  One consequence of Dietrich’s metaphysics of quiddity is that God and what the medievals call the “intelligences” do not have quiddities since they are simple beings. Aquinas on the other hand insisted that for God essentia, esse and quiditas are identical while for all creatures the esse is other than the quiddity or the essence. Indeed, this is how Aquinas distinguishes a creature from the creator. The essence of the creator alone is the same as his act of existing. But, besides the arguments Dietrich has raised against Thomas concerning the lack of such identity in creatures Dietrich finds that Aquinas’ system fails to properly account for intelligences because as simple beings there is nothing that distinguishes their essence from their act of existing—nothing except their being creatures. But to introduce creaturehood as the distinguishing feature is to render useless the importance of defining creatures in terms of the lack of identity of their essence and their act of existing. This is not a problem for Dietrich. For him some creatures are composite, some not, but in both simple and composite beings esse is the same as essentia. What remains problematic is the distinction of simple and composite creatures in terms of quiddity. To solve this problem Dietrich turns to the traditional Christian Neoplatonic notion of the hierarchy of being.