Burley on being

There is an interesting post from the Maverick today on the being-essence distinction. About this question "you have no idea how much ink, and vitriol too, has flooded the scholastic backwaters". Very true. He mentions Aquinas, but there were many others. Here is a link to my translation of Walter Burley's discussion of the question, with parallel Latin text. Walter provides a nice summary of the origins of the question in Boethius, and Avicenna and Al-Ghazali, as well as the different positions held by the main thirteenth century philosophers (Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaines). Walter agrees with Godfrey that existence (i.e. being) and essence are the same:

Concerning this [Godfrey's] position, it should be understood that nothing is actually in a real genus unless it actually exists. Which is clear from this: the Philosopher (Metaphysics VI at the end), divides being into true being outside the soul, and diminished being that only has being in the soul, and that being he excludes from his consideration. Next, he divides true being outside the soul into the ten categories, and thus every category is true being outside the soul, and nothing is actually in a category unless it actually exists outside the soul.

Maverick's discussion has more in common with the question of individuation, however, over which much ink was also spilled.

[Edit] I am right.  The question of whether it is existence that determines numerical distinction is discussed by Scotus in Question 3 of the third distinction of Book II of his Ordinatio.  The third distinction is all about the problem of numerical individuation.  Angels are immaterial, they have no matter in which their form is embedded.  But angels are numerically distinct, and if so, the distinction cannot be grounded in different material of which they are made, for they aren't made of material at all. In the six questions of this distinction, Scotus considers different answers to the problem, before settling on his own answer: numerical distinction and hence individuation must be grounded in some positive feature, some intrinsic 'thisness' or haecceity (from the Latin haec meaning 'this').  I never got round to working on questions 4-6 because they are so difficult, and not on account of the Latin.  Scotus is one of those writers - Sartre is another - whose prose becomes more obscure and more difficult in proportion to the difficulty of the question.  Why not the other way round?