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.

Great Books, Intellectual History, Natural Theology

Spinoza’s Philosophical Method and Augustine’s Natural Theology: Part Two

by Dave Seng

Part one can be found here.

The presuppositional method of Spinoza’s philosophy is an important part of the structure of his metaphysical system and generally follows Descartes’s reasoning. Spinoza does not argue for the existence of God discursively, deductively, or dialectically in the way Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, or Aquinas frames a cosmological argument, reasoning from an effect (the universe) to a cause (God).1 Spinoza believes that God necessarily exists because the notion of perfection proves that he exists. Spinoza puts it this way,

Perfection consequently does not prevent the existence of a thing, but establishes it; imperfection, on the other hand, prevents existence, and so of no existence can we be more sure than the existence of the Being absolutely infinite or perfect, that is to say God. For since His essence shuts out all imperfection and involves absolute perfection, for this very reason all cause of doubt concerning His existence is taken away, and the highest certainty concerning it is given,—a truth which I trust will be evident to any one who bestows only moderate attention. (593)

Spinoza reasons that both perfection and existence are properties of being and since God is the Perfect Being, God’s existence follows because existence is a necessary part of being. For Spinoza, God is the Perfect Being and substance of the universe. In fact, Spinoza thinks that those who reason from the natural order (what is) to the conclusion of God, “have not observed the proper order of philosophic study” (610). He explains,

For although the divine nature ought to be studied first, because it is first in order of knowledge and in the order of things, they think it last; while, on the other hand, those things which are called objects of the senses are believed to stand before everything else. Hence it has come to pass that there was nothing of which men thought less than the divine nature while they afterwards applied themselves to think about God, there was nothing of which they could think less than those prior fictions upon which they had built their knowledge of natural things, for these could in no way help to the knowledge of the divine nature. (611)

As a rationalist, Spinoza believes it is wrong to start with the “objects of the senses” because he thinks all knowledge comes by reason alone. After all, as Descartes famously insists, the senses can be wrong. Natural things, according to Spinoza do not provide knowledge of the divine. Arguments from natural reasoning, are based upon “fictions.” Instead, Spinoza thinks it is best to start with the existence of God, assumed or presupposed, and rationally describe the divine nature from there. “The divine nature ought to be studied first” according to Spinoza and he reasons that any natural argument from existence to an eternal and necessary Being is philosophically backwards. He thinks natural theology makes God an afterthought. In addition, Spinoza believes that God must be presupposed, or assumed, when it comes to the existence of the natural order, “Every one must admit that without God nothing can be nor be conceived; for every one admits that God is the sole cause both of the essence and of the existence of all things” (610). In other words, according to Spinoza, when considering the question of whether or not God exists, it must be assumed there is a God because “nothing can be nor be conceived” without God. A genuine inquiry into the existence or non-existence of God is not a viable option for Spinoza because God must be assumed and all reasoning must start from there. Spinoza repeats this assertion on page 611 of his Ethics, “individual things cannot be nor be conceived without God.” One reason why Spinoza takes this position is that he believes that all things and people are really a part of God. If all things are a part of God, it is unreasonable to discount the existence of God.

Spinoza, goes further than Descartes, however, and equates God with the universe which is pantheism. This is an important difference between Descartes and Spinoza. Like Descartes, Spinoza is a rationalist in his epistemology, unlike Descartes, Spinoza, is a pantheist in his theological perspective. Pantheism is the philosophical and theological position that equates God with the universe. With pantheism, the universe and God are one entity. In other words, the natural world and God are the same thing. According to Spinoza, “whatever is, is in God” (594) and “…in nature … only one substance exists, namely God” (600). Spinoza further claims that, “Hence it follows with the greatest clearness, firstly that God is one, that is to say … in nature there is but one substance, and it is absolutely infinite” (594). Finally, Spinoza concludes “All things which are, are in God and must be conceived through Him.” (597). Spinoza thinks that God is in all and all is in God. Spinoza’s metaphysical commitments ultimately lead him to conclude that all reality can be reduced to one thing, natural substance, which is God. The individual, particular things of this world are simply modes or attributes of the universal substance of God.

Spinoza, assumes or presupposes the nature of God’s existence because he is a rationalist, meaning that he believes all philosophic knowledge can be acquired through reason alone, apart from sense experience, or any appeal to external reality. God must exist because God is the perfect Being. God is in all and all are in Him. Spinoza’s rationalism also leads him to conclude that there can only be one substance in the universe and that substance is God. Further, Spinoza thinks that God, or the universe, created itself. He believes that the universe is the cause of itself (590). One of his earliest axioms in the Ethics is “that which cannot be conceived through another must be conceived through itself” (589). Later, he concludes, “for the thing whose nature (considered, that is to say, in itself) involves existence, is the the cause of itself and exists from the necessity of its own nature alone” (emphasis added, 599). For Spinoza, the reason why the universe exists is because the universe, which is God, made itself. Spinoza’s philosophical method for arguing to the existence of God is very different from Augustine’s.

Next time, we will examine how Augustine’s natural theology is different from Spinoza’s and why self-creation is a logical contradiction.

1Plato argued for a Demiurge or God-like artisan of the universe based on the reality of Being. Aristotle argued for a “Prime Mover” reasoning that an actual uncreated being is necessary to actualize the potency of the universe. Augustine and Aquinas also argued from the reality of Being to the creator Christian God. All thinkers agree that non-being cannot create being.

Works Cited

Spinoza. Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 28. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Classical Apologetics, Intellectual History, Natural Theology, Philosophical Theology

Spinoza’s Philosophical Method and Augustine’s Natural Theology: Part One

by Dave Seng

[Note some of this is a further development of the post about Descartes’ rational presuppositionalism. You can find that post here. This series will move on to explore a similar version of presuppositionalism as it is found in the theoretical thought of Baruch Spinoza.]

One of the human race’s great metaphysical questions is whether or not God exists. This question divides many authors in the Western intellectual tradition. Some think that God does not exist. Nietzsche, Hobbes, and Hume, for example, fall into this category, while others such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, and Spinoza think that a god or the Christian God does exist. Among those who believe that God exists, there is a division between them about how to correctly reason or argue for the existence of God. On one side, Descartes and Spinoza think that God should rationally be assumed or presupposed in any argument for God’s existence. Others, such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas think that arguing from the nature of existence, or being itself, is the best way to make a case for God’s existence. The difference between these two groups is one of methodology. Descartes’s and Spinoza’s position can be called rational presuppositionalism, while thinkers such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas hold the position known as natural theology (or natural philosophical theology). The next couple of posts will critically explore the philosophical differences between the approach of Descartes and Spinoza (rational presuppositionalism) and the natural theology of Augustine and Aquinas.

The concept of natural theology will be developed further in the upcoming posts. However, in brief, natural theology is a philosophical and theological way of reasoning to the existence of God which starts with the reality of being and becoming, or the fact of reality as it is, and uses the natural laws of logic, which are properties of being, including the principle of causality to conclude that God exists necessarily, eternally, and transcendently. Both Augustine and Aquinas utilize this general form of natural theology. Presuppositional rationalism, on the other hand, is the position that God’s existence must be presupposed and reasons from that point. With presuppositional rationalism—primarily in regards to Descartes’s and Spinoza’s position—God is presupposed because God is conceived as a “Perfect Being” and existence necessarily applies to a Perfect Being. It is also a form of rationalism because it holds that all genuine knowledge comes from rational thought apart from sense experience, or any appeal to concrete reality or Being. In this context, Spinoza puts forward three ideas worthy of careful reflection. They are his philosophical presupposition that God exists (that is, God must be presupposed in any argument about God’s existence), pantheism (God and the universe are the same thing), and his conception that the universe is the cause of itself (self-creation or self-causation).

Spinoza’s description of God is helpful at this point. In rational geometric fashion, Spinoza presents definitions and axioms which he uses to explain his conception of God. He defines God as “Being”—not the transcendent cause of Being—but an imminent Being with infinite substance, “By God, I understand Being absolutely infinite, that is to say, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence” (589). God, as a kind of substance, is “that which is in itself and conceived through itself,” (591), and is the “cause of itself” (590). For Spinoza, God and natural substance are one. God is a self-caused substance.

In many ways, Spinoza follows Descartes’s presuppositional rational methodology, so it is helpful to briefly understand Descartes’s line of reasoning. Both Descartes and Spinoza believe that God exists because God is a “Perfect Being.” Perfection must be a property of existence and because God is thought, or conceived to be, perfect, God necessarily exists. This is a form of thinking which argues that if God is the greatest being that can be conceived, God necessarily exists because existence is a property of Being (what is called the ontological argument for God’s existence). Both Spinoza and Descartes hold to this conceptual scheme of God’s existence. Descartes explicitly connects his presuppositional approach with God as a “Perfect Being.” When trying to overcome the question of how to prove external reality or whether or not one can trust their thoughts, Descartes offers this line of reasoning,

And though the wisest minds may study the matter as much as they will, I do not believe that they will be able to give any sufficient reason for removing this doubt, unless they presuppose the existence of God. For to begin with, that which I have just taken as a rule that is to say, that all the things that we very clearly and very distinctly conceive of are true, is certain only because God is or exists and that He is a Perfect Being, and that all that is in us issues from Him. (277, emphasis added)

Notice what Descartes says here—one must presuppose God exists because God is a Perfect Being which must include existence. God exists because existence is a property of Being, and in order to be the most Perfect Being, such a Being must have the property of existence. Descartes calls this a “metaphysical certainty” (277). When thinking of God, according to presuppositional rationalism, one is simply presupposing God’s existence. In other words, according to this Cartesian approach, God is the perfect Being which must be assumed when arguing for the existence of God. The presuppositional character of Descartes’s argument further reasons that if our thoughts and things we conceive of are true, they are true because God exists.

Next time, we will go into the presuppositional method of Spinoza as he follows much, though not all, of Descartes’ approach. Finally, it is worth noting that presuppositional rational reasoning is not new and does not begin with Van Til, Bahnsen, or Frame. In fact, presuppositional thinking does have significant similarities to the approach of Descartes’, Kant, and Spinoza and includes the usual errors.

Works Cited

Descartes. Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 28. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

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.”