Stephen L. Brock

The general aim of this paper is simply to draw attention to a certain theme in St Thomas' psychology of human action, one not often treated at much length in discussions of Aquinas on action. This theme is his notion of usus, "use", as a stage or component in the accomplishment of a complete human act. I shall begin by indicating some possible reasons for the general disregard of the theme, and shall then briefly note some rather striking affirmations by Aquinas concerning use, affirmations which suggest that it is probably more interesting, both for him and for us, than it might at first seem. The core of the paper focuses upon a set of problems about the coherence of Aquinas' notion of use. There my interlocutor will be Professor Alan Donagan, who has been one of the few writers on action-theory in Aquinas to dwell on this subject. The proposed resolution of these problems will, I think, make it at least plausible to assign to the act of use a rather central role in the account of Aquinas' mature way of conceiving the human will, as a faculty distinct from the intellect and as primarily a faculty of agency. The paper closes with a nod to one of the more significant features of Aquinas' moral philosophy that I think his doctrine of use helps us to keep in mind.

Enrico Berti and others hold that Aquinas’s notion of God as ipsum esse subsistens conflicts with Aristotle’s view that positing an Idea of being treats being as a genus and nullifies all differences. The paper first shows how one of Aquinas’s ways of distinguishing esse from essence supposes an intimate tie between a thing’s esse and its differentia. Then it argues that for Aquinas the (one) divine essence differs from the (manifold) “essence of esse.” God is his very esse. This somehow “contains” all esse, but it also transcends it, because although simple, it also “contains” all forms and differentiae.