essence as is the casewith the existence of substance5. Thus, it is not clear that Aquinas can avail him-self of an Avicenna-style scheme to explain how accidents exist both in the ex-tra-mental world and in the mind. Here I shall leave aside these complications,which would lead us away from our main topic. I content myself with observingthat Aquinas may have enough conceptual machinery to account for the idea thatmental being in the broad sense also includes extra-mental beings and not onlypurely mental entities. After all, there must be some kind of relevant connectionbetween the extra-mental and the mental state of an accident, whether or notsuch a connection can be cashed out in terms of the standard essence-existencedistinction.

So far, we have seen Aquinas contrast the narrower sense of mental being withextra-mental being on the grounds that mental beings in the narrow sense areprecisely those mental beings in the broad sense that exist only in the mind. Mynext task will be to examine Aquinas’s assessment of the nature itself of purelymental existence and of its ontological status, i.e. what kind of existence it is andhow it relates to extra-mental existence.

To prevent one possible misunderstanding, let me make it clear that by pure-ly mental beings I do not mean, generically, everything that has a purely mentalexistence. Mental propositions, for instance, have certainly a purely mental ex-istence but they are not the sort of purely mental beings I am most interested in.What I wish to focus on, by contrast, are purely mental beings that can figure assubjects in a true mental proposition. My insistence on the subject-term reflectsthe way Aquinas himself presents mental being. He remarks in fact that thethings that can be called beings according to the second sense of being are thoseabout which we can form a true proposition – which clearly indicates that the do-

5 For the difficult topic of the esse of accidents see the detailed discussion in J.F. WIPPEL, The Meta-physical Thought of Thomas Aquinas. From Finite Being to Uncreated Being, The Catholic University ofAmerica Press, Washington, D.C. 2000 («Monographs of the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Phi-losophy»), pp. 238-294.


main of mental beings can be obtained by looking at the things that can figureas subjects in a true proposition6. By implication, purely mental beings are thesubset of the things that can figure as subjects of a true proposition that do nothave any extra-mental existence. Aquinas’s examples – such as for instanceCaecitas est7 – suggest that the domain of mental beings and purely mental be-ings in particular is singled out by looking at a particular class of propositions,i.e. existential propositions whose subject-terms are the mental beings in ques-tion. This is confirmed, it seems to me, by an often neglected passage inAquinas’s commentary on the Peri Hermeneias where Thomas discusses the re-lation between the copulative and the existential use of the verb ‘to be’8. Hismain point seems to be that the primary sense of the verb ‘to be’ is the existen-tial one, while the copulative sense is somehow obtained by extending the exis-tential sense. Aquinas observes that ‘est’, ‘is’, primarily signifies what falls with-in the intellect’s scope in the manner of an absolute actuality: to say that some-thing is, in other words, primarily means to say that something is in actuality, i.e.exists9. Since, however, the actuality that is signified by the verb ‘is’ is the actu-ality of all forms, both substantial and accidental, we use the verb ‘is’ to indicatethat a certain form actually inheres in a certain subject, we use in other wordsthe verb ‘is’ as a copula10. Whether or not Aquinas’s account is mainly designedto capture the case of extra-mental beings alone – which I do not believe – it canbe easily extended so as to cover the case of purely mental beings as well. Af-firmative predicative propositions – Aquinas seems to say, among other things –have existential import. Therefore, each true affirmative proposition attributingsome property to an object implies and so presupposes a corresponding true ex-istential proposition about the object to which the property is assigned. Ofcourse, the kind of existence or actuality which existential propositions attributewill be different depending on whether the subject-term refers to an extra-men-tal being or to a purely mental one. The true predication ‘Blindness is a priva-tion’ implies and so presupposes the truth of the existential proposition ‘Blind-ness is’, but of course ‘is’ in this particular instance should not be taken to sig-nify extra-mental existence – for in this case the proposition ‘Blindness is’ wouldclearly be false – but only mental existence. Of course, some kind of mental ex-

6 Cf. THOMAS DE AQUINO, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, II, d. 34, q. 1, a. 1, ed. Mandonnet, vol.II, p. 872; In Duodecim Libros Metaphysicorum Expositio, V, lect. 9, ed. Spiazzi, n. 896.

7 Cf. THOMAS DE AQUINO, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, II, d. 34, q. 1, a. 1, ed. Mandonnet, vol.II, p. 872.

8 Cf. THOMAS DE AQUINO, Expositio Libri Peryermenias, I, c. 5, cura et studio fratrum Praedicatorum,Commissio Leonina, Rome / Vrin, Paris 1989 («Opera Omnia», t. I* 1), p. 31,391-406.

9 THOMAS DE AQUINO, Expositio Libri Peryermenias, I, c. 5, p. 31,394-395.10 THOMAS DE AQUINO, Expositio Libri Peryermenias, I, c. 5, p. 31,397-403.


istence must be presupposed also in the case of false affirmative propositionsabout inexistent objects and, probably, even in the case of negative propositions.But this is not the point. What I wish to lay stress on, by contrast, is that Aquinasseems to assume the same implication schema for affirmative true prupositionsin the case of both extra-mental and purely mental objects. Aquinas’s reasoning,in other words, shows that he may be prepared to consider mental existence asa form of being. This squares with Aquinas’s observation in the first Book of hisCommentary on the Sentences, q. 19, to the effect that each true proposition pre-supposes some being or other, be it extra-mental or purely mental11 – which I donot take to refer to the (mental) being of the proposition itself, but, given the con-text, to the being of the object about which the proposition is true. Thus, mentalbeing, even though it must be considered not-being as compared to extra-men-tal being, is nevertheless a form of being and not, as Aquinas himself observes,absolutely nothing.

II. The texts I have just analysed do not take us much farther than the seman-tic treatment of purely mental beings. For all that Aquinas seems to be saying inthese passages is that true affirmative propositions presuppose some kind of ex-istence or other. In the case of purely mental beings all this boils down to say-ing that true mental propositions about purely mental beings at least presupposethe intentional existence of such beings. This way of looking at things, however,does not introduce any distinction between different kinds of purely mental be-ing and in particular between purely mental beings that are somehow groundedin the extra-mental world and those that have no extra-mental ground. For, whenconsidered from the point of view of their semantic role, all inexistent objectscan be the object of true statements provided that they are apprehended in someway or other by the mind. What I need in order to establish some differenceamong different kinds of purely mental object is a general doctrine of being inwhich not only is mental being taken to be a form of being, but also some par-ticular kinds of purely mental being are described as connected with things ex-isting in the extra-mental world. What I need, in other words, is a way of singlingout different kinds of purely mental being on the basis of their different extra-mental ground. But how do it?

A particularly significant text in this direction is Aquinas’s commentary onMet. G 2, where Aristotle expounds his so-called theory of pros hen or focal mean-ing, i.e. the idea that all the different senses of ‘existing’ can be grouped arounda core or fundamental sense, the sense which is proper to substances. In the pas-

11 Cf. THOMAS DE AQUINO, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, I, d. 19, q. 5, ad 5, ed. Mandonnet, vol.I, p. 489.


sage Aquinas is commenting on Aristotle remarks that ‘being’ is spoken of inmany ways, but all that is is said to be in relation to one principle: some thingsin fact are said to be because they are substances, some others because they areproperties of substances, others because they are a process towards substanceor privations or destructions or qualities of substance, or productive or genera-tive of substance, or of the things that are relative to substance and so on and soforth. Although Aristotle’s analysis starts from semantic considerations about themeaning of the expression ‘that which exists’ and ‘exist’, his main point is notconcerned with language but rather with the world that language describes: theconsideration that ‘that which exists’, ‘existing’ or ‘exist’ are spoken of in manydifferent senses results in the ontological view that there are different ways ofbeing and so different forms of existing. Interestingly enough, Aquinas tries toput some order in Aristotle’s list of beings by saying that the ways of being list-ed by Aristotle can be reduced to four, which he arranges in an increasing orderof perfection:

1. The weakest form of being is the being of privations and negations, whichis purely mental. We call such forms of being beings of reason because our rea-son deals with them as if they were some beings by forming true affirmative andnegative propositions about them.

2. Very close to privations and negations are generations, corruptions and mo-tions, which possess something of the character of privations and negations, asis testified to by Aristotle’s definition of motion as an imperfect actuality.

3. The third way of being is the being of accidental properties. Accidents havenothing of the character of not-being, but are still a weak form of being in thatthey exist in something else and not per se.

4. Finally there comes the most perfect form of being, which possesses an ex-tra-mental existence totally unmixed with privation and negation, exists per seand hence is a firm and solid kind of being. The fourth way of being is, of course,the being of substances with reference to which all the other beings can be saidto be beings12.

12 Cf. THOMAS DE AQUINO, In Duodecim Libros Metaphysicorum Expositio, IV, lect. 1, ed. Spiazzi, nn.540-543: «Sciendum tamen quod praedicti modi essendi ad quatuor possunt reduci. Nam unum eorumquod est debilissimum, est tantum in ratione, scilicet negatio et privatio, quam dicimus in ratione esse,quia ratio de eis negociatur quasi de quibusdam entibus, dum de eis affirmat vel negat aliquid. Secun-dum quid autem differant negatio et privatio, infra dicetur. Aliud autem huic proximum in debilitate est,secundum quod generatio et corruptio et motus entia dicuntur. Habent enim aliquid admixtum de priva-tione et negatione. Nam motus est actus imperfectus, ut dicitur tertio Physicorum. Tertium autem diciturquod nihil habet de non ente admixtum, habet tamen esse debile, quia non per se, sed in alio, sicut suntqualitates, quantitates et substantiae proprietates. Quartum autem genus est quod est perfectissimum,quod scilicet habet esse in natura absque admixtione privationis, et habet esse firmum et solidum, quasiper se existens, sicut sunt substantiae. Et ad hoc sicut ad primum et principale omnia alia referuntur. Nam


From our perspective, Aquinas’s list of ways of being is important for one par-ticular reason, namely because a certain class of purely mental beings, i.e. pri-vations and negations, are grouped together with the other and stronger forms ofbeing. Aquinas, therefore, seems to be prepared to embrace a general theory ofbeing where mental being and purely mental being in particular is regarded asa weakening of the other and more pregnant forms of being. As is seen, the the-oretical framework behind Aquinas’s move is Aristotle’s doctrine of pros hen orfocal meaning, the claim in other words that everything can be said to be a be-ing provided that it bears some relation or other to the things that are beings inthe primary sense of the term, i.e. substances.

But what relation do privations and negations, which are as such purely men-tal beings, bear to substances? The answer, I suggest, should be looked for notin the intentional being of negations and privations but in their ontologicalground. In order to explain what I mean, let me recall that Aquinas’s ontologyseems to be sufficiently tolerant as to admit of some kind of, so to speak, two-stage or distributed existence. There are things, in other words, that possess anincomplete or potential existence in reality and a complete or actual existencein the mind. Universals and truth are two cases in point13. Universals, for in-stance, do not exist as universals in the extra-mental world, but only in the mind.However, it would be wrong to say that they do not exist at all in the extra-men-tal world, simply because things have natures or essences which our minds isable to know in a universalised form. Analogously, truth as such exists only inthe mind in that only mental entities of a special sort, such as mental proposi-tions, can be said to be true in the strict sense of the term. However, it would bewrong to say that true mental propositions do not have an extra-mental ground.On the contrary, they are grounded in how things are in the extra-mental worldand more precisely in the extra-mental circumstances, for instance a certainproperty belonging to a certain substance, that make them true. Thus, things canbe said to be true in so far as they cause the truth residing in the intellect, i.e. inso far as they make mental propositions true. It might be thought that the com-parison I wish to draw between universals and truth on the one hand and priva-tions and negations on the other is not entirely apt. For privations and negationsdo not exist at all as such in the extra-mental world, where there is a sense inwhich universals and truth exist in the extra-mental world, although only poten-tially: universals because there are natures, ontological constituents of particu-

qualitates et quantitates dicuntur esse, inquantum insunt substantiae; motus et generationes, inquantumtendunt ad substantiam vel ad aliquid praedictorum; privationes autem et negationes, inquantum re-movent aliquid trium praedictorum».

13 Cf. THOMAS DE AQUINO, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, I, d. 19, q. 5, a. 1, ed. Mandonnet, vol.I, p. 486.


lar things that can be made universal by the mind that grasps them and truth be-cause there are circumstances in the extra-mental world which cause truth in theintellect, i.e. make true mental propositions true. The comparison, however, isof some help in making the point that it would not be entirely correct to say thatnothing corresponds in reality to privations and negations.

My idea can be clarified by putting emphasis on the qualification ‘as such’ inmy previous claim ‘privations and negations do not exist as such outside themind’. Even if there is nothing directly corresponding to blindness in the extra-mental world and so the mention of blindness adds no item to the list of extra-mental beings, there is in another sense something in the extra-mental world that‘blindness’ names, i.e. the fact that someone has no sight. In other words, whenwe attribute blindness to someone we are not attributing any positive property,and yet it would be wrong to say that there is no extra-mental situation describedby our attribution of blindness. For it makes a great different whether someonecan see or not. Thus, our talking about blindness bears on how things are in theextra-mental world, after all, even though ‘blindness’ does not name any positiveproperty. The same pattern of reasoning can be applied to the case of negations.Clearly, non-redness is not a positive property an object possesses over andabove its other properties. Still, it would be wrong to say there is no objectivestate of affairs corresponding to our attribution of non-redness. After all, it is anobject’s being entirely coloured in some other way – and so ultimately the wayin which the object is coloured – that grounds our attribution of non-redness tothe object itself. What I am suggesting, in other words, is that mental beings ofthe kind of blindness and the like are ontologically reducible to extra-mental en-tities belonging to substances or, at least, to speak more loosely, to some situa-tions concerning substances. This, I suggest, is the reason why Aquinas is pre-pared to include the very weak kind of being privations and negations possesswithin a general theory of being built around the focal meaning structure. Al-though privations and negations are purely intentional objects, they can besomehow reduced to some extra-mental being, and in particular to some extra-mental being bearing relation to being in its primary sense, i.e. the being of sub-stances. Thus, talking about privations and negations is in one sense talkingabout purely mental entities, but in another sense is also talking about the worldand the objects populating it. It is not only their mental existence that does notallow us to exclude privations and negations from the ontology but also their con-nection with or reducibility to some extra-mental situations concerning sub-stances14. This general picture is confirmed by an interesting passage from

14 It may be useful here to distinguish between reduction and elimination. If I reduce entity of type Gto entity of type F, then sentences about Gs are true but can be paraphrased away into sentences contain-


Aquinas’s commentary on Met. L, where Aquinas partly assimilates the status ofaccidents to that of privations and negations15. The general point Aquinas is try-ing to make is that accidents are not beings in an unqualified sense but only inso far as they are modes of a certain subject, i.e. of a substance: the propertywhiteness can be said to be only because there is a white thing, namely a sub-stance that is white16. Accidents, therefore, can be called beings only in virtueof their subject. It should not come as a surprise – Aquinas continues – thatthings that are not beings in an unqualified sense should be called beings insome sense. For this is precisely what happens in the case of privations andnegations: non-white is said to be in some sense not because it has existence butbecause there exists a subject that lacks whiteness17. As a matter of fact, acci-dents and privations (and negations) have something in common, that is, bothare said to be in virtue of their subject. In their similarity, however, there lies al-so their difference: for, as a result of an accident inhering in it, the subject hassuch-and-such a being, i.e. gets qualified in a certain way, while in the case ofprivations and negations the subject has no posite being but rather lacks some18.Once again, what is interesting in the passage under examination is that Aquinasseems prepared to treat privations and negations as weak and diminished formsof being to be compared with and assimilated to other qualified forms of beingsuch as accidents and motions. Although not existing as such in the extra-men-tal world, privations and negations have enough extra-mental ground to be in-cluded in a general theory of what can be said to be in some way or other.

I should probably say something now about the semantic consequences of myunderstanding of privations, negations and the like. What is the relation betweenthe sense of est in the proposition Homo est, whose subject-term refers to an ex-

ing reference only to entities of type F. Thus, Gs in some sense exist but all truths about Gs can be re-duced to truths about Fs. If I eliminate entity of type G in favour of entity of type F, by contrast, sentencesabout Gs are, strictly speaking, false. For there are no Gs, but only Fs. It is clear from the context that itis the reduction and not the elimination of privations and negations that Aquinas is trying to carry out.

15 Cf. THOMAS DE AQUINO, In Duodecim Libros Metaphysicorum Expositio, XII, lect. 1, ed. Spiazzi, nn.2419-2420.

16 THOMAS DE AQUINO, In Duodecim Libros Metaphysicorum Expositio, XII, lect. 1, ed. Spiazzi, n. 2419:«Accidentia autem dicuntur entia, non quia sunt, sed quia magis ipsis aliquid est; sicut albedo dicituresse, quia eius subiectum est album. Ideo dicit quod non dicuntur simpliciter entia, sed entis entia, sicutqualitas et motus».

17 THOMAS DE AQUINO, In Duodecim Libros Metaphysicorum Expositio, XII, lect. 1, ed. Spiazzi, n. 2420:«Nec est mirum, si accidentia dicuntur entia, cum non sint simpliciter entia, quia etiam privationes etnegationes dicuntur quodammodo entia, sicut non album et non rectum. Dicimus enim quod non albumest, non quia non album esse habeat, sed quia subiectum aliquod est albedine privatum».

18 THOMAS DE AQUINO, In Duodecim Libros Metaphysicorum Expositio, XII, lect. 1, ed. Spiazzi, n. 2420:«Hoc igitur commune est inter accidentia et privationes, quia de utrisque dicitur ens ratione subiecti. Sedin hoc differunt, quia subiectum secundum accidentia habet esse aliquale, secundum vero privationes nonhabet esse aliquale, sed est deficiens ab esse».


tra-mentally existing object, and its sense in propositions such as Caecitas est,which contains a reference to a purely mental object? We have already seen thatto say ‘Blindness is’ does not mean the same thing as to say ‘Man is’, hence theverb est cannot be univocal in such two occurrences. Is it then used equivocal-ly? The problem could be extended, of course, to the corresponding senses of thecopula in propositions attributing properties to extra-mentally existing beingsand purely mental ones, respectively. One reason to think that the verb is usedequivocally is to connect purely mental beings with the veritative use of ‘to be’,as Aquinas standardly does. If the sense in which purely mental beings are isgiven by the sense of ‘to be’ connected with the truth of a proposition, then – onemight reason – extra-mental beings and purely mental beings are, i.e. exist, intwo radically different senses and so the verb ‘to be’ is just equivocal when ap-plied to the ones and the others. For to be something of which we say true andfalse things means to be in a radically different sense from the sense in whichthings that exist as such are said to be. However tempting such a line of thoughtmay seem, I think that we should resist the temptation. If my previous consider-ations are correct, i.e. if Aquinas is prepared to extend Aristotle’s doctrine of fo-cal meaning so as to cover also the case of purely mental objects, we should ex-pect the verb ‘to be’ to be used analogically when it is used in connection withpurely mental beings. In other words, the sense of est in the proposition Caecitasest is not unconnected with its use in propositions such as Homo est, but ratherbears some relation to it, just as the sense in which blindness exists bears somerelation to the sense in which extra-mental beings, and in particular substances,exist. The proposition Caecitas est only implies the mental existence of blind-ness, but the mental existence of things such as blindness, I have argued, is tak-en to be some form of being, which bears some relation to extra-mental being.The mental existence of blindness is corresponded to by and grounded in someextra-mental situation or state of affairs, and so to assert the existence of blind-ness does not amount to saying nothing at all about the extra-mental world. Thus,the sense of ‘to be’ in propositions such as Caecitas est bears some relation to itsuse in propositions bearing on extra-mental objects. Therefore, the verb is usedanalogically and not equivocally. After all, on Aquinas’s theory of truths, all truepropositions have to do, directly or remotely, with how things are in the extra-mental world.

III. There is another kind of purely mental objects that cannot be kicked out ofthe ontology on account of their special extra-mental ground, namely possibles. Iam concerned here in particular with not-yet-existent and unactualised possi-bles, i.e. possibles that are never brought into actuality. According to Aquinas’sstandard doctrine, a possible being is just a certain way in which God views Him-


self as capable of being imitated by creatures. To put it otherwise, a possible isjust a Divine idea. Now, it is clear that, for Aquinas, prior to its being brought in-to actual existence a possible being is just a certain way in which God views Him-self as capable of being imitated and so does not enjoy any kind of extra-mentalexistence outside God’s mind. This point is further clarified, as John Wippel hasrightly pointed out, by the observation that according to Aquinas, when some-thing is created, both its essence-principle and its existence-principle are creat-ed – which rules out the case that at least the essence of a creature, i.e. its beingas a possible, might preexist outside God’s mind before being brought into actu-al existence19. Thus, possibles possess, before being brought into actuality, onlysome kind of intentional existence in God’s mind. What is more, unactualisedpossibles will never enjoy any other kind of existence apart from their intention-al being. However, in this case as well it would be wrong to say that unactualisedpossibles have no ground in the extra-mental world. For they are clearly ground-ed in the eternal existence of God’s essence. It may be objected, not unreasonably,that this is a not a particularly interesting kind of extra-mental ground. Possiblesmay well be grounded in the Divine essence, but this way of grounding their ex-istence does not allow for any distinction between one possible and another. ForAquinas in fact Divine ideas are really identical with the Divine essence. The dif-ferent ways in which God views Himself, in other words, are in reality nothing butGod’s essence. Thus, the distinction among the different possibles is only a dis-tinction of reason, a conceptual distinction: possibles are only different ways inwhich our intellect can consider the Divine essence but do not introduce anymind-independent distinction within God’s nature, which is absolutely simple.This, however, is not the end of the story. In his commentary on Book I of the Sen-tences, Aquinas insists a good deal on the fact that the distinction among Divineattributes, although being a purely conceptual distinction, is nonetheless ex pro-prietate ipsius rei, i.e. is a distinction grounded on the real nature of God and notonly based on the character of our conceptual apparatus20. Aquinas’s point is thatour distinguishing different Divine attributes is not arbitrary, i.e. is not simplybased on our intellect’s ability to consider things in different ways even whenthere is no objective basis for such consideration, but is rather grounded on theintrinsic nature of the thing considered, which in some sense invites, in virtue ofits richness, different kinds of consideration. Something similar can be said about

19 Cf. J. WIPPEL, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and Godfrey of Fontaines on the Reality of Nonex-isting Possibles, in ID., Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas, The Catholic University of AmericaPress, Washington, D.C. 1984 («Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy»), pp. 163-189.

20 Cf. THOMAS DE AQUINO, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, I, d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, ed. Mandonnet, vol. I,p. 70.


Divine ideas and possibles: the different possibles, although being all really iden-tical with the Divine essence and so with one another, are rooted in the richnessof God’s nature. Thus, not only possibles as a whole possess some kind of extra-mental ground, but so does also the distinction between one possible and anoth-er. Possibles, therefore, are certainly purely intentional objects, but are not pureconstructs of our mind – and let alone of God’s mind – but concepts somehow de-rived from how things are.

IV. If my analysis so far is correct, both privations and negations on the one handand possibles on the other have, although in very different ways, some kind ofremote extra-mental ground and hence must be treated as merely intentional ob-jects of a special sort. In brief, both kinds of object are not mere constructs ofthe mind. This cannot be said, however, of another kind of purely intentional ob-jects, i.e. impossibles. In the article on Divine attributes I alluded to a momentago Aquinas distinguishes three different kinds of concept on account of theirdifferent ground in the extra-mental world21. First intentions, i.e. concepts suchas ‘man’ or ‘animal’, are directly grounded in extra-mental things. Second in-tentions, by contrast, i.e. concepts such as ‘genus’ and ‘species’, though not be-ing directly grounded in the extra-mental world, have still some remote groundtherein in so far as they come from the way extra-mental things are known by ourintellect. There is finally a third kind of concepts, which have no ground in theextra-mental world, either proximate or remote, i.e. concepts such as Chimera.Impossibles, therefore, are pure constructs of our mind – things that elsewhereAquinas calls fictitia22 or even vana23 – wihout any foundation or correlate in theextra-mental world. It must be noted that the peculiar status of impossibles ascompared to other purely intentional objects also emerges from a different per-spective, i.e. that of what God can or cannot do, which Aquinas illustrates for in-stance in Book I of his commentary on the Sentences, d. 42, q. 2, a. 2. In his re-sponse to one of the arguments, Aquinas observes that the set of all things di-vides up into beings and not-beings and so that which God can do is either a be-ing or a not-being, while he cannot do what is neither a being nor a not-being24.What Aquinas primarily means, as is clear from the body of the article, is that

21 Cf. THOMAS DE AQUINO, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, I, d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, ed. Mandonnet, vol. I,p. 67.

22 Cf. THOMAS DE AQUINO, In Octo Libros Physicorum Expositio, IV, lect. 1, ed. P.M. Maggiolo, Mariet-ti, Turin-Rome 1954, n. 407.

23 Cf. THOMAS DE AQUINO, Quaestiones disputatae de potentia, q. 3, a. 16, arg. 16, in Quaestiones dis-putatae, ed. P. Biazzi et al., 2 vols., Marietti, Turin-Rome 1965, vol. II, p. 86.

24 Cf. THOMAS DE AQUINO, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, I, d. 42, q. 2, a. 2, ad 5, ed. Mandonnet,vol. I, p. 993.


God cannot produce a state of affairs whose corresponding proposition containsa contradiction: God for instance cannot make it to be the case that a man is anass or that a thing has two incompatible properties25. If we move away from statesof affairs to focus instead on the objects involved therein, one of the conse-quences of Aquinas’s view is that God cannot produce impossible objects, ob-jects in other words that are in themselves contradictory, while he can produceobjects which are possible, even if they do not exist now, and could produce ob-jects that are possible, even though He will never do so. Of course, God can haveknowledge of impossibles either as a sort of complement of the set of things Hecan produce or, alternatively, simply by knowing the content of our thoughts.This form of knowledge on God’s part, however, does not confer upon impossibleobjects any kind of extra-mental foundation. The fact that Thomas describes im-possibles as neither beings nor not-beings shows, for one thing, that impossiblesare different in status from the other inexistents objects, i.e. the not-beings, andfor another that beings and non-beings can be somehow grouped together so asto constitute the domain of ontologically relevant things. Such a difference, how-ever, between impossible objects and the other kind of inexistents can hardly beaccounted for on purely semantic grounds. For there will certainly be many truepropositions we can form about impossible objects – which all require the in-tentional existence of such objects. From a purely semantic point of view, in oth-er words, impossible objects seem to be on a par with all the other inexistent ob-jects. The difference, therefore, between one kind of inexistent object and an-other must lie in the underlying ontological situation, that is in their being or notparasitic on some extra-mental being or on some state of affairs concerning ex-tra-mental beings.

V. In conclusion, according to Aquinas there seem to be two different consid-erations of inexistent objects, a purely semantic and a more ontological one. Ac-cording to the semantic consideration, all inexistent objects are on a par in thatthey can all figure as subjects of true propositions. This way, all inexistent ob-jects have the same ontological status in so far as they enjoy the same kind ofexistence, i.e. a purely mental or intentional existence. They exist, in otherwords, only because the mind can apprehend and represent them. Admittedly,Aquinas seems to imply that to have intentional existence does not amount tobeing absolutely nothing. Nonetheless, when taken as objects of thought inexis-tent objects are indistinguishable from one another. There is, however, anotherway of considering inexistent objects, that is with respect to their different onto-

25 Cf. THOMAS DE AQUINO, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, I, d. 42, q. 2, a. 2, ed. Mandonnet, vol.I, p. 991.


logical grounds. As we have seen, this approch enables us to distinguish amongdifferent kinds of inexistent objects and in particular between those inexistentobjects that are somehow grounded in how things are in the extra-mental worldand those that, by contrast, are not so grounded. Privations and negations on theone hand and possibles on the other possess some kind of extra-mental ground,the former in the extra-mental circustances that make true our attribution ofthem to extra-mental objects and the latter in God’s essence. All things consid-ered, only fictional objects have no connection with how things are in the extra-mental world and only they are pure constructs of the mind. Thus, even ifAquinas does not endorse any kind of Meinong-style ontology of inexistent ob-jects and is clearly victim of the «prejudice in favour of the real» Meinong him-self complained about, he is still able to distinguish between different kinds ofpurely intentional object on account of their different ontological grounds. Histreatment of inexistent objects, therefore, is not purely semantic.

Abstract: The paper examines Aquinas’s understanding of purely mental objects, i.e.things that have no existence outside the mind but only therein. According to the tradi-tional story, Aquinas’s treatment of purely mental objects is mainly driven by semanticconcerns and in particular by the need to explain the reference of terms denoting inexist-ent objects. The paper tries to counterbalance the traditional picture by showing how in-existent objects can be accommodated within Aquinas’s ontology. More particularly,Aquinas distinguishes different kinds of inexistent objects on the basis of their differentextra-mental ground: (I) privations and negations, (II) possible objects and (III) impossibleones.Key words: Ontology; Mental Objects; Reduction.

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