Since immaterial substances less than God are dependent on the divine causality in order to exist, existing cannot be what they are of their essence.
Existence can consequently be said to be external to essence, so that an existing thing, whose essence or quiddity is possible, can be said to be composed of essence and existence.
Worse yet, if two distinct individuals may have the same essence, then IId2 would imply that any two individuals that share the same essence must co-endure, i.e., must exist determinately at precisely the same times, since if one of them exists, its essence does, and that essence cannot exist without that of which it is the essence existing.
In the realm of intellects, Dietrich tells us, we discover a fourfold order in which intellectual reality stands: at the top of this order is found what Dietrich calls intellects existing through their essence, followed by intelligent spiritual substances that are called angels, and then species and finally the individual realities included in species that are known to mind.
They may be thought to capture de re essences existing independently of human thought, language, and interests, or de dicto essences determined solely by linguistic meaning.
Within an actually existing being, therefore, its essence and existence are not really distinct.
The notion that such truths are in some way prior to God's creation of the world, existing as purely possible essences separate from actual existence, involves a separation of essence from existence, and supposes that essence is something actually separable and conceivable without existence.
He argued that the fact of existence cannot be inferred from or accounted for by the essence of existing things and that form and matter by themselves cannot interact and originate the movement of the universe or the progressive actualization of existing things.
That is, an individual essence can exist without being an individual essence of any existing object.
Added to this essence of existing downtowns are all kinds of things that ought to be there if downtown weren't so noisy and dirty and chaotic — sidewalk cafés, art, islands of planting, pretty paving.
