Being, Metaphysics

Classical Metaphysics and Hegelian Idealism: Prefatory Remarks

by Dave Seng

Being is the sphere or subject-matter of knowledge, and knowledge is to know the nature of Being.

—Plato, The Republic

I will soon post a short series on the metaphysical idealism of Georg Hegel. What follows is a prolegomena which seeks to lay the foundation of what will come and provide some helpful interpretation of the concepts discussed. I am critical of idealism—the notion that the mind determines reality or that all reality is ultimately reducible to mind. Dr. Mortimer Adler once called idealism “the greatest of all modern philosophical mistakes.”1 So we will begin this introduction by discussing the concepts of “idea” and “reality” in order to see why idealism is such a significant error, and more specifically for this series, Hegelian idealism. Finally, we will discover that reality is not monistic (reducible to only one thing) but pluralistic due to the three modes of existence (real being, mental being, and intentional being). Monistic Hegelian idealism is an over simplification of reality.

To begin, we will start with Being or reality. In philosophy, the term ‘being’ most simply refers to the fact that something exists. It can be further analyzed into abstract being (such as ideas, mathematical entities, fictional characters, etc. that exist mentally) and concrete being (people, furniture, and things that can be experienced with the senses). 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 (because one’s epistemological theories about reality might turn out to be wrong). Being, therefore, is another term for reality or that which is or exists in some way.2 Philosopher John Macquarrie provides this helpful etymology,

“To ‘exist’ or ‘ex-sist’ (Latin: ex-sistere) meant originally to ‘stand out’ or ‘emerge’. Thus the verb probably had a more active feel about it than it does now. To exist was to emerge or stand out from the background as something really there. Putting it more philosophically, to exist is to stand out from nothing”. 3

To exist, or to stand out from nothing applies to individual things and the universe as whole. It is important to keep in mind, however, that Being is not the study of one thing among the already existing things which exist; it is the study of why and how the universe is the way it is and explores the fundamental principles of its existence. When looking at the universe as whole, Being is not a genus. This will be helpful when it comes to understanding Hegel’s metaphysical understanding of the world. For Hegel, the fundamental principle of the universe is what he calls “world-spirit” or mind.

The series will explore the three modes of being—real being, mental being, and intentional being. These modes of being help us to understand that ideas are always about something. Ideas themselves do not create reality or have productive power. Aristotle is a helpful guide here. In his Metaphysics, he states, “It is not because we think truly that you are pale, that you are pale, but because you are pale we who say this have the truth.”4 Aristotle is saying three important things. First, the being of the mind is different from being in complete reality.5 Second, just because we ‘think’ something is the case, does not make it so. Mental being, although real being (because the individual mind exists in reality), is not the same thing as external or actual real being (complete reality in Aristotelian terms). Third, there is a primacy in Aristotelian metaphysics of that which is in ‘act’ or physical existence. There is a primacy to external reality in classical metaphysics. The reason for this emphasis is that it is impossible to deny that being is. Mental being is different in kind, from physical reality. As we will see, intentional being, demonstrates that ideas are always of something else, and are grounded in both external reality and mental being.

What will be developed in future posts are what classical philosophers call the three modes of being—real being, mental being and intentional being. Real being, is physical reality—that which exists apart from the mind and independent of it. Real being exists exist whether or not the mind perceives it and is completely independent of the mind. Mental being includes subjective and objective acts of the mind. Mental being includes the subjective feelings that would not exist apart from the individual and the objective acts of memory and fictional characters. Antigone is a mental character but objective, a real character of literary fiction. The same is true regarding historical figures. Joseph Stalin once lived in reality but now is an objective figure of memory and history. Not all mental being is strictly subjective. Intentional being can only exist when there are two or more minds that can communicate about an object. The object could be an act of the mind or something in physical reality. In a sense, intentional being, is a via media, or middle way, between real being and mental being. Intentional being points to the ability of the individual mind to be “about,” bent towards, stretched out to, or focused on something. It is an act of cognition and includes the immaterial or universal nature of being because the mind is immaterial. The mind itself understands through a mode of immaterial existence. Through perception, the intellect receives the universal or essence of the object. This is possible, because the human mind can make abstractions about physical reality. What must be remembered, however, is that intentional being completely relies on both real and mental being. As we will see, all of this is collapsed in Hegelian idealism. To be an idealist one must deny real being.

Intentional being points us to at least two important concepts. The first is classical realism and how universals are to be understood and, secondly, that ideas are always of something (the primacy of real being). Daniel Sullivan provides a very helpful understanding of classical or moderate realism:

The view of philosophers in the tradition of Aristotle and St. Thomas is that what is known exists as universal in the intellect, but as individual outside the mind. This position is called Moderate Realism. It is called realism because the universals really do exist in the intellect; moderate, because their existence stops there. Since the form universalized in the intellect is identical with the form individuated in the thing, we can say, following the traditional formula, that our ideas are universal in the intellect only, but have a foundation in things. Implied in this view of the nature of the idea is the spirituality of the intellect (otherwise the universal could not exist there) and the matter and form composition of all corporeal substances, including man.6

When it comes to understand Hegel, is important to realize that he was correct about the immateriality of the mind. What Hegel failed to understand is that Being is composed of both the material and immaterial. Mathematicians know that this is intuitively correct. Even Max Planck, the father of quantum physics, understood this, “As there is a material object behind every sensation, so there is a metaphysical reality behind everything that human experience shows to be real.”7 Part of real being is that it demonstrates mathematical and immaterial qualities. But Hegel mistakenly makes all reality part of an immaterial world-spirit. In this sense, Hegelian idealism (and idealism in general) is Gnostic—the theological error which denies or denigrates the existence of real being.

The second point, that ideas refer to something else is best illustrated by Dr. Mortimer Adler:

In view of the fact that ideas are natural signs which signify, refer to, or intend objects as their natural referents or significates, it would seem appropriate to speak of the mode of existence possed by objects as intentional existence… ideas are intentions of the mind. Their intentionality consists in their having significates or objects. Objects, as intended or signified, have intententional existence.8

In other words, ideas are the signs which signify reality. They are descriptive of the world around us, but not the world itself. Before Kant and Hegel, no philosopher in the Western intellectual tradition confused or conflated the concept of idea with reality.

After Aristotle, Augustine was among the first to point to intentional existence and the ability of the human mind to discern it. Regarding immaterial principles of reality such as mathematics and the laws of logic (noncontradiction, identity, excluded middle), Augustine explains, “I have heard the sounds of the words by which their meaning is expressed when they are discussed, but the words are one thing and the principles another. The words may sometimes be spoken in Latin and at other times in Greek, but the principles are neither Greek nor Latin.”9 Intentional being is possible because the mind can hold the principle as an object of thought and discuss it regardless of the language used. The idea points to the thing signified (object of mental being or object of real being). Intentional being is not the thought itself. Augustine further explicates this idea in his book On Christian Doctrine. The mind holds a middle way between the immaterial (the mind, mathematics, logic, moral truths, aesthetics, questions of value and meaning, etc.) and the empirical material worlds. Human existence lives between these two worlds. Regarding the mind, Augustine reminds us, “… it holds a middle place between the unchangeable truth above it and the changeable things beneath it…”10 In classical terms, the mind holds a middle place between real being and mental being. Intentional being brings these worlds together and helps us to make sense out of reality.

The next few posts will explore the nature of being, reality and idea as they are to be correctly understood. We’ll discover why Hegelian idealism is not a helpful view of reality. Why should we put this emphasis on reality and defend the classical view of moderate realism? The reason is that we want to be rightly and correctly related to reality as it actually is. When one is correctly aligned with reality, intellectual integrity and wholeness is brought about. An integrated philosophical perspective will help us to understand and live in reality as it is.

Works Cited

Adler, Mortimer. Adler’s Philosophical Dictionary: 125 Key Terms for the Philosopher’s Lexicon. New York, NY: Scribner, 1995.

———. The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical, Moral, Objective, Categorical. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993.

Aristotle. Metaphysics. Vol. 7. Great Books of The Western World. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1996.

Augustine. On Christian Doctrine. Vol. 16. Great Books of The Western World. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., n.d.

———. The Confessions. Vol. 16. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1993.

Macquarrie, John. Existentialism: An Introduction, Guide, and Assessment. New York: Penguin Books, 1973.

Planck, Max. Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers. Translated by Frank Gaynor. Vol. 56. Great Books of The Western World. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1993.

Sullivan, Daniel. An Introduction to Philosophy: Perennial Principles of the Classical Realist Tradition. Charlotte, North Carolina: TAN Books, 2009.

1Mortimer Adler, Adler’s Philosophical Dictionary: 125 Key Terms for the Philosopher’s Lexicon (New York, NY: Scribner, 1995).

2As we will discover, things can be said to exist in different ways, depending on their mode of being.

3John Macquarrie, Existentialism: An Introduction, Guide, and Assessment (New York: Penguin Books, 1973)., 62.

4Aristotle, Metaphysics, vol. 7, Great Books of The Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1996), 577.

5In book IX, chapter 3 of his Metaphysics, Aristotle connects ‘act’ with ‘complete reality’.

6Daniel Sullivan, An Introduction to Philosophy: Perennial Principles of the Classical Realist Tradition (Charlotte, North Carolina: TAN Books, 2009), 72.

7Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, trans. Frank Gaynor, vol. 56, Great Books of The Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1993), 97.

8Mortimer Adler, The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical, Moral, Objective, Categorical (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993), 113.

9Augustine, The Confessions, vol. 16, Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1996), 95.

10Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, vol. 16, Great Books of The Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1996), 736.

Being, Metaphysics, Philosophical Theology

A Personal Reflection on Metaphysical Realism

by Dave Seng

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

– T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

On a personal note, I have to say that epistemology was the single area of study that made me want to completely walk away from the field as an undergraduate philosophy student. I began to think that all philosophy was an attempt to explain how one knows what they know in a purely cognitive or psychological manner. When one starts with a theory of reality, and not reality itself, it is very easy to become internally circular in one’s thinking. One never gets to external objective reality. Without ever examining the nature or being of reality as it is in act, all one is left with is a subjective and somewhat skeptical view of the world. Metaphysics—the study of ultimate reality—becomes an impossibility. One never gets out of Plato’s cave.

I came to understand, however, how such circular thinking is possible and why epistemology seems to be the central focus for much of modern philosophy. There are many reasons why modern philosophy begins with theorizing about reality rather than accepting reality as it is, but I think I can briefly point to the influence of Rene Descartes, Idealism, and twentieth-century Existentialism.

Ever since Descartes, philosophy and the development of intellectual thought in the West has emphasized the primacy of the thinking individual apart from the world or concrete reality. External reality, of course, can be doubted or considered uncertain. For Descartes, the only certain thing that can be known is the fact that one is thinking. This is the famous doctrine of his “cogito,” I think therefore I am.” Modern philosophy, beginning with Descartes, finds its point of departure, not in the fact of being (reality)—as Aristotle did—but with doubt and skepticism. The movement of the mind, for Descartes, was to go from the autonomous thinking individual and one’s ideas to the real and external world. Of course, this makes epistemology, one’s theory of reality, the starting point of philosophy—not reality itself. Rather than making being the concrete touchstone of reality, Descartes places the independent thinking individual as the center point of existence. Descartes’ emphasis of doubt, uncertainty, and the autonomous thinking individual eventually gave birth to the “hermeneutics of suspicion” so popular among critical theorists today.

Of course, Descartes was not alone in this error. Plato and Plotinus laid the groundwork for the rationalism of Descartes, and later Spinoza. Such disembodied rationalism made the Idealism of Berkeley, Kant, and Hegel possible1. No wonder we now live in an age where the human spirit creates reality, no matter how chaotic, disordered, or disengaged from concrete being one’s conception of it might be.

Post World War Two Existentialism did not help things either. Just one example, among many, can be found in the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre, who never recovered from his inherent Cartesianism, had a powerful impact on Western philosophy, and laid the groundwork for much of postmodernism. Sartre’s famous line, “existence precedes essence” was meant to overturn classical Western thought. It nearly succeeded. In his understanding, the goal of philosophy is to reject abstraction in all its forms and focus on the freedom, autonomy, and self-determination of the individual, liberated from all universal or external values. The existentialism of Sartre is certain in its conviction that the human being is absolutely free to create his own values and embraces a firm denial that values or ethical absolutes are to be imposed externally or from outside the existing human individual. The will is all-determining and defining in Sartrean Existentialism. When it comes to human moral behavior we are left with a hardened societal clash of wills2.

Of course, it is true that existence and essence are different things3, the existentialist error, however, completely separates them. When it comes to the human person, the essence, or rational soul, is completely bound to the existence of the individual. In Christian Aristotelian terms, everything in the natural world is bound together by form and matter. Among contingent things, there is no form without matter and no matter without form. This is true for human existence as well. A body without essence or soul is just a body, not a person. To exist means to be in act through the composition of form and essence. From this perspective, Sartre completely misses the point of human existence and what it means to be human.

At some point, I will write about the philosophy of the person and how to genuinely preserve the significance of the individual in today’s cultural climate. For now, what keeps me sane, is the re-discovery of classical metaphysics, the inquiry and study of being as being, the acceptance of being as a gift that is complete in its “giveness.” Being itself is what keeps one grounded because it can not be denied. It is the first point of contact anyone has and is of special interest to the metaphysician. Being is prior to philosophical reflection. St. Thomas Aquinas puts it this way:

Now the first thing conceived by the intellect is being, because everything is knowable only in so far as it is in act as it says in [Aristotle’s] Metaphysics. Hence, being is the proper object of the intellect, and is that which is primarily intelligible, as sound is that which is primarily audible. (1, q. 5, art., 2)

Being grounds the individual because it the first thing one experiences in reality. Being is the giveness of order. One should walk away from circular philosophies that start with a predetermined theory of reality. But one should never reject the fullness and significance of being. I came to understand what T.S. Eliot was trying to explain in Little Gidding—actually, what he was emphasizing in all of his Four Quartets—that reality is the determinate of order. All reality has an order to it. Including the order of knowing, or how we understand the world around us. When the order of metaphysical reality is properly understood, we come back to the extra-mental order of place and time and receive it with renewed meaning, purpose, and significance.

Works Cited

Aquinas, Thomas. The Summa Theologica Volume 1. The Great Books of the Western World, edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Vol. 17, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1996.

Notes

1Prior to Berkeley, Kant, and Hegel, no philosopher was an Idealist, meaning no philosopher believed that the mind was ultimate in determining reality.

2Sartre would most likely disagree with this sentence. He would suggest that most people would work together for the common good, though, ironically, without a shared objective standard of good. Interestingly, he admits to the clash of wills in his essay entitled The Humanism of Existentialism.

3To learn more about this, read St. Thomas Aquinas’ wonderful text, “On Being and Essence.”

Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophy

On Metaphysical Realism, Where We Have Been, Where we Are Going

by Dave Seng

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.

Epistemology, Great Books, Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophy

On the Intellect, Induction, and Abstraction

by Dave Seng

It was a good idea to call the soul ‘the place of forms’, though (1) this description holds only of the intellective soul, and (2) even this is the forms only potentially, not actually. – Aristotle

[Note: In my previous posts, I spoke about Aristotelians and Thomists as being innatist in their epistemology. I should have been more clear about this terminology because realists are not innatists in the Platonic sense. Human beings are not cognitively pre-loaded with the Platonic forms. Aristotelians are innatist in a very strict sense. What is innate, according to classical realists, is the capacity or potential to receive the form, universal, or essence of the sense object as it is in act. (See, for example, the last chapter of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics for further explication.) I will try to develop this theme as we move along.]

In our most recent posts on Berkeleyan idealism, we learned that the mind is structured to receive and apprehend reality as it is. In other words, being is the touchstone of all reality. Being is, and can not be denied (it can not be otherwise because it would be non-being or nothing). We also learned that the intellectual faculty of judgment has both metaphysical (ontological) and epistemic or psychological aspects. When the mind is working correctly, one knows reality. Concrete reality is the proper starting point for metaphysics, not one’s theory about it (one’s theory of reality could be wrong, which is why, again, being is the touchstone of reality). In this post, I will try to explicate the basics of how the intellect works at the foundational level—at the reception of being—what Aristotelian philosophers call the intellect. This will lay the groundwork for why metaphysical realists claim that one can know reality as it is and provides further insight into the distinction between apprehension and concept—the central confusion and philosophical error among idealists, although I will develop that in upcoming posts. For now, it is important to understand how the intellect itself works.

First, what is the intellect? The word comes from the Latin terms, intus, and legere—to read within. The intellect is the cognitive capacity that humans have to think rationally, carefully, and logically about the perennial questions of existence as they find it. It is the intellect and the ability to reason which separates humans from animals. Although humans are animals, they are not simply or just animals. It should be obvious that humans have different cognitive abilities than that of animals. In addition to sense knowing, which all animals have, humans have the ability to reflect on and arrive at deeper understandings of their sense knowledge. As noted in previous posts, to sense something and to understand something is not the same thing. I can hear a foreign language but not understand it. My cat can see the same image of a sign on its retina as I do, but have no understanding of what it means, while I can easily grasp its message. Just as humans are different in kind from animals, there must be some faculty in the human mind that is different in kind from simple sense perception. This faculty is called the intellect or what philosophers in the Aristotelian and Thomist traditions call the agent intellect.

The agent intellect is a special faculty of the mind and has two important functions. First, the intellect is in potency to knowledge—it does not know to start with (it requires the act of existence to motivate it because it depends on being, as act is prior to potency). Second, as immaterial, the intellect receives the essence, universal, or form of the external object through sense perception. Aquinas reminds us, “Now it is natural to man to attain to intellectual truths through sensible things, because all our knowledge originates from sense.”1 The senses are the only connection one has to reality. Even so, what comes into the intellect has an immaterial rather than material mode of existence. The tree I am looking at through the window does not exist as a physical tree in my mind. The intellect grasps the form or essence of the sense object. This is because there is an immaterial aspect to all reality. To account for this essential reception, however, there must be a prior ability, capacity, or function in the intellect which apprehends the form of the material object. The same form of the material object exists in the intellect that exists in reality, only the mode of existence is different. This second function of the intellect is an immaterial apprehension of the material form or essence. This is what Aristotle calls the agent intellect and the reason why he calls the intellect, or soul, “the place of the forms.”2 The agent intellect apprehends the essence of the thing perceived. The nature of the agent intellect is to receive the object of sense perception3.

A question remains, however. How do the forms or universals get into the intellect?

The intellect is in potency to knowledge and has a capacity to receive the essence of an external object. Now, it is important to understand how the form or essence of a thing is delivered to the intellect. Briefly, this is accomplished by induction and abstraction. Induction, or inductive reasoning, is the logical process of thinking in which the conclusion follows from experience, examination of particulars, and arriving at generalized or universal principles—for Aristotelians, the foundation of all subsequent reasoning. Aristotle held that wider and wider generalization is derived from repeated empirical experiences of particular things until the essence or universal concept is established in the intellect. Philosopher Ed Miller puts Aristotelian inductive reasoning it this way:

From the experience of the particular man Callias, the man Socrates, the man James, the man Tad, the man Bill … the intellect derives the general or universal idea of man, that is man as such. From the experience of the particular dog Fido, the dog Lassie, the dog Rover, the dog Flip … the intellect derives the universal idea dog. And the universal ideas—man, dog, and innumerable other concepts derived from experience in the same manner—become the tools and building blocks of all reasoning. They then make it possible to say and know, “Socrates is a man,” “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” etc.4

Aristotle compares the formation of the universal in the intellect to the formation of soldiers making a stand against a wartime enemy:

We conclude that these states of knowledge are neither innate in a determinate form, nor developed from other higher states of knowledge, but from sense-perception. It is like a rout in battle stopped by first one man making a stand and then another, until the original formation has been restored. The soul is so constituted as to be capable of this process. . . . When one of a number of logically indiscriminable particulars has made a stand, the earliest universal is present in the soul: for though the act of sense-perception is of the particular, its content is universal—is man, for example, not the man Callias. A fresh stand is made among these rudimentary universals, and the process does not cease until the indivisible concepts, the true universals, are established: e.g. such and such a species of animals is a step towards the genus animal, which by the process is a step towards a further generalization. Thus it is clear that we must get to know the primary premisses by induction; for the method by which even sense-perception implants the universal is inductive.5

In fact, Aristotle believes induction to be the basis of all other knowledge:

From experience again—i.e. from the universal now stabilized in the soul, the one beside the many which is a single identity within them all—originate the skill of the craftsman and the knowledge of the man of science, skill in the sphere of coming to be and science in sphere of being.6

Metaphysics, the study of being as being, is the science in the sphere of being. In other words, metaphysics is a kind of science in the Aristotelian and Thomist tradition. Being is at the center of whatever is thought or done. One can not change the oil in his truck or complete a math equation without referencing being. Being, however, is the first act of knowing. The intellect can only understand the universal or essence of any external object through induction.

Aristotle’s notion of induction is very similar to the concept of abstraction put forward by St. Thomas. Aquinas focuses on the idea that the mind can remove, withdraw, or pull out the concept of redness from viewing various red objects. One understands the concept of justice by examining just actions. Abstraction is a general idea, universal, or essence that the intellect removes from the multiple expressions of the same form found in the particular instances of it (the essential nature of the particular whether it be dog, cat, chair, human, or concepts such as the good, true, beautiful etc.).

St. Thomas helps us understand how the intellect moves from the particular to the universal (here “intelligible species” means essence. “Phantasms” are the mental images of things):

Our intellect cannot know the singular in material things directly and primarily. The reason of this is that the principle of singularity in material things is individual matter, while our intellect … understands by abstracting the intelligible species from such matter. Now what is abstracted from individual matter is the universal. Hence our intellect knows directly the universal only. But indirectly and as it were by a kind of turning back (reflectio), it can know the singular, because … even after abstracting the intelligible species, the intellect, in order to understand actually, needs to turn to the phantasms in which it understands the species. … Therefore it understands the universal directly through the intelligible species, and indirectly the singulars represented by the phantasms. And thus it forms the proposition, “Socrates is a man.”

Classical realists, then, begin with being—the concrete particular things encountered in the sensible external world. Being is more than physical reality but never less than it. With the universal firmly in place in the intellect one is enabled to return and know reality through reflection and judgment. One can genuinely think about reality, know it, and express it, “Socrates is a human being.”

For Further Reading:

Holloway, M., “Abstraction from Matter in Human Cognition”, The Modern Schoolman, Vol. XXIII (1946), pp. 120 – 130.

For a more general introduction to Thomist epistemology see:

Wilhelmsen, Fredrick. Man’s Knowledge of Reality: An Introduction to Thomistic Epistemology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1956.

I wrote about the Aristotelian distinctions of act and potency here.

Works Cited

Aquinas, Thomas. The Summa Theologica Volume 1. The Great Books of the Western World, edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Vol. 17, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1996.

Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle Volume 1. The Great Books of the Western World, edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Vol. 7, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1996.

Miller, Ed. Questions that Matter: An Invitation to Philosophy. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996.

Footnotes

1Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Trans. by Father Laurence Shapcote of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1996) 1a, q.1, art. 9.

2Aristotle, On the Soul (De Anima), Trans. by J. A. Smith (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1996) 661.

3 While we are distinguishing the important faculties of the intellect, it is also very important to be aware that the whole person is involved in knowing. This requires a bit of development and goes beyond the scope of this post but I plan on explicating this notion in time. For now, it is important to understand that for those in the Aristotelian and Thomist tradition, the entire person is involved in apprehending reality. This is because form and body (matter and form) are united and should never be separated. Not only does the individual know and understand things through deduction and induction, humans also know through connatural knowledge—the lived and embodied contact one has with others and reality itself. This involves knowing through empathy, lived human experience, intuition, and the contact of the intellect with the truth of reality itself by other holistic ways of knowing such as imaginative literature, the arts, and history. Embodied knowledge means knowledge through the whole person and by way of all the arts and sciences. The Platonic tradition sees form and matter as separate which, if unchecked, leads to idealism. Idealism is the result of disembodied knowledge, a disembodied epistemology. Platonist metaphysics rests on the separation of form from matter and provides the foundation for the error of idealism.

4Ed Miller, Questions That Matter: An Invitation to Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996) 235.

5Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (Analytica posteriora), Trans. by G.R.G Mure (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1996) 136.

6Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 136.