Alternatively, we could take this observation as motivating Haugeland’s (2013)
interpretation of Heidegger, according to which there is one Dasein, which each of
us is a case of. We are not Daseins on this view, but rather are something like
instances or cases of Dasein, in much the same way as an individual ailment can be a
case of smallpox.
Suppose that everything has an individual essence. It follows from this supposition
that an entity’s essence consists in its mode of existence only if it is necessary that it
and only it has that mode of being (if it has any mode of being at all). In one strand of
scholastic metaphysics, exactly one being meets this description: God. The manner of
being enjoyed by God is not shared by created beings; their mode of being is only in
some way analogous to the mode of being of God. In God, there is no distinction to
be drawn between existence and essence, unlike in created beings: God’s essence
simply consists in God’s existence.^81 (Fine (1994a: 2) does note that in traditional
metaphysics only one being enjoys existence as His essence—but doesn’t note that
the kind of existence He has is also enjoyed only by Him.)
On this tradition, there is a special mode of being enjoyed only by God. (Perhaps
this mode of being is even identical with God, as a more radical version of the
doctrine of divine simplicity would hold.) There might nonetheless be a privileged
wayofarticulatingthismodeofbeing.Let“D”stand for the mode of being enjoyed
by God, and let“C”denote the most natural conjunction of properties such that,
necessarily,Dx(x=y)ifandonlyifCy. Perhaps C will decompose into a traditional
list of divine attributes. God’sgoodnesswillbeamongC,butGod’s being such that
2+2=4willnot—and perhaps this would give proponents of this tradition a
reason to say things like“God is God’s goodness”but not“God is God’sbeingsuch
that 2 + 2 = 4,”since the former statement more accurately corresponds to a fact
about God’s essence than the latter.
For traditionalists, it is of God’s essence to be good. But it is merely necessarily the
case that God is such that 2 + 2 = 4. However, for traditionalists, God’s essence just is
His existence. So how to make this contrast? My thought here is thatgoodnesswill be
part of the articulation of God’s mode of being in a way that being such that 2 + 2 = 4
will not, and hence the former is rightfully thought of as part of God’s derivative
essence whereas the latter is not.^82
Suppose God’s essence is God’s existence.^83 How fares the fabled ontological
argument? Let’s get a version of that argument on the table. Here’s a Cartesian
(^81) See Aquinas’s (1948: 17)Summa Theologicapart 1, question 3, article 4.
(^82) We’ve seen how this sort of story plays out for God and Dasein. Perhaps a similar story could be told
that would allow the less than fully real entities to have strict essences as well, if that is desired. If such an
entity has a most natural mode of being, then this will also have an articulation, which is what generates the
list of strictly essential features of the entity. 83
Recall our discussion of divine simplicity in section 1.5.3. If God is His existence as well, then God is
the semantic value of the fundamental quantifier that appears in the statement of God’s total propositional
essence, as well as the ontic ground of that total propositional essence.