♠ Nine of Spades
the cosmological family
The Argument from Essence and Existence
St Thomas Aquinas — The Angelic Doctor
De ente et essentia (On Being and Essence)
DemonstrativeConcludes that something exists.
- Argument form
- Regress argument (existence had from another cannot be passed along without end)
- Concludes to
- Necessary being (that whose essence is its existence; also the cause of being in all things)
- Premise ground
- Metaphysical (what does not include its own existing has it from another, and not without end)
- Modal strength
- Necessary (essence identical with existence)
- What it licenses
- Period
- Medieval (c. 1252–56)
- Tradition
- Thomist (Avicennian in source)
Further reading
- Source text, public domain
De ente et essentiahttps://www.corpusthomisticum.org/oee.html - A scholarly account
Read an exposition of the argument - A principal objection
Read the objection in full
This formulation is ours, composed from the primary source and compressed to fit the card; the argument admits of other statements. Objections have been made to every argument in the deck; where one is linked above, it is chosen by us, not written by us.
ergocards.com/essence-existence
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