An Inquiry concerning Anitas : Existence, Accidental Forms, and Privations in Thomas Aquinas

Abstract: To account for privations, Aquinas links being as truth to the question an est (does it exist?). When we ask, “Does blindness exist?”, the answer is positive because it is true that some people are blind. Kenny refers to this way of existing proper to privations as anitas and identifies it with the first-order existential quantifier. Moreover, Ventimiglia, following Kenny and Geach, while clarifying that in Aquinas privations and accidental forms are ontologically distinct, suggests that both privations and accidental forms are said to exist in terms of anitas . This holds in the case of Frege, according to whom there is no need to distinguish between privations and accidents since they are both first-level concepts. But for Aquinas it is necessary to provide a clear distinction between them on the basis of a difference in their modes of existence. The author’s thesis is thus that it is not possible to account for both privations and accidental forms in terms of the existential quantifier unless, following Aquinas, we distinguish different senses of the existential quantifier expressing their different modes of existence, while avoiding the blurring of ontological distinctions.