45 © Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics, Volume 6, 2006 Joshua P. Hochschild: Kenny and Aquinas on individual essences, pp. 45-56. Joshua P. Hochschild: Kenny and Aquinas on individual essences 1. Introduction Anthony Kenny objects to many aspects of Aquinas’s treatment of being. He has long held, and recently argued in an entire book, that as a whole Aquinas’s treatment of being (esse) is inadequate, incoherent, even “sophistry.” 1 Among the many particular metaphysical doctrines Kenny criticizes as incoherent are the real distinction between being and essence in creatures, the notion of being as “participated,” the notion of subsisting immaterial forms, and the notion of God as subsistent esse. Some commentators have sought a general diagnosis of Kenny’s unsympathetic interpretation of Aquinas. They have focused on his unabashed deference to Fregean assumptions. Briefly, they have found while Fregean insights do serve to clarify certain aspects of Aquinas’s thought, Kenny seems to think that the Fregean framework must always function like a pair of night vision goggles, illuminating the obscurity of Aquinas. Kenny never considers that most of the time, at least, the Fregean framework might work more like a polarized lens, filtering out the rich refractions and diverse reflections of Thomas’s brilliance. 2 I think this general diagnosis is accurate, and my own reflections here will serve to confirm it. But my strategy is to begin from the inside, as it were, and focus on one particular puzzle Kenny raises. The puzzle is, at first glance at least, at some remove from the issue of being in its own right, and for that reason it is a puzzle that can be handled manageably and I hope persuasively. But by addressing this puzzle, I do hope to allow some other aspects of Aquinas’s teaching about being, left obscure on Kenny’s interpretation, to shine forth. 1 Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Being (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), cf. pp. vii and 194. Hereafter page references to Kenny’s book will be cited parenthetically in the main text. 2 The limitations of Kenny’s reliance on Frege are explored in Gyula Klima, “On Kenny on Aquinas on Being: A critical review of Aquinas on Being by Anthony Kenny,” International Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2004): 567-580; in Brian Davies, “Kenny on Aquinas on Being,” The Modern Schoolman 82 (2005): 111-129; and in Steven A. Long, “Aquinas on Being and Logicism,” New Blackfriars 86 (2005): 323-347.