Being is the actuality of every form or nature; for goodness or humanity are spoken of as actual only because they are spoken of as being. Therefore being must be compared to essence, if the latter is distinct from the former, as act to potency. — St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, I, q. 3, art. 4.

Before I go any farther, I would like to recall what we have learned in the last four posts, and explain some important concepts before we get to the distinction of apprehension and concept. A solid understanding of being will allow one to fully grasp the error of idealism.

First, we have learned the following:

1. Human beings grasp reality as it is. When the senses and the mind work together symbiotically, one correctly apprehends being.

2. Being is the first principle of reality, logic, and the order of understanding. The laws of logic are properties of being.

3. Our senses are the only connection we have to external reality, therefore our senses are the first principle of understanding.

All of the above implies that the evidence of being is lost, erased, or forgotten when philosophers wrongly separate the mind from the body. (We will get to how this develops from Descartes and various idealists, later.) One does not perceive reality by the mind alone or by the senses alone, but both working together. In the human person, form and matter can not be separated.

Definitions are always important. When I write about philosophical idealism this is what I mean:

In metaphysics, idealism is the theory that all reality consists of mind and its ideas. Idealism denies the material primacy of reality. Thus, idealism is also suspicious of knowledge built exclusively on the observation of matter. There are various kinds of idealists (which, again, we will get to later). However, most idealists fall into two schools – subjective and objective idealism. Subjective idealists such as George Berkeley (1685 – 1753) hold that ideas alone exist (although he used the term ‘idea’ in novel ways) and since all ideas only exist in the mind, all reality is mind dependent. Objective idealists such as Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) do not deny the existence of reality, but hold that one can not know it. All idealists hold that the mind is ultimate in determining reality and are suspicious of the notion that reality (being) is the determinant of order in the world.

Because being is the touchstone of all reality, I define being as the following:

The term ‘being’ most simply refers to the fact that something exists. It can be further analyzed into abstract being (e.g., ideas, mathematical entities, etc. that exist mentally, this is sometimes called subjective existence) and concrete being (e.g., people and things that can be experienced with the senses, sometimes called real existence). Aristotle taught that the study of being as being is the primary concern for the metaphysician. In the realist tradition, the fact of being and theories about it are two distinctly separate ontological and epistemological questions.

Although we will probably not get into the grammar of being for a while, I think this quote from St. Thomas is helpful as we review where we have been (I hope it will provide a little more understanding to the previous posts). That which is in act participates in being. “Being” is taken from the verb ‘to be.’ In the grammatical expression of being, realists understand it to be both a participle and verb. Aquinas explains how being is a verb:

The verb is consignifies composition, because it does not signify this principally but secondarily. Is signifies primarily that which the intellect apprehends as being absolutely actual, for in the absolute sense is means to be in act, and thus its mode of signification is that of a verb. But, since the actuality which is principally signifies is universally the actuality of every form, whether substantial or accidental, when we wish to signify that any form or any act whatever actually exists in a subject, we express that fact by this verb is. (St. Thomas, Commentary on Aristotle’s “On Interpretation,” Book I, lect. 5, end).

Keep these ideas in mind as we discover how apprehension and concept work in the intellect. My hope here is to clarify concepts as they develop and to provide further explication.