2.6. The Neoplatonic doctrine of the hypostases attains its decisive devel-
opment in trinitarian theology. Although the term hypostasis had been used by
the Arians to emphasize the difference between the Son and the Father, it pre-
vailed—in a definitive way only from the time of Athanasius—as a way to ex-
press the ontological relation implicit in the doctrine of the Trinity: “one God
in three hypostases” ( heis theos en trisin hypostasesin). In this context, the term hypostasis, up until then often confused with ousia, is clearly distinguished from the latter: the three hypostases or existences refer to one sole substance.
From this moment, the history of the concept of hypostasis is entangled with
that of the burning conflicts in which a terminological divergence was trans-
formed into heresy, a lexical scruple into an anathema. Through an alternating
succession of disputes and councils, secessions and condemnations, the formula
that emerged in the end to designate the Trinity against Arians and Sabellians,
Nestorians and Monophysites is: mia ousia, treis hypostaseis.
The problem was complicated because the Latin West (which had used the
term substantia to translate ousia) preferred to speak of “persons” rather than hypostases—in the decisive formulation of Tertullian: tres personae, una substantia. Thanks also to the patient mediating work of the Chalcedonian fathers, the
contrast between the Latin Church and Greek Church was resolved with the First
Council of Constantinople. The distinction between hypostasis and person was
recognized as purely terminological. “We Greeks,” writes Gregory of Nazianzus,
piously say one ousia in three hypostases, the first word expressing the nature of divinity and the second the triplicity of the individuated properties. The Latins
think the same, but due to the restrictions of their language and the poverty of
their vocabulary, they cannot distinguish the hypostasis from the substance and
hence make use of the term “person.”. . . This slight difference of sound was taken
to indicate a difference of faith . . . they had the same sense, and were in no way
different in doctrine. (Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 21, 35)
א That the trinitarian hypostases must not be understood simply as potentials or
habits in the single divine substance but as hypostatic existences is clearly affirmed by
Gregory of Nyssa. In the trinitarian economy, he writes, what are in question are not
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simply faculties or potentials of God (his word— logos—or his wisdom), but “a potential that has been given hypostatic existence according to the essence” ( kat’ ousianyphestosa dynamis; Gregory of Nyssa, p. 273). The Neoplatonic word is here transferred immediately to the trinitarian hypostases, something of which the Eastern fathers like Cyril were perfectly aware: “When the Platonists acknowledge three principal hypostases and affirm
that the divine substance extends to three hypostases or when at times they use the same
term ‘trinity,’ they are in agreement with the Christian faith and nothing would be amiss
for them if they wanted to apply the term ‘consubstantiality’ to the three hypostases to
conceive the unity of God” (Picavet, p. 45).
2.7. Dörrie has observed that in Athanasius the term hypostasis does not mean
simply “reality” but rather “realization” ( Realisierung): “it expresses an act, not a state” (Dörrie, p. 60). God is one unique being, one sole substantia—in itself
unknowable, like the One of Plotinus—which gives itself reality and existence
in three singularly determinate hypostases, three aspects ( prosopa) or manifesta-
tions (which, as we have seen, will become three “persons” in the Latin West).
In the West, starting with Boethius’s definition, which was to meet with
enormous success, the concept of person was defined as naturae rationalis in-
dividua substantia, “individual subsistence of a rational nature” ( natura, on the other hand, was unamquemque rem informans differentia specifica, “the specific
difference that informs any singular thing whatsoever,” according to Boethius).
In this way, the problem of the trinitarian persons or hypostases was conjoined
with the philosophical problem of individuation, of the way in which the divine
nature as much as the creaturely become an individua substantia, individuate or
“personify.” (The “personal” character of the modern subject, this concept that
has proven so determinative in the ontology of modernity, has its origin in trini-
tarian theology and, by means of the latter, in the doctrine of the hypostasis, and
it has never truly emancipated itself from it.)
In this way, hypostasis—which in Neoplatonism seemed to imply, even if
only apparently, a priority of essence over existence—enters into a slow process
of transformation that in modernity will ultimately lead to a priority of exis-
tence. In the Latin formula tres personae, una substantia, person ( prosopon, mask and at the same time face) entails, as we have seen, that the divine substance
manifests itself, gives itself form and effective reality in an individuated exis-
tence. In the foreground here is the oikonomia, the activity by means of which
the divine nature is revealed in this way to itself and to creatures. That Christian
ontology—and thus modern ontology, which derives from it—is a hypostatic
ontology means that it is eminently effectual or operative: as Dörrie reminds us,
hypostasis means not so much reality as realization.
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While in the Aristotelian apparatus singular existence was the presupposed
given, in hypostatic ontology it is now something that must be achieved or effec-
tuated. In the Isagoge, Porphyry had systematized the Aristotelian doctrine of the categories from the logical point of view in the form of a tree or scale ( klimax)
that descended from the highest genus—substance—through generic and specific
differences down to the individual. It has been suitably observed that, while the
Eastern Fathers entered into the tree from the bottom, that is, by starting from
the concrete existent individual to ascend toward species and genus and finally to
substance, the Latin Fathers entered into the tree from above and then proceeded
per descensum from the general to the individual, from substance to genus to spe-
cies to finally touch upon singular existence. By starting from the universal, they
are for that reason drawn to then seek the formal reason or the principle that is
added to essence to determine its individuation. The suggestion—certainly useful
to understand the two different mental attitudes with regard to the problem of
existence—is inexact to the extent that the relation between essence and existence
(at least in the theological model) entails or should always imply both move-
ments. But what is essential is that ontology now becomes a field of forces held in
tension between essence and existence, in which the two concepts, in themselves
theoretically inseparable, tend nevertheless to pull apart and draw back together
according to a rhythm that corresponds to the growing opacity of their relation.
The problem of individuation—which is the problem of singular existence—is
the place where these tensions reach their greatest point of stretching apart.
2.8. In Augustine’s reflections,
the problem of the relation between essence
and existence appears as the problem of the relation between the Trinity in itself
and the singular divine persons. In book VII of the De Trinitate he thus asks
whether the name God and the attributes like “good,” “wise,” or “omnipotent”
should be referred to the Trinity in itself ( per se ipsam) or rather to each singular divine person ( singula quaeque persona; Augustine 2, VII.1). As has been observed
(Beckmann, p. 200), the true problem here is how it is possible to reconcile the
unity of the essence with the plurality of the three persons. It is in order to re-
spond to this difficulty that Augustine pronounces a thesis that has determined
for centuries the way in which we have thought relation: “Every essence that is
called something by way of relationship is also something besides the relation-
ship” ( Omnis essentia quae relative dicitur est etiam aliquid excepto relativo). To prove this thesis, he has recourse to the example—also decisive for the history of
philosophy—of the relationship between master and slave. If a man is defined
as “master,” this entails that he is in relation with a slave (and vice versa). But
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1157
the essence of this man is not exhausted in any way in his being-master but
presupposes first of all his essence as a man. Only insofar as the master is a man
can he enter into the master/slave relation and be said in a relative mode. As
being- human is the substantial presupposition of being-master, so being-God,
the Trinity in itself—such seems to be the implication—is the essential presup-
position of the singular divine persons.
The analogy is imperfect, however, because the trinity of the persons in-
heres originally in the Christian God and it is therefore not possible, as in the
case of the man with respect to the master, to think a God who was not always
triune. Hence the decisive importance of the formula excepto relativo: it is to
be read according to the logic of the exception that we have defined in Homo
Sacer I ( Agamben 4, pp. 21–22/17–19): the relative is at once included and ex-
cluded in the absolute, in the sense that—according to the etymology of the term
ex-ceptio—it has been “captured outside,” which is to say, included by means of
its exclusion. The relativity and the singularity of the persons have been cap-
tured in the unitary essence-potential of God, in such a way that they are both
excluded and included in it. Hence the disputes, contradictions, and aporias
that have so profoundly marked the history of the Church and that trinitarian
theology has never managed to resolve. In order to achieve this, it would have to
abandon the conceptuality of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic ontology with an eye
toward another ontology.
א In Heidegger the difference between essence and existence, thematized as the
“ontological difference” between Being and beings, becomes the crucial problem of phi-
losophy. The ninth section of Being and Time, to which we owe the characterization of Heidegger’s thought as an “existentialism,” claims: “The essence of Dasein lies in its existence” (Heidegger 1, p. 42/67). Even if Heidegger insistently emphasizes that the concept
of existence that is in question here is not that of traditional ontology, he himself speaks, with regard to Dasein, of a “priority of existence” (ibid., p. 43/68).
In later works, metaphysics is defined by means of the forgetting of the ontological
difference and the priority of beings over Being. In the outline of the history of meta-
physics contained in §259 of the Beiträge zur Philosophie (published in 1989 but composed between 1936 and 1938), metaphysics is defined by means of the priority of beings: it is
“the thinking that thinks Being as the Being of beings, departing from beings and returning back to them” (Heidegger 9, p. 426/336). The final phase of the history of metaphysics is characterized by the retreat from and abandonment by being ( Seinsverlassenheit):
Beings then appear in that way, namely as objects and as things objectively pres-
ent, as if Being were not . . . the abandonment of beings by being means that
Being conceals itself in the manifestness of beings. And Being itself is essentially
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determined as this self-withdrawing concealment. . . . Abandonment by Being:
the fact that being is abandoning beings, is leaving them to themselves, and thus
is allowing them to become objects of machination. (Ibid., pp. 112–115/88–91)
Here Aristotelian ontology is declined toward a hypostatic ontology. Beings, abandoned
by Being, are something like a Neoplatonic or Gnostic hypostasis that, incapable of epis-trophe toward the One that has produced it, now occupies the stage of the world alone.
We owe to Levinas a coherent and explicit development of Heideggerian ontology
in a hypostatic direction. In De l’existance à l’existant, forcing the concept of Dasein, he defines as a hypostasis the passage from the impersonality of the “there is” ( il y a) to the emergence of a simple individual existence, which is not yet a subject or a consciousness
(Levinas 2, p. 75/65).
Here, in a decidedly hypostatic ontology, the connection that unites essence to exis-
tence and Being to beings seems, as in Gnosticism, to break. Heidegger’s thought starting
from the Beiträge zur Philosophie is the attempt—grandiose but certainly unsuccessful—
to reconstruct a possible unity and, at the same time, to think beyond it. But the only
way to resolve the aporias of hypostatic ontology would have been the passage to a modal
ontology. It is an ontology of this type that we will seek to develop in the pages that follow.
3
Toward a Modal Ontology
3.1. Perhaps never as in the correspondence between Leibniz and Des
Bosses did the inadequacy of the Aristotelian apparatus in account-
ing for singularity emerge with such clarity. What is in question in the cor-
respondence is the problem of how one can conceive the unity of composite
substances, in such a way that this or that body does not seem to be only an
aggregate of monads but can be perceived as a substantial unity.
“If a corporeal substance,” writes Leibniz in response to the announcement
of a dissertation De substantia corporea that Des Bosses is about to send him,
“is something real over and above monads, as a line is taken to be something
over and above points, we shall have to say that corporeal substance consists
in a certain union, or rather in a real unifier superadded to monads by God
[ uniente reali a Deo superaddito monadibus].” Leibniz calls this absolute principle ( absolutum aliquid) that confers its “unitive reality” on monads, and without
which bodies would be mere appearances and only the monads would be real, a
“substantial bond” ( vinculum substantiale). “If that substantial bond of monads
were absent, then all bodies with their qualities would be only well-founded
phenomena, like a rainbow or an image in a mirror—in a word, continuous
dreams that agree perfectly with one another” (Leibniz 1, pp. 435–436/225–227;
letter of February 15, 1712).
In the text attached to the letter, Leibniz seeks to specify the nature of the
substantial bond, defining it as a “more perfect relationship” that transforms a
plurality of
simple substances or monads into a new substance:
God not only considers single monads and the modifications of any monad
whatsoever, but he also sees their relations, and the reality of relations and truths
consists in this. Foremost among these relations are duration (or the order of
successive things), situation (or the order of co-existing), and intercourse (or
reciprocal action). . . . But over and above these real relations, a more perfect
relation can be conceived through which a single new substance arises from
many substances. And this will not be a simple result, that is, it will not consist
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in true or real relations alone; but, moreover, it will add some new substantiality,
or substantial bond [ aliquam novam substantialitatem seu vinculum substantiale],
and this will be an effect not only of the divine intellect but also of the divine
will. This addition to monads does not occur in just any way; otherwise any scat-
tered things at all would be united in a new substance, and nothing determinate
would arise in contiguous bodies. But it suffices that it unites those monads that
are under the domination of one monad, that is, that make one organic body or
one machine of nature [ unum corpus organicum seu unam Machinam naturae].
(Ibid., pp. 438–439/233)
3.2. What is in question in the substantial bond is the problem of what allows
one to consider as one sole substance such and such a “natural machine,” this
“horse” or that “dog” (p. 457/269), this or that human body, independently of
the union of the body with the soul. The problem becomes more complicated,
moreover, since the Jesuit theologian Des Bosses is interested above all in un-
derstanding how one can understand the unity of the body of Christ that is in
question in eucharistic transubstantiation ( hoc est corpus meum). The idea of the
natural bond allows Leibniz to propose an elegant solution of the problem.
If what defines the singular existence of the body is the substantial bond, it
will not be necessary for transubstantiation to destroy the monads of the bread
The Omnibus Homo Sacer Page 179
