Olivia Prevost

Whether Mando and Baby Yoda Have the Same Essence?

Olivia Prevost

Objection 1: Baby Yoda and the Mando do not have the same essence because they differ in form and designated matter. According to Thomas Aquinas, the essence of rational yet material beings consists of form and undesignated matter. Baby Yoda’s alien form is of a different kind than the Mando’s human form. Baby Yoda is short with stubby legs and only three fingers, while the Mando is tall and muscular and possesses the average human’s number of fingers. Likewise, Baby Yoda’s green flesh differs materially from the Mando’s human flesh. Because they share neither form nor matter, Baby Yoda and the Mando have different essences.

Objection 2: Moreover, Baby Yoda and the Mando do not have the same essence because they have different powers. Baby Yoda can use the Force to affect the world around him telekinetically, while the Mando cannot. Baby Yoda can also digest a wide variety of things that the Mando would find inedible, like space spiders and frogs as large as Baby Yoda’s head. As St. Thomas writes, “Every substance exists for the sake of its operation. ”1 This can be taken to refer to a substance’s powers. Since the operations of Baby Yoda differ from the operations of the Mando, Baby Yoda and the Mando cannot have the same substance. Essence is the way that the substance exists, so without the same substance, Baby Yoda cannot have the same essence as the Mandalorian.

On the contrary: St. Thomas Aquinas says, “the word essence in the case of complex substances signifies what is composed of matter and form.”2

1 W. Norris Clarke, S.J., Person and Being (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1993), 8. 2 Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings, ed. R. McInerny (London: Penguin Books, 1998), 33.

I answer that: According to Thomas Aquinas, there are three types of rational beings: God, angels, and rational animals. God’s very essence is existence, since he is an absolutely simple substance and receives his existence from nothing else. The essence of spiritual yet created intelligences, the angels, is separate from existence and receives its existence from God. These rational beings do not have matter as part of their form since they do not exist in the material world. Their essence includes only form and existence. The third type of intelligences, human beings, have an essence that includes matter, since their form cannot exist without some kind of matter. As Aquinas writes, the material intellectual substance exists “close to material things that they might be drawn to participate in its existence. ”3

To be a human being is to be embodied, and as such a human being’s form cannot exist without matter. Aquinas calls this matter undesignated matter, that is, matter that does not individuate a particular person but rather is intrinsic to the form: “Non-designated matter is included in the definition of man, for it is not this man and this flesh that are put into the definition of man, but bone and flesh as such, which are the non-designated matter of man. ”4 Thus, Thomas includes undesignated matter and form as the essential aspects of the third type of rational being: the rational animal. Baby Yoda falls into this third category of rational being as a rational animal.

Baby Yoda, while having an alien body, is an intellectual being. This can clearly be seen in the actions of fully developed members of his species, like Grandmaster Yoda. Jedi Grandmaster Yoda can think rationally and communicate. As a young member of Yoda’s alien species, Baby Yoda also possesses these powers of reason. 5 Under his mask, the Mando is a human being, that is, a being with the same powers of reason and communication. Clearly, Baby Yoda is a material being, since he operates within the confines of space and time. Like a human being, Baby Yoda is a rational yet material being.

As a material intellectual substance, Baby Yoda’s essence is like that of a human: it includes both matter and form. The presence of undesignated matter in his form makes him a rational being closer in nature to the Mando than to an immaterial rational being. Both Baby

3 Ibid., 43. 4 Ibid., 34. 5 “Grogu,” Fandom, https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Grogu. 28

Yoda and the Mando are complex substances since they possess both form and matter. Thus, they share the essence of rational animal. However, it is important to note that although Baby Yoda and the Mando have the same essence as rational animals, it does not follow that they have the same nature. Baby Yoda can share an essence with a human being while not sharing in human nature.

In understanding the nature of Baby Yoda’s essence in relation to other rational animals, a distinction must be made between nature and essence. Both human nature and Baby-Yoda-species-nature (for lack of a better name) are subspecies of the genre of rational animal. As Thomas Aquinas writes, “Human nature itself exists in the intellect as abstracted from all individuating characteristics, because it is equally the similitude of all and conducive to the knowledge of each insofar as they are men. ”6 Human nature exists in relation to essence as the abstraction of everything that is common in individual humans. Baby Yoda does not share the qualities necessary to be included in his abstraction. However, he is an individuated member of his own alien species, which is a subspecies of rational animal. Despite having different natures on the level of species, Baby Yoda and the Mando have the same essence insofar as they are rational animals, because they are both intellectual substances with undesignated matter as part of their essence.

Baby Yoda and the Mando have a strong bond in The Mandalorian. The Mando even adopts Baby Yoda into his warrior culture, and they become a family of two. It is possible for Baby Yoda to be a part of the Mando’s family as a foundling, despite Baby Yoda’s alien nature, because Baby Yoda shares in the Mando’s essence as a rational animal. They are both complex substances, having a form that includes undesignated matter. They share a spot in Aquinas’ hierarchy of being as the lowest of intellectual substances, and while their particular form and designated matter differ on the level of species, this difference is not great enough to prevent them from relating to one another as one material intellectual substance to another, that is, through a relationship of mutual love.

Reply to Objection 1: It is wrong to say that the Mando and Baby Yoda have different essences because they have differing form and

6 Aquinas, Selected Writings, 39. VOLUME XV (2022) 29

undesignated matter. Thomas Aquinas had no knowledge of a rational creature like Baby Yoda when he described the three types of rational beings in On Being and Essence. The essential feature of the embodied rational creature is its combination of form and matter. As Aquinas writes, referring to the Commentator, “the nature had by the species of generable things is something in between, that is, composed of matter and form. ”7 Both Baby Yoda and the Mandalorian are composed of matter and form. Thus, they share the same essence as rational yet material beings.

Reply to Objection 2: Even though Baby Yoda has different powers from the Mando, they still share the same essence as rational animals. The powers Baby Yoda possesses, like telekinesis and his remarkable powers of digestion, come from Baby Yoda’s material nature as a member of his alien species, not from a difference in his intellectual substance. Thus, these powers do not indicate a difference in essence on the level of rational being. Furthermore, the Mando and Baby Yoda are different substances by the very fact that they exist as individual entities. However, this does not mean that they have different essences. Thomas Aquinas writes that “substantial form does not have absolute existence in itself apart from the thing that it informs, nor does the matter to which it advenes. ”8 The substance of the Mando and Baby Yoda differ in so far as they are individuated. This does not preclude their having the same essence, since the matter and form which make up the substance can be the same in different substances of the same species, as in human men and women. Baby Yoda and the Mando are different substances with the same essence as rational and material beings.

7 Ibid., 33. 8 Ibid., 47. 30