Citation Information for “Thomas Aquinas,
‘Argument from Necessity’”
Philosophy of Religion
February 10 2026 19:47 EST
Gallery of the Rotunda,
Library of Congress,
LC-D4-13499
Citation Information for “Thomas Aquinas,
‘The Argument from Necessity’”
This page is not intended to be original or authoritative. The page is a summary of some main points and associated notes on the topic. Undoubtedly, there are scholarly and authoritative sources, both primary and secondary which ought be cited rather than these notes.
However if you find the page of use, your citation should meet the style requirements of the publication for which you are submitting your paper. In general, the current page may be cited in this manner:
Archie, Lee C, "Thomas Aquinas,‘The Argument from Necessity,’" Philosophy of Religion (June 26, 2006) URL=<http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/necessity.shtml>.
“Aquinas believes that a being which exists-of-necessity
cannot be a material individual; cannot have any intrinsic accidental
properties; cannot, therefore, change in any way; and cannot be
an individual of any given species or genus. Hence, an absolutely
necessary being does not have a nature in any straightforward
sense at all. In short, a being which exists-of-necessity cannot be
something whose existence actualises a real potentiality, and each
of the features in this list entails the possession of such a
potentiality.”
Gerald J. Hughes, The Nature of God
(London: Taylor & Francis, 1995), 45.
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