[408]

[435]

SUBSECTION II

The Transcendental Consideration of Essence

Let us repeat once more that essence must be considered in two orders. First it must be considered in the order of suchness: essence it that which constitutes the real thing as being "such" reality, the essence is a quid tale. The essence, however, is not only that which makes the real such (talifica), but also that according to which, and solely according to which, the thing is something "real". This second consideration of essence belongs, then, to the transcendental order. In order to enter into this consideration we have been obliged, first of all, to form a rigorous concept of this transcendental order: a task less simple than it might at first appear, because the theme bristles with difficulties and because the classical and modern traditions have woven about it concepts, long consecrated, which it was necessary to discuss carefully in order to bring before our eyes, in its purity and rigor, the idea of reality as reality. Hence, the extension of the earlier discussion; it was unavoidable.

Having done this, we have traced out the road toward the apprehension of essence in its transcendentality. The transcendental, we have said, is before all else a character of the real, but it is further a structure of the real as real. The order of suchness and the transcendental order, in a word, are not two independent orders; rather, the first determines the second: this is what we call the transcendental function. And this function determines, in the real, not only a character, but also a true transcendental structure. Hence [456] it is that the transcendental apprehension of essence must be achieved in two successive steps. First, it is necessary to conceptualize the essence purely and simply in its mere transcendental character and then, in a second step, to conceptualize the transcendental structure of essence.

1. Essence: Its Transcendental Character

In our consideration of essence in section two we saw that, both from the point of view of its notes and from the point of view of its primary coherential unity, essence is that according to which the real thing is "a one such": essence is "suchness". Suchness is not mere specific determination, but fulfills a structuring function: it is [409] that according to which the real thing has a constitutive structure. This essence is formally individual as essence, it is constitutive and not quidditative essence. The proper function of essence is not to specify, but to constitute "physically". This "suchness" (talitativa) structuring function is a true function, because suchness is not synonymous with categorial determination, but is that constructed character according to which each note is "note-of". With these remarks we have defined the notion of essence in contrast to mere specification, whether conceptive or physical (in the sense, for example, of substantial form). However, eo ipso, this essence is also that according to which the essentiated is real. The two dimensions are not formally identified, because the real qua "real" has characteristics which are not identical with the characteristics of the real qua "such". Hence it follows that the essence, together with the "suchifying" structuring function, exercises a second transcendental function. It is a function of another order, but a true function, the transcendental function of the constitutive structure, that function according to which the essentiated is eo ipso a reality without qualification (sin más). These are not two functions really different from each other, but they are distinct functions with a basis in re. [457] What we are now seeking, then, is, before all else, the transcendental character of this function, that is to say, the determination of the transcendental "properties" grounded in that function.

In order to respond to this question, let us prescind for the moment from essence as "suchness", in the strict sense in which we have defined this idea, and consider suchness provisionally as mere determination, that is, in the sense of mere content of something that is real. It might then appear that the idea of essence is discovered to be affected by an intrinsic ambiguity. On the one hand, essence would be mere determined content, and, on the other hand, essence would be suchness in the sense defined earlier. Under the first aspect, it would appear that any real quality or content whatsoever might possess essence, while, under the second aspect, the essence would appear to be only a part of the real thing, that is to say, what is essential to it in contrast to what is non-essential. We shall see immediately that this ambiguity is merely apparent: it is precisely the problem of the essentiated reality from the transcendental point of view. Now, however, in order to begin, let us abstract, for the [410] moment, from this question and let us consider the essence as mere content or determination. Finally, in the last analysis there is the aspect of essence which has entered into the preceding exposition and discussion of the usual idea of the transcendental order.

I. Essence as mere determination. The transcendental order, we have said, is the order of reality ut sic, and reality is that character which we have called "in and by itself" (de suyo). Now anything, in virtue of being a "proper" determined content is "in and from itself" (de suyo), is reality. The "in and by itself" (de suyo) is, then, the transcendental character of all and every determined content. In the order of apprehension we have seen that a content might not have the formality "reality", but have instead the formality "stimulus". [458] Therefore, what we have called formality of "reality" is precisely the transcendental moment of the presentation of things. The condition of being a stimulus is not transcendental in character, because it is always specific. On the basis of this supposition, essence is the determined content insofar as it establishes or implants the thing as something "in and from itself". Such is the transcendental function of suchness as determination: to constitute the real in its reality qua reality. And to be "in and from itself" is what makes the content formally "essence". Essence is, before all else, a transcendental concept and not merely a concept of "suchness". The essence is the determination in transcendental function. This establishment of the thing as something "in and from itself" is precisely what, on so many occasions, we have called reality simpliciter. In employing this expression, we left it floating in a deliberate ambiguity. For this formula can mean either the conjunction according to which something is reality, for example, silver or iron, or it may mean that with it, we have a reality without qualification: it is the ambiguity between suchness and the transcendental. In the line of the transcendental, we now say, the essence, more than "reality" simpliciter, is "that" simpliciter of the real itself as such. Transcendentally considered, the essence is the "in and from itself" (de suyo) simpliciter. In other words: essence is absolutely identical with reality.

Hence it follows that the very concept and the term essence are equivocal. In the exposition and the discussion with scholasticism, we have spoken of essence and of existence as moments founded on a [411] prior "de suyo"; before considering the thing essentially and existentially, we said, it must be considered really. Then essence meant what it meant classically: a moment of reality. Now, however, essence is not a moment of reality, but is rather the reality itself. To the degree to which we distinguish determination and suchness, essence will tend to appear to us as a moment of reality, but in a different dimension, [459] namely, as moment of substantivity. For the time being we will continue to consider suchness as mere determination. And in this dimension, essence is not a moment of reality, but the reality itself. In this context, essence is anterior not only to the fact that it exists, but also anterior to its own aptitude for existence; that is, the concept of essence which we are proposing is beyond the essence and existence of classical thought. Essence, then, (1) is identical with reality and (2) is anterior to the dualism "essence-existence". Both concepts of identity and of anteriority were expounded when we discussed the idea of the transcendental; however, in order to avoid mistaken interpretations of them, it will not be superfluous to recapitulate what has been said.

In the first place, then, to speak of the identity of essence and reality. Stated negatively, this identity is not the identity between res and ens as known in classical philosophy. For, in this latter, the res is the quid insofar as it connotes existence, whether actual or aptitudinal, while ens is this same res insofar as it is "qualified", by this existence. Here, in contrast, res is not identical with ens, neither under that aspect which concerns the res nor that which concerns the ens. It is not identical under that aspect which concerns the res, because res is not the quid in order to existence, but rather the quid in order to the de suyo, the "in and from itself". Neither does that identity exist under the aspect which concerns the ens, and this for two reasons: because "to be" is not the same as to exist, and because "to be" is not the same as reality. The identity of essence and reality has nothing in common, then, with the identity between res and ens. Neither does it mean what a certain scholastic thinker (Soto) thought it meant: for him, the essence is the quid considered "absolutely" and not connoting existence whether aptitudinal or actual. For Soto, in a word, between essence and existence there is, at least, a modal distinction ex natura rei, in such wise that the essence is only a moment of the reality, that moment which ex natura rei prescinds [412] from existence. What we have affirmed here is that the essence is [460] identical with the reality as something de suyo, "in and from itself". The essence does not prescind from existence, but includes it "indistinctly". We shall, however, return to this last point in what follows. Negatively, then, the identity of essence and existence is not the identity of res and ens nor is it the quid considered absolutely.

Positively, the identity of essence and reality means that both concepts express purely and simply the de suyo, the "in and from itself" of anything. If one wishes to employ the word res, it will be necessary to say that res is the real itself insofar as it is de suyo. The determined content of anything is not essence (in the classical sense), nor is existence itself real unless both moments belong to the thing de suyo. And this thing de suyo is what constitutes the essence. Here, as we have seen, the de suyo is to be understood as mere ex se. The thing is real insofar as it is de suyo and insofar as it is de suyo, its content is essence. This essence which is the real thing itself, what is ex se, embraces, then, both essence and existence in the classical sense. Such is the identity of essence and reality. This does not mean, however, that as aspects, so to say, of the thing, essence and reality are totally identical concepts, in such wise that the duality of terms is useless. Reality, in a word, means the character of being de suyo; it is, then, the transcendental property, or better, character of the thing; it is transcendentality itself. Essence, by contrast, is the real quid, the determined content of the thing in transcendental function, that is, insofar as, by being "such" the thing is eo ipso "de suyo", is transcendentally real; it is the quid referred to the transcendentality of the de suyo. The difference between reality and essence is formally only a difference between transcendental property or character and [461] transcendental function. This is not a mere conceptual subtlety. We have seen, in effect, with respect to the intelligent and volitional "thing" that the transcendental function of this "suchness" is much more vast than that of merely determining the transcendental character, the mere being something "de suyo" of the thing in question. The intelligent and volitional "thing" not only is something de suyo, but also by being "such", its function is much vaster than the being de suyo, because "it brings it about that" by respect to "such" a thing, the being itself, as such, is intrinsically true and good. We saw the same thing with regard to the difference between cosmos [413] and world. Immediately we will see it again with regard to the essence itself as such.

Essence understood in this way not only is identical with the real, but even more, is, in some way, anterior both to classical essence and to existence. We have already said that there is no question here of an anteriority whether causal or natural, as though the essence were the ground of the existence; that is to say, it is not a question of the anteriority of the essence, understood in the classical sense, with respect to existence. This was Hegel’s thesis. It is impossible for two reasons. First, because it would be an untenable ontologism; if, of the two terms, one would have to be anterior to the other, it would have to be existence and not essence. Secondly, because Hegel still moved within the orbit of the classical concept of essence, that is to say, essence understood as a quid in the order to existence. Here, by contrast, we move within the orbit of a concept of essence which is beyond the classical concepts both of essence and existence; essence here is the quid in the order to the de suyo. And in this concept, this essence is anterior to the two classical terms in the sense in which a formal ratio (razón) is anterior to that of which it is the ratio. The formal ratio is "ground", but only to the degree in which it is formal ratio. And in this formal ratio, the two classical terms are [462] included, not confusedly, but indistinctly: the essence is both existence and essence in the classical sense, because both have to begin by being de suyo; and this order to the de suyo is precisely the essentiality itself of the essence of which we are speaking. The anteriority of the essence is, negatively, absence of distinction between essence and existence in the classical sense in that other concept of essence. Positively, it means that being de suyo is the formal ratio and the ground of the fact that both existence (actual) and the aptitude for existence are moments of something which is already real. This is exactly what I expressed in the "Introduction" to this study, when I said that I was going to consider the essence in itself and not with respect to existence. It might have seemed that it was a truncation of the theme of essence; however, what I kept before my eyes was not essence simply insofar as it prescinds from existence, but rather this other concept of essence according to which essence is indistinctly anterior to both essence and existence in the classical sense. And the fact is that classical philosophy begins by [414] distinguishing, in the form that it already had, the concepts of essence and existence; and then it explained the former by its aptitude for existence. This, however, was not a viable process. It is necessary to begin with the real as real, that is, as a quid or essence de suyo, and afterward, only afterward, would it be possible to distinguish within this essence what are usually called essence and existence. This, consequently, is a "further" distinction.

What is the ground and the meaning of this distinction? Real things are primarily sensed as real. And in this their sentient intellection, things show themselves as altering; that is to say, alteration itself is sensed as real; the alteration of the real is sensed in its very reality. I am not referring only to the change which all things suffer in one or another form, but above all to that alteration according to which things cease to be what they are; what was before de suyo [463] ceases to be such to give way to other things de suyo. To be sure, we do not know whether this happens with the whole of the real. For the time, however, it is enough that this should be the case with intramundane realities. And by limiting ourselves to these, as we so many times have done in the course of this study, we have to affirm that, as a matter of fact, all intramundane realities are, in one degree or another, labile, subject to change. It is what I call the "labileness" of the real. It is, then, a character which affects its suchness: such as they are, things are intrinsically labile. The labile character of intramundane things, however, has a strict transcendental function, that is, it determines a transcendental character in the real itself as real: its "limitation" as reality. This is a transcendental limitation. This limitation is not a second transcendental character; it is not the case that things are real and further limited, but that the limitation belongs intrinsically to the de suyo itself. The real is de suyo; it is, however, de suyo limited as reality; the real is "really limited". This is exactly what I said so many times when I said that "de suyo" means reality as ex se, but not, however, a se. I will return to this idea immediately.

In order to understand what this limitation is, we must take a few steps backward. Essence, as we have seen, is qualitative auto-sufficiency in transcendental function, that is, insofar as it constitutes something de suyo. The real is, therefore, transcendentally sufficient. However, real or transcendental sufficiency is not the same [415] as plenary sufficiency (we shall see presently what the meaning of this adjective might be). And this non-plenary sufficiency is what I have called transcendental limitation. Essence is intrinsically and transcendentally limited. Now the essence as already intellectively "sensed", as limited, considered formally from the point of view of its very limitation, that is to say, as something limited de suyo, forces [464] the intelligence to "conceive" the real, the de suyo, the essence according to two concepts, different as concepts, to which there correspond two aspects of the essence. Each one of these concepts conceives the same reality, the same de suyo; in each of them, however, I have only "reduced", aspects of that reality, that de suyo, neither of which gives me the essence, the de suyo in its entirety. This reduction necessarily works or operates along two lines.

In the first place, the essence considered from the point of view of "suchness", we have seen, has an unalterable constitutive content, unalterable, however, in the order of formal sameness; physically every essence is totally or partially alterable. This physical alterability is the labileness in suchness (talidad) of the essence; and in transcendental function it shows us a reduced aspect of the essence: sufficiency as something merely "ratified" in order to this de suyo, in order to the reality. Here "ratified" is not what is usually understood by this term, namely, closed in the order to existence, but rather expresses a formally transcendental character in the order to the de suyo, that which is enclosed in the order to the de suyo. However, since suchness is something positive, and, in transcendental function, is essence, it follows that "ratified" is not the essence itself, but a conceptive "reduction" of the essence: it is the suchness conceived transcendentally insofar as it is limited. As a consequence, "rato" is, first, a conceptive transcendental character. In the second place it is a "reduced", character of the essence; it is that which the adverb "merely" expresses; it is the essence in its "merely rato" aspect. In the third place, it is a transcendental character, not in order to existence (that was the classical conception), but in order to the de suyo. The de suyo in the line of qualitative limitation remains conceptively reduced to the mere rato in the transcendental order.

[465] This essence, however, reduced to something ratified, is not all the de suyo of the essence, but precisely something reduced; it is only an aspect of the essence. The essence, in effect, is not real only [416] insofar as it is ephemeral, but rather is real simpliciter, it is simpliciter de suyo. The de suyo is, then, something "more" than merely transitory, ephemeral. And insofar as it is more than merely transitory, even though limited in the line of this very "more", the essence is something "merely existent". However, we must not fall into any illusions; this also is a question of a merely reduced aspect of the essence. If, from the essence as reality, as de suyo, we separate (the expression will be forgiven us) its aspect as ratified, the real essence is not totally annulled; rather there remains to us another aspect of it, namely, the hollowness, so to say, which the subtraction of the ratified leaves in the essence as reality de suyo. And this second conceptive aspect is the essence as something "merely existent". Merely to exist is not here a character "added" to the "ratified", it is not a "predicate" of the rato, but a "reduction" of the essence as something de suyo. Only in order to the de suyo does the essence appear as something "merely existent".

Seen from this point of view of its transcendental limitation, the essence, as limited reality, remains "reduced" in this way in two aspects. It remains reduced, in the first place, to something "merely ratified"; furthermore, it also remains reduced to something "merely existent". Without reduction, however, the essence as something de suyo is positively reality simpliciter, the real simpliciter. Hence it is that these two aspects of the reduced essence, namely, the "merely ratified" and the "merely existent" do not coincide save in a certain way with the classical notions of essence and existence. The difference lies precisely in the "merely". To say of anything that it is "merely ratified" is not to say that it is de suyo simpliciter. Neither, however, is to say of anything, that it is "merely existent", to say that it is simpliciter de suyo. Let us permit our reflection to linger on these ideas for a moment. [466] Before all else, we repeat at length, this duality presupposes the de suyo, but it is not that which constitutes the de suyo formally. It is a question, actually, of two aspects of the real essence; to pretend that this duality comprises the real essence would be tantamount to asserting that a thing is constituted by the totality of the aspects which it offers. Only the de suyo is the formal ratio of reality and stands beyond its aspects as their ground. It is certain that the limitation is a moment proper to essential sufficiency. It is not, [417] however, anything extrinsically added to the latter; rather, the essence is intrinsically and formally limited in itself, in its proper ratio (razón) as essence. This is what we expressed when we said that essence is, indistinctly, both essence and existence, in the classical sense; now we see that, properly speaking, the essence is also indistinctly as much merely ratified as merely existent. Every essence is ex se; however it is not, for this reason, a se. A se, however, does not mean what it usually was taken to mean in a large part of scholasticism, namely, identity of essence and existence, but rather to be real by itself. For greater exactness, it ought to be said as a first approximation, that the essence, in the sense of reality de suyo is a se when it is essentially existent. This, however, is only a first approximation, because, rigorously speaking, the "aseity" is a character which ought to be understood directly in relation to reality, to the de suyo. To be a se is to be reality in a plenary sense; and "to be" in the plenary sense consists in not tolerating reduction. This is the case with God. His plenitude does not consist in the identity of essence and existence, but in plenary sufficiency in the order of reality. When it is said that A and B are identical, this identity may have three meanings. It can mean that A is formally B, or that B is formally A, or that the thing is not what A and B are formally, but is rather [467] something which absorbs, in a superior unity, what A and B are, so that the latter are identical not by formal identity, but by elevation. This is the case with reality a se. In the reality a se, essence and existence are identical; not, however, formally, but by elevation. It is in this that the plenitude of reality consists. All things are real, but none, save God, is "the" reality.

All essences are intrinsically limited; it is a transcendental limitation. To be sure, it is a question of an intramundane transcendental. If, however, we should wish to refer to a transcendental which embraces God himself as well, we would say that "sufficiency-limitation" is a detached transcendental. Let us limit ourselves, then, to intramundane essences. Their limitation does not affect only that which it has been customary to call existence; rather what it does affect is indistinctly the real itself as such, the de suyo itself. In the limited essence there is no priority whatsoever of any reduction over any other. It is true that no intramundane essence, insofar as it is merely ratified, is essentially existent; but it is no less true that no [418] intramundane existent, insofar as it is merely existent, has such or such transcendentally ratified content. This is the reason why "merely ratified", and "merely existent" do not coincide, save in a certain way, with the essence and existence of classical thought. For classical philosophy, the essence is (according to different conceptions) either a ratified quid, whether actually or only aptitudinally existent, or mere capacity for existence, of receiving the act of existence. Here, by contrast, what the ratified and the existent are "merely" shows that it is a question only of "reductions", of the real essence, of what is de suyo. The "merely ratified" essence is not classical essence, because the latter is such in the order of reality as existence, while [468] the merely ratified essence is essence in the order of reality as a de suyo. The same must be said of existence. Even more; here we have not spoken of "existence", but of the "merely existent". There is no essence and existence, not only because there is not this "and" (I shall return to this point), but above all because there is nothing save either the "merely ratified" essence or the "merely existent" essence. And both the one and the other are equally "poor" (we should say insufficient) in the order to reality.

In the reality a se there is no possibility of conceptive "reductions". For, even taking essence and existence in the classical sense, the plenitude of reality of God does not consist in a priority of essence over existence nor of the latter over the former. It is not only the case that essence is such that it involves existence (existential essence), that is to say, it is not only the case that the essence is distinct from the essence of intramundane realities, but also that the existence is pure essentiality (essential existence). In God, to exist is something toto caelo different from what to exist means in intramundane realities. Not only essence, but existence is, in the being a se, something transcendentally different from what these are in the "merely ratified" being and in the "merely existent" being of intramundane realities. This is the reason why God, as reality, is beyond this duality and this identity: He is the plenary de suyo.

Neither in God nor in any other real essence is there, then, a priority between these two "reductions"; by being such, they are mere conceptive "reductions". It is one of the serious errors of all the existentialists, to believe that, at least in the case of human reality, there is a fundamental anteriority or priority of existence [419] over essence; no such priority exists, not even when the two terms are understood as "merely ratified" and "merely existent". It is a [469] question, not of a priority of existence, but of a different essential structure. We shall concern ourselves with this in relationship to the transcendental structure of the real essence as such.

The ground of this conceptive duality, I have said, is the limitation of the real as such, transcendental limitation. It is the "talitative" labileness in transcendental function. It might be thought that the ground of this duality is causality, that is, the fact that the whole of the real is grounded on something distinct from itself, on something by reason of which it is real; this is what it was customary to hold, above all in classical philosophy, with relation to essence and existence. However, even prescinding from the difference between these two "moments" of classical metaphysics and the two "reductions" of which we are speaking here, it still does not seem to me that the fundamental experience which motivates the duality in question is the fact of causation. Not that it is false simpliciter that causality intervenes in the experience of real things and, therefore, in the apprehension of the intrinsic character of their reality. In the final analysis, however, when all is said and done, things, whether caused or not, are already here. And the truly surprising thing in experience is that what is already real ceases to be real by reason of an intrinsic condition. And this is anterior to all causality, whether productive or destructive. That there is this double causality is evident. The decisive consideration for our problem, however, is the intrinsic and formal character of the reality of the real. It is one thing to see the real in its collision (productive or destructive) with other realities, and another very different thing to apprehend a reality in itself as transcendentally labile. To see a house that is falling to pieces because someone is destroying it is not the same as seeing a house which of itself is gradually disintegrating. The first is an apprehension in causal connection, the second is an apprehension of the real thing in [470] itself. Even when we see the house falling to pieces because someone is destroying it, what is decisive is seeing that the house is actually falling to pieces and not seeing that it is falling to pieces because someone is destroying it. Reality is intrinsically labile; the transcendental function of this labile character is limitation. The marvelous thing is not that everything comes to be for a time, but that [420] everything, in one measure or another, passes away. The ground of our duality lies in the radical experience of the labileness of the real.

This labileness, and, therefore, this limitation, is not something primarily conceived, but rather something primarily sensed. It is a fundamental experience of sentient intellection. Only because we sense the real in its very limitation can we and must we conceive those two reduced aspects in the real. It is true that I have repeatedly called them "conceptive" reductions; but this was in order to set them in contrast to real moments. The limitation, however, which is intellected in the concepts in question takes its point of departure in the de suyo intellectively sensed. The impression of reality (in the sense proposed some pages earlier) is an impression not only of something which "is here", but rather of something which is labile in this its being. By this I do not mean to say that everything in its first presentation of itself in intellective sensation is formally and expressly sensed as something labile. For this last step, a conceptive reflection is necessary. The only thing that I am saying is that, when we apprehend something as labile, this labileness is sensed; and we sense it as a character which adheres in the very reality of what is sensed; that is to say, that the labileness is a moment of the impression itself of reality. The impression of reality is not an empty character, alien to the content of what is sensed, but is rather an intrinsic formality of every apprehension, of every perception of the real, and is found, therefore, intrinsically modalized according to the content perceived. One of these modal moments—one only among many others—is precisely this of being at times the impression of a labile [471] reality in its proper character of reality. This is the reason why I say that we sense the real in its limitation as reality. This thing sentiently intellected is that to which the lÕgoj directly and primarily points. And only to the degree to which this lÕgoj achieves conceptive form in a reflection does the duality which we are studying appear explicitly and distinctly. Its primary ground, however, is a unitary experience of the real as real.

Let us return, in closing this discussion, to something which I pointed out two pages earlier. "Merely ratified" and "merely existent" are two "reductions" of the real essence as something de suyo. It is not a question of essence and existence, but of a single real essence, [421] of one and one only de suyo. They are two aspects of a single "reduced" essence which, therefore, insofar as real, is formally beyond this duality. It is, however, one thing to say that these two aspects are different as aspects and another to say that they are two physically distinct moments, tamquam res et res, as Egidius Romanus said. Reciprocally, since they are merely aspects, these two reductions do not physically "compose" the real. In no order whatsoever, in which it is considered, is the real thing "composed" by the totality of the aspects which it presents for intellective consideration. There is no existence which would be the act of an essence, but one sole real essence, which is either merely ratified, or merely existent. With this it remains clear that, even prescinding from the difference between these reductions and the essence and existence of classical thought, there is no "real", that is, physical, distinction or composition between essence and existence. And it is the ground of this duality which is solely the transcendental limitation of the real. The real is limited as real; its "limitation", however, is a merely negative aspect. Every essence as something de suyo is ex se, intrinsically and formally, [472] limited, but it is so by reason of its proper and intrinsic character. That something is labile does not necessarily mean that it is such because it is compounded. On the contrary, the labileness itself in transcendental function is what makes it necessary to conceive the essence reductively, either as merely ratified or as merely existent; it is always a matter, however, of two conceptive "reductions".

Hence it is that this conception partially coincides with that of the classical thinkers who deny the real distinction. It coincides only in the negative dimension: there is no real distinction between the two terms of the duality, but only a "conceptive", difference (they would say "of reason") with a basis in re. There is, however, a difference in the positive dimension; because, as we have said, "merely ratified" and "merely existent" coincide only partially with the classical concepts of essence and existence. For the whole of scholasticism, the quid is essence only in the order to an aptitudinal existence; while here the essence is the quid, but in the order to the de suyo. And the same must be said of existence: it is not to be understood with regard to the quid, but directly with regard to the de suyo; only then do we have reality. The duality is only "reductive". It is not a [422] duality of reason between essence and existence, but between two reductions of the de suyo: as merely ratified or as merely existent.

Naturally, there is an entire series of "arguments" pro and contra the distinction of reason or the real distinction. They are repeated in a monotonous and uniform manner all along the course of the history of metaphysics; that is why I think that it is useless to reproduce them here. Those who maintain the real distinction would deny that the terms of the duality are mere aspects. In the last analysis, they appeal, whatever may be said, to a consideration of the finite being with respect to the infinity of its first cause. Personally, I do not see that there is anything which forces us to go beyond what [473] we have reached in the immediate analysis of transcendental limitation. Created reality is intrinsically and formally limited in and by itself; and there is no need to multiply entities beyond necessity. Intrinsic and formal limitation is the adequate explanation of the necessity of a first cause. "Merely ratified" and "merely existent" do not act or conduct themselves as physically distinct moments, but rather are but two mere aspects of one sole character: transcendental limitation of the essence as reality de suyo, as reality simpliciter.

Here we have the transcendental character of essence as mere determination, or, if one wishes, as mere "determinacy", that is, as mere "suchness" (talidad). In this exposition we have treated the two terms as synonyms. I have, however, already noted that suchness in the strict sense is not mere determination. "Suchness" is that according to which the real is constituted physically and individually in "such" reality, in virtue of notes which primarily are "notes-of" in primary coherential unity. By contrast, determination is the mere content of certain notes which do not form part of the essence as suchness in the strict sense, but which, however, determine it further, whether as constitutional derivatives from it, or as its own determinants in the line of concretion. These notes are, then, as we have seen, formally non-essential. The essence is not all that the thing is hic et nunc, but only that which is formally constitutive of it. This assertion might make it seem that the essence loses its radical metaphysical character to be reduced solely to "the essential" of something. This is, as I have indicated earlier, the problem of essentiated reality: what is it that has essence? In its proper place we have already treated this question, but only from the point of [423] view of the essential notes. Now it must be treated from the transcendental point of view. Transcendentally, that ambiguity of the concept of essence will prove to be purely apparent. Let us take up then this new aspect of the question.

[474] II. The essence as strict "suchness". In order to examine this problem, let us begin by studying, from the transcendental point of view, the essence as the formally "such" (talitativa) element of the substantive reality. Then we will confront the duality "essential-nonessential".

First of all, the essence as the formally "such" (talitativo) element of the substantive reality. Let us recall, in summary fashion, the different aspects according to which the essence has shown itself to us in the course of this study. We have seen, in the first place, that the essence is a moment of the substantivity, that moment according to which certain notes of it constitute, "by themselves", sufficiency in the order of substantivity. From this point of view, the constitutive essence is the system of notes sufficient and necessary to form, by themselves, a system; this is constitutive auto-sufficiency. This system, however, is, in its turn, formally a primary coherential unity. As coherential, this unity is a unity of self-closure, a unity which I have called cyclical. As primary, it is a unity which "makes" the notes into essential moments. The unity does not confer their content on the notes, but it does confer on them their character as essential. The notes are, then, "suchifying", while the unity is essentiating. Both moments, however, of the essence—its notes and its primary coherential unity—are not merely two juxtaposed moments, but rather every note is constitutively and formally "note-of"; and that of which it is a note is the unity itself, which is "in" them. This intrinsic "belonging" (pertenencia) of the two moments is what constitutes the constructed state: the essence is intrinsic constructivity. (I have already noted that this concept is proper to intramundane essences, but one which leads, epagogically, to the possibility of an essentially simple extra-mundane essence.) And in this line of thought, every other note of the thing is formally non-essential. This consideration of the essence is a "suchness" (talitativa) consideration; essence is that according to which the thing is "a such" (or "such a one").

[424] [475] By its proper suchness, however, the essence has a transcendental function: it is that according to which the thing is a reality, that is, that according to which the thing is de suyo. This de suyo, now has a supremely precise character, determined by the constructivity in transcendental function. The belonging of the "de" of the notes and of the "in" of the unity, that is to say, the belonging of notification and essentiation to the constructive suchness of the essence is, in transcendental function, precisely the de suyo; and reciprocally, the de suyo itself has a transcendentally constructed character.

This is not a question of a mere conceptual subtlety which verges on tautology. Quite the contrary; here is where one can begin to see clearly what I said some pages earlier, namely, that the transcendental function of the "suchness" can be much vaster than the mere determination of a de suyo. Every note, in fact, is a "note-of" in and by a primary coherential unity, which, in its turn, determines, not the content of each note, but only its essentiality. In the transcendental order, this duality disappears, to remain absorbed in the de suyo. Because, if indeed it is certain that the notes have a content proper to themselves, nevertheless, it is no less certain that no note whatsoever is de suyo, that is to say, no note whatsoever, has, by itself, a proper reality; only the thing, the entire construct, is de suyo. If we sometimes speak of each note as a reality, it is by way of a mental operation by which we consider each note as though it were a thing. But this is a metaphysical fiction: no note whatsoever has reality save as "note-of" a unity. There is no other essentiated reality, but the thing in its intrinsic constructivity. And it is this transcendental construct that confers reality on all and on each one [476] of the notes. Hence, the fundamental difference between the "suchifying" (talitativa) function and the transcendental function. In terms of "suchness", the notes are what gives the character of notes to the thing (notifican a la cosa). Transcendentally, however, the notes have reality only as moments of the de suyo in its entirety; from the transcendental point of view, the notes owe their entire reality to the de suyo. If this were not the case, we would have as many realities as notes; we would have, not one reality, but an aggregate of realities. The de suyo, determined as a construct, is a transcendental character of reality, one and the same for all the notes. And this is true not only with reference to the notes, but also [425] with reference to the unity itself. In the order of "suchness", the unity is unity only by being "in" the notes, conferring essence on them. It is real, however, only in the de suyo. What then is this de suyo? It is, then, nothing other than the entire constructivity in its transcendental aspect. "Entire" constructivity means, as we have seen, the character "common" to the unity and the notes. In the order of "suchness" this character is "essentiality" and the character of its community is "actuality": the essence is, as a construct, essential actuality. This essentiality is actual in the unity as primary moment: the unity is actualizing, essentiating actuality. It is actual in the notes as constructed moments: the notes are actualized actuality, essentiated actuality. This is constructivity in the order of "suchness". This "entire" constructivity, then, in the order of "suchness", that is, its common character of essential actuality, has a precise transcendental function: to establish the "suchness" as something de suyo. The actuality now is not only actuality of this "such" essence, but actuality of reality, this actuality which consists in being de suyo. The constructivity in transcendental function is that which concretely constitutes the res. There are many notes and there is one unity, but there is only one res. The de suyo is, if one wishes, a "construct [477] of reality", not only a construct of unity and notes. Transcendentally, essence is "construct of reality". This is the reason why the essence is the simpliciter of the reality. The manner in which the things are concretely de suyo is by constructivity; and, reciprocally, all constructivity transcendentally determines a de suyo

This becomes even clearer if we now consider the non-essential notes. We have already said, in the first part of this study, that the essence is an internal moment of the thing; within it the difference between the essential and the non-essential is to be found. With this it appears that the concept of essence remains restricted to one part of the real thing. Let us remember, in a word, the different meanings of this concept. In a first sense, essence is the conjunct of all the notes which a thing possesses hic et nunc. Among these notes there are some which univocally characterize the sameness of a thing in confrontation with other things or with its own variations; this is the second concept of essence. Among these latter notes, however, there are some which are the minimum necessary and sufficient which the thing must possess in order to be wholly [426] and solely what it is. This is the third concept of essence, essence in the strict and formal sense. It is needless to repeat that essence in this third concept is primarily and formally the constitutive, not the quidditative, essence. On the other hand, however, through many pages now, we have been saying that essence is the synonym of reality. And then it would appear that, either we retrace the path already traversed, by returning to the first concept of essence, or, if we hold to the third, we leave outside the thing important characteristics of reality, all the non-essential characters. But this appearance is false.

Before all else, what are these non-essential notes? We have already seen this. They are not necessarily notes the possession of [478] which would be useless or indifferent to the thing. Quite the contrary, there is an entire series of non-essential notes, the constitutional notes, which derive, of necessity, from the essence, which then is, more than constitutional, constitutive. There are also certainly other notes which the thing may or may not have. The decisive point for our present problem is not that these notes cannot have reality, but rather of what kind may be the reality which they have, when de facto they are possessed by the thing. Both, then, in the first group of notes as well as in the second, it is always, as we have seen, a matter of grounded notes. In comparison with them, the essential or constitutive notes are ungrounded. As a consequence, what we must now ask is what may be the character of the grounded notes when they are possessed by the thing. This is a question of decisive importance.

It is not a question of a juxtaposition of notes, as though the thing "in addition to" essential notes, of ungrounded notes, might have other notes grounded on them and which remain outside them. This is absurd. No matter how many non-essential notes a real thing may have, this thing is, nevertheless, in its ultimate concretion, always and only one single thing and not various things. The grounded notes form a unity of a special type with the constitutive notes. This is not a unity of "inherence". It would not matter if we employed the term were it not that it already has a consecrated meaning in metaphysics: the manner of the "to be" of the accident. The fact is that the grounded notes are not inherent accidents, because the [427] essence itself is not substance but substantivity. I shall return to this point presently. The unity of the essential notes is, I have said, a unity of "coherence". The unity of the non-essential notes with the essence is then a unity of "adherence". There is no question here, naturally, of a material property. Even less does this mean "juxtaposed to"; rather the prefix "ad" has the exact sense of "in direction toward". All the non-essential notes are notes which make of the [479] thing, not reality simpliciter, but rather reality "in a certain respect" ("ad"). Seen from the essence itself, they are, as I have said, positionally determined by it (the essence); seen from the point of view of the non-essential notes themselves, however, this positional determination is the character of ad. Adherence is a metaphysical character of the real. The real is, then, always "one"; its unity, however, is complex: it is a unity of coherence which is the ground of a unity of adherence. The metaphysical ground of adherence is coherence. In this sense, there is, in the real thing, a profound difference between the coherent notes and the adherent notes, between the essential and the non-essential.

The fact is, however, that this difference, and, in general, the triple meaning of the concept of essence, is a difference which refers to that which the thing is. It is a difference in the order of "suchness". In it, the non-essential notes determine further the constitutive notes or the notes of "suchness" in the strict sense. This strict and formal essence has, however, a transcendental function. We are speaking, of course, of the constitutive and not of the quidditive essence. This it is, which, in its transcendental function, as we have seen, determines the de suyo, the reality of a thing insofar as it is real, the res. The non-essential notes, then, have no reality at all de suyo. Quite the contrary; it is the essence which de suyo possesses the non-essential notes. Only because the essence is reality, are the non-essential notes real. In the order of suchness, it is the non-essential notes which determine the essence. Transcendentally, by contrast, it is the essence which confers reality on them (the nonessential notes). The adherent is reality in and by the reality of the coherent. This transcendental character of the essence with respect to the non-essential is not "to sustain". Substantialism reappears anew. The essence is a moment of the substantivity, that moment according to [480] which the thing is res. The function of this res is not "to sustain", [428] but "to reify". All that is non-essential is reified by the essence as res; and reciprocally, every res reifies all that derives from it or all that accrues to it. Transcendentally, there is neither retrogression to the first concept of essence nor restriction to the third. The strict constitutive essence in transcendental function does not limit itself to the establishment of something real; its function is much vaster: it reifies every non-essential determination in the order of "suchness". It does so in such fashion that there is transcendentally but one concept of essence: the reality as something de suyo. The non-essential is not a second reality juxtaposed to the essential; rather, insofar as it is reality, it is transcendentally the same reality as the reality of the essential. What happens is that, mentally, we can consider a non-essential note in and by itself, and speak of that which it is de suyo. Then, however, we consider it not insofar as it is a non-essential note, but simply as a real thing. This, however, comes from the mode of considering the note and not from its metaphysical reality.

Twice (with respect to adherence and with respect to reification) we have seen the concept of substance appear. However, despite the monotonous repetition of ideas, it is necessary to recall that the essence is not essence of substance, but essence of the substantivity. Essence is not substance, whether first or second. It is not second substance, because the essence is not necessarily quidditive nor quiddifiable, but formally and essentially is constitutive essence. Neither, however, is it first substance. Because reality, whether it is subjectual or not, is primarily substantivity, that is, a system of notes. And within it the essence is the subsystem or fundamental system, the determining system of the total system. Because it is cyclical, this fundamental subsystem is system in its own right in a constructivity. [481] And because it is positionally determinant of the other notes, it confers on these the character of system by adherence. The nonessential notes are not, then, an exception from the transcendental point of view. This is the reason why the function of the essence with respect to the non-essential in the order of "suchness" is not "to sustain", but "to reify". In these two points (the reality as substantivity and the essence as constructivity) there resides, for all that concerns our problem, all our difference with Aristotle.

[429] To sum up, essence is the strict and formal "suchness" in transcendental function, in the order to the de suyo and the transcendentality itself is the de suyo, the real simpliciter. This is the transcendental character of the essence. The essence does not, however, have only a transcendental character, but also possesses a strict transcendental structure. This is the other aspect of the transcendental consideration of essence.

 

2. Essence: Its Transcendental Structure

The transcendental order is determined by the order of the "suchness" in transcendental function. What, however, this function determines is not only certain transcendental "properties", but a true, transcendental structure. We have seen, in a word, that the "suchness" (talidad) is something constructed, and what it determines transcendentally is the de suyo as a "construct of reality". The real, the de suyo, is constructivity, and precisely in virtue of being such, this construct finds itself internally and transcendentally structured. In discussing the problem of "to be", I appealed to this concept of transcendental structure: then, however, it was the structure of reality in that external-transcendental respectivity which is called world. Now, by contrast, what concerns us is the internal, transcendental respectively of the real, of the essence in and by itself.

[482] No dialectical disquisition is involved here. Quite the contrary. Since what determines this structure is the transcendentally constructed character of reality, we must turn our attention to the analysis of constructivity in order to find a guideline for our investigation in this order.

First of all, because it is constructed, the de suyo involves not only the intrinsic belonging of the "notes-of" and of the "unity-in", but also the fact that this belonging has its own transcendental character: "constitution". This de suyo, however, not only has a transcendental character, but also, in virtue of those two moments of the constructivity (the "de" and the "in"), the thing is de suyo, according, however, to different internal respects of these two moments; these respects are what I have called dimensions. The second structural moment of the transcendental is "dimensionality". Finally, the constructivity has a different transcendental function according to the [430] "type" of "suchness" (talidad) in question. Constitution, dimensionality, and type: here we have the three transcendental structural moments of the de suyo, as such.

I. Essence and constitution. Naturally, we may recall once more we are speaking not of the quidditive, but of the constitutive essence. This essence has two moments: the essential notes and their unity. These two moments belong to the essence intrinsically. The notes endow the unity with its "suchness" and the unity is present "in" the notes making them "notes-of" (primary, coherential unity): it is the intrinsic constructivity of the essence. In transcendental function, this belonging constitutes the reality, the de suyo: it is the metaphysical construct. The question is not, however, exhausted by this analysis. For, in its character as construct, the de suyo constitutes a [483] constructed "unity", that is to say, a unity of two moments. The de suyo is an unum: it is the transcendental unity. This unity is not the same as the essential unity, even though it is necessary to use the same word in order to designate it. The essential unity is the pnmary moment of the "suchness". The transcendental unity is something different. We have seen that the "entire" construct of "suchness" (constructo talitativo) has a character common to unity and the notes: essential actuality. This actuality in transcendental function is formally the res, the de suyo. It is a metaphysical construct. In this construct, then, its character of "real" is common to the notes and to the unity qua real. And this common transcendental moment has as its proper character to be unity: it is the transcendental unity. The constructed character of the real qua real is, before all else, transcendental unity. Reciprocally, the transcendental unity is the actuality of the de suyo as metaphysical construct. Transcendental unity, then, is not to be confused with essential unity. Because it is a construct, the transcendental unity has a precise structure. This must be clarified in some detail.

The primary coherential unity confers, in terms of "suchness" (talitativamente), their cyclical closure on the essential notes; and this cyclical closure is that in which the indivision of the real positively consists. From this point of view, incoherence multiplies the real. Closure, we have said, has a character of suchness proper to itself: it is an individual constitution. And individual constitution is [431] the way in which the essence determines the transcendental unity, the metaphysically constructed unity of the real as such. It is a transcendentally individual unity. What is the character of its structure?

When we were discussing this problem in terms of "suchness" we said that the idea of individual embraces four moments: the [484] moment of numeral unity, of constitution, of concretion, and of incommunicable reality. For the time being we may set aside the moment of concretion. Of the other three moments, the first two referred to what we called singularity and constitution. As we shall see, transcendentally the difference proves to be absorbed into a higher character: the transcendental constitution. The fourth is the moment according to which each real thing is incommunicably separated from all the others. Constitution and incommunicability are, then, the two aspects of the individual transcendental unity. These mutually implicate each other, and the transcendental unity, in its proper structure, consists in this implication. Let us examine both aspects successively beginning with the second.

The cyclical closure in terms of "suchness" is, in transcendental function, that in virtue of which to be de suyo is to be "separated" from all the rest. This, however, is the most superficial aspect, because it is merely negative. In the transcendental order, the cyclical closure has an exact positive function, the real qua real belongs to itself. The real, as a de suyo, is thus a suyo. This is not a concept in the order of "suchness". In the order of suchness, everything has "its" properties. Here, however, we are talking about the transcendental order, and transcendentally, the thing does not have "its" properties, but is suyo its own, itself. This belonging to itself, this suyo, is the positive element which underlies the formal indivision, or undividedness. Because it is suyo qua reality, all of the real is incommunicable. Incommunicability is the negative aspect of this positive belonging to itself. Understood in this way, incommunicability is not a character which refers formally to existence—incommunicable existence as it is customarily called—but refers rather to the de suyo itself, which embraces, indistinctly, both essence and existence in the classical sense. Existence is incommunicable only [485] insofar as it belongs to the thing as something which is suyo. The de suyo is beyond essence and existence in the classical sense. And it is this de suyo which, because it is suyo, is incommunicable in [432] virtue of its formal ratio (razón); and only in virtue of the de suyo being incommunicable are both essence and existence, in the classical sense, incommunicable. In this respect, then, the transcendental function of essence is to establish the real as something which is suyo de suyo. Transcendental unity is, before all else, this unity which consists in being suyo.

This is not just a wearisome play of words. De suyo is the character of the reality of the real qua real; and suyo is the moment of the real’s belonging to itself. This difference between the de suyo and the suyo:

1. Is only a difference of reason; because of it, suyo is a transcendental moment;

2. Is a difference of reason, but founded in re; there is one aspect under which something is de suyo, another under which it is suyo;

3. This fundamentum in re, however, is, in the real thing itself, a precise structure of grounding. The suyo is not merely something "added" to the de suyo, nor is it a matter of two aspects discernible ad libitum among a thousand others which might be excogitated. The suyo is, quite the contrary, a moment which belongs intrinsically to the de suyo in accordance with a structure of grounding: the real is suyo because it is de suyo. The suyo, incommunicability, is only a "resultant", so to say, of the de suyo. This is the reason why incommunicability is not only a transcendental property, but has, further, the character of a transcendental structural moment.

The suyo, understood in this way, is a character of the de suyo, therefore, it permeates (transfunde) the real in its entirety in all its moments, including the moments of "suchness". A thing, for example, is suyo as living, as being endowed with such and such physical notes, [486] etc. This is the reason why it is incommunicable. The suyo touches the notes and the essential unity, the real, in what is most proper and radical in it, its reality itself.

As a construct of "suchness" (constructo talitativo), the essence is, then, enclosed cyclical unity, a system of notes capable of forming by itself a system endowed with constitutional sufficiency. This character of "suchness" in transcendental function consists in determining a constructed metaphysical unity whose first structural aspect is to belong to itself, to be suyo.

[433] With this it might appear that we have now reached the transcendental unum of the real. But this is true only in an incomplete manner. In terms of "suchness" the notes impart a suchness to the essential unity, that is to say, confer certain determined and particular characteristics. Its transcendental function, however, is higher than this: in its transcendental unity, the real not only belongs to itself (is suyo, is incommunicable), but also belongs to itself in a manner particular to each essence. In terms of "suchness" the notes impart "suchness" to the primary coherential unity; transcendentally, they modulate the belonging to itself. Every reality de suyo is suyo, but "in its own way". This belonging to itself in a particular way is what we call transcendental "constitution". The unity of incommunicability, to the degree to which it is grounded only in the de suyo, has the structural character of constitution. Here we have the complete transcendental unum. It is not merely a property, but the transcendental structure of two moments: one, the moment of belonging to itself, the other, the moment of belonging to itself in a special, particular way. Clearly, this concept of a "special way" of being suyo has nothing in common with the substantial modes of which some scholastics spoke in relation to subsistence.

The concept of constitution emerged for us in passing in speaking of the essential notes, but in a somewhat unclear way. Then, [487] constitution meant the intrinsic determination in terms of "suchness", of the unity by its notes; every real thing has, in this sense, its proper individual characteristics, its constitution. Transcendentally, however, it is not a question of this kind of quality of the unity, but of an intrinsic way of belonging to itself. And it is in this transcendental sense that we speak here of constitution. These are not two independent senses: the second is the first in transcendental function. And the difference between these two senses leaps to view. In terms of suchness, there is, as we have said, a difference between the moment of numerical unity and the moment of qualified constitution. There are things which are only singuli, different examples only numerically, while in other things, there are constitutive differences in the order of "suchness". It was necessary to distinguish, therefore, mere singularity from strict and formal individuality. Nevertheless, at that time, we already suggested that, "strictly speaking", the singular, too, has its constitution, indeed, its singular constitution. [434] This suggestion was made in the order of "suchness". When, however, these "suchnesses" are taken in transcendental function, the difference between singularity and strict individuality remains absorbed in the (lo) transcendental individual. But the singulum and the individuum, taken in transcendental function, determine the de suyo as something that is suyo, as something that belongs to itself, in a particular way. That is to say, the singuli and the individui have equally their own transcendental constitution. And as both in the first and in the second the essence is constitutive and not quidditive, it follows that the transcendental constitution determined by the said essence is transcendentally individual; to be individual, in a word, is to belong to one’s self, to be suyo, in a particular way. Essence is transcendental constitution.

This idea of transcendental unity as individual constitution was [488] necessary. When Aristotle delineated the problem of the "one" (Ÿn), he differentiated diverse senses of unity, and, in a special way, these four: the one as "continuum" (continuous, sunecžj), and as the "whole" (Ölon), the one as "universal" (kaqÕlou), and the one in the sense of "each one" (cada cual, kaq' Ÿkaston). This last meaning alone concerns our present problem. And a double inadequacy is to be discovered in it. In the first place, in terms of suchness, "each one" (cada cual) as mere singular, is not distinguished from "each one" as strict and formal individual, i.e., from what "each one" is according to a proper determination in suchness (determinación talitativa propia). In the second place, however, when the "each one" (cada cual) is taken in the transcendental sense, it remains reduced to something vague and imprecise, precisely because of the lack of the transcendental determination of constitution. "Each one" is transcendentally "each one" according to its proper constitution, according to the particular way of belonging to itself, of being suyo and, therefore, one.

As I see it, this is the positive concept of what scholasticism, without further clarification, called "inclusion" or, at least, "connotation" of the positive entity in transcendental indivision. When discussing this concept, I said that indivision, both as including and connoting the entity of the being, is an inadequate concept, because it leaves unanswered the question of precisely determining the positive character of indivision and the precise way in which this positive [435] element is included in the structure of the unum. The intrinsic indivision is the coherential cyclical unity, whose transcendental function is belonging to itself, the being suyo of what is de suyo. And in its turn, the inclusion of this cyclical coherence in the transcendental indivision is precisely and formally the modulation of the belonging to itself, that is, the constitution. It is not only that, as a matter of fact, real things have constitution, but also that they [489] must have it by reason of their proper kind of unity. This is the reason why the constitution is transcendental. The real then has, not this vague and formalistic "property" of being "one", but an exact "structural" character: transcendental constitution. And the function in the order of "suchness" which determines this character is the constructivity in the order of "suchness", as constitutive of the suyo. The essence as reality, as de suyo, has an exact transcendental structure, the first aspect of which is to be suyo, constitutionally, that is, constitutionality. As I have said, essence is, above all, transcendental constitution.

Essence, then, as reality, as de suyo, is suyo, is transcendentally individual. The individual, however, has many further determinations, almost infinite in principle, which do not constitute the individual, but which determine it in the order of concretion. This is the third moment of individuality, of which we must now speak. The difference of which we are speaking is rigorous and beyond appeal: "individual" is not a "concrete". It always remains to say, however, in what, on this point, the transcendental character of this further determination may consist. In its formal and particular ratio (razón), the real is the essence as a de suyo, and this essence is already individual in its character as essence; it is individual de suyo. The transcendental function of the individual character of "suchness" is much wider than that of determining the particular manner of belonging to itself. Just as the reality, as de suyo, transcendentally "reifies" all of its notes, which are non-essential in the order of "suchness", so also the individual essence, as a de suyo, "individualizes" all the further notes in the line of concretion. The thing, we have said, is res and reifies. We may now add, then, that the res is transcendentally individual, and individualizes all that flows from it or that accrues to it, exactly and formally because it is already [490] transcendentally individual. Transcendentally, concretional [436] determination is individualization. Individualization means that these further notes are not only concrete, but also, by reason of their belonging to the essence, take on individual character; it is the essence which confers on them their character of individuals. For this reason it is necessary to introduce, at this point too, adequate words which would prevent confusions. Essence, insofar as it is already transcendentally individual, has individuity (individuidad). The notes of the further concretion do not make the thing individual, but rather give it individuality (individualidad). Already, in the order of "suchness", the difference is profound: the individual is not made, but "is" once and for all, while individuality is acquired or is impoverished, and, in any case, is always modified. This is the difference between to be "el" mismo and "lo" mismo. The real thing ("la" cosa real), so long as it endures, is always the (la, feminine of el) same, but it is never absolutely the (lo) same. In transcendental function, the difference takes on another character: it means that individuity, precisely because it is such, individualizes; so that there is then only one sole individual in its two moments of individuity and individuality. These two moments must, however, be understood correctly. In the order of suchness, the ulterior notes have two different characters. Some notes flow from the constitutive dimension (by positional determination); they are constitutional notes. Others are strictly adventitious. The first "express", the constitutive dimension (the phenotype, for example, is the expression of the genotype); the second "concretize" the individual. In both cases, it is the notes which determine the individual in the order of "suchness". (For this reason I have called them, in this context, without further distinction, "notes in the order of concretion".) In the transcendental order, however, the situation, so to say, is inverted; the essence proves to be an individual de suyo; and, thanks to this individuity, confers on the concretive notes their character as individuals. The essence "individualizes" de suyo. For [491] this reason, the difference in the order of "suchness" remains absorbed in the transcendental individual. This individual is unique.

To sum up, the essence, the real, the de suyo, has a structural moment proper to itself; it is transcendentally constitution with the character of individual. But it is not only this.

[437] II. Essence and dimensionality. The essence is a transcendental construct. In it are found, naturally, the two moments of constructivity (the "of" of the notes and the "in" of the unity) in transcendental function, that is, as structural determinants of the de suyo, as such. And we have just seen that this constructivity determines that transcendental unity which is the constitution. The constitution, we have said, is the mode in which the real (thing) itself is one. There is, however, another aspect: the unity of the essence in the order of "suchness" as primary coherential unity not only includes the notes, but is "in" them exactly in its character as primary. And this character in the order of "suchness" determines, in transcendental function, another structural character, also transcendental. It is not simply that the constitution is an inclusion of the notes in the unity, and that we now take this "relation" inversely. This would be true in the order of "suchness". Here, instead, we are referring to the entire metaphysical construct as the structure of the de suyo itself. And in this line, we have said, the transcendentally real, that is, as de suyo, belongs to itself in each real thing as real, in its particular way. The constructivity, then, of the essence in the order of "suchness" determines another structural character different from that of this belonging.

We saw in the course of the analysis of the "real" truth that, in the order of suchness, the real is found projected from within, in its own notes. This projection is the formal "respect" of the real in its notes, a respect which is nothing other than the actualization of the [492] real in them. The thing not only has hardness, for example, but is actualized in its entirety in this note of hardness; the note is not "had", but "is" in it. It is nothing other than the constructivity in the order of suchness of the essence, the presence of the unity "in" the notes. This projective respect is what I have called dimension. And we see that that of which it is dimension is the substantivity, the constitutional sufficiency of something. In treating the theme of real truth, I introduced these concepts somewhat indiscriminately, that is, passing over the sphere of mere suchness and emphasizing the transcendental, at that point not yet distinguished as such. The same happened with the concept of constitution. There we were essaying a first introduction to these concepts of constitution and dimension. However, equally with constitution, dimension is a transcendental [438] concept in the strict sense; and the difference between these two ways of viewing, that of "suchness" and the transcendental, will be seen immediately.

Considered in the order of "suchness", it was a matter of a "respectivity" of the "in" of the unity with respect "of" the notes. By this primary exigential presence, the unity is in the notes actualizing them as essential notes. We said that, from the point of view of the notes, the essence is something "been" (sido) with respect to the primary unity. In transcendental function, then, this unity, this "in", in its respect to the notes, is what determines a structural character of the de suyo itself. The essence transcendentally, that is, the real, the de suyo, is something that not only belongs to itself in its own way (constitution), but also is something which de suyo is "from itself" what it is. And in this respect, the de suyo is an intus of its own reality, is "interiority". Interiority does not mean here anything occult; it is not a matter of something which lies beyond the essential notes or beneath them, because the essence is a [493] construct, a metaphysical construct, a construct of reality. The essence, I said, has the character of system, is the fundamental system of the substantivity. And the "in" of its unity, the interiority, is nothing else, transcendentally, but "systematicity" itself. Neither does it mean that it is an intimacy. Not everything real possesses intimacy; this is given (intramundanely) in human realities. Material things lack intimacy: they do, however, have this interiority which is nothing else than the transcendental character of the "in" in the order of suchness of the essence, systematicity in transcendental function. The de suyo is, in this aspect, a "from itself". Correlatively, in transcendental constructivity, the notes are nothing other than the been (sida) unity, that is, been (sida) interiority. And this is precisely an extra, an "exteriority". Exteriority does not mean exteriorization before other entities. Quite the contrary, nothing can exteriorize itself in this sense, because, anteriorly, that is to say, independently of this possible exteriorization, it has or "is" exteriority. Exteriority is a transcendental moment of the de suyo; it is nothing other than interiority formed (plasmada) to be the real itself. The essence, the real, is something, if I may be permitted the expression, "self formed", (auto-plasmada). Transcendental constructivity is this intrinsic structure of interiority and exteriority. The interior is found actualized in [439] the exteriority; and, reciprocally, the exterior would not be exterior were it not the ex of the interiority itself. In the order of "suchness" the essence is the "in" of the unity and the "of" of the notes. Transcendentally, by contrast, the essence, as reality simpliciter, is interiority and exteriority as moments of this metaphysical construct which is the de suyo. The formal respect, then, according to which the interiority is shaped (plasmada) in its proper exteriority, that is to say, the very respect of the ex, is what constitutes what I call [494] "dimension". Dimension is a strictly transcendental character; it is the in in the ex as a moment of the de suyo itself.

Hence the profound difference between this view of the real and that of which Aristotle spoke. Aristotle sees the notes of the real as something which supervenes upon a subject, a substance. No note has "separate" reality, but only reality as "united" to a substantial subject. He calls these different ways of "to be" "categories" or supreme "genera" of being, of the ×n. In the first place, however, even within Aristotle himself, this concept of category suffers from a serious ambiguity, because he does not distinguish sufficiently between two aspects of the categories. Only when they are viewed in their proper content are they supreme "genera" of being. By contrast, when they are viewed as different modes of "to be", the categories have nothing to do with their generic character. The Latins translated category as predicament. Strictly, however, the categories are predicaments only by reason of their content, that is, as genera. Taken as modes of "to be" they are not predicaments. There is always this ambivalence, or better, this ambiguity, between category and predicament in Aristotle. This situation does not come about by chance. The fact is that Aristotle, by reason of the convergence which he sees between the reality and the predicamental logos, conceived the reality in subjectual form. Consequently, the categories, other than substance, appeared to Aristotle as accidents, that is, as something which is not real save upon a substantial subject. As a consequence, this is, as I have said, fundamentally a view of reality "from outside inward". Hence it was enough that with Hegel, twenty-three centuries later, the real should be seen "dialectically", in order that the reality might be conceived as an "interiorization" of the notes in which its "to be" consists. The real, however, is not, primo and per se, substance, but substantivity. And the substantive element simpliciter of the substantivity [440] is the essence. The essence does not have notes which are notes [495] of a subject, nor is it an interiorization as Hegel thought; it is a pnmary interiority which, of itself, is already formed (plasmada, ex) in its proper essential exteriority. It is a vision "from within outward", a vision from the primary "in" of the unity and from the "of" constructed of the notes, but both in transcendental function. The metaphysical constructivity of the real is this structure of "interiority-exteriority" whose formal transcendental character is "dimension". Dimension is nothing other than the ex of the in in the construct of reality.

In the order of "suchness", the real is, as we have seen, pluri-dimensional: the thing actualizes itself in its notes in three respects, namely: richness, solidity, actuality of being (estar siendo). These three dimensions of "suchness" have a precise transcendental function as moments of the de suyo.

In the first place, richness. I have already indicated that, even in the order of "suchness", the richness of the essence cannot be confused with abundance of notes. The distinction, however, remained obscure. It becomes clear now when richness is considered in transcendental function. What transcendentally determines the richness is the "perfection" of the real as such. The essence, the real, is of itself (de suyo) more or less perfect. An essence which would be whole in a single note, would have the highest perfection. The constructed ex (according to which the interiority of the real is transcendentally exterior) is, before all else, its own "perfection". Perfection is, then, here a transcendental moment. It is the first— first only in enumeration—transcendental dimension of the essence in as far as it is de suyo, insofar as it is reality.

In the order of "suchness", however, the real actualizes itself in a second dimension, solidity. Solidity, in transcendental function, is "stability". The essence is a more or less stable de suyo; if this were not the case, it would not be something de suyo, but would be [496] dissipated into a pure nothing. Stability is not the synonym of static nor of quiescent in Hegel’s sense, but is a transcendental character which lies beyond these properties in the order of "suchness". In this order, there are many different stabilities: there are static stabilities; there are, also, dynamic stabilities. For example, one speaks of the stability of the solar system (something which to [441] this day has resisted mathematical proof) and stable and unstable equilibria. In this last case, stability always involves a dynamic aspect, whatever may be the concept that is formed of it (stability in the sense of difficulty in issuing from the state of equilibrium or stability in the sense of facility in recovering equilibrium by internal forces). It will be said that these dynamic systems are not "things". Undeniably, however, there are "things" to the stability of which, in the order of "suchness", there belongs (in one form or other, this is not important here) a moment of "movement", for example, the stability of a fluid mass in rotation (many stars and, above all, living beings). Here we are not referring to anything of this kind, but rather to the fact that stability means that the real, whatever it may be in the order of "suchness" (static or dynamic) is stable in its reality itself. Nor does stability mean that the real is a thing like a permanent subject beneath its possible movements (in the metaphysical concept of movement). It is not that there are not stable realities in this sense. This type of stability, however, is neither the only nor the typical example of stability. Even more, the very necessity that there should be a permanent subject—the mobile—is a consequence of the transcendental stability of the real, and not the reverse. This consequence, in turn, is not necessary. Movement might be only a moment of the primary act itself (as scholasticism would say) of the real, a case in which it would not be possible to speak strictly of an "underlying subject", but of a "moving substrate". A moving [497] substrate is one thing; a mobile subject quite another. We will not enter any more deeply into this problem which does not concern us here. The only thing that concerns us is that whatever may be the concrete character of the stability, this stability, as transcendental character, is a structural moment of the real, a transcendental moment of the de suyo. A thing which is essentially unstable is essentially unreal, if the expression be permitted me.

Finally, the real has, in the order of "suchness", another dimension: its actual exercise of the act of being (estar siendo). When we reached this point, this new dimensional character also necessarily remained obscure. The effectivity of actually exercising the act of being (estar siendo) is clear only in transcendental functions. The actual exercise of the act of being (estar siendo) in transcendental function is "duration". This is a strictly transcendental character. Duration here [442] does not mean how long a thing endures (this would be only the measure of duration) nor does it mean either the distensio of St. Augustine or the durée of Bergson. In all these cases, duration has a temporal character. There are, however, other cases in which duration is a-temporal (æevum) or extra-temporal (eternal). Here we are treating of none of these. Duration, in itself, is a transcendental character of all these "durations"; all of these are but modes of enduring. Nor is duration, as a transcendental character, formally identical with what some scholastics had in mind when they said that to endure is to retain "to be". First, because it is not a question of "to be", but of reality. In the second place, and chiefly, because in this definition duration is conceived by way of its effects. Duration is neither to retain "to be" nor to retain reality, but to be "enduringly"; that is, that by reason of its own transcendental structure every reality is de suyo enduring. Under any contrary condition, it would be evanescent, it would not have reality. And in this sense it (duration) is a transcendental moment of the de suyo.

Perfection, stability, duration, are three dimensions according to [498] which the real is shaped (plasmado) from within in the intrinsic exteriority of its notes. They are three formal respects of the in in its ex. In them is expressed the transcendental dimensionality of the real. All the real is de suyo more or less perfect, more or less stable, more or less enduring. They are not three independent dimensions; for this reason, as I remarked in the proper place, these dimensions cannot be understood in mathematical form. Transcendentally, however, they are true dimensions. They belong to each other mutually; in each of them, however, the real is "more or less" (perfect, stable, enduring), that is to say, in their very unity they are something according to which the real is "measured". And what is measured in this measuring, in the form of "more or less", is what transcendentally constitutes the "grade of reality". The concept of "grade" has its origin, obviously, in the order of "suchness": there are things which are more or less hot, more or less developed, etc. Transcendentally, however, there are no grades of "to be" in this sense of gradation, that is, as though the grades of reality were only differences, so to say, of intensity. Essences have reality in different measure, but with a metaphysical, and not a gradual, distinction. With this clarification the word can be employed in metaphysics. What constitutes [443] this measure or degree is precisely the dimensional structure of the real as such. Real things are real de suyo in different measure. It is, in a certain sense, a transcendental capacity of reality. For this reason, in their difference of transcendental measure, essences are not distinct in degree, or grade, but rather have no common measure physically: physically, they are incommensurable.

The real is de suyo, belonging to itself in its own way and, further, is real in different measure. Constitution and dimension are two transcendental structural moments of essence as something de suyo.

[499] III. Essence and typicalness (tipicidad). The real, the essence, belongs to itself, in its own way, and from itself. This constitution and dimension have, in their turn, a different character according to the "suchness" of the essences in question. This diversity in the order of "suchness" can, in effect, be understood in two ways. First: diversity which is formally of the order of suchness; second, diversity in the order of "suchness" according to its transcendental function. The first point of view would lead to a catalogue or classification of essences. This is not what we are looking for here; we have already made some allusion to it in speaking, for example, of the dimension of stability in the essence. The only thing we are looking for here is the diversity of essences according to a difference in their transcendental function. All material essences are diverse in the order of "suchness" in their formal "suchness" (material bodies of different character, organisms of different types, etc.); nevertheless, they all have the same transcendental function. What we are looking for, then, is not a diversity in the order of "suchness" qua order of "suchness", but a diversity in the order to a difference of transcendental function. We call this difference transcendental "typicalness". Stated in stricter terms, this is a matter of a difference in the metaphysical construct qua metaphysical.

Every reality, every essence, is de suyo in the double structural moment of constitution and dimension. This ordination to the de suyo is the transcendental function of every essence without exception; it is precisely what makes it something formally real. Among essences, however, there are some whose transcendental function consists simply in establishing them as realities and "nothing more". [444] This "nothing more", negative in appearance, is a positive moment of transcendental typicalness. It is the type of essence that I would call transcendentally "closed". By this statement, I am not referring to the closure of the essence in the order of "suchness"; every essence, without exception, possesses its notes of "suchness" according to a closed, cyclical unity; and this closure, in transcendental function, [500] is, as we have seen, the de suyo. I am referring to something else; namely, the moment according to which, by reason of being something de suyo, the closed essence is something "in itself". Its entire transcendental reality is exhausted in being "de suyo en sí". This is what the closed essence consists in. The expression "en si" has already made its appearance when we were treating of the ratio (razón) of the essential unity. Then, however, "en sí" meant: (1) a moment of "suchness", and (2) a moment of "suchness" exclusive to quiddifiable essence, that is, of each individual reality with respect to others of the same species. Here, however, "en sí" is a transcendental moment of every closed essence as such.

It is clear that no essence constitutes an exception to this rule, in the sense that no essence falls short of being something "en sí". What happens is that there are essences which, in transcendental function, not only are "en sí", but are "en sí" in such wise that it belongs to their particular de suyo, in actu secundo, to behave, not only according to the notes which they possess, but also in view of their particular character of reality. In actu primo (the only decisive factor in this point) this structure is what constitutes the "open" essence. Openness is here a transcendental structural character. These essences are not "en sí" and "nothing more", but in their very way of being "en sí" they are open to their character of reality qua reality and, therefore, are open, in principle, to the whole of reality as such. These are, without any shadow of doubt, the intelligent and volitional essences. Since that which possesses will is grounded (whatever may be the manner of understanding this grounding) in the note of intelligence, we may limit ourselves to this last and speak only of the intelligent or intellective essence. Every intellective essence is transcendentally open, and reciprocally, every transcendentally open essence is, eo ipso, intellective, because intelligence is, [501] formally, apprehension of the real as real, and reciprocally. The intellective essence is open de suyo to everything real as real. The [445] closed essences are, then, those which are not intellective. Intelligence, which is an essential note, has a transcendental function exclusive to itself. For this reason, the difference between the intellective and the non-intellective is a transcendental difference and not only a difference in the order of "suchness". Open and closed are two transcendental "typicalnesses".

Let us clarify these concepts. In the first place, openness does not point, formally and in the first place, to the term to which it is open. Here, then, we are not treating of the fact that, by reason of being open, the intelligence coincides in principle with all reality qua real. Openness does not mean the condition of the term to which it is open, but the very structure of the intellective essence insofar as it is something de suyo. In the second place, the "en sí" of essence is not the Kantian "en sí". Here "en sí" means only the establishment of something as a de suyo. This "en sí" neither includes nor excludes, without qualification, a transcendental openness. When it excludes such openness, the essence is "only" de suyo, "only" "en sí". When it includes such openness, then the real is something de suyo "open in itself", is intelligence. Hence it follows that the intellective essence has a peculiar transcendental function. The essence which is intellective in the order of "suchness" in transcendental function establishes this essence before all else as something real, as something which de suyo is something "en sí". At the same time, however, it establishes that essence as something transcendentally open to that which it—the intellective essence—is not in itself, or to its own proper "to be" in itself. These two moments are not structurally independent, and in their mutual transcendental belonging formally consists the type of metaphysical construct to which we have been alluding. In this is grounded the "coincidence" with the whole of the real qua real and, as a consequence, the verum and the [502] bonum. By reason of this "coincidence" the transcendental function of the intelligence exceeds the mere establishment of the intelligence as a reality proper to itself. This "exceeding" however, that is, the "coincidence", is not something primary, but is, rather, the consequence of the transcendental structure of the intellective essence: the transcendental openness.

It is necessary to understand correctly the relation of the "en sí" and of the "openness". It might be thought that the intellective [446] essence is properly and formally (as something de suyo) only something "en sí", and that its presumed reference to other realities or to its own reality is an addition, so to say, to this character of the "en sí"; in this case the openness would be only a presumed and problematic "addition" to the "in itself". The intelligence, like any other reality, would be formally "only in itself", and its presumed openness would not be a formal moment of the reality of the intelligence as such. This was the error of all forms of subjectivism: the intellective essence, by reason of being something "only in itself", would be a closed essence. But the intellective essence is not de suyo only something in itself (en sí), placed only later in relation with other realities, but its openness belongs constitutively and formally to its proper reality in itself. The intellective essence is de suyo "open in its very self".

But it would be no less an error to understand this structure from the opening alone, as though the intellective essence were something like the openness itself, in such wise that its character of "en sí" would be the precipitate of that which the intellective essence is "openly". In the case of the human essence, this would mean that man is pure happening or event. But this is impossible. Openness is, to be sure, an essential moment of the intellective essence as reality; it is, however, a moment which "modifies"—we may say more exactly—that "makes a type of" (tipifica) that which the intelligence is as reality de suyo "en sí". That is to say, the openness is a [503] transcendental character of the "en sí". It is not an addition; even less is it something which floats above itself. Only because the intellective essence is real in its very self can it be open to reality as such. In the case of man, man "is", not by happening, but rather he happens precisely because he is as he is, as "de suyo en sí". Openness is a transcendentally typical modification of the "en sí". Because it is transcendental, it is not a mere addition to the "en sí"; however, because it is only a transcendental typification, it is inscribed intrinsically and formally, a limine, in the "en sí". This precise articulation of the "en sí", and of the "openness" in the intellective essence is, then, a transcendental structure.

This transcendental typicalness of the intellective essence, insofar as it is de suyo, has a very clearly defined character considered in the suyo itself as resulting from the de suyo. We have seen that the [447] essence, by reason of being de suyo, belongs to itself in its own way, and that this transcendental structure, the constitution, has, as its character, the individuity which individualizes everything that derives from the "suchness" or that accrues to it, in such wise that, transcendentally, there is but one single individual. The suyo of the closed essence is simple individuity. In the case of the open essence, however, the openness transcendentally modifies this metaphysical construct of the suyo. Every essence, in a word, belongs to itself. In being open, however, it behaves, in the operative order, not only according to its properties in the order of "suchness", that is to say, it does not behave only in the manner deriving from its being such only in itself and nothing more, but behaves, rather, in a manner deriving from its particular character as reality; it behaves not only according to what it is in the order of "suchness", but also according to its transcendentality as such. This means that, in the transcendental constitutive order, an open essence not only belongs to itself, but belongs to itself in a particular manner.

[504] The closed essence is, so to say, only "materially" suya. This is not the occasion to examine in detail the differences between the way in which an inanimate reality and a living thing, above all, the animal, belong to themselves. These differences are not properly transcendental, but much rather of the order of "suchness". Transcendentally, the living being belongs to itself only "materially"; transcendentally, it is a "closed" essence. Its openness, in a word, is only "stimulative" (estimúlica); it is open to stimuli, but is not so, formally, to the character of the stimulus as reality. At most, we might say that the animal, above all the superior animal, is a primordium of open essence; it is, if one wishes, a "quasi-open" essence, in which phrase the "quasi" expresses the character of mere primordium. For this reason, the animal has only individuity; it is suyo, but only "materially", that is, only as transcendental individual. By contrast, the strictly open essence is suya "formally and reduplicatively" as I have been in the habit of saying; it not only belongs to itself, but also does so in that particular manner of belonging to itself which is self-possession, possession of self, in its proper and formal character as reality, in its proper "ser-suyo". It is its reality, as such, that is suya. In actu secundo, this possession of self is precisely life. To live is to be in possession of oneself (poseerse), and to possess oneself is to [448] belong to one’s self in the formal and explicit aspect of reality. Life as transient (transcurso) is the mere "argument" of life, but is not life itself. In life man possesses himself "transcurrently", but this transcurrency is life only because it is possession of self. When the possession of self is taken as a character of the first act, this manner of being suyo is precisely what constitutes the person.

Just as, then, in the constitutive order, every essence, without exception, is "individuity", so, too, the open essence is, in the constitutive order, transcendental "personeity". Personeity is the type of [505] the individuity of the open essence. Just as the individual, transcendentally considered, individualizes everything which derives from its "suchness" or accrues to it, so also the open essence, because it is personeity, "personalizes" (in principle) everything that derives from its "suchness" or accrues to it: it has "personality". Life in its biographic discursiveness is personal only by personalization. In and by itself, it is not "personal", but strictly "a-personal". It is personal only by reason of being the life of a living thing which is already person, that is, which has the character of personeity. Personeity is not personality, but, without personeity, personality would be impossible. It is not enough to say that my acts are mine, those of each person, because by doing only this, one has not shaved down to the person. Personeity does not reside in the fact that my acts are mine, those of each one, but rather that my acts are mine because I am my "own" me, so to say, that is, because antecedently I am personeity. Person is the suyo of the open essence. It is a transcendental character. For this reason, it is impossible for an intellective essence not to be person in some form or other (by its own condition or by assumption, etc.); what is impossible is that there might exist an intellective essence which would not be a person, which would simpliciter be without personeity.

Man belongs to this type of essence. Intramundanely, he is the only essence which is person. For this reason it is necessary to clarify somewhat this transcendental condition of the human person, both in what refers to its de suyo as well as in what refers to its "openness". It might be thought that our earlier exposition means that (inversely to what happens with every other intramundane reality), in human reality there is a priority of existence over essence. This is the case with all existentialisms. But this is not true. Mere existence [449] is, as we have seen, only a "metaphysical reduction" of the de suyo. [506] Without a priority of the de suyo, man would not be reality. Furthermore, to exist as a character of the de suyo and to conduct oneself with a view to existence would be impossible if man did not have to conduct himself with metaphysical necessity and a priori with respect to his existence. And this necessity, precisely because it is such, is something which follows from the transcendental structure of man, that is, from his essence, from his de suyo. There is no priority of existence over essence; rather, it is a matter of an essence which de suyo conducts itself operatively with regard for its proper reality, because, and only because, it is a transcendentally open essence. It is one thing to be open to one’s proper reality; quite another thing that the essence should determine itself processually from the mere act of existing. The latter is metaphysically impossible. Man, by reason of his intellective "suchness", is de suyo, that is, transcendentally, an open essence. And the suyo of the open essence is where the person transcendentally resides.

Furthermore, in the case of man, it is necessary to make clear just what this openness itself may be. All intelligence is openness to the real qua real. But this tells us nothing about the particular character of this openness. From the latter depends the very character of intelligence itself; because, in principle, intelligences can be conceived which differ essentially in the order of "suchness". Therefore, it is not enough to say that comprehension is openness. What constitutes the openness of this intellective essence which is man, is not primarily comprehension, but the discovery of oneself as turned from oneself, insofar as intelligence is turned toward sensation; that is, openness is impression. And, as I have already said, I do not, in saying this, refer to the fact that man exercises his intelligence on something already sensed prior to the intellection itself, but that in the order of "suchness", human intelligence, not only in exercising its act of intellection, but in the very structure of intelligence as such, [507] is turned toward sensation; in such wise that intelligence and sensation form one sole structure, the sentient intelligence, thanks to which all reality is sensed in the impression of reality. The human opening is concretely, formally, and primarily sentient, an intellective openness having the character of impression. It is, therefore, a matter neither of intellection being an act ulterior to that of sensing, nor [450] of intellection itself consisting in endowing what is sensed with an objective form (form of an object), different from the subjective form which it had in the act of sensing (Kant), but rather that, in its exercise, the intellection is in itself sentient, and sensation intellective, and that, in their essential constitutive structure, intelligence and sensation constitute a single structure. It is possible, and is a matter of fact, that there may be sensation without intellection, but the opposite is not certain; all intellection is ultimately sentient. This is the reason why man is "animal of realities"; and hence it follows that man is "personal animal". Man proceeds to elaborate his personality in distention and pretension, precisely because structurally he is already personeity, and is such as an animal (animalmente).

This reflection upon the human reality as an open essence is only a special case of the problem of the transcendental structure of essence as a de suyo. It was, however, suitable not to omit it, first, because it is the sole intramundane essence which is open; and secondly, in order to avoid confusion of concepts; and, above all, in order to eliminate conceptions which are only too current in contemporary thought. Open essence and closed essence are the two transcendentally distinct types of all essences in so far as "de suyo".

To sum up. Our purpose has been to form a conception of [508] essence in its transcendentality. And we have seen, first of all, that the essence has a transcendental character. Transcendentality is the character of reality as such, that is, the de suyo. And the essence is what is constitutive of the real in transcendental function, that is, in the order to the de suyo. This essence, as reality de suyo, not only has transcendental properties, but also is a strict transcendental structure. What is constitutive of the real is, in effect, of a constructed character. This constructivity in the order of suchness in transcendental function determines a metaphysical construct. This construct has its proper structure, a transcendental structure. This structure has three structural moments: as metaphysical construct, the essence is individual constitution, is a dimensional system, and has a determined type. The essence is de suyo suya in a manner proper to itself; it is, de suyo, an interiority in exteriority, according to different dimensions; it is de suyo closed or open to its very character of reality. The intrinsic consistence, belonging to each other, of these three moments constitutes the transcendental structure of the essence.