In contemporary analytic metaphysics, the by far dominant view is that being
is unitary. But in the philosophical tradition that stems from Plato—the tradition of
so-called“Western”philosophy—there have been few, if any, proponents of the view
that being is unitary. As we will see later, even by my lights the paradigmatic medieval
champion of the“univocity”of being, Duns Scotus, endorsed some fragmentation of
being by virtue of holding that some things enjoy more being than others; being, on
his view, at least embraces an“analogy of inequality,”to use the medieval terminology.
Things bear an analogy of inequality with respect to an attribute, roughly, just in case
one thing enjoys more of that common attribute than another thing, or one thing is a
more perfect instance of that attribute than another. Althoughbeing is univocal,on
Scotus’s view,being still comes in degrees, and so different entities can stand in an
analogy of inequality with respect to being.^1
The view that existence comes in manyflavors is suggested by the Aristotelian
slogan “being is said in many ways,”and according to some interpretations is
Aristotle’s view.^2 Variants of this slogan were championed by various medieval
philosophers, such as Aquinas, who worried that God cannot be said to exist in the
same sense (or in the same way) as created things.^3 In the early modern period, we
find Descartes alluding to the medievals’worry, but extensive discussion of the
problem of being disappeared from the central stage by the time of the modern
period.^4 However, although the view itself receded into the background, it never
really disappeared. In the later philosophy of Leibniz, wefind a distinction between
well-founded phenomena, which enjoy some sort of attenuated existence, and the
monads, which enjoy a genuine or absolute kind of reality.^5 In Kant’s critical
philosophy, he famously distinguishes between two kinds of reality, empirical reality
and transcendental reality.^6 In the late nineteenth century, wefind Lotze (1884:
438 – 40) distinguishing between several different kinds of being: among them are
(^1) See Hochschild (2010: ch. 6) for a discussion of the analogy of inequality, and especially pp. 101–3 for
a discussion of Scotus. 2
For a defense of the claim that Aristotle believed that there are ways of existence, see M. Frede (1987:
84 – 6). Barnes (1995b) and thefirst two chapters of Witt (1989) provide a good introduction to Aristotle
and the question of the meaning of“being.”Brentano discusses Aristotle’s views extensively in Brentano
(1981a); for a much shorter and somewhat different treatment, see Brentano (1978: 20–2). For criticism of
Aristotle on ways of being, see Shields (1999: 236 3 – 40).
Aquinas claims that“being is said in many ways”in many places; see, for example, Aquinas (1993:
92 – 3) and Aquinas (1961: 216–20). See also Ashworth (2013a) and Cross (1999: 31–9) for a clear and
accessible account of medieval theories concerning kinds of existence and senses of“being.”I take Aquinas
to be an ontological pluralist in my sense. For a defense of the claim that Aquinas believes in ways of being,
see McCabe (1969: 90 4 – 1) and, more recently, Brower (2014).
5 See, for example, Descartes’51st principle in thePrinciples of Philosophy(1992: 210).
There are many places in which Leibniz downgrades the ontological status of well-founded phenom-
ena by saying that they are not“real things”; see, e.g., Leibniz (1989: 181, 185 fn. 239). Further, in this
period, Leibniz (1989: 189) holds that,“speaking with metaphysical rigor...atbottom there should only be
these intelligible substances, and that sensible things should only be appearances. However, our lack of
attention lets us take sensible things for the only true things. 6 ”
This distinction is appealed to in many places in Kant, but see (1999a: 425–31/A367–80) for a
particularly intriguing occasion. We’ll revisit this distinction in section 6.2.