In essentialism, there is an essence that fundamentally characterizes observable objects as the common element of a set of existing things, even if the essence itself is unobservable.
In the case of organized human aggregates, it is indeed the collective need of security, of acting sine cura as regards the dangers and risks of uncontrolled violence, that expresses the fundamental condition from which the essence itself of politics comes down, namely the application of a system of government capable of imposing rules erga omnes and possible sanctions for those who break them.
It could point to the essence of the disease, but on no account was it the essence itself.
Within Paul's system, what plays the role of the Thomistic rationes is the divine essence itself, which is the supreme principle of knowledge of possibles, but not an idea.
But since all these diverse ways are understood in a single eternal act of understanding, which is nothing but the act of divine being, and which in turn is again the divine essence itself, the multiplicity of ideas does not entail any corresponding multiplicity of the divine essence.
Given that God is immutable, and hence that the divine power is not affected by the passage of time, and divine ideas, within Wyclif's system, are as necessary as the divine essence itself, the logical consequence is that, despite Wyclif's claims of the contrary, the whole history of the world is determined from eternity.
Returning to our earlier discussion, Ibn Gabirol describes pure matter as stemming directly from the Divine Essence itself, with form, on the contrary, arising somewhat secondarily from the Divine Will.
To hold otherwise would be to introduce too much distinction and diversity into the divine essence itself and would thereby compromise the divine simplicity (PB 3.267 73; Wippel, 1981, 118 23; Maurer, 1999, 192 200).
In fact, there is a formal difference between the supreme principle of understanding of possibles, which is the divine essence itself as infinitely imitable ad extra, and divine ideas, which are the practical principles of the production of creatures (In Metaph., book VII, tr. 3, chap. 2, fol. 298va; see also QdU, fol. 135rb).
In the divine essence itself there is no distinction or non-identity whatsoever between the attributes of God.
In fact, divine ideas are not the specific natures of creatures as creatures are conceived of terminative in themselves by God, but as they are conceived of subiective in Him, that is, by means of a different reality (the divine essence) and according to their relation of ontological dependence upon the divine essence itself.
