WHAT ARE WE TO UNDERSTAND GRACIA TO MEAN? Realist Challenges to Metaphysical Neutralism
VIBS Volume 177 Robert Ginsberg Founding Editor Peter A. Redpath Executive Editor Associate Editors G. John M. Abbarno Mary-Rose Barral Gerhold K. Becker Raymond Angelo Belliotti Kenneth A. Bryson C. Stephen Byrum Harvey Cormier Robert A. Delfino Rem B. Edwards Andrew Fitz-Gibbon Francesc Forn i Argimon William Gay Dane R. Gordon J. Everet Green Heta Aleksandra Gylling
Matti Häyry Steven V. Hicks Richard T. Hull Mark Letteri Vincent L. Luizzi Adrianne McEvoy Alan Milchman George David Miller Alan Rosenberg Arleen L. F. Salles John R. Shook Eddy Souffrant Tuija Takala Anne Waters John R. Welch
a volume in Gilson Studies GS Peter A. Redpath, Editor
WHAT ARE WE TO UNDERSTAND GRACIA TO MEAN? Realist Challenges to Metaphysical Neutralism
Edited by
Robert A. Delfino
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006
Cover illustration: Étienne Gilson, painted by Jacqueline Gilson, photographed by Louis-Gildas and Benjamin Morand with technical assistance of Ralph Nordenhold. Used with the kind permission of Cécile Gilson. “Some material is reprinted by permission from Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge by Jorge J. E. Gracia, the State University of New York Press © 1999 State University of New York. All rights reserved.”
Cover Design: Studio Pollmann The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN-10: 90-420-2030-X ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2030-6 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006 Printed in the Netherlands
With utmost appreciation for his many contributions to metaphysics, the contributors to this volume of the VIBS Studies in the History of Western Philosophy Special Series dedicate this work to Jorge J. E. Gracia
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CONTENTS Foreword by Ralph M. McInerny Editor’s Introduction Acknowledgments ONE
TWO
THREE
The Bounds of Metaphysics Thomas D. Sullivan and Russell Pannier 1. Preliminaries 2. Being as Being and the Transcendentals A. Reasons for Studying Being as Being B. Gracia’s Objections 3. God 4. Conclusion Being as Being, the Transcendentals, the Divine, and Metaphysics: Response to Sullivan and Pannier Jorge J. E. Gracia 1. Where Sullivan and Pannier Go Astray 2. Response to the Criticism of My Objections to the Being as Being View 3. The Case of God 4. Conclusion What is Metaphysics and What are its Tasks?: An Attempt to Answer this Question with Critical Reflections on Gracia’s Book Josef Seifert 1. On Metaphysics and its Tasks A. Being as Being and the Tasks of Metaphysics B. The Source of Being and the Tasks of Metaphysics 2. Critical Reflections on Gracia’s Definition of Metaphysics and its Task A. Ambiguities of the Notion of Category B. Neutrality of the Notion Category: Contentlessness or Non-Reductionism? C. The Irreducibility of Metaphysics to a Study of Categories
xi xiii xv 1 1 4 4 6 9 10
13 13 16 19 19
21 21 22 30 32 32 36 38
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Contents D. Responses to Gracia’s Attack on Metaphysics as the Science of Being as Being 3. Closing Remarks
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
Being as Being and the Tasks of Metaphysics: Response to Seifert Jorge J. E. Gracia 1. Response to the Direct Objections Against My View 2. Response to My Objections Against Being as Being 3. Conclusion An Aristotelian Critique of Gracia’s Metaphysics Jonathan J. Sanford 1. Gracia’s View of Metaphysics 2. Aristotle’s View of Metaphysics 3. Aristotelian Objections to Gracia’s Position 4. Conclusion Metaphysics and Meta-Metaphysics: Response to Sanford Jorge J. E. Gracia 1. The Necessary Focus on Being 2. Metaphysical Progress 3. The Rationale for the Metaphysical Enterprise 4. Conclusion Neo-Thomism and Gracia’s Metaphysics Robert A. Delfino 1. The Object of Metaphysics 2. The Division of the Speculative Sciences 3. Abstraction and the Operations of the Intellect 4. Gracia’s Metaphysics 5. Neo-Thomism and Gracia’s Metaphysics 6. Conclusion Thomas, Thomists, and the Nature of Metaphysics: Response to Delfino Jorge J. E. Gracia 1. Thomas and Thomists 2. Delfino’s Neo-Thomism in Metaphysics
39 41
47
47 50 52 53 53 56 59 65
69 70 71 72 73 75 75 76 78 81 82 85
89 89 91
Contents NINE
Gracia and His Task Peter A. Redpath
TEN
The Nature of Philosophy: Response to Redpath Jorge J. E. Gracia 1. The Source of My Errors: Ordinary Language 2. My Error: Philosophy is a View A. Philosophy as Habit B. Philosophy and Truth C. Philosophy as a System D. The Charge of Exclusivity E. The Charge of Inclusivity 3. A Crucial Correction: Categories are not Sentences 4. Conclusion
ELEVEN
TWELVE
Spirits and “Things”: Ritschl’s Critique of Metaphysics in Light of Gracia’s Definition of Metaphysics John D. Kronen 1. Ritschl’s General Critique of Metaphysics 2. Ritschl’s Critique of Natural Theology 3. Ritschl’s Critique of the Classical Doctrine of God 4. Ritschl’s Defense of Personalism 5. Ritschl’s Personalism and Gracia’s Conception of Metaphysics 6. Conclusion Is Hume A Metaphysician?: Aristotle vs. Gracia Daniel D. Novotny 1. Did Hume Think He Was a Metaphysician? A. “Metaphysics” Means “Any Profound Reasoning” B. Good and Bad Metaphysics C. The Science of Human Nature as Good Metaphysics 2. Was Hume a Metaphysician? A. Hume Is Not an Aristotelian or a Rationalist Metaphysician B. Hume Is a Metaphysician in Gracia’s Sense 3. Conclusion
ix 95
129 130 132 132 138 139 140 141 141 143 145
147 150 153 160 169 173 179 180 181 182 184 185 185 186 189
Contents
x THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
Making Sense of the History of Metaphysics: Response to Kronen and Novotny Jorge J. E. Gracia 1. Metaphysics Conceived Too Narrowly 2. A Broad Conception of Metaphysics 3. Anti-Metaphysics Metaphysicians A. Ritschl B. Hume 4. Conclusion Gracia on the Ontological Status of Categories Russell Pannier and Thomas D. Sullivan 1. Gracia’s Preliminary Characterization of the Class of Categories 2. Gracia’s Radical Dissolution Effort A. The Distinction Between Categories and Universals B. Are Categories Sets, on the One Hand, or Are They Entities that May or May Not Be Instantiable, on the Other? C. Gracia’s Account of the Traditional Theories of Categories D. Gracia’s Account of Categories as Neutral Entities 3. Conclusion Categorial Neutralism: Response To Pannier, Sullivan, Seifert, and Ingala Jorge J. E. Gracia 1. Criticism by Pannier and Sullivan A. General Charge: Begging the Question B. Restatement of the Argument 2. Criticism by Seifert: The Impredicability of Substance 3. Some Questions by Ingala: Nothing, Square Circles, and the Transcendentals
193 194 197 198 198 199 201 203
204 210 210
211 212 218 227
231 232 232 233 235 237
Afterword by Jorge J. E. Gracia
241
About the Contributors
245
Index
249
FOREWORD Dr. Samuel Johnson said of the Irish that they are an honest race; they never speak well of one another. We might wish to conclude from this that all philosophers are Irish, but not only would this involve a fallacy that the man whose work is the subject of this book would be delighted to point out, it would also have the distressing effect of excluding Jorge J. E. Gracia from the category expressed by the term “philosopher,” ut ita dicam. But Gracia is a glorious example of the philosopher. From which we cannot conclude that no Irish need apply, of course. Indeed, in the volume you are about to read, Gracia’s interlocutors as often as not are of Irish descent. Still, they say many good things of his work, and on the assumption that they are both Irish and honest, this may puzzle us—until we notice their criticisms of Gracia. The philosophical work of Gracia over the past quarter century represents as impressive and complex an achievement as can be found in contemporary American philosophy. His early work dealt with medieval thinkers, chiefly Francisco Suarez, and translating the relevant disputationes of that significant Jesuit’s metaphysical tour de monde led Gracia to the problem of individuation and, we might say, into the metaphysical labors that have occupied him ever since. He can of course be taken neat; no need exists for a genetic approach to his thought. But readers who, like Gracia, were schooled in medieval thought will at once feel at home in reading him. His development as an analytical philosopher has only increased this sense of affinity with his work. But all that is bye the bye. When someone picks up a work of Gracia’s it is much like stepping into a Platonic dialogue. The present book consists of several extended criticisms of Gracia’s work on categories together with Gracia’s response. A reader may be reminded of the Thomas Schilp volumes but they tended to be hagiographic whereas Gracia’s critics appear bent on blowing him out of the water. And he loves it. Has any philosopher taken such palpable delight in confronting what purports to be a radical undermining of his life’s work? Gracia has the gusto of Socrates as he takes on his opponents. He gives no quarter because he expects none. He wants readers who have misgivings about his positions to take their best shot at him. Often in responding, he will first restate the objection to give it more clarity and weight. And then he will argue that it amounts to a misunderstanding, an irrelevance, or a falsehood. The dust clears, and Gracia holds the field. Undoubtedly, an element of the county fair exists in this, and I mean that as praise⎯the agora was just such a place. Gracia’s dialectical character would not have permitted him to send forth into the world tome after tome without engaging his readers in discussion viva voce. It is in that exchange that philosophizing chiefly consists. Gracia is clear that he regards this as a never-ending enterprise. It did not begin with him and it will not end with him. The views he argues for are
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meant to be as good as the arguments for them he provides. He expects to be challenged. In this book he confronts several challengers and argues that, in the main, his view of categories and their role in defining metaphysics stands. He does not mean that the discussion is over and that no possible further objections can be made. Readers who have misgivings can be sure that Gracia would be delighted to hear from them. He would not mind a little praise either, of course. So if you are among the majority of his readers, you might want to tell him thank you. But do not be too nice. He would sooner be criticized than flattered. I have known Jorge for all his professional life and account him a dear friend, a worthy foe, a philosopher sans pareil who has many fruitful decades ahead of him. Younger readers can look forward to that future work. My prospect is playing a harp, if I am lucky, and at last being in a position to look down on Jorge Gracia.
Ralph M. McInerny Professor of Philosophy University of Notre Dame
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION Jorge J. E. Gracia’s contributions to philosophy are extensive and distinguished. He has published over 200 articles, forty-five reviews, and thirty books, which include original works, translations and edited volumes. Although his interests cover a wide spectrum including ethnicity, race, nationality, philosophy of language, hermeneutics, philosophical historiography, Hispanic philosophy, and medieval philosophy, it is metaphysics that has permeated his entire philosophical life. In his early career, he worked on metaphysical issues related to individuality and individuation. These efforts resulted in several books and articles, including the first systematic treatment of the subject entitled Individuality: An Essay on the Foundations of Metaphysics, published in 1988. For his outstanding achievement in this book he was awarded the John N. Findlay Prize in Metaphysics by the Metaphysical Society of America in 1992. In the same year he published Philosophy and Its History: Issues in Philosophical Historiography, which included some metaphysical discussion about the nature of texts. In December 1994, the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association devoted a session to the discussion of this book. Not completely satisfied, he gave a more comprehensive metaphysical treatment of texts in Texts: Ontological Status, Identity, Author, Audience, published in 1996. A session was devoted to this book, along with his other book, A Theory of Textuality: The Logic and Epistemology, at the Canadian Society for Hermeneutics meeting in June 1999. During the same year Gracia published the first systematic analysis of the discipline of metaphysics, entitled Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge. In this groundbreaking work Gracia analyzed the nature of metaphysics, using sources ranging from Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas to Robin George Collingwood and Peter Frederick Strawson, arriving at a new conception of metaphysics that explains why repeated attempts to eliminate the discipline have failed. In addition, he offered a novel understanding of the nature and ontological status of categories, an analysis of the nature of reductionism and its role in philosophy, and a discussion and criticism of the main views concerning the nature of metaphysics developed in the history of philosophy. Central to the book was his thesis that metaphysics is a philosophical view that seeks to identify the most general categories, define them if possible, determine the relationships among them, fit the less general categories into the most general ones, if possible, and determine how the less general categories are related to the most general categories. This, along with his view that category itself is neutral with respect to word, concept, extra-mental entity and every other category, garnered much criticism from many fronts, especially from realist philosophers brought up in the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions.
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Editor’s Introduction
In October 2000, Peter A. Redpath organized a session on this book at the American Maritain Association Meeting at Notre Dame University, Indiana. I was a member of the panel, which included Ralph M. McInerny, Thomas Sullivan, Douglas Geivett, and Raymond Dennehy, who chaired the session. The discussion that followed was interesting and passionate, but limited by time to only brief comments by the panelists and even briefer replies by Gracia. Nobody found this entirely satisfactory, and so the idea for this book was conceived. The chapters in this book are arranged in the following manner. The first ten chapters consist of five realist critiques of Gracia’s views of metaphysics, followed by Gracia’s response after each chapter. Chapters Eleven and Twelve illustrate how Gracia’s metaphysical framework allows us to make sense of historical metaphysicians and even so-called anti-metaphysicians such as Albrecht Ritschl and David Hume. Gracia expands on this idea in Chapter Thirteen. Chapter Fourteen is a critique of Gracia’s understanding of the ontological status of categories, and it is followed in the next chapter by Gracia’s response. An afterword by Gracia concludes the book. I should note that in accordance with VIBS stylistic requirements, I have used the phrase “being as being” as a substitute for “being qua being” throughout the book, except when “being qua being” occurs as part of a quotation. Gracia ended Metaphysics and its Task by remarking that all knowledge depends on metaphysical views and therefore metaphysics is inescapable. I agree, and contend that this is why the examination of metaphysical views and the systematic study of the discipline of metaphysics are essential to global discourse. Perhaps Gracia’s metaphysical framework is just what the many cultures of the world need in order to come togetherin fruitful dialogue. But I will leave that up to the reader to decide.
Robert A. Delfino Editor, Studies in the History of Western Philosophy Value Inquiry Book Series (VIBS)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Peter A. Redpath for his invaluable assistance and guidance. This book was his idea, he came up with the title, and I am indebted to him for recruiting me on this project. I owe much gratitude to Jorge J. E. Gracia for his hard work, patience, and dedication to this project even with his many responsibilities. I thank Ralph M. McInerny for writing the foreword. My sincere appreciation extends to all of the contributors for their excellent articles. I thank Jennie Doling of the State University Press of New York for permission to publish excerpts from Gracia’s book Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorical Foundations of Knowledge. I am grateful to Margaret H. Haley and John Joseph Jordan for reviewing the final copy of the text. I apologize to the authors and readers for any mistakes that might remain in the text, and I accept full responsibility for them. I also thank Elizabeth D. Boepple for preparing the index and assisting with the production of the final copy. The following people gave assistance in different ways: Geremy Bernstein, Albert Tantala, and Thomas Riley. Finally, Anita and Anthony Delfino, my parents, also deserve my thanks, as does my beautiful wife, Marialena.
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One THE BOUNDS OF METAPHYSICS Thomas D. Sullivan and Russell Pannier 1. Preliminaries In a work remarkable for its analytical approach to a vast range of philosophical literature, Jorge J. E. Gracia seeks to shed new light on the nature of metaphysics. Gracia contends that metaphysics is not about being as being, the transcendentals, God, or any number of other traditionally suggested things. Metaphysics is, instead, a categorical inquiry into the foundations of all knowledge.1 Is he right? Has nearly every great metaphysician failed to give a proper account of the nature of their subject? Does it really matter? Is not pondering the nature of metaphysics a scholastic exercise in line drawing, of the sort that so often distracts philosophers who should be directing their attention to the hard problems generated by the stream of results rushing in from the sciences? Physicists do not waste a lot of time asking, “What is physics, really?” They work on particular projects with hardly any reflection at all about what properly should be dubbed “physics,” instead of, say, “chemistry” or “physical chemistry.” But ever since Aristotle worried his way through half a dozen books in the Metaphysics about the nature of the subject before taking up any problems deemed to fall within its proper scope, philosophers have thought it necessary to get perfectly clear about the boundaries. Quite a colossal waste of time, we might think. Mistakenly. For much can hang on how we conceive disciplines. Even in the sciences, where the race for new results demands the utmost attention, we must step back periodically and think about the nature of science and the interconnections within it. For one thing, decisions about these matters substantially impact the course of research. When, for example, the United States Congress held hearings about the proposed Super Collider project in 1987, scientists took different positions, depending in part, on their view of the relationships among their disciplines. Philip Anderson of Bell Labs and Princeton, a leading condensed matter physicist, testified against building a proposed Super Collider on the grounds that particle-physics is no more fundamental than several other branches of science. Steven Weinberg argued the opposite on the grounds that when discoveries are made in, say, high-temperature superconductivity, they take the form of mathematical demonstration from known properties of electrons, photons, and atomic nuclei. Particle-physics is more funda-
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THOMAS D. SULLIVAN AND RUSSELL PANNIER
mental than other branches of physics, Weinberg argued, for in some significant sense we can now reduce other physical sciences to elementary particle-physics. Whether billions are spent on a collider depends, in part, on what we think particle-physics to be and how we think other branches of physics relate to it.2 Another reason science takes an interest in the nature and interconnection of the disciplines is that we have become acutely conscious of the need to ascertain what kinds of problems are solvable. Among the great achievements of twentiethcentury science was the production of proofs that we cannot solve some problems by some means, or even at all. As pointed out by physicist James Hartle, we best carry out investigation of the limits of sciences in terms of mathematics and whatever discipline is most fundamental. And so we need to examine how physics, especially quantum cosmology—the quantum mechanics of the universe as a whole and everything within it—relates to such fields as astronomy, fluid mechanics, chemistry, geology, biology, and psychology.3 So, scientists are not entirely insouciant about the nature of their disciplines. The fact that they care undercuts the case against philosophers caring about what metaphysics comes to. But we can make the argument for the need to reflect on the nature of metaphysics more directly, and on just the basis Gracia provides. We need to know whether metaphysicians have any legitimate tasks. If you want a theoretical world-picture, why not rely exclusively on the deliverances of the physical sciences? If you find yourself asking questions that appear out of place in physical sciences—What is a being? What is one being? What is truth?— might you not have taken a step beyond the sensible into the meaningless abyss? Might not the anti-metaphysicians from David Hume to Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein have been right that no genuine metaphysical problems exist for us to pursue, only puzzles generated when ordinary language goes on holiday? After all, metaphysical questions do strike most people as peculiar—Aristotle acknowledged they are hard to make clear—and those captivated by metaphysical questions rarely reach a consensus about the answers. So why not quietly forget all about metaphysical questions and join the ranks of the genuinely productive? The reason we need metaphysics, the reason that metaphysics always buries its undertakers, Gracia argues, is that it provides a theory of categories that serves the indispensable role of clarifying the particular disciplines, including the basic physical sciences, which are in no position to do the job for themselves. Though perhaps incomplete, this answer is defensible. After all, every particular discipline, such as physics, deals with some domain of objects, and the question “What are these objects?” is unavoidable. Any attempt at elucidation presupposes the existence of different sorts of entities, and so the clearer we are about the sorts of things that exist, the clearer we can be about the nature of the object under investigation. Since no particular physical science is responsible for a general inquiry into the structure of the most general categories, the task properly falls to a maximally general science that has been called “metaphysics.” So metaphysics is use-
The Bounds of Metaphysics
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ful, if only because without an investigation of fundamental categories, the basic concepts of the physical sciences remain, to some degree, obscure. We may support Gracia’s claim by turning to the sciences, where researchers recently have explicitly recognized the need to investigate ultimate categories. John F. Sowa, for example, has argued that we must successfully carry out the ontological project of building a category theory if we are to be successful at constructing programs in artificial intelligence. And so Sowa’s Knowledge Representation: Logical, Philosophical and Computational extensively considers systems of ontologies developed in artificial intelligence like Chat-World (David Warren and Fernando Perera) and Cyc (Douglas Lenat), against the backdrop of category theory provided by Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Edmund Husserl, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Martin Heidegger.4 Or, to take another example, we might turn to the deepest regions of physics, where MIT’s Sunny Auyang devotes the opening sections of How is Quantum Field Theory Possible? to an explanation of why we need a “Categorical Framework of Objective Knowledge” for an articulation of the subject.5 Gracia’s explanation of the chronic vigor of metaphysics, then, strikes us as right. But does it go far enough? Can we claim for metaphysics what Gracia appears determined to exclude? In the “Prologue” to his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Thomas Aquinas argues that the metaphysician must give an account of the ultimate causes of reality, and, therefore, must depict being as being and establish the properties of being (now commonly called the “transcendentals”), and ultimately characterize the Entity responsible for it all. In Book 4, Aquinas piles on more work for the metaphysician. The metaphysician must defend first principles and assumptions of the particular sciences, jobs moderns tend to assign to the epistemologist or philosopher of science, not to the metaphysician. But Gracia apparently rejects the traditional view. In his final summary of Metaphysics and its Task, he reminds us that he began his book by asking the question why metaphysics survives all attacks made against it and continues to flourish in one form or another. Having postponed the answer until he had produced a clearer notion of the discipline, he contends: First we can reject some answers which have been given to it. The reason metaphysics survives is not that it is concerned with being, God, transcendental reality, ultimate causes, or any of the other objects we have rejected as proper objects of metaphysics. . . . No, the reason metaphysics will never perish is that it is concerned with the most general categories and the relation of less general ones to them.6 But does nothing more exist for metaphysics to investigate than categories, as Gracia here and elsewhere appears to maintain? And if he is wrong, might he
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be depriving his argument of potentially useful resources for filling out the explanation of the resilience of metaphysics? 2. Being as Being and the Transcendentals A. Reasons for Studying Being as Being To answer the questions just raised we had best begin with a little reflection on the reasons traditional thinkers held that metaphysics studies being and its properties. Many reasons have been given, but one is especially interesting because of its kinship with Gracia’s line of reasoning. Aquinas argues: That science is pre-eminently intellectual which deals with the most universal principles. These principles are being and those things which naturally accompany being, such as unity and plurality, potency and act. Now such principles should not remain entirely undetermined, since without them a complete knowledge of the principles which are proper to any genus or species cannot be had. Nor again should they be dealt with in any one particular science; for, since a knowledge of each class of beings stands in need of these principles, they would with equal reason be investigated in every particular science. It follows, then, that such principles are treated by one common science, which, since it is intellectual in the highest degree, is the mistress of the others.7 The pivotal idea in this passage is that we need to investigate general concepts and principles if we are to dissipate the mists clinging to the particular sciences. This idea that metaphysics helps clarify the particular disciplines is, as we have seen, just what Gracia uses to back up the claim that metaphysics will always bury its undertakers. The difference is that Gracia points to an investigation of categories as yielding the needed results, while Aquinas says the study of being as being and the transcendentals will do the job. Note, though, that Aquinas does not exclude the categories. And while in the “Prologue” he says nothing explicitly about the categories, from what he says elsewhere in his commentary, especially his Commentary on Book 5 of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, he clearly thought we must investigate categories, among other things, if the basic concepts and principles of the particular sciences are to emerge from the shadows into clear light. We may bring to Aquinas’s position much the same kind of support that we earlier brought to Gracia’s. Science, we had noted, recognizes the need for clarification of categories. But it also recognizes the need for clarification of being and the transcendentals. Witness, again, quantum physicist Auyang. Auyang, we had noted, stressed the need the physicist has for category theory. But, in that connec-
The Bounds of Metaphysics
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tion, she also stresses the need to clarify such concepts as object and reality. The physicist needs to understand properly what to be means: Although our chief concerns are quantum fields and elementary particles, we cannot forget that the paradigms of objects are the things we handle everyday, such as tables and chairs, which provide an anchor to the meaning of “object” and “real” . . . The relation [between our theories and the world] is articulated and grasped in ordinary language: interpreters must connect the structures of physical theories to general common concepts such as that of objects and properties. Common notions are vague, which implies that they need to be clarified, not that they can be slighted. This clarification is the job of philosophy. However, in the philosophy of physics, it is easy to be engrossed in technicalities to the neglect of philosophy and bewitched by glamorous notions to the neglect of common sense. Interpreters rehearse mathematics but carelessly invoke general common concepts to explain their meaning. The uncritical usage of common general terms is a major source of quantum mystification. Einstein rightly stressed the indispensability of analyzing the nature of everyday thinking in the interpretation of physical theories.8 As if reading out of Aquinas—or Gracia—Auyang observes: “They [scientific theories] have clear substantive concepts for their subject, but rely on everyday understanding for general concepts. Therefore, their conceptual structures are incomplete.”9 In addition to clarifying such concepts as those of existent, thing, and object, we need to elucidate the notions of the one and the many. Seeking to firm up the foundations of arithmetic, Gottlob Frege asks: “What is the number one?” and “How are we to curb the arbitrariness of our ways of regarding things, which threatens every distinction between the one and the many?”10 Frege’s answers to these question are not Aquinas’s, but he evidently shares Aquinas’s conviction that confusion about the concepts of one and many raise havoc with particular disciplines. We are not suggesting that Aquinas conflates the number one with the one that is the property of being—Aquinas explicitly repudiates that idea. Instead, the point is that Aquinas and Frege believe these concepts need careful examination, and that the examination proves in the end to be metaphysical, if for no other reason than we must mark the equivocation on “one.” If the conceptual structures of particular sciences are to be complete, we need to clarify other general concepts of possibility and necessity. Recent history of modal logic provides a good illustration. After centuries of neglect, studies of the semantics necessary to undergird intuitions into the meaning of modal operators and to furnish completeness proofs of different formal systems have reinvigorated this field. This, in turn, has naturally led to the search for a metaphysics of the semantics, plunging investigators into deep questions about the ontological
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status of possibility and necessity. Focusing in the main on Leibnizian possible worlds, these investigations have quite a different appearance from what we find in Aquinas or in Aristotle’s treatment of the topic in Book 5 of the Metaphysics. Nonetheless, contemporary investigations into the possible and actual again support Aquinas’s contention that we cannot leave being and its concomitant altogether indeterminate if we are to achieve clarity in the particular disciplines. B. Gracia’s Objections We might think that all this talk about how an investigation of being as being and transcendentals can serve to clarify the concepts of the particular disciplines would only strengthen Gracia’s hand. As we have seen, Gracia doubts that the study of being as being and the transcendentals is a proper task for metaphysics. More disconcertingly, he also appears to raise doubts about whether the questions are legitimate at all. Gracia acknowledges that a traditional view like Aquinas’s appears to have something going for it, but Gracia contends the weaknesses of the position are overwhelming.11 Gracia thinks that several insurmountable objections exist to a position like Aquinas’s. The first serious problem is: “It makes no sense to say metaphysics studies being qua being, because being qua being is nothing other than the various individual beings and particular kinds of being which compose the universe.”12 Gracia expanded this compressed statement in the remainder of that paragraph, but he stated it more precisely in a handout at the Notre Dame Conference discussing his book: Being qua being is either: (A) something extramental or (B) something intramental. If (A), then it can be either: (1) one or more, but not all, individual beings, (2) all individual beings; (3) one or more, but not all, kinds of being; or (4) all kinds of beings. If (B), then it can be either: (1) a concept which corresponds to something extramental; or (2) a concept that does not correspond to anything extramental.13 Gracia then disposes of each alternative. Of special interest is what Gracia says about A2 and A4, positions that appear to come close to Aquinas’s. What is wrong with these two alternatives? With respect to A2, Gracia says, “If being qua being is taken to refer to A2 (all individual beings), then two undesirable consequences follow: (1) metaphysics would be directly concerned with individuals, rather than with universals or natures; and (2) metaphysics
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would become a compendium of all sciences.”14 The compendium objection holds also for A4. But do the unwanted consequences truly follow? Consider (1), the first consequence Gracia draws with respect to A2, that if being as being is all individual beings, then metaphysics is directly concerned with individuals. The first thing to note is that the phrase “being as being” is not the name of a collection of individual beings; for it is no name at all. Instead, “being as being” is an abbreviation of “every entity considered in so far as it is just that, an entity.” Just as we may consider some Dobbin in so far as Dobbin is a horse, or in so far as Dobbin is an animal, so may we consider Dobbin in so far as Dobbin is a being or entity. More abstractly, we can consider an x in so far as it is an F, a G, an H, and so on. The conclusion does not follow that if we consider x as an F that we consider x just as an individual or that we do not consider the property of F-ness at all. In truth, abstract sciences attend primarily to the F and G and H-ness of individual things, the natures of F and G and H, and the relationships that obtain among them. Biologists tell us much about human blood, for example, that the heart pumps it, that it circulates through the body via arteries, veins, and capillaries, and that it carries oxygen and nutrients to the body tissues. None of what we know about blood would be known without examining the blood of some individuals, but whether the blood sample under the microscope is this or that particular individual is of no biological interest at all. Just as science can focus on the interconnection of the abstract properties individuals exemplify, so can metaphysics. Therefore metaphysics can study this feature of things, their being, without collapsing into a study of individuals as such. Nor does (2), the second consequence Gracia draws from A2, follow. If metaphysics considers all individual things the study need not be a mere compendium of all the sciences, since each science may consider a special facet of individual things. One science may consider individuals in so far as they exemplify F and G, another in so far as the individuals exemplify H and J. The conclusion no more follows that a perspective on individuals as beings is a compendium of perspectives of all sciences than it follows that an aerial perspective of the houses of a city is a compendium of all the shots taken from the ground. Gracia argues against the idea that metaphysics could study being as being.15 We might set out this argument as follows: (1) If metaphysics is about being as being, then it is about a general category. (2) If it is about a general category, it tells us nothing important.
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Since: (3) Metaphysics (on this account) can tell us something important only if it can offer an analysis of the general category. (4) And metaphysics can offer an analysis of the general category only if we can define the general category. But: (5) We cannot define the general category of being. So: (6) Metaphysics (if informative at all) cannot be about being as being. This objection goes further than the objections considered a bit earlier. Gracia no longer contends merely that metaphysics cannot treat being as being. The argument now appears to be that nothing worth considering exists at all, by any discipline. Does the objection go through? Not obviously, even if being is an ultimate category, and if Gracia should assure us that we cannot define ultimate categories. The problem is premise (4). No good reason exists to think that metaphysics can offer an analysis of the general category only if we can define the general category. After all, metaphysics can tell us something valuable about the ultimate category of being if it can, in any way, enlighten us about it. And it can enlighten us about it without offering a definition. How so? In many ways. We may elucidate a category by giving authentic examples, ruling out others, and seeing its structure. Also, metaphysics can enlighten us about a general, indefinable category by putting the general concept to multiple uses, in much the same way the physical sciences do with their general, indefinable concepts. Mathematicians illuminate the concept of number as they infer theorems from axioms that take the concept of number as indefinable. Some mathematicians say that we, thereby, implicitly define the concept. Much the same holds for physics. Isaac Newton might have thought he successfully defined “mass” or that he had to. Modern physicists like Richard Feynman, however, readily concede that physics leaves basic terms such as “mass,” “force,” and “energy” undefined, but they rightly insist their meaning is clarified as physics unfolds its results. Much more exists to Gracia’s complex arguments against the possibility of investigating being as being and the transcendentals, but since much of it depends on what he says about the ontological status of the categories, which we take up elsewhere in this book, we will here pass on to the last possible subject for metaphysical study under consideration in Gracia’s book: the divine.
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3. God Philosophers have often said that metaphysics takes up questions about God’s existence and nature. Among Thomists quite a bit of fussing has occurred about whether Aquinas thinks God is a proper subject of metaphysics. The best answer, it appears, is Aquinas did not think so, but instead took the subject to be the study of being as being. Still, Aquinas thought the investigation of being as being leads to the postulation of God as an explanation of the being of things. While this may have been a new and significant proposal on Aquinas’s part, for present purposes, whether God is or is not the proper subject of metaphysics hardly matters at all. All that matters is that questions about God’s existence and nature are questions a metaphysician can legitimately ask. Or, more interestingly, we can ask whether or not we stand any chance of satisfactorily answering questions about God, whoever does the asking. Gracia argues that the metaphysician should steer clear of this question. One argument is that if we confine metaphysics to the study of God, then metaphysics reduces to a particular discipline, theology.16 But this argument leaves untouched a position like Aquinas’s, because Aquinas does not regard God as the sole subject of metaphysics. The first argument that engages Aquinas’s position is: If metaphysics deals with God and revelation purports to tell us something about him, there is no good reason, based only on considerations of the object, to rule out the study of God via revelation. Indeed, it makes no sense to reject what might be the best sources of information on the matter. But this conclusion, I believe, does not concur with what most metaphysicians have done or with what they have conceived themselves to be doing.17 For discussion’s sake let us grant that revelation, if known to be true, would be the best way to come to understand at least some things about God. But why believe a revelation has been given to us? Why even consider the claim that it has? Might having some natural evidence for thinking that the existence of God is possible and not absurdly unlikely at least be useful? Were the fact of God’s having revealed himself so dazzlingly obvious, like the existence of the sun, so many unbelievers could hardly exist. Philosophizing about God’s existence on the basis of natural evidence, even if such philosophizing did not reach conclusive results, could prepare the way for reception of revelation. This is one reason some theological traditions heartily approve of natural theology. Were this the only reason, it would appear to suffice to answer Gracia’s objection—unless we cannot get anywhere at all with natural reasoning about God. Gracia, at one point, appears to suggest as much:
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THOMAS D. SULLIVAN AND RUSSELL PANNIER Finally, there is the difficulty involved in the knowledge of God, for there seems to be very little we can say about God if we do not use the information religions presume he has made available through revelation. Indeed, the very possibility of meaningful speech about God is a matter of acrimonious disagreement among theologians, and this extends even to God’s existence. Therefore, if God is the object of metaphysics, it looks as if there is very little, if anything at all, that metaphysics can establish.18
Well, some theologians do claim that God is too great a being for us to talk about meaningfully, and these same theologians appear to manage the trick when they tell us that God has this marvelous property of being beyond all human language. What argument could they have for the position? They can hardly be expecting us to believe the claim that they received this truth from God, since the claim would be self-referentially incoherent. If theologians have any argument at all for the position, the argument must be philosophical, must involve claims about sense and reference and other semantic technicalities. So we are to believe these theologians as philosophers, not as theologians. Are the philosophical arguments of the theologians something metaphysicians wanting to talk about God should worry about? Perhaps, even if Alvin Plantinga and others have spent years exposing the weaknesses of the lines of reasoning, these theologians largely borrow from Kant and the positivists.19 But if all these arguments justifying talk about God strike us as insufficiently reassuring, one more excellent reason exists for hope—that provided by Gracia himself. Gracia’s proposal? Work toward a knowledge of God through an examination of categories. As Gracia explains much later in his book, we may divide metaphysics into general and specific metaphysics. General metaphysics “concerns itself with the identification and definition (when possible) of the most general categories and with the study of the different relations among them. By contrast, specific metaphysics is that branch of the discipline that concerns itself with less general categories.”20 We may further divide specific metaphysics into such branches as theology and anthropology. What would a metaphysical theology involve? It would “fit the category of the divine within the categories identified and defined in general metaphysics and to determine how some of the features which characterize the single member of that category are related to all the most general categories.”21 This appears reasonable enough. And if it should leave the metaphysician with less to say about God than some would like, a categorical approach removes the chief reason for thinking metaphysics cannot talk about God at all. 4. Conclusion Where does all this leave us? We started by agreeing that Gracia gives a good explanation of the power of metaphysics to endure. Science cannot dispense with the cate-
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gories and metaphysics elucidates categories. We then suggested that we could supplement Gracia’s explanation by indicating other reasons metaphysics might be necessary or worthwhile. But the supplement presupposed that some value attaches to the traditional view that metaphysics is about being as being, the transcendentals, and God. This runs counter to a good deal that Gracia appears to maintain. And yet, perhaps we have not fully grasped Gracia’s way of thinking about these topics. In Chapter Seven Gracia seeks to show that everything traditional metaphysicians have deemed to be within the scope of metaphysical inquiry is also within the scope of his conception of metaphysics by arguing that we can translate all the traditional questions into his scheme of categorization. Gracia may also be intimating that such translations show the underlying unity binding together all the traditional metaphysical questions, questions that might otherwise appear to be related only by historical contingency. Quite possibly, therefore, the criticism that his conception of metaphysics is too narrow is misplaced. When pondering the possibility we may usefully recall a dispute about another discipline—logic—that took place in the early part of the last century. Proponents of what was then the new logic maintained that the traditional view of the subject, set out by Aristotle and his followers, mistakenly heaped together several topics that did not belong to the subject. Logic, the traditionalists thought, had something to do with the acts of the mind—the view is quite explicit in Aquinas’s Preface to the Posterior Analytics—but in truth, the new logicians argued, logic has nothing to do with psychology. Additionally, traditional theorists tied logic to metaphysics, as was clear in Aristotle from page one of the Categories, which is largely devoted to considering the modes of being. And finally, the complaint continued, the centerpiece of reasoning is not the syllogism, but a set of structures best investigated from a mathematical standpoint. Something much like the syllogism would reappear within an articulation of those structures, but only as a corrected and reconstituted fragment of a vastly broadened science. Though at first traditionally-minded logicians staunchly defended the ancient conception of their discipline in traditional terms, in time nearly all who studied the subject came to see the old in a new light. What exactly logic is about remains a matter of dispute. Some highly skilled mathematical logicians now contend Aristotle’s conception of the subject is not much off the mark after all. But we cannot go back to the old way of thinking about these matters. Similarly, Gracia has laid down a challenge to the traditional conception of metaphysics. It may turn out that much of the old material, which Gracia sometimes appears willing to exclude entirely from the subject, will reappear, transformed by a categorical approach to the topic in line with his provocative proposals. Time will tell.
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1. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999). 2. See Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), pp. 51–65. 3. See James Hartle, “Scientific Knowledge from the Perspective of Quantum Cosmology,” Boundaries and Barriers: On the Limits of Scientific Knowledge, eds. John L. Casti and Anders Karlqvist (Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley Publishing Co, 1996), pp. 116–148. 4. John F. Sowa, Knowledge and Representation (New York: Brooks-Cole, 2000), pp. 1–132. 5. Sunny Auyang, How is Quantum Field Mechanics Possible? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 11–15. 6. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, p. 221. 7. St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, trans. John P. Rowan (Chicago, Ill.: Henry Regnery Co., 1961), Vol. 1, Prologue, p. 1. 8. Sunny Auyang, How is Quantum Field Mechanics Possible?, pp. 11–12. 9. Ibid., p. 6. 10. Gottlob Frege, Foundations of Arithmetic, trans. J. L. Austin (Evanston, Il.: Northwestern University Press, 1980), pp. 1, 58. 11. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, pp. 25–26. 12. Ibid., p. 26. 13. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Gracia’s Handout, American Maritain Association Meeting, University of Notre Dame, 21 October 2000. 14. Ibid. 15. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, p. 27. 16. Ibid., p. 53. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 20. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, p. 149. 21. Ibid.
Two BEING AS BEING, THE TRANSCENDENTALS, THE DIVINE, AND METAPHYSICS: RESPONSE TO SULLIVAN AND PANNIER Jorge J. E. Gracia Should we include being as being, the transcendentals, and the divine in the object that metaphysics studies? Thomas D. Sullivan and Russell Pannier think that I do not think so, for I contend, so they say, “metaphysics is not about being as being, the transcendentals, God, or any number of other traditionally suggested things. Metaphysics is, instead, a categorical inquiry into the foundations of all knowledge.” Also, this claim becomes the basis of a further claim Sullivan and Pannier make, this time directed against another of the main theses of the book: that I do not adequately explain the continued resilience, or, as they put it, “vigor,” of metaphysics. Contrary to what Sullivan and Pannier think, I do hold that being as being, the transcendentals, God (with a qualification that I will make clear later), and any number of other things are studied in metaphysics, and I think that I make the point quite clear in Metaphysics and its Task.1 So, where did Sullivan and Pannier go wrong? What is it that they misunderstood about my view that led them astray? 1. Where Sullivan and Pannier Go Astray I can think of at least two things: First, I argue against views of metaphysics that find the essential character of the discipline in its study of being as being, the transcendentals, the divine, or similar things; and second, Sullivan and Pannier do not appear to quite understand what I mean by category, insofar as they believe that I do not think being as being, the transcendentals, and the divine are categories. With respect to the first, I need to make clear that I do not, unqualifiedly, claim that metaphysics does not study being as being, the transcendentals, the divine, and such other traditionally identified objects. I reject only views that argue for an understanding of the discipline that excludes other than these, considered separately or jointly, as proper objects of study. With respect to the second, I should note that I understand being as being, the transcendentals, the divine, and many other such things traditionally identified as objects of metaphysics as categories. As such, they constitute legitimate parts of what metaphysics studies.
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So, we may ask: Where in particular did Sullivan and Pannier find support for their misunderstanding? They quote a passage that occurs at the end of my book where I say: First we can reject some answers which have been given to it [i.e., “the question of why metaphysics survives all attacks against it and continues to flourish in one form or another”]. The reason metaphysics survives is not that it is concerned with being, God, transcendental reality, ultimate causes, or any of the other objects we have rejected as proper objects of metaphysics . . . . No, the reason metaphysics will never perish is that it is concerned with the most general categories and the relation of less general ones to them.2 Sullivan and Pannier understand this passage to say that I exclude being as being, the transcendentals, the divine, and other things traditionally identified as objects of metaphysics from such an object. At first, this reading might appear correct. But note that I do not say that we should reject these things as “objects” of metaphysics, or as “part of the object” metaphysics studies. I say that these are to be rejected “as proper objects” of metaphysics. I mean that to consider being as being as the proper object of metaphysics is a mistake, and so is to consider the transcendentals, the divine, or any such other thing. A proper object of a discipline, as commonly understood, is the object that, strictly speaking, belongs to the discipline to study. For example, when theologians speak of God as the proper object of theology, they mean that the aim of theology is to study God. Indeed, for scholastics in general, a property is a necessary consequence of essence, as the capability to laugh is consequent on the human essence. Likewise, then, to speak of something as being a discipline’s proper object means that the object is what the discipline is essentially meant to study. Even in cases where the discipline deals with other objects, it studies them only secondarily or accidentally, we might say, and to the degree that they relate to the proper object. My position is that being as being, the transcendentals, the divine, or any of the other objects traditionally identified as proper objects of metaphysics, by themselves and exclusively, do not qualify as such, even if they are part of that proper object. Sullivan and Pannier have understood the sentence in a way I did not intend. Although what I say elsewhere should have alerted them to this fact. For example, in the chapter of the book where I identify the proper object of study of metaphysics, I include being in that object, and the branches that I propose to divide metaphysics confirm the point: Ontology studies the categories of being, theology the categories of divinity, and so on. One specific source of the second misinterpretation could be that the traditional Aristotelian view of categories excludes being as being, the transcendentals, and the divine from them. This view considers being as being apart from any kind
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of being, including categorial kinds of the Aristotelian variety, such as substance and relation. The transcendentals other than being, again within the same tradition, are attributes of being and, therefore, applicable to every category that can divide being. And many thinkers understand the divine to be an actual, individual being: God, and, as such, not a category. Still, many thinkers hold that God falls into the category of substance, although for many theists, including Thomists, the applicability of the category to God is merely analogical. If we adopt my technical understanding of categories, it should be clear that being as being, the transcendentals, and the divine are categories. I describe a category as what predicable terms express. And a predicable term is one that can occur in third place (X[1] is[2] Y[3]) in a non-identity declarative sentence. So, “being as being,” “being,” “good,” “true,” and “one” (and any other transcendental term), as well as “divine” are predicable terms, for we can say such things as “X is being as being,” “Y is a being,” “Z is good,” “P is true,” or “M is divine,” when these are not identity sentences. This means that they are (1) categories and (2) studied in metaphysics. This discipline studies all categories, although what it tries to establish about the most, and less, general categories is not the same thing. Naturally, if I am right in thinking that the claim made by Sullivan and Pannier concerning my understanding of metaphysics is incorrect, I also undermine the derivative claim about the inadequacy of my explanation of the continued vigor of metaphysics. They object that, by excluding being as being, the transcendentals, and the divine, in addition to a score of other things they claim St. Thomas Aquinas includes in the object of metaphysics, I have missed a crucial reason why we need to study metaphysics insofar as no other science studies these. And they would have a point had I excluded these objects from metaphysics. Since I do not, their objection does not affect my position. Much of what Sullivan and Pannier say, when they compare my view of metaphysics to that of Aquinas, shows, again, where they have gone astray. They are right in claiming that strong similarities exist between Aquinas’s justification for metaphysics and the one I offer. We both think that metaphysics supplies something missing in other sciences and what metaphysics supplies is foundational to the knowledge other sciences yield. I will not repeat here what Sullivan and Pannier say because they have said it well and have even found support for it in the work of contemporary scientists, something I did not do. But they are mistaken when they suggest that I exclude the study of being as being, the transcendentals, and the divine from metaphysics. This mistake in turn undermines the accuracy of the description Sullivan and Pannier give of the differences between Aquinas’s view and mine. Let me identify the main difference between the two views to set the record straight: Although Aquinas appears to grant the status of the object of study of metaphysics to several things in different places, as Sullivan and Pannier point out, he does not appear to give a unified and explicit explanation of how all these claims are to be articulated
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and brought together under one conceptual umbrella, but I do. So, significant similarities between Aquinas’s view and mine exist, but my view has a theoretical advantage over his. Some Thomists, no doubt, will take this as a sign of hubris on my part and, as an insult to the memory of Aquinas. But, as I argue in my response to Robert A. Delfino’s commentary in this volume, those of us who are trying to get at the truth, instead of being faithful followers of particular authors, have no alternative but to say what we think is right. 2. Response to the Criticism of My Objections to the Being as Being View The view Sullivan and Pannier especially wish to defend against my objections holds that the proper object of metaphysics is being as being. They do this by trying to show that my objections against it do not work. In response, let me begin by reviewing my objections briefly, because the renditions Sullivan and Pannier give of them, especially of one, are to some extent misleading. The position I assail is one that holds that being as being is the proper object of study of metaphysics. By this I mean that the view maintains that only being as being is such an object: strictly speaking metaphysics is about being as being and nothing else. Whatever we study in the discipline, then, we must study under this general topic. But how are we to take this object? Although we can understand “being” in several ways, as I point out in the book, there appear to be only three pertinent ways: (1) As nothing other than the collection of all individual beings. (2) As nothing other than the collection of all kinds of beings. (3) As something other than the collections of all individual beings and their kinds. Understood in sense (1) being as being is nothing but Dick and Harry, this stone, that piece of paper, my relation of fatherhood to my daughters, and so on. My objection to this view is that, within the Aristotelian-Thomistic framework that proposes being as being to be the proper object of metaphysics, no science is about these as individuals. No science is concerned with Harry as Harry, but only with Harry as human, or material, and so on. And least of all would metaphysics have as its proper object individuals—the case of God is peculiar, however, but I will return to this later, because Sullivan and Pannier deal with it separately. At present, what matters is that metaphysics cannot have the collection of all individuals as its proper object. And Sullivan and Pannier recognize the point by saying—as if this were an answer to my objection—that the expression “being as being” does not mean this
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collection. It means “every entity insofar as it is just an entity.” In this, they are right. But this supports my argument. It does not weaken it. I also argue, and Sullivan and Pannier dispute, the consequence that, if metaphysics is concerned with the collection of all individuals, it would amount to the compendium of all sciences (assuming sciences study individuals). The basis of the objection Sullivan and Pannier offer to this claim is that this does not follow. For just as an aerial perspective of the houses of a city is not a compendium of all the shots taken from the ground, so a perspective on individuals as beings is not a compendium of the perspectives of all sciences. And they are right, but they assume that the perspective on individuals in question is precisely only one from the point of view of being as being, a position that I will address shortly. Understood in sense (2), we take “being as being” not as the collection of all individuals. We take it as the collection of all kinds. The advantage of this alternative is that kinds are universal and, therefore, fit the proper object of science within an Aristotelian-Thomistic framework. So, this position does not have to contend with a difficulty that the previous alternative encountered. But this is not enough to save it, I argue. For kinds are precisely what other disciplines study. If this is so, metaphysics would again turn out to be the compendium of all sciences. Naturally, we could object that metaphysics is not merely the compendium of all sciences, but that it also supplies something unique: the study of some kinds not studied in other disciplines. The problem with this suggestion—which by the way, is not made by Sullivan and Pannier—is that metaphysics still would be a compendium of everything we know, and this would not appear to be at all what metaphysics is. Although the discipline takes into account the knowledge arrived at by other disciplines, it most definitely does not regard it as part of itself. A treatise on metaphysics does not look like an encyclopedia. Taken in sense (3), being as being is something other than the collection of all individual beings and kinds of beings. This possibility is not open to every philosopher; only if we accept the view that being as being is conceptually or really distinct from essence (the kinds things are) can this work even in principle. It works for Aquinas because for him being (esse) is really distinct from essence (essentia). So, we can identify being as being as the proper object of study of metaphysics, and not reduce it to the collection of individuals, the collection of kinds, or both. This view has problems. One is that being (esse) for Thomas is not a form. This creates difficulties, for knowledge involves in-forming the mind. So, how is it that we know being? Obviously not in the way we know everything else, and to say this raises questions about the intelligibility of the claim. Leaving this aside, the problem arises that esse is not subject to definition or analysis. Esse is the most primitive concept of all, if we can even correctly speak of it as a concept. For concepts are always the result of the simple apprehension of form, and esse, as
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noted, is not formal. But let us also put aside this difficulty, and ask: How much can we say about it? Perhaps we can say some things about it, but the things that we can say are precious few and definitely much less than what metaphysical treatises contain. For example, can we truly claim that everything Aristotle says in the Metaphysics is about being as being? And is Thomas’s On Being and Essence exclusively about esse? Absolutely not, for they speak in them about essence, accidents, privations, individuals, and so on, and none of these is being as being. My point is that, if we take seriously the claim that the proper object of metaphysics is being as being, the discipline would have extremely little to say, properly speaking, and most of what it has said in the past turns out not to be properly part of metaphysics because it concerns things other than being as being. The only way to avoid this difficulty is to revert to the view of being as being as the collection of all individual beings, of all kinds of being, or both, or to show that being as being includes all sorts of other objects. We could, perhaps, argue that such things as necessary being, possible being, and the like are included in it. But this entails giving up on the idea of being as being as the proper object of metaphysics. For necessary being is not being as being. It is being as necessary, and likewise, mutatis mutandis, with the other possibilities mentioned. Additionally, metaphysics treats things such as privations and non-beings, which are not beings at all. How can we fit these under being as being? It does not appear possible in that a privation, for example, is precisely not being at all! Note, then, that the reasons Sullivan and Pannier think I give against the view of metaphysics as the study of being as being are not the reasons I accept or give in the book. I claim instead that, if the single category studied in metaphysics is indefinable and unanalyzable, then metaphysics will have little to do and little in common with much that it has done in the past. I do not claim that a category needs to be definable or analyzable for us to study it in metaphysics. When I address the neutrality of categories I say, “Each category, qua category, should be considered to be whatever it is, as determined by its proper definition, and nothing more.”3 This does not entail that every category can have a definition properly speaking, that it must be analyzable, or that metaphysics studies only those categories that have proper definitions and are analyzable. Elsewhere in the book I make clear that some categories cannot have proper definitions precisely because they cannot be analyzed—indeed, this applies to “category” itself, and may be the case with being, nothing, and some other categories. This takes care of the objections raised near the end of Section 3 of the commentary by Sullivan and Pannier. So let me turn to the special case of God.
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3. The Case of God Beginning with Aristotle, God has been one of the objects metaphysicians have identified as the proper object of study of the discipline. I reject this view and Sullivan and Pannier dispute my rejection. But they base their argument on a misunderstanding of my claim, in a way similar to the one that founded their objection against my rejection of metaphysics as the study of being as being. When I claim that God cannot be the proper object of study of metaphysics, I mean that it cannot be the only object that the discipline is intended to study. I do not argue that metaphysics should exclude theology—instead, as Sullivan and Pannier acknowledge, I point out that it includes it. The position that Sullivan and Pannier dispute—that metaphysics completely excludes God—is not mine. Questions about God’s existence and nature are obviously appropriate in metaphysics since these terms express categories that are among the most general, and to examine how less general categories relate to the most general ones is part of metaphysics. Metaphysics reduces to theology only when we conceive of metaphysics as the study of God and only God. Yet one critical qualification is in order. Earlier I used as an argument against understanding being as being as the collection of all individual beings the point that the object of the discipline is universal, not individual. So how can I now say that God, an individual indubitably, can be an object of metaphysics? Strictly speaking, it cannot. The object in question is divinity, not God, something I make explicit in the book. But since it turns out that a proper notion of divinity requires that divinity be instantiated only once, if at all, then it is frequent, and harmless, to speak of God instead of divinity. Finally, I want to stick to my claim that, independent of revelation, what philosophers can say about God is relatively little, and much that metaphysicians say has little to do with God. For these reasons too, no sense exists in arguing that God is the proper object of metaphysics, even if divinity is part of that object. 4. Conclusion In closing, Sullivan and Pannier summarize their comments by indicating that it would help my explanation of the continued vigor of metaphysics if being as being, the transcendentals, and God were included in the proper object of study of the discipline. As I have indicated, I never excluded them. So, my position is as strong as Sullivan and Pannier wish it to be. And they graciously point out, “perhaps we have not fully grasped Gracia’s way of thinking about these topics. . . . [and] the criticism that his conception of metaphysics is too narrow is misplaced.” I would claim that it is not just that “[i]t may turn out that much of the old material, which Gracia sometimes appears willing to exclude entirely from the subject, will reappear, transformed by a categorical approach to the topic in line with his
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provocative proposals.” Such material has never left the discipline as I have conceived it. My view provides a rationale for its inclusion missing in previous understandings of metaphysics. NOTES 1. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999). 2. Ibid., p. 221. 3. Ibid., p. 205.
Three WHAT IS METAPHYSICS AND WHAT ARE ITS TASKS? AN ATTEMPT TO ANSWER THIS QUESTION WITH CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON GRACIA’S BOOK Josef Seifert At a time when finding serious and original works on metaphysics is difficult, the publication of a major book on central issues of metaphysics is no doubt an important event that deserves praise. This is especially the case when the work in question expresses itself thoroughly positively on the existence and importance of metaphysics and seeks, most importantly—in spite of its considerable novelty— not just scholarship or originality but “truth.”1 Jorge J. E. Gracia’s Metaphysics and its Task is such a work. In addition, his book is quite methodic, systematic, and contains virtually no single paragraph lacking in useful distinctions, statements of fine intuitions, logical arguments, and so on. At the same time, it is well written and quite a readable book that could serve as a textbook for advanced metaphysics courses. My praise of this work does not mean that I uncritically accept all the results of Gracia’s book. I express some of my disagreements in the second part of this paper. As I am firmly convinced that all hermeneutical and critical philosophical studies ought to build on an understanding of the issues at hand, I intend to explain in the first part of this paper what I think the object and task of metaphysics is and then relate the results of my studies to Gracia’s reflections.2 1. On Metaphysics and its Tasks In opposition to Gracia’s objections, I contend that of the possible ways to describe metaphysics (as first philosophy, as philosophy of the highest causes, as philosophy of being, and so on), it might still be best and most comprehensively characterized, with Aristotle, as the science of being as being, of being insofar as it is.3 It seeks in principle an answer to the question: what is being as such? All the other questions metaphysics asks, such as questions about first principles and transcendentals, pure perfections, first causes, ultimate ends, substance and other categories of being, or the questions, “What are the fundamental kinds
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of being?” “What is its absolute ground?” “What are its opposites?” and especially, “What is nothingness?” and so on, can be related to, or even be regarded as parts of, this one question about being as being. Yet this fundamental question of metaphysics remains obscure even in Aristotle, whose greatness largely consists in having discovered this foundational field of study, calling it “first philosophy.” The meaning of the expression “science of being as being” can be understood in many ways and one reason why Gracia rejects it appears to be based on his considering only the first of its meanings. The following appear to me to be not only the main possible interpretations of this phrase but also the outline of a description of the comprehensive tasks of metaphysics. A. Being as Being and the Tasks of Metaphysics 1.
What is being (esse and ens) in the transcendental sense, understood here as that nature and those features of being that are proper to all beings of whatever category and regardless of whether these beings are finite or infinite? Further, what are the distinct moments of all beings (the so-called “transcendentals” in the Thomistic sense), or the properties coextensive with being (proprietates coextensivae enti) in John Duns Scotus’s sense? Take, for example, a being (ens) and to be (esse), the ontologically true (verum), one (unum), being something as opposed to nothing and to something else (aliquid), good or bearer of value (bonum), and beautiful (pulchrum) in a broad sense. All these “transcendentals” are found in all beings, no matter what their form or mode of being. The topic of an investigation into being as being in this first sense also entails the study of the first principles or most universal laws and states of affairs expressed in propositions (the four principles of identity, contradiction, excluded middle, and sufficient reason). Metaphysics in this sense also investigates the primary cause and reason for there being something instead of nothing. Metaphysics, insofar as it investigates these, is also etiology, the science of the first causes. The investigation of four causes, especially the material and efficient cause, falls already into the second and profoundly different part of metaphysical investigations.
While the first question of metaphysics about “being as being” is the most abstract level of the knowledge of being per se, it still is extremely important. For the aspiration of metaphysics to grasp, in some limited fashion, the totality of being, can only come to fulfillment if being as such possesses an inner unity. That is, if it is possible to predicate being and its universal attributes to all things and all categories and to apply the first metaphysical principles, such as the principle of contradiction, to absolutely all beings. For without such universal transcendental
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moments and principles, which extend to all beings as such, to being as being, the totality of the given falls into completely heterogeneous parts to which we could not apply a universal concept such as that of being. Reality would become devoid of every inner principle of unity and completely heterogeneous and unconnected from the metaphysical point of view. The complete lack of inner unity within beings would not even be the most serious consequence of the non-existence of transcendental principles in the sense of the first understanding of “being as being.” Metaphysical knowledge aims above all, at what is in itself the most perfect, absolute being. But an absolute being cannot even be conceived of rationally if it does not correspond to these first principles of being—which are, as Aristotle shows in book four of the Metaphysics, presupposed for all thinking and acting.4 Without the unconditional validity of the first principles of being, the absolute could either simultaneously possess those attributes that we ascribe to it and their opposites, or be a pure nothing. Both as general ontology and as philosophical theology, metaphysics in the classical sense would be impossible and our thought—if it could reach to the being of “things in themselves”—would be limited to the realm of the finite, which alone would fit into our essentially limited categories. All this would be inevitable without the existence of those attributes of being and first principles that the Scholastics call “transcendental.” This is so because their application is not limited to specific categories or even to any single modality of being. (Modalities are more general divisions within being than categories because the categories have some application to all of the modalities but attain an entirely different sense in each of them.) Therefore, it is possible to assert without exaggeration that the closely linked problems of the transcendentals and of the first principles of being are fundamental questions, on whose affirmative answer depends the possibility of classical metaphysics. But in no way, and on this I entirely agree with Gracia, can the whole of metaphysics be reduced to studying being as being in this first sense. 2.
In a second sense the fundamental question of a metaphysics of being as such must be understood, not as the study of what is common to all beings, but as the question about the most fundamental differences within being: i. of the modalities, ii. of the categories as the most abstract (highest) genera of (real and partly also possible and fictional) beings, iii. and of all other most fundamental kinds of being that determine “being as such,” as they are treated, for example, in a metaphysics of life, of the person, of community, of the work of art, and of other fundamental distinctions and principles within being, such as the difference between essence and real existence.
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JOSEF SEIFERT iv. This part of metaphysics studies also the most fundamental causes and types of causes that are characteristic not of all beings but, for example, of all material things or of all beings that contain some materiality. To this field of study belongs at least the material and the efficient causes (within the system of the four classical “Aristotelian” causes), which, unlike the formal and the final cause, do not, or at least not in any similar sense, belong to purely spiritual and infinite beings and therefore not to all beings. Still, they are either causes or conditions of whole spheres of being (inanimate nature, plants, animals, and human beings) or even (as efficient causality) of all finite beings.
All of these issues demand a study of “being as being” not in the first sense as the study of the general characteristics of all beings, but in the second sense as the study of being with respect to the primary and radical differences within being, which are so fundamental that they also pertain to being as being. So interpreted, metaphysics—as the study of being as being—does not seek to find the common traits of all the forms of being. Instead, it studies the fundamentally different kinds of being, which reveal being as such through the multi-dimensionality of their sense of being and through their order.5 A first part of this study deals with the fundamentally different modalities of being: (1) Real being as found in matter, plants, animals, human beings, and higher beings. (2) Ideal entities of different kinds: ideal essences/eide, ideas, ideal objects, ideal rules that, while excelling over contingent real beings through their ideal perfections and through their timelessness and meaningfulness, lack the full datum of reality.6 (3) Purely logical entities (concepts, propositions, pure questions, and so on) that are, for example, of extreme importance as pure bearers of truth.7 Also included are: (4) Possible beings/worlds and (5) purely intentional objects that depend entirely on consciousness. Within real beings, we can make many further metaphysical distinctions. Some of these are quite general and others much more specific. Some of these distinctions refer, for example, to principles of being within many or even all kinds of (real) being such as the distinction between essence and existence. Others refer to different categories of being (such as substance and different types of accidents), or to more specific differences within the natures and essences of real things such as the distinctions between living and inanimate things or between persons and impersonal beings. Let us briefly discuss the first kind of fundamental distinctions within being. Besides the fundamental role of essence in and of real beings, which can never be reduced to ideas or “essences” in the sense of ideal forms, we find here also the decisive role of esse (to be)—as Thomas Aquinas, Étienne Gilson, Cornelio Fabro, and others have seen.8 We encounter here the actus essendi (act-of-being)
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as the innermost principle of actualization and realization of all beings and forms, in the sense of the actus actuum (act of all acts). While I share with existentialist Thomist metaphysicians the emphasis on this unique datum of “to be,” I reject emphatically that conception that is especially marked in the work of Gilson, which holds that the actus essendi alone is a positive principle of being and a pure perfection, while essentia (essence) is an exclusively negative and limiting principle. On the contrary, I have argued in my article “Essence and Existence” that any hypostatizing of esse, as well as its radical separation from essence, is an absurdity, and, taken seriously as a philosophical thesis, threatens to lead to a radical agnosticism about God and even to pantheism.9 While these distinctions such as between essence and existence, matter and form, act and potency, refer to more abstract principles of being and principles within beings (entia), other distinctions refer to the different types of entia themselves. Most of the second group of distinctions concern primarily the essences of things within the same category of being, but some of them constitute new but less universal categories (such as “life”). The fundamental distinctions within one and the same kind of category (for example that of “substance”) show that distinctions other than those between different categories (for example the distinction between personal and impersonal beings) are even more fundamental for a metaphysics of the different types of being than the more abstract level of the distinctions between categories or general principles of being. 3.
Still deeper is a third question of metaphysics about being as such (being as being), which links itself organically to the answer of the second.
Metaphysics seeks, among all the different kinds of being, those that possess the character of being in the fullest sense and therefore “deserve to be called” “beings” or “existent” in the most proper sense. What is being in the truest sense? We can deal with this question on the level of those beings that are accessible to us in experience. On this level, Aristotle answers it by pointing to the different categories and to substance as the primary and most perfect one. Metaphysicians have offered many other answers to the third and crucial question concerning being as being, namely the question about being in the most proper sense. The Atomists, as do the Marxists, see being in its most proper sense in matter, in mass and in motion as well as in their dialectic, or also in the forces of production. Friedrich Nietzsche considers the truest being as the “will to power,” and “nothing other,” or in the Übermensch (overman). Martin Heidegger considers Dasein (man) and in his book on Nietzsche, will, as being in the eminent sense. Plato sees authentic being in the spiritual non-corporeal sphere of the ideas. All of these are different answers to the third central fundamental question of metaphysics that concerns being which authentically is (being in the most proper sense).10
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Regarding this third object of metaphysical inquiry into being as being, I wish to express here two theses that I have argued for elsewhere.11 First, an investigation into the evident criteria for being in the authentic and proper sense has many levels. Second, that it is the unique datum of the real world, of inanimate objects, plants, animals, human beings, angels, and God that constitute being in the primary sense. This is in opposition to the modes of “purely intentional” beings as objects of consciousness, to the realm of the merely possible, to the sphere of ideal essences and objects, and to the world of (mental or ideal) conceptual logical entities.12 Within real beings again, we can ask whether essence or existence possesses a “priority” and consider critically, for example, the thesis of the “absolute priority of existence over essence” of existentialist Thomism. Given that both essence and existence are absolutely universal transcendental principles of real beings, both of the finite and the infinite entity, it is possible to look for “being which is authentically being”—being in the truest sense—exclusively within the sphere of ens. For ens necessarily contains within itself both essence and existence. Being neither simply coincides with essentia nor simply with esse. Being most properly speaking cannot be sought for in a principle partially “abstracted” from the unity of being (ens) and therefore neither in the pure actus essendi nor in pure essence, but only in the ens considered as an integral whole. Within the many real beings (entia), which both exist and have an essence (things, organisms, colors, activities, and so on), those beings that may be taken as most likely candidates for the title “being in the proper sense” are either (on a more abstract level) substances as such, or, on a more concrete level, the person as such. Substance, as that which stands in itself in being, is, according to Aristotle, within the more abstract level of the most general genera of being (the categories), and so is being in the primary sense. Therefore, Aristotle also characterizes metaphysics as ousiology (the science of substance).13 Compared to lifeless things, living beings possess a much higher form of being.14 And living beings that possess rationality, freedom, and are persons, are much more fully being properly speaking, compared with whom all other things are hyperbolized nothings. Still, even the answer that the person is being in the most proper sense is woefully insufficient. For persons only possess the fullness of their being when there is unity between their substance (the personal subject) and the appropriate accidents (acts, transcendence, moral perfections, association with other persons, and so on), which alone allow the person to achieve his or her full being and dignity. Only those personal beings that fulfil their specific vocation and realize their proper good are in a still higher sense beings properly speaking. Additionally, metaphysics does not ask only the question of what is being in the most proper sense, but also of what is its foundation. It is therefore also etiology, the study of the principles and causes of things. This etiological dimension of metaphysics of being in the most proper sense also does not allow for its full de-
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velopment and foundation in a mere study of substance in the Aristotelian style. Instead, only a metaphysics of the person uncovers entirely new types of causality that cannot be reduced, for example, to the four Aristotelian causes that apply to all real beings. Also, the answer that the perfected person is being properly speaking, if applied to deficient human beings existing in time, is not satisfactory in an ultimate way. How can an imperfect, suffering, ignorant, and often evil human person threatened by death be being in the most proper sense? 4.
The second and ultimate level on which we can pose the problem of being in the most authentic sense is therefore the ultimate metaphysical level of this question and at the same time a new question over and against the question of “What is most authentically being among the actual beings in the world?” Namely, we can ask about being in the absolutely perfect sense, about “being in the supreme sense.” This is the most important topic of metaphysics and it neither refers to, nor is reducible to, metaphysics as the study of categories, as we will see in our critical examination of Gracia’s position.
In reference to this question, Aristotle says that metaphysics is the science of God, of the Unmoved Mover, a divine science. Also Plato, though he identifies true being in the absolute sense with the eternal forms or the idea of the Good, in another respect, also identifies it with the demiurge (the “Creator and Father of the Universe”).15 Both the third and the fourth question of metaphysics also require a metaphysics of pure perfections that does not only involve an understanding of those universal transcendentals that we have discussed and that are, by being found in every being, ipso facto also “pure perfections.” For many pure pefections are in no way universal properties of all beings. Consider life, consciousness, knowledge, wisdom, justice, happiness, and so on. Also, these are perfections that carry no essential limitations and that we can characterize through five essential characteristics. So what are pure perfections more precisely speaking? v. The core of pure perfections is their being good, absolutely speaking. What is meant here by good is not only that which is sought for its own sake, and not only good as a means toward something else.16 The “good absolutely speaking” does not mean here just any good whose importance is objective, and that is for this reason intrinsically and inherently good, or good in the sense of being just good for me, let alone just being subjectively satisfying for me as harmless pleasures. Such an absolute value that characterizes a good in itself and lifts it out from the neutral by an intrinsic preciousness stands in the center of Plato’s thought.17 Plato expresses this repeatedly.18 In addi-
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tion, phenomenological realists have elucidated this concept of absolute value with an entirely new clarity.19 What we mean when we say that something is a pure perfection, however, is not only the assertion that a good is intrinsically and objectively good in itself such as, for example, the value of animal life or human dignity—but that it is good in such a way that one cannot surpass its goodness without possessing it. This is neither true of animal life, which is good in an essentially limited way that excludes higher goods such as human intelligent nature, nor of human dignity that precludes higher values and natures such as omniscience. Therefore we have here an entirely new sense of “goodness absolutely speaking.” Anselm of Canterbury distinguishes between such properties that to possess—because of their inherent limitations—is only sometimes and in some respects better than not to possess them and other properties that it is always and in each being (in quolibet) better to possess than not to possess. This presupposes an insight into the inseparable link between some qualities and their inherent limitations, while other qualities are “pure” goods or perfections because in their essence any inherent limitation is absent. Pure perfections are such things as goodness itself, but also being, life, beauty, knowledge, wisdom, omniscience, and so on. To possess any of these pure perfections is absolutely and in every case better than not to possess them. Anselm’s great discovery implies that no pure perfection can be restricted to a human being, or find its absolute realization in a human being, but transcends all of its earthly actualizations.20 The most significant further steps in the elaboration of the theory of pure perfections were achieved by Scotus and later by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.21 We could define the first essential mark of a pure perfection following Scotus’s view that a pure perfection is one that is simply and absolutely better than anything incompatible with it.22 vi. A second essential characteristic of pure perfections exists. Namely, each pure perfection, when we turn the mental gaze at what constitutes its nature, its ratio formalis, is seen to possess a sort of greatness and beauty, wealth and ideal depth. And it is in this light that we see imperfections of beauty, of goodness, of justice, and so on, in all concrete things. This holds true in some sense of most other ideas (such as of the great and small) but in an entirely new sense only of the eide of the pure perfections, where we encounter more properly speaking not only the “idea” but the “ideal,” the higher and even the absolute beauty of its true essence.23 In the light of such an ideal, which far transcends any concrete embodiment, we judge concrete things as deficient and
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wanting—just as Plato, in Book 5 of the Republic, says that the beautiful will in some point of view be found ugly. vii. Each pure perfection admits not only of a higher “ideal perfection” as a criterion of such judgments, but of infinity and, we may add, of absolute infinity. If we can gain this breath-taking metaphysical knowledge into a quality’s character of pure perfection, we can know of it (and we know this of many attributes) that it is not essentially limited and therefore admits of infinity. We can even discover more than that: as long as pure perfections are limited, they are not fully themselves. They are only truly themselves when they are infinite. Any finite being is not fully “being itself,” any limited justice not fully justice, any finite good not the good itself, and so on.24 Infinite perfection is, therefore, far from an empty concept of whose content we would know nothing. Instead, infinite perfection includes the full possession of the ratio formalis of all “pure perfections” (many of which are known by us) in their infinite form. In addition, this unlimited form of the pure perfections is in some dark way accessible to the human intellect. Of all the beauty and goodness we understand, they are beauty and goodness themselves only when they are without limits and when they are infinite. To be able to understand this is perhaps the highest achievement of all rational knowledge.25 viii. This true knowledge of the absolute Good itself does not make false what Thomas Aquinas said: we can know that these perfections are without inherent limit and therefore that what is signified by the names of being, goodness, and so on, is unlimited—even though our mode of understanding and signifying them is limited.26 ix. Pure perfections possess a profound inner unity revealed first in that they are all mutually compatible, which can be demonstrated from the first mark listed above. For if goodness and beauty were both pure perfections but incompatible with each other, it would be absolutely better and at the same time not better to possess the given pure perfection goodness, or beauty. It would be better to possess goodness because of its character of pure perfection and better not to possess it because it would contradict beauty, which is a pure perfection and therefore absolutely better to possess. Yet, their unity reaches far deeper than mere compatibility as a logical consequence of their first mark. They are necessarily united if they are to be perfect and therefore they go hand in hand and strengthen each other mutually. On its deepest level, their unity means that they cannot reach their perfection when separate from the other pure perfections such that their supreme unity in some absolute state suggests itself.
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JOSEF SEIFERT x. As an especially phenomenological assertion, Scotus says that the pure perfections are all irreducibly simple (simpliciter simplex and therefore indefinable). We can interpret this as their having an utterly irreducible essence. The pure perfections are never just a case of another quality. They have their unmistakable identity. And the richness of their irreducible thisness is not even lost in their perfect unity and simplicity in the infinite being.
Without the knowledge of pure perfections, the absolute and infinite being of classical metaphysics would be completely unknowable, since on the one hand we cannot predicate a limited attribute of it and on the other we only know such limited attributes. The Anselmian formulation that God is “that greater than which nothing can be thought” defines the divine essence precisely in terms of the plenitude of all pure perfections.27 In its fourth sense, which organically extends the third and is already implicitly contained in it, the fundamental question of metaphysics is not merely: “Which of the kinds of being accessible through experience is being in the primary and the most excellent sense?” Instead, it is: “Which ‘something’ possesses the reality of the authentic being (Seienden) in the absolute sense and in absolutely unsurpassable perfection?” On this level, metaphysics for Aristotle is identical with theology, with philosophy of God, such as is developed in book XII of the Metaphysics, even though Aristotle does not sufficiently differentiate the four fundamental questions of metaphysics about being as being, or conceives in a sufficiently adequate manner absolute and divine being in itself and in its essential attributes. B. The Source of Being and the Tasks of Metaphysics “Why is there anything instead of nothing?” We can also understand metaphysics as an attempt to give a response to this question about the ultimate ground of being as such and about being in the most authentic sense as the source, primary cause, and primary form of all being. The supreme metaphysical foundation of being stands in the absolute, divine being, not primarily because every contingent being is through it and not even because the absolute being is intrinsically and necessarily real. Instead, it is because God by virtue of his infinite perfection and inner fullness of value, recognized in every act of adoration and love, carries in himself the reason of being and the final end of being as such. The infinite perfection of absolute being unites in itself all the pure perfections, therefore also all the uniquely personal pure perfections. The absolute being must have, no—must be—knowledge itself, wisdom, truth, freedom and omnipotence, happiness and the totality of love. The first and final end of being as such consists first in the glory and the value of the infinite being and good itself. Namely, in Anselm’s “that greater than
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which nothing can be thought.” This supreme and free being constitutes at the same time the first end of all temporal things, whose primary fundamental significance and whose reason for being consist (in the first place) in the praise of the infinite good that merits—according to the principle of due response—all praise and glory.28 This most profound metaphysical value of the glorificatio Dei (glorification of God), which surpasses even that of the happiness of the finite being and that we can also grasp philosophically as the ultimate end of contingent being, is fulfilled only on the level of personal being. The vocation of personal being is the praise of God, offered freely and grounded in the knowledge of the truth about being and the good. For this reason also, it is necessary that a classical metaphysics also be personalistic. Earthly beings can accomplish the most adequate glorificatio Dei only through free acts (in the essentially personal act of adoration and of the free glorification of God). Only secondarily does the proper destiny and reason of the beings of the world consist in their participation in the absolute good through their felicity. We can also accomplish this secondary final end exclusively in personal knowledge and love, as well as in personal and spiritual sanctity, in the becoming like unto God to the greatest degree possible. The ultimate being itself, which we must become similar to, is a person such that a demonstration that personal being is a pure perfection, and as such inseparable from the absolute being, is already contained in a Platonic position, or at least implied by a Platonic metaphysics.29 Plato says that God cannot ever be unjust—that he is, to the contrary, justice to the greatest degree possible—and that we can be similar to him only when we also become as just as possible.30 He is speaking of a justice that obviously only persons can realize, as the supreme reality not only of the world, but in God himself. These are not mere gratuitous assertions, but concise formulations of the core of Platonic-Socratic metaphysics as a metaphysics both classical and proto-personalistic. A classical metaphysics, which is true and that is a metaphysics of the ultimate ground, of the principle, the supreme arche, and the reason why there exists something instead of nothing, can therefore only be personalistic. Nothingness and non-being, the great antithesis to being and an important topic of metaphysical investigations, can also be located within such an understanding of metaphysics. For while it is not part of the notion of being as being, and not a category of being, it can well be explained, in its different meanings and degrees of radicality, in the light of our four understandings of being as being. Nothingness is one of the opposites of any being understood in the first sense and therefore figures prominently in the principles of contradiction (the same X cannot be and not be at the same time), of excluded middle (between the being and not being of the same in the same sense there exists no third alternative), and of sufficient reason (every being requires a sufficient reason for what and how it is instead of being different and for why it is instead of not being and this reason
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never lies in nothingness). Nothingness constitutes the opposite to the transcendental property of being something (aliquid) of any being that can, in this respect, be called “not nothing” (non nihil). Consequently, we could regard the absence of any contingent being in any category that preceded its being as its nothingness from which it emerged. Its nothingness as its non-being precedes, so to speak, the actus essendi and that makes it correct to say that these beings, which cannot be beginningless, emerge from nothing.31 In this respect, nothingness can—in the form of a total absence of a given being—be “real.” We can also contrast nothingness with all other forms and dimensions of being as their total absence up to the (intrinsically impossible but still indispensable) concept of absolute nothingness that would also be the opposite of the absolute Being as well as of any being of any modality and category. Therefore Gracia’s concern to find a place for non-being and nothingness within metaphysics can be fully accommodated within a metaphysics of being as being, because nothingness, as its contrast, must be understood as part of understanding being and its principles, even though nothingness cannot be called a category (understood as a most general genus of being). 2. Some Critical Reflections on Gracia’s Definition of Metaphysics and Its Task We now are in a position to make some critical observations on Gracia’s work. In spite of my admiration of the many achievements in the book, I have to avow several disagreements that begin with its subtitle. The full title is Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge and this title suggests two things that I disagree with: (1) That metaphysics is not so much a science about being as about the foundation of knowledge, which in my view is true only quite indirectly. (2) That its subject is to be restricted to exploring categories. And this double difficulty with the thoughts that appear to be expressed in the subtitle leads us to a series of, what I hope are, constructive critical reflections. A. Ambiguities of the Notion of Category Gracia writes: “Three main theses are defended. The first is that metaphysics is the part of philosophy that studies categories.”32 Therefore, we best proceed systematically with a critical consideration of the book, by first addressing its central thesis: that metaphysics is the study of categories. What are categories? Does Gracia break with, or return to, the classical notion of categories in his work? Are categories all meanings of predicable words, or only the most universal genera of things? Repeatedly in the book, we read statements like the following one: “I adopted a provisional understanding of them [namely, of “categories”] as what-
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ever is expressed by terms or expressions, simple or complex, that can be predicated of other terms or expressions.”33 Such a notion of category is not only extremely wide but also extremely vague and therefore confusing. It is vague and confusing because how can the category substance, to name just one, be “predicated of terms or expressions?” It appears that of terms and expressions, instead of the beings and things meant by them, we can only predicate a limited number of the classical categories (quantity, for example). This is so because these categories are chiefly applicable to real beings and also only quite a limited number of other predicates such as that they are precise or unclear and so on. For terms and expressions—and, more generally speaking, beings of other modalities hardly conceived by Aristotle—such as pure entia rationis (beings of reason), logical entities, possibilities, and the like may also require other and new categories. Also, if we declared all meanings of predicable terms categories, and therefore also parts of the subject-matter of metaphysics, such a position would constitute a complete and absurd break with the whole tradition of metaphysics and with what it, since Aristotle, understands by “category” in the metaphysical sense. This is so for three reasons: 1.
2.
3.
While Aristotle says that deutera ousia (secondary substance), the abstract character of substance, is predicable of other things, he denies this of the most important of all ontological categories, namely substance, saying that it differs from the others precisely because it is not predicable of any other thing. In other words, categories are not predicable when they refer to modes of being, being of the most important category, namely that which stands in itself in being (substance). Therefore, Gracia’s definition of categories would omit the most important of them. If Gracia means that all terms that express something that can be attributed to something else is a category and that this is what metaphysics studies, I would strongly object to such a claim that categories in such a comprehensive sense are what metaphysics studies. Gracia observes this when he writes in Chapter Three, dedicated to the object of metaphysics, about those who identify it with categories: “Categorial being is what all the other disciplines study and, therefore . . . metaphysics would amount to nothing more than . . . . the encyclopedia of all knowledge.”34 This all-comprehensive notion of category also entails a complete break with classical metaphysics, which means by category something entirely different. Namely, the most universal genera of beings only and not the other sorts of more specific ontological natures and the logical, linguistic, and epistemological categories to which Gracia refers. In wondering whether the categories are ten or twelve, or only four or five
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JOSEF SEIFERT in number, metaphysicians plainly understood something completely different by the term “category” than the broad notion Gracia appears to have in mind, which also includes epistemological and logical as well as linguistic categories.
Consider especially his second thesis of the neutrality of the metaphysics presented by him “with respect to the question of whether they [the categories] are linguistic, conceptual, or real in the sense that there are categories of each sort but not all categories are of one sort.”35 This statement and many others confirm an interpretation of the meaning of the subtitle of the work to the effect that metaphysics studies the categories of human knowledge, logic, and language instead of just the categories of being itself. I fully agree with Gracia on the fundamental importance of metaphysics for the foundation of logic as well as of epistemology and on the existence and importance of all of the types of categories he mentions. I also agree with his opposition to the reduction of the problem of categories to any one of these levels. But I do not think that the task of metaphysics entails the study of logical categories (a task for logicians), or of linguistic categories (a task for grammarians and philosophers of language) per se. Instead, I hold that the task of metaphysics entails the study of the highest and most fundamental genera of being and therefore to the ontological categories as those most abstract types of being, which each other thing can be regarded as a member. This is obviously not to deny that metaphysics must both seek the ultimate foundations of logical and linguistic categories and simultaneously use and build on some of them—but their exploration as such pertains to other philosophical disciplines. The study of logical, epistemological and linguistic categories per se falls outside the scope of metaphysics, which explores ontological categories. Gracia’s position on this point appears divided. On the one hand, he defends the bold thesis that metaphysics studies not only all ontological categories understood in his broad meaning of the term but logical and linguistic categories as well. On the other hand, he appears to return to the classical idea of the categories as the most general kinds of being. Gracia appears guilty here of a contradiction or untenable ambiguity when, while claiming that metaphysics deals with all categories, he reintroduces the classical notion of category as indicating the subject matter of metaphysics. For example, he says: “the aim of metaphysicians is quite restricted; they seek to provide a general categorization and to see how the specific categories found in our experience, or posed by other disciplines, fit within it.”36 But is this not a contradictory or at least a puzzling notion of category? Gracia’s answer to this question appears unconvincing. He tries to get around this difficulty and in some sense appears to return to the classical notion of category when he says: “According to its specific aim, metaphysics is concerned
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with categorization; according to its object, it is concerned with every category, although with the most general categories in one way and with the less general categories in another way.”37 But is this true? Is metaphysics concerned with all properties that are predicable of something in any significant way? We never see in books of metaphysics reference to all categories in this comprehensive sense, not even as examples in order to illustrate the most general categories, let alone as the subject of investigation. Suppose that the metaphysician’s task consisted in being some center of information that members of all disciplines were to come to asking questions. For example, “What most general category do cultures, white mice, the fur of grey cats, the teeth of sharks, the distance between the beautiful spots on a peacock, the sky, a pair of skis, pans, the extension and location of pots, and so on, belong to?” This new and quite exhausting task for metaphysicians would obviously be nothing but an application of metaphysical knowledge to concrete cases. It would be like a hobby for some metaphysicians who have little else to do, but not the task or subject matter of metaphysics itself except to the extent that such examples help us to test or to gain further knowledge of the most universal categories. In the light of all this, we have to insist first that metaphysics neither analyzes the categories of human knowledge, nor logical or linguistic categories, nor the categories seen from a neutral perspective (leaving it open whether they are linguistic, logical, or epistemological). Instead, metaphysics specifically turns to the ontological categories, the categories of being. Secondly, metaphysics does not study all ontological categories either but only the most fundamental ones and it is not even bound to fulfil the comprehensive task of classifying all concrete data under the most general categories. Concerning the meaning and number of categories, whose exploration belongs to metaphysics, I would add first that metaphysics, and on this I agree with Gracia, should not only study the most general types of being, the traditional categories, but also, besides existence, many other natures as well. On the one hand, though, I would see this task as more restricted than Gracia by not including all categories (in the wide sense used by him) under the subject matter of metaphysics. On the other hand, I would considerably enlarge the scope of this task by not restricting it to a mere classification of diverse data and categories in the broad sense under the headings of the most general categories. Besides, I would add additional reasons for including in metaphysics the study of data that are not (the most general) categories. I would say that metaphysics ought to study all fundamental natures of beings (such as of life, person, community, art), which entail a fundamentally different distance to nothingness or provide a decisive part of the answer to the question of being as being in the third and significant sense, namely, of being in the most proper sense. Regarding this point, and without wishing to call them “categories,” which term has the more precise meaning explained above, I would count many
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other essences, irreducible to the most general categories and to any other nature, among the valid topics of metaphysics. But I do not hold that we should study them only under the point of view—exclusively mentioned by Gracia as “the other way” of considering them metaphysically—of how they can be classified in terms of the more general categorical forms of being. Let us ask another question that touches on the nature and concept of category. Are there non-predicable ontological categories that would contradict Gracia’s definition of them? We have to answer this question in the affirmative. For the most important ontological category, prote ousia (primary substance), substance as a self-standing thing, is precisely not predicable. Therefore the whole notion of category Gracia uses, in this respect (namely to call category only what is predicable), is not too comprehensive but too restrictive. Gracia’s failure to recognize non-predicable categories might derive from a lack of clear distinction between ontological, logical, and linguistic categories. For once we distinguish generally kinds of being (ontological categories) from concepts and logical categories (some of these cannot serve as predicates) and specifically from linguistic expressions (all of these can function as predicates), it becomes clear first that ontological categories can be predicated in principle only in another sense. Namely, not of terms or concepts or parts of sentences (except inasmuch as these are considered as special types of entities), but only of things (beings) and that, second, not all genera of beings are predicable, least of all the most important one, substance. Ontologically speaking, we cannot predicate concrete substances such as this ox, or Socrates, of any other being because they do not inhere in any other thing and stand in being by themselves. Only linguistically speaking we can have “this ox” function as predicate such as when we say: “This X that you see is an ox.” This leads to a further criticism of Gracia’s position. B. Neutrality and the Notion Category: Contentlessness or Non-Reductionism? Gracia appears content to answer the question about the nature and tasks of metaphysics from a standpoint that he calls “neutral” and that promises to answer his questions in a more scientific way. Unfortunately, this neutrality has two entirely different meanings. The first, which appears to be generally favored in the book, leads to a destruction of metaphysics and to contradictions. The second is good, but is only misleadingly called “neutrality.” Let us start by turning to a consideration of the first meaning of neutrality and to some criticisms thereof: 1.
As the second of his main assertions about the book, Gracia states that his essay on metaphysics is neutral: “with respect to the question of whether they [the categories] are linguistic, conceptual, or real in the sense that there are categories of each sort but not all categories are of
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one sort.”38 The author repeatedly appears to glory in the fact, as does Irving M. Copi with his logic, of having written a book acceptable to all metaphysicians regardless of whether they are realists, idealists (conceptualists), nominalists, and so on, or even deny the possibility of metaphysics but imply it.39 Yet such a claim, which is made repeatedly by the author, gives rise to three problems: i. First, it leads to many contradictions to other parts and to the major gist of the book, for example to the author’s critique of metaphysical nominalism, conceptualism, and realism, wherein these and many other positions about categories that had first been declared compatible with the treatise, are rejected as untenable, contradictory, reductionistic, and in other ways wrong.40 Nonetheless, even immediately after having criticized them as false and reductionistic, Gracia declares them again as compatible with his allegedly “neutral” standpoint: “This means that the very notion of category should be understood to be neutral with respect to whether categories are extramental kinds of entities, concepts, or words.”41 ii. This “neutrality” leads to confusing statements of what categories are of the sort cited above, which are, both in terms of their allcomprehensiveness and in terms of what is said about them, not at all compatible, for example, with a metaphysical and realist notion of the categories. For example, to understand categories as the most universal essential forms of entities is incompatible with the assertion that they are whatever “can be predicated of other terms or expressions.”42 For most ontological categories cannot be predicated of terms and expressions at all. iii. The “neutrality” of the position leads to an evaporation of any philosophically and metaphysically significant content of the notion category. Let us assume that categories are nothing but words and the ways that these are used. Then precisely metaphysics and metaphysical categories do not exist (even though also this nominalism and the resulting negation of metaphysics remains contradictory in presupposing some understanding of being). Therefore a neutrality that prescinds from all these differences leads to a philosophical obliteration of the field metaphysics. Similarly, Copi’s prescinding from the question whether logical laws are objective, subjective, ontologically founded, or just linguistic leads not to a pure philosophical science of logic but to a potential negation of, or at least a total prescinding from, what constitutes the most fundamental question of philosophical logic. Namely, what are logical entities such as concepts, propositions, and logical laws, and in
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2.
what is their necessity rooted? The second meaning of “neutrality” is expressed by Gracia in the following way: “Each category, qua category, should be considered to be whatever it is, as determined by its proper definition, and nothing more.”43 And again even more clearly: “Hence, whether a particular category is a linguistic, mental, or extramental kind of entity, should not be determined before an investigation of the category is carried out.”44
In such passages, “neutrality” is no longer defined in terms of an epoché regarding the question of whether a category is mental or extramental, but as an openness-of-mind to investigate each category in its own terms and only then to decide the question whether it is just subjective or objective, mental or extramental, and so on. But we should call this sense of “neutrality” a striving for differentiation or “comprehensiveness” of a metaphysical position. The assertion that metaphysics needs to be “neutral” in this sense is quite a good point that requires, however, a rejection of the first sense of neutrality and consists in a differentiated and non-reductionistic account of each kind of category in its own nature. It recognizes all of the categories (ontological, conceptual, linguistic, and so on) and distinguishes each in its identity and difference. It also requires overcoming what Gracia sees as a one-sided explanation and an absolutization of some categories or some difficulties of the single conceptions of categories he carefully expounds.45 In other words, he wishes to recognize both transcendent and immanent, ontological, conceptual, and other categories, and the characteristics of each in order to overcome a position that seeks to explain the whole variety of phenomena termed “categories” in the light of just one of these. And this requires a comprehensive metaphysical study. C. The Irreducibility of Metaphysics to a Study of Categories This criticism partly refers to all meanings of categories, partly only to the classical understanding of ontological categories. If we understand the categories as objects of metaphysics in the sense of the classical tradition, namely as a study of the most universal genera of beings—a position sometimes adopted by Gracia and even fundamentally presupposed by his basic position—then obviously metaphysics cannot be reduced to the study of categories. This is clear from our preceding exposition of the important but modest place they hold within the whole of metaphysics in the first part of this essay. And inasmuch as Gracia espouses the explanation of metaphysics as analysis of the “most general categories” and then just adds the need of their application to all other categories, metaphysics must obviously not be reduced to just a study of categories. For such an understanding of the task of metaphysics would exclude important parts.
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For example, it would exclude the discussion of the transcendentals and first principles, which are precisely prior to, and more universal than, the categories. Granted that the categories are the most fundamental genera (and therefore essences) of beings, it would also exclude a discussion of the actus essendi, the discussion of the existence of God, of the real existence of the world, and so on, which are important parts of metaphysics. It would omit the treatment of all those pure perfections that are not transcendentals in the widest sense and most parts of special metaphysics. It would further omit from metaphysics the answer to the third and fundamental question concerning being as being, through a metaphysics of the person, and so on. Finally, it would exclude as well the highest object of metaphysics, God, who obviously transcends those categories that refer only to finite beings such as time and place. But the study of God also includes the study of many pure perfections that we can neither regard as just parts of the classical set of categories nor sufficiently analyze if they are just so classified, which would be problematic in principle. In addition, if we take “categories” in the bewilderingly universal sense used by Gracia, not even all classical categories (such as prote ousia) or substance in the ontological sense fall under this description, as we have seen. Even if we improve the description of category by omitting the “predicability” mark from it, several problems remain. First, it remains impossible to reduce all metaphysics to a study of the categories. For example, real existence (as distinct from the general category of existence) cannot be so reduced and is an important issue for metaphysical questions of the real existence of the world, the spirit (ego cogitans and other persons), the material world, and so forth. Such questions as that of the real existence of the world, spirit, freedom, immortality, and so on cannot in any manner be subsumed under the heading of a study of categories even when these are taken in the widest sense of this term. Second, even the most important issue of metaphysics, the question of the real existence, the real being of God (as distinct from Gracia’s proposed study of the category of divinity and so on) is not a categorical question. It is precisely the question of whether a being really exists that fulfils this “category” (when this term is used in the misleadingly wide sense). Third, a reduction of metaphysics to a study of categories is also a false way to reach the goal of the “unity of metaphysics,” because it is reductionistic.46 D. Responses to Gracia’s Attack on Metaphysics as the Science of Being as Being Gracia has three main arguments against understanding metaphysics, with Aristotle, as the science of being as being.47
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First, he raises the objection that metaphysics, if such is its object, “excludes both individual beings and kinds of being.”48 But against this interpretation of the admittedly obscure and misleading classical definition of metaphysics we might object that it considers the meaning of “being as being” solely in the first of our four distinctions and in that case Gracia’s objection would well be to the point. For if such wholly abstract consideration of transcendental being were its whole content, it would not only follow that “metaphysics studies everything” but also that many distinct and important parts of metaphysics, all of those that correspond to the three other meanings of being as being outlined above, would be excluded. But while some authors may interpret the phrase exclusively in this narrow and simultaneously most abstract way, I do not defend such a view and would concur with Gracia’s first objection if being as being were so interpreted. But his objection in no way applies to our broad and differentiated understanding of the phrase. Gracia’s second objection runs as follows: Being as being cannot be the object of metaphysics because this term is either senseless or it refers to “nothing other than the various individual beings and particular kinds of being which compose the universe.”49 To this objection, which Gracia does not discuss further, I would reply that this assertion is incorrect. Not only the first meaning of “being as being,” but also the others do not refer merely to the collection of all things or to the single categories of kinds of being. The first deals with the most universal traits and principles of all being that cut across some of the modalities and all of the categories of being. The second does not deal with all individual things nor even with all species of beings but only with those that are so fundamental and characteristic that they entail a different opposition to nothingness and elucidate the meaning of being as being in its fundamental divisions and, so to speak, in its principally different distances and oppositions to nothingness. The third, building on the second, deals with what possesses the character of being in the most proper sense and therefore asks an entirely different question again and a question irreducible to a study of all kinds of being. The fourth least of all deals with the collection of all things but with absolute being. Therefore, none of the understandings of being as being are subject to Gracia’s second critical objection. The third critical objection claims that if it were to study being as being, metaphysics would “turn out to be an empty discipline.”50 But neither the “indefinability of being” invoked in this context nor the primitive (ultimate, originary, and irreducible) character of being either excludes the point that different marks and properties of all being may be analyzed or identified nor entails that metaphysics is an empty discipline.51 If we distinguish different kinds of definition, we can see that we have essential definitions and analyses that do not define a thing through a proximate genus and specific difference, which obviously is impossible in the case of being, but still is able to define or to identify being in terms of distinct moments and properties rooted in it.52 It is not true that the in-
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definability of being or the good results in a position such as George E. Moore expresses with regard to the good.53 3. Closing Remarks I will now summarize and expand upon two of my most important critical observations on Gracia’s central thesis of equating metaphysics with a philosophy of categories. The first critical observation was that the study of different categories is not excluded by a study of being as being. As a matter of fact, a study of the categories is necessarily part of the second and of the third and fourth sense of a first philosophy of being as being. Gracia, though, does not appear to recognize this given his narrow understanding of the phrase being as being (solely in the first sense). The second critical observation was that metaphysics cannot be restricted to the study of categories. Metaphysics, while truly dealing with ontological categories as the most universal genera of (real) being, can in no way be restricted to the study of the categories for six reasons. First, being as being in the first sense discussed above precisely considers the transcendental meaning, properties, and principles that fall outside, and therefore apply to all the categories and even, at least to some extent, belong to all the five modalities of being. As the transcendental sense of being in the most encompassing and universal meaning of the term is a central issue of metaphysics, we must not reduce metaphysics to a study of categories. Second, the metaphysical modalities are, at least in some respects, even more general than the categories and should therefore be clearly distinguished from them: the categories either chiefly or only refer to the first of these five modalities of being, real being.54 Since the distinction of ontological modalities—both understood as the five spheres of being distinguished above and in the more restricted sense of ontological modalities such as contingency, necessity, and so on— belongs to metaphysics and cannot be reduced to the study of the classical categories, metaphysics cannot be reduced to a categorization of reality.55 Third, when turning to the second subject-matter of metaphysics interpreted as the study of being as being, namely being in its fundamentally different senses, we must note that the categories belong only to different types of essences. Therefore, we cannot say that a metaphysics of being as esse, which is a crucial part of metaphysics, is reducible to the study of the categories. To reduce metaphysics in this way would be a sort of essentialism that the school of existentialist Thomism and realist phenomenologists rightly have criticized. Fourth, within the study of different genera of being the investigation into categories as the most universal and abstract genera of being is only part of the study. Also included is an ontology of life, of the person, of both personal and non-personal forms of causality, and so on, which are not concerned with the clas-
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sical categories as the most general genera of being. The same is true of, according to some, the, and in my opinion, one of the most crucial questions of metaphysics: “Why is there something instead of nothing?” We cannot answer this question sufficiently by a study of the categories. Fifth, metaphysics culminates in the study of absolute being: of that “greater than which nothing can be conceived.” And this absolute being, as well as the pure perfections, goes beyond the scope of the categories even if some categories as well are pure perfections and must be attributed to the absolute being. Yet, neither is God just a member of an ontological category nor are all pure perfections categories. Sixth, and finally, metaphysics of real things and most of all of persons, and, in an entirely new sense, of God, also deal with the individual, the incommunicable, the unique and irrepeatable. And this is not reducible to a category. Gracia’s discussions of individuality plainly show this. Let me return at the end to the many good reasons mentioned at the beginning of this paper that motivate a true philosophical delight over the appearance of Gracia’s Metaphysics and its Task. It is the work of a sharp mind and of a real metaphysician, who has already excelled in this field of philosophy before, especially in his well-known studies on individuality, but who has presented in this book a very insightful and original philosophical work that deserves to be studied in depth.56 Above all, this paper is meant as an invitation to a hopefully very fruitful future dialogue with the author whom I admire very much as an eminent thinker and philosopher, my highly respected friend and colleague Jorge J. E. Gracia to whom this volume is dedicated.
NOTES 1. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), p. xvi. 2. See my discussion in Josef Seiftert, “Texts and Things,” Annual ACPA Proceedings, 72 (1999), pp. 41–68. 3. See Aristotle, Metaphysics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1968), bk. 3, 6, 1003a1. 4. Ibid., bk. 4, 3, 1005b8 ff. See also Edmund Husserl, “Prolegomena,” Logical Investigations (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 5th ed., 1968), vol. 1, chs. 5–8; Alexander Pfänder, Logik (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1963), pp. 197–214. For an interpretation of the Aristotelian treatment of the principle of contradiction in the context of ousia and the unity of metaphysics, see Giovanni Reale, Il Concetto di Filosofia Prima e l’Unita della Metafisica di Aristotle (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 3rd ed., 1967), trans. John R. Catan as The Concept of First Philosophy and the Unity of the Metaphysics of Aristotle (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980), pp. 127 ff. 5. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, bk. 4, 2, 1003 a 33, and Franz Brentano, Von der mannigfaltigen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1862), reprinted in 1960 by the Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt.
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6. See Roman Ingarden, “Essentiale Fragen,” Jahrbuch für Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Forschung (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1925), vol. 7, pp. 125–304, Jean Hering, “Bemerkungen über das Wesen, die Wesenheit und die Idee,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1921), vol. 4, pp. 495–543. See also Josef Seifert, “Essence and Existence: A New Foundation of Classical Metaphysics on the Basis of ‘Phenomenological Realism,’ and a Critical Investigation of ‘Existentialist Thomism’,” Aletheia, 1 (1977), pp. 17–157, Aletheia, 1:2 (1977), pp. 371– 459, and Sein und Wesen (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1996), ch. 1. 7. See Husserl, “Prolegomena,” Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1970). See also Josef Seifert, “Is the Existence of Truth dependent upon Man?” Review of Metaphysics, 35 (1982), pp. 461–481, and “Are There Timeless Falsities? On the Difference between Truth and Falsity with Respect to the Ideal Existence of Meaning-Units. A Reply to Mark Roberts,” Aletheia, 6 (1993–1994), pp. 280–320. 8. St. Thomas Aquinas, De Ente et Essentia, in Opera Omnia (ut sunt in indice thomistico additis 61 scriptis ex aliis medii aevi auctoribus), ed. Roberto Busa, S. J. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1980), vol. 3, pp. 583–587. For an English translation, see On Being and Essence, trans., Armand A. Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2nd ed., 1968). See also Étienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1952), Josef Seifert, Sein und Wesen, Cornelio Fabro, La Nozione Metafisica di Partecipazione secondo S. Tommaso d’Aquino (Torino: Società Editrice Internazionale di Torino, 3rd ed., 1963), and Partecipazione e causalità secondo S. Tommaso d’Aquino (Torino: Società Editrice Internazionale di Torino, 1960). 9. I do this more thoroughly in Seifert, Sein und Wesen, ch. 2. 10. For further meanings of metaphysics, see Reale, The Concept of First Philosophy, p. xiv, ff. 11. Josef Seifert, Essere e persona: Verso una fondazione fenomenologica di una metafisica classica e personalistica (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1989). 12. See Seifert, “Essence and Existence,” and Sein und Wesen, ch. 1. 13. For an interpretation of metaphysics as “the science of substance,” see Giovanni Reale, Il Motore immobile. Traduzione, introduzione e commento (Brescia: Editrice La Scuola, 1963), esp. pp. xiii ff., xviii ff. 14. See Josef Seifert, What is Life? On the Irreducibility of Life to Chaotic and NonChaotic Physical Systems (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, B.V., 1993). 15. See Reale, Il Motore immobile, p. xix ff, and Storia della filosofia antica (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1979–80), vol. 2, pp. 33 ff., p. 261 ff, and Per una nuova interpretatione die Platone: rilettura della metafisica dei grandi dialoghi alla luce delle “Dottrine non scritte,” (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1991), passim. 16. See Plato, Republic, bk. 2, 357, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. E. Hamilton and H. Cairns (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961). 17. Ibid., bk. 2, 357E–358A. 18. See Plato, Republic, bk. 2, 358, 361. 19. For the best phenomenological treatment of the notion of objective value see Dietrich von Hildebrand, Ethics, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1978), chs. 1–3, 17–18. 20. Cf. Plato, Republic, bk. 7, 540. On the identification of the absolute Good and the absolute One as source of all being in Plato see Jens Halfwassen, “Philosophie als
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Transzendieren: Der Aufstieg zum hochsten Prinzip bei Platon und Plotin,” Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter, 3 (1998), pp. 29–42. 21. See Duns Scotus, Quaestiones Quodlibetales (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: The Franciscan Institute, 1950), q. 1, q. 5, Opus Oxoniensis, 1, d. 8, q. 2, Ordinatio 1, d., q. 3. See also John Duns Scotus, God and Creatures: The Quodlibetal Questions, trans. Felix Alluntis and Allan B. Wolter (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1981), pp. 6 ff., pp. 11 ff., pp. 108 ff., pp. 114 ff., pp. 119 ff. 22. In Essere e persona, ch. 5, I tried to show that also some limited subjects, not only their natures, as Scotus believed, can be incompatible with some pure perfections. 23. Josef Seifert, Ritornare a Platone. In appendice un inedito di Adolf Reinach, ed. Giuseppe Girgenti (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2000), vol. 81. 24. See Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Metaphysische Abhandlung, in Die Hauptwerke, ed. Gerhard Kröger (Stuttgart, Germany: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1967), pp. 26–27, and Essais de Theodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l’homme et l’ origine du Mal, in Die philosophischen Schriften, ed. C.J. Gerhardt (Hildesheim, Germany: G. Olms, 1965), vol. 6, pp. 158 ff., esp. 161 ff. 25. Therefore the audacious statements of St. Aurelius Augustine are justified; see De Trinitate, 7, 3, 4. 26. See the references to the respective texts of Aquinas and their discussion in Seifert, Essere e persona, ch. 5. 27. See also Plato, Sophist, 248D–249A, and Republic, bk. 2, 381C. 28. See Hildebrand, Ethics, chs. 17–18. 29. See Seifert, Essere e persona, chs. 9–15. 30. Plato, Theaetetus, 176B–176C. 31. For a proof of this, see Seifert, Essere e persona, ch. 10. 32. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, p. xvii. 33. Ibid., p. 177. 34. Ibid., p. 36. 35. Ibid., p. xvii., cf. p. 134. 36. Ibid., p. 140. 37. Ibid., p. 141. 38. Ibid., p. xvii., cf. p. 134. 39. Irving M. Copi, Symbolic Logic, 3rd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1967). 40. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, pp. 182–205. 41. Ibid., p. 205. 42. Ibid., p. 177. 43. Ibid., p. 205. 44. Ibid., p. 206. 45. Ibid., p. 182 ff. 46. Ibid., p. 210. 47. Ibid., pp. 26 ff. 48. Ibid., p. 26. 49. Ibid., p. 26. 50. Ibid., p. 27. 51. Ibid., p. 33. 52. For a further development see Seifert, Sein und Wesen, ch. 1–3.
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53. G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, 14th ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), ch. 1, p. 6 ff. 54. These I distinguish from logical and other modalities in Seifert, Sein und Wesen, chs. 2–3. 55. See also Roman Ingarden, Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt, in Existentialontologie (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1964), vol. 1, and Formalontologie, vols. 2, 1 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1965). See also Seifert, Sein und Wesen. 56. See Jorge J. E. Gracia, Individuality: An Essay on the Foundations of Metaphysics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988); and Suarez on Individuation (Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press, 1982).
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FOUR BEING AS BEING AND THE TASKS OF METAPHYSICS: RESPONSE TO SEIFERT Jorge J. E. Gracia Josef Seifert offers some direct and some indirect arguments against the view of metaphysics I present in Metaphysics and its Task.1 Indirectly, he argues against my position by attempting to show how all sorts of things can be part of the object of metaphysics when we conceive this object as being as being. Directly, he argues against my view of categories as the object of metaphysics and my objection against considering being as being as the proper object of the discipline. I deal with his objections against my view of categories in a separate response that combines his objections with those of Russell Pannier, Thomas D. Sullivan, and Emma Ingala Gómez. Additionally, for the sake of parsimony, I must ignore the indirect argument he presents. Here, then, I address only the direct objections Seifert formulates against my position and his criticisms of my objections against the view that identifies being as being as the proper object of metaphysics. The direct objections appear in different sections of Seifert’s paper, but I will present my responses to them together. I begin, however, with Seifert’s criticism of my position. 1. Response to the Direct Objections against My View Seifert offers two main arguments against my view. The first he divides into several parts, but they have the same form. I have paraphrased them as follows: “Gracia’s view, that metaphysics is the study of categories, must be rejected when we accept” what Seifert calls “a classical understanding of categories because then metaphysics excludes the study of all sorts of things that are part of that study.” He identifies these parts as the transcendentals and first principles, existence (including the existence of God), pure perfections that are not transcendental in the widest sense, being as being, the person, and God. He repeats this same argument at the end of his commentary where he adds other items, including absolute being, individual, the incommunicable, the unique, and the irrepeatable. But surely we cannot take this argument as a serious objection against my view for the simple reason that, when I claim that the object of study of metaphysics is categories, I am not speaking about categories in the “classical sense” that Seifert uses to formulate his objection. So, to say that if we interpret categories in
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the classical sense, my view is defective, is a non-starter. Obviously, under such conditions my view would be defective, but that is not my view and therefore I need not be concerned with its fate or viability. Seifert is aware of this, which is puzzling, for then why offer the argument? So he adds a second argument that tries to address my view. This argument consists in claiming that when we take categories in the broad sense in which I take them, “not even all classical categories . . . or substance in the ontological sense fall under this description . . . . [And] [e]ven if we improve the description of category by omitting the ‘predicability’ mark from it, several problems remain.” According to Seifert two important things are excluded from my view: (1) real existence, because this can never be reduced to a category; and (2) the real existence or being of God, for again, this is not a category and it does not involve a categorial question. To this Seifert adds still another objection: “[A] reduction of metaphysics to a study of categories is also a false way to reach the goal of the ‘unity of metaphysics,’ because it is reductionistic.” I do not know what to make of the last objection raised by Seifert. He appears to claim that my view is reductionistic, but to say this does not constitute an argument unless he brings forth further evidence in its support. This is especially necessary because I devote an entire chapter of my book to show that reductionism is precisely the fault of views of metaphysics other than mine, so that I claim that my view is not reductionistic and this is one of its distinguishing characteristics and strengths. So, for us to take the accusation of reductionism against my view seriously, he needs to spell it out in detail. Because Seifert does not do so, I must ignore the charge. But let me turn to the other argument. This appears to have two parts, based as it is on two counterexamples to my view: We can study neither real existence nor the existence of God in metaphysics according to my view because neither of these is or could be a category and metaphysics studies only categories. The source of the difficulty Seifert finds with my view appears to be that he attributes to me an understanding of category that I do not hold. According to my understanding, the first counter example he cites is indeed a category and, therefore, studied in metaphysics. I understand a category as what is expressed by a predicable term and since “real existence” is a predicable term and is not meaningless, then whatever the term expresses is a category. Obviously, if to be a category is to be something other than this, if it has to do with being conceptual in some sense, as many philosophers hold, then Seifert’s objection applies. But it most definitely does not apply to my view. The second counter example that Seifert brings up is the real existence and real being of God. Here matters are a bit more complicated, for I do not believe that terms that refer to individuals are predicable and therefore that what they express are categories. Neither Socrates nor his capacity to laugh or one of his acts of laughing are categories. So, if by “real existence of God” and “real being of
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God” Seifert means to refer to individual properties or even individual acts, then real existence and real being are not categories. Yet, this does not mean that in my view metaphysics excludes questions about the being or existence of the divine. And since we generally take God to be the only instance of divinity, because a correct understanding of divinity requires only one instantiation of it (if there exists any), then these questions of existence and being have to do with God. But if real existence and being are not taken as individual properties or acts, but merely as what is expressed by the predicable terms “real existence” and “being,” then metaphysics in my view deals with them. Although Seifert does not make it clear in the context of the argument, he might be thinking that “real existence” and “being” are not properly speaking predicates because what they express are not properly speaking properties or acts, such as white or running. And in the summary of his objection he gives at the end of his commentary, Seifert gives as an objection to my view that categories “belong only to different types of essences.” From this he argues that a metaphysics of categories would have to exclude a non-essential conception of being, such as that of St. Thomas Aquinas, turning metaphysics into a kind of essentialism. This shows that Seifert is working with a notion of predicate as what expresses an essence of some sort. But this is not my view at all! My understanding of predicate is not technical in that sense, involving a particular semantic view about what predicates mean. For me, to say that a term is “predicable” means that the term can be put in third place in a non-identity sentence, as we do in ordinary discourse. I explicitly stated this in the book. So by saying that “real existence” and “being” are predicable terms, I do not imply that they express properties like white or acts like running and therefore essences of any kind. So, again, what we have is that Seifert is arguing against a view that is significantly different from mine and therefore his objections do not apply to my view. But let me go beyond this and point out that in his efforts to speak about the real existence and being of God, Seifert does use the terms “real existence” and “real being” in third position. Obviously, by doing this he does not mean that they mean something essential, but then he should not saddle me with that charge when the only thing I have done is to describe what he and others do. Incidentally, Seifert incorrectly reports my position and then draws conclusions from it in several places. In one case (chapter 3, section 2, subsection A, 2 above), for example, he claims that I argue against my own position because I point out that identifying categories as the object of study of metaphysics makes of the discipline the encyclopedia of all knowledge. This is incorrect insofar as my view is not that the mark of metaphysics is that it has categories for its proper object—I reject this position—but instead that although metaphysics has that object, it pursues specific aims with regards to most general and less general categories.
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Seifert is also incorrect in inferring (in chapter 3, section 2, subsection A, 3) from the question I raise concerning whether categories are linguistic, conceptual, or real that this means they are categories of knowledge, logic, and language, and not of being. I do not think anybody can justifiably draw that inference. Finally, in the same section Seifert, referring to my view that metaphysics studies all categories, asks whether “metaphysics [is] concerned with all properties that are predicable of something in any significant way?” But, as I have made clear before, categories for me are neither properties nor predicable. The view that Seifert refers to, then, is not mine. 2. Response to My Objections against Being as Being Seifert, like some other critics of my views included in this volume, also tries to respond to my objections against the view of metaphysics that holds being as being as its proper object of study. Recall that my objection is that “being as being” can be understood in either one of four ways: as the collection of all individual beings, as the collection of all kinds of beings, as these two collections taken together, or as something other than these. Seifert gives three arguments against this objection. The first is that the fourth way of understanding being as being I list is not his and therefore that, although my objection may apply to those who hold such a view, it does not apply to his view. I have no quarrel with this conclusion, especially since I was not thinking of him when I gave this as a possible understanding of “being as being.” Seifert directs his second argument against the other three ways that I say we can understand “being as being.” His point is that it does “not refer simply” to these, but that it deals instead: first, “with the most universal traits and principles of all being that cut across some of the modalities and all of the categories of being”; second, not “with all individual things nor even with all species of being but only with those that are so fundamental and characteristic that they entail a different opposition to nothingness”; third, “with what possesses the character of being in the most proper sense”; and fourth, “with absolute being.” My answer to this objection is that everything that Seifert describes as being neither an individual being nor a kind of being turns out to be one or the other. Again, the problem here is that he is working with a narrow and technical understanding of kinds. He has in mind natural kinds, or species—indeed, in one place he refers to them as “species” and we should recall the point made earlier about essence. But this is not what I have in mind at all. My conception is general and includes everything about which we can say that they are. This includes Seifert’s universal traits, principles, modalities, and so on. And, obviously, absolute being, which I think he is using to refer to God, is an individual, for it could not be a universal (instantiable). So the challenge for Seifert, if he is going to offer a credible objection to my view, is to come up with something other than individual beings or
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kinds of beings that metaphysics can study. But he cannot do it, because anything he could possible cite is included in these. So, it turns out he has not met my challenge. Seifert’s third argument is directed at my claim that, if metaphysics studies being as being and being as being is not understood as the collection of all individual beings, of all kinds of beings, or both, it must be something else, and this something else is usually claimed to be indefinable and primitive. So, we cannot say much about it. Seifert’s argument is that this is true if we are interested in only what is essential or part of definitions, but that we can still “define or . . . identify being in terms of distinct moments and properties rooted in it.” My response to this is that obviously we can do what Seifert claims. We can refer to and describe X by talking about Y and the relations of Y to X. I can speak of Norma as my wife, or as the mother of my children, or as a person who resides in a particular place and so on. But none of this really tells much about Norma herself. What tells me about Norma is that she is a human being, a person, and a substance, and so on. This is precisely what Aristotle and the scholastics talked about when they talked about science. They thought of a science as giving definitions that express essence and as establishing causes. Well, perhaps this is too narrow an understanding of what a science is, but surely what pertains to the knowledge of something as what it is, is essential or necessarily connected to it. This is where the view that metaphysics studies being as being fails, for we can say precious little about being when it is taken merely as being. We can say much about being insofar as it is necessary, or possible, or general, or universal, or even divine. But as being? Those who wish to argue for being as being as the proper object of study of metaphysics face two challenges. First, they need to identify in what sense being as being is not the collection of all individual beings, or kinds of beings, or both taken together; and second, they have to come up with something substantial to say about it. If they can do the first, they still have the second challenge. And I have not yet seen anyone who has been successful at both tasks. Seifert is aware of the challenge he faces and tries quite hard at the beginning of his commentary to provide an understanding of being as being that does not conceive it as a collection of individuals, or kinds, or both and also allows him to say something substantial about metaphysics. But he fails, for the dilemma that I have presented for those who hold the view of metaphysics as the study of being as being is inescapable. All that they end up doing is reducing metaphysics to the study of something ineffable, which we can say nothing or almost nothing about, or to an individual or individuals, or to specific kinds of beings. And these moves have the disadvantage that they exclude from metaphysics much that metaphysicians, including themselves, study.
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In short, then, Seifert’s valiant effort to reassert the view that being as being is the proper object of metaphysics fails, just as the efforts of others in this collection who have also tried fail. Additionally, the objections that Seifert puts forward against my positive view of metaphysics also fail, but in this case the reason is that he misunderstands my position. NOTE 1. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999).
Five AN ARISTOTELIAN CRITIQUE OF GRACIA’S METAPHYSICS Jonathan J. Sanford Metaphysics is arguably the most cherished jewel in philosophy’s treasure trove of disciplines. Undoubtedly it has been hallowed as the most serious of philosophical enquiries ever since Aristotle hailed it as the climax of human wondering—the exercise that alone is truly free from utilitarian ends and in which the pursuit of being as being leads to thought thinking thought.1 As true as it may be, if the last sentence appears quite difficult to comprehend then it may have occurred to you already that besides being considered the most profound of intellectual exercises, metaphysics has often been charged as the most obtuse of intellectual exercises. And true enough, it is one thing to toss around such phrases as Aristotle’s “the philosophy of first causes and principles” or Immanuel Kant’s “the inventory of all our possessions through pure reason, systematically arranged,” and another to explain what they mean to your barber (or hairdresser, as the case may be). Jorge J. E. Gracia has done a great service to philosophers (as well as to barbers and hairdressers everywhere) in bringing his erudition and exceptional acumen to bear on the vexing question of “What is metaphysics?” I call this question vexing because an answer to it has hardly met with consensus over the course of the history of philosophy. It is just such an observation that prompts Gracia to attempt to answer this question for us. For those familiar with Gracia’s other writings, it comes as no surprise to find that his answer to this question in Metaphysics and its Task is marked by clarity, consistency, and cogency.2 This work is of great help to anyone seeking to understand what metaphysics is all about, both for its probing discussion of the question and for its answer to it. Still, Gracia’s view of metaphysics has its shortcomings. I discuss these in the following. The thrust of my criticisms are inspired by Aristotle’s view of metaphysics, a view that I will argue is worthy of the deference it traditionally has been given. 1. Gracia’s View of Metaphysics Gracia’s view of metaphysics is an expansive one. He aims to define metaphysics broadly so as to include within this definition all approaches that have been claimed to be or have been observed to be metaphysical in character. To do this he pays special attention to what he calls metaphysics’s object. By “object,” Gracia
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does not mean some individual thing that metaphysics considers, but instead what it is in general that metaphysics studies. Categories comprise the object of metaphysics: “In short . . . metaphysical views are about categories, so categories are the proper object of the discipline.”3 Metaphysics is the study of categories. But what are categories? Gracia provides a definition of categories that is unique among other definitions because of its breadth: “I propose, then, that we refer to categories as whatever is expressed by a term or expression, simple or complex, which can be predicated of some other term or expression.”4 Gracia insists that defining categories in this way avoids several confusions. First, it avoids thinking of categories as purely linguistic. Second, this definition avoids a commitment to conceptualism because what is expressed by the category may well entail an extra-mental entity. Third, this definition avoids a strict commitment to realism because what is expressed may only be a conceptual or linguistic entity. In short, Gracia defines categories in such a way that no commitments to nominalism, conceptualism, or realism are at all entailed.5 It is in a posture of neutrality with regard to the ontological status of the ultimate objects of metaphysics that Gracia considers his conception of first philosophy to be of particular use.6 Gracia goes on to explain how his definition of categories avoids an unwanted entanglement with notions of predication and conditions: Predicates, then, should not be confused with categories. Categories are what predicates express, not the predicates themselves. Predicates are linguistic entities whose function is to specify the conditions to be satisfied by the entity expressed by the subject. Nor should categories be confused with conditions, for categories need not be conditions of anything. Categories become conditions only when they are expressed by a predicate whose function is to make a claim concerning the relation of a category to something else.7 Severing the relationship between categories and predication or conditions frees categories from any real, conceptual, or nominal commitments, among other things. Such a distinction permits such terms as “the” and “nothing” to be thought of as categories. Finally, by “express” Gracia has in mind whatever is expressed, so that by “white” he means white, instead of a reference to or description of white. So, every definition must include one or more expressions, but not every expression is a definition. Gracia defines categories in such a broad and neutral way because he seeks a description of the job of metaphysics that includes the whole gamut of metaphysical undertakings. Over the centuries metaphysicians have studied such things as griffins, which probably only exist as mental entities; they have studied such things as substance and accident, which are often presumed to be extra-mental entities; and they have even studied nothing, which is not any type of entity.
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Since Gracia has defined categories in the broadest possible way, it appears natural to wonder how it is we are to proceed as metaphysicians and at what we are to aim. Are metaphysicians to study the categories of “the” and “substance” with equal vigor? If we are to follow Gracia’s suggestions, where do we begin, what do we do after beginning, and toward what are we ultimately moving? But naturally Gracia is aware of these questions. Answering them pertains to metaphysics’s task. Gracia’s principle of organization for the task of metaphysics concerns the relation of categories to each other. Metaphysicians must seek to establish the most general categories and relate the lesser categories to them. It is only this activity that appropriately can be called metaphysics or first philosophy: [B]oth terms, “first philosophy” and “metaphysics,” can be of use, provided one understands they refer to the discipline concerned with the most general categories and with the relation of less general categories to those which are most general. The discipline may be called “first philosophy” precisely because it is concerned with what one might call “first,” in the sense of most general, categories, and the relation of second, or less general categories to the first categories. And the discipline may be called “metaphysics” because it is concerned with categories which go beyond the ones which are closer to us in the sense of being less general, and with the relation of these less general categories to the most general ones.8 This passage establishes the critical link for understanding Gracia’s conception of metaphysics as the science of categories. It manifests the close connection between the object and the task of metaphysics. Metaphysics’s task is to specify the most general categories and to relate them to the others, and so is intimately bound with metaphysics’s object. Metaphysics’s object—categories—is the genus for the definition of the discipline. Other disciplines study categories as well. What makes metaphysics unique is its task. Metaphysics’s task—the designation of most general categories and their relations to less general ones—provides the differentia of its definition. Something more should be said about Gracia’s view of metaphysics’s task and, in particular, about the role of most general categories for the pursuance of this task. On these issues Gracia writes: Concerning the most general categories, metaphysics has a threefold aim: First, it seeks to identify the most general categories; second, it seeks to define them if at all possible and, if not, at least to describe them in ways which allow us to recognize them. I do not make definition a requirement because the most general categories may not be definable as there may not
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JONATHAN J. SANFORD be categories in terms of which they may be defined. Third, it seeks to determine the relationships among these categories.9
The paramount importance of the most general categories should be clear; the purpose they serve is that of principles, which organize the entire metaphysical enterprise. Metaphysicians seek to identify, define when possible, and relate them to the other categories. But Gracia never tells us what these most general categories are. He also never tells us what it is about the more general categories that binds less general categories to them, or what about less general categories binds them to the more general categories. But we cannot press these omissions as the basis for a criticism of Gracia’s view of metaphysics until a case is first made that supplying these omissions is necessary to a more adequate understanding of metaphysics and its task. Gracia has given us answers to what metaphysics is, and what metaphysicians do, and he never promised to do more. 2. Aristotle’s View of Metaphysics It is instructive for at least two reasons to consider a few similarities and contrasts between Gracia’s view of metaphysics and that of Aristotle. First, the shadow of Aristotle looms large throughout Gracia’s book: Gracia stakes out his view in contradistinction to those of other philosophers, the most formidable of whom—at least in Gracia’s estimation—is Aristotle. Second, it is a historical fact that Aristotle’s Metaphysics has had the greatest impact on the subsequent development of metaphysics. As true as it may be that all philosophy, Aristotle’s included, has been a footnote to Plato, it is Aristotle’s investigations of the problems set forth by Plato that merits our recognition of him as the metaphysician. The term “category,” which has so central a place in Gracia’s view of metaphysics, is an inheritance from Aristotle, as are our use of such concepts as substance, accidence, potentiality, actuality, formal and final cause, first philosophy, being as being, the science of first causes and principles, and so many others. And it is to Aristotle himself that we look to make a case that a description of metaphysics and its task that leaves unspecified the most general categories and what it is that relates categories to each other is insufficient. Aristotle’s view of metaphysics is quite complex and his interpreters still argue about some of its features. I do not, then, propose to present a complete account of Aristotle’s view of metaphysics. Instead, I want to call attention to a few of its salient features in order to compare it to Gracia’s. Similar to Gracia’s position, it is possible to describe Aristotle’s view of metaphysics as that of a discipline or science that has categories as its object. But this similarity is by no means complete. It is qualified in two significant ways. First, Aristotle provides a much more restrictive definition of categories. They are what Gracia calls predicates. In short, categories are for Aristotle what Gracia con-
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siders the most general predicates.10 Second, categories for Aristotle are always categories of being. Instead of conceiving of categories in such a way that whether they are to be thought of as linguistic, conceptual, or ontological entities is left open, Aristotle’s view is that categories are, at the same time, linguistic, conceptual, and ontological entities. In Metaphysics, VI, 2, 1026a34–1026b2, Aristotle argues that “being” has four senses: (1) accidental being, (2) being in the sense of truth and falsity, (3) categorial being, and (4) potential and actual being. Yet of all these senses of being, being in the sense of the categories is that sense of being Aristotle most consistently considers in the Metaphysics.11 A main reasons for why this is so is that it is only from being in the sense of the categories that knowledge can be had. This is so because scientific knowledge (œpistˇmh) can only be had by means of demonstrations, and categories are the necessary building blocks of demonstrations insofar as every proposition utilizes categories. Every discipline employs categories, but metaphysics both employs categories and pays them special attention as an especially important sense or mode of being.12 A category (katagoreÚw), also translatable as “predicate,” is an uncombined word or expression that is one of the following: what (Substance), how large (Quantity), what sort of thing (Quality), related to what (Relation), where (Place), when (Time), in what attitude (Posture, Position), how circumstanced (State or Condition), how active and what doing (Action), and how passive and what suffering (Affection). All ten categories are listed together in only two places, one in the Categories and the other in the Topics.13 The order is slightly different in the two passages, but the first category listed in each place is substance. In the Categories, the word Arisotle uses for the first category is oÙsfa, which is consistently translated as “substance.” In the listing of the ten categories in the Topics, the first category is described as tf œsti, a phrase that is usually translated as “essence.” It is not without precedent for Aristotle to use tf œsti and oÙsfa interchangeably. So, in the traditional interpretation the two lists, including the first category listed in the two lists, have been thought to be equivalent. A supporting text for translating the first category in both lists as “substance” is Aristotle’s following statement: “And indeed the question which, both now and of old, has always been raised, and always been the subject of doubt, namely ‘what is being?,’ is just the question, ‘what is substance [tf tÕ Ôn, toàtÒ œsti, tfj ¹ oÙsfa]?’”14 I think it most sensible to follow the traditional interpretation on this matter.15 Substance has a unique role among the other nine categories of being: it is the ontological ground that the others stand on: Thus all the other things are either said of the primary substances [tîn prîtwn oÙsiîn] as subjects [Øpokeim{nwn], or in them as subjects. So if the
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JONATHAN J. SANFORD primary substances did not exist it would be impossible for any of the other things to exist.16
Substance, in Aristotle’s scheme, serves as the absolute ontological baseline. The existence of the other categories depends on substance and so too do the other three senses of being. The paramount importance of the categories for the discipline of metaphysics, and of substance in particular, is readily apparent in the opening lines of Book VII of the Metaphysics, a book that for many reasons can described as the heart of the Metaphysics: There are several senses in which a thing may be said to be . . . for in one sense it means what a thing is [tf œsti] or a “this” [tÒde ti], and in another sense it means that a thing is of a certain quality or quantity or has some such predicate asserted of it. While “being” has all these senses, obviously that which is primarily is the “what” [tÕ tf œstin], which indicates the substance [t¾n oÙsfan]. . . . And all other things are said to be because they are, some of them, quantities of that which is in this primary sense, others qualities of it, others affections of it, others some other determination of it. . . . Clearly then it is in virtue of this category that each of the others is. Therefore that which is primarily and is simply (not is something) must be substance.17 This passage emphasizes the following points: being in its primary sense is substance, substance is to be thought of as the first category, and this first category answers to the question “what is it?” The accentuation of categorial being in the discipline of metaphysics, as well as a consideration of what it means for Aristotle to engage in science, suggest that even though three other senses of being exist besides being in the sense of the categories, categorial being serves as a sort of fulcrum that allows other senses of being to be given scientific consideration. What we want from any science, metaphysics included, is the truth about those things that science studies. Each science considers four main types of arguments or problems and these are always in a category or predicate.18 In the Topics Aristotle explains: “For the accident and genus and property and definition of anything will always be in one of these predications; for all the propositions found through these signify either what something is or its quality or quantity or some one of the other types of predicate.”19 But what does it mean to “be in” a category? Aristotle obviously has more in mind than a mere linguistic inclusion. In the sentence immediately following the last quote Aristotle describes a man looking at an object directly in front of him and he states that the object is a substance of such and such quality, in relation to such and such, and so on.20 The use of this concrete example suggests that for Aristotle the predicates or categories are not just linguistic devices but accurate accounts of how things stand in the world.21
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Aristotle says, “for each of these kinds of predicate, if either it be asserted of itself, or its genus be asserted of it, signifies what something is [tf œsti].”22 Also, one of his statements in the Categories lends further support to the claim that he posits existence for all the categories: “So if the primary substances did not exist it would be impossible for any of the other things [tîn ¥llwn ti; the antecedent for which is “categories”] to exist.”23 This appears to be the first premise of a Modus Tollens argument, which Aristotle presumes we can supply the missing premise to as well as the conclusion: Premise 2: But other categories do exist; Conclusion: Therefore primary substance exists. The goal of deductions that deal with the four divisions of problems is to achieve true predication. True predication can only obtain if the four divisions of problems are properly nested within one or more of the ten categories. True predication insures that the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises. True predication in a demonstration (¢pÒdeixij) secures scientific knowledge.24 Aristotle claims that a deduction is a demonstration instead of a dialectical syllogism when the premises are true and primary, or when we know the premises to be derived from true and primary premises.25 Valid demonstrations secure the passage from sure premises to certain knowledge.26 For Aristotle, something is true if it is a properly formulated statement of a fact of reality. Bearing this in mind, it appears clear that Aristotle’s claim that every division of problems falls under the genera of predicates is grounded on the position that the world or reality or being corresponds to categorial division. The categories must then be something unto themselves as well as the underlying features of the way things are. They are, in simple terms, the constitutive elements of the world and serve as the basis for the world’s intelligibility. It is the categories, then, which enable there to be a science of being. Without the categories, which are necessary for true predication to occur, there could be no premises. Without premises there can be no demonstrations. Without demonstrations there can be no science. And, if no science exists, then obviously there can be no science of being. Like other disciplines, metaphysics employs the categories. Unlike other disciplines, metaphysics studies the categories insofar as they are categories of being. Above all, metaphysics focuses on substance as that category in which being makes itself especially manifest. 3. Aristotelian Objections to Gracia’s Position Both Gracia’s and Aristotle’s views of metaphysics have been presented. These views have not been explored in their complexity, but instead with an eye to their more prominent features. Using Aristotle’s view as a sort of norm to judge Gracia’s, there emerge at least three Aristotelian objections to Gracia’s position: First, something crucial has been lost in Gracia’s broad view of metaphysics; namely, a necessary focus on being. Second, some ambiguity exists in Gracia’s account con-
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cering how progress is to be made in relating categories to each other, but Aristotle provides the means to clarify this ambiguity. Third, Aristotle supplies a better explanation for why metaphysics ought to be pursued. Metaphysics’s unique task, on Aristotle’s account, is to investigate categories in order to disclose being. This investigation is feasible only because categories are not just linguistic or conceptual entities, but also ontological. The unique task of metaphysics, on Gracia’s score, is to investigate categories in order to determine the relations between them. Gracia’s expansive redefinition of categories circumvents ontological entailments. So even though Gracia understands metaphysics as the discipline that studies the categories, it is no longer the discipline that necessarily studies being. He clarifies his position on this in the following words: [O]ur concern is with the object metaphysics studies, not with the status of universals, the knowledge we can have, or what there is. Moreover, it should be clear that what has been said thus far about metaphysics and its object does not commit us to a particular stand in this matter.27 Gracia’s view on the object of metaphysics does not commit us to any stance on universals, epistemology, or general ontology because categories are defined as neutral with respect to existence and our possible knowledge of reality.28 Metaphysicians over the years have identified categories with transcendental entities, immanent constituents of things, similarities, collections, concepts, types and tokens. According to Gracia, all of these identifications have their shortcomings.29 Gracia wants to describe the object of metaphysics in such a way that the accomplishment of the task of metaphysics is unencumbered with the problems associated with taking a particular stance on the status of categories. According to Gracia, it is possible to complete the task of metaphysics, which is to relate more and less general categories to each other, without assuming anything about the status of those categories. The first problem with Gracia’s view of metaphysics is that it is too broad insofar as the study of being no longer delimits this science. What is the point, an Aristotelian metaphysician might ask, of studying categories and their relations unless it is to reveal fundamental aspects of being? Does not the metaphysician necessarily want to know how things stand with reality? Gracia, well aware of Aristotle’s approach, anticipates the objection that the task of metaphysics is to carry out a science of categories in order to complete the study of being as being. To this Aristotelian objection Gracia’s most forceful reply is the following: “[T]o say that metaphysics studies only categories of being is to leave out much that metaphysicians have studied and, in my view, must study; it is to present an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of metaphysics.30 A metaphysical consideration of non-being is one of the main considerations that Gracia thinks Aristotle’s account forestalls.
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At least two replies can be made to Gracia’s response. First, an Aristotelian metaphysician can consider such things as non-being and nothing and still claim that metaphysics studies categories to understand being. Aristotle himself refers to non-being, it is synonymous with being in the sense of falsity.31 The measure by which such concepts as non-being or nothing are considered is that of categorial being—in other words a non-being is whatever does not fit into one of the ten categories of being and therefore has only a linguistic or conceptual status. Metaphysicians can and do discuss non-being by employing one or more of the categories (as we must to discuss anything) plus a negative (such as “non-,” “not,” “a-,” or “no”). Second, as to Gracia’s claim that the Aristotelian conception of metaphysics does a disservice to metaphysicians whose work has had little or nothing to do with Aristotle’s conception of the science of being, we must at the least question whether the appellation “metaphysician” should be applied so liberally. To employ an analogy, a person who claims that she engages in parenting because she takes care of her two dogs is not truly parenting, for parenting is an activity that necessarily concerns children. This individual does many of the things that parents do, including feeding and cleaning her dogs, but she is not a parent to them. Similarly, metaphysics is an activity that necessarily concerns being. Just because some individuals perform activities similar to those of metaphysicians, such as thinking about categories and their relations, they are not necessarily doing metaphysics. The second objection to Gracia’s view of metaphysics concerns a problem internal to Gracia’s description of the task of metaphysics. This problem has to do with the probable failure of what Gracia sees as metaphysics’s primary task of organizing categories by relating less to more general categories. To see this problem, Gracia’s notion of predication needs to be considered. Predication is the process whereby metaphysicians relate less general categories to the more general ones. Gracia calls true predication the successful completion of this task. Gracia describes true predication in the following way: True predication requires that the conditions specified by the predicate be satisfied by what is expressed by the subject. Thus, “mammal” is truly predicated of “bachelor” only if bachelors are mammals. This means that the conditions specified by a term that expresses a particular category must be satisfied by the members of that category.32 This is an understanding of true predication that is entirely devoid of ontological commitment because a genus and differentia of a predicate can be provided without making the claim that the subject really exists. Such an understanding of true predication, then, allows Gracia to make the following concluding claim about categories:
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JONATHAN J. SANFORD My proposal, then, is to respect the integrity of categories. Each category, qua category, should be considered to be whatever it is, as determined by its proper definition, and nothing more, for that is what the predicable term that names the category expresses.33
Respecting the integrity of categories simply means letting the definition of a category determine what it is. The phrase “what it is” does not entail any ontological commitment and at the same is the basis that allows true predication to occur. The problem with Gracia’s account of true predication appears when we consider that the most general categories are indefinable. Gracia claims that metaphysicians study the most general categories and that they seek to define them when possible. Yet, Gracia states: “I do not make definition a requirement because the most general categories may not be definable as there may not be categories in terms of which they may be defined.”34 Recall that Gracia claims that for true predication to occur, conditions specified by the predicate must be satisfied by the subject. These conditions are given by the category’s definition. If the most general categories are indefinable, then true predication cannot be had by them because the conditions to be determined by such categories’ definition are unavailable. We have no assurance that we could know anything about such conditions, or even if they exist. In other words, without a definition, no conditions can be specified in order to satisfy the requirement for obtaining true predication. If the most general categories fall short of satisfying the conditions for true predication, then Gracia’s treatment of categories is shown to have a definite weakness: metaphysics’s task of relating less general categories to the most general cannot be undertaken. This situation presents Gracia with a dilemma. If the most general categories are indefinable, then Gracia can acknowledge that metaphysicians must inevitably fail to succeed in sufficiently specifying the most general categories and truly relating the less general categories to the most general. In other words, the task of metaphysics, insofar as Gracia has presented this task, is an altogether hopeless endeavour. Or, Gracia could choose to include an added component to account for true predication with respect to the most general categories. This added component would be a commitment to a form of realism concerning the categories, at least to the most general categories. We could then recognize the most general categories as at the basis of being or reality, things that all else depend on, without feeling the loss of our inability to define them. The “what it is” of such categories could then remain undefined and yet they would still provide the material necessary for predicating lesser categories of them. Naturally, to do this we would have to lean heavily on a theory of induction. That is just what Aristotle does when he claims that some fundamental features of reality recommend themselves with self-evidence. To take this route Gracia would have to abandon the strict neutrality of categories, but doing so would enable
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metaphysical progress in the sense of the acquisition of scientific knowledge, as it is understood in both Aristotle’s and Gracia’s senses, to occur. For, if we can say that the most general categories in some sense are, then we might be able to account for why the lesser categories are related to them, even though we cannot provide definitions for the most general categories. So, if the most general categories are undefinable, the dilemma is that either the task of metaphysics, insofar as Gracia understands it, must be abandoned, or his insistence on the neutrality of categories must be abandoned. A metaphysician with Aristotelian tendencies would agitate for the second alternative. The third objection against Gracia’s view of metaphysics concerns what makes metaphysics a worthwhile enterprise. Gracia’s description of metaphysics stresses its usefulness to other sciences as its raison d’être, therefore making it ancillary to the other sciences. In striking contrast, Aristotle ranks metaphysics as the highest contemplative undertaking, both because its object (being, its first causes and principles) is most noble and because it is the least useful of enterprises. In other words, of all the disciplines, it is metaphysics that most truly can be said to be pursued for itself instead of for its utility: [A]nd of the sciences, also, that which is desirable on its own account and for the sake of knowing it is more of the nature of wisdom than that which is desirable on account of its results, and the superior science is more of the nature of wisdom than the ancillary.35 All the sciences are more necessary than this, but none is better.36 The pursuit of metaphysics marks then, for Aristotle, a zenith of human activity, for this pursuit requires an extremely high development of human excellence. This excellence can only be developed in leisure: [F]or it was when almost all the necessities of life and the things that make for comfort and recreation were present, that such knowledge began to be sought. Evidently then we do not seek it for the sake of any other advantage; but as the man is free, we say, who exists for himself and not for another, so we pursue this as the only free science, for it alone exists for itself.37 The motivation for pursuing metaphysics is then intimately bound with the object of metaphysics itself: we pursue metaphysics, the science of being, for the sake of the science of being. Additionally, the pursuit of metaphysics is the most excellent employment of human freedom.38 Perhaps Aristotle’s elevated description of the nobility of pursuing metaphysics appears peculiar to those of us who have claimed with Francis Bacon that knowledge is power. In other words, knowledge must be useful to qualify as knowledge. If so, then something crucial has been lost; namely, a proper under-
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standing of why people have and will continue to engage in metaphysics. Metaphysics, as Aristotle describes it, and as so many have understood it, is the fullest expression of our wondering about ultimate questions. We pursue such questions because we want them answered, not because they might lead to faster airplanes or a cure to cancer, as good as those things might be. What, then, should we make of Gracia’s justification for why metaphysics should be pursued? He tells us that the metaphysician’s most important task is to relate the less general categories to the most general. Leaving aside the problem raised in the second objection, namely that this task, insofar as Gracia has presented it, may be an impossible undertaking, and assuming that we can successfully perform this task, we must still ask why we should perform this task. What is the motivation for studying categories? Gracia tells us that in relating less to more general categories we are performing an invaluable service—that of laying the foundations for all other sciences: Metaphysics, then, turns out to be the categorial foundation of knowledge. For in it we attempt to establish and understand the most general categories and the relation of all other categories to them. . . . As the view of these categories and their relations, metaphysics is logically presupposed by every other view that one may have. Any account of what we know or think we know, then, is incomplete until we provide its metaphysical foundation. . . . All our knowledge depends on metaphysical views whether we are aware of it or not, and all our thinking involves metaphysical thinking. . . . The only difference between them [those who are not consciously pursuing metaphysics] and declared metaphysicians is that the former are unaware of what they do and, therefore, do it surreptitiously and unreflectively, whereas the latter are aware of it and do it openly and deliberately. Metaphysics is inescapable.39 Gracia is absolutely correct to point out the inescapability of metaphysics. He and Aristotle are in complete agreement on this point. A large part of the nobility of metaphysics in Aristotle’s account is because it is the science of the first causes and principles—those causes and principles that determine everything that is and so lay at the foundation of all other sciences. The problem with Gracia’s description is that it appears to avoid the heart of the matter concerning why metaphysics ought to be pursued. Namely, Gracia does not give us any indication that metaphysics should be undertaken for itself, but only for the sake of providing the basic organizational scheme for the other sciences. Metaphysics is justified only insofar as it is useful to the other sciences and not insofar as it is itself a theoretical investigation into reality. But I insist with Aristotle that a person pursues metaphysics for itself: a person seeks to understand being because being is itself worthy of being understood. Therefore, it is impera-
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tive to disagree with Gracia’s summary claims concerning the reasons metaphysics has survived throughout its manifold developments in history: The reason metaphysics survives is not that it is concerned with being, God, transcendental reality, ultimate causes, or any of the other objects we have rejected as proper objects of metaphysics. Nor is the reason that in it humans find meaning for their lives or that metaphysics is natural for them. No, the reason metaphysics will never perish is that it is concerned with the most general categories and the relation of less general ones to them.40 As true as it is that metaphysicians are concerned with relating categories to each other, it is their interest with being that motivates this concern. The true hallmark of the metaphysician is that he or she is interested in, is provoked by and is full of wonder about, being. Categories are of interest to the metaphysician insofar as they are the means we use to productively pursue the science of being. 4. Conclusion Gracia’s analysis of metaphysics as the science of categories is an excellent inquiry into the nature of metaphysics. It is a work that incorporates a historical survey of metaphysics and the maturity of this survey performs a great service in framing, cataloguing, and analyzing the many significant metaphysical developments. Also, Gracia’s more general definition of categories does allow him to easily move from one metaphysical system to another while employing the same analytical apparatus. Gracia provides us with a much needed way of comparing and probing the many varying, and often contradictory, metaphysical systems. Yet, in spite of its contributions, Gracia’s Metaphysics and its Task does not sufficiently describe metaphysics’s task. Metaphysics is not just concerned with the relations of less to more general categories, but earnestly seeks answers to these types of questions: Why is there something instead of nothing? What is the case with reality? How are things with the world? Since at least Plato, answering these types of questions has been tied to pursuing the question of being. As Aristotle teaches us so well, metaphysicians need to employ categorial descriptions, but they do so to understand being.
NOTES 1. Aristotle, Metaphysics, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), bk. 1, 2, 982b28, for being as being see bk. 4, 1, 1003a22, and for thought thinking thought see bks. 12, 9, 1074b34. 2. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999).
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3. Ibid., p. 147. 4. Ibid., p. 134. 5. Ibid., pp.134, 177–217. 6. Ibid., pp. 205–208. 7. Ibid., p.135. 8. Ibid., pp.152–153. 9. Ibid., p.138. 10. Ibid., p. 133. 11. See Robert Hanna, “What Categories are not,” Monist, 66:3 (1983), p. 424. 12. On the relationship between demonstration and scientific knowledge see Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, bk. 1, 1, 2, bk. 2, 8, 9, 10, 19, and Metaphysics, bk. 7, 10. 13. Aristotle, Categories, 1, 1b25–28, and Topics, bk. 1, 9, 103b21–24. 14. Aristotle, Metaphysics, bk. 7, 1, 1028b3–4, my translation. 15. For a rejection of this traditional interpretation, see Michael Frede, “Categories in Aristotle,” Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 29–48, esp., p. 36. 16. Aristotle, Categories, 5, 2b4–6. 17. Aristotle, Metaphysics, bk. 7, 1, 1028a10–30. 18. Aristotle, Topics, bk. 1, 4, 101b13–25. 19. Ibid., bk. 2, 9, 103b24–27. 20. Ibid., bk. 2, 103b30–4. 21. For a similar example see Aristotle, Categories, 4. 22. Aristotle, Topics, bk. 1, 9, 103b35–6. 23. Aristotle, Categories, 5, 2b5–6. 24. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, bk. 1, 1 and 2. 25. Aristotle, Topics, bk. 1, 1, 100a27–30. 26. See Ibid., bk. 1, 1, 100a30–33 for some difficulties regarding how we can obtain sure and certain premises. 27. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, p.180. 28. Ibid., pp. 205–208. 29. Ibid., pp.181–202. 30. Ibid., p.145. 31. Aristotle, Metaphysics, bk. 9, 10. 32. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, p. 200. 33. Ibid., p. 205. For a similar characterization of the neutrality of categories with respect to existence see Jorge J. E. Gracia Individuality: an Essay on the Foundations of Metaphysics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), p. 107. For the similarities and differences between universals and categories according to Gracia see Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, p. 209. 34. Ibid., p. 138. 35. Aristotle, Metaphysics, bk. 1, 2, 982a14–17. 36. Ibid., bk. 1, 2, 983a10–11. 37. Ibid., bk. 1, 2, 982b23–28. 38. See also Aristotle’s description of the most excellent of human activities in Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 10, 7.
An Aristotelian Critique of Gracia’s Metaphysics 39. 40.
Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, pp. 220–221. Ibid., p. 221.
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Six METAPHYSICS AND META-METAPHYSICS: RESPONSE TO SANFORD Jorge J. E. Gracia Jonathan J. Sanford’s argument against my view of metaphysics is that, in identifying the nature of the discipline in terms of its object and aims, I never tell “what it is about the more general categories that binds less general categories to them, or what about less general categories binds them to the more general categories.” Presented as such, it is clear that his claim amounts to a view that a position concerning the nature of metaphysics requires a metaphysics. In short, we cannot engage and resolve a meta-metaphysical question about the nature of the discipline without engaging in a metaphysical enterprise and therefore making some metaphysical commitments. Sanford is aware that we cannot take this objection seriously unless he can show how a conception of metaphysics presupposes a metaphysics, so he makes the attempt. But does he succeed? We can measure his success only after examining the general program proposed by Sanford in more concrete terms. He undertakes this task by trying to show that presupposing Aristotle’s metaphysics gives us a better understanding of the nature of the discipline. By showing how the particular metaphysical view of Aristotle provides a better conception of metaphysics than I give, Sanford aims to demonstrate that a metaphysics is a requirement of meta-metaphysics. He points to three advantages that he thinks Aristotle’s view has over mine. Before I examine these alleged advantages, I should note that, strictly speaking, the procedure that Sanford follows in trying to demonstrate the need for metaphysics in meta-metaphysics does not match the requirement he has stipulated. Even if his claim that Aristotle’s metaphysics is instrumental in making Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics better than mine, this by itself would not demonstrate that there exists a necessary, or even a desired, connection between metaphysics and meta-metaphysics. It does not show that in order to have an adequate conception of the discipline we need, or it is desirable to have, a substantive metaphysical view. And it definitely does not prove that such a view needs to be Aristotelian. It is altogether conceivable that, even in the concrete case of Aristotle, his metaphysics is not necessarily connected to his conception of metaphysics. Additionally, even if it were, it is still not necessary or even proven to be desirable that in order to have an adequate conception of metaphysics we need to assume a particular metaphysical view—least of all an Aristotelian view. The most that San-
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ford can do through his strategy is to show that my conception of metaphysics is less adequate than Aristotle’s, that Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics is tied to his metaphysics, or that Aristotle is a good example of someone whose metaphysics is connected to his meta-metaphysics. Having clarified this point, I can now turn to the particular advantages that Sanford sees in Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics over mine. As noted earlier, these are three. (1) Something significant has been lost in my account of metaphysics, namely, a necessary focus on being. (2) Some ambiguity exists in how I propose to measure progress in relating categories to each other, whereas Aristotle resolves this ambiguity. (3) Aristotle provides a better explanation of why metaphysics ought to be pursued. Let me take each of these claims in turn. 1. The Necessary Focus on Being In developing the charge that my view of metaphysics, unlike that of Aristotle, does not have a necessary focus on being, two things become clear. (1) Sanford does not have an argument that does not beg the question. (2) He becomes defensive, namely, it turns out that he tries to justify the Aristotelian view in light of my challenges instead of attacking mine. For these reasons, we can dismiss his claim, but let me be more specific. Sanford begins by explaining, quite accurately, the differences between my view and that of Aristotle. The main difference is that the focus of metaphysics for Aristotle is being, whereas in my view the focus is much broader. Then, he formulates his argument against my view in the following words: “The first problem with Gracia’s view of metaphysics is that it is too broad insofar as the study of being no longer delimits this science.” Since it is precisely one of my major claims that metaphysics has to be broad and that narrow conceptions of it in terms of being are inadequate, in order for Sanford’s argument to be effective, he needs to tell us why my claim is wrong. He cannot rest by merely saying that it is, for this is precisely what is at stake. Citing his or Aristotle’s claim to the contrary will not do. This is a case of begging the question to say the least. Nor does what he says immediately following help him. He asks rhetorically? “What is the point, an Aristotelian metaphysician might ask, of studying categories and their relations unless it is to reveal fundamental aspects of being?” Well, in the first place I do not exclude this aim from metaphysics; I dispute only that it is its exclusive aim. So, two things are wrong with Sanford’s question. (1) It appears to impute a view to me that I do not share. (2) It assumes what it should establish. In the question that follows, the petitio principii is even more blatant: “Does not the metaphysician necessarily want to know how things stand with reality?” Clearly, the issue is precisely what the metaphysician is trying to do, so we need more than to be reminded of one view, even if it is quite a respectable view, of it.
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In short, we have no serious argument here against my position. Additionally, in the rest of the presentation of the first disadvantage Sanford sees in my position when compared with Aristotle’s, instead of giving an argument to support his claim of a disadvantage, he tries to explain how Aristotle’s view does not have the two disadvantages it appears to have if compared with my view, and to which I call attention. The first is that it does not appear to consider such things as “nonbeing” and “nothing.” The second is that it does not account for the work of metaphysicians who do not conceive the discipline as Aristotle did and do not discuss being as being. So, again, we have no serious argument here against my view, but instead just a defense of Aristotle’s view. Incidentally, I am not convinced that Sanford succeeds in saving Aristotle, but I will let Aristotelians struggle with that issue. 2. Metaphysical Progress In the presentation of the second disadvantage of my position when compared with Aristotle’s, namely, the charge of ambiguity, Sanford offers a couple of arguments that require consideration. The first is that my definition of predication is “entirely devoid of ontological commitments” and, because of this, cannot serve to show whether we have made any progress in metaphysics. But he is mistaken, for I do not say, claim, or think that true predication is devoid of such commitments. The same text Sanford cites to show that true predication for me is entirely devoid of ontological commitments shows beyond any doubt that predication, for me, has to do with making such claims. This is the text: True predication requires that the conditions specified by the predicate be satisfied by what is expressed by the subject. Thus, “mammal” is truly predicated of “bachelor” only if bachelors are mammals. This means that the conditions specified by a term that expresses a particular category must be satisfied by the members of that category.1 Note, I say quite explicitly that true predication requires that the conditions specified by a predicate be satisfied by what the subject expresses. “Mammal” is truly predicated of “bachelor” because bachelors are mammals. Undoubtedly, true predication involves an ontological commitment. To put it differently, a sentence is true if and only if what it says is the case; and what it says is that a certain thing expressed by the subject of the sentence meets the conditions specified by the predicate. True predication requires that there be facts that correspond to the claim in question. We cannot get more ontological than this. Additionally, this also gives us a measure of false predication when the thing that the subject refers to is not in the way it is described by a predicate and therefore a measure of progress in metaphysics, for metaphysics is the search for true predications of a certain sort that meet certain conditions.
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But Sanford has a more important objection in this section, although it does not quite fit the rubric that he places it under. The rubric is one of progress, but this objection argues that the task I have identified for the discipline is not possible. The reason he gives is that the most general categories are indefinable, whereas true predication requires that these most general categories be definable. Is he right? No, for he assumes that I hold that the terms predicated in true predications must be definable. But I do not. Definability cannot be a requirement of the terms that express categories insofar as every metaphysics is bound to have some terms that are not definable because they refer to primitive categories, namely, categories that we cannot further analyze into other categories. This does not entail that these terms are ineffable or that they do not specify one or more conditions that the subject, of which the terms that are used to express them must meet for true predication to occur. Additionally, even if this were as Sanford notes, we cannot use this fact as the basis of an argument to show the superiority of Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics over mine insofar as Aristotle’s metaphysics also has primitive categories (all the things he technically calls categories are such). In short, then, that the most general categories are indefinable does neither conflict with the requirements of true predication nor with the task of metaphysics as I have presented it. And going back to the first criticism, it is just not the case that my view includes an ontologically sanitized view of true predication. 3. The Rationale for the Metaphysical Enterprise The third advantage that Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics has over mine, according to Sanford, is that it provides a better reason to pursue the discipline than mine. According to Sanford, my conception of metaphysics makes it ancillary to other sciences, instead of what Aristotle thought (that it is the crowning achievement of human knowledge). In my view metaphysics is posterior to other sciences and has a utilitarian bent that is rightly missing in Aristotle. For Aristotle, we pursue the ultimate questions that metaphysics asks because we want them answered—not because their answers might lead to faster airplanes or a cure for cancer. We do not pursue metaphysics, in my view, Sanford claims, for itself, but in order to provide the basic organizational scheme for other sciences. The pursuit of metaphysics is justified not “insofar as it is itself a theoretical investigation into reality,” but merely “insofar as it is useful to the other sciences.” This charge originates because Sanford is reading into my text things that it does not say and drawing inferences from it that are not justified. I do not think a person can find anywhere in my book an explicit statement that metaphysics is ancillary to other disciplines or utilitarian in nature. Nor do I think that we can logically infer this view from what I claim about the nature of the discipline. My claim is that metaphysical principles, meaning claims of the sort we arrive at
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through the pursuit of metaphysics, are presupposed by any other claim we make, both in ordinary living and in disciplinary studies. This means that metaphysics underlies all other knowledge that we might claim to have. Does this mean that metaphysics is ancillary to all other knowledge? Absolutely not. It means instead that whatever we mean or say has metaphysical underpinnings (and depends on metaphysics), instead of the reverse. “Ancillary” means helpful, but metaphysics is not “helpful.” Metaphysics is foundational and necessary with respect to all knowledge, whereas ancillary things are neither foundational nor necessary. This point is recognized quite explicitly by Thomas D. Sullivan and Russell Pannier in the first article in this volume; not only do they agree with me in this, but they offer further substantiation of it, including a favorable comparison to St. Thomas Aquinas. Additionally, is Sanford right when he claims that my view entails that the pursuit of metaphysics is not theoretical? Why not, let me ask? The aim of metaphysics appears to be fundamentally to understand how everything ultimately hangs together and this appears to have little to do with the practical, even if we predicate the practical on it. But let us not go too far in this direction, for Peter A. Redpath accuses me of forgetting the practical in his article in this collection. And to this charge, I will respond, as will become clear later, that by studying all categories, metaphysics has a direct connection to practicality in that it studies the categories of the practical. Also, does my claim entail that metaphysics is posterior to other disciplines as Sanford claims? Not logically, obviously, insofar as metaphysics provides the foundations of all other knowledge. But temporally, yes. Aristotle agrees with this, for according to him our knowledge begins with the concrete and sensible and progresses in abstraction and intelligibility. Precisely because metaphysics is foundational, it is difficult to deal with, insofar as it is always difficult to uncover the basic assumptions with which we work. 4. Conclusion In short, the advantages through which Sanford claims to show that my view of metaphysics is inferior to that of Aristotle disappear quite quickly when subjected to scrutiny. More quickly still disappears his more general claim that in order to do meta-metaphysics we must presuppose a metaphysics and perhaps the metaphysics of Aristotle. In his closing remarks, Sanford raises two questions that he appears to think cannot be answered within metaphysics if a person adopts my view of the discipline, for he argues that these questions have to do with being and I do not identify being as the object of metaphysics. The two questions are: (1) Why is there something instead of nothing? and (2) What is the case with reality? My response is twofold: (1) these questions use extremely general categorial terms and in doing
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so fall squarely within metaphysics as I understand it, and (2) that these questions concern reality and being does not mean that they must fall outside of metaphysics, for I claim that ontology is a part of metaphysics and ontology deals with such categories as these. In closing, let me note that the main mistake behind much of what Sanford claims is that he unjustifiably narrows the object of metaphysics to being. He needs to be liberated from the yoke that Aristotle put on the discipline more than 2,000 years ago.
NOTE 1. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), p. 200.
Seven NEO-THOMISM AND GRACIA’S METAPHYSICS Robert A. Delfino In Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorical Foundations of Knowledge, Gracia offers us a new conception of metaphysics that tries to avoid the inadequacies of earlier conceptions of metaphysics, while proposing a theory that more or less characterizes what metaphysicians have done over the last 2,500 years. Gracia emphasizes that his book aims “not to change [the] practice [of metaphysics] but to understand it, that is, to fit it within a conceptual framework which makes sense of our collective experience.”1 Accordingly, it may appear that Gracia’s book offers little to neo-Thomists, those who seek to build upon the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas. Yet, I do not believe that this is the case. Instead, I think in many ways Gracia’s view of metaphysics complements and builds upon the metaphysics of Thomas. In this paper I will argue that the object of metaphysics that Gracia proposes is compatible with the division of the speculative sciences and the object of metaphysics described by Aquinas. I will also present a view of metaphysics that merges the best aspects of both Thomas’s and Gracia’s view of metaphysics. As we will see, this view has many advantages, including some that Gracia’s view does not have. Still, I cannot address all of the issues that should be discussed in this regard and so I present here more of a prolegomenon to a future neoThomistic metaphysics, which makes use of Gracia’s contributions, instead of a complete work. 1. The Object of Metaphysics After lengthy argument, Gracia argues that the specificity of metaphysics cannot be found in its object of study alone, but in both its object and aim.2 He says that metaphysics studies categories, but that it studies different categories in different ways because of its aims. Concerning the most general categories, metaphysics has a threefold aim: to identity the most general categories, to define them if possible (or at least describe them), and to determine the relationships among these categories. Concerning the less general categories, metaphysics has a twofold aim: to fit them correctly into the most general categories, and to determine how they are related to all the most general categories, including categories into which they do not fit.
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This conception of metaphysics appears markedly different from Thomas’s claim that metaphysics studies being as being (with special emphasis on existence) and Gracia takes great pains to argue that being, being as being, and existential being cannot be the object of metaphysics. His disqualification of these three centers around two main arguments: that metaphysics becomes the compendium of all disciplines, and, therefore, is not a separate science, or that it becomes an empty discipline that can say little or nothing at all. Other scholars have quarreled with Gracia on these points. For now I will concede them and accept his definition of metaphysics as given above. I do this because, despite these concessions, I maintain that the object of metaphysics that Gracia proposes is compatible with Thomas’s division of the speculative sciences, which I will consider next. 2. The Division of the Speculative Sciences Thomas’s most detailed account of the division of the sciences occurs in Questions Five and Six of his commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius.3 Taking his lead from Aristotle, Boethius separates the practical sciences, which aim at something made or done by us, from the speculative sciences, which aim at truth. Thomas accepts the distinction, noting that ultimately the ground of the speculative sciences is located in extra-mental things: “The subject-matter of the speculative sciences must be things that cannot be made or done by us, so that our knowledge of them cannot be directed to activity as to an end. And the speculative sciences must differ according to the distinctions among these things.”4 The ultimate ground of the speculative sciences must be extra-mental reality, because speculative sciences are ordered to truth and truth is the intellect’s conformity with reality.5 Despite this, Thomas divided the speculative sciences according to how the human mind understands reality through different types of abstraction. To understand why he did so requires us to discuss the anthropological side of Thomas’s view of science. Anthropologically, science is a habit of the intellect according to Thomas. The intellect is the power (or capacity) to think. From this power proceed different actions, for example simple apprehension (conceptualization) and judgment of existence. Midway between a power and an action is what Thomas calls a habit (habitus). A habit is a simple quality of the intellect that disposes a human being to act in a definite way that is good or bad.6 For example, the more a person cowers in fear before surmountable evils the less likely he is to confront such evils in the future. By repeatedly performing acts of cowardice he builds up a disposition inclining him to act in a definite way, which, in this case, is morally bad. Not all habits are scientific habits, as the previous example of cowardice indicates. Scientific knowledge for Thomas comprises that habit whereby we hold conclusions with certainty and demonstrate them by syllogistic reasoning from self-evident propositions.7 Accordingly, a scientific habit, in its proper sense, is an
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intellectual disposition that facilitates such demonstration, though sometimes Thomas will use the word “habit” loosely to refer to what is produced or held by the habit.8 While conclusions in a science are numerous, the habit, in its proper sense, is one and simple, and therefore accounts for the unity in the activities and conclusions of the scientist. The conclusions and demonstrations of a science form an ordered set, one conclusion following from another, all unified by a single, simple habit. Thomas denies that a scientific habit is composed of other habits.9 For instance, if a person learns to demonstrate a new truth in mathematics, he does not bring about a new habit. Instead, he strengthens and perfects the habit of mathematics within him, increasing the range of conclusions he can demonstrate. Obviously, if a science gets its unity from the unity of a single intellectual habit, we can ask, what gives unity to a habit? Or, conversely, we can ask what differentiates one scientific habit, for example, mathematics, from another, such as natural philosophy? In the Summa theologiae, Thomas says that a habit is distinguished from another habit by its formal object, a certain perspective.10 In the case of mathematics and natural philosophy they both study things, the material object, but from two different formal perspectives. Natural philosophy studies things insofar as they are subject to change. Mathematics studies things insofar as they have quantity. Natural philosophy and mathematics study the same material object but from two different formal perspectives. To avoid confusion, I should point out that “material object” simply means whatever a person is studying; it need not be physical. For example, Thomas says that we can study God, who is completely non-physical, from two formal perspectives.11 In this case God is the material object, or simply, what is under investigation. It appears, then, that many formal perspectives exist from which we can study things in the world: some are living, some are non-living, some are corporeal, some are incorporeal, and so on. Yet, Thomas says only three speculative sciences exist: natural philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics. What, then, constitutes a formal perspective in the sense necessary for differentiating speculative sciences? According to Thomas: When habits or powers are differentiated by their objects they do not differ according to just any distinction among those objects, but according to the distinctions that are essential to the objects as objects. . . . Now an object of this kind—namely, an object of a speculative power—derives one characteristic from the side of the power of the intellect and another from the side of the habit of science that perfects the intellect. From the side of the intellect it has the fact that it is immaterial, because the intellect itself is immaterial. From the side of the habit of science it has the fact that it is necessary, for science treats of necessary matters . . . . Now everything that is necessary is, as such, immobile because everything changeable is, as such, able to be or not to be, either absolutely or in a certain respect . . . . Consequently, separation from mat-
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Let us apply Thomas’s criterion, separation from matter and motion, to understand precisely how the three speculative sciences mentioned above are differentiated. Among the things studied by science, Aquinas says some depend on matter for being. This group can be divided into two others. First, those that are dependent on matter for being and for being understood, for example cats. This is the province of natural philosophy. Second, those that depend on matter for being but not for being understood, for example numbers and lines. This is the province of mathematics. Finally, some things studied by science do not depend on matter for being or for being understood. Examples include being, substance, potency, and so on. This is the province of metaphysics. No fourth speculative science exists because nothing depends on matter for being, but not for being understood. Note how human epistemology is partially responsible for these divisions. I should also note that the formal objects of natural philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics (change, quantity, and being, respectively), correspond to how the human mind understands reality through three types of abstraction. To clarify this we should examine Thomas’s views on the different operations and types of abstraction of the human intellect. 3. Abstraction and the Operations of the Intellect According to Thomas the intellect has two operations. The first we will refer to as simple apprehension, though, following Aristotle, he calls it the understanding of indivisibles.13 Through simple apprehension we understand what a thing is, or, in other words, its essence. For example, when I understand that a human being is a rational animal, I understand the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be a human being (real definition). The essence of a thing is signified by the real definition of that thing. Thomas will sometimes talk of nature (natura) instead of essence (essentia). In such cases he wants us to reflect on something’s essence insofar as it is directed to that thing’s specific operation.14 For instance, it is in the nature of human beings to think and of birds to fly. The first type of abstraction is called abstraction of a whole and it is related to simple apprehension.15 It is the abstraction of a universal from a particular, as when we abstract human from this human being. Abstraction involves focusing on something positive and excluding other aspects of the thing under consideration. In abstracting human from this human being we exclude unnecessary things such as color, height, weight, and so on, while focusing upon what is essential, in this case rational animal. When employed in natural philosophy, this type of abstrac-
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tion does not completely exclude materiality because natural philosophy studies what depends on matter for being and being understood. A human being, according to Aquinas, is such an example because materiality is included in its definition and therefore it cannot be understood apart from materiality: The nature of man, which his definition signifies and which is the object of science, is considered without this flesh and these bones, but not absolutely without flesh and bones. And because individuals include determinate matter in their nature, whereas universals include common matter . . . the abovementioned abstraction is not said to be the abstraction of form from matter absolutely, but the abstraction of the universal from the particular.16 But how can natural philosophy be said to study things from the perspective of change if, as mentioned above, the nature we abstract does not change? We said earlier that nature refers to essence insofar as it is directed to a thing’s specific operation. Thomas is following Aristotle who said nature is an: “[inner] principle of motion and of stationariness (in respect of place, or of growth and decrease, or by way of alteration).”17 Therefore in understanding human nature abstracted as a whole, we understand how human beings cause change and are changed. From the side of animality, we are corruptible because living things decay and die. From the side of rationality, we can plan projects and initiate change. Natural philosophy, like all science, only treats individuals in an indirect and secondary fashion. Once we perform abstraction of the whole, we can consider the universal and unchanging nature in relation to the particulars, from which it was abstracted. This allows us to know changing and material things existing outside of our minds through universals that are unchanging and without determinate matter. The second type of abstraction is called abstraction of form.18 It shares with abstraction of a whole a relation to the act of simple apprehension. But it considers things that do not include sensible matter in their definitions. Sensible matter is the matter we can perceive with our five senses.19 Consider a line. Sensible matter is the subject in which a line inheres. For instance, a line exists in a blade of grass and in a worm. Yet, we can understand what a line is without considering the smell of the grass or the color of the worm. Mathematics makes use of this kind of abstraction to study what is dependent on matter for being but not for being understood. It turns out that this amounts to the study of quantity. Briefly, quantity has priority over all the Aristotelian categories except substance. This means that qualities, relations, place, position, and so on, cannot exist without quantity, but not vice versa. Quantity, however, cannot exist without substance. Therefore the mathematician does not abstract quantity from intelligible matter, but only from sensible matter. Substance as subject to quantity is called intelligible matter because it is not perceived by the external senses, but instead by the imagination.20 All of this serves to show how the speculative sciences are differentiated accord-
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ing to distinctions that the mind itself makes in the course of investigating reality, because sensible matter and intelligible matter refer to human ways of knowing. The second operation of the intellect we will refer to as judgment, though Thomas calls it joining and dividing.21 Thomas says that this operation pertains to a thing’s being (esse).22 Through judgment we know things as actually existing, as when a mother holding her baby knows that the baby exists. In judgment we can join or divide what we have grasped in simple apprehension. For example, we can judge that “A human being is not a stone.” This is an example of dividing, or in other words, a negative judgment. But, our judgments are false if we divide two things that are one extra-mentally, as in the judgment “A human being is not an animal.” The third type of abstraction is called separation (separatio).23 It is a negative judgment, because it distinguishes one thing from another by understanding that they “can exist separately.”24 As such, it is only called abstraction in an analogous sense. This is so because in abstraction we can extract animal from this cat, even though they are one in reality, but we cannot separate what is one in reality without falsehood. Thomas says that separation belongs to metaphysics.25 To understand how separation is connected with the point that metaphysics studies what is neither dependent on matter for being nor for being understood, we should examine an example of separation that Thomas gives. I should note that I am following John F. Wippel’s interpretation of Aquinas on this topic.26 Earlier I noted how Thomas said that the mathematician does not abstract quantity from intelligible matter, but only from sensible matter. Since substance does not depend on quantity for existence, the “consideration of substance without quantity belongs to the order of separation instead of to that of abstraction.”27 So through separation we can consider substance as substance instead of substance insofar as it is quantified, or colored, and so forth. Similarly, because judgment pertains to a thing’s being, through separation we can consider being as being (ens inquantum ens), or, as Thomas sometimes calls it, common being (ens commune).28 Included in the study of this is substance (the primary referent of being), the properties of being (one, good, true, and so on), and the principles and causes of being, some of which are only treated indirectly such as God.29 Thomas is following Aristotle, who said that science must investigate the principles of what it studies.30 Aquinas distinguishes between two sorts of principles: Some are complete natures in themselves and nevertheless they are the principles of other things [for example, God]. . . . And for this reason they are considered not only in the science of the beings of which they are the principles, but also in a separate science. . . . some principles, however . . . are not complete natures in themselves, but only the principles of natures, as unity is the principle of number, point the principle of line. . . . Principles of this sort, then, are investigated only in the science dealing with the things of which they are principles of all beings.31
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Thomas briefly argues that a principle of being in the first sense, a complete nature and yet the principle of other things, must be being in the highest degree and therefore must be the most free from matter and change.32 This he says corresponds to our notion of divinity. Because no science can demonstrate the existence of its subject, God is only studied indirectly in metaphysics. Therefore metaphysics amounts to studying what is neither dependent on matter for being nor for being understood. In one sense this refers to what excludes materiality, as in the case of God. In a second sense this refers to what can exist in matter, but neither depends on matter for being nor for being understood, for example substance. Following Wippel, I use “positively immaterial” to refer to the first sense and “neutrally immaterial” to refer to the second.33 According to Thomas, metaphysics studies the neutrally immaterial primarily and only studies the positively immaterial indirectly. Before we can discuss what is compatible between Gracia’s view of metaphysics and the neo-Thomistic metaphysics I will put forward, we need to briefly summarize Gracia’s view. 4. Gracia’s Metaphysics Let us examine Gracia’s most detailed definition of metaphysics, which states that metaphysics is: [A] philosophical view which seeks: (a) to identify the most general categories; (b) to define the most general categories if at all possible and if not, at least to describe them in ways which allow us to identify them; (c) to determine the relationships among the most general categories; (d) to fit less general categories into the most general ones; and (e) to determine how less general categories are related to all the most general categories, including the ones in which they do not fit.34 A category, according to Gracia, is “whatever is expressed by a term or expression, simple or complex, which can be predicated of some other term or expression.”35 He understands the term expressed technically such that the term Plato expresses Plato and the term white expresses white.36 Only individual entities, such as Plato and Plato’s knowledge of grammar, are excluded because they cannot be predicated of other terms or expressions.37 Instead, they function as terms of an identity sentence, such as “This is Plato,” and, therefore, are not categories. An advantage of this view is that it allows for all sorts of categories such as nothing, square circle, chimera, and so on. This allows metaphysics to study quite a wide range of objects. But what is the ontological status of category? Is it something extra-mental? Is it something conceptual? Is it something linguistic? Picking only one answer com-
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mits us either to realism, conceptualism, or nominalism, respectively. Gracia thinks that this question is illegitimate because it involves an unwarranted reduction.38 In other words, it is foolish to pick only one answer, because not all categories are extra-mental entities or concepts or words. He proposes that category is neutral with respect to extra-mental entity, concept and word—it is neutral with respect to all other categories.39 Accordingly, he says that “Each category, qua category, should be considered to be whatever it is, as determined by its proper definition, and nothing more.”40 He admits that the neutrality he describes makes categories quite similar to universals. The difference is that a universal is instantiable, but instantiability is not a requirement of a category. For example, “human” can have many instances, such as Peter, Paul, and Mary. But the category nothing can have no instances; it is not instantiable. Every universal is category, but not vice versa. Gracia’s view, therefore, has many advantages. Category is extremely broad and so allows metaphysics to study anything, even negations such as nothing, privations such as blindness, impossibilities such as square circle, and so on. This is in harmony with Thomas’s principle that the supremely intellectual science “treats of the most universal principles” because category is broader than universal.41 Category is also more suitable for human minds insofar as the proper object of the human intellect according to Thomas is “a quiddity [definition] or nature existing in corporeal matter.”42 As we have seen above, category as category should be considered to be whatever it is, as determined by its proper definition. In addition, Gracia’s metaphysics is not the compendium of all sciences since it focuses on the most general categories in one way and the less general in another. It is not empty since it concerns itself with the identification, definition (when possible) and description of the most general categories, not just one primitive indefinable category such as existence. In short, I should like to preserve what is good in Gracia’s view while also preserving what is good in Thomas. I accomplish this by doing two things. First, I adopt Gracia’s notion of category. In doing this, I do not have to abandon realism in metaphysics, or Thomas’s view of existence. These are objections Gracia has already dealt with in Metaphysics and its Task.43 Second, I combine Gracia’s notion of category with the formal object of the neutrally immaterial. As we will see, this will clarify how the object of metaphysics that Gracia proposes is compatible with the division of the speculative sciences and the object of metaphysics described by Aquinas. 5. Neo-Thomism and Gracia’s Metaphysics Earlier we discussed how, according to Thomas, natural philosophy studies what depends on matter for being and for being understood. This amounts to studying change and the universal natures that are the principles of change, for example, human, animal, and so on. Categories of this sort are not the most general insofar as
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they are contained under the categories of metaphysics. For example cat is contained under substance. Mathematics studies what depends on matter for being but not for being understood. This amounts to studying quantity, which includes discrete quantities such as numbers and continuous quantities such as lines, surfaces, solids, etc. Categories of this sort are also not the most general, because they too are contained under the categories of metaphysics. For instance, a sphere is a type of being. Finally, metaphysics studies the neutrally immaterial or that which does not have to exist in matter, though it can exist in matter. This includes the study of being, substance, act, potency, and so on. Categories of this sort are the most general categories because all the others mentioned above are contained under them. Therefore, I propose that metaphysics studies the neutrally immaterial, which I take to be identical with the most general categories. Hence, in a way similar to Gracia, I can say that metaphysics studies categories from the perspective of the most general categories. This avoids Gracia’s objections about metaphysics becoming the compendium of all disciplines or an empty study. Naturally, Gracia could object that my view does not allow metaphysics to study categories such as nothing, or square circle. The reason is that I have identified the most general categories with the neutrally immaterial, or what can exist in matter but neither depends on matter for being nor for being understood. Since nothing and square circle cannot exist in matter, they appear to be excluded from metaphysics. To this I respond that while it is true that nothing and square circle are not included in the formal object of metaphysics, the neutrally immaterial— that does not mean they are in no way studied in metaphysics. As I said earlier, metaphysics studies categories from the perspective of the most general categories. That which cannot exist at all, I refer to as the negatively immaterial, using this phrase differently than Wippel. Categories falling under the negatively immaterial, which include nothing and square circle, are most definitely not the most general ones. Because they can have no members that exist materially or immaterially, the other categories we have mentioned above in natural philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics cannot fit under them. In the case of nothing, it can have no members whatsoever. It is merely the negation of being. Concerning square circle, it is merely the combination of incompatible categories of mathematics. Therefore, nothing and square circle are less general categories and are only studied insofar as they fit into the most general categories or to determine how they are related to the ones into which they do not fit. Similarly, the positively immaterial are also not included in the formal object neutrally immaterial, but they are studied indirectly as well. This illustrates another strength of this view: it gives a clear criterion for determining what categories are the most general, something Gracia says is not easy to do.44 An additional advantage of the view I am proposing is that, unlike Gracia’s view, it does not require aim to help differentiate metaphysics from the other speculative philosophical disciplines. As we have seen above, natural philosophy
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and mathematics do not study the most general categories. Only metaphysics studies the most general categories and that is enough to differentiate it from the other philosophical sciences. Obviously, if metaphysics studies the most general categories it will seek to identify them, define them if possible, and relate them. Most of this is implied in the operations of simple apprehension and judgment. Thomas is also clear that the less general categories are also studied in metaphysics indirectly.45 Gracia mentions only one serious objection to a view quite close to the one we are discussing here. It is an objection against conceiving metaphysics as the study of the most general predicates of being. He says: [M]etaphysics has always been concerned with the less general as well as with the most general. For example, it is common place to find discussions of color and even of particular colors, such as red and white, in metaphysical treatises. So, even if we were to accept that metaphysics studies predicates— apart from whether predicates are conceived as linguistic terms, concepts, or features of things—it would certainly be a mistake to say that it studies only the most general predicates.46 But in the view I propose, metaphysics will study other categories, the less general ones, such as red, insofar as they fit into the most general ones or to determine how they are related to the ones into which they do not fit. Therefore I do not disagree with what Gracia claims metaphysics seeks to establish, only with Gracia’s insistence that aim be partially responsible for the differentiation of metaphysics from the other speculative philosophical disciplines. Another strength of my view is that I am able to account for the unity of metaphysics in a stronger way than Gracia. Since, as we have seen, the formal object gives unity to the habit and ultimately to the science, metaphysics is one because it studies the neutrally immaterial. The unity of metaphysics as described by Gracia is weaker insofar as it gets its unity from two sources, object and aim, instead of just one. He says that the unity it has is like that of a city, apparently following William of Ockham to some degree on this matter.47 I acknowledge that from the perspective of what is produced by the habit, metaphysics is a collection of conclusions that are an ordered set, but from the perspective of the habit itself it is one, unified by its formal object, the neutrally immaterial. Despite this disagreement, I can still accept Gracia’s point that metaphysics is divided into two main branches. The first is general metaphysics, which concerns the most general categories. The second is specific metaphysics, which concerns the less general categories. General metaphysics can be subdivided into ontology and etiology, to give just a few examples. The subject of ontology is being and the subject of etiology is cause. Because being is included under the formal object of the neutrally immaterial, it is one of the most general categories. The same holds true for cause. As a result, both ontology and etiology are contained under
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metaphysics as a part according to Thomas: “One science is contained under another in two ways: in one way, as its part, because its subject is part of the subject of that other science, as plant is part of natural body. So the science of plants is also contained under natural science as one of its parts.”48 It is in this sense that the object of metaphysics described by Aquinas, ens commune, is compatible with Gracia’s view of metaphysics and with the view of metaphysics that I propose. Concerning specific metaphysics, it can be subdivided into theology and philosophical anthropology, to name just a few branches. Theology concerns divinity and philosophical anthropology concerns human beings. Neither divinity nor human beings are included in the neutrally immaterial. So, in my scheme, specific metaphysics concerns only what metaphysics studies indirectly. Therefore, Gracia is correct to say that metaphysics should not be confused with one of its branches. 6. Conclusion In the end, my view of metaphysics is a hybrid. I have tried to merge the best of Thomas’s and Gracia’s metaphysics. From the side of Thomas I have tried to preserve his anthropological view of science, the divisions of the speculative sciences, his contributions to ontology, and the strong unity of a science because much is good in these. From the side of Gracia, I have tried to preserve his notion of category, its neutrality, its broad range, its suitability to the human intellect, and the ability of his view to overcome many objections that plague other conceptions of metaphysics because much is good in these and because they complement and build upon the metaphysics of Thomas. Obviously, much more needs to be done if we are to fully merge the best of Thomas’s and Gracia’s metaphysics. For example, the relationship of at least some of the categories to God will have to be addressed. I hope that I have made such work appear worthwhile.
NOTES 1. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), p. xvi. 2. Ibid., p. 132. 3. St. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Librum Boethii De Trinitate, trans. Armand A. Maurer, The Division and Methods of the Sciences (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 4th ed., 1986). 4. Ibid., q. 5, a. 1, resp., pp. 12–13, my emphasis. 5. Ibid., q. 5, a. 3, resp., p. 35. 6. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1–2, 49, 1, resp.
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7. St. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Librum Boethii De Trinitate, q. 2, a. 2, resp., trans. Armand A. Maurer, Faith, Reason and Theology (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1987), p. 41. 8. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1–2, q. 94, a. 1. 9. Ibid., 1–2, q. 54, a. 4, ad 3. 10. Ibid., 1–2, q. 54, a. 2, ad 1. 11. St. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Librum Boethii De Trinitate, q. 2, a. 2, resp., pp. 41–42, and q. 5. a. 4, resp., pp. 51–53. 12. St. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Librum Boethii De Trinitate, q. 5, a. 1, resp., pp. 13–14. 13. Ibid., q. 5, a. 3, resp., pp. 34–35. 14. On the relationship between demonstration and scientific knowledge see Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, bk. 1, 1, 2, and bk. 2, 8, 9, 10, 19, and Metaphysics, bk. 7, 10. 15. St. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Librum Boethii De Trinitate, q. 5, a. 3, resp., p. 40. 16. Ibid., q. 5, a. 2, resp., p. 29. 17. Aristotle, Physics, trans. R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye, The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), bk. 2, 1, 192b15–16. 18. St. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Librum Boethii De Trinitate, q. 5, a. 3, resp., p. 41. 19. Ibid., p. 38. 20. Ibid., pp. 38–41. 21. Ibid., pp. 34–35. 22. Ibid., p. 35. 23. Ibid., p. 41. 24. Ibid., p. 40. 25. Ibid., p. 41. 26. John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), pp. 44–62. 27. St. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Librum Boethii De Trinitate, q. 5, a. 3, resp., pp. 40–41. 28. Ibid., q. 5, a. 1, ad 7, p. 22. 29. Ibid., q. 5, a. 4, resp., pp. 52–53. 30. Aristotle, Physics, bk. 1, 1, 184a12–14. 31. St. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Librum Boethii De Trinitate, q. 5, a. 4, resp., pp. 49–50. 32. Ibid., pp. 50–51. 33. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, p. 8. 34. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, pp. 139–140. 35. Ibid., p. 134. 36. Ibid., p. 135. 37. Ibid., pp. 135–136. 38. Ibid., pp. 201, 216. 39. Ibid., p. 208. 40. Ibid., p. 205.
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41. St. Thomas Aquinas, “Prooemium,” Expositio in libros Metaphysicorum, in The Division and Methods of the Sciences, pp. 96–97. 42. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1, q. 84, a. 7, resp. 43. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, pp. 155, 212–213. 44. Ibid., p. 143. 45. St. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Librum Boethii De Trinitate, q. 5, a. 4, ad 5, p. 56. 46. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, p. 79. 47. Ibid., pp. 210–211. 48. St. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Librum Boethii De Trinitate, q. 5, a. 1, ad 5, p. 21.
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Eight THOMAS, THOMISTS, AND THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICS: RESPONSE TO DELFINO Jorge J. E. Gracia 1. Thomas and Thomists In his commentary, Robert A. Delfino raises an important issue for historians of philosophy especially and for philosophers more generally, although he raises it in the particular context of St. Thomas Aquinas’s thought. The particular issue has to do with how faithful a person needs to be to Aquinas in order to claim accurately that she is a Thomist. Obviously, apart from the particularities of this case, we can raise this issue concerning any other philosopher. We could obviously ask how faithful to David Hume a person must be in order to be counted accurately as a Humean, or in the case of Aristotle, an Aristotelian, or in the case of Willard Van Orman Quine, a Quinean? The general question is interesting and merits attention, for it goes to the core of the issue of authority in philosophy and of the criteria that a person can legitimately use as a philosopher or historian. But the general question would be too much to take up at this time. So, following Delfino’s lead, I plan merely to deal with the issue as it applies to Thomists, although what I say has repercussions for the general issue. The question for us, then, is: What are the criteria that fit a Thomist? We find an explicit answer to this question in a self-proclaimed Thomist from the seventeenth century, John of St. Thomas (John Poinsot). In the Tractatus de approbatione et auctoritate doctrinae divus Thomae, of the Cursus theologicus, he lists five criteria of a true disciple of Thomas. Such a disciple must: (1) look back to the continuous line of succession of previous disciples who adhered strongly to Thomas’s doctrines; (2) be energetically intent on defending and developing Thomas’s views instead of disagreeing cautiously with them or explaining them in a lukewarm manner; (3) stress the glory and brilliance of Thomas’s doctrines instead of his opinions and novelty of interpretation; (4) follow Thomas, arrive at the same conclusions, explain Thomas’s reasons, and resolve any apparent inconsistencies in his views; and (5) seek greater agreement and unity among Thomas’s disciples. These criteria speak for themselves and obviously their aim is both apologetic and corporate: Thomists must defend the master and make sure to keep the
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ranks in line. Additionally, as significant as what these criteria establish explicitly, are the things that are missing from them. For example, we have no reference to truth, methodological precision, rigor of inquiry, or historical accuracy. An assumption exists that Thomas was right in what he said and thought and the job of Thomists is to try to fix whatever might appear not to be so. Another significant missing element is that of criticism. Obviously, John is concerned with keeping the group of Thomists united and in agreement instead of allowing for the free flow of ideas and evaluation. Thomists must keep in mind what other Thomists in the past have held and one of their explicit purposes is to seek agreement and unity among themselves. Even a brief encounter with the writings of Aquinas will reveal that Thomas would disagree with the criteria that John applies to a Thomist. The thing that concerned Thomas most was truth. Naturally, as a believer and a theologian, he was willing to accept and argue for the truth of Christian doctrine. Indeed, he could not conceive of any part of this doctrine as being remotely false, for its source he believed to be God himself. But when it comes to the views of human beings, including those who had authority in the fields in which they spoke, he always subordinated their views to what he thought was the truth. If it was clear that the views of the authoritative author contradicted what Thomas thought to be the truth, Thomas never chose to abandon truth in order to follow the authority. On the contrary, even with the highest authorities of the Church, such as St. Aurelius Augustine, Thomas’s procedure was to “interpret” the thought of the authoritative author in such a way as to bring it around to what he considered true. And when we come to matters of philosophy and not theology, then it is clear that Thomas was willing to abandon the author’s view and correct it as far as he thought the view required it in order to bring it in line with the truth. Consider how he treated Aristotle, whom he regarded as the foremost authority in philosophy. Did Thomas hesitate to modify Aristotle’s views? Most definitely not. For example, Thomas had no hesitation to conceive God in personal terms in contrast to the Aristotelian Unmoved Mover and he introduced a distinction between essence and existence that Aristotle had never accepted. Nonetheless, it is fair to say that Thomas considered himself an Aristotelian when it came to philosophy. But this is not all, for Thomas was willing to take the thought of Aristotle and apply it to situations that the Stagirite had not envisioned. Consider, for example, how Thomas argues that sacred doctrine is a science, even though it appears to violate the principles of demonstrative reasoning that Aristotle had laid down in the Posterior Analytics. Thomas tells us that sacred doctrine is a science even though its principles are not self-evident because it relies on a higher science, namely the knowledge that God has. This is definitely contrary to what Aristotle held for several reasons. First, because the knowledge in question is a matter of faith and this would involve opinion, turning the reasoning dialectical. Second, the knowledge that God is supposed to have conveyed to human beings in his revela-
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tion includes knowledge of things about the world and Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover did not have any thoughts about the world, but only about itself and its thought. Finally, revealed knowledge involves knowledge of individuals such as Christ, but all scientific knowledge for Aristotle has to do with universals. So, obviously, Thomas abandoned the core criteria of Aristotle’s conception of science and adopted instead criteria that can accommodate theology. Truth, in this case revealed truth, took precedence over philosophical authority. Thomas explicitly points out that in philosophical matters, the argument from authority is the weakest, even if in theology it is the strongest. But, obviously, in theology the strength does not come from human authorities, but from divine authority. In short, to speak of a Thomist in the sense that John of St. Thomas spoke of one is both to speak of someone whose attitude Thomas himself would reject— and of someone who would not be adhering to Thomas’s practice. Unfortunately, ever since Thomas’s death, and especially after the statements about the value of Thomas’s philosophy issued by Pope Leo XIII in the nineteenth century, many self-proclaimed Thomists have adopted an attitude toward Thomas that is quite close to that of John of St. Thomas. They assume that Thomas was right and that their only task is to defend his views, to explain them to those who do not understand them, to proselytize for followers, and to keep Thomists in line. In their devotion, they forget truth, the spirit of criticism essential to all scientific pursuit, and Thomas’s views and practice. The true Thomist must put truth first in all matters of inquiry and so be faithful to the spirit that guided Thomas’s thought. This entails openness, a critical spirit, and a willingness to reject any view that does not square with the truth and to modify a position that is found wanting, including that of Thomas, if need be. This appears to be precisely the attitude behind Delfino’s aim in his commentary. 2. Delfino’s Neo-Thomism in Metaphysics Delfino lays out his purpose by telling us that my view of metaphysics complements and builds on the metaphysics of Thomas. More precisely, he argues that the object of metaphysics I propose is compatible with both the division of the speculative sciences and the object of metaphysics Thomas accepts. Delfino also claims to present a view of metaphysics that merges the best elements of both my view and that of Thomas, and finds that this sort of enterprise is perfectly acceptable for a neo-Thomist like himself. Delfino has several steps to his argument. The first is to accept that metaphysics studies the most general categories. But, in contrast with my view, he goes on to argue that the most general categories are neutrally immaterial categories. By a neutrally immaterial category he means a category that “can exist in matter, but neither depends on matter for being nor for being understood.” And he claims that these categories are the most general because “contained under them are all
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the others,” including, for example, cat, animal, line, and number. The first two are subsumed under the category of substance and the last two under quantity, which are both immaterial. Similar moves are possible with other categories. This in turn means that in studying the category of the neutrally immaterial, metaphysics also studies all categories insofar as all categories are contained in the most general ones and these are identified with the neutrally immaterial. He also expresses this point by saying that metaphysics studies all categories under the perspective of the most general ones. To the possible objection that this excludes from the object of metaphysics such categories as nothing and square circle, he answers that these are not part of the formal object of metaphysics (the neutrally immaterial) because they are not sufficiently general, but that they are nonetheless studied in metaphysics, albeit indirectly, as contained in the most general categories. His identification of the most general categories with the neutrally immaterial shows, Delfino claims, that his view is superior to mine in that it provides a criterion of most general categories, whereas I do not. So, is Delfino right in thinking that his view both consistently integrates the main points of mine and is superior to mine? I do not think so for several reasons. In the first place, it is not clear what he means by the claim that the most general categories are those that are neutrally immaterial. Does he mean that they are the most general categories because they are neutral with respect to immateriality and therefore can contain material categories? It would appear so, since he cites examples of material categories, such as animal as being contained in neutrally immaterial categories, such as substance. But why call them neutrally immaterial? Why not neutrally material? Are these not two sides of the same coin? Are not “material” and “immaterial” complement terms (I assume “immaterial” and “nonmaterial” are synonyms)? Why one and not the other? Additionally, what exactly is the relation between neutrally immaterial, immaterial, and material categories? I think Delfino needs to say more than what he has already said about this if his claim of superiority to, and consistency with, my view is to be taken seriously. Second, the reason Delfino gives for the exclusion of nothing and square circle from the group of most general categories makes no sense to me. That a category does not have members, or cannot have members, does not disqualify it from being a most general category, unless we stipulate that generality entails it. But should it? Third, it is not the case that the category of the neutrally immaterial contains all other categories if we adopt, as Delfino claims he does, my conception of category. That C is a category for me entails that the term that expresses C, call it C', is predicable. This means that for a category to contain (in Delfino’s language) another category, the term that expresses the category must be predicable of the term of the contained category. To say that color is contained in the category quality entails that “quality” is predicable of “color.” This means that if the category of
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the neutrally immaterial contains all other categories, whether directly or indirectly, the term “neutrally immaterial” should be predicable of the terms that express all other categories. And since “non-neutrally immaterial” is a category, then “neutrally immaterial” would have to be predicable of “non-neutrally immaterial.” But this is a contradiction. So we must assume that the category of the neutrally immaterial does not contain the category of the non-neutrally immaterial. The only way out of this predicament I see is for Delfino to think of categories differently than I do, or abandon the idea that the category of the neutrally immaterial contains all other categories, and both of these alternatives contradict his explicit claims, if I have understood him correctly. This brings me to another point, fourth, that smuggled into the notion of a neutrally immaterial category, Delfino appears to have included something like being or the possibility of being. The language he uses in this context frequently includes terms like “being” or “existence”: “[M]etaphysics studies what is neither dependent on matter for being”; “metaphysics studies the neutrally immaterial or that which does not have to exist in matter, though it can exist in matter.” (My emphases.) If it is being, this is a major restriction on what these categories are and also on what qualifies as a category, insofar as all categories are included in the most general ones. If so, then the whole emphasis on ontological neutrality that was a hallmark of my position is lost. And if it is not being, but possible being, again he has introduced an ontological restriction sufficiently important to show that his view is not similar to mine in a fundamental aspect and one that may affect his overall view of categories. So, his claim that he has integrated my view into his comes into doubt. Delfino also argues that his view is superior to mine in that it is more economical (my word) than mine and also provides a stronger account of the unity of metaphysics. The first, insofar as it does not require the identification of an aim for the discipline (its object is sufficient to set the limits of metaphysics). The second, because the formal object of metaphysics, the neutrally immaterial, gives unity to the habit and the science of metaphysics without, again, having to refer to an aim. The account I give, in his view, is both less parsimonious and weaker because it has two sources, a certain object and an aim. But this would work only if he can explain how all categories are contained in the category of the neutrally immaterial, and this, as I pointed out earlier, does not appear to be possible. So the advantages of parsimony and unity vanish due to this serious difficulty. The overall problem with Delfino’s view, and the source of its weakness, is that by choosing a particular category as the formal object of metaphysics, he has followed in the footsteps of so many other philosophers who have unduly restricted the object of metaphysics and, therefore, presented us with an inadequate account of the conclusions the discipline reaches. The weakness in Delfino’s view is not that it does not account for the unity of the discipline, but that it does not account for the variety of things about which the discipline reaches conclusions.
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Only if we see the object of metaphysics as not having any kind of restriction other than categorial and the kind of conclusions about that object for which we employ the discipline, as I have argued, can we do justice both to the unity of the discipline and the multiplicity of objects about which it reaches conclusions. To say that metaphysics studies the neutrally immaterial properly speaking and all other categories under that conceptual umbrella, as Delfino suggests, does not account for much that metaphysicians claim. But, again, Delfino makes a further claim. He argues that my position is not incompatible with that of Thomas insofar as, for Thomas, the object of metaphysics includes both being and cause and my division of metaphysics includes the sciences of ontology and etiology. Additionally, Delfino finds that his position is compatible as well with Thomas’s view in spite of his attempt to complement Thomas’s position with mine. So, is he right? I am afraid that he is not for two reasons: First, his view is in substantial disagreement with that of Thomas; and second, his view is in even greater disagreement with my position in that it modifies it in fundamental ways. True, my conception of metaphysics is more encompassing than those of Thomas and Delfino, accommodating their views as appropriate for subdisciplines of metaphysics. This is a great virtue of my position, for it gives it a greater power of explanation. But Delfino’s view goes contrary both to mine and to that of Thomas. Incompatible with mine is his restriction of the formal object of metaphysics to a certain category, namely, the neutrally immaterial. Contrary to Thomas’s view—although I have not substantiated this claim here—he substitutes being as being by the category of the neutrally immaterial which makes his view closer to that of Boethius than to that of Thomas. So, in a sense, we could say that, in the spirit of John of St. Thomas, Delfino is not a Thomist. Still, in the spirit of true Thomism I suggested earlier, we could consider him a Thomist or a neo-Thomist.
Nine GRACIA AND HIS TASK Peter A. Redpath Jorge J. E. Gracia’s Metaphysics and its Task is a valiant attempt to give a comprehensive, systematic explanation of “one of the most obvious facts” of philosophical experience and history: “The continued resilience of metaphysics.”1 From the start of metaphysics with the Ancient Greeks and throughout all the periods of philosophical history, metaphysics has been attacked, only to rise again like a phoenix. Gracia’s work attempts to answer why this happens. Even if we would like to abandon metaphysics like an unwelcome relative, Gracia tells us that we cannot do this precisely because the questions metaphysics asks “are the most fundamental,” and underlie “everything else in our experience.”2 Therefore, “To give them up is unthinkable, even if we never reach completely satisfactory answers.”3 We might attempt to explain metaphysics’s resilience by appeal to human nature: “Metaphysics seems to be a natural thing for human beings to do.”4 Gracia rejects this answer as unsatisfactory because it does not clarify for us “what metaphysics is, particularly because philosophers disagree concerning the nature of the discipline.”5 And he maintains, “If we are going to understand why philosophers always go back to metaphysics, we must begin by determining what, in fact, metaphysics is.”6 Given “wide disagreement about how to answer this question” and different “conceptual confusions” different authors raise that “vitiate the question,” Gracia recognizes that his task “is not easy.”7 Still, Gracia says, in this book, he gives “a direct answer” to the question “what is metaphysics?” and indirectly provides a rationale for the discipline’s survival.8 In carrying out his task, Gracia tells us that his book aims “to present a theory which makes sense of the practice of metaphysics throughout its history.”9 In so doing, he claims his intention is “to fit it within a conceptual framework which makes sense of our collective experience.”10 His intention is not to make “a drastic change” in the way we practice metaphysics.11 Therefore, even if the theses Gracia defends “contradict what many metaphysicians, in fact, say about metaphysics,” Gracia maintains that his theses “are rooted in” the discipline’s “practice.”12 For Gracia, then, metaphysical practice, not statements made by “metaphysicians” about their practice, becomes the main measure by which we know metaphysical activity. For this reason, Gracia does not intend his book to be a chronological survey of the different views concerning metaphysics proposed throughout the history of
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Western philosophy. Instead, he calls his approach “systematic,” apparently meaning by this that it presents what he calls “conceptual frameworks” that “should help us understand and evaluate the history of the attempts to define metaphysics.”13 His work does not attempt to give exhaustive treatments of the positions he discusses. Instead, his main goal is to understand the historical resilience of metaphysics by considering “the history of the attempts to define metaphysics” and to understand why they have failed.14 As he says, he concentrates “on one issue, the definition of metaphysics.”15 Gracia’s systematic approach leads him to three theses that he defends: (1) Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that, in different ways, studies different, most and less general, categories because it seeks to (a) identify and, when possible, define, and determine the relations among, the most general categories and (b) establish the relations of the less general categories to the most general ones. (2) “[C]ategories are neutral with respect to the question of whether they are linguistic, conceptual, or real in the sense that there are categories of each sort but not all categories are of one sort.”16 This being so, and considering that metaphysics studies categories, we make a mistake “to think of metaphysics in exclusively nominalistic, conceptualistic, or realistic terms.”17 Metaphysics studies “all kinds” of categories, not “only one kind of category.”18 (3) “[A]ttempt at reduction” causes our mistaken understanding of metaphysics in exclusively nominalistic, conceptualistic, or realistic terms.19 Gracia considers his first thesis “[t]he most fundamental” because while, in general, “philosophers have distinguished metaphysics from other disciplines in terms of” its (a) object of study, (b) method used, or (c) the propositions that compose it “or to which it arrives as conclusions,” he maintains that the object metaphysics studies and the aim it pursues distinguish it from other disciplines.20 In Gracia’s view, metaphysics is “fundamental,” “logically prior to every other discipline,” and “inescapable” precisely because metaphysics aims to “identify and relate the most general categories” and “establish the relations of less general categories to the most general ones.”21 Gracia maintains that his position has three more corollaries. His way of conceiving metaphysics makes the following things possible: (1) His view allows us “to think of widely different philosophers . . . as engaged in one enterprise.”22 In this way, we can see “[t]he history of metaphysics, and to a certain extent the history of philosophy as a whole . . . as a single endeavor in which many different approaches and viewpoints are present.”23 In so doing, Gracia maintains that four “much needed” effects follow: His conception
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(a) gives metaphysics intelligibility, (b) promotes dialogue among different metaphysical schools, (c) makes easier our “study and comparison of radically different positions,” and (d) contributes to “elimination of artificial divisions and boundaries among philosophical traditions.”24 (2) His view allows us to explain “the unity of metaphysics, a topic which has worried philosophers from the beginning of the discipline.”25 Therefore, we can say that a discipline called “metaphysics” exists and that this discipline “derives its unity from the object it studies and what it aims to establish about it.”26 (3) His view allows us to understand philosophers properly, because if metaphysics is “fundamental and inescapable,” then, whether philosophers explicitly state their metaphysical views or leave “them implicit in their work,” we must “take into account their metaphysical views,” to have a satisfactory understanding of them.27 Gracia maintains that his book’s task (1) “becomes essential to any serious attempt at understanding the thought of any philosopher” and (2) “makes the practice of this discipline and the understanding of its nature necessary steps in the development of a comprehensive view of the world or any of its parts.”28 From this he concludes, “In this sense, the issue discussed here is at the basis of all human understanding.”29 I concur with Gracia that the continual resilience of metaphysics is a fact of philosophical experience and history. What Étienne Gilson once said of philosophy is equally true of metaphysics: It always buries its undertakers.30 This is true of philosophy precisely because it is true of metaphysics. Therefore, in this paper, I will not question whether Gracia is right about the resilience of metaphysics being a historical and experiential fact. Instead, my consideration will focus on whether Gracia’s theses adequately explain this resilience and logically justify the corollaries he draws from them. Since my focus is on Gracia’s theses, a reasonable place to start this consideration is with what Gracia says grounds his theses: “If we are going to understand why philosophers always go back to metaphysics, we must begin by determining what, in fact, metaphysics is.”31 Gracia’s main goal is to understand the historical resilience of metaphysics by considering “the history of the attempts to define metaphysics” and to understand why they have failed.32 As he says, he concentrates his “efforts on one issue, the definition of metaphysics,” and he thinks that by finding this definition he is able to “provide an answer to the question of whether metaphysics should be understood nominalistically, conceptualistically, or realistically.”33 Given Gracia’s focus on the history of the definition of metaphysics and the crucial role that his understanding of definition plays in his project, we cannot adequately evaluate his task’s success or failure apart from considering what he means by “definition.”
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In his “Introduction,” Gracia tells us that he understands definitions to be sentences in which predicates “specify certain conditions which are claimed to be satisfied by the entities to which the subjects of the sentences of which they are predicates refer.”34 By this he means that definitions are sentences that “express essence,” or “refer” necessary and sufficient conditions (what a linguistic entity called a sentence’s “predicate term” expresses) to a linguistic entity called a sentence’s “subject term,” and, indirectly through the subject term, to the entities that the subject term expresses.35 Therefore, definitions appear to be predicative sentences, conjunctions of linguistic entities that refer our understanding to some other entity as satisfying some necessary and sufficient conditions. Therefore, Gracia says: “Predicates are linguistic entities whose function is to specify the conditions to be satisfied by the entiity expressed by the subject,” and “Predicating, then, is the act of putting together linguistic terms in a certain way.”36 “The aim of predicating is to make a claim that the conditions specified by the predicate are satisfied by whatever the subject expresses,” that is, by something.37 For, “[c]onditions are always conditions of something; they are related to something.”38 And, “[i]n predicative sentences the predicate specifies some, and only some, conditions which are supposed to be satisfied by what the subject expresses. Therefore, what the subject and predicate express are not the same thing.”39 According to Gracia, we can divide definitions into two broad groups: nominal and real. “A nominal definition consists of a sentence whose predicate specifies the necessary and sufficient conditions of the correct use of the subject of the sentence.”40 In so doing, a nominal definition concerns “the meaning of terms,” is part of “the province of semantics,” expresses a nominal essence: “the necessary and sufficient conditions of the correct use of terms,” and has to do with conditions of linguistic usage.41 “A real definition also consists of a sentence, but the conditions its predicate specifies have to do with the kind of thing to which the subject of the sentence refers.”42 In so doing, a real definition concerns kinds of things; is part of philosophy; expresses a real essence: “the necessary and sufficient conditions that make a thing the kind of thing it is”; and has “to do with conditions of being.”43 Given this understanding of the nature of definition and its general kinds, Gracia claims that, “traditionally,” philosophers have taken metaphysics “to deal with real rather than nominal definitions.”44 Unhappily, at this point, Gracia does not tell us more precisely what he means by the phrase “to deal with.” Among other things, this phrase could mean that metaphysics, or, more properly speaking, a metaphysician, uses real definitions, or that the object of metaphysics is real definition. Whatever the case, Gracia tells us that (1) we cannot determine this issue “until we have established the object of metaphysics” and (2) his “concern at
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this point is with the kind of definition metaphysics itself can have,” nominal or real.45 It is not with establishing the object of metaphysics. Therefore, whether metaphysics “deals with” real or nominal definitions, or whether metaphysics be a natural kind or one produced by human “intentional activity and design” [an artificial kind], Gracia maintains that metaphysics can have a real definition. For, he says we can have real definitions of natural and artifactual kinds so long as the necessary and sufficient conditions that our definition specifies “apply to the kind and not to the effective use of a linguistic term.”46 Whether metaphysics has a real or nominal definition, Gracia maintains that we usually express the necessary and sufficient conditions specified in a definition “in terms of genus and specific difference (differentia).”47 Gracia then explains more fully what he means by “genus” and “specific difference”: The genus is the class to which the kind of thing which is to be defined immediately belongs. Thus, the genus of human being is often taken to be animal, and so is the genus of cat. The identification of a genus reveals a set of necessary conditions, but to make the conditions sufficient, the specific difference must be added. This is the condition or set of conditions which distinguish the kind of thing being defined from other things which satisfy the generic conditions. In the case of human beings, the capacity to reason has been traditionally identified as the specific difference . . . . Neither generic nor specific conditions are sufficient conditions, considered separately and by themselves, for the determination of the definiendum. Considered by themselves, they are merely necessary conditions. Generic conditions are distinguished from specific ones in that the first are necessary for the second. In the example cited earlier, the conditions specified by animal are supposed to be necessary for rational. To be rational requires to be animal, but to be animal does not require to be rational.48 After doing this, Gracia attempts to place metaphysics within its genus. He does this by attempting to understand metaphysics as a species within the genus philosophy. He starts to do this by taking for granted that metaphysics is a branch of philosophy. This being so, he says we first need to make more precise our understanding of philosophy. He does this “by staying away from radical and extreme conceptions and adopting one which is largely in agreement with our ordinary use of the term both in the classroom and outside of it.”49 In an attempt to be “inclusive” in his conception of philosophy, Gracia proposes “four different sets of generic conditions for metaphysics.”50 These include understanding metaphysics as:
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PETER A. REDPATH (1) A view of the world, or any of its parts, which seeks to be accurate, consistent, comprehensive, and supported by sound evidence; (2) The activity whereby 1 is developed; (3) The rules which are to be followed in the formulation of 1; (4) An ability to produce 1, to engage in 2, or to develop 3.51
Gracia then maintains, “1 takes precedence over the others and must be considered the appropriate genus of metaphysics” because it is their final cause.52 Or, as he says, “It is the aim of all the others and presupposed by them. None of the others makes sense apart from it, even if 1 cannot be developed without the others.”53 Since (1) takes precedence over all the other possible genera for metaphysics, to get a precise understanding of what Gracia means by philosophy, we need to flush out more precisely what he means by a “view.” When we do so, we find that he thinks of a view as “a set of beliefs concerning anything, although there are differences with respect to the beliefs in question.”54 To make his conception of philosophy more precise and distinguish it from the notion of philosophy as any set of beliefs “an ordinary person may hold about anything” and from “science,” Gracia maintains that we may conceive of philosophy “as a view of the world, or any of its parts, that seeks to be accurate, consistent, comprehensive, and for which” we give evidence as support.55 He calls philosophy a view of the “world or any of its parts” in the sense that the object it “studies does not seem to be restricted to any individual thing or any particular kind of thing. Philosophy seems to concern itself with everything which is subject to human experience.”56 By “world” he apparently means experience, not the physical universe. He further maintains that the feature of comprehensiveness formally differentiates philosophy from science. While “science also aims at accuracy, consistency, and sound support,” Gracia maintains “[p]articular sciences do not aim at comprehensiveness.”57 In making these distincitions, Gracia does not maintain that philosophy “is or must be” comprehensive, consistent, accurate, and supported by sound evidence. He maintains that, were we to apply these conditions “as criteria of what constitutes a philosophy, then, based on what we know, we could not call philosophy any of the things which are generally called philosophy,” and to him, “this makes no sense.”58 Therefore, Gracia concludes that “to qualify as philosophy,” a set of beliefs need only “seek” to be accurate, consistent, comprehensive, and supported by sound evidence: In order to qualify as philosophy, then, a view need not be accurate, consistent, comprehensive, and supported by sound evidence, but it does need to seek to be so. It must seek to be accurate in the sense that it must aim to be
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faithful to experience understood broadly to include both empirical experience and nonempirical intuitions. It must seek to be consistent because it must attempt to avoid contradiction. It must seek to be comprehensive in that it must try to present as complete a picture of the object it describes as possible. And it must seek support in evidence which is thought to be sound because philosophy wishes to achieve the status of knowledge, and views without sound support are matters of opinion, not knowledge.59 By aiming at all these conditions Gracia thinks that philosophy, and only philosophy, “aims to be fully comprehensive. Philosophy aims to produce a big picture even of partial aspects of the world; it is not content with partial pictures of the world or any of its parts.”60 In a sense, then, philosophy is a set of beliefs unified by the task of becoming a fully comprehensive view. Having thereby established metaphysics’s genus, or the necessary conditions for the further specification of metaphysics by its specific difference, Gracia sets about to “determine the specific conditions which will complete, with the mentioned generic conditions, the set of necessary and sufficient conditions of metaphysics.”61 This discussion comprises much of the rest of the book and starts with different strategies that Gracia says philosophers have given to answer it.62 Gracia divides these strategies according to four different traditions. “One tradition distinguishes metaphysics on the basis of the object with which metaphysics is concerned,” that is, with whatever “metaphysics studies.”63 A second locates this distinguishing feature in method. A third finds it in the aim of metaphysics. And a fourth places it in “the kind of knowledge it yields.”64 He also mentions “intermediary positions or positions that combine two or three of the mentioned ways of distinguishing the disciplines.”65 After Gracia divides these different traditions, he considers, critiques, and dismisses each. Then he gives a two-part presentation of his view of metaphysics by identifying the specific difference of metaphysics in terms of its object and aim. The specific difference of metaphysics includes its object (studying categories) conjoined with “what it specifically seeks to establish about that object” (its aim).66 The first part of this presentation identifies the object of metaphysics: the study of categories. Categories, in turn, are whatever predicate terms express. And this can be a name, a concept, or something real.67 Gracia defines a category as “an identity sentence in which the predicate is interchangeable with the subject, and this predicate specifies the conditions that are satisfied by the members of the category.”68 A category is, thereby, a statement of identity conditions for membership in a category, or conditions that must be satisfied by what the subjects of predicate sentences express in order for what they express to enter, belong to, or fit into a category. Therefore, by expressing categories, predicate terms specify of the subject of a predicative sentence the conditions whereby what that subject expresses fits into the category, its membership conditions.
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For Gracia, then, categories are identity sentences. They are not conditions. He says, “Conditions are always conditions of something; they are related to something. But categories need not be so.”69 Categories need not be related as conditions. They become conditions when a predicate term expresses them. Therefore, Gracia says that a predicate term’s “function is to make a claim concerning the relation of a category to something else.”70 In making the claims in the above paragraph, Gracia is careful to clarify his use of the term “to express.” He notes that philosophers talk about linguistic entities like words and propositions as expressing ideas, words, thoughts, and propositions. We do not often find it used to refer to proper names or individuals. Gracia tells us that when he uses the term “to express” of categories, he is not using it to function in the way that the term “to predicate” functions in a predicative sentence. Instead, he uses it to function as terms in an identity sentence function.71 The second part of Gracia’s two-part presentation of his view of metaphysics completes the specific difference of metaphysics through a multiplicity of aims related to most, and less, general categories. Gracia says that metaphysics studies categories, but that it studies different categories in different ways because of its aims. Metaphysics has a threefold aim regarding the most general categories, to: (1) identity them, (2) define them, if possible, or, “at least to describe them in ways which allow us to identify them,” and (3) determine the relationships among these categories.72 And it has a twofold aim regarding the less general categories, to: (1) “fit less general categories into the most general ones,” and (2) “determine how less general categories are related to all the most general categories, including the ones in which they do not fit.”73 Gracia states that, in his view, “a great part of what the metaphysician does is to connect and relate categories.”74 In light of its definition, Gracia concludes that the philosophical view we call “metaphysics” has to be the conceptual foundation of all our knowledge. The reason for this is that, by studying categories, metaphysics studies the conditions for category membership that all predicate terms demand that subject terms require of what they express. According to Gracia, everything we think or say we think or say in terms of categories as he defines them. Therefore, “if metaphysics studies categories, . . . metaphysics studies everything.”75 And metaphysics winds up being “the categorial foundation of all our views, of all our knowledge,” and “the conceptual foundation of everything else we know.”76 After Gracia says this, he explains more specifically how metaphysics differs from philosophy and other subjects of study. He does this first according to the aim of metaphysics, philosophy, and other disciplines. In this respect, metaphysics differs from philosophy considered as a whole in that philosophy so considered is a comprehensive view about everything. Philosophy’s task is broader than the task of metaphysics and of all other disciplines. Philosophers seek “an overall and comprehensive view of the world or any of its parts.”77 In contrast to this the metaphysician only aims at providing a partly
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comprehensive view, of general and specific categories, a general identification and definition, if possible, of the most general categories, and an identification and determination of how the less general categories we find in our experience fit within these most general categories. In light of this aim we can also distinguish metaphysics from the particular sciences. Like philosophy and metaphysics, the particular sciences have an aim and object related to categories: to identify and determine even narrower categories and to relate other specific entities to these categories. Unlike philosophy and metaphysics, the particular sciences do not aim at or achieve a comprehensive view of the world, or all experience, and all its parts. At best, they achieve a coherent view of part of the world and its parts. Therefore, we might say that the particular sciences differ from metaphysics in that particular sciences aim at systematic views of part of the world and the parts of this part (a non-comprehensive view) while metaphysics aims at systematic views of the world and any of its parts (a comprehensive, or partly comprehensive, view), and philosophy aims at a totally systematic view of the world and any of its parts (a totally comprehensive view).78 In this respect, we might call philosophy the system of all systematic views. Because we find the specific difference of metaphysics in its aim (categorization) and object (categories), Gracia maintains that we make a mistake if we try to restrict metaphysics to a study of one category and use of any one method. The method of metaphysics cannot be purely a priori or a posteriori. For example, we can only characterize something like running by appeal to experience, which appears to involve a priori and a posteriori intuitions. As Gracia says: “[M]etaphysics draws from experience to form a list of the most general categories into which the world can be divided. Indeed, how could one proceed to categorize if one had nothing to categorize?”79 And he adds that (1) metaphysics transcends experience by formulating the categories according to which we organize experience in a most general way; and (2) “we often determine membership within a category through inspection of the content and implications of concepts considered apart from experience.”80 Like all sciences, Gracia maintains that the epistemic basis that metphysics draws its conclusions from is “the consideration of non-categorial members of categories.”81 In making the claims in the above paragraph, Gracia appears to think that the act of intuition is part of metaphysical practice in at least three ways: by metaphysical (1) reliance on concepts that we derive from experience, and not “from propositional expressions of that experience”; (2) apprehension of the terms of identity statements through which predicate terms can present categories; and (3) determination of membership within a category through inspection.82 After Gracia completes the defense of his definition of metaphysics, he considers many other issues related to metaphysics. I will not consider most of these because we have enough information at this point to answer the question that Gracia raises at the start of his book about the resilience of metaphysics, about why it
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survives despite constant attacks against it. And we now have enough information to determine whether Gracia’s theses adequately explain this resilience and logically justify the corollaries he draws from them. First, regarding Gracia’s general explanation about the resilience of metaphysics, in part, he explains this in relation to the ontological status of categories as neutral with respect to whether they are extra-mental kinds of beings, words, or concepts. He maintains that we do not have to consider categories as, or as not, linguistic, conceptual, or extra-mental. The reason for this is that categories are identity sentences where the predicate is interchangeable with the subject and the predicate specifies the conditions that members of the category have to satisfy to be members of the category.83 Gracia tells us that essential or necessary predication demands that what the subject expresses satisfies the conditions expressed by the predicate. Categories, however, express the conditions that what-the-subjectexpresses have to satisfy. As such, categories express the conditions of true predication, or truth conditions, for necessary or essential predicate statements. Therefore, Gracia says, “Thus, ‘mammal’ is truly predicated of ‘bachelor’ only if bachelors are mammals.” And, he adds: In the pertinent cases for us, that is, cases of necessary or essential predication, the conditions are given by the category’s definition. If the category bachelor is analyzable into unmarried and man taken together because these are the conditions specified by the predicate bachelor (bachelor is defined as unmarried man), then “unmarried” and “man” taken together must be truly predicable of the name of every bachelor. Likewise, if the category human is analyzable into rational and animal taken together, then “rational” and “animal” must be truly predicable of the name of every member of the category human.84 Apparently, because categories express the truth conditions of essential and necessary predicative statements, and because we usually explain knowledge in terms of such propositions, Gracia thinks that categories express the conditions for all knowledge. Since metaphysics studies categories, metaphysics necessarily becomes the categorial foundation of all our knowledge and philosophical views. Since metaphysics studies the truth conditions of all, not of some, knowledge, to reduce metaphysics to a study of one kind of category would involve reducing more general truth conditions to less general ones. According to Gracia, this is the sort of mistake that thinkers make when they try to reduce metaphysics to a study of a realism, nominalism, or conceptualism. Since we can truthfully predicate terms of names, concepts, and mind-independent beings, to try to reduce metaphysics to a study of the truth conditions of one of these categories is doomed to fail. Therefore, Gracia concludes that the reason metaphysics survives is not because it studies any one category or because it is natural for us to pursue. It survives because it studies the most and less general categories with the aim of relating the
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less to the more general. It studies the most and less general categories and their relations. By so doing it provides the truth conditions that make philosophical views comprehensive. This means that, without metaphysics, no philosophical view can be complete. All other views logically presuppose metaphysics.85 In relation to Gracia’s general goal of explaining metaphysics’s resilience, I think that he largely succeeds in this effort through his identification of the object of metaphysics as ontologically neutral and his claim that unwarranted reduction accounts for the failure of philosophers to eliminate metaphysics from philosophy. At the same time, I think that his theses do not adequately explain this resilience and logically justify the corollaries he draws from them. I think a main reason Gracia’s theses fail is because his definitions of philosophy, metaphysics, and definition are not correct. I will defend this conclusion by first considering Gracia’s definition of philosophy as “[A] view of the world, or any of its parts, that seeks to be accurate, consistent, and comprehensive, and for which evidence is given as support.”86 We need to recall that some of the main reasons Gracia gave for holding this view was so that he could stay “away from radical and extreme conceptions” and adopt “one which is largely in agreement with our ordinary use of the term both in the classroom and outside of it” and to be “inclusive” in his conception of philosophy.87 While, at first sight, Gracia’s approach might appear prudent and philosophically well-grounded, in my opinion, he makes a major mistake to subordinate his desire rightly to define philosophy and metaphysics to the goal of inclusivity. In this case, I think this desire ends up weakening his argument. Given Gracia’s opinion that “[o]rdinary language holds our basic intuitions of the world,” his conclusion that analysis of ordinary language “should help us develop a general map of the ways we think” appears reasonable, until we consider that the way we teach philosophy in universities influences the way our ordinary language holds our intuitions about philosophy.88 While Gracia appears to think he is being prudent in looking to the current classroom way of talking about philosophy to help him properly categorize philosophy and metaphysics, John Deely says: I tell you that philosophy as it has been taught in our American universities since their beginning in 1636 has mainly left out so many irreducibly key elements as to get the whole thing wrong, when it has not been made downright incomprehensible. And philosophy itself as a discipline of thought has suffered severely in consequence. . . . [What] has claimed to be and been in fact the mainstream of philosophical thought in contemporary culture has turned into a side current, perhaps even backwater. In the seventeenth century, modern philosophy, in order to develop, had to move pretty much outside the mainstream. In the late twentieth century the philosophical establishment within the academy has become to philosophy’s future what the judges of Gali-
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If what Deely says about the history of philosophy is true, then approaching contemporary ordinary language to get our basic intuitions about philosophy’s nature would be inclusive and largely in agreement with ordinary use of the term inside and outside the American classroom, but this would be no guarantee that the view would be moderate, inclusive, or give us fundamental intuitions. In light of what Deely says, a more prudent ordinary language approach would be to consider how the term “philosophy” was used inside and outside schools in all ages of philosophy’s history, especially in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Latin Hispanic tradition, which Deely calls “The Road Not Taken.”90 Gracia ignores this tradition and the whole Renaissance in his short account of the history of attacks against metaphysics and the history of definitions of metaphysics. Had he not done so, had he more thoroughly examined this period and late pagan antiquity and the history of definitions of philosophy and metaphysics inside and outside the classroom, he might have arrived at a different common understanding of what constitutes philosophy and metaphysics. For example, in his classic study entitled, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, Ernst Robert Curtius tells us, “The concept of what constitutes philosophy had already begun to grow vague in the third century of our era.”91 In the process, he says, “Students were no longer taught to philosophize, but to interpret the classics of philosophy,” to confound philosophy with interpreting texts.92 He adds: This was accomplished by courses of lectures, which began by defining philosophy in a manner equally traditional. In the schools of late Antiquity six different definitions were transmitted [to the later middle ages]: 1. Knowledge of what exists and how it exists; 2. Knowledge of divine and human things; 3. Preparation for death; 4. Assimilation of man to God; 5. Art of arts and science of sciences; 6. Love of wisdom.93 Curtius says that (Flavius Magnus Aurelius) Cassiodorus (Senator) preserved these definitions for us and that, by late pagan antiquity, the word “philosophy” applied to every branch of learning, including engineering. “But,” Curtius claims, “the cultural ideal was rhetoric, of which poetry was a subdivision. The assimilation of philosophy to rhetoric is a product of neo-Sophism. Rhetor, philosopher, sophist now mean the same thing in the Latin West too.”94 My main point in the above reference to late ancient and early medieval definitions of philosophy is that, if we look to derive our definition of philosophy from reflection mainly or only on ordinary language and historical definitions of philosophy, a good likelihood exists that the definition we come up with will be erroneous. And this will likely happen even if we narrow down several definitions
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to the one that the others appear to aim at. Had we attempted to define philosophy at these historical times using Gracia’s inclusive procedure of avoiding “extreme conceptions” and adopting an understanding that is largely in agreement with the ordinary use of the term in and outside of the classroom, the likelihood exists that we would have reduced a philosopher to a rhetorician. Gracia might protest against this claim by asserting that, ultimately, his definition is rooted in the discipline’s practice. For, despite what these thinkers were saying inside and outside the classroom during these historical times, in its roots, philosophy is a view of the world, or any of its parts, that seeks to be accurate, consistent, comprehensive, and supported by sound evidence. In short, philosophy is essentially a systematic worldview, which is what he could claim all these definitions given in late pagan antiquity suggest. At first sight, Gracia might appear to have a case for such a protest. For, despite what Curtius says, Gracia’s definition has an uncanny resemblance to the definition of philosophy that Plato gives of it as a love of what we know and to a secularized version of St. Aurelius Augustine’s definition of philosophy as faith seeking understanding.95 Recall that Gracia maintains that a view is “a set of beliefs concerning anything, although there are differences with respect to the beliefs in question.”96 And he tells us that, to be philosophical such a set of beliefs must “seek” to be accurate, consistent, and comprehensive. Gracia also adds that, in addition to these three features, to be philosophical, a view “must seek support in evidence which is thought to be sound because philosophy wishes to achieve the status of knowledge, and views without sound support are matters of opinion, not knowledge.”97 If, as Alfred North Whitehead is famous for saying, the whole of subsequent Western philosophy is a “footnote to Plato,” Gracia’s definition would appear to be precisely the one we should find rooted in the practice in all ages of subsequent Western philosophical understanding. Despite such a protest, I think that a more prudent response than this would take into consideration that what Joseph Owens says about metaphysics is equally true of philosophy. According to Owens: Metaphysics is primarily a vital quality and activity of the intellect, and not a collection or systematic organization of data either in print or in the memory. In its own nature metaphysics exists solely in intellects, and not in books or writings, though the name may be used, in a secondary sense, to denote a body of truths known through the metaphysical habitus, and to designate a treatise or a course in which metaphysical thinking is communicated.98 Gracia could still protest that, despite being systematic, his understanding of philosophy is a vital quality and activity of the intellect: a view that attempts to be accurate, consistent, and comprehensive and seeks support in evidence. And he could also maintain that the theses he defends “are rooted in the practice of the discipline, even if they contradict what many metaphysicians, in fact, say about
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metaphysics.”99 According to Gracia, we should always measure what philosophers say against philosophical practice. If that is the case, then, ultimately Gracia has to measure his views of philosophy and metaphysics against a more complete view of a human being and give us a more detailed explanation of what he means by philosophical practice, one that goes beyond analyzing statements. Otherwise, his claim that we should always measure what philosophers say against philosophical practice means that we should always measure what philosophers say against what philosophers say. In my opinion, because Gracia fails to specify more completely in this book what he means by a human being and to give a more detailed understanding of what he means by philosophical practice, he fails adequately to define philosophy and metaphysics as a vital intellectual activity and adequately to explain the unity of science. If we take a more detailed look at Gracia’s claims about the nature of philosophical practice, I think we can recognize more completely the deficiencies inherent in the approach he takes to defend his claims even on the basis of his aim to give a theory that makes sense of the historical practice of metaphysics. Recall that Gracia has said his intention is “to fit it within a conceptual framework which makes sense of our collective experience.”100 Therefore, even if the theses Gracia defends “contradict what many metaphysicians, in fact, say about metaphysics,” Gracia maintains that his theses “are rooted in” the discipline’s “practice.”101 In evaluating Gracia’s success in his project according to his criteria, we need to consider, on the basis of his criteria and philosophy’s history, whether Gracia’s theory makes sense of metaphysical practice throughout its history. My response is that it does not. Putting aside Gracia’s questionable claim that philosophy is a view and that views are sets of beliefs aiming at becoming comprehensive worldviews, consider for the moment Gracia’s assertion that, to qualify as philosophy, a view need not be accurate, consistent, comprehensive, and supported by sound evidence. It only has to seek to be so. It must seek (1) to be accurate, in the sense that it has to aim to be faithful to experience understood in a broad sense to include empirical experience and non-empirical intuitions; (2) to be consistent because it has to try to avoid contradiction; (3) to be comprehensive in the sense that it has to try to present as complete a picture as possible of the object it describes; and (4) to support with evidence that we think is sound because philosophy “wishes” to achieve the status of knowledge, and views lacking such support are opinions, not knowledge.102 Gracia tells us that, in meeting these criteria, philosophy differs from science in one respect: “Particular sciences do not aim at comprehensiveness.”103 Does this claim or the ones made in the above paragraph make sense of our collective experience? Do we normally call people “scientists” if they merely aim at being accurate and consistent and only aim at supporting their views with sound evidence? Do we normally talk about science as having a “wish” to achieve the status of knowledge?
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If we do not, and if the only difference between philosophy and science is that philosophy is comprehensive and science is not, how can our collective experience support Gracia’s claims about the aims of science or philosophy? Is Gracia correct when he says that scientists do not aim at comprehensiveness? Does this claim square with our collective experience? It does not conform with mine. Since the project of modern science as a system was born in the dream of René Descartes, its project appears to me to have been to view science as a practice aiming at a comprehensive account of the world and all its parts.104 Gracia shies away from applying success in achieving philosophy’s aims as truth conditions of what constitutes a philosophy because, “If these conditions were to be applied as criteria of what constitutes a philosophy, then, based on what we know, we could not call philosophy any of the things which are generally called philosophy. And this makes no sense.”105 I disagree. This makes perfect sense if what Deely has described as the condition of modern American philosophy is true, and if Gracia is wrong in viewing philosophy as an emerging belief system. It makes no sense according to the inclusivist, systematic restrictions Gracia uses to arrive at philosophy’s definition. Just because, given the limitations Gracia places on our understanding of philosophical experience, Gracia does not “know of any philosophy which is generally regarded as having fulfilled these conditions,” and just because Gracia claims that philosophy is a belief system trying to become knowledge, or a comprehensive system, an open-ended “adventure in the clarification of thought,” does not mean that a philosophy fulfilling true philosophical conditions does not exist or has never existed.106 Apparently, no modern science fulfills these criteria either, even though modern science started out aiming at being comprehensive. This does not mean that no science exists or has ever existed. It simply means that no philosophy has ever existed as a belief system that has emerged into a comprehensive system. I concur. But I do so because philosophy is no belief system, comprehensive or otherwise. In “The Unity of a Science St. Thomas and the Nominalists,” Armand A. Maurer gives a detailed argument that the notion of philosophy as a system or body of knowledge started as a reaction “with the nominalist and conceptualist theologians of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries” to St. Thomas Aquinas’s conception of science as an intellectual habit. Maurer maintains that, strictly speaking, Aquinas considered science to be a mental habit, not a system, and that William of Ockham was the “chief theoretician and popularizer” of the notion of philosophy as a system or body of knoweldge.107 In so doing, Maurer supports Owens’s claim that metaphysics is not a system.108 Gracia completely ignores Maurer’s research and chooses, instead, to measure all definitions of philosophy in light of the use of the definition of philosophy in contemporary ordinary-language.
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In response to Maurer’s research, Gracia could no doubt claim that, despite what Maurer says about the notion of philosophy during the late Middle Ages, all these thinkers, including Aquinas, were aiming at philosophy as a comprehensive system. Gracia might support his objection by appeal to the practice of philosophy from the pre-Socratics to Socrates and Plato. Did not the pre-Socratics aim at developing a comprehensive view of the world and all its parts and did not Socrates and Plato wind up explaining everything in terms of participation in the Good?109 My reply to such appeals is that, while the pre-Socratics aim at explaining the physical world and all its parts, this in no way means that they mainly conceived of their philosophical practice as analyzing sentences to come up with worldviews, or that they thought of their essential activity as a set of beliefs wishing to grow into a system. For all the ancient Greeks philosophy started in wonder, not in a set of beliefs. This is true even of Parmenides of Elea and Plato, both of whom accepted the distinction between opinion (doxa) and knowledge (episteme). Parmenides explicitly rejects the notion of being able to arrive at a comprehensive worldview by moving from a set of opinions to knowledge.110 And, when Plato talks about “opinion,” he has in mind is not so much what we today would call a “belief.” For him, habitual possession, not a comprehensive worldview, transforms true opinion into knowledge. When Plato spoke about opinion or belief, he had in mind knowledge of singular contingents, sense knowledge, or a knowledge that is imprecise and not habitually possessed. When he spoke about “true opinion” he had in mind opinions that are repeatedly true (what Gracia appears to mean by a practice). Therefore, in the Meno, Socrates replies to Menon’s wonder about why knowledge should be more prized than right opinion that Menon does not understand the answer to this question because Menon has “not observed the statues of Daedalus.”111 Had he done so he would have recognized: If you have one of his works untethered, it is not worth much; it gives you the slip like a runaway slave. But a tethered specimen is very valuable, for they are magnificent creations. And that, I may say, has a bearing on the matter of true opinions. True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in their place, but they will not stay long. They run away from a man’s mind; so they are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason. That process . . . is recollection, as we agreed earlier. Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable. That is why knowledge is something more valuable than right opinion. What distinguishes one from the other is the tether.112 Clearly, at a minimum, as Plato expresses his understanding of knowledge in the above passage, knowledge coincides more closely with what, in ordinary language, we call a “habit,” not with what Gracia calls a “view” or a “practice.” It
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also coincides more closely with the classical philosophical notion of a habit as a stable disposition than it does with the notion of a simple practice.113 Additionally, this same Platonic understanding of knowledge is identical with Plato’s definition of philosophy as a love of wisdom, or a love of knowing what a person knows, which is markedly different from Augustine’s notion of philosophy as faith seeking understanding. In my opinion, Gracia’s understanding of philosophy and science suffers from the same sort of criticism that Plato levels against Menon. At best, Gracia turns philosophy and science into Menon’s notion of true opinion because his definition of philosophy and description of science evicerates them and reduces them to a status little better than Immanuel Kant’s impossible dreams. His definition of philosophy appears, in Socrates’ words, not to be tied down in the human mind. It appears to exist like the statues of Daedalus, untethered, unstable, and ready to run away from the human intellect at a moment’s notice. Furthermore, if none of us needs to fulfill the aims of philosophy specified in Gracia’s definition of a philosopher, if philosophic reason never has to come to a right, or any, conclusion, can we truly call philosophical aims “aims”? Gracia never tells us what he means by an aim, although he appears to distinguish it from Kantian impossible dreams that limit pure reason. Is it, then, a possible dream? A hope? An intention? What sense does it make to say that philosophy’s wish to achieve the status of knowledge is an aim when we can be philosophers without anyone ever achieving the goal? Does this not, at best, turn philosophy into a hope, a quixotic dream, not an intention? Does not intending presuppose some present, not future, potential ability to reach a goal we aim to reach? Do we reasonably call people “swimmers” when they have no determinable ability to swim? To be swimmers do we only need to aim at being, in the sense of hoping to be, swimmers, even if we have no determinable potential to become swimmers? Does not intention, aiming, presuppose real, determinable ability to intend, to plan, not merely to hope or wish for? And, if this is the case, does not Gracia need to define philosophy in relation to acquired psychological abilities: habits? In Gracia’s present scenario, no distinction appears to exist between actual and indeterminately potential philosophers. Apparently, we all become philosophers merely by being indeterminately potential philosophers dreaming about some ideal future state that we sincerely try to reach. In short, being a philosopher appears to become essentially the same as anyone, truly capable or not, sincerely wishing to become a philosopher. Essentially a philosopher need never have acquired ability or achieve knowledge. We need only be sincere, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile.114 And what does it mean to say that philosophy has “wishes”? Strictly speaking, philosophy has no wishes or hopes. Philosophers have these. Because Gracia so easily confounds these notions and hypostatizes his notion of philosophy’s ab-
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stract essence into a set of beliefs with desires suggests to me that a serious opposition exists between his definition of philosophy and his view that we need to measure philosophy’s nature as a personal practice in terms of our collective experience. In terms of our collective experience, a more reasonable conclusion for us to draw is that something is wrong with Gracia’s definition of philosophy as a belief system wishing to become knowledge, or comprehensive, than with the view that philosophy can exist even if no person ever realizes its truth conditions as a knowledge. Gracia’s attempt to define philosophy systematically has another weakness: extremes of inclusivity and exclusivity. Despite Gracia’s aim to be inclusive, by defining philosophy as a comprehensive systematic worldview, Gracia appears to reduce philosophy to theoretical knowledge and, thereby, to eliminate from legitimate philosophizing strictly practical and productive modes of thought. In so doing, Gracia appears to wind up rejecting the classical Aristotelian division of philosophy into theoretical, practical, and productive. Apparently, in Gracia’s view, practical and productive knowledge cannot be philosophical, or, if they can be, they can only be so by aiming at being comprehensive worldviews, theoretical systems. Apparently, Aristotle did not understand what he was doing when he made this distinction because he violated our common experience of philosophical practice that philosophy is a view. For, in reality, practical and productive knowledge can only be philosophical by having as part of their aim to be part of a theoretical system or to bring into being a comprehensive theoretical system. If, on the other hand, practical and productive knowledge can be philosophical, apparently the only way they could be would be by aiming at expressing comprehensive worldviews. In this case, the aim of political philosophy would be to have all of us express totalizing worldviews in predicate sentences, and the aim of economics would be to have a monetary worldview. It would not involve developing the money-making habit. While, given his definition of philosophy, Gracia appears to wind up rejecting much of classical philosophical wisdom by only allowing practical and productive beliefs to enter the philosophical system on the condition that they become theoretical, applying the same definition, he winds up including within philosophy groups with which ancient philosophers could not stand being compared.115 Consider, for example, what he says about the ancient Sophists. Gracia maintains that they were “inspired by a skeptical attitude against knowledge in general” and that they “rejected certainty in knowledge in favor of expediency.” He refers to Gorgias as a “skeptic” and maintains, “Gorgias questioned the very basis of our understanding.”116 In my opinion, strictly speaking, all these claims are false. Ancient Sophists were not “skeptics” in the classical sense or in the ordinary sense that we use the term, namely the sense of holding negative opinions or being doubters. Strictly speaking, a skeptical attitude against knowledge in general did not inspire the ancient Sophists. They did not reject certainty in knowl-
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edge in favor of expediency. They did not hesitate to articulate comprehensive worldviews or claim to achieve conviction. And Gorgias did not explicitly question the basis of our understanding. Owens tells us that the term “skeptic” does not appear in earlier doxographical records, but that it is recorded by Diogenes Laertius who reports that people were called by this name “because they were always looking for truth and never finding it.”117 The older form of Skepticism, Pyrrhonism, appears to have originated with Pyrrho after the mid–fourth century BC, long after the leading ancient Greek Sophists like Protagoras and Gorgias were dead. Owens elaborates on the practice of this group as follows: The term comes from skeptesthai, meaning to look carefully at, examine, consider. Diogenes and Sextus Empiricus (Pyrrh. Hyp. 1,7) note that they were called also Aporetics and Ephectics (epochê). These terms indicate that they deliberately suspended their judgment and so remained in a state of aporia [irresolution], the state that the Aristotelian scientific procedure was meant to remove, but which the Skeptics accepted as ultimate (epochê or suspension of judgment). They were further called Zetetics or seekers, because they were always seeking truth. Again, this attitude was in contrast to the Aristotelian conception, in which zêtêsis or seeking led up to a solution of the aporiae and to definite conclusions.118 If what Owens says about ancient Skepticism is accurate, the term “skeptic” appears to apply more closely to Gracia’s definition of a philosopher than it does to the behavior of ancient Sophists like Protagoras and Gorgias. Gracia’s philosopher appears to be a sincere skeptic: someone who identifies philosophy with a view, must always, sincerely, aim at reaching truth, and never has to get there. Paradoxically, in other respects, Gracia’s notion of philosophical practice also appears to resemble more the activity of the ancient Sophists with whom Plato says “the old philosophers cannot stand comparison” than it does the practice of ancient philosophers or skeptics.119 Despite what Gracia claims, strictly speaking, Gorgias was no skeptic. He held no skeptical attitude against knowledge in general, and he did not reject certainty in knowledge in favor of expediency. True, he favored expediency. But this does not mean that he rejected human certainty in knowledge. In the Gorgias, Plato portrays Gorgias as maintaining that he possesses the finest of the arts precisely because he possesses the art of conviction, which Gorgias identifies with the art of speech! In addition, Gorgias does not deny the reality of comprehensive knowledge. He maintains that he possesses one art, one method, the art of speech, by which he possesses total science. As Owens tells us “The art of Protagoras, as Plato (Pr., 319 A ff.) has him describe it, aimed at teaching political virtue, the highest and most comprehensive
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excellence of all.”120 Gorgias claims to be an expert in the science of words, and that this expertise makes his skill the finest of the arts, the art that rules over all the other arts and is productive of the greatest human good: to produce conviction. Therefore, in reply to Socrates’ question about what good Gorgias’ art produces that makes it the best of arts, Gorgias replies: I mean the power to convince by your words the judges in court, the senators in Council, the people in the Assembly, or in any other gathering of a citizen body. And yet possessed of such power you will make the doctor, you will make the trainer your slave, and your businessman will prove to be making money, not for himself, but for another, for you who can speak and persuade multitudes.121 At this point, Gracia might object that, while Gorgias and Protagoras might not have been skeptics in the classical sense or in the sense of contemporary common language, in practice, both were skeptical because they denied the principle of non-contradiction and the reality of truth. For several reasons, this objection does not appear to help Gracia. First, Gracia tells us that, while we must regard as false any theory that includes or implies a contradiction, and, while we cannot explain away contradictions in relation to context, theories are never finished products. Apparently, what Gracia thinks about metaphysics he also thinks about all philosophical theories; they are adventures “in the clarification of thought, progressive and never final.”122 Therefore, he says, “we must use the Principle of Non-Contradiction . . . as a desideratum, a guiding rule which we aim to apply in context, but not as an inflexible criterion.”123 Second, precisely what Gracia means by these statements is difficult to determine. Since he considers a philosophy to be a comprehensive system, he appears to mean that we should not reject a whole system because it contains some contradictory assertions. I doubt that he means we can accept as philosophical a theory that denies the applicability of this principle to our fundamental intuitions and our prescription of categories. He is critical of Gorgias because he claims Gorgias “questioned the very basis of our understanding and sought, thereby, to undermine any attempt to develop what later came to be known as metaphysics.”124 Since Gracia considers “the view of the most general categories and how less general categories are related to them” to be “the conceptual foundation of everything else we know,” he would have to consider any proposition that contradicted this view to be questioning the basis of our understanding.125 Such a view might entail the denial of the existence identity statements, since, according to Gracia, a category is “an identity sentence in which the predicate is interchangeable with the subject, and this predicate specifies the conditions that are satisfied by the members of the category.”126
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Third, apparently Gracia thinks that, because Gorgias was a skeptic, in practice, Gorgias denied the existence of identity statements and the ontological neutrality of categories. But Gracia gives no evidence to prove this point. And, Gracia, not Gorgias, appears to be the skeptic. Fourth, perhaps, in thinking about Gorgias, Gracia has in mind Protagoras’ famous assertion, “man is the measure of all things . . . of the being of things that are and of the not-being of things that are not.”127 Even if such were the case, I think that Gracia has a difficult time attacking Protagoras’ teaching as undermining the foundations of human understanding because it contradicts Gracia’s view of what constitutes the conceptual foundations of everything we know. As Plato presents Protagoras’ teaching in his dialogue the Theaetetus, Gracia’s teaching appears to be strikingly similar to categorial neutrality of Protagoras. Plato describes Protagoras’ teaching as arising from at least two influences: (1) the Heraclitean and ancient poetic teaching that everything constantly changes and nothing permanent exists and (2) the emanationist accounts of sense perception that Empedocles had popularized. Plato maintains that Protagoras accepted the reality of individuals. He had simply held that, prior to a mixing of motions emanating from two different sources, the subject and object, the subject and object remained indefinite, or neutral, to both. These motions mix in-between the subject and object, and then, through a sort of boomerang effect, or opposition, return to their respective sources. In this way, Plato says, “nothing has any being as one thing just by itself, no more has the agent or patient, but, as a consequence of their intercourse with one another, in giving birth to perceptions and the things perceived, the agents come to be of such and such a quality and the patients come to be percipient.”128 Given the neutral status of these motions to individual being and unity, Sophists like Protagoras and Gorgias thought that their power of speech could interfere with a thing’s indeterminate individual being and unity as whiteness and visibility and alter the individual perceiver and the thing perceived, thereby changing the act of perception and the being of the thing perceived. I suspect that Gracia would protest that his views of philosophy and metaphysics are radically different from the teachings of these ancient Sophists. Despite such protest, I think their views are strikingly similar. To recognize this similarity more precisely, we need to consider what Gracia says about categories, and real, or essential, definitions, predicate sentences, and how categories function in predicate sentences. Gracia tells us that categories are whatever predicate terms express, be that a name, a concept, or something real.129 He defines a category as “an identity sentence in which the predicate is interchangeable with the subject, and this predicate specifies the conditions that are satisfied by the members of the category.”130 A category is, therefore, an identity statement that stipulates or prescribes a set of rules or conditions for membership in a category, or conditions that must be satis-
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fied by what the subjects of predicate sentences express in order for what they express to enter, belong to, or fit into a category. Therefore, by expressing categories, predicate terms become proclamations of conditional prescriptive statements, specifying of the subject of a predicative sentence the conditions under which what that subject expresses will be allowed admission into the category: its membership conditions. For Gracia, then, categories are more than identity sentences: sets of rules that become prescriptive conditions for category membership on the occasion of a predicate term presenting, announcing, proclaiming, pronouncing, and prescribing their presence. He says, “Conditions are always conditions of something; they are related to something. But categories need not be so.”131 Categories need not be related as conditions. Categories as categories are simply identity statements, statements of sets of conditions. But when we predicate categories we relate them. By so doing, categories assume a prescriptive, and causal, character. Therefore, Gracia states that a predicate term’s “function is to make a claim concerning the relation of a category to something else.”132 That is, in predicate sentences, the predicate term presents, introduces, announces, proclaims, pronounces, and prescribes the truth conditions for category membership of non-categorial members. In so doing, we can say that predicate terms proclaim “categorial imperatives” that cause category membership.133 Gracia tells us that he understands definitions to be sentences in which predicates specify certain conditions that someone claims the entities to which the subjects of the sentences of which the predicates refer “satisfies.” By this he means that definitions are proclamations, prescriptive pronouncements, sentences that “express essence,” or “refer” necessary and sufficient conditions (what a linguistic entity called a sentence’s “predicate term” expresses) to a linguistic entity called a sentence’s “subject term,” and, indirectly through the subject term, to the entities that the subject term expresses. Real, or essential, definitions do this by prescribing the necessary and sufficient conditions, the truth conditions that make a thing to be what it is. In so doing, they prescribe the conditions that make non-categorial members objects of experience and thinkable.134 Therefore, when predicate terms express categories, categories become measures of the being and experience that predication prescribes, and become the means through which we know things. In short, all essential, or real, predication is a prescriptive act of conditional necessity. All real propositions, real predicate statements, are conditional prescriptive statements that constitute the measure of all things, of things that are, that they are, of things that are not, that they are not. Essential speech makes things to be what they are, which, in turn, causes non-categorial members to become members of a category. Essential speech proclaims an essence, or category and relates that essence to a non-categorial member. Prior to that relation that non-categorial member was devoid of the truth conditions for category membership. Therefore, it had no individual categorial identity. It only attained individual categorial identity
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by being related to, and admitted into, a category through truth conditions expressed through the act of speech. In this way, by relating categories to non-categorial members, speech acts operate, as they do for Protagoras and Gorgias, as causes that bring non-categorial members into categories, cause them to exist in an essentially different way, and make them knowable. Prior to fulfilling the stipulated definition of being a human being, no individual could be Socrates because, for that individual to be Socrates, he has to be stipulated to belong to the category human. He has to be an object of experience. And he cannot be an object of experience unless he belongs to a category. Such causation requires that some intuition that Socrates fulfills the truth conditions for membership in the category human being, which is what occurs in the act of predicating the category rational animal of Socrates. This individual is Socrates because someone has predicated that this individual is Socrates-a-human-being. And someone has predicated that Socrates is a human being because Socrates is a rational animal. And someone has done all this because, in the act of predicating, someone has had irresistible “flashes of insight or empirical apprehensions” given “in a sudden, non-argumentative way” that all this is so. In short, Socrates is truly a human being because a clear and distinct insight exists that Socrates is a rational animal, a member of a linguistic system. In Gracia’s view, we appear immediately to grasp these notions through immediate intuition or insight. He tells us, “[i]ntuitions are flashes of insight or empirical apprehensions,” and that when we grasp something intuitively, we grasp it “in a sudden, non-argumentative way.”135 This being so, we can characterize a method as intuitive if we claim that the propositions it tries to establish follow from some non-propositional things, and “not from other propositions.”136 For example, if I claim that some particular object is a specific color, Gracia maintains that I do not express my reason for knowing this fact, or that this is so, in one or more propositions. I do not make the claim based upon reasons that I express in propositions. Instead, I merely assert, or proclaim, my intuition.137 While Gracia does not say so in this work, in a more recently published book, he tells us, “Ordinary language holds our basic intuitions of the world, and thus its analysis should help us develop a general map of the ways we think.”138 Therefore, he apparently thinks that we grasp these basic intuitions by analyzing ordinary language. And he maintains that the method we use in metaphysics makes “claims supported directly by intuition.”139 Again, Gracia might protest that I am distorting his view. To defend his claim he might refer to the distinction he makes between an essence and a cause. Regarding essence, Gracia says he takes this “to be the set of necessary and sufficient conditions for a thing to be the kind of thing that it is and without which, therefore, the thing could not exist.”140 In saying this, I take Gracia to mean that an essence is a set of prescriptive rules that stipulate the truth conditions for a thing to be a thing of a certain kind, to have membership in a category. As an example,
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Gracia states, “the essence of human beings is rational animality.”141 Gracia is careful at this point to say that he does: [N]ot say that the conditions [for membership in the category human being] are necessary and sufficient for the thing to exist. To say that would imply that to be a kind of thing is sufficient for existence and also to confuse the notions of essence and cause.142 Gracia elaborates on this point by saying that a necessary condition for existing is that something be a kind of thing. Only kinds of things can exist. But this is not a sufficient condition for existing. For Gracia claims that some kinds of things do not exist. As examples, he gives “unicorns” and “Martians.”143 (Apparently, Gracia thinks that existing in his mind does not mean to exist.) Beyond being a kind of thing, to exist a kind of thing must have a cause. Gracia adds that the definition of a human being does not express the causes that give rise to the existence of human beings. These causes would apparently be what Gracia calls “non-categorial members of categories.” For, he gives “other human beings” as an example.144 Therefore, Gracia maintains that, while “[a]ll essences are causes,” not all causes are essences.145 The reason for this is that, for a thing to exist, it has to be a kind. Some causes (essences, or categories) are causes of kinds. But other causes are not causes of kinds. They are causes of kinds existing. Such causes “have nothing to do with making a thing the kind of thing it is.”146 So, for example, “the capacity to reason is part of the essence of a human being and thus a cause, in the stated sense of cause [of a kind], . . . whereas the human being’s parents are causes of the [existence of the] human being, but not part of her essence.”147 Therefore, Gracia maintains, “Causes . . . are the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to exist.”148 All causes are sets of conditions. But not all causes are sets of conditions existing as parts of an essence uniting to cause a whole essence, or category. Some causes, such as parents, are sets of conditions that are not parts of an essence that cause the existence of a whole essence to be as this or that individual. Just what these parents add to this whole essence to cause it to exist, Gracia does not tell us. They cannot add some sort of existence because, Gracia maintains, “Existence is not a cause at all.”149 Whatever this something is, it is a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for existing from which another existence, not an essence, follows in virtue of existing as a kind. How, then, does a cause cause? Apparently, Gracia thinks it does so by predicating truth conditions for existence. The only way a cause appears to be able to do cause is by predicating. Therefore, Gracia says “My view is that ‘exist’ is a predicate in ordinary language and as such whatever it expresses, and certainly it must express something because we understand it, is a category.”150 Existence, then, is the act of predication of a set of rules, a prescriptive speech act of pro-
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nouncement of membership in the category of essence or existence, of fulfilling or satisfying a set of rules, necessary and sufficient conditions, for membership in the category of essence or existence. This peculiar nature of existence as an act of predication explains the difficulty Gracia finds in explaining what he means by the term “express” when he uses this of predicates in relation to categories. Gracia says that, when he uses the term “to express” of categories, he does not use this term to function in the way that the term “to predicate” functions in a predicative sentence. He uses it to function as terms in an identity sentence function.151 But how do predicate terms function in identity sentences? They do not do so as predicate terms in predicate sentences. Predicate terms in predicate sentences function as pronouncements of a likeness to what is expressed by the predicate term of identity sentences, as pronouncements of partial unity, of part of what the subject of the predicate sentence is. They do not pronounce the same rules for conditions of membership existence as do “predicate” terms in identity sentences. “Predicate” terms in identity sentences function as declarations of everything the subject is, the entire set of rules for being the subject, all the conditions that things must satisfy for them to become members of categories. Identity sentences are pronouncements of total sameness, of total unity, between the subject and predicate. They are complete sets of rules that, when used in predicate sentences, become prescriptions of all the conditions that must be satisfied by the members of a category. Therefore, Gracia says: The definition of a category is not a predicative sentence. “A bachelor is an unmarried man” is not like “John is a bachelor.” The first says that to be a bachelor is the same thing as to be an unmarried man; the second, that John is the kind of thing bachelors are, namely, what is expressed by the predicate of the first sentence.152 In sum, for Gracia, predicate terms are likenesses of the terms said of subjects in identity sentences. Since the terms said of subjects in identity sentences are total unities, predicate terms are likenesses of total unities. And, for him, to exist means to pronounce something to be a likeness of something that is totally one. Therefore, to exist means to express something as partly one, to say that something is like something that is totally one, or participates in total unity. Since this is so, Gracia’s categories have the same sort of ontological status as does the Good of Plato.153 They are too good to be. To be means to be like a category, or like that which is totally one. But for things to be able to be, like the Good of Plato, categories must not be. They must be neutral to being. For as the set of necessary and sufficient conditions for all being (essence and existence), the only way categories can fulfill their function is by not being. If categories were, nothing else could be. But other things are. Therefore categories must not be.
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Does this mean that, in the end, Gracia’s view of philosophy and metaphysics become reduced to a sophisticated kind of neo-Platonism? In a way, it does. In a way, it does not. In my opinion, unlike Plato, Gracia turns categories into linguistic acts, acts that endow subjects of sentences with linguistic being, with what he calls “frameworks.” Therefore, for him, to be means to be linguistically expressed. And categories turn out to be sets of linguistic conditions. In this respect, Gracia’s view more closely resembles the views of Protagoras and Gorgias than it does the view of Plato. Still, the Platonic element in Gracia’s view is unmistakable, just as it is in Aristotle’s metaphysics. As Aristotle tells us, “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.”154 If Aristotle is right, then, in some way, all arts and sciences aim at the good. So, to say, as does Gracia, that we have to derive our definition of philosophy and of metaphysics from that at which they aim appears to be in the best of philosophical tradition. For philosophy and metaphyics then become a study of the Good, which, in a way, is what they are. In my opinion, Gracia’s task in his book has been to transcend an antimetaphysical mindset that, for decades, if not centuries, has impeded philosophical progress in the West. He has attempted to do this by grappling with the intellectual situation in its present condition, as it exists, much as Plato did centuries ago in trying to counteract the cultural damage caused in his time by ancient Sophists. And he has attempted to do so by showing that, no matter how hard we try, we cannot escape from metaphysical speculation. To prove his point, he has reviewed the history of metaphysics in terms of its historic definitions to attempt to come up with an adequate definition of metaphysics. In the end, I think that Gracia fails in this quest finally to give metaphysics a new, adequate definition, and I do not think Gracia’s theses adequately explain this resilience of metaphysics and logically justify the corollaries he draws from them. I think that his theses partly explain this resilience and partly justify the corollaries he draws. But I do not think that they do so adequately or entirely. In principle, I think that Gracia’s definition of metaphysics is largely a restatement of Plato’s view of metaphysics that confounds the Platonic Good with sets of linguistic conditions. In so doing, Gracia winds up confounding theoretical speech with practical speech in which we intuit individuals to have specific essences on the occasion of being related in a speech act. This means that, in defining philosophy and metaphysics as views, while he appears to reduce practical and productive knowledge to theoretical knowledge, ultimately, in his first principles, he does the reverse. He reduces theoretical knowledge to an act of constructing linguistic frameworks. In studying different, most and less general categories, in different ways, and in seeking to identify and, when possible, define, and determine the relations
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among, the most general categories and establish the relations of the less general categories to the most general ones, I think that Gracia is doing little more than studying all the different ways that multitudes participate in the One and the Good. For this reason, Gracia tells us that predicate terms express the necessary and sufficient conditions for category membership. But nowhere does Gracia tell us precisely what he means by “necessary,” “sufficient,” or “conditions.” When we consider the meaning of these terms, we become hard pressed to come up with anything but unity, goodness, and being. For what is necessary is what must be, can only be, or can be in only one way. Necessity involves a kind of unity. What is sufficient is that which fulfills or satisfies, is something good. And conditions are what exist before something else can exist. Therefore, in Gracia’s view, predicate terms express unity, being, and goodness. They pronounce something to be because by being one it participates in the Good. They express participation in the Good, in that which is totally One, and thereby totally self-sufficient or necessary as a condition for other things to be. I disagree with Gracia that metaphysics chiefly studies categories, but I agree with him that metaphyics chiefly studies being and unity and that it does so in a way that is neutral to all participations in being and unity. While Gracia denies that metaphysics has an exclusive method, one that it does not share with other disciplines, this does not mean that he denies to metaphysics a distinctive method related to its aim. He collapses this method into part of its aim. Still, he rightly describes the metaphyical method to involve analogous, not univocal, predication. Because metaphysics involves the study of many different ways that many different kinds of things are and are one, we make a mistake to try to reduce metaphysical predication to the sort of predication distinctive to talking about one way of being or being one, the mistake of misplaced reductionism.155 As far as Gracia’s corollaries are concerned, I do not concur with him that his way of conceiving metaphysics makes possible for us “to think of widely different philosophers . . . as engaged in one enterprise.”156 By reducing the subjects of metaphysics and philosophy to views of linguistic conditions, Gracia confounds both studies with linguistics and appears to reduce both to a kind of general logic of establishing linguistic frameworks. In doing this, he appears to me to reduce metaphysics to a kind of panpsychism in which some sort of hypostasized speech act ultimately makes things to be. By so doing, I do not think Gracia’s view of metaphysics allows us to see “[t]he history of metaphysics, and to a certain extent the history of philosophy as a whole . . . as a single endeavor in which many different approaches and viewpoints are present.”157 While this might enable us to see the history of metaphysics and philosophy as a whole, the whole we would see would not be metaphysical or philosophical. Instead, in its principles, Gracia’s view would appear to reduce the history of metaphysics and philosophy to viewing a political project that aims at
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unifying differences by imposing linguistic conformity. In my opinion, this is not the sort of history that Gracia would want us to see as the history of metaphysics. I do not think Gracia’s account achieves the four “much needed” effects that he envisions: (1) giving metaphysics intelligibility, (2) promoting dialogue among different metaphysical schools, (3) making easier our “study and comparison of radically different positions,” and (4) contributing to “elimination of artificial divisions and boundaries among philosophical traditions.”158 By misconceiving its nature, we do not give metaphysics intelligibity, promote dialogue among different metaphysical schools, make our study easier, and facilitate elimination of artificial boundaries among philosophical traditions. At the same time, I do not think Gracia totally fails in his quest. One thing he clearly accomplishes is to indicate that the history of metaphysics has been a sustained reflection on the problem of the one and the many. A cursory glance at the works of Plato or at the Metaphysics of Aristotle gives a clear indication that these leading ancient Greek thinkers considered metaphysics to involve a study of the problem of being and unity, and of the problem of the one and the many. Recent emphasis on philosophy as a study of a host of different things, from pure thought to existence, has obscured our ability to see this. And members of all different schools of what presently goes by the name “philosophy” have been guilty of this obfuscation. For the ancient Greeks, the whole of philosophy was a sustained reflection on the problem of the one and the many. By losing this awareness, modern and contemporary intellectuals have lost their understanding of philosophy. Gracia’s exhaustive research helps us recover this awareness. For this alone we should be grateful to him. Finally, I do not think that Gracia completely explains the unity of metaphysics or the cause for its resilience. What he unifies is not metaphysics, and the unity that he establishes is inadequate to explain how the individual believer becomes a metaphysical knower. After finishing his work I feel to some extent like Socrates reflecting on Anaxagoras. Socrates says, “These reflections made me suppose, to my delight, that in Anaxagoras I had found an authority on causations who was after my own heart.”159 Socrates adds that his hopes were dashed when he found that Anaxagoras confounded causes with conditions. Instead of explaining all of Socrates’ actions in terms of causes, Socrates says that Anaxagoras wound up saying such things as: The reason I am lying here now is that my body is composed of bones and sinews, and that bones are rigid and separated at the joints, but the sinews are capable of contraction and relaxation, and form an envelope for the bones with the help of flesh and skin, the latter holding all together, and since the bones move freely in their joints the sinews by relaxing and con-
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tracting enable me somehow to bend my limbs, and that is the cause of my sitting here in a bent position . . . . Fancy being unable to distinguish between the cause of a thing and a condition without which it could not be a cause! It is this latter, as it seems to me, that most people, groping in the dark, call a cause—attaching to it a name to which it has no right.160 Gracia is right to say that metaphysics is “fundamental and inescapable” and that whether philosophers explicitly state their metaphysical views or leave them implicit in their work, until we analyze their metaphysical views we can completely understand no philosopher. We avoid metaphysical principles at our peril. But we cannot explain the fundamental nature of metaphysics or its resilience in terms of linguistic conditions, which, in my opinion is what lies at the heart of the weakness of Gracia’s method. We will never explain metaphysics, its task, and its resilience by confounding linguistic conditions with existential causes.161
NOTES 1. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), p. ix. 2. Ibid., p. xiv. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., p. xiii. 5. Ibid., p. xiv. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., p. xvi. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., p. xv. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., p. 2. 16. Ibid., p. xvii. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., pp. xvii–xviii. 19. Ibid., p. xviii. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid.
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26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid., p. xix. 29. Ibid. 30. Étienne Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965), p. 246. 31. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task., p. xiv. 32. Ibid., p. xv. 33. Ibid., p. 2. 34. Ibid., p. 3. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., p. 134. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid., p. 135. 39. Ibid., p. 136. 40. Ibid., p. 2. 41. Ibid., p. 3. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid., p. 4. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., p. 5. 47. Ibid., p. 6. 48. Ibid., pp. 6–7. 49. Ibid., p. 9. 50. Ibid., p. 13. 51. Ibid., pp. 13–14. 52. Ibid., p. 14. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid., p. 10. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid., p. 11. 58. Ibid., pp. 10–11. 59. Ibid., p. 11. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid., p. 14. 62. Ibid., pp. 14–130. 63. Ibid., p. 14. 64. Ibid., p. 15. 65. Ibid., p. 17. 66. Ibid., p. 132. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid., pp. 201–202. 69. Ibid., p. 135.
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70. Ibid. 71. Ibid., pp. 135, 201–202. 72. Ibid., p. 140. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid., pp. 139, n14. 75. Ibid., p. 138. 76. Ibid., p. 140. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid., pp. 140–141. 79. Ibid., p. 141. 80. Ibid., p. 142. 81. Ibid., p. 147. 82. Ibid., p. 142. 83. Ibid., pp. 201–202. 84. Ibid., p. 200. 85. Ibid., p. 221. 86. Ibid., p. 10. 87. Ibid., pp. 9–12. 88. Jorge J. E. Gracia, How Can We Know What God Means?: The Interpretation of Revelation (New York and Houndsmills, Basingstoke, and Hampshire, England: Palgrave, 2001), p. 2. 89. John Deely, Four Ages of Understanding: The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-first Century (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2001), p. viii. 90. Ibid., pp. 447–484. 91. Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (New York: Published for the Bollingen Foundation Inc. by Pantheon Books, Inc., Bollingen Series 36, 1948), p. 209. 92. Ibid. 93. Ibid. 94. Ibid., pp. 209–210. 95. See, for example, Plato, 60D–84B and St. Aurelius Augustine, Contra academicos, bk. 3, ch. 20, 43. 96. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, p. 10. 97. Ibid., p. 11. 98. Joseph Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1963), pp. viii–ix. 99. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task., p. xvi. 100. Ibid. 101. Ibid. 102. Ibid., p. 11. 103. Ibid. 104. See Peter A. Redpath, Cartesian Nightmare: An Introduction to Transcendental Sophistry (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Editions Rodopi B. V., 1997) and Robert C. Trundle, Jr. with a foreword by Peter A. Redpath, From Physics to Politics: The Metaphysical
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Foundations of Modern Philosophy (New Brunswick, N.J. and London: Transaction Publishers, 1999). 105. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, pp. 10–11. 106. Ibid., pp. 10, 220. 107. Armand A. Maurer, “The Unity of a Science St. Thomas and the Nominalists,” St. Thomas Aquinas, 1274-1974, Commemorative Studies, ed.-in-chief Armand A. Maurer, 2 vols. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), vol. 2, pp. 269–291. 108. Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, pp. viii–ix. 109. See, for example, Plato, Phaedo, 97C–101E 110. See Parmenides’ poem, which the Ancients commonly called On Nature and Plato, Theaetetus, 155D. 111. Plato, Meno, trans. W. K. C. Guthrie, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters, eds. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, (New York: Distributed for the Bollingen Foundation by Pantheon Books, Bollingen Series, 71, 1966), 97D. 112. Ibid., 98A. 113. See, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1–2, q. 49. 114. See Peter A. Redpath, Masquerade of the Dream Walkers: Prophetic Theology from the Cartesians to Hegel (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Editions Rodopi, B. V., 1998), pp. 80–99. 115. Plato, Greater Hippias, trans. Benjamin Jowett, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters, 281D. 116. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, p. ix. 117. Joseph Owens, A History of Ancient Western Philosophy (Engelewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1959), p. 368. 118. Ibid. 119. Plato, Greater Hippias, 281D. 120. Owens, A History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 159. 121. Plato, Gorgias, ed. and trans. W. D. Woodhead, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1961), 452E. 122. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, p. 220. 123. Ibid., p. 175. 124. Ibid., p. ix. 125. Ibid., p. 140. 126. Ibid., pp. 201–202. 127. Plato, Theatetus, ed. and trans. Francis M. Cornford, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters, 152A. 128. Ibid., 182B. 129. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, p. 132. 130. Ibid., pp. 201–202. 131. Ibid., p. 135. 132. Ibid. 133. Ibid., pp. 201–202. 134. Ibid., p. 3. 135. Ibid., p. 94. 136. Ibid.
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137. Ibid., pp. 93–94. 138. Gracia, How Can We Know What God Means?, p. 2. 139. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, p. 94. 140. Ibid., p. 43. 141. Ibid. 142. Ibid. 143. Ibid. 144. Ibid. 145. Ibid., p. 49. 146. Ibid., p. 50. 147. Ibid. 148. Ibid., p. 49. 149. Ibid., p. 42. 150. Ibid., p. 155. 151. Ibid., pp. 135, 201–202. 152. Ibid., p. 202. 153. See Plato, Republic, bk. 6, 509B. Also see Étienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers (Toronto: Pontifical Institure of Mediaeval Studies, 1962), pp. 10–21. 154. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1968), bk. 1, 1, 1094a1. 155. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, pp. xvii–xviii. 156. Ibid., p. xviii. 157. Ibid. 158. Ibid. 159. Plato, Phaedo, trans. Hugh Tredennick, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, 98C–99B. 160. Ibid., 97D. 161. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, p. xviii–xix.
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Ten THE NATURE OF PHILOSOPHY: RESPONSE TO REDPATH Jorge J. E. Gracia I would like to commend Peter A. Redpath for the thorough and careful job he did of summarizing the main thrust of Metaphysics and its Task at the beginning of his commentary.1 Without a doubt he has put much time and effort into this enterprise. Unfortunately, when we come to the criticisms he offers of my view, it becomes evident that he has seriously misunderstood it. Instead of trying to set the record straight on every count where he has misunderstood my view, here I discuss only the issues that Redpath raises that appear to me most important and from the discussion of which I think we can draw some interesting philosophical lessons. In particular, I address the issue that Redpath identifies as primarily responsible for the failure of my attempt to explain the resilience of metaphysics. According to Redpath, this issue has to do with my definitions of philosophy, metaphysics, and definition itself, although he only explores in detail what he considers to be deficiencies in my conception of philosophy. In his view, I have gone astray in my attempt to be inclusive, namely, in trying to include in philosophy most of what people throughout the ages have considered to be philosophy. This is the general charge. Before I do anything else, I should mention that the conception of philosophy I present in the book is not a thesis I defend in it. It is not even of central importance to my argument. The main theses in the book are instead about metaphysics and its object. I present a view of philosophy in passing only because we generally consider metaphysics to be a part of philosophy and sometimes confuse or purposefully identify metaphysics with it. Under these circumstances, it makes sense to say something about philosophy. But I did not intend my position to be a technical and precise conception, but instead a working understanding that allows the discussion to move forward to the main topic of the book. This is clear because I explicitly recognize that the nature of philosophy is a controversial topic among philosophers and, therefore, what I can do under the circumstances is merely to give a general description of it that makes room within it for the most accepted conceptions of it within and without the classroom. I do not defend this view in the book and I meant my conception of philosophy to be inclusive. Obviously, then, what I say cannot be taken as a theory about the nature of philosophy.
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In light of this, it is ironic to find that almost Redpath’s entire discussion is concerned with my claims about philosophy. Could it be that my cursory conception of philosophy is the primary flaw that Redpath found in the book? Leaving this aside, however, let me now turn to the specifics of Redpath’s charges. 1. The Source of My Errors: Ordinary Language Redpath begins by identifying the source of my errors. He disputes my view that ordinary language is useful in formulating a view of philosophy. His point in this, if I understand him correctly, is that the language of the academy has influenced, and perhaps even he would say “corrupted,” our ordinary language today. The last three centuries, he claims, have had an especially bad effect on this language. So, if we were going to profit from our examination of ordinary language, we would have to go back to the sixteenth and seventeenth century Latin-Spanish tradition, a suggestion he takes from John Deely, when presumably the language in use was not corrupted. Two points in this argument deserve attention. First, current ordinary language is corrupt and of no use to make a headway about the understanding of the nature of philosophy. Second, we need to go back to the language of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to make any headway. Note that we cannot take Redpath to be disputing my appeal to ordinary language as such, for he recommends that we go back to the language in use at a specific period of history. His objection cannot be against ordinary language per se, but only about some ordinary language, namely, the contemporary one. Naturally, he could still insist that his argument applies to all ordinary language and he appears to do just that in some parts of his commentary, especially toward the end. But if this is what he wishes to defend, then he has to abandon his suggestion that we go back to the ordinary language of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Let us assume for a moment that he means to dispute any appeal to ordinary language. What could I say to this? The answer is, I think, obvious: What else do we have as a means of communication but language, and especially ordinary language, since all technical language begins with, is based on, and makes use of, ordinary language? Obviously we do use as means of communication such instruments as gestures, which some may not consider to be part of ordinary language. Still, even though these may not be considered strictly speaking part of, say, the English we speak today, they are definitely linguistic signs used to convey meaning and therefore part of the baggage we ordinarily use to communicate. So, I would want to include these in what I call ordinary language. But, obviously, these are not quite pertinent for us in the present context, for they are not the means we generally use to convey abstract notions of the sort we discuss in philosophy. So, it is on the ordinary usage of such languages as English
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and Spanish, for example, that we must rely for the communication of these notions. From all this, it should be clear that Redpath would be wrong in denying a significant role to ordinary language in philosophy, insofar as ordinary language is essential to the communication of the notions that philosophy uses. So much, then, for the argument against ordinary language in general. So let us assume that Redpath has not directed his argument against the use of ordinary language per se. Instead, let us assume that the argument is against the use of current ordinary language, namely, the one corrupted by the academics and philosophers of the last three centuries. We can put my answer to this objection in the form of a question: What else do we have? This is our language and whether it is corrupt or not, this is all we have to communicate about philosophy. Any reference to a previous language that we wish to make must necessarily be filtered through it. On what basis does Redpath purport to know that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had a different view of philosophy than we do in our ordinary discourse today? Unless he were a man of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—and by the way, that is an awfully long time ago, it is quite disputable that those two centuries had one way of speaking, even if we only considered English—he must rely on texts that we currently have from people from those centuries. And we can only look at these texts through our current glasses, namely, through the framework of concepts and views we use to make sense of the world today. This framework of concepts and intuitions is precisely what our current ordinary language reveals to us. But perhaps Redpath has some way of getting back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that I lack. Even if he could travel back in time, however, when he arrives at the sixteenth or seventeenth century, he is still a man of the twentieth century. Only if he spends a great deal of time there and learns the ways of living and speaking of the people at that time will he be able to say that he truly understands what they think and how they speak, as “a native”, and not as a foreigner from the twentieth century. In short, the hurdle of our current ordinary language, never mind how defective, is inescapable. So, it does not help Redpath to tell us that we cannot use our ordinary language because it is corrupt and that we need to go back to some earlier period of history when language was not yet corrupted. The corruption of our ordinary language, if it truly is the case, must be worked out from within; we cannot escape it by going elsewhere, for any road to escape it originates within it. Let me turn to the second point made in the objection, namely, that we need to go back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in particular to find the right language that will reveal to us the correct intuitions about philosophy. I have already pointed out that this is not helpful insofar as to do this requires us to deal with our current ordinary language first even in order to transcend it; we cannot but begin where we are today. But there exists also another difficulty that we may put in the form of a question: Why Latin-Hispanic philosophy of the sixteenth and
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seventeenth centuries? Why not Greek philosophy? Why not Latin philosophy of the thirteenth century? After all, many Thomists hold that the Hispanic philosophers of the seventeenth century, and especially Francisco Suárez, are to blame for the misunderstanding of the nature of philosophy itself. Consider Étienne Gilson, who is one of Redpath’s heroes in philosophy. Do I need to remind Redpath of all the bad things Gilson said about Suárez and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? The point is that Redpath has not given us a reason for his choice of centuries, except for a quote from Deely, whose primary import is rhetorical. So much, then, for Redpath’s objection against the use of ordinary language to establish a general conception of philosophy. Let me turn to Redpath’s objection against my conception of philosophy. This is serious because he intends it to undermine the understanding of philosophy I propose. The intention of the first charge was to identify the reason why I got the wrong view about philosophy—I rely on the corrupt source of ordinary language; he intends the second to show that my view is wrong. 2. My Error: Philosophy is a View The objection is that my conception of philosophy as a view has several faults. First, philosophy is not properly speaking a view, but instead what the scholastics called a habitus, which Redpath describes as “a stable disposition.” Second, I exclude from philosophy the condition that it be true or that it be knowledge and have instead the condition that it be a search for truth or for the status of knowledge. Third, I include in the aim of philosophy that it be systematic, or that it aim at developing a system. Finally, I violate the same principle that I hold inspires my position, namely, that it adhere to what philosophers have done in the past, instead of to what they have said. This last point appears to be that philosophers for the most part do not believe philosophy is a view, have held that philosophy must have as its condition truth or have the status of knowledge, and have not aimed at creating a system. In my response to the different parts of this argument, let me remind readers of what I said concerning the conception of philosophy I present in this book: it is merely a working and non-technical definition. But this does not mean that I think it is wrong. On the contrary, I think it is quite right and therefore I believe that Redpath is mistaken with respect to the charges he brings against it. Let me explain. A. Philosophy as Habit Redpath begins his argument by objecting that philosophy is a habit instead of a view, but he does not appear to be as confident about this claim as he claims to be. For instead of giving reasons for his position, he musters several authorities, including those of my old teachers, Joseph Owens and Armand Maurer, and even of
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St. Thomas Aquinas, in its support. Unfortunately, Redpath not only misunderstands my theory, but also misunderstands the authorities he cites. I believe that I can use these in support of my position more than in support of his. First, I will address what I think is the main source of Redpath’s error about the nature of philosophy. Second, I will point out that what he says about my view is not accurate. Third, I will show that what I say is concordant with what Owens says in the same text Redpath cites to argue against my view. And finally, I will briefly point out how Thomas’s position is perfectly concordant with mine. This should suffice to demonstrate the errors of Redpath’s charges. The source of Redpath’s error is that he does not take into account the crucial distinction between “essence” and what we often call “ontological status.” Take human being, for example. The essence of a human being consists in what is expressed by its definition, say, rational animal. The definition gives us the set of necessary and sufficient conditions for a human being to be what it is and of necessary conditions for it to exist as such, even if it must meet further conditions for its actual existence. Ontological status, on the other hand, is revealed by the classification of human being in terms of the most general category or categories under which it fits. In this case, using an Aristotelian categorial framework as an example, the answer is substance, because human beings exist as substances in the world. Note, then, the difference between essence and ontological status and note also that what I have done with human being, could be done with everything else that we can think of, including philosophy. We can ask for the essence of philosophy and this would be to ask for something different than to ask for its ontological status. The source of Redpath’s misunderstanding is that he assumes that these two questions are one and the same and because of this he confuses the answers to them. But he should not have done so after reading my book, for at the outset, in the Introduction, I draw attention to this distinction in relation to metaphysics. Allow me to quote the pertinent passage: One issue of particular importance concerns what has been called the “ontological status of metaphysics.” This issue should not be confused with that involved in the definition of metaphysics, insofar as the former involves what is often referred to as its “ontological characterization.” By this is meant the identification of the broadest categories within which metaphysics fits. An example should help us see the difference between these two issues. Consider the case of bachelor. A bachelor is defined as an unmarried man. But this definition does not tell us the most general categories to which a bachelor belongs. Within an Aristotelian metaphysical framework, a bachelor turns out to be a substance, because that is the one general category, of those Aristotle adopts, into which bachelors fit. Moreover, Aristotle would conceive that substance to be composed of two principles, matter and form. But other philosophers might think otherwise. For example, Descartes would
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JORGE J. E. GRACIA think of a bachelor as a thinking substance of a certain sort and for Leibniz, it would be a monad. Indeed, some philosophers reject the notion of substance altogether and thus maintain that a bachelor is something other than a substance. Hume, for example, would classify a bachelor as a bundle of perceptions. The categorization of metaphysics too has been of concern to philosophers and they have frequently differed as to what that categorization is. For example, some have held that metaphysics, like any other kind of scientific knowledge, is a feature (often referred to as a quality) of the mind. Others have held that metaphysics is a set of propositions. Others still have spoken of a set of sentences or texts, and so on. But settling this matter is not the concern of this book, although some of the things I say in chapter 2 have implications for it. Rather than attempting to discuss the ontological status of metaphysics or to deal with all the logical, metaphysical, epistemological, semantic, and axiological issues that can be raised about it, I concentrate my efforts on one issue, the definition of metaphysics, although by finding a solution to it I also provide an answer to the question of whether metaphysics should be understood nominalistically, conceptualistically, or realistically.2
In saying that I should conceive philosophy as a habit instead of a view, Redpath is using an answer appropriate to the ontological issue as an answer to the essence issue. That philosophy is a habit means, for many philosophers, that it is classifiable as a certain quality of the mind. And to say that metaphysics is a view, as I point out, is to say that it is what we think (under certain conditions) about the world, but this is not in conflict with the first claim. These are not two alternative answers to one problem, but instead complementary ones insofar as they address two different issues. One tells me the sort of thing philosophy is: a view about the world; the other tells me the ultimate kind of thing it is: a habitus or a quality. But ask yourselves: What is science or philosophy if not what we think about the world? How could we not say that science is primarily composed of claims we make about the world when philosophy, science, and knowledge in general are supposed to be true in the sense that they are supposed to be understandings of the ways things are? This is a point that Redpath himself emphasizes, as we will see later. But what is it that is true? A habit or a quality of the mind, as such, cannot be true or false. A disposition, as Redpath calls it, again cannot be true strictly speaking. Truth is a property of what I think when I judge something to be so and so. It is my claim that the world is round that can be true, not the habit or quality of my mind whereby I entertain that claim. Truth is a relation of correspondence between what we think—our judgments as some philosophers refer to them—and the world: an “adaequatio rei et intellectus.” And if the world is round, then what I think is true and if it is square, what I claim is false. So, it is the claim or judgment that is true, for it is the judgment that has to do with being, as Aquinas would
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say, namely, with the being of things, in that it is in a judgment that I compose, and we find truth primarily in the intellect and its composing and dividing.3 Obviously, as a thought about the world, my thought that the world is round has some status in my mind and this is what some philosophers mean when they say that it is a quality. Additionally, as a thought that grows out of specific procedures I regularly follow, I call it a habit as well, a way that I regularly do something or come to understand something, or think about something. But this most definitely does not mean that the claims we make, namely, what is true or false, is to be understood as the same thing as a habit or quality, for habits or qualities are not propositions or judgments to which truth can be attached, except in a secondary and perhaps even metaphorical sense. Qualities and habits do not correspond to the world. And truth, as Redpath recognizes, is essential to philosophy. Although a particular philosophy, or some part of it, may not turn out to be true, it most definitely must aim to do so. Redpath proceeds to argue that I rule out, and do not consider, the view that philosophy is a habit, adopting instead the view that philosophy is a set of propositions composing a system. He is wrong in this. Consider first that I make the distinction between the question of essence and the question of ontological status and say explicitly that I am not concerned with the question of the ontological status of metaphysics and the same applies to philosophy or knowledge. Indeed, I go so far as to mention the view that philosophy is a quality of the mind, but set it aside because this is not the kind of answer that would work as an answer to the question that I am concerned with, namely the question of essence. I purposefully narrow down the task of my book in order to avoid superficiality. So, I set aside the ontological question and do not even state my view of it. But I should point out that the view I present is perfectly concordant with a metaphysical characterization of philosophy, or metaphysics for that matter, as a habit. After all, what I say about philosophy and metaphysics is that they are views. May I ask Redpath: Have you ever found a view independent of a viewer? Obviously not! My position is that philosophy is a way that we think about the world and therefore it is not independent, ontologically, of viewers and thinkers. I absolutely agree with Redpath’s claim that philosophy is not floating around somewhere by itself, even though he mistakenly thinks that I do not. Redpath is mistaken, then, when he accuses me of committing the same sins against philosophy that he attributes to William of Ockham and the nominalists— to whom I explicitly refer by the way—when they hold that philosophy is a set of propositions or even sentences. Do I say anything that remotely approaches this in the book? No, for the simple reason that this is not what I think philosophy is at all. Yet, and this may have been the source of Redpath’s misunderstanding, I do say that, since we can only know about the views people hold through sentences that express propositions, for practical purposes we must deal with sentences when we discuss philosophy. But this is most definitely not the same thing as
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claiming that philosophy is a set of sentences. Additionally, I doubt that Redpath could do away with sentences when he does philosophy or considers the philosophy of anyone. After all, Redpath does not have direct access to anyone’s mind but his alone. The only thing he has are the texts that philosophers left behind and these texts are composed of sentences in particular languages that presumably express the propositions that the philosophers thought were true. Another source of Redpath’s misunderstanding could have been that I did not list among the positions that I gave as answers to the problem of the ontological characterization of philosophy the view that philosophy is a habit. This may have led him to think that I merely ignore, or reject, this view. But the reason I omit it is because I am not concerned with this issue, as I noted already, and because habits are qualities of the mind for most of those who hold this position, and I do refer to the ontological conception of philosophy as a quality of the mind. By citing the more general view, it appeared to me I had taken care of the more specific one. In How Can We Know What God Means? I explicitly mention the notion of theology as a habit and tie it to the notion of skill or ability, which I also mention in Metaphysics and its Task as one of the meanings of “philosophy.”4 But Redpath, because he ignores the distinction between these issues, and perhaps because he ignores the inclusive relation between the quality and the habit views, draws the wrong inference. Finally, Redpath does not take into account that philosophy, in my view, is three things in addition to being a view. (1) Philosophy is the activity whereby philosophy, considered as a view, is developed. (2) Philosophy is the set of rules that we follow in the formulation of the view in question. (3) Philosophy is the ability to produce the view, to engage in the philosophical activity, and to develop the rules guiding the activity. Indeed, the two fundamental understandings of philosophy I list as most encompassing are as a view and as an activity. So, obviously, my conception of philosophy is intrinsically tied to knowers and cannot be interpreted as a set of propositions or sentences considered independently of knowers. This brings me to the authorities Redpath cites to prop up his claim. For the sake of brevity, let me omit reference to Maurer and just consider the text of Owens, which Redpath cites: Metaphysics is primarily a vital quality and activity of the intellect, and not a collection or systematic organization of data either in print or in the memory. In its own nature metaphysics exists solely in intellects, and not in books or writings, though the name may be used, in a secondary sense, to denote a body of truths known through the metaphysical habitus, and to designate a treatise or course in which metaphysical thinking is communicated.5 In this text, Owens is talking about metaphysics, but for our purposes we can take what he says as if he were talking about philosophy. He begins by pointing out
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that metaphysics is a vital quality and activity of the intellect. What he means by this is that metaphysical knowledge or understanding is an act of the mind that a person engages in—it is not a static feature of the mind. Understanding is always an act, as the verbal form that expresses it suggests. After all, knowledge involves judging and this is obviously an activity, the activity of making a claim about what is the case by joining a subject term to a predicate term and attributing something to something else. So, this is perfectly consistent with my position that philosophy is both a view and an activity. Nothing in what Owens says contradicts it and nothing in it contradicts Owens’s claims. Next, Owens rejects the position that metaphysics is a collection or systematic organization of data either in print or in the memory. This again makes a lot of sense. If metaphysics were something printed, it would be a script of some sort and this has nothing to do with knowledge. A script is merely one of the means we use to communicate; it is composed of marks on a surface. (For more on this, see my two books: A Theory of Textuality and Texts.6) Nor is metaphysics a collection or systematic organization of data. Again, a crucial point because knowledge in general is not a collection of data. Knowledge involves judgment, which we can express in my terminology by saying that it is a view about the world that meets certain conditions. Owens also denies that we find metaphysics in the memory. This, too, makes sense, for knowledge is not a recorded past event that exists in the memory, but instead consists of an act of understanding, namely, an act whereby we grasp the way something is. Owens makes the point even more clear when he notes that metaphysics exists in intellects, and not in books or writing, and it is not a treatise or course. Nor is it even a body of truths primarily, although secondarily this is acceptable. Does this contradict my position? No, for, just as Owens, I do not maintain that philosophy or metaphysics is a free-standing body of truths. Philosophy is the way someone thinks about the world when that thinking meets certain conditions and this is nothing other than a view. Let me add some brief parting words about Aquinas. As mentioned earlier, for Aquinas truth is something that pertains to the intellect when this combines and divides in a way that corresponds to the way things are. But if we look carefully at the beginning of the Summa theologiae, it becomes clear that Thomas is thinking about truths as views knowers have of the world. What he says about sacred doctrine, his term for revealed theology, makes no sense unless we think of it as a body of true judgments a knower holds, namely, as a view of the world. When Thomas explains the relation between theology and philosophy, his point is that some of the doctrines of theology are also part of philosophy (for example, God exists), but some are not. Both philosophy and theology have methods that are appropriate for them (namely, reason for philosophy, faith for theology) that lead to the understanding of truth.
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This brings me to the second objection Redpath musters against my conception of philosophy, namely, that I exclude from philosophy the condition that it be true or that it be knowledge and have instead the condition that it be a search for truth or for the status of knowledge. This criticism is coupled with the one mentioned earlier, where Redpath claims that my understanding of philosophy is not faithful to what most people think when they think of philosophy. His point is that we normally think of philosophy or science as satisfying the condition of being true. If something is not true, then it is not philosophy, just as the mere wish to achieve the status of science does not achieve the status of knowledge. And he goes further, for, according to him, not even the other conditions I identify are sufficient. Success at achieving truth is a requirement of both science and philosophy. As a first response, I think I can use Redpath’s reference to science effectively against his objection. For if truth is a requirement of science, then most past science is not science insofar as it has proven to be false. Consider Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Aristotle, and so many other thinkers who thought of themselves as scientists in their day and were respected as such. Well, since most of their “scientific” views have turned out to be false and we cannot consider them to be science, consequently they themselves were never scientists at all. But does this make any sense? As a second response, let me ask Redpath whether in the requirement of truth is also contained the requirement of certainty concerning truth. If it is, then precious few scientific claims qualify as science at any particular time, for we have certainty about so few of them. In the overwhelming number of cases we have merely different degrees of evidence for the truth of scientific views, not certainty that they are true. And the situation with philosophy is even worse, for what claim in philosophy do we know with certainty? Perhaps Redpath has a long list at hand, but I can think of only a few. I have difficulty thinking of any that has not been questioned at one time or another by one philosopher or another and since I do not know all the arguments and objections pertinent for every view that has been proposed, I truly cannot claim with absolute certainty that I know them to be true. As a third response, let me add that if Redpath is right about the truth requirement of science or philosophy, then we can never speak about a scientific theory being false. If it is a requirement of a theory to be scientific that it be true, then nothing but what is true qualifies as science. Again, this does not make sense in terms of the practice that we follow both in science and in philosophy. It definitely did not fit the practice of Thomas and other medieval authors, who referred to Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and Avicenna (Ibn Sina), for example, as philosophers and to their views as philosophy, and yet thought they were seriously mistaken in what they thought.
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What we ordinarily mean by science has to do precisely with attempts, governed by certain established procedures, to achieve the kind of knowledge and certainty we would like to have. And the same applies to philosophy. We are all in the same situation, muddling through, as you might say. And, what is it that separates us from those who are not scientists and philosophers? Most definitely not a mere wish, as Redpath claims I maintain. I use the word “wish” only once and in passing, obviously metaphorically. No, it is the search for truth under certain conditions: the search for a view of the world or any of its parts that seeks to be accurate, consistent, comprehensive, and supported by sound evidence. To require truth of science or philosophy is, then, to eliminate from these fields almost everything we claim to be these, for we know so little with certainty that would qualify. Redpath’s position in this is like that of those who claim that art must meet specific requirements and then eliminate everything in the history of art that does not satisfy them. Tolstoy eliminated such works as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on such grounds. But can we take such views seriously? Only if they demonstrate that they are right beyond any doubt, but definitely not as working concepts. I am sure many people understand science and philosophy to mean just what Redpath says, namely, they impose on them the requirement of truth. But most practicing scientists and philosophers do not do this. C. Philosophy as a System The third objection Redpath directs against what he considers to be my view of philosophy as a system. He goes astray in this because he puts together two things I say that he should keep separate—as separate as they are in the book. First, I say that my approach in the book is systematic. This is an innocent claim and in this I follow common practice today. “Systematic” is a term that is generally opposed to “historical.” So, to say that my approach in the book is systematic is to say that it is not historical. I meant nothing more than this by the use of this term and I think I make the point clear by adding that I do not intend to discuss the views of past philosophers when I develop my view. One of the reasons I give for adopting this approach is that I have too much respect for the history of philosophy and how I think we should do it to treat it merely en passant. Unfortunately, Redpath appears to think that I meant something like what some nineteenth-century philosophers had in mind when they spoke about “the System.” Second, together with his misunderstanding of my use of “systematic,” Redpath adds what I say about philosophy being comprehensive. This again has nothing to do with a System. I explain the term in the book, but let me recall that it means merely that, as human beings, we are engaged in an attempt to make sense of the world and our experience of it, and each discipline of learning contributes something to this. Philosophy’s role in this enterprise is to try to put the picture from the different disciplines together, while adding dimensions to it that the other
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disciplines do not cover, such as metaphysics, ethics, and logic, to see how it all hangs together and to critically examine the pieces we get from different specialized disciplines of learning. Naturally, nothing is systematic in this in the way Redpath means it. And I do not see what is wrong with it. Does he mean to tell us that we should not try to examine critically what the different disciplines of learning teach us and not try to put together all these bits into a picture that makes sense of the whole and produces an understanding of it? Was not Thomas Aquinas, for example, involved in something like this when he wrote his famous summae? Finally, does what I say go contrary to our general view of philosophy? Redpath tells us that it goes contrary to his view, but we have now seen that his view of philosophy displays serious shortcomings and I think is influenced by a too narrow reading of the discipline. On the other hand, the issue of whether the view I adopt does or does not accord with ordinary usage is an empirical issue that we need to leave to linguists and sociologists. Perhaps he is right and most people believe philosophy to be something quite different from what I say it is. If this is so, my failure is merely an empirical one and does not affect my theory about metaphysics or the view of philosophy I present. I am not going to surrender the view of philosophy I propose merely because it does not adhere to a current consensus, for my aim in adopting it is not to be accurate about such a consensus. Instead my aim is to adopt a working conception that, although non-technical and left undefended, makes sense of what philosophers actually do and that we can use as the basis for a discussion of the nature of metaphysics. But Redpath has a further problem, for if he is right in that my view does not reflect a general consensus, then how can he also accuse me of giving too much ground to the current, ordinary language view of philosophy and ask that I turn instead to earlier views present in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries? Frankly, Redpath wants to have and eat his cake and I am afraid that he cannot do both. I think he can do neither, for he is wrong on both counts. D. The Charge of Exclusivity Another objection Redpath musters against my view of philosophy is that it is too exclusive. He bases this charge on his opinion that my conception of philosophy as a view of the world or any of its parts that meets certain conditions reduces philosophy to a theoretical enterprise and excludes its practical dimensions such as ethics and politics. Frankly, I do not see how he can say this, for ethics and politics have to do with actions and actions are part of the world. Additionally, I say that one common conception of philosophy is as a set of rules that we use in the practice of philosophy and that this is nothing other than a view about philosophical method. Likewise, the rules devised in ethics and politics about human action are part of a view of how human lives ought to be lived. So, clearly, my understanding of philosophy includes, contrary to what Redpath claims, a practical dimension.
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E. The Charge of Inclusivity Another charge is that of being too inclusive, although I am not sure I follow his reasoning. He has a long argument against my calling people like the Sophist Gorgias “skeptics.” I am not sure whether he means this to be a historical issue or a verbal one. Is Redpath talking about the way a Greek word was used? Is he talking about the way “skeptic” is used in ordinary English today? What is Redpath disputing? I disagree with much of what he says, but let us leave that aside and concentrate on the point that is perhaps at stake, namely, that my position turns out to be skeptical, although I do not understand how this point is related to the charge of too much inclusiveness. Redpath appears to base his charge of skepticism against my view on four things that he claims I accept. (1) Philosophy is a view that seeks to be accurate, consistent, comprehensive, and supported by sound evidence. (2) No theory is ever a finished product. (3) Philosophical theories are adventures in the clarification of thought, progressive, but never final. (4) Although we must use the principle of non-contradiction as a desideratum, a guiding rule that we aim to apply in context, we should not apply it as an inflexible criterion. Redpath finds these to be grounds for accusing me of skepticism because philosophy does not have to attain truth in order to be philosophy, theories need not be finished or final, and the principle of non-contradiction is not an inflexible criterion of knowledge. The answer to this objection does not have to be lengthy. First, let me make clear that a skeptic, as I understand the use of this term, is someone who holds that truth is unattainable. If this is so, then it is clear that none of the four grounds that Redpath uses to support his charge are relevant for the accusation in that I have not argued that philosophy cannot achieve truth. My point is merely that philosophical views are frequently false, that theories are generally subject to modification and improvement, and that the principle of non-contradiction must be used but with care, because often our understanding of the terms of a theory to which we apply it is incomplete or inadequate, leading us to the wrong conclusion. I explain this quite carefully in the book. Note also that the language of “adventure” is his, not mine. 3. A Crucial Correction: Categories Are Not Sentences Redpath repeatedly says—at least seven times—that a category for me is an identity sentence. In one place, he says that I define “a category as an identity sentence.” In another place, he says that for me, “categories are identity sentences.” In still another place, he even gives this as a reason for something else I hold, and so on. But this view is mistaken. There exists no place in the book where I hold it. Indeed, it is significant that in several instances where Redpath attributes this view to me, he fails to refer to a text and in others he quotes only part of the sentence
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that he uses to support his claim. Consider that he says: “Gracia defines a category as ‘an identity sentence in which the predicate is interchangeable with the subject, and this predicate specifies the conditions that are satisfied by the members of the category.’” But my text actually says the following: “The definition of a category, then, is an identity sentence in which the predicate is interchangeable with the subject, and this predicate specifies the conditions that are satisfied by the members of the category.”7 Plainly, I do not say that categories are identity sentences. Instead, I say that the definition of a category is an identity sentence, as I hold all definitions to be. Nor does the quoted sentence imply that categories are identity sentences. The view Redpath attributes to me is not in the book, nor is it implied by any of the views I propose in it. Why? For many reasons, but consider three: First, I say repeatedly that categories are what predicate terms express. If this is taken strictly, as I mean for it to be taken, then categories cannot be sentences, for what predicates express are not always sentences. Sometimes they are things, sometimes they are words, sometimes they are concepts, and so on. This is a key thesis of my book and that brings me to a second point: To identify categories with predicates, let alone sentences, would make them linguistic insofar as I explicitly say that predicates are linguistic, but I argue explicitly against the position that categories are exclusively linguistic and have tailored my view accordingly. Finally, if what Redpath says is correct, then we could say that the category human is the same as the sentence “Human is a rational animal” insofar as that is its definition. But we would have to be mad to hold this view and I definitely am neither mad nor hold the view. Why did Redpath accuse me of the absurdity that categories are identity sentences? Where did he go wrong? He went wrong because, as I said earlier, his quotation is incomplete and taken out of context. Obviously, once Redpath makes a mistake like this, then all sorts of other mistakes follow, because he goes on to draw several inferences from the mistake. Additionally, he makes matters worse by turning on the rhetoric. Terms that do not appear in my text and some expressions that make no sense at all he either attributes to me or uses to show the absurdity of my position. He speaks of predicate terms as “announcing,” “proclaiming” and “prescribing,” of “essential speech,” of “real propositions” and “real predicate statements,” and so on. And he goes on to claim greater and greater absurdities, which he attributes to me or to be implications of my view. Consider this extraordinary statement: “Prior to fulfilling the stipulated definition of being a human being, no individual could be Socrates because, for that individual to be Socrates, he has to be stipulated to belong to the category human.” And more: “This individual is Socrates because someone has predicated that this individual is Socrates-a-human-being.” First, it is difficult to make sense of these sentences. Redpath appears to be claiming that I hold the view that a definition is a condition of being, namely that in order for something to be a human being, or to be this human being, namely
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Socrates, there has to be a definition of the thing in question. This is preposterous to say the least. Keep in mind that for me a definition is a sentence. So, if Redpath were right, I would have to hold that in order for dinosaurs to exist, there would first have to be token sentences that defined them. Does this make any sense? Obviously not. Dinosaurs preceded human beings, so they preexisted any token sentences that we could use to define them. I do not adhere to this and nothing I say implies it. Note that Redpath appears to be assuming that proper names are proper predicates and this is something I explicitly rule out in the book. When proper names are in third position, the sentence is not predicative but instead an identity sentence. Most of the rest of Redpath’s commentary consists of interpretive comments where he tries to fit my views with the views of other philosophers, especially Plato, and in statements about how my view differs from his. I do not see the need to comment on this, since it contains no arguments against my position. But I do want to reject the statement to the effect that I reduce the subjects of “metaphysics and philosophy to views of linguistic conditions” and that I confound “linguistic conditions with existential causes.” He bases these claims on nothing I say or accept and he cannot derive them from what I say. Indeed, my whole theory is precisely one that aims at avoiding views of this sort. 4. Conclusion Redpath’s criticisms lack the force he thinks they have, for he largely based them on misunderstandings of my view. Still, I am grateful for his valiant effort to assess the value of my position and I welcome the opportunity to correct his misunderstandings and perhaps preclude the same misunderstandings in others. Finally, it is always a pleasure to engage in philosophical dialogue with someone who is so passionate about what he believes and to have the opportunity to explore philosophical questions in depth. NOTES 1. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999). 2. Ibid., pp. 1–2. 3. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1, q. 16, a. 2. 4. Jorge J. E. Gracia, How Can We Know What God Means?: The Interpretation of Revelation (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 122–123, and Metaphysics and its Task, pp. 10–14. 5. Joseph Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1963), pp. viii–ix. 6. Jorge J. E. Gracia, A Theory of Textuality: The Logic and Epistemology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), and Texts: Ontological Status, Identity, Author, Audience (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996). 7. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, pp. 201–202.
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Eleven SPIRITS AND “THINGS”: RITSCHL’S CRITIQUE OF METAPHYSICS IN LIGHT OF GRACIA’S DEFINITION OF METAPHYSICS John D. Kronen In his book on the nature and task of metaphysics, Jorge J. E. Gracia mentions several important historical critiques of metaphysics, beginning with ancient skepticism and ending with contemporary post-modernism.1 Though Gracia’s account of the most important challenges to metaphysics that have appeared in the history of Western Thought is as thorough as is necessary for his purposes, there was at least one crucial challenge to it that Gracia did not mention and that I wish to explore in this article. I am speaking of the challenge to metaphysics that Albrecht Ritschl raised in the last three decades of the nineteenth century.2 Ritschl belongs to what we might call “thinkers of the second order.” He does not have the fame of a St. Aurelius Augustine, or a St. Thomas Aquinas, or even a Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher. And, although he possessed an acute intellect, and was undoubtedly one of the most learned theologians of the nineteenth, or of any century, he does not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the truly great representatives of Western thought.3 His system, for all its beauty and systematic integrity, simply is not original or profound enough for such an evaluation. Still, he should not be held to be merely one among many now forgotten thinkers whose thought was once important but now is only of antiquarian interest. Jarslov Pelikan was not exaggerating when he wrote that “in the century between the death of Schleiermacher in 1834 and the death of [Adolf] Harnack in 1930, the most imposing figure in Continental Protestant theology was Albrecht Ritschl.”4 Ritschl’s great influence on Protestant thought accounts, in part, for why the ultra-conservative Protestants so hated and feared him.5 While he was not any where nearly so radical in his reinterpretation of Christianity as, for instance, Hegel and his followers were, his broad influence on Protestant seminaries was great enough to win him disciples in nearly all of the theological centers of Germany.6 This made him a far more deadly foe than any of the other liberal thinkers of the nineteenth century. His thought influenced the work of many twentieth century theologians of the liberal wing of the Protestant Church, from Ernst Troeltsch early in the century to Wolfhart Pannenberg late in the century.7 In addition, the
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work of several scholars has shown that Ritschl’s influence can be detected even in the theological systems of such avowed enemies of nineteenth century liberal theology as Karl Barth and Emile Brunner.8 David Lotz and Claude Welch have given persuasive arguments for the conclusion that Barth’s famous antipathy toward metaphysics and natural theology, and his insistence that theology must be rooted in God’s revelation in history, stemmed more from the thought of Ritschl than from that of the sixteenth century Reformers to whom Barth was so devoted.9 This is not to say that Barth’s strictures against metaphysics were not a reflection of the theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin. Tracing Barth’s thought to Ritschl’s with respect to these matters must ultimately lead one back to the sixteenth century Reformers themselves since Ritschl’s war on metaphysics and natural theology was, in part, motivated by his intense study of the theology of Luther in particular.10 But there can be no doubt that Ritschl’s attack on metaphysics was motivated by concerns that were, in significant respects, quite different from those that animated Luther and Calvin. Therefore, we must take Barth’s attack on metaphysics, insofar as it flowed from the thought of Ritschl, to be of a slightly different nature from the attacks of the classical Protestant Reformers. Barth’s critique of metaphysics has been the subject of intense scrutiny and debate among scholars.11 In contrast, Ritschl’s has been all but forgotten.12 I wish to partially rectify this oversight, not only because of the influence Ritschl had on Barth and on other so called neo-orthodox theologians, but also because Ritschl’s critique of metaphysics is intrinsically interesting and set forth with much greater clarity and succinctness than Barth’s more celebrated assault. In the first part of this article I will explicate the general reasons for Ritschl’s mistrust of metaphysics. I will show in this part that what animated his mistrust of metaphysics were not only religious concerns, but also ethical ones. In the second part I will begin a more precise analysis of Ritschl’s specific objections to metaphysics by examining his criticisms of the traditional proofs for God’s existence. This analysis will continue in the third part of the article where I will examine Ritschl’s critique of what contemporary thinkers commonly call the classical doctrine of God and will culminate in the fourth part of the article, where I will examine Ritschl’s defense of personalism as applied to theology and ethics. In the final part of the article, I will argue that Gracia’s conception of the nature of metaphysics offers a way of conceiving of the discipline that Ritschl would have not rejected. In addition, I will argue that one of the things that prevented Ritschl from attaining the rank of thinkers of the first order was his habitual neglect of exactly the sorts of questions with which Gracia thinks metaphysics is concerned.
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1. Ritschl’s General Critique of Metaphysics A complete account of what Ritschl found to be so wrong with classical metaphysics, especially as theologians and ethicists have used it in erecting their systems of thought, would necessarily involve a thorough examination of several areas of his thought. More precisely, we would have to examine his view of religion, of the role that what he called “independent value judgments” play in it, and his conception of the nature of ethics and moral activity. I do not have space here to cover all of these immensely complicated and still controversial aspects of Ritschl’s thought in the depth they deserve. Therefore, I will begin by analyzing the main charges Ritschl levels against classical metaphysics in his celebrated essay Theology and Metaphysics.13 But along the way I will, at those points where I deem it necessary, offer a brief sketch of some of the ideas that I have mentioned that were central to Ritschl’s thought. This will, of necessity, involve some reference to the third volume of Ritschl’s magnum opus, his great Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation.14 Ritschl begins his essay on theology and metaphysics by noting that he does not wish to deny the importance of metaphysics as such, nor its value in doing systematic theology. Ritschl insists quite adamantly that metaphysics is necessary for the theologian to successfully carry out his assigned tasks. It is not, therefore, metaphysics as such that Ritschl is hostile to. It is metaphysics of a specific sort that he opposes.15 We might tentatively identify it with the sort of Aristotelian/Neoplatonic realism that Ritschl claimed to have poisoned the theology of the Fathers, the medieval schoolmen, the Protestant Orthodox, and even the idealistic theologians of nineteenth century (for example, Schleiermacher, Richard Rothe, and David Friedrich Strauss). Obviously, this concept of metaphysics is quite broad and blurs significant differences between, for instance, John of Damascus, Aquinas, and Christian Wolff. Still, I do not think that Ritschl is wrong in detecting some key similarities in the thought of all of these thinkers and he lays out what he takes to be similar in the metaphysical theology of all of them in a passage the importance of which merits quoting in full: “Metaphysics” is familiar as the quite fortuitous title of Aristotle’s “First Philosophy.” This discipline devotes itself to the investigation of the universal foundations of all being. Now the things that our cognition concerns itself with are differentiated as nature and spiritual life [geistiges Leben]. Therefore, any investigation of the common foundations of all being must set aside the particular characteristics by which one represents the difference between nature and spirit and the means by which one knows that these groups of things are dissimilar entities. Thus natural and spiritual manifestations or entities occupy the attention of metaphysical knowing only insofar as they are to be grasped generally as “things.” For the conditions of knowing that are common to the manifestations of both nature and spirit are established in
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JOHN D. KRONEN this concept of “thing.” The “First Philosophy,” therefore, indicates that knowledge which may temporally precede or follow the preoccupation with the particular circumstances in which things are partly nature and partly spirit, but metaphysics does not surpass the philosophy of nature and spirit in value. For either all parts of philosophy are of equal value in a formal sense, or those parts of philosophy which explain reality more exhaustively are of more value than others. According to this latter standard, however, the philosophical cognition of nature and spirit surpasses metaphysical cognition in value since, when metaphysical cognition investigates both nature and spirit, these entities are treated only generally and, therefore, superficially under the general concept of “thing.” But metaphysical cognition of nature and spiritual life as “things” is a priori; it establishes the forms which originate in the cognizing spirit of man. These forms alone enable the spirit to rise above the flow of impressions and perceptions in order to proceed to the fixing of conceptual objects. Thus, metaphysical concepts do indeed embrace and dominate all other concepts that are directed toward the particularity of nature and spirit, and these metaphysical concepts clarify the fact that through experience the human spirit fixes its specific perceptions on things and differentiates them accordingly as natural things and as spiritual entities. However, it does not follow from the superordination of metaphysics to knowledge based on experience that one arrives through metaphysical concepts at a more basic and more valuable cognition of spiritual entities than would be the case through psychology and ethical examination of those entities. For it is only these latter forms of cognition that succeed in reaching to the reality of spiritual life. By itself, metaphysical analysis of a spiritual entity is not capable of differentiating that entity from natural entities. Such an analysis is inadequate for grasping the form and peculiarity of spirit, and in that sense is without value.16
In order to analyze this passage correctly, we must keep in mind that Ritschl here assumes a specific definition of metaphysics that, while it was not everywhere accepted in the tradition, was common enough and was especially prominent in the thought of the older Protestant Scholastics whose concept of it Ritschl, as a Protestant, was naturally influenced by. According to this definition, metaphysics is first defined by its object. As Abraham Calov, a prominent figure in seventeenth century Protestant Scholasticism expressed it, metaphysics has a distinct object from the other disciplines, “not indeed really but formally, which is sufficient [to establish it as a distinct discipline].”17 Metaphysics, Calov insists, is the discipline that studies every being simply insofar as it is a being.18 This involves examining every object with respect to the most general or abstract notions such as being itself, thing, essence, nature and existence, as well as such transcendental properties of being as perfection, unity, goodness, truth, duration, and place.19
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It is this notion of metaphysics that Ritschl here is assuming and so he holds that metaphysics studies everything under the aspect of simply being a thing. In so examining entities under this most abstract concept, metaphysics, according to Ritschl, prescinds from any consideration of things insofar as they are in important respects different from each other. More especially, Ritschl insists that metaphysics prescinds from considering entities insofar as they are either persons or things in the narrower sense (namely, material substances). This opens up the danger that a purely metaphysical analysis of the world will end up blurring the distinction between spirits or persons and material substances and so fail to take into account the particular value that attaches to spirits as free and therefore moral beings. It reifies or materializes spiritual beings. Ritschl also defines metaphysics in terms of its method, holding that the concepts and principles the metaphysician makes use of are a priori in nature. Here Ritschl shows the influence of Wolff and, especially, Immanuel Kant on his conception of metaphysics. Before explicitly pointing to the inherent danger that attends a metaphysical interpretation of the world, I should note that Ritschl, unlike Barth, does not wish to wholly exclude metaphysics from theology. He is aware that metaphysical categories are necessary for clarifying the key principles and concepts of any discipline and he appears to realize that no discourse about God or other supramundane beings could have any meaning if we banned the fundamental and transcendental concepts and principles of metaphysics from theological discourse. This is a significant admission and I will return to its implications at the end of this article, implications that Ritschl appears not to have fully attended to. But though Ritschl allows for the necessity of metaphysics to theology, he wishes to restrict its use in theology and, as we will see, in ethics. To make the point in Kantian terms, we could say that Ritschl held that metaphysics ought to be used regulatively in theology instead of constitutively. It ought to be used as an aid in clarifying the different categories and concepts that theology must make use of in theological discourse in order to ensure that such discourse is intelligible and consistent.20 But it ought not to determine the content of the categories and the concepts used in theology. For, since metaphysics is the most abstract of disciplines, which examines everything only under the most ultimate category of “thing,” it cannot reveal the special content of such categories as “person” or “God.” If metaphysics is used constitutively in theology, if it is used to determine the specific nature of God, for example, it will end up emptying the concept of God of those peculiar features that accrue to God, not insofar as he is a mere substance, but insofar as he is a person. It will end up blurring the distinction between God and other persons on the one hand, and mere things on the other, and, in so doing, it will fail to bear witness to the particular nature and value of any person, whether created or not, as a free and moral being.
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But that is just what metaphysics has been used to do, Ritschl laments, by metaphysicians who do not understand the nature and legitimate use of their discipline. The history of Christian theology, as well as of philosophical ethics, bears witness to this sad fact according to Ritschl. Everywhere we find in them the same blurring of the distinction between persons and things, with the consequent failure to appreciate the superior value and dignity of persons over things. This is obviously a bold claim and, at first, a puzzling one. For it might appear we could no more make use of the purely abstract discipline of metaphysics to construct a complete concept of God or of persons than we could of logic. We are incapable of using abstract disciplines that way because of their abstractness. But Ritschl insists that this is exactly the way that metaphysics has been used, or instead abused, in the history of Western Theology and Philosophy. In order to assess this charge of Ritschl, we must examine the specific criticisms he leveled against the older theology, criticisms aimed at showing that that older theology had succumbed to the temptation to use metaphysics constitutively instead of regulatively. We will break our discussion of this matter into three parts: (1) Ritschl’s critique of natural theology, (2) Ritschl’s critique of the classical conception of God, and (3) Ritschl’s defense of personalism. 2. Ritschl’s Critique of Natural Theology In Theology and Metaphysics, Ritschl bridges his discussion of metaphysics and his discussion of natural theology by means of a brief discussion of philosophical cosmology. Ritschl notes that cosmology, taken as a branch of metaphysics (of special metaphysics, as they used to say), is the study of the world as a whole, understood in light of a priori concepts. More precisely, cosmology uses a priori concepts of what it is to be a thing—concepts “in which the manifold of perceived and presented things is ordered again into the unity of the world (be this conceived necessarily as limitless or as a whole”).21 The metaphysical or ontological conception of the world, since it is filtered through the abstract concept of “thing,” is neutral or blind with respect to the distinction between spirits and natural entities. That, for Ritschl, is its curse and it is a curse that he thinks infects the cosmological proofs for God’s existence. Such proofs, since they proceed from an abstract consideration of the world as the totality of “things” (or, at any rate, of sensibly perceived things), can never arrive at any religious conception of the source or ground of the world, that is of the manifold of perceived and presented things. For Ritschl, a religious conception of the world must conceive of the source of the world in personal terms: All religion is interpretation of that course of the world which is always perceived, in whatever circumstances, as interpretation in the sense that the sublime power which holds sway in or over that course of the world sustains or
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confirms for the personal spirit its own value over against the limitations imposed by nature or by the natural workings of human society.22 This passage comes close to the heart of Ritschl’s thought, to what was most precious to him. He wished to vindicate the unique value of each person as a spiritual being, created in God’s image and likeness, whose spiritual nature gives it more worth than all of the machinery of the natural world. Religion, for Ritschl, intrinsically involves the human person’s sense of transcending the world even while she finds herself caught up, as an incarnate and finite spirit, in the nexus of cause and effect that holds sway in the realm of matter. Through religion, through devotion to supra-mundane powers (the gods), a person seeks to overcome this tension she feels between her higher, personal aspects, and her lower, material aspects. She seeks, by becoming one with God in his purposes, to obtain to a spiritual mastery over the world and its impersonal forces. True religion, for Ritschl, must save and perfect individual personality, not diminish or destroy it. In light of this passionate concern of Ritschl for the value of the person, a concern that drove him to repudiate any conception of God that diminishes or downplays either God’s personhood or that of his creatures, Ritschl judged the cosmological proofs for God’s existence to be of no value for either religion or ethics. These disciplines are both charged with considering the person as a being distinct from material substances, a being characterized by freedom, by the ability to act according to universal moral norms, and to create and enter into loving relationships with other persons.23 The proofs for God’s existence are useless, according to Ritschl, because they either do not arrive at a personal conception of the source of the phenomenal world, or, at best, they arrive at a conception of a personal source for it that, nonetheless, is unable to love or to care for created persons. In this regard Ritschl insists that the cosmological proof for God’s existence does not establish the existence of a personal God who providentially cares for rational creatures, but only arrives at the uncaused cause of every caused thing. Ritschl does not see why such a cause could not be either the world itself (taken as the entire collection of phenomenal objects), or perhaps an immanent impersonal world Soul such as that of Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza or the Stoics.24 The so-called teleological proof for God’s existence fares no better than the cosmological one does according to Ritschl. In this regard Ritschl notes that the father of metaphysics, Aristotle, had a teleological proof for the existence of God. But Aristotle’s God is not at all like the Christian God. He is not the creator of the world, much less its loving sustainer and ruler; he is instead simply the most perfect of beings in the world itself. He is the ultimate moving cause of all other beings in virtue of his perfection. He is the most beautiful of beings and so all things desire him. He is, in short, the Unmoved Mover (in the sense of not efficiently causing anything himself) of everything else that happens in the universe.25
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Naturally, Ritschl is aware of another form of the teleological proof that does not require there being a final cause of things in the sense of being something that, in virtue of its perfection, moves all things as the ultimate object of desire. A form of the teleological proof exists that proceeds from a consideration of the purposes apparent in the world. According to this version of the teleological proof, purposes entail a purposer, a grand designer who fashioned the world for specific ends. But Ritschl discards this proof because he thinks that the world, empirically considered, shows as many instances of a lack of purpose as it does of purposeful design. Based on the evidence, a person could as well endorse, not the theistic interpretation of the world, but the Buddhist assertion that “the world which embraces so many purposeless relationships within itself cannot be referred to a rational Source at all but, on the contrary, one can only conclude that it ought not exist at all.”26 Ritschl infers from this that “if the opposite seems true (namely, that the world is purposeful), the validity of that truth for us Christians is not based on a more correct metaphysical knowledge, since such knowledge is indemonstrable, but rather on an opposite religious world view.”27 As for the ontological proof, Ritschl says little about it, appearing to endorse the Kantian idea that it does not show that God exists, but, at best, that our concept of God involves the concept of a necessary being.28 Yet, the moral proof for God, offered by Kant, was held in deep reverence by Ritschl. As we will see, at times he claimed more for it than Kant himself did, holding that it was a theoretical proof of the existence of God, and not merely a practical one, in Kant’s sense of the term. But, since such a proof rests on a sharp distinction between persons and things (at least as Ritschl understood the proof), it was not thought by Ritschl to be a metaphysical proof at all (though Ritschl may have agreed to call it a philosophical proof). It appears clear that Ritschl’s discussion of the different classical proofs for God’s existence was not terribly original (he relied largely on Kant and Hermann Lotze for his criticisms), nor quite persuasive by itself. As Alfred Garvie pointed out long ago, although the proofs for God’s existence do not yield us a completely adequate notion of God from the religious point of view, this does not make them either unsound or useless for piety. For, even if they do not yield complete and adequate knowledge concerning the nature of God, they do point to the existence of some uncaused cause of all else, of some final end of the world, and of some superhuman intelligent designer. In this way, they vindicate some beliefs of theists that, for example, reductive materialists do not share. And this fact may lead some ultimately to embrace Christ: “As the law was for the Jews a tutor to bring unto Christ, so for some minds may these theistic proofs prove; and, therefore, they should not be despised by the Christian faith.”29 Still, even admitting that Garvie was correct in his criticism of Ritschl, we will see in the next section that Ritschl’s real concern was not with the incompleteness of the proofs themselves. More precisely his concern was with the way
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that natural theologians have used these proofs to argue a priori that the ultimate cause of the world must be simple, unchanging, and impassive. Ritschl regarded such a conception of God as at odds with Christian revelation and with a proper assessment of the value and dignity of human persons. Therefore, we can only undertake a complete assessment of Ritschl’s critique of natural theology after examining his critique of the classical doctrine of God. 3. Ritschl’s Critique of the Classical Doctrine of God Ritschl’s most incisive attacks on the proofs for God’s existence, and therefore on the baleful influence metaphysics has had on theology, concerned not the proofs themselves, but the way these proofs were developed. The problem with the proofs was not that they demonstrated the existence of an uncaused cause of all phenomenal entities, or a grand designer of the world, but the way these proofs were used, relying on certain metaphysical principles, to determine the nature of the uncaused cause of phenomenal entities, or their grand designer. But Ritschl’s method of critiquing the doctrine of God handed down by those devoted to the tradition of natural theology obscures this fact. Ritschl never traced, in any detail, the way that those who devote themselves to natural theology develop their doctrine of God in light of the metaphysical proofs for God’s existence. I wish to bridge this gap in Ritschl’s thought by sketching, briefly, the way that the natural theologian par excellence of the West, Aquinas, developed the proofs for the existence of an uncaused cause of the world into a proof for the existence of God. I cannot, in a paper of this size, enter into a detailed discussion of all of the moves made by the Angelic Doctor in his famous treatise on God’s existence and nature. But I can provide a general account of the way that Aquinas formed his doctrine of God in the Summa theologiae. Ritschl recognized the enormous influence of Aquinas on the tradition of natural theology and since, or so it appears to me, Ritschl understood Aquinas’s doctrine of God quite well, I think a brief account of the doctrine of God contained in the Summa will be fruitful in understating Ritschl’s critique of what he called the metaphysical doctrine of God.30 As anyone knows who has read the Summa at all carefully, Aquinas ends each of his famous five ways for proving the existence of God with the assertion “all call this [being] God” (or something to that effect).31 Aquinas himself, therefore, did not think that showing that an Unmoved Mover exists, or an uncaused cause, or a necessary being, and so on, shows that God, in the theistic sense, exists. It does not show that the Unmoved Mover, the uncaused cause, and so on, is a personal, free, morally good, creator of the universe. Aquinas devotes fully twenty-three questions of the Summa to showing precisely that we must conceive the first cause of the universe theistically. The arguments here are quite sophisticated and complex. But a common thread to all of them exists, which I wish to focus on here.
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The common thread goes to the heart of Aquinas’s thought. Aquinas holds that the act of existing is the act of all acts and the perfection of all perfections, even of the forms themselves.32 As Maritain and Gilson never tired of pointing out, Aquinas was an existentialist in philosophy, meaning that he held that the act of existing (esse) is what is most really real in things and is the ground of their perfection.33 A thing is perfect according to Aquinas precisely insofar as it is. This means for Aquinas that the first being, God, whom Aquinas thinks the second and third way show must have his being from himself, is possessed of all perfection and is the ground of all created perfection.34 This entails several other things for Aquinas. The first is that God, who is the uncaused cause of being and the being who has existence from himself, is simple.35 He is simple because any composite being would be composed of potency and act. God does not even possess any accidental features (namely, any features that are not, in reality, identical with himself) because that would entail that he could be perfected by, for example, the accident of wisdom.36 But to be perfectible entails being in potency in some way, which is contrary to God’s perfect actuality. God is also immutable. He is immutable because, if he were mutable, he would be liable to change, and, if liable to change, he would be, in some way, potential. But, as God has being from himself, he is pure act, and so cannot have any potency (taken in the passive sense) in him.37 Finally, God is impassive according to Aquinas. He has no relations to creatures.38 This entails that he knows the future actions of creatures only because he is the cause of them, at least insofar as they are actions and, consequently, in some way perfect.39 It also means that no state of the creature can affect God emotionally.40 His perfect blessedness entails that God can have no real relation to creatures and that his happiness cannot in any way be disturbed by wrath at sin or compassion for suffering.41 After emerging from his youthful flirtation with Hegelian theology, Ritschl’s attitude to the doctrine of God classically stated by Aquinas and echoed by countless Catholic theologians, by the Protestant Orthodox of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and by the Lutheran Confessionalists of Ritschl’s day, was one of unwavering and intense hostility. Ritschl may have been a modern man, a person versed in Kant and so suspicious of any claim to a knowledge of “the way things are in themselves,” but he showed no uncertainty whatsoever on the question of the adequacy or the truth of the “metaphysical” doctrine of God. He saw himself as engaged in a sort of holy war against this sort of “idolatry,” and he used all of his considerable intellectual ability and his vast scholarship to attempt to discredit it.42 Ritschl had three reasons for opposing this doctrine, aside from his conviction that such a doctrine of God is at variance with the Scriptures and with the thought of Luther.43 First, it is incompatible with the notion that God is a person. Second, it is incompatible with the notion that he is a loving person. Third, it is
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incompatible with any robust doctrine of creaturely freedom. I will take up each of these charges of Ritschl in turn. With respect to the first point, Ritschl argued that the notion of the divine aseity, or absoluteness, which classical theology upheld, arose from a misuse of the concept of “thing” or “substance.” This concept, in virtue of which the mind conceives of entities as distinct and, therefore, relatively independent beings, was abused by the natural theologians in such a way as to suppose that the substantial nature of a thing exists or subsists behind its properties and separately from its relations to other things.44 Though Ritschl did not deny the usefulness of the concept of “thing” or “substance” for making sense of the world, he held that it could not function as a concept giving us insight into the peculiar natures of the different things we come into contact with in our experience, or into the nature of God.45 Ritschl objects to the constitutive use of metaphysics, a use of it that attempts, having proven the existence of a first cause of all caused beings, to arrive at some notion of the nature of this being. More precisely, the problem is that the use of the concept of “thing” to arrive at the notion that God, as the first being, is a pure thing, or substance, without any relation or possible relation to other substances, ends up reifying the concept God and stripping it of the predicate “person.” As Ritschl explains: The absolute, as [Franz Hermann Reinhold] Frank [a confessionalist opponent of Ritschl’s] defines it, is indeed something similar to what the Brahmins assert, and the mystics in Islam and in the Christian Church experience and explore it practically in that they temporarily loose themselves and their self-consciousness in universal being, not in order to place their trust in it as the Christian does in his Father in Christ. But if the absolute is conceived as existing only for itself, outside all relationships with others, it cannot rightly be designated as “the rock which has begotten us, the God who has given us birth.” For these words designate a being who does not enter into relationships with others, and if these relationships are correct predicates, they are either excluded from the concept of the absolute or they call into question the definition established above [namely, Ritschl’s definition of God as a loving person]. In both cases it is clear that the absolute is not a product of religious reflection, but rather is a metaphysical concept which is entirely foreign to the Christian and is current only among the mystics in the religious groups mentioned.46 We could argue against Ritschl that Aquinas, as well as the Lutheran Confessionalist Frank, who endorsed a basically Thomistic concept of God, did not at all wish to deny “personality” to God since both men held that God is a being possessed of intellect and will who created the world out of love for creatures. But this objection would not truly meet the heart of Ritschl’s critique. He did not wish
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to deny that the natural theologians want to hold to a personal notion of God, only that their doctrine of God’s aseity, his simplicity, immutability, in a word, his absoluteness, is incapable of combination with the concept “person.”47 We could make Ritschl’s point a little more precisely if we recall that Aquinas, and other natural theologians who follow him, typically treat the divine attribute in two stages. This is somewhat unclear in Aquinas himself, but is explicit in the thought of such Protestant Scholastics as Johannes Andreas Quenstedt and Calov. The last two held that the predicates of God are in two, most general, categories.48 First, some predicates of God hold of him simply as infinite or independent essence (being). Quenstedt and Calov held these to be immanent or quiescent. They describe God in and of himself, without any relation or potential relation to creatures. They are actually nothing but the transcendental properties of being (for example, unity, truth, goodness, and so on), as applied to God. For instance, God’s simplicity, his complete lack of composition, is the transcendental “Unity” as applied to God. Every being, in virtue of being a being, is one being, distinct from and independent of other beings. But God, as the first being, who exists from himself, must be a hyper-unity. He must be so “one” that he is without any composition whatever, even the composition of substance and accident, or genus and specific difference.49 As Schleiermacher pointed out, and as the older Protestant Orthodox were dimly aware of, these quiescent, or immanent, or transcendental divine attributes do not give any content to the concept of God.50 They merely alert us to the point that the transcendental attributes of being hold of God in an eminent and most perfect way. They do not tell us what God, in his specific essence, is, but only that, whatever he is, he is simply, infinitely, changelessly, eternally, and so on. It is for this reason that Calov and Quenstedt insisted that God’s specific nature is expressed by saying that He is a spirit.51 They even went beyond Aquinas in this regard and appeared to hold that “spirit” is a quasi-genus that we may place God, the angels, and humans in with the qualification that God, unlike angels or human beings, is an infinite, simple, and uncreated spirit, while angels and human beings are finite, complex, and created.52 Aquinas, although he refused to treat the category “spirit” as a quasi-genus encompassing God, the angels, and human beings, followed more or less the same method in the Summa. For, as we have seen, he used the concept of “being,” understood as actuality, to argue that the uncaused cause, as subsistent being, must be perfectly one, simple, unchanging, perfect, and so on. But all of these predicates of the uncaused cause are transcendentals. They do not tell us what is the specific content of the divine nature, only that God, whatever he is, is unchangingly, simply, eternally, perfectly what he is. Naturally, we may hold that they do more than that. For in arguing that God is perfect, Aquinas concluded that God contains all created perfections either formally or eminently.53
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But this really does not give any content to the concept of God unless we have a rule telling us which perfections apply to God formally and which only eminently.54 For to eminently contain a perfection is not really to possess that perfection at all, but merely whatever is perfect in it, so to speak, in a higher way. For instance, seeing is a sort of perfection—it is a good making property in animals naturally ordered to see. But Aquinas would argue that God cannot actually see, because that would require that he has eyes, which in turn would require that he has a body. God cannot have a body since, as the first being, he is simple and no body is simple. So all we can say at this point is that God, in some way, possesses whatever is really perfect in the power to see, but in a way proportionate to him that does not entail that the predicates “being able to see” or “having eyes” apply to him. So, if all we had were this concept of God, we really would not have any idea of what God, in himself, is. We would merely know that he is whatever he is independently, simply, eternally, and so on, and that he somehow pre-contains all perfections. But to say he precontains them is consistent, on one interpretation, with just saying that he is their cause. This appears to have been the view of the neo-Platonists, who did not believe in a personal God. For them God is the One and the Good who, by a necessary emanation, gives rise to mind, to life, and to nature, without himself having a mind, being alive, or having a nature.55 The neoPlatonists did truly conceive of God in impersonal terms—he is not the providential God of Christianity whose “eye is on the sparrow” but the impersonal principle of the universe. Aquinas, and the other natural theologians, want to go some way with the neo-Platonists insofar as they want to hold that God is simple, unchanging, eternal, impassive, in short, absolute, but they also want to hold God is personal. Without entering into all the details of their argument, we can state the principle it is based on as follows: Whatever predicate formally applies to creatures that does not, in itself, entail an imperfection, may be applied to God, but in a manner commensurate with his perfect being.56 We have already seen that the predicate “being able to see” insofar as it entails the predicate “having eyes” cannot be formally applied to God. But Aquinas argues that the predicate “being wise,” and the predicate “being free,” and the predicate “being just,” for example, while they hold of us imperfectly, are not intrinsically imperfect. Since they are not intrinsically imperfect, we can predicate them of God, but in such a way that we understand that God is wise, free, just, and so on, independently, simply (not in virtue of any accidental properties), immutably, and so forth. This procedure of Aquinas (a procedure the Protestant Orthodox approved of) is most definitely ingenious.57 It offers a way that Aquinas can, on the one hand, argue a priori for the perfection of God using certain metaphysical categories. For instance, he can show that God cannot merely be the world or prime matter because, if a thing is perfect insofar as it is a being, then the first being, which has being from itself, cannot be in any way potential and so cannot be material. In this way it would appear that Aquinas could answer Ritschl’s charge that the cosmo-
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logical proof only shows that there exists some uncaused cause and does not show that that cause could not be the world taken as a whole, or the ultimate matter making up all corporeal objects. But it also holds out the possibility that Aquinas could oppose the charge that, by making use of the Neoplatonic notion of being as such, he will end up with the One of Plotinus and Proclus, which is an impersonal “it” that emanates the world but does not create it. Ritschl was completely unconvinced by this procedure of Aquinas and the other natural theologians. He thought that the Neoplatonic notion of the transcendent, simple One, of the absolute, is completely incompatible with personhood. For, in the first place, a person is a being who can enter into relationships with other beings, especially into loving relationships. But the God of classical theology is incapable of having relationships with anything outside himself.58 To suppose he could would undercut his simplicity and absoluteness. Furthermore, Ritschl appears to have held that the doctrine of the divine simplicity (or, as he called it, of the divine absoluteness) is incompatible with holding God as having any specific properties at all, other than the property of being a pure being. Therefore Ritschl said that to conceive of God as the absolute, is to conceive of him as “deprived of all specific qualities.”59 But Ritschl was not content merely to argue against the natural theologian’s conception of God based on its inability to account for God’s personhood; he further insisted that such a conception could not account for God’s nature as a loving person. A God who is incapable of relations with others is incapable of loving them. For love is a kind of relation and, according to Ritschl, the most intimate of relations.60 But Aquinas’s God cannot love, in spite of his insistence that his God does love. He cannot love because true love must take the end of the beloved as its end and this entails such an interest in the beloved’s achieving his end that the lover can be wounded—can be affected by what happens to the beloved.61 But Aquinas must deny this. God’s glory is so above the world, and his blessedness so complete that nothing that befalls the creature can affect him.62 Though he is opposed to sin, for example, he cannot be said to be wrathful, for such an emotion would entail a disturbance in God.63 Again, though he is merciful, insofar as he desires to aid the wretched, he feels no compassion since, again, such a feeling would be a disturbance in his perfect bliss.64 God is so removed from any real concern with creature’s welfare for Aquinas that it matters not to his glory whether creatures are saved or damned and Aquinas holds that God feels no pity for the damned.65 The final reason Ritschl rejected the classical doctrine of God is that he thought it leads to ideas of God’s relationship to creatures that fail to take into account the personhood and, consequently, the freedom of creatures. In this respect he criticized the Catholic doctrine that grace is a certain quality affecting the soul taken as something lying behind the will of the person, as well as the Orthodox Protestant doctrine that grace is the mystical indwelling of the Trinity held to
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affect the soul at a level prior to its conscious, volitional states.66 Ritschl held that these notions of grace reify the relationship of God to his creatures. They bypass the point that God is a person and so are his creatures. The root of these errors lie in the illicit use of metaphysics in theology. For metaphysics, as it is blind to the difference between spirits and things, leads to a cosmology that is likewise blind to this difference. The result is a view of God’s action on creatures wholly conceived of in the category of efficient causation. A metaphysical view of the world, since it is indifferent to the distinction between spirits and things always leads to a conception of the world in terms of what is lowest in it (namely, matter).67 It leads to such a conception because human beings have a better grasp of natural, or material causality, than they do of spiritual or free causality. Therefore, when they are not careful to remember the distinctions between the two kinds of causes, they will attribute properties of the kind better known to them to the kind they know less well. In opposition to these ways of conceiving of God’s action on us, we must, according to Ritschl, suppose that God really made human beings free, in the full libertarian sense. We must suppose that God made humans able to choose to respond to God’s love, to his offer that they should work with him in achieving the end that is perfective of both the divine and human beings, namely, the establishment of the kingdom of God.68 But this means that God’s dealings with us are moral not metaphysical. God seeks to convert our wills and he does this by speaking to us and reasoning with us. Only in this way will our autonomy be protected.69 God does not efficaciously move the will as the Dominicans held by a “physical pre-motion”—an interesting phrase in light of Ritschl’s insistence that classical theology actually materializes God and his relation to creatures. Neither does God move the will by a mystical union of his hidden and inert substance with the substance of our souls, nor by sacraments, which work by themselves, magically, as a person might say. All of these traditional, metaphysical ways of speaking of God’s dealings with us actually portray what is higher, the realm of spirit, after an analogy with what is lower, the realm of matter. So much then for Ritschl’s critique of the classical doctrine of God, a doctrine he believed was perverted by an illicit use of metaphysical categories in the working out of the divine nature and attributes. It appears to me his critique has some force, if you accept his initial assumptions concerning the distinction between spirits and things and the personal nature of God. But a defender of the classical doctrine might ask at this point why we should accept these assumptions of Ritschl. Why, for instance, should we think that God is a person at all, much less that he is the sort of person Ritschl took him to be? Answering these questions will take us to the heart of Ritschl’s thought and that, in turn, will allow us to see why his thought has continuing relevance and why Gracia’s conception of metaphysics is not one that Ritschl could have condemned.
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JOHN D. KRONEN 4. Ritschl’s Defense of Personalism
We have seen that running through all of Ritschl’s thought is a passionate concern to maintain the uniqueness and value of the individual person. In hundreds of passages in his oeuvre we find Ritschl insisting on the point that persons transcend the natural world and are worth more than all the machinery of the universe. This emphasis of his thought places him in a class of thinkers who are now called “personalists” and I think that fully understanding Ritschl’s critique of traditional metaphysics and natural theology necessarily involves an understanding of Ritschl’s reasons for supporting what we would now call “personalism.” It would be nice, for someone undertaking such an attempt to understand Ritschl on this point, if Ritschl had given a clear definition of what he took “personhood” to be. Unfortunately, he never gave such a definition. We will see later that this led him to state some of his most important insights in unclear and ambiguous ways. But, even if no definition emerges of personhood in Ritschl’s writings, a description of it does, which it must behoove us to briefly examine. According to Ritschl, (1) Persons are capable of free action.70 (2) Persons are capable of moral action.71 (3) Persons are capable of forming theoretical and practical judgments.72 And (4) Persons are capable of loving other persons.73 It is probably the last feature of persons that was the most important to Ritschl, but I want to begin my discussion of his defense of personalism by attending, for a moment, to the third characteristic of persons, namely, their ability to form theoretical and practical judgments. Ritschl pointed to this ability in his critique of reductive materialism. Good reason exists to believe that Ritschl regarded reductive materialism as the greatest intellectual threat to the Christian faith; therefore, he attempted to discredit it by pointing to what he took to be its epistemological shortcomings. Ritschl held that reductive materialism is based on the false notion that rules that apply to all phenomenal objects at a certain level of generality can be used to explain the peculiar nature of specific sorts of objects that differ from other objects in important ways. We can see in this criticism similarities to Ritschl’s criticism of metaphysics when used constitutively in theology: It may be admitted that natural science is right and consistent in explaining the mechanical regularity of all sensible things by the manifold movement of simple limited forces or atoms. But within this whole realm of existence, which is interpretable by the category of causality, observation reveals to us the narrower realm of organisms, which cannot be exhaustively explained by the laws of mechanism, but demand, besides, the application of the idea of end. But among organic beings, again, one section, differentiated in manifold ways, is animate, that is, endowed with the capacity of free movement. Finally, a still smaller section of animate beings is so constituted as to act
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freely from the conception of ends, to discover the laws of things, to conceive things as a whole, and themselves as in ordered interaction with them, further to identify all these activities with their own Ego by means of the manifold affections of feeling, and to exchange their spiritual possessions with others through speech and action. Now the claim of materialism to invalidate the Christian view of the world rests on the belief that it must succeed in deducing the organic from what is mechanical, and similarly the more complex orders of being from those immediately below. The materialistic interpretation of the world busies itself with the pursuit of these empty possibilities. Its scientific character is limited, however, by the fact that it can only suggest chance as the moving force of the ultimate causes of the world, and of the evolution of special realms of being out of those which are more general; for this is really to confess that science cannot penetrate to the supreme law of things.74 Ritschl’s argument here is that particular principles must be employed when studying particular sorts of objects. The reductive materialist, using principles that explain only specific sorts of properties and activities of animals and human beings, cannot, Ritschl thinks, adequately explain those aspects and activities of them that involve a relation to ends of different sorts. Ritschl insists in this regard that even the natural scientist bases his or her investigations on principles of explanation that cannot be adequately defended by means of any observation or scientific experiment. For instance, the scientist assumes that nature operates according to causal laws and, although all science so far has supported that assumption, it can never prove it.75 Still, Ritschl will allow that such an assumption is reasonable, so long as the scientist admits that it is also reasonable for the moralist and the theologian to hold that human behavior, in particular, cannot be exhaustively explained without reference to other sorts of causal principles, for instance, teleological ones. In this critique of reductive materialism, I think we can also see the importance of Ritschl’s epistemological division between concomitant and independent value judgments for his defense of personalism. Ritschl held that all judgments human beings make, even the judgments of the most objective physicist concerning the nature of the bodies that impinge on our senses, are interested. Scientists would not engage in the laborious work they must to discover the laws of nature if they were not interested in discovering such laws.76 Still, Ritschl held that the value judgments characteristic of religion and morality are of a different order than those characteristic of the sciences or of mathematics. Religious and moral judgments are more immediately concerned with the value things have for the knowing subject, with the way that some objects of apprehension either increase or diminish her sense of life.77 Therefore moral judgments are rooted in the moral pleasure or pain some objects produce in the person making such judgments and
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religious judgments relate to the sense of transcendence over the world possessed by the person making such judgments.78 Ritschl thinks that these two sorts of value judgments must not be confused, even though it is easy to confuse them if we consider only the more advanced religions such as Christianity. That is because advanced religions conceive of God as a moral being. But even in primitive nature religions, which worship their deities in orgiastic rituals, one can discern, according to Ritschl, the desire of the worshippers to associate themselves with their deities by partaking in the cycle of birth, growth, decay, and rebirth that those deities supposedly control. In this way, such worshippers hope to attain mastery over the world.79 In Christianity the religious believer also hopes to attain mastery over the world by becoming part of God’s kingdom, which, as supra-mundane, transcends the world and will outlast it. Yet, such a kingdom, as it is rooted not only in trust in God and in his goodness and power, but also in the motive of love for all of God’s creation, also relates to moral value judgments.80 By rooting all judgments in the interest of the person making such judgments, and by showing that moral and religious judgments arise from different functions of the knowing subject, Ritschl hoped to undermine the reductive materialist’s critique of religion. For he wanted to argue that science itself proceeds from a certain curiosity and, therefore, spontaneity in the scientist. It does not spring, obviously, from the same sort of curiosity as religious and moral knowledge does; but it is rooted in the interest the knowing subject takes in scientific questions and it is guided by some a priori assumptions. In this way then, when the reductive materialist attacks religious personalism, with its doctrine that human beings are not mere machines but are beings created in the image and likeness of God, she forgets the roots of science in her personality, in her ability to act freely and to make judgments concerning nature. In this vein, Ritschl even hints at an argument that has been put forth with greater clarity by other thinkers—that the ability of the scientist to grasp the laws of nature shows her transcendence, as a person, over nature.81 Having defended the reality and uniqueness of persons against the assaults of the reductive materialist, Ritschl goes on to defend Kant’s moral argument for the existence of God. Ritschl’s understanding of that argument is rooted in his notion of religion and of the nature of religious impulses. Though Ritschl is aware of the difficulty of arriving at any adequate definition of religion, he still sees enough commonality among all the great world religions to give some description of what all of them have in common.82 In every religion what is sought, with the help of the superhuman spiritual power reverenced by man, is a solution of the contradiction in which man finds himself, as both a part of the world of nature and a spiritual personality claiming to dominate nature. For in the former role he is a part of nature, dependent upon her, subject to and confined by other things; but as spirit he is
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moved by the impulse to maintain his independence against them. In this juncture, religion springs up as faith in superhuman spiritual powers, by whose help the power which man possesses of himself is in some way supplemented, and elevated into a unity of its own kind which is a match for the pressure of the natural world.83 Relying on this definition, and on his faith in the a priori certainty of some moral principles, Ritschl gives his version of Kant’s moral proof for God. According to Ritschl, only one way exists to overcome that tension that human beings feel, quite rightly, between their being persons (and so transcendent over the universe) and their being parts of the universe itself. Namely, to suppose that the entire universe of both finite spirits and of natural substances is the creation of an infinite personal being who has the power to control natural laws and so to bring it about that those created persons who trust in him will eventually experience an eternal bliss commensurate with their personal transcendence over the natural universe.84 This proof is blameless according to Ritschl. For, in the first place, it does not blur the distinction between persons and things, as the other proofs do. This proof views God to be “the ethical Power Who assures to man the position above the world befitting his ethical worth, and this, too, as the final end of the world.”85 Further, this proof does not beg the question, since its starting point, “the estimate of moral action as springing from freedom, and the hope of the union of felicity and virtue—is conceived independently of the authority of God.”86 Ritschl’s only criticism of the proof as worked out by Kant is that Kant failed to appreciate its power. In short Ritschl believes that Kant’s way of drawing the distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge is wrong. For, although Ritschl does hold that the two forms of knowledge spring from different functions of the mind, both give us equal knowledge about the nature of things: What I mean by this is that, besides the reality of nature, theoretical knowledge must recognize as given the reality of spiritual life, and the equal binding force of the special laws which obtain in each realm. With respect to this, theoretical cognition must simply accept the fact that while spiritual life is subject to the laws of mechanism so far as it is interwoven with nature, yet its special character as distinct from nature is signalized by practical laws which declare spirit to be an end in itself, which realizes itself in this form. Kant wrongly let himself be persuaded, by this specific quality of spiritual life, to oppose practical Reason as one species of Reason to theoretical as another. And yet knowledge of the laws of our action is also theoretical knowledge, for it is knowledge of the laws of spiritual life. Now the impulses of knowledge, of feeling, and of aesthetic intuition, of will in general and its special application to society, and finally the impulse of religion in the general sense of the word, all concur to demonstrate that spiritual life is the end,
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JOHN D. KRONEN while nature is the means. This is the general law of spiritual life, the validity of which science must maintain if the special character of the spiritual realm of existence is not to be ignored.87
Although Ritschl endorses the Kantian moral argument for God’s existence, he does not think that it, alone, is adequate to give us a full knowledge of God. Naturally, for Ritschl, this can only come about through God’s revelation in Scripture—above all, through his revelation in Christ. But Ritschl wishes to give further credibility to the scriptural witness to God by defending the rationality of believing in that witness. He does this by a brilliant dialectical argument that culminates in the assertion that “the goodness of God, as the general presupposition of everything, is embraced in the specific attributes of the Divine Fatherhood; or, in other words, in the truth that He has revealed Himself to the Christian community as love. There is no other conception of equal worth besides this which need be taken into account.”88 Ritschl begins his dialectical tour de force with an attack on the absolute idealists. These deny that God, as the ground of being, can be a person. The predicates “ground of being” and “person” are incompatible for them since “personality is that selfhood which shuts itself up against everything else,” whereas the ground of being “is the comprehensive, the unlimited, which excludes nothing from itself…”89 Ritschl accuses those who think this way of failing to distinguish properly between individuality and personhood. Although every person is an individual (and here, I think Ritschl would endorse Gracia’s view that an individual is merely a noninstantiable instance of an instantiable, though he would not put it that way), the personhood of each person, “consists in the power to take up the inexorable stimuli of the environment into one’s plan of life, in such a way that they are incorporated in it as means under firm control, and no longer felt as obstacles to the free movement of the self.”90 Persons, as persons, are not shut up from other things, but are capable of the deepest, most meaningful, and most universal relationships with other things. Yet, the more developed the personality, the more it is able not to be overcome by stimuli in its environment that would dissuade it from achieving its end. Such a developed personality “draws a multitude of incentives from the reciprocal action of its memories and from the principles it has acquired, and is thus able both to repel the synchronous stimuli it receives from surrounding persons and things, and to demonstrate its independence by influencing others.”91 Ritschl thinks that no contradiction exists between the concept of developed personality and the concept of God as the source of all other existing things, so long as we remember that God did not need to develop into a personality and that creatures never affect him in the way one created person does another.
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But the personality of God is thinkable without contradiction just because it stands contrasted with the restraints which we find by experience imposed on our personality. As the cause of all that happens, God is affected only by such forces of influence as He has conferred upon His creatures, and as He sees transparently to be the effects of His own will. Nothing which affects the Divine Spirit is originally alien to Him; and there is nothing which, in order to be self-dependent, He must first appropriate. Everything, rather, that the world means for Him is at bottom an expression of His own self-activity; and whatever of the movement of things reacts upon Him. He recognizes as the recurrent sweep of that reality which is possible through Himself alone. As comprising all that happens in the unity of His judgment and the unity of His purpose, He is eternal; and no break in this being or this consciousness is conceivable, for no impression can arise either from things or from ideas which He has not taken up beforehand into the unity of His knowledge and His will.”92 Having dispatched, to his satisfaction, with the absolute idealist’s objection to the personality of God, Ritschl next moves on to establish his position that love exhausts God’s moral attributes. He develops this position in opposition to two views of God that have held sway in the history of theology and that he sees as rivals of his view. One, which Ritschl thinks characterizes, to a greater or lesser extent, medieval Catholic thought, we might call “theological voluntarism.” The other, which Ritschl thinks characterizes Protestant Orthodoxy (especially of the Lutheran variety), we might call “theological essentialism.” According to theological voluntarism, God created the world out of arbitrary will. God, on this view, is the sovereign Lord whose personal end is far above the end of the world. Therefore, God is indifferent as to whether or not this or any world exists. In addition, all rational creatures are naturally related to God as slaves are to their masters. Creatures have no rights over against God and, in particular, are not naturally ordered to union with him.93 Theological essentialism, while it also appears to make the creation of the world something superfluous to God, emphasizes that there exist standards of morality rooted in God’s nature that are as valid for him as for creatures. It further holds that rational creatures are naturally ordered to God and therefore have some rights even with respect to him.94 Ritschl’s critique of both of these views is complex and lengthy and I will not go into it in detail here. Suffice to say that, against theological voluntarism, Ritschl asserts that it ignores the inherent value that created persons must have even for God insofar as they are persons and therefore capable of moral action.95 Also, such a view of the world cannot give any account of a moral world order. And such an account appears to Ritschl to be demanded by the one proof for God that he thinks is efficacious, namely, the moral one.
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It is true that the voluntarists suppose that God rules the world by establishing a certain equity with creatures.96 In other words, he enters into pacts with them. So, for example, in the Garden God, out of sheer grace, determined to give Adam and Eve perfect blessedness if they refrained from eating the fruit of the forbidden tree. God entered also into other pacts, one with the ancient Israelites and another with all human beings through his Son. But Ritschl thinks that no stable world order could be conceived of by means of pacts of such a relative and arbitrary nature. The voluntarist’s reading of Scripture must suppose that, even though human beings continually violate their pacts with God, God, out of an arbitrary and gracious indulgence, continues to ignore these violations and to set up new pacts with them. Such a moral order, Ritschl thinks, can only end in chaos.97 Against the theological essentialists, Ritschl insists that it is wrong to suppose that God’s will is determined by a passive aspect of his nature that is higher than his will. This tears God asunder and conceives of his personality after the image of human personality, which must always develop based on some natural traits not under its control.98 But Ritschl also accuses the essentialists of giving too much prominence to legal categories in their theology. They conceive of human beings as having a right, based on their nature, to communion with God. Yet, this right can only be exercised on the condition that human beings obey the immutable law of God, a law rooted in God’s nature.99 When human beings disobey the divine law, they are subject to God’s vindicatory righteousness, a righteousness that demands the eternal death of the sinner for any sin he or she has committed, unless his or her sins are atoned for by means of a vicarious sacrifice.100 Ritschl thinks such a conception of the moral order of the world ignores the point that the most universal of ends, namely, moral ends, are not concerned merely with a person’s external actions, but with a person’s motives.101 The state may not be as concerned with the inner motives of a person as the spiritual monarch of spirits must be thought to be, since the purpose of the state in punishing is to protect the right of all members of the state to engage in every lawful form of behavior. And to protect this right, it may be necessary to punish some in order both to incapacitate them and to dissuade others. But morality must be interested in the moral character of a person and Ritschl believes that God, as the Spirit among spirits, must be concerned above all with moral ends; to suppose otherwise would be to limit his sphere of concern to what is, comparatively, of lesser worth.102 Therefore God, when he punishes, must be guided by a desire to rehabilitate the sinner instead of the desire to repay evil with the appropriate amount of suffering.103 Finally, Ritschl argues against theological essentialism that the retributive theory, which it endorses, makes it impossible to understand how God could ever become reconciled with the least of sinners, in spite of all the brilliant attempts of its defenders to demonstrate otherwise.104 Having shown both theological voluntarism and theological essentialism to be false, Ritschl propounds his view of the moral content of God’s personhood. As
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we have already noted, he declares that God’s moral attributes are exhausted by love. God, Ritschl holds, created the world out of sheer love for rational creatures. His purpose was to establish a kingdom of God where he and created spirits would relate to each other forever in mutual love.105 Ritschl thinks only this conception of God is adequate to our sense of the moral worth of persons and only it can explain why God created at all and why he created a world of spiritual beings.106 In addition, this view can explain the limitations imposed on spiritual beings. For, although it cannot be determined a priori whether God would create only one finite spirit to love or many, we know a posteriori that he has created a multitude of finite spirits. But Ritschl appears to think that this would be possible only supposing the existence of a common spatial universe consisting of bits of matter that would serve to distinguish one created person from another. So matter was necessary as the common stuff that would allow God to create many finite spirits occupying a common world.107 God, obviously, can bring it about that all material causation should serve the ends of finite spirits. But in order to allow for the development of moral personality, he allows natural laws to work even in ways that finite spirits may perceive as causing them harm.108 All of this is in order to discipline them and to allow them to form perfected human personalities. At the end of time, God will raise up all spirits who have not finally rejected him into his supramundane kingdom. It might be objected here that Thomas Aquinas, and other theologians whom Ritschl disagreed with, also taught that God created the world out of love.109 But Ritschl finds their insistence on this point hollow since they do not conceive the end of the world as being God’s end. For Ritschl the end of the creature and God’s personal end must be one and the same: [I]f love is to be a constant attitude of the will, and if the appropriation and the promotion of the other’s personal end are not alternately to diverge, but to coincide in each act, then the will of the lover must take up the other’s personal end and make it part of his own. That is, love continually strives to develop and to appropriate the individual self-end of the other personality, regarding this as a task necessary to the very nature of its own personal end, its own conscious individuality. This characteristic implies that the will, as love, does not give itself up for the other’s sake. To take up this position is not, as some have objected, to introduce the element of egoism into the conception of love. For the will is egoistic when it sets itself in opposition to the common aims of others; but in the present case, the will is directed to the closest fellowship with another and to a common end.110 For Ritschl, then, creation was in some way necessary to God. Not to his existing, for Ritschl admitted that God is not dependent on another for his being; nor to his perfect personality, for Ritschl asserted God is perfect from himself; but to
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his achieving his end, namely, the expression of his moral nature, which consists in love, in a community of mutually loving persons. In concluding this section, I wish to note that Ritschl thinks his view of the divine nature can solve the age old problem of whether what is right is so because God commands it, or God commands it because it is right. Ritschl writes: Lastly, these results decide the twofold question, whether God wills the good because it is the good a priori for Him also, or whether a thing is good merely because God wills it. Both suppositions are false. We cannot at all conceive a will which is not definitely directed to some end. The Scotists held that God could as easily command as forbid deceit; the will, however, which they thus ascribe to Him is a will without direction. And a will which should receive its direction from an a priori substantive righteousness is not the self-determination befitting God. Now the conception of good employed in the twofold question stated above ought to be deduced exclusively from the consistent aim of the highest human fellowship, i.e. from the law of the Kingdom of God. But if the Kingdom is the necessary correlate of God’s personal end, to which the Divine will is directed, then it is inconceivable that God could command deceit or theft, for they are contrary to the personal end of God as expressed in His kingdom. On the other hand, the thought of the Kingdom of God as the content of His personal end is a datum, it is true, for our knowledge, but not for God before He determines Himself in His own Will. The truth is rather that it is brought forth eternally in God’s selfdetermination as love; it holds good for God, therefore, not before, but in His self-determination, as expressing the direction His self-determination cannot but take in order to realize His purpose. And we simply cannot have a right conception of the good as defining the relations of the multitude of persons who compose the kingdom of God, if we abstract from the form of the Divine Will, and from its content as love.111 Ritschl’s insistence that God’s personhood consists in his loving will is harmonious with his view of created personhood. Against the old substance metaphysics and reductive materialism, which, according to Ritschl, both attempt to ground the real being of a person in something that exists behind her will, Ritschl insists that a human being’s personhood consists in the habitual tendencies of her mind and will, in her state of character, we might say, to use Aristotelian language.112 This view of Ritschl’s concerning the nature of the personhood of both God and human beings, coupled as it is with a passionate devotion to the value of the person and a hatred of any doctrine that Ritschl thought would obscure that value, is perhaps the most interesting aspect of Ritschl’s thought. It also accounts for his hostility both to traditional metaphysics and to reductive materialism. The defenders of both doctrines neglect what is most valuable and real in things for what they
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think is of greater reality and importance: namely the inert substantial natures that lie behind personality. I think that George MacDonald expressed the essence of what Ritschl was up to better than he ever did in a passage that I will close this section with: In what belongs to the deeper meanings of nature and her mediation between us and God, the appearances of nature are the truths of nature, far deeper than any scientific discoveries in and concerning them. The show of things is that for which God cares most, for their show is the face of far deeper things than they. . . . It is through their show, not through their analysis, that we enter into their deepest truths. What they say to the childlike soul is the truest thing to be gathered of them. To know a primrose is a higher thing than to know all the botany of it—just as to know Christ is an infinitely higher thing than to know all theology, all that is said about His person, or babbled about His work. The body of man does not exist for the sake of its hidden secrets; its hidden secrets exist for the sake of its outside—for the face and the form in which dwells revelation: its outside is the deepest of it. So Nature as well exists primarily for her face, her look, her appeals to the heart and the imagination, her simple service to human need, and not for the secrets to be discovered in her and turned to man’s further use.113 5. Ritschl’s Personalism and Gracia’s Conception of Metaphysics We have now explored in some depth Ritschl’s reasons for mistrusting traditional metaphysics. We have seen that they were rooted in a passionate concern to maintain what Ritschl held was a true estimate of the nature and worth of personhood. We have also seen why Ritschl rejected natural theology as being of any value to religion and why he thought that the root of the problem with such a theology was that it made use of metaphysics constitutively instead of regulatively in theology. We have, finally, examined Ritschl’s defense of his conception of personhood as well as the way he developed that conception into a doctrine of God that stresses God’s personhood almost to the point of blurring the distinction between the value of created and uncreated personhood. But we need to step back for a moment and consider whether Ritschl’s critique of metaphysics has succeeded or not. The answer to this question is complicated. Ritschl’s critique of metaphysics depends on a conception of it as the discipline that studies being as such. Ritschl does not deny the existence of such a discipline and, at least in some places, he holds that the theologian must make use of metaphysical concepts in working out a theological doctrine that is clear and consistent. But Ritschl worries that making use of metaphysics in theology will lead to a blurring of the distinction between persons and things if we are not careful, and we have seen how he argued for the conclusion that this is what happened in the history of theology. Ritschl, therefore,
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in order to avoid succumbing to this danger himself, did not explicitly appeal to many metaphysical concepts in the working out of his theology. Whatever we think of the force of Ritschl’s critique of the discipline of metaphysics, it is clear that Ritschl has not shown that a full blown use of metaphysics in theology and ethics must be detrimental to those disciplines. He has not because his assault on metaphysics merely assumes that it is the study of being as being. Gracia, in his book on metaphysics, has shown that this is only one of many conceptions of the nature of metaphysics and has, also, argued that it is not the best conception of metaphysics. Gracia objects to defining metaphysics as the study of being as being for some of the same reasons Ritschl did. He writes: It makes no sense to say metaphysics studies being qua being, because being qua being is nothing other than the various individual beings and particular kinds of being which compose the universe. Being is nothing but being this or that, such as this cat, this chair, or that color, or being a kind of thing, such as a cat, a chair, or a color. To ask about being qua being is to ask about an abstraction. There is nothing over and above individual beings or particular kinds of being, and so the discipline concerned with being qua being amounts, after all, to the collection of disciplines concerned with the various individual beings or particular kinds of being which compose the total collection of what there is. Metaphysics is the encyclopedia of all knowledge.114 This passage has quite a Ritschlian ring to it. But Gracia, though he may follow Ritschl in his critique of metaphysics conceived as the science of being as such, is not as dismissive of the importance of metaphysics as Ritschl was. Gracia holds that the cultivation of metaphysics is crucial to attaining clarity and completeness with respect to any sort of knowledge. This is because Gracia has a different view of what metaphysics studies than Ritschl did. According to Gracia, metaphysics is concerned with the most general categories, where a category is simply whatever is expressed by a predicate.115 And metaphysics is concerned with these most general categories in a particular way. Metaphysics is a philosophical view which seeks: (a) to identify the most general categories; (b) to define the most general categories if at all possible and if not, at least to describe them in ways which allow us to identify them; (c) to determine the relationships among the most general categories; (d) to fit less general categories into the most general ones; and (e) to determine how less general categories are related to all the most general categories, including the ones in which they do not fit.116 Based on this novel definition of metaphysics, Gracia argues that he can account for the reason why metaphysics endures—for why none of the anti-
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metaphysicians have ever succeeded in killing it. We cannot think at all without making reference to the most general categories and we cannot be clear about what we wish to assert or defend if we do not attend to metaphysical questions concerning the definitions of the most general categories and the relationships that hold between them and less general ones: All our knowledge depends on metaphysical views whether we are aware of it or not, and all our thinking involves metaphysical thinking. Those who delude themselves in believing that they do not engage in metaphysical thinking nonetheless do. The only difference between them and declared metaphysicians is that the former are unaware of what they do and, therefore, do it surreptitiously and unreflectively, whereas the latter are aware of it and do it openly and deliberately. Metaphysics is inescapable.117 As fond as I am of Ritschl, I must confess that he fell into the trap Gracia says awaits those who ignore metaphysics. For, as insightful and brilliant as Ritschl was, he was unwilling or unable to be clear about many of his most important claims. Many commentators have noted this shortcoming in his thought and it is one of the things (perhaps the most important thing) that makes Ritschl a thinker of the second, instead of the first, order.118 As Welch has noted, though Ritschl could be devastating in his criticism of his enemies, he himself often floundered horribly in trying to state his views on some matters.119 And the reason for this was his failure to appreciate the importance of metaphysical reflection in Gracia’s sense of the word. I could illustrate this point with dozens of examples, ranging from Ritschl’s discussion of God’s eternal knowledge, to his discussion of the divinity of Christ, but I think the most fruitful way of illustrating it would be to concentrate on his discussion of the nature of personhood. Doing this will show just how unclear an anti-metaphysical thinker can be and will vindicate Gracia’s conviction concerning the importance of metaphysics. In Theology and Metaphysics Ritschl attempted to answer some of his critics, many of whom castigated him precisely for neglecting to make use of traditional metaphysical categories in his writings. In the course of defending himself, Ritschl tried to put forward a view of metaphysics that he thought was more accurate in itself and more useful to the theologian and ethicist. He illustrated his conception of a truer metaphysics by contrasting it with that kind of metaphysics that conceives of things as inert substances lying behind and separate from their qualities and relationships. This is all well and good, but when Ritschl comes to lay out his view of what things are and, in particular, of what persons are, he vacillates between several competing views. Therefore, in one place he appears to identify persons with bundles of impressions, in another with their powers of knowing and willing, and, in yet another, with their developed character.120 All of this confusion arises because
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Ritschl never bothered to work out a metaphysical view of the person in Gracia’s sense. He never asked the question of how, exactly, the category of “personhood” relates to the most general categories, of which of the most general categories it is in, of how it is different from other sorts of things that are in the categories it is in, or of how it relates to categories it is not in. Naturally, at times we might take Ritschl to be asserting that “personhood” is one of the most general categories and that it is not in any other more general category. This is an interesting view, but, unfortunately, Ritschl never clearly espouses it, nor does he anywhere give any clear argument for it. At any rate, even if we wanted to hold such a view, that would not preclude agreeing with Gracia about the nature and value of metaphysics. And Gracia, quite rightly, would insist that a person who held such a view should do several things. (1) They should seek to give a clear definition of “personhood.” (2) They should rebut the arguments of those who hold that “personhood” is not one of the most general categories since it is “in” more general ones (such as substance). (3) They should show its relation to other categories it is not in and so on. But, again, Ritschl never attempts to do any such thing. My view is that one could, by attending to the sorts of questions Gracia says it is the task of metaphysics to attend to, use Ritschl’s thought to construct a view of “personhood” that is quite interesting and, so far as I know, unique. I do not say this view was Ritschl’s since he never attended to the sorts of questions that would generate a metaphysical theory of the person. But I think it is suggested by several things Ritschl says and is definitely consistent with most of what he says, at least if we interpret him charitably. The view of “personhood,” which I think we could construct by examining Ritschl’s thought through Gracia’s metaphysical lens, is that “personhood” is a predicate that is not category specific, meaning that it is not always instantiated by things in the same ultimate category. I think that Ritschl, in his clearest moments, implied that persons are rational beings (namely, beings capable of thinking, feeling, and willing) whose wills are determined by respect for ultimate moral ends.121 In finite spirits “personhood” must be developed and it is, therefore, a property that admits of degrees in them.122 Yet, in God, “personhood” is fully developed from the start and is not in any way an accidental feature of God.123 Even in finite spirits “personhood” is not an accident either. It is instead the accidental unity that consists of the spiritual entity itself (that I think Ritschl, in his clearer moments, held to be a sort of substance that perdures over time, but that is only conceptually distinct from its powers of knowing and willing) and its developed moral character. This is an interesting metaphysical theory of “personhood” and one I have never come across. Some thinkers hold that “personhood” is a category in the category of substance. They define a person as “an individual substance of a rational nature.”124 Others hold that “personhood” is in the category of property; personhood is a state, according to them, which some sorts of natural substances usually pass
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through during their lives.125 But I have never come across a thinker who held “personhood” is a predicate that is, in itself, neutral with respect to these categories. As I have said, Ritschl’s thought, at least in some places, appears to imply this view. Unfortunately, Ritschl never put it forward with any clarity. He just was not interested enough in the sorts of questions Gracia would call metaphysical to even attempt such a thing. But I think he implicitly, in some ways, held this view, and I think that if he had paid enough attention to metaphysics to precisely formulate what he took persons (and God, and Christ, and free actions, and so on) to be, his thought would have been both more precise and more influential than it was. 6. Conclusion I wish, in conclusion, to make one final point. It is that I do not think a Ritschlian need be too upset by what we might call a Gracian critique of Ritschl’s critique of metaphysics. After all, Gracia is one with Ritschl in being mistrustful of a metaphysics that studies being as being and for some of the same (or nearly the same) reasons as Ritschl. Also, Gracia’s conception of metaphysics does not commit a person who engages in metaphysical reflection to embrace any particular list of ultimate categories. The metaphysician as such is concerned with finding out what those categories are, with defining them, with showing their relation to less general categories, and so on. So the Ritschlian need not fear that a person who is devoted to a Gracian conception of metaphysics will be tempted to use metaphysics to dissolve the distinction between persons and things, for example, or between created persons and God. Gracia thinks that the determination of what the ultimate categories are and of their relation to other categories cannot be determined in a purely a priori fashion, but must be determined by making use also of experience, of inference, and so on.126 So Gracia would be open to Ritschl’s arguments concerning the unique value and status of persons. Finally, a conception of metaphysics that focuses on the ultimate categories cannot be used to dissolve persons into the vortex of the absolute, of pure being itself; it is perfectly compatible with any worldview, such as Ritschl’s, which sees difference as lying at the heart of reality. Since this is so, and since Ritschl’s thought could be made clearer and, therefore, more powerful when we view it through Gracia’s metaphysical lens, I conclude that anyone who wishes to be a Ritschlian in theology, philosophical anthropology, and ethics, ought to be a Gracian in metaphysics.
NOTES 1. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), pp. ix–xiii.
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2. For a useful biographical sketch of Ritschl, replete with an account of his chief scholarly contributions and of his influence on later theology, see Philip Hefner, “Introduction,” Three Essays of Albrecht Ritschl (Philadelphia, Pa.: Fortress Press, 1972), pp. 1–50. 3. For more on the breadth and quality of Ritschl’s scholarship, see the following: David Lotz, “Ritschl in his Nineteenth Century Setting,” Ritschl in Retrospect: History, Community, and Science, ed. by Darrell Joddock (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1995), esp. p. 23, and Alisdair McGrath, Justitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 347. 4. Cited by David Lotz, “Ritschl in his Nineteenth Century Setting,” p. 9. 5. See Hefner, Three Essays of Albrecht Ritschl, pp. 31–32. 6. Ibid., p. 15. 7. See Lotz, “Ritschl in his Nineteenth Century Setting,” pp. 26–27, Hans Schwarz, “The Centrality and bipolar Focus of the Kingdom: Ritschl’s Theological Import for the Twentieth Century,” Ritschl in Retrospect, pp. 116–118, and, for the importance of Ritschl’s influence on the twentieth century, see Rolf Schäfer in Lotz, “Ritschl in his Nineteenth Century Setting,” p. 27. 8. See Hefner, Three Essays of Albrecht Ritschl, pp. 40–41. 9. See Claude Welch, “A Reevaluation,” Ritschl in Retrospect, pp. 189–190. 10. On this, see especially the important study of David Lotz, Ritschl and Luther: A Fresh Perspective on Albrecht Ritschl’s Luther Study (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1974). 11. See Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Religion, trans. Francis McDonagh (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1973), pp. 265–276. 12. For a useful recent summary of Ritschl’s critique of metaphysics, see Darrell Joddock, “Ritschl’s Doctrine of God,” Ritschl in Retrospect, pp. 143–165. 13. All references to Theology and Metaphysics will be to Hefner’s English translation of it in Three Essays of Albrecht Ritschl, pp. 151–217. 14. All references to this work will be to The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation: The Positive Development of the Doctrine, ed. and trans, H. R. Mackintosh and A. B. Macaulay (Edingurgh: T & T Clark, 1900). 15. Ritschl, Theology and Metaphysics, p. 187. 16. Ibid., pp. 154–155. 17. Abraham Calov, Metaphysica divina, pars generalis, (Rostock, 1636), p. 221. 18. Ibid., p. 4. 19. Ibid., pp. 105–132, and 196–236. 20. Ritschl, Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, p. 15. 21. Ritschl, Theology and Metaphysics, p. 155, and cf. Christian Wolff, Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General, trans. Richard J. Blackwell (Indianapolis: BobbsMerril, 1963), ch. 3, esp. p. 49. 22. Ritschl, Theology and Metaphysics, p. 156. 23. Ritschl, Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, pp. 24–25. 24. Ritschl, Theology and Metaphysics, pp. 158–159, and Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, pp. 215–216. 25. Ritschl, Theology and Metaphysics, pp. 156–157, and Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, p, 216. 26. Ritschl, Theology and Metaphysics, p. 161.
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27. Ibid. 28. Ritschl, Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, pp. 216–218. 29. Alfred Garvie, The Ritschlian Theology: An Exposition and an Estimate (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1902), pp. 81–82. 30. Ritschl, Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, pp. 193–194. 31. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1, q. 2, a. 3. 32. Ibid., 1, q. 4, a. 1, ad 3. 33. See J. Maritain, Existence and the Existent, trans. Lewis Galantière and Gerald B. Phelan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1948), pp. 1–9. 34. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1, q. 4, a. 2. 35. Ibid., 1, q. 3, a. 7. 36. Ibid., 1, q. 3, a. 6. 37. Ibid., 1, q. 9, a. 1. 38. Ibid., 1, q. 13, a. 7. 39. Ibid., 1, q. 49, a. 2, ad 2. 40. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, bk. 1, ch. 89. 41. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1, q. 21, a. 3. 42. Ritschl, Theology and Metaphysics, p. 167. 43. Ritschl, Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, pp. 211–214, and Theology and Metaphysics, pp. 152–153, and 162. 44. Ritschl, Theology and Metaphysics, p. 166. 45. Ritschl, Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, p. 18. 46. Ritschl, Theology and Metaphysics, p. 165. 47. Ibid., pp. 166–167. 48. Calov, Systema locorum theologicorum (Wittenberg, 1655–77), vol. 2, p. 223, and Johann Andreas Quenstedt, Theologia didactico-polemica, sive systema thelogicum, (Wittenberg, 1685), 1, ch. 8, 1, 4. 49. Calov, Systema locorum theologicorum, vol. 2, pp. 284–288, and Quenstedt, Theologia didactico-polemica, sive systema thelogicum, 1, ch. 8, 1, 10–11. 50. Friedrich Schleiermacher, On the Christian Faith, trans. H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1928), pp. 198-199. For an example, see Calov, Systema locorum theologicorum, vol. 2, p. 217, on the inadequacy of defining God as infinite essence as such. 51. Calov, Systema locorum theologicorum, vol. 2, p. 177, and Quenstedt, Theologia didactico-polemica, sive systema thelogicum, 1, ch. 8, 1, 2. 52. Calov, Systema locorum theologicorum, vol. 2, pp. 177–183, and Quenstedt, Theologia didactico-polemica, sive systema thelogicum, 1, ch. 8, 1, 2. 53. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1, q. 4, a. 2, and 1, q. 6, a. 2. 54. On this point see William Alston, “Aquinas on Predication,” Reasoned Faith, ed. Eleanore Stump (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), esp. pp. 156–160, and 167– 178. 55. See Plotinus, “Ninth Tractate,” The Enneads, trans. Stephen Mackenna (London: Viking Penguin, 1991), p. 539. It should perhaps be noted in this regard that the Eastern Fathers tend, in general, to follow closely Plotinus’ description of the One when they treat of God. Cf. Maximus the Confessor, Two Hundred Texts on Theology and the Dispensa-
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tion of the Son of God, in The Philokalia, trans. G. E. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber and Faber, 1981), vol. 2, pp. 114–116. 56. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1, q. 13, a. 3. 57. See Quenstedt, Theologia didactico-polemica, sive systema thelogicum, 1, ch. 8, 1, 2. 58. Ritschl, Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, pp. 271–272. 59. Ritschl, Theology and Metaphysics, p. 166. See also, Ibid., pp 173–174 for his discussion, in this regard, of the relationship between mysticism and Neoplatonic metaphysics. 60. Ibid., pp. 277–278. 61. Ritschl, Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, p. 322. 62. Ibid., p. 271, and cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, bk. 1, ch. 101. 63. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, bk. 1, ch. 89. 64. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1, q. 21, a. 3. 65. Ibid., Supp., q. 99, a. 2, ad 1. 66. For his criticism of the Catholic doctrine of grace, see Ritschl, Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, pp. 601–602, and for his criticism of the Protestant doctrine of grace see Ritschl, Theology and Metaphysics, pp. 170–174. 67. Ritschl, Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, p. 238. 68. Ibid., pp. 334–338. 69. Ibid., pp. 20–25, 603–607. 70. Ibid., pp. 20–21, 232–235. 71. Ibid., pp. 292–294. 72. Ibid., pp. 203–204 73. Ibid., pp. 290–291. 74. Ibid., p. 209. 75. Ibid., pp. 616–617. 76. Ibid., p. 204. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid., p. 205. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid., pp. 205–206. 81. Ibid., p. 617, 621. 82. Ibid., pp. 194–197. 83. Ibid., p. 199. 84. Ibid., p. 219. 85. Ibid., pp. 219–220. 86. Ibid., p. 220. 87. Ibid., p. 222. 88. Ibid., p. 273. 89. Ibid., p. 232. 90. Ibid., p. 234; for Gracia’s notion of what an individual is see Jorge J. E. Gracia, Individuality: An Essay on the Foundations of Metaphysics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), pp. 45–56. 91. Ritschl, Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, p. 234. 92. Ibid., p. 236. 93. Ibid., pp. 240–241.
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94. Ibid., pp. 245–246. 95. Ibid., p. 244. 96. Ibid., p. 241. 97. Ibid., pp. 244–245. 98. Ibid., pp. 248–250. 99. Ibid., pp. 245–246. 100. Ibid., p. 247. 101. Ibid., pp. 251–252. 102. Ibid., p. 257. 103. Ibid., pp. 47–57, 630. 104. Ibid., pp. 262–269. 105. Ibid., pp. 280–282. 106. Ibid., pp. 274–276. 107. Ibid., pp. 278–279. 108. Ibid., pp. 352–354. 109. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1, q. 44, a. 4. 110. Ritschl, Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, pp. 277–278. 111. Ibid., pp. 283–284. 112. Ritschl, Theology and Metaphysics, p. 186. 113. George MacDonald, 356 Readings, ed. C.S. Lewis (New York: Macmillan, 1947), p. 65. 114. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, pp. 26–27. 115. Ibid., pp. 134–135, 205. 116. Ibid., pp. 139–140. 117. Ibid., p. 221. 118. See Garvie, The Ritschlian Theology, pp. 46–47. 119. Claude Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), vol. 2, pp. 3–4. 120. Ritschl, Theology and Metaphysics, pp. 181–182, 185, and 186. 121. Ritschl, Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, pp. 292–294. 122. Ibid., pp. 232–236. 123. Ibid., p. 236. 124. This is the classic definition of Boethius, Contra Eutychen, bk. 3, 4–5. 125. For one example of such a view see Michael Tooley, “Abortion and Infanticide,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 2:1 (Fall, 1972), pp. 37–65. 126. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, pp. 141–142.
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Twelve IS HUME A METAPHYSICIAN?: ARISTOTLE VS. GRACIA Daniel D. Novotny There has been a disagreement among standard interpreters of David Hume not only over the details of his different views and claims, but also over the basic understanding of his philosophical program. The question of whether Hume viewed his program as a constructive exercise in metaphysics/ontology, or as one whose foundation rested on the destructive skeptical claim that we must discard all metaphysical discourse, has been answered by Hume’s scholars in different ways. In spite of these disagreements, a general and systematic treatment of Hume’s attitude toward metaphysics is rare. Most philosophers are content to say that Hume attacks metaphysics.1 Others do not mention Hume’s metaphysics at all.2 Still others speak about Hume’s metaphysics without explaining what the word “metaphysics” in this context stands for.3 Of all these, as far as I know, only Don Garrett rightly notices that “Hume did not consider himself an enemy of metaphysics as such. For he understood ‘metaphysics’ to consist simply of all ‘abstract and profound reasonings’—a definition broad enough to include much of his own philosophy.”4 Yet this observation, true as it is, does not exhaust the question of Hume’s attitude toward metaphysics. The aim of the present paper is to fill in the indicated gap. This I would like to accomplish in two ways: (1) I address an exegetical issue, namely the meaning of the word “metaphysics” for Hume, and (2) I attempt to elucidate the nature of Hume’s philosophical project and consider whether it is anti-metaphysical as many scholars hold. I will direct my focus to the general aspect of the issue—not to particular topics such as causality, substance, or self, which commonly occupy most treatments of “Hume’s metaphysics.” The central thesis of (1) is that “metaphysics” for Hume means “any profound reasoning” and that in this sense Hume explicitly and consistently considers himself to be a metaphysician. In (2) I show that Hume’s science of human nature is truly a metaphysical enterprise, though not in the usual Aristotelian or rationalist sense. It is this second part where I find Jorge J. E. Gracia’s recent work in meta-metaphysics helpful.5 So helpful that the justification of my claim that Hume was a metaphysician hinges on the adequacy of Gracia’s account of what metaphysics is.
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Many scholars regard Hume as an explicit and accomplished enemy of metaphysics in every sense of the word. Therefore, for instance, Alfred Jules Ayer writes in Language, Truth and Logic: Of Hume we may say not merely that he was not in practice a metaphysician, but that he explicitly rejected metaphysics. We find the strongest evidence of this in the passage with which he concludes his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. “If,” he says, “we take in our hand any volume; of divinity, or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames. For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”6 Ayer’s claim that Hume explicitly rejected metaphysics would be true only if metaphysics were what Ayer thought it was, namely putative “knowledge of a reality transcending the world of science and common sense.”7 But it might not be true if metaphysics turns out to be something else, which I think is the case. Ayer is not the only person who understands Hume in this way. To give another example, Farhang Zabeeh published a paper on Hume’s metaphysics where, again, he makes unqualified assertions to the effect that Hume dismisses metaphysics as such. Zabeeh quotes and comments on many passages from Hume pertaining to metaphysics, especially from the Introduction to the Treatise of Human Nature and the first section of An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. Since he closely follows the text, at one point he is even forced to acknowledge (correctly) that “[in the Enquiry] true and false philosophy are identified with True and False Metaphysics.”8 But unfortunately the prejudice concerning Hume’s antimetaphysical attitude is so strong that Zabeeh lapses again into indiscriminate statements, such as “metaphysics and theology for Hume . . . are worthless subjects.”9 Obviously, it would be pointless to go through all the misleading comments that scholars have made about Hume’s attitude toward metaphysics. Instead, it is more fruitful to provide a better assessment of it. My thesis is that, for Hume, the word “metaphysics” means “any profound reasoning,” and that since reasoning can be carried out in good or bad ways, we can get good or bad metaphysics as a result. At least two general features of good metaphysics exist: First, it is accurate, and second, it takes into account the limits of possible human knowledge. On the contrary, bad metaphysics is inaccurate (“not a science,” “obscure”) and aims to get beyond the scope of possible human knowledge (in Hume’s view, these misguided attempts are nourished by human vanity and popular superstition). The best example of good metaphysics for Hume is his science of human nature.
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In what follows I gather textual support from the Treatise and the Enquiry for particular parts of my account: (1) for Hume the word “metaphysics” means “any profound reasoning,” (2) Hume distinguishes good and bad metaphysics, and (3) the science of human nature is the best example of good metaphysics.10 A. “Metaphysics” Means “Any Profound Reasoning” At least two passages exist where Hume uses “metaphysics” as a synonym for “any profound reasoning.” The first occurs in a context where Hume laments the poor condition of philosophy, writing that “[T]here is nothing which is not the subject of debate, and in which men of learning are not of contrary opinions . . . . Amidst all this bustle ‘tis not reason, which carries the prize, but eloquence.”11 In Hume’s view, this sad situation has the following negative effects: From hence in my opinion arises that common prejudice against metaphysical reasonings of all kinds, even among those, who profess themselves scholars . . . . By metaphysical reasonings, they do not understand those on any particular branch of science, but every kind of argument, which is in any way abstruse, and requires some attention to be comprehended. We have so often lost our labor in such researches . . . . And indeed nothing but the most determin’d scepticism, along with a great degree of indolence, can justify this aversion to metaphysics.12 In this text Hume reports what “self-professed scholars” take metaphysics (metaphysical reasoning) to be, namely “every kind of argument, which . . . requires some attention to be comprehended.” And he remarks: “[I]ndeed . . . a great degree of indolence, can justify this aversion to metaphysics.” This implies, first, that Hume accepts the view that metaphysics is any profound reasoning (I take “profound” to be synonymous with “requires some attention to be comprehended”) and, secondly, that he does not dismiss metaphysics completely. In a second passage, Hume is even more explicit: “But as the matter is often carried farther even to the absolute rejecting of all profound reasonings, or what is commonly called metaphysics, we shall now proceed to consider what can reasonably be pleaded in their behalf.”13 Here again Hume equates metaphysics with any profound reasoning and he even appears to consider this understanding to be standard (“common”). This passage from the Enquiry further indicates that Hume did not change his mind on this matter between writing Treatise and Enquiry. As it is known, in the Advertisement of the Enquiry Hume asks readers to take the Enquiry and not the Treatise as an official expression of his opinions: “Henceforth, the Author desires, that the following Pieces may alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles.”14
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Besides the two passages cited above, others exist where Hume mentions metaphysics. None of them, as far as I can tell, contain an unqualified rejection of it. Consider the following: We might produce the figures of poets and orators, as sufficient proofs of this [namely that resemblance, causation and contiguity are sources of mistakes in ideas], were it usual . . . in metaphysical subjects to draw our arguments from that quarter. But lest metaphysicians shou’d esteem this below their dignity, I shall borrow a proof from an observation.15 Note that Hume uses the expression “metaphysical subjects” to refer to the sort of questions he himself is dealing with on this occasion. Hume does not deny all the positive connotations of the word “metaphysical.”16 In another passage, he states: Thus tho’ we clearly perceive the dependence and interruption of our perceptions, we stop short in our career, and never upon that account reject the notion of an independent and continu’d existence. That opinion has taken such deep root in the imagination, that ‘tis impossible ever to eradicate it, nor will any strain’d metaphysical conviction of the dependence of our perceptions be sufficient for that purpose.17 Here Hume calls his principle of the dependence of our perceptions a “metaphysical conviction!” Another passage from the Treatise reads: If any one upon serious and unprejudic’d reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. . . . He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu’d, which he calls himself; tho’ I am certain there is no such principle in me. But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions.18 Note that Hume’s formulation is “setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind” and not “setting metaphysicians aside” as he should have said if for him all metaphysics were something undesirable. To conclude, there appears to be strong textual evidence that, for Hume, “metaphysics” means “any profound reasoning” and that though he might be quite reluctant to use this word often it does, in certain contexts, carry for him a positive meaning. B. Good and Bad Metaphysics Let us turn to the opposition between good and bad metaphysics and the two characteristic features Hume attributes to them. Good metaphysics uses accurate and
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just reasoning, whereas bad metaphysics does not and is “obscure.” The textual support for this claim comes only from the Enquiry, but nothing in the Treatise contradicts it. The three pertinent passages in the Enquiry read as follows: [We] must cultivate true metaphysics with some care, in order to destroy the false one and adulterate. . . . Accurate and just reasoning . . . is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon.19 The chief obstacle, therefore, to our improvement in the moral or metaphysical sciences is the obscurity of the ideas, and ambiguity of the terms.20 There are no ideas, which occur in metaphysics, more obscure and uncertain, than those of power, force, energy, or necessary connexion, of which it is every moment necessary for us to treat in all our disquisitions. We shall therefore, endeavour, in this section, to fix, if possible, the precise meaning of these terms, and thereby remove some part of that obscurity, which is so much complained of in this species of philosophy.21 All three passages either explicitly or at least implicitly refer to the opposition between good (true) metaphysics and bad (false and adulterate) metaphysics. Additionally, it is accuracy that “subvert[s] . . . metaphysical jargon.”22 This jargon consists in “the obscurity of the ideas, and ambiguity of . . . [such] terms” as “power, force, energy, . . . [and] necessary connection.”23 The accuracy of good metaphysics involves fixing the precise meanings of problematic terms and therefore removing the obscurity of bad metaphysics. The other feature of good metaphysics is that it does not go beyond the limits of possible human knowledge, whereas bad metaphysics futilely and unwittingly tries to do so. There exists one reference where Hume explicitly uses the word “metaphysics” that supports this claim: Here indeed lies the justest and most plausible objection against a considerable part of metaphysics, that they are not properly a science; but arise either from the fruitless efforts of human vanity, which would penetrate into subjects utterly inaccesible to the understanding, or from the craft of popular superstitions.24 I take it that the expression “[supposedly] penetrate into subjects utterly inaccessible to the understanding” means “to go beyond the limits of possible human knowledge.” Hume acknowledges that some metaphysicians (the bad ones) try to do this— but he himself does not and therefore we should count him as a good metaphysician.
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Let us turn to the textual support of the contention that the best example of good metaphysics, for Hume, is his science of human nature. In the Introduction to the Treatise, he speaks first about metaphysics and, immediately after, adds: ‘Tis evident, that all the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and that however wide any of them may seem run from it, they still return back by one passage or another. Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religon, are in some measure dependent on the science of MAN; since they lie under the cognizance of men, and are judged of by their powers and faculties. . . . If therefore the sciences of Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, have such a dependence on the knowledge of man, what may be expected in the other sciences, whose connexion with human nature is more close and intimate?25 This text suggests that Hume slips from the talk about metaphysics into the talk about the science of man precisely because his science of man/science of human nature is the best example of (good) metaphysics. Otherwise the text would be stylistically weak, which would be uncharacteristic. Support for the view that the science of human nature is the best instance of metaphysics is also present in the Enquiry. There, after Hume considers objections against metaphysics, he adds: But is this a sufficient reason, why philosophers should desist from such researches . . . ? Is it not proper to draw an opposite conclusion . . . ? In vain do we hope, that men, from frequent disappointment, will at last abandon such airy sciences, and discover the proper province of human reason. . . . The only method of freeing learning, at once, from these abstruse questions, is to enquire seriously into the nature of human understanding, and show, from exact analysis of its powers and capacity, that it is by no means fitted for such remote and abstruse subjects.26 Above I argued that Hume saw himself as doing true metaphysics. If we put this together with the assertion that “the only method of freeing learning . . . from these abstruse questions [namely, false metaphysics] is to enquire . . . into the nature of human understanding,” it follows that Hume considered true metaphysics to be best instantiated in the science of human nature. If the science of human nature is the best example of metaphysics, as I have claimed, then we need to account for why Hume undoubtedly prefers the first over the second. After all, he puts the expression “human nature” into the title of the book and talks much more frequently about the science of human nature than
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about metaphysics. He does this for two reasons. First, the expression “Science of Human Nature” is more informative than the expression “good metaphysics.” Second, although Hume acknowledged the positive connotations of the word “metaphysics,” he was also aware of the negative ones. Consequently, it was better for him to use the first expression over the second, since the first had positive connotations only. In short, from what I have argued it plainly follows that, contrary to a fairly widespread interpretation, Hume understood himself to be engaging in metaphysics. Hume does use the word “metaphysics” disapprovingly, but he also uses it consistently in a positive sense, and he uses it in this second sense to refer to the science of human nature. 2. Was Hume a Metaphysician? We have now seen that the science of human nature is, for Hume, the best example of good metaphysics and that he therefore considers himself a metaphysician in the broad sense, understanding metaphysics as “any profound reasoning.” Let us turn to another question, namely, whether Hume was a metaphysician in some other, narrower, sense. First, I discuss the view that Hume’s science of human nature is not metaphysics in the “classical” (Aristotelian/rationalist) sense. Second, on the basis of Gracia’s recent account of the nature of metaphysics, I will argue that the “core” part of Hume’s science of human nature is truly metaphysical.27 A. Hume Is Not an Aristotelian or a Rationalist Metaphysician Let us begin with a trivial clarification: today we would no longer classify many of the problems Hume treats in his science of human nature as metaphysical. For example, we would treat Hume’s theory of meaning in logical semantics, Hume’s fork and his critique of causal reasoning in epistemology, and the association and innateness of ideas in (cognitive) psychology.28 Consequently, from a contemporary perspective, the science of human nature can have at best a metaphysical part or “core,” but it cannot consist in nothing but metaphysics. Accordingly, whenever I say “science of human nature is” or “is not a metaphysics,” what I have in mind is the narrower claim that part of the science of human nature is or is not a metaphysics. We can proceed now to a brief discussion of the well-known fact that the science of human nature is incompatible with metaphysics conceived in an Aristotelian or rationalist sense. Many ways exist to express and justify this point, but I will do it in terms of observable/non-observable entities. According to the standard view, in Aristotle there appears to be (at least) two distinct conceptions of metaphysics, namely ontological (metaphysics as an investigation of being as being) and theological (metaphysics as an investigation of God). Regardless, not everybody shares the standard view and we can adopt different stances as to
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which conception is the correct one or how to reconcile the two. But the crucial point is that Aristotle’s science in general, and of being as being or God in particular, concerns causes or principles and that these causes and principles might be, and typically are, unobservable (not given in experience).29 The same characteristic applies to the seventeenth century rationalist conception of metaphysics. Rationalists broadened the scope of metaphysical topics, so as to include not only the ultimate causes of anything that exists, but also the principles of natural world and mind, while they also allowed, like Aristotelians, nonobservable, theoretical entities. It must be obvious now that, since a fundamental tenet of Hume’s philosophy is to stay always within the reach of experience, namely what is observable either in sense perception or introspection, Hume is not a metaphysician in either the Aristotelian or the rationalist sense of the word.30 B. Hume Is a Metaphysician in Gracia’s Sense Still, that Hume is not a metaphysician in the Aristotelian or rationalist senses (nor in Ayer’s sense, as we have seen) does not mean that he is not a metaphysician at all. I propose to argue that Hume is a metaphysician in a non-trivial and appropriate sense. My procedure will be as follows: First, I present a slightly simplified version of Gracia’s recent account of metaphysics, then I briefly formulate my interpretive hypothesis concerning Hume’s ontology, and finally I apply Gracia’s definition of metaphysics to Hume’s science of human nature. This, I claim, shows that the science of human nature contains metaphysics as an integral part. But before embarking upon my task, let me make two comments. First, there exists an interesting convergence of Michael Loux’s more traditional Aristotelian account of metaphysics and Gracia’s account. Loux characterizes metaphysics as a “category theory” and, in my opinion, Hume is a metaphysician even in Loux’s sense of the word, though Loux is not aware of it.31 Second, other philosophers, such as Charles Hartshorne, argue that Hume was a metaphysician. Yet, Hartshorne does this for a different reason: For Hartshorne “a metaphysical doctrine [. . .] is a modal statement about existence, saying what could, could not, or must exist.”32 Since Hume makes claims fulfilling Hartshorne’s criterion (such as “No thing/event X1 which is distinguishable from X2 can be logically dependent/inseparable from X2”) he counts as a metaphysician in Hartshorne’s sense. Naturally, I cannot evaluate here Gracia’s and Hartshorne’s competing conceptions of metaphysics. I merely assume the adequacy of Gracia’s view. In Metaphysics and its Task, Gracia argues that metaphysics is a philosophical view that has several aims. (1) The identification and description of the most general categories. (2) The specification of the relationships among the most general categories. (3) The classification of less general categories into the most general ones. (4) The determination of the relationships between less general and most
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general categories.33 (I should note that I have merged two of Gracia’s first conditions into one because for our purposes we do not need to distinguish them.) By “philosophical view” Gracia means a view of the world, or any of its parts, which seeks to be accurate, consistent, comprehensive and well justified. It is crucial to note that the word “categories” is being employed here quite broadly, namely as “whatever is expressed by a term or expression, simple or complex, which can be predicated of some other term or expression.”34 Categories do not have to be irreducible, mutually exclusive, or jointly exhaustive. Let us proceed now to my interpretive hypothesis, intended to help us identify the metaphysical “core” of Hume’s science of human nature. It is widely acknowledged that Hume’s philosophy is rich, having many aspects and giving rise to different interpretations. I would like to focus here on Hume’s ontology, that is, on the kinds of entities Hume thought to exist. Hume tackled the ontological question on three different planes; we can also say that Hume engaged in three distinct, though intertwined, ontological projects. For want of better terminology, I call these reductive empiricism, proto-phenomenology and common sense articulation. The empiricist project is the most salient. In it Hume aims at reducing everything to the most basic entities, namely perceptions and relations.35 Hume’s protophenomenology is his official program of “mental geography,” where he seeks to “know the different operations of the mind, to separate them from each other, to class them under their proper heads.”36 Its aim is to describe and categorize all aspects of our mental life, including perception, belief, and desire. Finally, the aim of the articulation of common sense is to describe and explain the ontology of common sense (Hume would say “the doctrine of the vulgar”).37 Hume argues that entities posed by common sense are fictions, so that, strictly speaking, no such a thing as common sense ontology exists. Yet, this does not prevent him from ascribing to it a significant role in our life. Interestingly, it appears to be precisely the departure from the fictitious common sense ontology that is the source of Hume’s disappointment over some of his philosophical accomplishments: “But all my hopes vanish, when I come to explain the principles, that unite our successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness. I cannot discover any theory, which gives me satisfaction on this head.”38 Since I take it to be a part of common sense ontology that some principle of personal identity exists, I identify Hume’s source of disappointment with his inability to provide a sufficient account for this common sense belief. So, in my view, for a unified interpretation of Hume’s thought we need to address not only the familiar twofold epistemic (skeptical/pragmatic) but also the threefold ontic aspects of his project. Logical positivists, for instance, understood Hume almost exclusively from the vantage point of his empiricist reductionism.39 In contrast, Norman Kemp Smith and Barry Stroud appear to stress what I call Hume’s “proto-phenomenology.”40 But in my opinion, we should read Hume as trying both to reduce empirical facts to ontological simples (empiricist reduction-
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ism) and to formulate views about the human mind/nature (protophenomenology). Additionally, as noted, Hume is also concerned, though to a lesser degree, with common sense ontology. Naturally, a complete defense of my hypothesis would be by no means an easy task, and one that I cannot undertake on this occasion. Let me just point out here that David Fate Norton’s view appears to be close to my threefold view of Hume’s ontology.41 Norton speaks about the simple perceptions and then how some of these are interrelated and associated to produce further perceptions that are then projected onto a putative world outside our minds.42 This corresponds roughly to my idea: Hume’s simple perceptions are part of his empiricist ontology, “further perceptions” (space, causal connection, external existence, and so on) part of his proto-phenomenological ontology, and the putative entities resulting from the projection of “further entities” on the outside world part of his common sense ontology. But Norton says that Hume gave the “way of ideas” a kind of phenomenological turn and by that he means that for Hume perceptions are not representations of something extra-mental but objects of the mind. Though Hume speaks in this way, I tend to disagree with Norton’s interpretation for there appears to be for Hume no mind/objects-of-mind distinction. Having presented Gracia’s conception of metaphysics and my interpretive hypothesis, we proceed to apply Gracia’s definition to (my interpretation of) Hume’s science of human nature. At first glance, at least two difficulties with a straightforward application suggest themselves. First, Hume does not speak about categories and they do not appear to bother him. Second, it would appear impossible to determine general and less general categories for Hume, since he explicitly says that “all general ideas are nothing but particular ones, annex’d to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive signification.”43 With respect to the first difficulty, the answer is that it is not necessary for Hume to have employed the word “categories.” For our purposes, it is sufficient to identify Humean categories in Gracia’s sense, and this is possible. The second difficulty is not insurmountable either: regardless of Hume’s explicit account of generality and particularity, Hume’s views can be “reformulated” in terms of more general and less general categories and even organized in a tree-like structure of genus and species.44 (Many advantages to this structuring exist, some of them formal.)45 We are in a position to determine whether Hume’s science of human nature satisfies all four of Gracia’s conditions for metaphysics. First, does Hume engage in (1) Identification and description of the most general categories? He does, in that, formally speaking, he implicitly works with three most general categories corresponding to the three ontological projects identified above: the first category encompasses primary, the second derivative, and the third fictitious entities. (A note in passing: There might be a difficulty considering that Hume works with these three categories only implicitly and not explicitly. But for the sake of simplicity, I will set this difficulty aside).
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Instances of primary entities are perceptions (impressions and ideas) and relations, and Hume deals with them in his empiricist reductionist program. Instances of derivative entities are ideas of memory, extension, temporal succession, beliefs, and so on. They are ideas derived from impressions in a genuine way. Derivative entities are the subject-matter of Hume’s proto-phenomenological project. Instances of the fictitious entities include substances, self, and necessary connections (causes). They are targets of what I call Hume’s common sense articulation project. This is the most controversial and elusive aspect of Hume’s ontology. See for instance his “Of scepticism with regard to the Senses.”46 By common sense entities I mean (for Hume putative) things like tables, individual people’s selves, causal powers, and so on that are “out there”—not impressions of, nor beliefs we have in, them. Many passages show that Hume understands the distinction: “The table, which we see, seems to diminish, as we remove further from it: but the real table, which exists independent of us, suffers no alteration.”47 Second, does Hume engage in (2) The specification of the relationships among the most general categories? Obviously he does, since one of Hume’s aims is to establish the reducibility of the second category to the first category and to explain away the third. Third, we can clearly see that condition (3) The classification of less general categories into the most general ones, is also satisfied, for instance, when Hume divides and subdivides perceptions. Finally, we must acknowledge that condition (4) The determination of the relationships between less general categories is satisfied as well and perhaps even trivially in that the second category is reducible to the first and no relationships of the third to the first two exist since the third is a fiction. If this line of my argumentation is cogent and Gracia’s definition of metaphysics correct, we may conclude that an essential part of Hume’s science of human nature is appropriately called “metaphysics.” Surprisingly, then, it follows that although commonly considered “an anti-metaphysician,” Hume engaged in the same enterprise as those whom Gracia considers to be the paradigmatic metaphysicians.48 3. Conclusion The first part of this paper carried out a textual exegesis of the Treatise and Enquiry and identified the meaning of the word “metaphysics.” The conclusion was that Hume explicitly considers his science of human nature to be metaphysics, although only in his peculiar sense of “any profound reasoning.” The second part addressed the issue of whether Hume’s science of human nature is a metaphysics in some more substantive and appropriate sense. Its conclusion was that, on Gracia’s account, Hume’s science of human nature has a truly metaphysical “core.” At this point a question might arise as to the connection between Hume’s metaphysics as “any profound reasoning” and Hume’s metaphysics in the more substantive sense. I can answer this question in at least two possible ways. First, I
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could try to establish some links between the two. Was Hume aware of some continuity between what he called “metaphysics” and what has been so called traditionally? Second, I can simply admit that the only connection between the two parts of my paper is purely nominal—Hume, as Gracia and I do, uses the word “metaphysics,” but what he and we mean by it is quite different. But even if this were the case, I would have still met the aim of my paper because I have succeeded in elucidating Hume’s philosophical attitude toward metaphysics and it has resulted in the identification of two distinct attitudes toward two different things, ambiguously referred to by the same word “metaphysics.” At this point, I will opt for the second answer, leaving the exploration of the more substantial connections for another occasion. In spite of whatever shortcomings my arguments have, I hope that, besides some exegetical points, this paper makes a contribution to a deeper understanding of what, as a metaphysician, Hume thought he was doing and what he actually was doing. Hume thought he did metaphysics in his sense and he was working in metaphysics in Gracia’s sense.
NOTES 1. Michael J. Loux, Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (London, New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 17. 2. D. G. C. MacNabb, “David Hume,” Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 74–90. Rudolf Luethe, “David Hume,” in Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, eds. Barry Smith and Hans Burkhardt (Munich, Philadelphia, Pa.: Philosophia Verlag, 1991), pp. 363–365. 3. Georges Dicker, Hume’s Epistemology and Metaphysics (London, New York: Routledge, 1998). 4. Don Garrett, “Hume, David,” Companion to Metaphysics, eds. Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa (Oxford, Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1995), p. 215. 5. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999). 6. Alfred J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (New York: Dover Publications, 1952), p. 54. 7. Ibid., p. 33. 8. Farhang Zabeeh, “Hume on Metaphysics and the Limits of Human Knowledge,” Theoria, 27 (1961), p. 17. 9. Ibid., pp. 17–18. Not even in his later book did Zabeeh revise his exegesis: Farhang Zabeeh, Hume, Precursor of modern empiricism: An analysis of his opinion on Meaning, Metaphysics, Logic and Mathematics, 2nd ed. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), pp. 6–11. 10. The textual references in my paper are confined to two texts: David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, eds. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), and David Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding,
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ed. Tom L. Beauchamp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). For additional bibliography see Richard Hall, Fifty Years of Hume Scholarship (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1978). 11. Hume, “Introduction,” Treatise of Human Nature. 12. Ibid. 13. Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, bk. 1, 5. 14. Ibid., “Advertisement.” 15. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, bk. 1, 2, 5, 21. 16. For a similar case see Ibid., bk. 1, 4, 1, 11. 17. Ibid., bk. 1, 4, 2, 51. 18. Ibid., bk. 1, 4, 6, 3–4. 19. Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, bk. 1, 12. 20. Ibid., bk. 7, 2. 21. Ibid., bk. 7, 3. 22. Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, bk. 1, 12. 23. Ibid., bk. 7, 2, and bk. 7, 3. 24. Ibid., bk. 1, 11. 25. Hume, “Introduction,” Treatise of Human Nature. 26. Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, bk. 1, 12. 27. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task. 28. See, for instance, John Biro, “Hume’s New Science of the mind,” The Cambridge Companion to Hume, ed. David Fate Norton (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 51 ff. 29. Charlotte Witt, Substance and Essence in Aristotle: An Interpretation of Metaphysics VII–IX (Ithaca, N.Y., London: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 14–24. 30. For textual support see Dicker, Hume’s Epistemology and Metaphysics, pp. 154–158. 31. For the account of metaphysics as a “category theory” see Loux, Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction, pp. 11–17. For the assumption that Hume does not fit the account see Ibid., p. 17 n. 6. 32. Charles Hartshorne, “Hume’s Metaphysics and its Present-Day Influence,” New Scholasticism, 35 (1961), p. 150. 33. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, pp. 131–140. 34. Ibid., p. 134. 35. Many passages stating this program explicitly exist, including Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, bk. 1, 2, 6, 7, Treatise of Human Nature, bk. 1, 4, 2, 14, Treatise of Human Nature, bk. 1, 4, 2, 21, Treatise of Human Nature, bk. 1, 4, 5, 15, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, bk. 12, 1, 9, and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, bk. 12, 1, 12, etc. 36. Ibid., bk. 1, 13. 37. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, appendix 13. 38. Ibid., appendix 20. 39. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, and see his more recent Hume (New York: Hill and Wang, 1980).
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40. Norman Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume: A critical study of its origins and central doctrines (London: MacMillan, 1941). Barry Stroud, Hume (London, Boston: Routledge and K. Paul, 1977). 41. Norton, The Cambridge Companion to Hume, esp. pp. 7–12. 42. Ibid., paraphrasing p. 8. 43. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, bk. 1, 1, 7, 1. 44. For a similar structuring see Michael Gorman, “Hume’s Theory of Belief,” Hume’s Studies, 19 (1993), p. 95. 45. Barry Smith, “Ontology and Information Systems,” unpublished, available at: (http://ontology.buffalo.edu/ontology.doc); shorter version was published as “Ontology”, Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information, ed. L. Floridi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 155–166. 46. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, bk. 1, 4, 2. 47. Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, bk. 12, 1, 9. 48. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task, p. xviii.
Thirteen MAKING SENSE OF THE HISTORY OF METAPHYSICS: RESPONSE TO KRONEN AND NOVOTNY Jorge J. E. Gracia A great challenge for the historian of philosophy is to make sense of the history of metaphysics. Difficulties arise from at least three quarters. First, we have no universally accepted conception of the discipline. Most philosophers disagree on what metaphysics is and they summarily dismiss each other’s conceptions of the discipline. How can the historian of philosophy, then, try to write a history of something that does not appear to have any unity, something that lacks identity? It would appear to be a requirement of the historians’ task that what they talk about has an identity that we can trace throughout history. The second difficulty has to do with the repeated attacks that have been brought against metaphysics. Every age has had at least some fierce criticisms of metaphysics, ranging from those who dismiss it as mere hocus pocus, to those who regard its claims as meaningless. If these criticisms are right, then what sense does it make to try to trace its history? Third, the critics of metaphysics often try to put in its place something that they loath to call metaphysics, but that in many ways functions like a metaphysics. So, what do we make of these? Should the thought of anti-metaphysicians be included in the history of metaphysics? If we take these three difficulties seriously, we might be tempted to give up not only the pursuit of metaphysics, but even the pursuit of trying to make sense of its history. But, as should be expected, the matter is not this simple. In Metaphysics and its Task, I claim that metaphysics is inevitable.1 We might try to ignore it, but a metaphysical framework is latent in any attempt we make at understanding ourselves and the world around us. So, even when we think we are not doing metaphysics, we are presupposing metaphysical frameworks that surreptitiously mold our views and determine in many ways what we think. To present an argument to support this thesis was one of the tasks of the book. The papers by John D. Kronen and Daniel D. Novotny in this volume constitute excellent illustrations of how in practice my view is valuable in that it helps make sense of some historical views about metaphysics. Both have explored the thought of authors who we generally do not consider metaphysicians and whose views are not classified as metaphysical. These two authors presented themselves
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as, and are generally considered to be, instead critics of metaphysics. Their thought is frequently interpreted as an alternative to metaphysics instead of as a part of the history of metaphysics; and the enterprise that they engage is for the most part seen as contrasting to that which concerns metaphysicians. In this brief response to Kronen and Novotny, I attempt to show that it is a too narrow understanding of metaphysics that leads to all three difficulties mentioned earlier. Then I point out how my view avoids being too narrow. Finally, I refer to the work of Kronen and Novotny as illustrating precisely how my claims are justified. First, then, let me turn to the source of a too narrow conception of metaphysics. 1. Metaphysics Conceived Too Narrowly Ever since the Greeks introduced the term “metaphysics” in Western philosophy, philosophers have taken sides on the nature of the discipline. In part, the source of the difficulties is the same book in whose title the term first occurred, for Aristotle’s Metaphysics does not appear to provide a unified notion of the discipline. Much of the subsequent discussion about the nature of metaphysics in the West has been concerned with the different ways in which Aristotle himself talks about the discipline in his book. And there has been fierce disagreement as to the unity of the discipline and the exact conception of it that Aristotle had. None of this is especially pertinent for our discussion insofar as here I am not concerned with the historical issue of what Aristotle thought or of the origin of the discipline. But it is crucial to note that the disagreement concerning the nature of metaphysics starts at the beginning. From the inception of the term, there exists no set view of metaphysics that is presented and then criticized by subsequent authors. Instead, we have, even in the same author, what appear to be conflicting views about the discipline. It is also crucial for us to note that these differences do not bother Aristotle himself. And that, as a result, there have been many commentators who have tried to show that, in spite of what appear to be different conceptions of the discipline, when we go beyond the surface, we can find a unity to it in Aristotle’s thought. Others, naturally, have tried to show just the opposite, arguing that what we have in Aristotle are several and incompatible conceptions of the same thing. The crucial element in this for us is that these two views about Aristotle’s thought signal two different approaches common in the history of philosophy with respect to metaphysics. On the one hand, we have those who attempt to bring different narrow conceptions of the discipline under one broad notion and therefore justify the unity of metaphysics. On the other hand, many see different conceptions of metaphysics as incompatible and, instead of seeking a kind of inclusive unity, settle for one narrow understanding of the discipline and dismiss the others as illegitimate. My approach is of the first sort. I submit that the narrow strategy is
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responsible for the difficulties that we encounter in developing a sensible conception of metaphysics that could be the basis for its history. Two main ways exist in which the narrow conception of metaphysics is developed. Both involve setting conditions that the discipline has to meet, but the conditions identified are different. One imposes on metaphysics the criterion of success; the other narrows the scope of metaphysics either in terms of the object it studies, the method it uses, or the aim it pursues. The first strategy is common not just to metaphysics, but we find it frequently in other disciplines as well, and Peter A. Redpath has advanced it in this volume. The argument for it is that, for example, science is only that which successfully achieves its end, whatever that may be. So, let us assume for the sake of argument that the aim of science is to develop theories that explain the ways the world works. Then, something would qualify as science only if it does explain the ways in which the world works. Or still, we might say that the aim of art is to cause an experience of the beautiful, so anything that fails to produce that experience is not art. And to metaphysics, also, we can apply this criterion. Let us say, for example, the aim of metaphysics is the discovery of a specific kind of truth. If a particular metaphysical theory fails the test of this truth, then we cannot consider it metaphysics. Obviously, when we apply the criterion of success to any discipline, much that counts as part of the discipline is drastically limited, if not altogether eliminated in many cases. And if we do this with metaphysics, regardless of the criterion of success applied, it turns out that most of what we generally regard as belonging in the history of the discipline is not truly metaphysics at all. Consider for example, the criterion of success for the discipline as the achievement of truth mentioned earlier. This creates an enormous problem, for two reasons: First, it is clear that many of the metaphysical claims and views that we find in the history of metaphysics are contradictory and, therefore, cannot all be true. So we would have to eliminate at least one of these contradictory views in every case and, second, even if views that are true exist, do we have certainty that they are so? And if we are not certain, how can we include them as part of metaphysics? The failure to achieve certainty would appear to require that we suspend judgment as to their nature and, therefore, we do not include them in metaphysics until such a time as we establish certainty. The second strategy used in developing a narrow conception of metaphysics consists in imposing restrictions on its object, method, or aim. It is frequent to find in the history of philosophy claims to the effect that metaphysics studies only being, or one individual being, such as God, or one kind of being, such as substance. And we have examples of this approach in the articles by Jonathan J. Sanford and Josef Seifert in particular in this volume. But this move immediately forces metaphysicians to eliminate from the discipline any discussion that is not about the particular object in question.
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Consider, for example, the way that Francisco Suárez operates, which is typical of many of those who follow this strategy. He identifies the object of metaphysics as real being and as a result has to eliminate from metaphysical consideration anything that does not qualify as such, including “beings of reason.” Yet, he realizes that it is essential for his project to deal with “beings of reason,” but where? Most definitely not within his metaphysical treatise, so his solution is to add a disputation to the Metaphysical Disputations that is not strictly speaking part of the book, in order to discuss these kinds of beings in it. This is a clever solution to get out of the corner that Suárez put himself into by narrowly defining the object of metaphysics, but it is not truly effective. He is still in trouble, for the discussion of beings of reason cannot but be considered part of his general metaphysical discussion and can only be separated from the rest of it in a contrived way. Other narrow views of the object of metaphysics face similar difficulties. I have discussed the most common versions of these in my book, so I will not repeat here what I say there. Other authors, however, narrow the scope of metaphysics not through the imposition of limitations on the extension of its object, but by identifying a particular method that they consider appropriate to the discipline. They claim, for example, that metaphysics is a priori, a posteriori, that it involves elucidation, that it uses linguistic analysis, and so on. Naturally, if metaphysics can use only one kind of method, we must leave out of metaphysics any enterprise that uses a different method. So, in this way are justified all sorts of exclusions from the realm of metaphysics. A favorite technique is to exclude Empiricists, for they claim that all our knowledge arises from experience, and those who wish to exclude them from metaphysics claim that the proper method of metaphysics is a priori. Finally, the aim is also used, although less frequently, to narrow down the domain of metaphysics. For example, by adopting a view that considers the aim of metaphysics to be critical, some philosophers eliminate from its domain any claims that are substantive. The obvious example of this strategy is Immanuel Kant, who attempts to show the helplessness of pure reason. In short, then, by applying the criterion of success or by narrowing the object, method, or aim of metaphysics, we put in place specific parameters that establish the limits of the discipline. This has the effect that much of what we have called metaphysics, or many consider a part of it, we must exclude. This in turn explains in part why we have no universally accepted conception of the discipline, for different criteria of success are applied to it and different and narrow conceptions of its object, method, or aim are used to define its boundaries. This also explains in part many of the repeated attacks against the discipline found in the history of philosophy, for a discipline that is understood in so many different ways is left open to criticism from many sides. Finally, this also explains why some disqualify many things that look like metaphysics from it, for narrow conceptions of the discipline ignore much that ties these different enterprises.
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Plainly, then, the solution to the problems faced by the historian of metaphysics is to find a way to show that there exists an identity to metaphysics and at the same time to provide an understanding of it that is sufficiently encompassing to integrate into it much that is artificially left out. The way to accomplish this would appear to require in turn that we avoid the strategies that created the situation, namely, the criterion of success and the narrow conceptions of the object, method, and aim of metaphysics. And how are we to do this? 2. A Broad Conception of Metaphysics We can reject the criterion of success by pointing out that the genus of metaphysics is philosophy and that philosophy is a view of the world or any of its parts that seeks to be accurate, consistent, comprehensive, and supported by sound evidence. The key elements in this conception of philosophy in relation to the criterion of success are the words “view” and “seeks.” Metaphysics, like its genus philosophy, of which it is a part, is a view about the world or any of its parts, but it is a view subject to certain conditions that, as I argue, separate it from science, religion, and ordinary views we hold. But the conditions imposed on it do not include a condition of success; instead metaphysics needs only to seek to be accurate, consistent, comprehensive, and supported by sound evidence. Accuracy has to do with truth, consistency has to do with cogency, comprehensiveness has to do with the development of a whole picture, and sound evidence involves certain criteria of methodological precision and justification. None of this implies that metaphysics, just as philosophy, has to be true, consistent, comprehensive, or supported by sound evidence. If these were requirements of metaphysics, most of what we call metaphysics would not qualify. It is hard to say that any of it would because we have such little certainty about metaphysical claims and because we have limited exposure to the challenges that have been brought, or could be brought, against particular metaphysical claims. So, it would be difficult to claim with any sense of legitimacy that we know that a certain metaphysical claim meets the conditions of accuracy and so on, that would be required for it. This is why it is crucial to conceive metaphysics in part and philosophy in general—and this applies to all disciplines—as bona fide attempts to meet these conditions instead of as actually meeting them. We can, obviously, establish conditions of knowledge that meet these criteria, but this is the goal we should strive to achieve and we should not measure the particular views that we have or develop as metaphysical, philosophical, or scientific to the degree they meet that goal, but instead because they seek to meet it under some specific conditions. With respect to the object, method, and aim of metaphysics, we can avoid a narrow conception of the discipline by pointing out that the object, method, and aim of the discipline are anything but narrow. Since I dwell at length on all these
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in the book, I will not repeat here what I say there with respect to all three. Instead, I refer the reader to the pertinent discussions of method, which I conceived quite broadly. But let me add that it is with respect to object and aim in particular that the breadth of my conception of metaphysics becomes evident. The view I propose is that the object of study of metaphysics consists in categories, when we conceive these broadly as anything that predicates express. But categories come in a range that goes from the least to the most general and this is what determines the specific aim of the discipline: The metaphysician seeks to identify the most general categories and their interrelations, and to see how less general categories fit within the most general ones. The result is that metaphysics (1) has an object that is the broadest possible one, but at the same time (2) studies that object with certain aims that establish boundaries to the discipline and allow us to distinguish it from other particular enterprises of learning. By rejecting the criterion of success and identifying the broadest possible object for metaphysics, but having the discipline approach this object with a specific aim, my view makes possible both to account for the identity of metaphysics and to include in the history of metaphysics much that particular metaphysicians wish to leave out. Additionally, this makes possible the understanding not only of the disagreements concerning the nature of the discipline, but also of how antimetaphysicians fit well within the enterprise we know as metaphysics. This is precisely what both Kronen and Novotny show in their articles with respect to two figures who many interpret as anti-metaphysicians: Albrecht Ritschl and David Hume. 3. Anti-Metaphysics Metaphysicians A. Ritschl Let me first take Ritschl and examine what Kronen has to say about him. This is pertinent for what I have claimed because Ritschl offers a serious criticism of metaphysics and what he tells us about metaphysics, as Kronen explains, reveals that he has in mind one of those conceptions that are narrow in terms of the object it studies and the method it uses. The object is narrow because, although metaphysics appears to be concerned with everything that exists, Ritschl believes that it looks at this extremely encompassing object only through the concept of “thing.” (Keep in mind that the term “thing,” in Latin, is “res,” which also means “reality.” This should alert us to the late scholastic tradition, of which Suárez is such an important component, where the object of metaphysics is considered to be “real” being.) Additionally, the method is also narrow because, for Ritschl, this is supposed to be exclusively a priori. The problem of conceiving the object of metaphysics as everything, but only insofar as it comes under the aspect of thing, is, according to Ritschl, that it fails to do justice to the distinction between persons and material substances, or spirits
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and natural entities. But the understanding of persons and spirits is the key to the understanding of God and his creation. In metaphysics, then, we have no recognition of the character of the most fundamental reality and, therefore, metaphysics by itself distorts instead of aids our understanding. This distrust of metaphysics leads Ritschl, according to Kronen, to put metaphysics aside. The result is unfortunate, for he fails to see that his views have a metaphysical foundation that, because of his aversion to a specific kind of metaphysics, he leaves without proper exploration. An unfortunate consequence of this is lack of clarity. For example, although a central concept in Ritschl’s thought is that of person, he leaves it without proper elucidation because he dares not explore it metaphysically. The reason is that he believes that metaphysics looks at the objects it explores as things. But does metaphysics have to study its object under the aspect of thing? Obviously not. This is an assumption that Ritschl makes that is far from being necessary. Metaphysics is unacceptable to Ritschl only because he adopts an extremely narrow conception of it that he had inherited from some of his predecessors. As Kronen claims, if instead of adopting this narrow conception of the object of metaphysics, Ritschl had adopted a conception such as the one I propose, it would have been possible for him to explore more deeply the central concepts of his thought and to make explicit some of the tacit metaphysical assumptions he makes. And, indeed, no incompatibility exists between Ritschl’s critique of metaphysics and my view, as Kronen points out. Even Ritschl’s criticisms of metaphysics appear to point precisely in the direction of my criticisms, in that we both claim that to conceive metaphysics narrowly is a mistake. Unfortunately, Ritschl did not think that he could understand this discipline in any other way than the narrow way he inherited, and as a result he paid quite a heavy price. The other lesson we can learn from Ritschl is that—contrary to what he thinks and using the broad conception of metaphysics I propose—much of what he says about persons and other concepts central to his philosophy is metaphysical and, therefore, these dimensions of his thought can be studied in a history of metaphysics. So, it is not just his criticism of metaphysics that historians of the discipline need to be concerned with, but also his notion of metaphysics in the narrow sense mentioned, as well as different particular metaphysical claims and assumptions he makes. In short, here is a critic of metaphysics whose thought fits perfectly well within a history of the subject, provided we have a properly broad conception of the discipline. B. Hume Hume is another case study that we can use in support of a broad view of metaphysics for purposes of the understanding of the history of the discipline. Novotny makes this case by arguing that, by adopting my conception of metaphysics, we can consider Hume as a metaphysician and that doing this yields several advan-
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tages in the understanding of his thought. But the story has more to it, for he also argues that, even in Hume’s terms, he qualifies as a metaphysician and some of his philosophy is metaphysical, in spite of all the statements to the contrary that we find among the expert literature on his thought. Beginning with the second point, Novotny points out that Hume rejects a specific kind of metaphysics and in its place puts one with which he is comfortable. The metaphysics he favors is conceived as “any profound reasonings” that are “accurate and just.” The metaphysics he rejects is constituted by reasonings that are neither of these because they are unclear, abstruse, and expressed in jargon. Naturally, since Hume thinks his science of human nature consists of reasonings that are accurate and just, obviously he must also think that he is engaged in a metaphysical program. The significance of this conclusion for us is that Hume conceives metaphysics in an extremely broad way. His conception is much broader than any of those who preceded him and who identified metaphysics with the study of God, being as being, and so on. So we can classify him as a metaphysician precisely because he expands the criteria of metaphysics. Unfortunately, his view has at least two serious drawbacks. In the first place, it is difficult to see how Hume could, on the basis of his extremely broad understanding, distinguish metaphysics from other scientific pursuits. Additionally, and here is the other drawback of his conception, he includes in metaphysics a normative criterion of success which involves clarity and accuracy. This means that, automatically, all metaphysics that fails to be accurate or clear is not metaphysics and, therefore, much of what we call metaphysics in the history of the discipline does not qualify. Novotny makes a further important point, namely, if we were to adopt my view of metaphysics, Hume qualifies as a metaphysician. And, naturally, this is precisely what I would like to emphasize, adding that to do so also preempts the difficulties mentioned about Hume’s understanding of metaphysics. For, although we can judge that Hume is a metaphysician by his reckoning, this is not particularly informative and it is misleading to some extent in that it suggests that he is doing something different from what those practicing other disciplines do, whereas this is not the case. The description of his metaphysics in his sense, as “any profound reasonings,” is not sufficiently informative. Yet, if we adopt my view of metaphysics, then it becomes clear that Hume is a metaphysician in a sense that distinguishes what he is doing from what those who practice other disciplines do and at the same time puts him squarely in the tradition of metaphysics. And how can we put him in this cubicle? I do not wish to reiterate what Novotny already has said, so I merely refer the reader to his article. For Hume is engaged in different aspects of category theory, including the identification of some most general categories, the explanation of how these are related, and the analysis of how less general categories fit into the most general ones.
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4. Conclusion In conclusion, then, in the articles by Kronen and Novotny, we have a practical application of the claims I make about metaphysics and the need to understand it as I do in order to make sense of its history. These authors have shown both how some critics of metaphysics turn out to be critics only of particular conceptions of metaphysics and how the broad conception of metaphysics I propose allows us to understand better the philosophical programs that these authors adopt.
NOTE 1. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999).
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Fourteen GRACIA ON THE ONTOLOGICAL STATUS OF CATEGORIES Russell Pannier and Thomas D. Sullivan In Metaphysics and its Task, Jorge J. E. Gracia argues for the view that metaphysics is the study of categories.1 By way of clarifying that view, he defines “metaphysics” as any: [P]hilosophical view which seeks: (a) to identify the most general categories; (b) to define the most general categories if at all possible and if not, at least to describe them in ways which allow us to identify them; (c) to determine the relationships among the most general categories; (d) to fit less general categories into the most general ones; and (e) to determine how less general categories are related to all the most general categories, including the ones in which they do not fit.2 His definition raises at least two questions. First, is it sufficiently inclusive? Are there pursuits in addition to what we might call “category theory,” which legitimately belong within the scope of metaphysical inquiry? Second, what is the ontological status of categories themselves? In our earlier essay we took up the first question. Here we take up the second—the ontological status of categories themselves. For anyone accepting Gracia’s definition of metaphysical inquiry the second question is unavoidable. Nobody who believes that the only legitimate concern of metaphysics is category theory can avoid asking himself, sooner or later, “But what about categories themselves? What sort of ontological status do they have, as categories?” This second question is inevitable even for those who, while rejecting Gracia’s definition, nonetheless concede that category theory is at least one of the appropriate subjects of metaphysical inquiry. In general, anyone characterizing any particular theory, whether philosophical or scientific, as being “about” a class of entities owes readers an intelligible account of the ontological status of those entities. Often people default on such debts. But high rates of default do not, by themselves, prove the unenforceability of their corresponding obligations, anymore than the high rate of default on credit-card debt proves that credit-card debt is not legally enforceable debt. Gracia himself acknowledges the question’s inevitability by devoting two of his ten chapters to its discussion.3 Although he concedes the question’s inevitability, Gracia maintains that the question itself is misguided, incoherent, and unintelligible. Asking what is it to be
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a category, as category? “makes no sense.”4 He goes on to argue that the question’s unintelligibility is responsible for the corresponding unintelligibility of the traditional philosophical theories of categories. A practice of asking unintelligible questions inevitably generates a practice of offering unintelligible responses (at least responses distinct from the sole possible intelligible response, “But the question itself is unintelligible”). He concludes that philosophers are not conceptually compelled to choose between, say, realist, conceptualist, and nominalist accounts of categories. Both such accounts and the question that they respond to are equally nonsensical. In pursuing this daring strategy Gracia follows in the radical footsteps of philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida, each of whom sets out to “dissolve,” as opposed to “solve,” philosophical questions by demonstrating the conceptual illegitimacy of the questions themselves. While conceding the ingenuity of Gracia’s radical dissolution effort, we will argue that it ultimately fails. In particular, we will argue that the question “What is it to be a category, as category?” is intelligible and that philosophers are conceptually compelled to choose between mutually incompatible responses. We will proceed in two stages. We will first briefly discuss Gracia’s preliminary characterization of the class of categories and then move on to a consideration of his dissolution effort itself. 1. Gracia’s Preliminary Characterization of the Class of Categories Gracia begins his inquiry into the ontological status of categories by identifying them as “whatever is expressed by a term or expression, simple or complex, which can be predicated of some other term or expression.”5 Apparently, he intends to assert this as a sufficient condition for being a category. That is, being expressed by a simple or complex term or expression which is predicable of some other term or expression is a sufficient condition for an entity’s being a category. But it is not so clear that he intends it as a necessary condition. One difficulty with assuming that he so intends it is that he would then appear to be logically committed to the view that the class of categories is at most denumerably infinite. In other words, a 1-1 correspondence can be defined correlating the members of the class of categories with the members of the class of natural numbers. For the class of linguistic expressions of any particular natural language, or for that matter even of the class of all natural languages, is at most denumerably infinite. But if the class of natural numbers is denumerably infinite, which it definitely appears to be (just try to mention the “last” natural number), then Cantor’s Theorem tells us that the class of properties of natural numbers is more than denumerably infinite. Properties of natural numbers appear to qualify as categories in Gracia’s definition. Therefore, it appears to follow that the class of categories outruns any set of linguistic expressions we could invoke, a result apparently conflicting with the
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proposition that being expressed by a simple or complex term or expression is a necessary condition for being a category. Cantor’s Theorem implies that an infinite number of categories are irretrievably beyond the semantical reach of any particular class of linguistic expressions. So if C is the class of categories and L the class of linguistic expressions then any 1-1 mapping of L into C will inevitably leave an infinite number of members of C untouched by language. But even apart from this Cantorian difficulty, stipulating Gracia’s characterization as a necessary condition appears to carry with it the embarrassing consequence that the membership of the class of categories is at the mercy of the historically contingent evolution of natural languages. So, apparently, the question whether any particular category exists would depend upon the answer to the question whether there happens to exist some linguistic expression in some natural language that “expresses” that entity. This would appear odd, to say the least. Is there any reason to believe that the existence of a category depends upon there being at the moment some particular linguistic expression in some particular natural language that “expresses” that category? Do categories come into existence with the birth of new natural language predicates? Do they go out of existence when natural language predicates become obsolete? In light of such difficulties we will tentatively assume that Gracia intends his characterization as a sufficient, but not a necessary, condition for being a category. It is crucial to note his admonition that he does not intend his formulation as a final analysis of the kind appropriately reached at the end of an ontological investigation, but instead only as a preliminary characterization that serves to conceptually fix the intended subject-matter without begging ontological questions from the outset.6 In that regard, he distinguishes three traditional metaphysical accounts of the nature of categories. According to nominalist accounts, categories are linguistic entities. According to conceptualist accounts, they are conceptual entities. According to realist accounts, they are mind-independent entities (their existence does not depend upon the existence of mental acts). Gracia argues, properly in our view, it would be a serious mistake to begin a philosophical investigation of the ontological status of categories by initially characterizing them in a way that commits the investigation at its inception to some particular ontological theory of categories. Such ontological commitments are appropriate only at the end of ontological investigations, not at their beginnings.7 As he puts it, “What we need at this point is a neutral way of speaking about categories that will not commit us to any single view of them.”8 His formula “allows us to talk about categories without committing us to a particular view of categories, and it leaves open the question of their ontological status and thus of the nominalistic, conceptualistic, or realistic status of metaphysics.”9 “Categories are whatever is expressed by predicate terms such as ‘human,’ ‘concept,’ and ‘word,’ be that something real, conceptual, or nominal.”10
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Gracia recognizes that his preliminary characterization of the class of categories stands in need of clarification. For example, what is the intended sense of “predicate”? He responds by stating that predicates are “linguistic entities which are joined to other linguistic entities, namely, the subjects of the sentences of which they are predicated.”11 Assuming that he intends to refer to linguistic types instead of linguistic tokens, we could intelligibly assert that, for example, the linguistic type “black” is used as a predicate when a particular token of that type is joined to a particular token of the linguistic type “ebony” by means of a particular token of the type “is.”12 What is the intended sense of “predicating”? Predicating is a speech act in which some particular token of some particular type of linguistic predicate is affirmed of some particular token of some particular type of some linguistic subject.13 Why do speakers perform predicative speech acts? Gracia maintains that the “aim of predicating is to make a claim that the conditions specified by the predicate are satisfied by whatever the subject expresses.”14 For example, the speech act of assertively uttering the sentence “Ebony is black” asserts that the condition expressed by “black” (namely, the condition being black) is satisfied by the entity expressed by “ebony.”15 Similarly, the speech act of assertively uttering the sentence “Socrates is the son of Sophroniscus” asserts that the condition being the son of Sophroniscus is satisfied by the entity expressed by “Socrates” (Socrates himself).16 It follows that we must distinguish categories from predicates.17 “Categories are what predicates express, not the predicates themselves. Predicates are linguistic entities whose function is to specify the conditions to be satisfied by the entity expressed by the subject.”18 We must also distinguish categories from conditions because categories do not have to be conditions of anything. Categories “become” conditions “only when they are expressed by a predicate whose function is to make a claim concerning the relation of a category to something else.”19 For example, being black is a category. The word “black” is a predicate when it occurs in a sentence such as “Ebony is black.” The category being black becomes a condition only when expressed by a linguistic predicate in a sentence such as “Ebony is black.” “Conditions are always conditions of something; they are related to something. But categories need not be so.”20 These comments about categories and conditions may puzzle some readers. If categories are distinct from conditions, how can they somehow “become” conditions when invoked in predicative speech acts? Are categories material entities of some kind that can be transformed into material entities of some other kind? Further, in maintaining that conditions are necessarily “related to something,” does Gracia commit himself to the awkward view that categories “become” conditions only when those conditions are in truth satisfied by the entity expressed by the subject term? What about false assertive predicative speech acts? Do the cate-
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gories expressed by the predicates in such predicative speech acts “become” something other than “conditions”? If so, what? But both of these possible objections would presuppose an uncharitable reading of the text. We think that we can express what Gracia has in mind through terms of entities entering into relationships with other entities in virtue of being made intended objects of predicative speech acts. In particular, we could plausibly say that a category C is semantically invoked as a condition if and only if C is expressed by some term C*, which is predicated of a term S* in an assertive predicative speech act performed by some speaker, where S* expresses an entity S. This is cumbersome, but the underlying intuition is straightforward. A category C is semantically invoked as a condition just in case there exists some particular speaker A who assertively predicates C of some entity S. Therefore, a category “becomes” a condition only when it enters into a three-place relation between itself, some particular speaker, and some particular intended subject of that speaker’s assertive predicative speech act. Admittedly, this way of putting the point departs from Gracia’s usage, insofar as he restricts the class of predicated entities to linguistic expressions, whereas our paraphrase assumes the legitimacy of speaking in terms of non-linguistic entities being predicated in assertive predicative speech acts. But the departure appears justifiable for expository purposes. Surely, he does not intend to deny that when a linguistic predicate P* is assertively predicated of a linguistic subject S* it is also necessarily the case that there exists an associated sense of “predicated” in which the entity P semantically “expressed” by P* is assertively predicated of the entity S semantically “expressed” by S*. Therefore, it appears Gracia could consistently distinguish “syntactical” predications from “semantical” predications. For example, suppose that a speaker assertively utters the sentence “Gracia is a philosopher.” In the “syntactic” sense of “predicated” she has predicated the word “philosopher” of the word “Gracia.” In the “semantical” sense of “predicated” she has predicated the property being a philosopher of the physical entity Gracia. If our interpretation is correct then we can adequately meet both imagined objections to Gracia’s account. Categories do not “become” conditions when semantically invoked in assertive predicative speech acts. Instead, they enter into three-place relations with other entities through semantic invocation by speakers in assertive predicative speech acts. Further, it would be a mistake to interpret Gracia as maintaining that categories “become” conditions only when truly predicated of intended subjects of assertive predicative speech acts. The necessary and sufficient condition for a category “becoming” a condition is that some particular speaker assertively predicates some particular intended subject of the assertive predicative speech act. The truth-value of that assertion is irrelevant. What does Gracia mean by “expresses” in referring to categories as “whatever is expressed by predicates” and in referring to the subjects of sentences “as expressing that which is claimed to satisfy the conditions specified by a predi-
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cate”? Acknowledging a departure from ordinary usage, he says that he intends to “use ‘to express’ technically in such a way that ‘Socrates’ expresses Socrates and ‘black’ expresses black, regardless of whether the terms in question function as subjects or predicates. Naturally, a further analysis is required to make clear what Socrates and black are, but that is not pertinent for the present.”21 We suggest that Gracia’s usage of “expresses” can be explicated in terms of the relation x is semantically tied to y in virtue of conventional semantical rules of a natural language. Therefore, instead of saying, as Gracia does, “‘black’ expresses black,” we could say, “The word ‘black’ is semantically tied to black in virtue of the conventional semantical rules of a natural language (English in this case).” An implication of his preliminary account of categories is that the class of categories includes what he describes as “controversial” items, such as “nothing, square circle, unicorn, possible, and so on.”22 For, such items are semantically tied to linguistic entities that can be assertively predicated of other linguistic entities. For example, the possibility of assertively predicating “square circle” of another linguistic entity (for example, “this object”) is sufficient to show that the entity semantically tied to “square circle” is a category. In addition, he asserts that the only class of entities excluded by his preliminary characterization of the class of categories is the class of what he calls “individual entities,” entities such as “this cat, Socrates, Rocinante, or my present knowledge of grammar.”23 Following standard contemporary usage, we will refer to such entities as “particulars.” Particulars are excluded because they are “not expressed by terms or expressions that can be predicated of other terms or expressions.”24 Because singular terms such as “this cat,” “Socrates,” and “my present knowledge of grammar” “cannot be predicated of other terms or expressions, and, therefore, what they express are not categories.”25 But what about the apparent fact that we can assertively predicate singular terms of other linguistic expressions? Does not this imply that, after all, particulars are categories because we can semantically tie them to linguistic expressions that function as linguistic predicates in assertive predicative speech acts? Gracia responds by maintaining that in speech act contexts where singular terms occur in the predicative position they “do not function as predicates in a predicative sentence, but as terms in an identity sentence.”26 Naturally, such a response clarifies matters only to the extent to that Gracia’s underlying distinction between predicative and identity assertions is itself clear. In that regard, he begins by reminding the reader that he has previously stated that a predicate “specifies the conditions which, in a sentence, are claimed to be satisfied by what the subject expresses.”27 He goes on to argue that the distinction between a predicative assertion and an identity assertion is that in the second “what is expressed in the grammatical predicate is the same as what is expressed in the grammatical subject,” whereas in the first it is not.28
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He says that this explains why “subject and predicate are interchangeable in identity sentences.”29 In a predicative assertion the predicate “specifies” some, but not all, of the conditions the speaker asserts are satisfied by the entity expressed by the subject term.30 In such cases the entities expressed by the subject term and the predicate term are ontologically distinct.31 In contrast, in identity assertions the “subject and predicate express the same thing.”32 Gracia’s explanation that the interchange of subject terms and predicate terms is not linguistically possible in some semantical contexts that appear to involve identity assertions is that the second are not truly identity assertions at all.33 For example, the assertion semantically expressed by “Cicero is Tully” is not a genuine identity assertion. We can interpret it as the assertion that Cicero is customarily referred to as “Tully.” But being customarily referred to as bearing the proper name “Tully” is not “everything” Cicero is.34 It does not exhaust Cicero’s nature; Cicero has properties in addition to the property being customarily referred to as bearing the proper name “Tully.” On the other hand, Gracia says that if “Socrates” were an abbreviation for, say, a definite description such as “the son of Sophroniscus,” then, although “Socrates” would semantically function as a predicate, it would not “express” a particular.35 Although this account of the distinction between predicative and identity assertions is interesting and challenging, it does raise questions. But because focusing upon that account is not our primary objective, we will limit ourselves to a brief comment. First, whatever else someone might say about this way of drawing the line between predicative and identity assertions, it is not the usual way. According to standard contemporary philosophical usage, identity assertions are merely assertions where singular terms flank both sides of a linguistic token of the linguistic type “is.” Therefore, we would classify assertions expressed by “5 is 3 plus 2” and by “Gracia is the author of Metaphysics and its Task” as identity assertions. In contrast, apparently Gracia would classify neither as a genuine identity assertion. Neither assertion’s predicate expresses the “entire nature” of its intended subject. For example, attributing the characteristic being equal to the number 3 added to the number 2 to the number 5 fails to exhaust 5’s essence. 5 has additional properties, for example, the property being equal to the product of the number 1 with the number 5. Similarly, attributing the characteristic being the author of Metaphysics and its Task to Gracia fails to exhaust Gracia’s essence. Obviously, Gracia is free to use “identity assertion” in any sense he chooses. But the particular usage he has chosen carries consequences that are, at the least, philosophically striking. First, apparently, no assertion where a particular is semantically tied to the linguistic subject could be a genuine identity assertion. For, presumably, any particular possesses an infinite number of properties. Therefore, no assertion of the form “x is y,” where “x” is semantically tied to a particular, could be a genuine identity assertion on Gracia’s account. Therefore, genuine identity
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assertions could occur, if they occur at all, only in speech-act contexts where the subject expressions are semantically tied to non-particulars. This observation suggests another striking implication. Consider the assertive predication “Being a triangle is being a three-sided plane figure.” Presumably, the subject expression is semantically tied to the property being a triangle, while the predicate expression is semantically tied to the property being a three-sided plane figure. Apparently, Gracia would have to classify this as a genuine identity assertion because the entity semantically tied to the predicate expression exhausts the entire nature of the entity semantically tied to the subject expression. But it also appears to follow that he must assert that the entity semantically tied to the expression “being a three-sided plane figure” is not a category because it is not invoked in a predicative context. At least prima facie, this consequence appears odd. Consider that Gracia would also apparently be compelled to assert that the entity semantically tied to “a three-sided plane figure,” as used in, say, the assertive predication expressed by “This particular thing is a three-sided plane figure” is a category, because it fails to exhaust the nature of the entity semantically tied to the subject expression. But then which is it? 2. Gracia’s Radical Dissolution Effort We move on to consider Gracia’s radical attempt to dissolve the traditional question of the ontological status of categories, as categories. We begin with his discussion of what he takes to be the traditional responses to that question, responses he ultimately tries to prove unintelligible, along with the question itself. A. The Distinction between Categories and Universals Before identifying those traditional responses, Gracia observes that the set of alternative accounts of the ontological status of categories, as categories, is closely analogous to the set of alternative accounts of the ontological status of universals, as universals. That remark suggests a question: What distinction does he intend to draw between categories and universals? Gracia says that, whereas universals are necessarily instantiable, categories may or may not be instantiable.36 Therefore, on the one hand, being instantiable is a necessary condition for being a universal.37 It is also a sufficient condition.38 Therefore, an arbitrarily selected entity e is a universal if and only if e possesses the property being instantiable. Universals can possess the property of instantiability in two ways. Some possess it because they are in reality instantiated, for example, the universal being a cat.39 Others possess the property being instantiable because, although they are not in reality instantiated, it is possible for them to be instantiated, for example, the universal being a unicorn.40 On the other hand, categories are not necessarily instantiable.41 For example, although being a square circle is a category, it is not a universal.42 It is not a uni-
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versal because it is not possible for it to be instantiated, but it is a category because it is possible for it to be assertively predicated of something in an assertive predicative speech act.43 But some categories are instantiable, for example, the category being a cat.44 In general, while possessing the property being instantiable is not a necessary condition for possessing the property being a category, it is a sufficient condition.45 The conclusion is that the class of universals is a proper subset of the class of categories.46 All universals are categories, but some categories are not universals. Apparently, the matter can be summarized in the following way.47 Consider an arbitrarily selected entity e. Either e is assertively predicable of at least one other entity or it is not. If e is not assertively predicable of at least one other entity then e is a particular. If e is assertively predicable of at least one other entity then, at the least, e is a category. If, in addition, e is instantiable, then e is also a category. This line of reasoning shows that at least three classes of entities are included in Gracia’s ontology: particulars, universals, and categories. B. Are Categories Sets, on the One Hand, or Are They Entities that May or May Not be Instantiable, on the Other? We have just represented Gracia’s account as presupposing a characterization of categories as entities that may or may not be instantiable. But it is crucial to note that Gracia alternates between characterizing categories in extensional terms, on the one hand, and characterizing them in intensional terms, on the other. Sometimes he speaks of categories as sets, while on other occasions he characterizes them as entities that may or may not be instantiable. Therefore, sometimes he characterizes categories as entities that may or may not have “members.”48 But, apparently, only sets can have “members.” On the other hand, on other occasions he characterizes categories as entities that may or may not be “instantiable.”49 But whatever entities possessing the property possibly possessing the property being instantiable might turn out to be, it does not appear that they could turn out to be sets. It is logically appropriate to ask whether a particular set has “members,” but it is logically inappropriate to ask whether a particular set is “instantiated.” Whatever else they might be, sets are particulars and, as Gracia himself stresses, particulars cannot have “instantiations.” Not only are sets ontologically distinct from entities possessing the property possibly possessing the property being instantiable, but, as Bertrand Russell famously argued, the first appear to be ontologically dependent upon the second. (Russell’s term for properties is “propositional functions.”) Therefore, in order to explain what it means to refer to “the set of cats” we must invoke the property being a cat, but it is apparently possible to explain what it means to refer to “the property being a cat” without referring to sets at all. We can express the same point in terms of the distinction between a property, on the one hand, and a property’s ex-
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tension, on the other. Consider the property being a square circle and its extension the set of all square circles, which, obviously, has no members. On Russell’s view (and ours) the metaphysical identity of that property’s extension is a function of the metaphysical identity of the property itself, instead of the other way around. We will assume that Gracia’s intends his intensional characterization of categories as more fundamental than his extensional characterization and will tailor our language accordingly. It is true that some philosophers who, although willing to concede the existence of sets, are unwilling to concede the existence of corresponding properties defining those sets. For example, Willard Van Orman Quine concedes the existence of sets because he believes that the criteria of individuation for sets is philosophically clear, but is unwilling to concede the existence of properties because he thinks that they lack clear criteria of individuation. But so far as we can see, Gracia says nothing to indicate that he sympathizes with Quine on this issue. After all, he is obviously willing to concede the existence of universals, which we can understand as a species of properties in Russell’s sense, and he is obviously willing to refer to universals in intensional terms. C. Gracia’s Account of the Traditional Theories of Categories In Chapter Nine of Metaphysics and its Task (“Realism, Conceptualism, Nominalism”) Gracia discusses what he takes to be the traditional accounts of the ontological status of categories, as categories. His title suggests the existence of only three such accounts—realist, conceptualist, and nominalistic. But in the chapter itself Gracia distinguishes seven accounts.50 The apparent explanation for the discrepancy is that we can understand any of the seven as an instance of one of the basic three. We will briefly discuss the first two of the seven alternatives Gracia distinguishes and then make a generalization about the others. i. Categories as Transcendental Entities The first theory of categories, as categories, Gracia takes up is the account of them as “transcendental entities.”51 He also refers to such accounts as “Platonic” accounts and characterizes them as maintaining that categories are “outside the world of human experience and do not depend on it in any way.”52 Transcendental accounts are a species of what he calls “realist” accounts. His characterization of Platonic accounts raise questions that, in a different context, we would pursue in greater detail. For example, his use of the word “outside,” as in “outside the world of human experience,” suggests that Platonic accounts hold that, although categories do not exist in this space-time realm, they nonetheless exist in some other space-time realm. He appears to make the traditional polemical point that according to Platonist accounts categories exist “out there” somewhere. (Recall the frequency that you have witnessed philosophers
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making such charges while raising their arms and pointing their fingers at the ceiling.) In our view this is a misleading caricature of transcendental accounts. In denying spatio-temporal status to categories, they do not intend to assert that, whereas categories do not exist here, they nonetheless exist somewhere else. Could Plato, one of the greatest of metaphysicians, have made such an elementary blunder? We think not. Accordingly, we will interpret what Gracia calls “transcendental” theories of categories as making two claims: (1) Categories exist independently of the existence of minds or mental acts and (2) Categories have no spatio-temporal location. From a Platonic point of view the proper answer to the question “But where are categories located?” is “Nowhere.” A category is not the sort of entity that could have either a “where” or a “when.” What is Gracia’s main point about transcendental theories? He asserts that, although some categories are transcendental entities, others are not. From that premise he draws the conclusion that categories, as categories, are not transcendental entities.53 If his premise is true, so is his conclusion. The question is whether his premise is true. How does he support the claim that some categories are transcendental entities but others are not? We begin with an example of a category he apparently takes to be a transcendental category: being a triangle.54 He does so because: The category triangle is what it is and does not undergo change. Whether there are any triangles in the world of human experience or not, or whether we think of triangles or not, does not affect the category. The requirements of triangularity are independent of the world of human experience and the minds that have access to it.55 Apparently, the basic idea is that what it is to be a triangle (namely, the essence of triangularity) is not a function of the existence of minds or mental acts. This observation is fairly puzzling for at least two reasons. First, we would suppose that we can make the same point about what Gracia later calls the “immanence” theory of categories. Undoubtedly, any competent immanence proponent, for example, Aristotle, would also deny that what it is to be a triangle is a function of minds or mental acts. Apparently, Gracia has not focused upon that particular feature of transcendental accounts that serves to distinguish them from immanence accounts, namely, the characteristic being non-spatio-temporal. A second puzzling aspect of Gracia’s explanation for classifying the category being a triangle as a transcendental category is that we would have expected him to make quite a different point. We expected him to say that the existence of the category does not depend upon the existence of minds or mental acts, as opposed to the point he does make—that the essence of the category does not depend upon the existence of minds or mental acts. After all, he has apparently just characterized transcendental
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views as denying that the existence of categories is dependent upon the existence of minds or mental acts. Be that as it may, he goes on to contrast categories such as being a triangle with categories such as being nonexistent.56 As he puts it: Given the very general conception of category I have proposed, nothing and nonbeing are categories. But, if this is the case, and categories are transcendental realities more real than the world of experience, it follows that nothing and nonbeing are real, and this leads to the contradiction that nonbeing is being and nothing is something. It also leads to the conclusion that nothing and nonbeing are more real than the things and beings we experience, and this makes no sense whatever.57 This argument raises several questions. The characterizations he makes of the two cases he sets out to contrast do not appear to genuinely distinguish them. On the one hand, he has just said that the category being a triangle is a transcendental entity because the essence of triangularity (namely, what an entity would have to be in order to be an instantiation of triangularity) is not a causal function of the mental order. But if such is the basis of the contrast between being a triangle, on the one hand, and being nonexistent, on the other, then, apparently, we have no genuine contrast after all. For, it also appears that neither is what it is to be nonexistent (namely, the essence of nothingness, whatever that might be) a causal function of the mental order. Therefore, with respect to this particular feature, the two categories do not appear distinguishable. On the other hand, he apparently denies that the category being nonexistent is a transcendental entity because (1) if it were a transcendental entity, then any of its instantiations, if it had any, would be “real,” but (2) the category has no instantiations at all, much less “real” ones. So, if such is Gracia’s basis for distinguishing the non-transcendental category being nonexistent from the transcendental category being a triangle, then it also appears to fail to genuinely distinguish them. For, he has apparently just denied that the existence of the category being a triangle depends upon the existence of its instantiations. But if so, then it appears that, with respect to this second point of comparison, the categories being nonexistent and being a triangle are again on a par. In neither case does the category’s ontological status depend upon the existence of instantiations. But there appears to be a deeper difficulty. Consider again Gracia’s treatment of the ontological status of the category being non-existent. As we have just contended, he appears to argue that the category is not a transcendental entity because it has no instantiations at all, much less, mind-independent instantiations. But that argument appears to presuppose that the ontological status of any particular category is a function of the ontological status of its instantiations. Therefore, because the category being non-existent could not have mind-independent instan-
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tiations, the category itself could not be mind-independent. Or, to mention a different kind of case, if a category’s instantiations are spatio-temporal entities, then so must be the category itself. There appears to be no good reason to accept such inferences. Simply because the category, say, being a trout, has instantiations that are fish, it does not follow that the category itself is a fish. Or, more generally, because the category being a trout has instantiations that are spatio-temporal, it does not obviously follow that the category itself is spatio-temporal. That would require argument. We will return to this issue in more detail later. Gracia raises a difficulty of perhaps lesser significance by his choice of the particular category being nonexistent as an example of a non-transcendental category. He appears to assume that being nonexistent is a first-level property, in the sense that its instantiations, if there were any, would be particulars, instead of properties. But for well-known reasons articulated by Gottlob Frege, it appears philosophically preferable to construe being nonexistent as semantically tied to a second-level property, namely, the property being a property which has no instantiations. So construed, the property being nonexistent does have instantiations, namely, all those first-level properties that themselves lack instantiations. Yet, as just noted, this difficulty appears of lesser significance because, apparently, Gracia could choose a different example to make his point. If he intends to characterize non-transcendental categories as categories lacking instantiations, then he could simply use as examples categories such as being a unicorn or being a dinosaur. ii. Categories as Immanent Entities The second account of categories, as categories, he takes up is the theory that categories are “immanent” in the entities that instantiate them.58 Here he has Aristotle in mind.59 Gracia characterizes immanence views as maintaining that categories “are no longer posited as entities outside the world of human experience, but rather as constituents of that world.”60 So, for example, the category being a black entity is not “something outside the black things I perceive, . . . but something in those things.”61 Like transcendental accounts, Gracia classifies immanence accounts as a species of realist accounts. Gracia’s main point about immanence accounts is that, like transcendental accounts, they are too narrow in that they exclude entities that should be included in the class of categories.62 Some categories are immanent entities, but others are not. In this regard, he says: Consider the case of the category transcendental entity. If all categories were immanent constituents of the things which make up the world of experience, then a transcendental entity, which by definition would be a thing outside the world of human experience, would be a constituent of that world because it
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RUSSELL PANNIER AND THOMAS D. SULLIVAN is a member of a category and all categories are immanent. This contradiction arises because the understanding of categories as immanent constituents of things is too narrow and does not take into account the fact that there are categories which are not, and cannot be, constituents of the things which are part of our experience.63 How, precisely, does this argument go? Perhaps, something like this: (1) Assume, for reductio purposes, that, for any category C, C is spatiotemporally immanent in any entity that instantiates C. (2) Consider the category being a transcendental entity. (3) By definition, any particular instantiation of the category being a transcendental entity is not a spatio-temporal entity. (4) Let TE be a particular instantiation of the category being a transcendental entity. (5) It follows that the category being a transcendental entity is spatiotemporally immanent in any entity that instantiates it. (6) But then, in particular, the category being a transcendental entity would be spatio-temporally immanent in TE. (7) But TE is not a spatio-temporal entity. (8) Therefore, the category being a spatio-temporal entity is spatiotemporally immanent in a non-spatio-temporal entity, namely, TE, which is a contradiction. (9) Therefore, we must reject the reductio premise.
This is an interesting argument, but it is not obvious that it establishes what Gracia intends to establish—that although some categories are immanent, others are transcendental. For, apparently, a systematic immanence theorist (for example, David Armstrong) would just deny (2) and (3) on the basis that they beg the question at hand. Armstrong denies the existence of non-spatio-temporal entities. Gracia might respond by claiming that he has already established the existence of transcendental categories. But, as we have just argued, it is not obvious that he has succeeded. iii. The Other Five Accounts Gracia goes on to discuss five other accounts of categories, as categories. In order of discussion, they are categories understood as similarities, as collections, as concepts, as types, and as tokens.64 We do not have room here to take up any of these accounts in detail, but we do want to make two general points about Gracia’s treatment of them. First, his main point concerning each of these last five accounts is the same as his main point about the first two accounts. With respect to each account of
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categories, as categories, as Xs (namely, similarities, collections, and so on), he argues that, although some categories are Xs, some are not. In each case he concludes that the account in question fails to account for all categories. Second, although we cannot consider in any detail his many interesting and challenging arguments for that general conclusion concerning each of the five cases, we do want to remark upon his use of a particular method of argument we have earlier identified as apparently philosophically problematic. For example, in discussing the theory of categories as collections, Gracia says, “One may want to say, of course, that there are categories which are collections. The categories aggregate, set, and class, one might want to argue, are good examples.”65 Apparently, this remark implicitly presupposes something like the following argument: (1) The instantiations of the category being a collection are (of course) themselves collections. (2) Therefore, the category being a collection is itself a collection. But, as we earlier argued, the inferential move from the premise that an instantiation I of a category C possesses a certain property P to the conclusion that C itself possesses P is, to say the least, not obviously valid. An explicitly formulated argument supporting that inference would appear to be in order. Similarly, in discussing the theory of categories as types, Gracia says, “Of course, there are categories that are types. The word ‘cat’ is a type. But not all categories are types.”66 The implicitly presupposed argument appears to be something like this: (1) The category being a token of “cat” is a type whose instantiations are linguistic items. (2) Therefore, the category being a token of “cat” is itself a linguistic item. (3) But some categories (for example, being a trout) have instantiations that are not linguistic items. (4) Therefore, some categories are not themselves linguistic items. This argument appears inadequate in the same way that the argument concerning categories as collections is inadequate. It appears to presuppose, in (2), the assumption that the proposition that instantiations of a particular category possess a certain property P entails the conclusion that the category itself possesses P. Again, in the course of discussing the theory of categories as tokens, Gracia says, “Of course, token itself can be a category, but no member of this category can be a category.”67 The implicit presupposition appears to be that if the theory of categories as tokens were true, then the category being a token of a type would be
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a token because its instantiations are tokens. This inferential move appears to commit the same apparent error. D. Gracia’s Account of Categories as Neutral Entities Gracia has argued that all traditional theories of categories can be sorted into three fundamental types: realist theories, conceptualist theories, and nominalist theories.68 According to realist theories, all categories possess the property being a mind-independent entity.69 According to conceptualist theories, all categories possess the property being a mind-dependent entity.70 According to nominalist theories, all categories possess the property being a linguistic entity.71 Assuming that metaphysics is essentially the study of categories, each of these three traditional theories of categories generates a corresponding conception of metaphysics.72 “For realists, metaphysics studies extramental entities; for conceptualists, metaphysics studies mental entities; and for nominalists, metaphysics studies linguistic entities.”73 But Gracia takes himself as having demonstrated that each of these traditional approaches shares a common defect. Each is too narrow; each “excludes from study some categories which have been regularly studied by metaphysicians.”74 The cause of this mutual failure is an “attempt at unwarranted reduction.”75 “If we are going to find a satisfactory conception of metaphysics, we must avoid any illegitimate attempt to reduce categories to what they are not. My proposal is to do just that by conceiving categories in such a way that we are not forced to commit ourselves to realism, conceptualism, or nominalism.”76 Gracia maintains that to conceive of categories in this special way is to conceive of them as what he calls “neutral” entities. This thesis of the ontological neutrality of categories apparently includes at least four claims: (1) Although some categories are extramental entities, some categories are concepts, and some categories are words, not all categories are extramental entities, concepts, or words. (2) More generally, no characteristics whatever are instantiated by all categories, as categories. (3) Therefore, categories have no common essence, as categories. (4) Consequently, traditional metaphysical efforts to ask about and ascertain the intrinsic nature of categories, as categories, are fundamentally misguided, senseless, and unintelligible.77 How does Gracia attempt to demonstrate these claims? He begins by reminding readers that he has preliminarily defined “category” as “whatever is expressed by a simple or complex term or expression which is predicable of some other term or expression.”78 As an example, he offers, “Bachelor is a category because it is what the predicable term “bachelor” expresses.”79 This formulation appears problematic. Although Gracia’s manner of referring to properties is consistent with traditional Scholastic usage, it is not consistent with contemporary philosophical usage. It is not even grammatical, at least as measured by contemporary syntactical standards of English. Relying upon our earlier exposition of Gracia’s preliminary definition of “category,” we assume that what he
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intends could be better expressed as, for example, “The property being a bachelor is a category because it is semantically tied to the linguistic predicate type ‘bachelor’ in virtue of the conventional semantical rules of English.” However, we will eventually see why Gracia prefers the traditional Scholastic mode of expression. He then asserts that in any true predicative assertion, the “conditions specified by the predicate” must be “satisfied by what is expressed by the subject.”80 For example, “‘mammal’ is truly predicated of ‘bachelor’ only if bachelors are mammals.”81 He says: This means that the conditions specified by a term that expresses a particular category must be satisfied by the members of that category. In the pertinent cases for us, that is, cases of necessary or essential predication, the conditions are given by the category’s definition. If the category bachelor is analyzable into unmarried and man taken together because these are the conditions specified by the predicate bachelor (bachelor is defined as unmarried man), then “unmarried” and “man” taken together must be truly predicable of the name of every bachelor.82 Although we are not certain that we grasp Gracia’s intended meaning, we propose the following formulation as at least one plausible interpretation. Any category is linguistically representable as having the generic form “being an F,” where “F” ranges over the members of the class of categories. A definition of a category C is a specification of all and only all the characteristics any entity must instantiate in order to instantiate C. We will call such characteristics the defining characteristics of the category C and, following Frege’s usage, we will also refer to them as the Fregean marks of C. Then we can say the following. Let C be a category whose defining characteristics (Fregean marks) are F-1, . . ., F-n. Let e be an arbitrarily selected entity. Then e instantiates C if and only if e instantiates F-1, . . ., F-n. We can also say this: Let C be a category semantically tied to the linguistic predicate C*, and let e be an entity semantically tied to the linguistic expression e*. Then C* is truly predicable of e* if and only if e instantiates F-1, . . ., F-n. Consider, for example, the category being a bachelor. Assume that the defining characteristics (Fregean marks) of that category are the characteristics being a human male and being an unmarried person. Let b be an arbitrarily selected entity. Then b instantiates the category being a bachelor if and only if b instantiates the characteristics being a human male and being an unmarried human. In addition, let the category being a bachelor be semantically tied to the linguistic expression “bachelor,” the characteristic being a human male be semantically tied to the linguistic expression “human male,” the characteristic being an unmarried human be semantically tied to the linguistic expression “unmarried,” and e* be a linguistic expression semantically tied to e. Then we can say that “bachelor” is truly predicable of e* if and only if “human male” and “unmarried” are truly predicable of e*,
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and that, in turn, is so if and only if e instantiates the characteristics being a human male and being an unmarried human. So, at this point, what has Gracia marshalled by way of premises? Apparently these: (1) A category is an entity that is semantically tied to at least one linguistic predicate type in virtue of the conventional semantical rules of some natural language. (2) If C is a category whose defining characteristics (Fregean marks) are F-1,. . ., F-n, then e instantiates C if and only if e instantiates F-1, . . . , F-n. Where does he move from there? He moves in what strikes us as a philosophically startling direction. He says: All this means that if such categories as human or bachelor, for example, were concepts (i.e., if “concept” were included in their definitions), then “concept” would be truly predicable of the names of the members of those categories, say, of “Socrates,” with the unwelcome result that Socrates would turn out to be a concept.83 We think that this inference is fundamentally invalid because it presupposes an incorrect account of the relation between the defining properties of an arbitrarily selected category C, as being the particular category it happens to be, on the one hand, and the ontological status of C, as being a category as such, on the other. Let us try to spell this out. Gracia apparently assumes that an arbitrarily selected category C instantiates the characteristic being a concept only if the characteristic being a concept is one of C’s defining characteristics (Fregean marks). In other words, categories as categories, are concepts only if their instantiations are concepts. For example, if the category being a human instantiates the characteristic being a concept then any instantiation of that category, say, Socrates, also instantiates the characteristic being a concept, namely, Socrates himself is a concept. Obviously, Socrates is not a concept. Gracia concludes that the category being a human is not a concept. Generalizing his argument, we appear to have: (1) If categories, as categories, were concepts then all of their instantiations would be concepts. (2) But it is not the case that all instantiations of categories are themselves concepts. (3) Therefore, it is not the case that categories, as categories, are concepts. Obviously, the argument is deductively valid; it is an instance of modus tollens. The argument’s defect is not invalidity, but unsoundness. The conditional asserted in premise (1) appears false. In particular, it appears that (1) is based upon a confusion between what Frege would call the marks (namely, defining characteristics) of a category, on the one hand, and what he would call the properties of a category, on the other. The marks of a category are those characteristics any entity must exemplify in order to qualify as an instantiation of the category. In contrast, the properties of a category are those characteristics the category itself, as category, exemplifies.
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In general, it appears we cannot legitimately infer from the proposition that a category C has a certain property P the conclusion that P is one of C’s defining characteristics (Fregean marks). Consider an example. Suppose that the category being a trout is one of Gracia’s favorite categories. In other words, one of the properties the category being a trout instantiates is the characteristic being one of Gracia’s favorite categories. But, obviously, it does not follow that being one of Gracia’s favorite categories is one of the defining characteristics of the category being a trout itself. If it were, no particular fish could be a trout unless, in addition to being a fish, it also happened to be one of Gracia’s favorite categories, whatever that could mean. We conclude that the conditional “If categories, as categories, were concepts then all of their instantiations would be concepts” is false. As we have earlier indicated, Gracia apparently maintains that this conditional is entailed by the premises (1) A category is an entity that is semantically tied to at least one linguistic predicate type in virtue of the conventional semantical rules of some natural language, and (2) If C is a category whose defining characteristics (Fregean marks) are F-1, . . . , F-n, then e instantiates C if and only if e instantiates F-1, . . . , F-n. Faced with our conviction that (1) and (2) are true, we can only deny Gracia’s claim that (1) and (2) entail that conditional. The reader might wonder whether Gracia’s assertion of this apparently false conditional is a mere slip of the pen, but unfortunately that does not appear to be so. He makes the same move with respect to both nominalist and realist theories of categories. So, with respect to nominalist theories, he says, “[I]f, the categories human and bachelor were words (i.e., if ‘word’ were included in their definitions), then ‘word’ would be truly predicable of the names of the members of those categories, say, of ‘Socrates,’ with the unwelcome result that Socrates would turn out to be a word.”84 Generalizing, this appears to be equivalent to the conditional: “If categories, as categories, were linguistic types, then all of their instantiations would be linguistic types.” For example, if the category being a human is a linguistic type, then any instantiation of that category, for example, Socrates, is also a linguistic type. Similarly, with respect to realist theories of categories, he says: [I]f the categories hallucination and afterimage . . . were extramental entities (i.e., if “extramental entity” were included in their definitions), then “extramental” would be truly predicated of the names of the members of those categories, say, “Jorge’s hallucination” and to be extramental would apply to Jorge’s hallucination. But, of course, Jorge’s hallucination is nothing outside his mind.85 Again generalizing, this appears to be equivalent to the conditional: “If categories, as categories, were extramental entities then all of their instantiations
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would be extramental entities.” In our view, neither of these conditionals is any more plausible than the conditional he invokes in his discussion of conceptualist theories. The same confusion is the foundation of them all—a confusion between the marks of categories, on the one hand, and their properties, on the other. So far, we have seen that Gracia apparently subscribes to a generalized conditional of the form “For any category, C, if C instantiates a characteristic P, then any of C’s instantiations also instantiates P.” Yet, as we earlier argued, he also appears willing to assert the converse of that conditional. Namely, he is also apparently committed to the proposition “For any category C, if C’s instantiations exemplify a characteristic P, then C itself exemplifies P.” For example, we find him inferentially moving from “Any instantiation of the category being a collection is a collection” to “The category being a collection is itself a collection,” from “Any instantiation of the category being an afterimage is a mental entity” to “The category being a mental entity is itself a mental entity,” and from “Any instantiation of the category being a Dodo bird is an extra-mental entity” to “The category being a Dodo bird is itself an extra-mental entity.”86 His text contains many instances of moves of this sort. Putting these two generalized conditionals together generates an “if and only if” proposition: “For any category C, C instantiates a characteristic P if and only if all of C’s instantiations instantiate P.” Given these assumptions, it is easy for Gracia to conclude by denying the existence of any characteristic that all categories instantiate, or more explicitly, by denying the existence of any true answer to the question “But what is it to be a category, as category?” He argues: These examples illustrate that the exclusive understanding of all categories as words, concepts, or extra-mental entities is too narrow, for it involves an unwarranted reduction. It is a reduction because extra-mental entity, concept, and word are themselves categories, and thus the reduction of all categories to one of them is precisely the reduction of a broader category to a narrower one. This situation is comparable to one in which, all of a sudden, we would decide to narrow down the category animal to the category human, making all animals human. Extra-mental entity, concept, and word are all categories, and it will not do to say that all categories have to be one of these to the exclusion of others.87 This argument apparently trades upon the assumption that, because different sorts of entities exist in the world, for example, physical objects, mental entities, linguistic entities, and so on, there exists no characteristic that all categories instantiate. Although we do not find the argument’s precise structure completely transparent, we propose the following as a reasonable formulation of the argument Gracia may have in mind:
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(1) For any category C, C instantiates a characteristic P if and only if every instantiation I of C instantiates P. [Premise] (2) For any non-transcendental characteristic NC, there exists at least one entity that does not instantiate NC. [Premise] (3) Assume, for reductio purposes, that there exists at least one nontranscendental characteristic P that all categories instantiate. [Reductio premise] (4) By (2), there exists at least one entity that does not instantiate P. Call that entity e*. (5) By (1), no category that is instantiated by e* instantiates P. Call one of those categories C(e*). (6) Then C(e*) both instantiates P [by premise (3)] and does not instantiate P [by (5)], which is a contradiction. (7) Therefore, the reductio premise is false. We limit ourselves to non-transcendental characteristics because we assume that Gracia assumes that the kinds of common characteristics sought by traditional theories of categories are not characteristics instantiated by anything whatever. Such characteristics, because everything else shares them, would not shed any special light on categories. But this argument rests crucially upon premise (1), which we have already rejected for its failure to recognize the Fregean distinction between the properties of a category, as category, on the one hand, and the marks of that category, as being the particular category it happens to be, on the other. Gracia is well aware of the sort of criticism we have made. Although he does not, as we have, refer to Frege with respect to the distinction between the properties of categories, as categories, and the marks of categories, as being the particular categories they happen to be, he is obviously familiar with the distinction and with the potential objection based upon it. In that regard he remarks: [O]ne could reply that my argument is fallacious because it fails to distinguish between categories and the set of conditions that apply to the members of categories. To say that categories are extra-mental entities, concepts, or words does not imply that the members of the categories are such. The category bachelor can be an extra-mental entity, a concept, or a word without its members necessarily being so, because the conditions that apply to the category do not apply to the members of the category. In short, bachelorhood is not a bachelor; it is only this or that man that is a bachelor.88 But he refuses to capitulate: “This objection sounds quite formidable at first, but upon analysis it loses its force.”89 Why does he think so? His explanation covers approximately sixteen pages of detailed and complex discussion.90 Although this philosophically interesting and challenging passage would ideally warrant a
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paragraph by paragraph analysis, limitations of space preclude us from offering such an analysis. As a second best, we offer a condensed interpretation of those sixteen pages. Although we believe that our interpretation is fair to Gracia’s text, we readily concede the possibility of alternative interpretations. In any event, we encourage readers to examine the passage for themselves. So, what does Gracia’s response to Frege come to? We suggest that it comes down to what we will call Argument A: (1) If the Fregean property-mark theory is true, then it is possible to intelligibly ask “What is the essential nature of categories, as categories?” Namely, it is possible to intelligibly ask “What are the necessary, and together sufficient, conditions for an arbitrarily selected entity’s being a category?” (2) It is not possible to intelligibly ask that question. (3) Therefore, the Fregean property-mark theory is false. Obviously, the argument is deductively valid. We concede (1), but dispute (2). How does Gracia defend (2)? Although his defense of (2) is not entirely clear to us, we offer what we will call Argument B as a plausible interpretation of that defense: (1) If it is possible to intelligibly ask “What are the necessary, and together sufficient, conditions for an arbitrarily selected entity’s being a category?” then there exists at least one characteristic instantiated by all categories. (2) But no characteristics are instantiated by all categories. (3) Therefore, it is not possible to intelligibly ask “What are the necessary, and together sufficient, conditions for an arbitrarily selected entity’s being a category?” We regard both (1) and (2) as doubtful. The conditional asserted in (1) appears to presuppose the proposition that it is not possible to intelligibly ask whether a particular state of affairs exists if that state of affairs does not exist. This interpretation of the conditional is apparently supported by Gracia’s contention that “it makes no sense to ask whether all categories are words, concepts, or extra-mental entities. To do so would be like asking whether cats are black or not. Well, some are black and some are not, which means that being black or not being black are not part of the conditions of being a cat.”91 But even if it is a fact that not all cats are black, that does not appear to entail the literal unintelligibility of even asking whether all cats are black. If the question were unintelligible, how does it come about that we know the answer? Consider an example. There exists no greatest infinite ordinal. But from that negative fact we cannot justifiably infer that it is unintelligible to ask whether there exists a greatest infinite ordinal. The proof (a reductio proof) of that negative fact requires the asking of that same question.
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Premise (2) is doubtful for reasons we have already set forth. It presupposes an illegitimate merging of the properties of categories, as categories, with their marks. But, in any case, invoking (2) as a justification for rejecting the Fregean property-mark distinction does not appear to advance the philosophical dialectic even a step. Instead, it appears to beg the question at hand. After all, is not this where we came in? Gracia begins by ignoring the property-mark distinction. A Fregean would obviously challenge his starting point. Gracia responds to the Fregean objection by asserting that the objection has a senseless and meaningless presupposition at its foundation. But an examination of the chain of arguments by which he purports to prove the cognitive meaninglessness of the Fregean distinction appears to reveal that chain itself as ultimately depending upon a premise that reaffirms Gracia’s initial decision to ignore the property-mark distinction. It appears we can capture the entire dialectic in the following imaginary interchange: Gracia: “The Fregean property-mark distinction is false.” Interlocutor: “But why so?” Gracia: “Because it is unintelligible.” Interlocutor: “But why so?” Gracia: “Because the Fregean property-mark distinction is false.” But putting aside the question whether (2) of Argument B ultimately begs the question at hand, Gracia’s approach itself appears to conflict with (2). At least four reasons exist for thinking so. First, as we have earlier noted, he begins his investigation of the ontological status of categories by preliminarily characterizing them as “whatever is expressed by a term or expression, simple or complex, which can be predicated of some other term or expression.”92 However we should best interpret this, and we have earlier discussed some of the alternatives, at the least it purports to offer a general characterization of categories, as categories; the same sort of characterization (2) declares philosophically illegitimate. Second, his ultimate characterization of categories describes them as “neutral” entities in the sense that: Each category, qua category, should be considered to be whatever it is, as determined by its proper definition, and nothing more, for that is what the predicable term that names the category expresses. Accordingly, the category human is no more and no less than what is established by its definition, for the category human is nothing but what the predicable term “human” expresses.93 Therefore, the metaphysical identity of the category being human is nothing more nor less than being a rational animal, and so on. We have already challenged this general way of thinking about categories on the ground that it presupposes a confusion between the properties of categories and their marks. But the point we make in this context is a different one. Whatever we might say about the truth or falsity of Gracia’s claim, it appears we cannot deny that it purports to be a general characterization of the nature of categories,
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as categories. After all, what it presumably asserts is “For any category C, as category, the metaphysical identity of C is whatever it is, as determined by its proper definition, and nothing more.” In other words, a characteristic necessarily instantiated by all categories, as categories, is being an entity whose metaphysical identity is whatever it is, as determined by its proper definition, and nothing more,” again the same sort of characterization (2) of Argument B apparently rejects as philosophically illegitimate. Third, in the course of responding to the Fregean objection, Gracia says: Consider the example: Bachelorhood is not a bachelor. The use of the abstract noun to refer to the category already tips the scales in favor of the position on which the objection is based. For, although strictly speaking, the definition of bachelorhood should be no more than unmarried manness, one is tempted to define bachelorhood instead as, for example, the property of being an unmarried man, the concept of being an unmarried man, or a word denoting unmarried men. But, if rather than speaking about bachelorhood, we speak simply about bachelor, or about being a bachelor, then matters are quite different. For it becomes clear that the definition of bachelor is unmarried man, so that to be a bachelor is nothing more or less than to be an unmarried man.94 What Gracia is apparently suggesting is perhaps analogous to Quine’s wellknown attempt to differentiate between what he regards as the philosophically legitimate invocation of general terms (for example, “horse”) in first-order quantification theory, and what he regards as the philosophically illegitimate invocation of the nominalizations of general terms (for example, “the property being a horse”) in second-order logic. What Gracia apparently assumes is that if speakers could somehow manage to avoid moving from the use of general terms of the form “___ is an F” to the use of referring expressions of the form “the characteristic being an F,” then the philosophical problems concerning the ontological status of categories would disappear. We disagree. Consider an example. Suppose that a community of speakers somehow manages to avoid consistently referring to the “mental” order. We do not believe this to be a genuine possibility, but even if it were, the existence of such a linguistic practice would not, by itself, demonstrate the philosophical illegitimacy or unintelligibility of asking whether or not there exists a mental order distinct from the physical order. Again, suppose members of a particular linguistic community never refer to “rabbits” (perhaps because they never encountered rabbits). Would this fact, by itself, demonstrate that asking whether or not rabbits exist is philosophically unintelligible? Still, putting aside the issue of the merits of Gracia’s thesis about general terms and abstract nouns, we want to make here the simple point that, at the least, the thesis predicates a characteristic of all categories, as catego-
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ries—the characteristic being an entity that cannot be intelligibly referred to by means of an abstract noun. But that same characterization appears to conflict with premise (2) of Argument B. Is not this an assertion characterizing every member of the class of categories? Fourth, Gracia’s text has many sentences that we can interpret as at least implicit quantificational sentences whose subject term is “categories.” Some of these are expressible as universally quantified statements of the general form “All categories are (are not) ____,” while others are expressible as existentially quantified statements of the general form “Some categories are (are not) ____.” We can understand quantificational statements of either the form “All Fs are Gs” or the form “Some Fs are Gs” as presupposing a domain of discourse that is specified by whatever characteristic is semantically tied to “F.” So, we can understand such statements as singling out the class of entities instantiating the characteristic being an F and going on to predicate the characteristic being a G of each, or at least some, of those Fs. In such cases, we can understand the characteristic being an F as a domain-of-discourse instantiable whose semantical function is to fix the presupposed domain of discourse. In general, we understand properly any speaker who asserts such a quantificational statement as presupposing some domain-of-discourse instantiable that is semantically tied to “F” and instantiated by each member of his presupposed domain of discourse. Therefore, we properly understand any speaker who, like Gracia, makes statements of the form “All categories are Gs” or of the form “Some categories are Gs” as presupposing some domain-of-discourse instantiable that is semantically tied to “categories” and instantiated by every member of the class of categories. But, again, the presupposition appears to conflict with (2) of Argument B. 3. Conclusion We have undertaken an evaluation of Gracia’s creative and challenging attempt to dissolve the traditional question of the ontological status of categories, as categories. Although conceding its intrinsic philosophical interest and ingenuity, we conclude that it ultimately fails. In our judgment, he fails to prove that categories lack an essential nature, as categories, or that even the question whether they have an essential nature, as categories, is meaningless. He vitiates his arguments for these claims by a refusal to recognize the traditional distinction between the properties categories possess, as categories, and the marks they possess as the particular categories they happen to be. His sustained defense of that refusal begs the question at hand. One of the most fundamental principles of the metaphysical tradition, which Gracia himself is such a learned and illuminating expositor and critic of, is the proposition that entities belonging to any metaphysically natural kind share an essence, as being entities of that particular kind. That tradition presupposes that categories themselves belong to a metaphysically natural kind.
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Gracia himself apparently accepts this presupposition. He apparently believes that categories belong to the most fundamental of all metaphysically natural kinds. But in the end he rejects the application of the tradition’s fundamental principle to categories themselves, the same entities he claims to be the sole legitimate subjects of metaphysical inquiry. Unlike entities of every other metaphysically natural kind, categories themselves lack a common essence. We are not convinced. Along with the tradition, we think that categories do share an essential nature, as categories, and that an essential part of the project of metaphysical inquiry is ascertaining that nature. We encourage Gracia to abandon metaphysical skepticism and contribute his considerable philosophical powers to that project.
NOTES 1. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), p. 153. 2. Ibid., p. 139–140. 3. Ibid., chs. 8–9. 4. Ibid., p. 206. 5. Ibid., p. 134. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., pp. 134–135. 17. Ibid., p. 135. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., pp. 135–136. 25. Ibid., p. 136. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid.
Gracia on the Ontological Status of Categories 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.
Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 209. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 209–210. Ibid., p. 182. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 184. Ibid., p. 183. Ibid. Ibid., p. 184. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 185. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 187. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 187–199. Ibid., p. 192. Ibid., p. 198. Ibid., p. 199. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.
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230 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94.
RUSSELL PANNIER AND THOMAS D. SULLIVAN Ibid. Ibid., pp. 199–200. Ibid., pp. 205–208. Ibid., p. 200. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 201. Ibid., pp. 205–206. Ibid., p. 201. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 201–217. Ibid., p. 206. Ibid., p. 134. Ibid., p. 205. Ibid., p. 201.
Fifteen CATEGORIAL NEUTRALISM: RESPONSE TO PANNIER, SULLIVAN, SEIFERT, AND INGALA Jorge J. E. Gracia The nature and ontological status of categories has been a constant concern of Western philosophers from the beginning—one always considered controversial and a source of disagreement. Yet, the theories that were produced until quite recently fall into no more than four general groups: Nominalists argue that categories are words, names, or similar linguistic entities; conceptualists argue that they are concepts; realists argue that they are extra-mental realities; and a few philosophers have tried to combine some or all of these views in different ways. But the twentieth century, owing in part to its emphasis on logic, produced a new type of theory, one that conceived categories as logical places in the syntax of propositions. I provided a provisional and partial list of these views in Metaphysics and its Task and proceeded to show that all of them have serious drawbacks.1 These arise in part because every characterization of categories uses categories. Accordingly, it stands to reason that the way to avoid these difficulties is to use a different strategy, namely, to stop any attempt at the characterization of categories in terms of other categories. And the only way to do this appears to be to posit that categories, considered as categories, are neutral with respect to any of the possible characterizations that we can apply to them. But we need to consider this neutrality, as all neutrality, as non-exclusive, namely, we should not understand the neutrality of categories so as to preclude that some categories be characterized in this or that particular way. In this volume, Russell Pannier, Thomas Sullivan, and Josef Seifert have presented several arguments against my view. Additionally, Emma Ingala Gómez, the translator of my treatise on categories into Spanish, has raised some interesting and important questions about my theory in the Preface to the translation. The questions raised by Ingala and the objections raised by Seifert are relatively concise, so it will be easier for me to respond to them here. But the arguments that Pannier and Sullivan put forth are both extensive and complex. This means that I cannot do justice to them in the limited space I have at my disposal. Instead of trying to attempt the impossible, then, I merely respond to the main objection they raise concerning the argument of the book and restate my argument in a way that I
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think shows more clearly how it meets the objection. I leave the task of addressing details to a sustained treatment of categories that I hope to complete in the future. Let me, then, turn first to the main concern expressed by Pannier and Sullivan. They summarize it in the “Conclusion” of their commentary, so I think it is a good idea to begin there. 1. Criticism by Pannier and Sullivan A. General Charge: Begging the Question The central objection against my view that Pannier and Sullivan present is that it begs the question. They charge that I assume what I set out to prove. But do I? The readers should not be surprised to find out that I do not believe so. Pannier and Sullivan present their general argument as follows: Gracia “fails to prove that categories lack an essential nature, as categories, or that even the question whether they have an essential nature, as categories, is meaningless.” And they continue: “He vitiates his arguments for these claims by a refusal to recognize the traditional distinction between the properties categories posses, as categories, and the marks they posses, as the particular categories they happen to be. His sustained defense of that refusal begs the question at hand.” Obviously, if it is true that I beg the question, I must assume the same thing that I claim to prove, which Pannier and Sullivan claim is that there exists no distinction between the properties of categories, as categories, and the properties categories have, as particular categories. Pannier and Sullivan are right when they claim that one thing I argue for is that categories, as categories, are nothing but what they are, as the particular categories they are. But I do not assume this at all! They have missed the form of the argument I have presented in Metaphysics and its Task. No circularity exists in it, for the argument has the form of a reductio ad absurdum as follows. I begin by assuming the contradictory of what I wish to prove—that categories, as categories, are something other than what they are, as particular categories. A great part of the chapter devoted to the discussion of categories deals precisely with the different ways philosophers have interpreted these, depending on whether they have thought of categories as transcendent entities, immanent entities, relations, concepts, similarities, words, and so on. Next, I show that these ways of understanding categories are unacceptable for different reasons and, therefore, we must reject them. The logical next step, then, is to accept the truth of the contradictory of the assumption made at the beginning. And this is precisely that the distinction between what categories are, as categories, and what categories are, as particular categories, is unwarranted, because any time we identify categories, as categories, with something other than what they are, as particular categories, we end up with irresolvable puzzles and contradictions. So, clearly, I do not beg the question at all.
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Obviously, Pannier and Sullivan would still be right in their charge if, when I argue against the different views of categories that understand them to be, as categories, something other than what they are, as particular categories, I assume that they cannot be. And in their commentary they effectively show that at least in some of the arguments I use, I do refer to this point. Still, they miss two crucial facts: First, although I do invariably refer to this point in every case, the arguments I give against the position in question do not rely on the overall principle that I set out to prove concerning categories. Even a cursory look at the arguments I give against any of the views in question should suffice to make this clear. I have no space here to illustrate the point in every, or even in most, cases. But just consider the arguments I give against the view of categories as relations. One of these, for example, has to do with the infinite regress that relational accounts are usually subject to and this has nothing to do with the distinction between categories, as categories, and categories, as particular categories. The second fact that Pannier and Sullivan miss is that I refer to the principle that categories, as categories, are nothing other than what they are, as particular categories. I do this not in order to establish the principle (that would definitely be begging the question), but instead in order to identify what I consider to be the source of the difficulties faced by the positions in question. So, again, no begging of the question is found in the arguments used against positions that accept the distinction between what categories are, as categories, and what they are, as particular categories. In short, then, Pannier and Sullivan have missed the structure of the overall argument I present. Additionally, they have missed the reason why in the arguments against particular views of categories I have referred to this principle. But, as we would expect, Sullivan and Pannier also have a more substantive objection. They claim that I am wrong in holding that what categories are, as categories, is not anything other than what they are, as particular categories. To answer this charge would require that I look carefully at the different arguments they give in support of their position. Unfortunately, this is impossible within the present parameters. Instead, I will briefly restate the argument I present in the book with the hope that this will be sufficient to show how it effectively establishes its conclusion. B. Restatement of the Argument First a general summary: I argue that the notion that categories, as categories, are something other than what they are, as particular categories, results in an irresolvable puzzle. Why? Because it entails the analysis of category into narrower categories than category. Perhaps we can bring the point out by pointing to the puzzle that Plato raised concerning the Good and that Bertrand Russell tried to solve through his theory of types. The issue raised by Plato was whether the Good could itself be
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good. And the answer is that it could not, at least not in the sense in which other things are good. To say otherwise is intolerable. Russell argued that this is so because good in the sense in which the Good is so is a different logical type than the way in which things other than the Good are good. The situation with category is quite similar, but even worse, because in the way I have conceived “category” nothing falls outside it, except for individuals. So, we have nothing we could possibly refer to that we could use in the analysis of categories, as categories, which is not a category. In short, the notion of category is primitive, because everything else we can possibly predicate presupposes it. Again, I am not assuming this. I am claiming this on the basis of at least two arguments. One shows how attempts to do otherwise end in intellectual disaster; the other shows that logically, any attempt to do it ends in disaster. Let me explain. Predication comes in two main kinds, which traditionally we call essential and accidental respectively. Consider the following two examples: (1) Peter is human. (2) Peter is white. (1) is a case of essential predication, whereas (2) is a case of accidental predication. The mark of essential predication is that the definiens (or any part of it) of the predicate can be substituted for the predicate and be truthfully predicated of the subject of the sentence. If the definiens in the definition of “human” is “an animal capable of reasoning,” then in (1), we can truthfully say that Peter is an animal capable of reasoning, or that Peter is an animal, or that Peter is capable of reasoning. By contrast, it is not the case that in accidental predication the definiens of the predicate can take the place of the predicate and be truthfully predicated of the subject of the sentence. In (2), for example, if the definiens in the definition of “white” is “a color within a certain spectrum,” say, we cannot truthfully predicate “color within a certain spectrum” of Peter, because Peter is not a color at all. In Metaphysics and its Task, I assume that this analysis is correct. I also assume that metaphysics is concerned with essential predication instead of with accidental predication. This does not mean that metaphysics does not deal with accidental predication. Obviously it does. But it deals with it in essential terms. Namely, metaphysics is concerned with the way things are necessarily tied together, not with the way they are accidentally tied together. This is, I think, a standard assumption of most metaphysicians, although some have doubted it. I accept it. We can give different arguments in its favor, but that would take us far away from the present task. Suffice it to say that metaphysicians want to establish the necessary connections among the different parts of the world, instead of the way things turn out, accidentally, to be tied. So, if both assumptions are accepted, then it becomes clear why categories, as categories, cannot be anything but what they are, as particular categories. For
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any essential analysis of categories, as categories, would entail that we could substitute the analysis in any place that the term “category” is used and this results in falsity. If we define categories as some kind of concepts, and therefore not words or realities, then “concept” would have to be predicable truthfully of anything of which “category” were predicable essentially. But this is most definitely not the case, for such things as cat and human are categories and, although they may be accidentally concepts, essentially they are not so. Obviously, my argument relies on some significant assumptions. One is that metaphysics involves a search for necessary truths, not contingent ones. And another is that predication can be distinguished into essential and accidental. But I do not believe that Pannier and Sullivan question either of these assumptions. If I am right about their view, then it appears I am also right after all in saying that categories, as categories, are nothing but what they are, as particular categories. The reason is that this is the only way that we can preserve essential predication and the task of metaphysics as traditionally conceived. Obviously, accidentally categories can be all sorts of things, but that would not be of concern to the metaphysician. Incidentally, Pannier and Sullivan are mistaken in thinking that I believe categories are natural kinds. They could not be so for me insofar as nothing and privation are categories in my scheme, and these are definitely not natural kinds, that is, if natural kinds are things like cat and pepper. 2. Criticism by Seifert: The Impredicability of Substance Seifert presents what look like several serious criticisms of my view of categories, but when we subject them to analysis, it becomes clear that they arise either because he misunderstands my view in significant ways or because he brings unwarranted assumptions with him into the discussion. Additionally, even those criticisms that do not suffer from these difficulties turn out to be easily answerable. The result is that none of the criticisms that Seifert brings up affect my view in any way. The general charge that Seifert makes against my conception of categories is that it is “extremely vague and therefore confusing. . . . because how can the category substance, to name just one, be ‘predicated of terms or expressions?’” In this opening shot, it becomes clear already that Seifert has seriously misunderstood my position, for it is obvious that he is under the impression that in my view categories are predicable. But I have made no such claim in my book. Predicability, as I make explicit, is a property of words, not of categories. Categories are what predicable terms express, not the words that we predicate, even if some categories turn out to be words. The way that I described categories is not vague at all, or confusing, but instead precise and clear. In my view only some categories are predicable, namely, those that are words. Seifert’s misunderstanding is even more clear in the next paragraph, for there he adds the following: “if we declared all meanings of predicable terms categories,
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and therefore also parts of the subject-matter of metaphysics, [as Gracia wishes,] such a position would constitute a complete and absurd break with the whole tradition of metaphysics and with what it, since Aristotle, understands by ‘category’ in the metaphysical sense.” The main mistake here is to suggest that categories, for me, are meanings. But I explicitly deny that they are meanings in the chapter on categories. Categories are not meanings at all, for meanings, as I explain, are tied to words and texts whereas categories are not. So, again, it is clear that Seifert has misunderstood my view. So much, then, for proof of misunderstanding on the part of Seifert. Let me turn to the claim included in the last sentence from him I quoted, to the effect that I break with the Aristotelian tradition in my understanding of categories and that this is absurd. He gives three reasons to support this claim, although only two of these refer to categories—the other has to do with my conception of metaphysics and therefore I ignore it here. The first reason is a repetition of something we saw already when he stated his original charge of vagueness and confusion against my view of categories. It is that if we take my view seriously, then the most important of all ontological categories, namely, primary substance, would not be a category because this category is not predicable. He not only states this point early on, but repeats it at the end of the section where he attacks my view of categories. This is the main point of his attack. I have already set the record straight with respect to predicability: categories need not be predicable. So, to say that something like primary substance is not predicable does not automatically disqualify it from being a category. Still, insofar as categories are what predicable terms express, it is true we have a point in saying that if we cannot express something by a predicable term, then it cannot be a category. So, although Seifert misunderstands my theory, he has a point in what he says that relates to my view. The issue, then, amounts to whether primary substance is or is not a category. And the answer is that it definitely is, because the term “primary substance” is predicable of many primary substances, such as you, me, or this cat, so what the term expresses is definitely a category. Is this a problem? No, for that the term “primary substance” is predicable of many does not mean that the things that it is predicable of must themselves be predicable. This is precisely the point that Aristotle was making when he was thinking about primary substance, namely, that some things are not predicable. To say this requires that we think of those things under the same concept, namely, that of not being predicable. It also requires that we predicate non-predicability of them. But this does not mean that non-predicability itself is non-predicable. Seifert confuses two things, the property or character of being nonpredicable (primary substance) with the non-predicable thing (namely, a primary substance). This man or this cat are primary substances and therefore nonpredicable for Aristotle; but this does not entail that “primary substance” is nonpredicable. It is, insofar as I can apply the term to both this man and this cat. For
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this reason, the point that Seifert brings up against my view is not an objection with which either Aristotle or I have to be concerned. The other objection against my view of categories that Seifert presents to substantiate his charge that my break with the Aristotelian view is absurd, is that what I understand by category is not what metaphysicians understand by them. But he gives no particular argument or reason for demonstrating that what the metaphysicians, to whom he refers, hold is superior to what I hold. So, I need not give consideration to this objection. I should add, in passing, that Seifert asks rhetorically whether I contradict myself when I say “the aim of metaphysicians is quite restricted; they seek to provide a general categorization and to see how the specific categories found in our experience, or posed by other disciplines, fit into it [namely, metaphysics].” Well, I do not see where the contradiction is, and until he points it out, I will have to answer his question merely by saying “No.” In short, then, if we set aside the objections Seifert brings up that are based on misunderstandings of my view, we have only one remaining that merits attention. This concerns the category of primary substance. But, as I explained, the problem he raises concerning it is not truly a problem at all, for it rests on a confusion between the subject of predication and what we predicate of it. 3. Some Questions by Ingala: Nothing, Square Circles, and the Transcendentals In the Preface to my ¿Qué son las categorías?, the translator, Ingala, raises several important questions about my theory of categories that could be used as a basis for objections. Two questions concern what look like counter examples to my claim that some categories are empty: “nothing” and “square circle.” Another has to do with the “transcendentals.” She puts her questions as follows: From the conception of categories defended [in the book] it follows logically, as the author points out, that nothing, square circle, and unicorn are categories and, moreover, empty categories. But, how can the predicable character of categories be put together with the fact that there are categories that cannot be predicated because they are necessarily empty? On the other hand, is “nothing” an empty category? Wouldn’t it be appropriate to consider as members of it the species that Kant distinguishes in his famous table of nothing? Moreover, if categories are neutral, wouldn’t it be appropriate to say that the category nothing is just that, nothing? Nor is it clear that square circle is an empty category. Couldn’t we predicate “square circle” of “this square circle about which I am thinking now” or of “the square circle that has a perimeter greater than 2Br”? Moreover, the generality with which Professor Gracia describes categories makes entity, being, or thing—considered in the
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The general issue concerning the first two questions is that the claim that categories can be empty does not appear to be consistent with the view that categories are predicable. Note that I do not hold that categories are predicable. My view is that predicable terms express categories. So Ingala has to modify her point accordingly. In reference to nothing and square circle, Ingala asks, then, whether these categories are empty insofar as the terms that express them are predicable. Additionally, in reference to nothing, she brings up in particular Kant’s well-known classification of the concept of nothing into four different types. With respect to square circle, Ingala refers to different square circles of which we may predicate “square circle,” such as the one I am thinking of at the moment and so on. Although the issue that we need to settle appears to concern the categories of nothing and square circle in particular, it is a more general issue. It has to do with the category “empty.” If we look at this category, I think we can find the answer to Ingala’s question. For the term “empty” is often used contextually or, we might say, relatively. This is why we can predicate it of a variety of things. A glass is empty (of water); a room is empty (of people); and so on. So, we can also say that a category is empty (of a certain kind of entities or things). Perhaps the example of the category nothing will help. Consider the case of Kant, for he points to different ways that we use “nothing” to refer to things that are something, namely, to different kinds of concepts. Other philosophers, beginning with Plato and going all the way down to Martin Heidegger have made similar points. John Scotus Eriugena, for example, listed different ways that we should understand “nihil,” which all turn out to be something. His aim was to rescue his semantic realism, namely, the view that words have meaning only insofar as they mean something real. In all these cases, the sense of nothing that is used is, we might say, relative. So, when we predicate the term, we use it to say that something is nothing of some sort, as when I say that the pain in my back is nothing, meaning that it is nothing to worry about, or nothing serious, or nothing unbearable. What we have said concerning “nothing” we can also say concerning “empty.” If “empty” is used relatively in this way, then it expresses something or some things and then what it expresses is a category with members, posing no serious difficulties to my general theory, for then the term “empty” can be predicated of all sorts of things and the same applies to the term “nothing.” The same thing that I have said concerning “empty” and “nothing” could also, and even more clearly, apply to “square circle.” For when we speak of the category of
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square circle as empty what we mean is that it does not have members of a certain sort. And this in turn makes possible that it can have members of another sort— and it is of the terms that express these that we predicate the term “square-circle.” But this does not completely solve the issue concerning “nothing,” unless I am prepared to argue that we only use “nothing” to express a relative sense and not an absolute sense. But is it not true that we can use “nothing” absolutely? If this is the case, then truly, the category would have to be, correspondingly, absolutely “empty.” But if this is so, then how can we put this together with the point that categories are what predicates express? For if categories are tied to predicates in this way, it would appear that they must apply to some things, namely to what the subjects of the sentences express. The answer here needs to take into account two points. First, predication is not the same as true predication. Only true predication entails that the conditions established by a predicate apply to what the subject term expresses and therefore that the subject is a member of the category expressed by the predicate. In “Triangles are geometrical figures with three sides” the category geometrical figure with three sides has as one of its members triangles. But when someone predicates falsely, this implies precisely that there exists no such inclusion. When I say “Triangles are geometrical figures with four sides,” I have carried out a predication, but the resulting sentence is false and entails that what the subject term expresses is not a member of the category expressed by the predicate. So, in principle, it is possible that we could have categories that express predicable terms, even if it can never be the case that the ensuing sentences could be true. And this could be the case of nothing. Nothing, considered in an absolute sense, could be a category that is incapable of being expressed by a predicate of a true sentence, for there exists no thing that meets the conditions of being nothing. Second, not all predications have to be affirmative. We can predicate negatively. I can say that X is not Y. In this case I mean that the conditions specified by the predicate do not apply to the subject. Therefore I can say “Triangles are not geometrical figures with four sides.” This shows that I can negatively predicate and therefore that predication does not always have to claim that what a subject expresses meets certain positive conditions specified by the predicate term. So again, we could have “nothing,” when we consider the category it expresses absolutely, predicated negatively of all sorts of things, as in “Darkness is not nothing.” This is one sense where we express “nothing” by a predicate term when the sentence is true. For the sentence does not express the claim that what the subject term expresses meets the conditions expressed by the predicate term and so is a member of the category expressed by that term. Instead, what the subject expresses does not satisfy such conditions and therefore it is not a member of the category expressed by the predicate. I think this satisfactorily answers Ingala’s concerns, but now let me turn to her last point, namely, that within my scheme, transcendentals, such as entity,
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being, and thing, turn out to be categories. This, in turn, she points out, ignores the important distinction of Aristotelian origin worked out in detail in the Middle Ages, between analogical predication and univocal predication. In the first place, I do not see why the understanding of the transcendentals as categories necessarily ignores or obliterates the distinction between analogical and univocal predication. In my scheme, such things as analogical predication, univocal predication, and predication are all categories. Additionally, the transcendentals, such as entity, being, and thing are also categories. Finally, the terms “analogical predication,” “univocal predication,” “predication,” “entity,” “being,” “thing,” and so on, also express categories. To say this does not commit me to hold that the categories expressed by the terms “entity,” “being,” “thing,” and such other terms are related in a fixed way to the categories expressed by the first three terms. My view does not logically commit me to hold that, for example, we cannot predicate “being” analogically. My view is completely neutral with respect to this claim. Whether a person decides to make this claim or not depends on other factors, related to her metaphysical views about the particular categories in question and how she thinks they are related. In short, Ingala’s suggestion that my broad view of categories ignores the Aristotelian distinction between analogical and univocal predication in the context of the transcendentals is true to the extent that it does not say anything about it, but it is false if we take it to mean that it commits me to a rejection of such a view.
NOTES 1. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999). 2. Jorge J. E. Gracia, ¿Qué son las categorías? Opuscula Philosophica, trans. Emma Ingala Gómez (Madrid: Ediciones Encuentro, 2002), pp. 9–10.
AFTERWORD: ANOTHER BEGINNING Jorge J. E. Gracia The scientific enterprise appears fraught with insurmountable difficulties, for how can someone expect to produce a completely accurate description of the way things are? Observation and experimentation appear always to be flawed and the way we look at the world appears to be affected by the perspective from which it takes place. How can we possibly, then, achieve objective, unbiased, and accurate understandings of reality? The conflicts within our experience are sometimes gigantic and the skeptical objections to any kind of objectivity and accuracy are terrifying. Yet, when we compare the task of science with that of metaphysics, it appears easy by contrast. Scientists do not worry about the fundamental issues that metaphysicians worry about. Often what they seek is quite clear and the methods they employ have undergone thorough testing and so have acquired widespread acceptance among experts in the respective fields in which they work. Additionally, the task of scientists often, although not always, appears to be insulated from issues of morality or politics that could sidetrack their objectivity and direction. But none of this is true of metaphysicians. Metaphysicians do not have at their disposal a proven method that practitioners of the discipline generally accept. Metaphysicians differ widely in the procedures they follow and accept as appropriate for their discipline. Nor do they agree on the aim of their task. Some metaphysicians believe that their aim is the description of reality, but others think it has to do only with the description of the way we think about the world, and still others hold that metaphysics studies language and nothing more. Additionally, metaphysics often connects with moral and political issues, which interfere with objectivity in investigation. Ideological commitments in these areas often affect and color how metaphysicians see their task and how they approach it. Metaphysics, then, is both difficult and risky. It is difficult because it confronts many obstacles that other disciplines do not face. And it is risky because it is easily misled into conclusions governed by considerations that have little to do with knowledge and objectivity. This would suggest that we should relegate it to the dustbin of history, for why should anybody with common sense bother with a discipline beset by such gargantuan difficulties? Why bother with an enterprise whose parameters have yet to be determined, whose method needs to be established, whose aim is under dispute, and whose conclusions are suspect? And yet, metaphysics continues to captivate our interest. After the appearance of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, there has been no age in the West when metaphysics has not been cultivated. And there has been no prolonged period of time when humans pursued serious intellectual endeavors without the raising of meta-
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physical issues and questions. But why is this? In Metaphysics and its Task, I have proposed an answer to this question: Metaphysics is inevitable because metaphysical views are at the heart and foundation of all other views we may have and this means that metaphysics is the foundation of all other disciplines of learning.1 If what I claim is true, then the task of trying to figure out what metaphysics is about and how it relates to the other disciplines of learning is essential to the understanding of human knowledge. And this is what I attempt to do in the book. My answer is that metaphysics is the study of the most general categories that we can think about and of the relation of less general categories to those most general ones. Every piece of knowledge we acquire, every thought we have, presupposes in some way a metaphysics, namely, a view of how the categories we use to think about the world are related. This is quite an ambitious claim that has so far not been made by anyone else and through which I propose to explain not only the survival of metaphysics throughout the ages, but also the way that metaphysics has been done, even if this is contradicted by what many metaphysicians have said. Yet, although the claim is ambitious, it is not immodest, for in my view, philosophy is a never-ending enterprise, to the extent that the depth of understanding a person can achieve at any one time is always finite, contextual, and mixed with error. And this applies to my claim as well. The process of understanding does not end with the writing of a book. Instead, it is the beginning of the path toward new insights. A teacher of mine told me once that he always hesitated to write a book because its publication appeared to mark an end to inquiry and the beginning of apology. I am afraid I do not agree. The writing and publication of a book is instead a new beginning, the opening of doors to a public criticism of what before were most likely private views. In this sense, the discussions contained in the present volume fulfill my expectations about Metaphysics and its Task, for I wrote this book for the purpose of promoting, instead of ending inquiry. This book is a challenge instead of a solution and so I am most grateful to those who have participated in the present dialogue for the opportunity they have given me to enter this new phase of my understanding. Thanks to them, I have developed a further appreciation of the nature and task of metaphysics. Philosophy cannot make any headway if it is not engaged in re-examination and criticism. This is the source of its vitality. Without criticism, philosophical views become dead dogmas, empty formulations, and sacred cows that stand in the way of enlightenment. The articles contained in this collection have satisfied my expectations, for they have subjected my views to serious and rigorous criticism and in doing so have advanced the discussion of the nature of metaphysics. Although in the book I challenge all previous conceptions of metaphysics, it is understandable why most of the articles included here have offered criticisms from the realist perspective characteristic of Aristotelians and Thomists. The reason is not difficult to surmise, for the neutralism I have proposed in the conception
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of metaphysics constitutes a challenge to these philosophical traditions in particular and to all naive forms of realism in the conception of metaphysics in general. Most of the criticisms fall along a few lines. Russell Pannier and Thomas D. Sullivan argue that my view of metaphysics is too narrow. Robert A. Delfino and Jonathan J. Sanford argue that it is too broad. Josef Seifert argues that it is both too narrow and too broad. And Peter A. Redpath attacks my conception of philosophy. John D. Kronen and Daniel D. Novotny, on the other hand, generally agree with my position and show how it can be used (1) to sidestep some criticisms of the discipline that are put together based on narrow conceptions of it and (2) to understand better some figures in the history of philosophy. Finally, most of the authors also present particular criticisms of my view that I have answered in context and need not repeat here. Three of them in particular, namely, Pannier, Sullivan, and Seifert, challenge my conception of categories as ontologically neutral. I believe I have responded to all these criticisms effectively and therefore that my theory about the nature of metaphysics and categories remains unscathed. As such, my theory continues to be a challenge to realist, conceptualist, and nominalist understandings of the discipline and to any view of categories that attempts to analyze them. Yet, although in my estimation I have satisfactorily answered the criticisms presented against my position, in the process of answering them I have deepened my understanding of metaphysics and have tried to clarify and develop some parts of my theory that had remained obscure or incomplete. I am, therefore, most grateful to all the participants in this enterprise for making possible one further step in my understanding and for opening new avenues of reflection. In short, I thank them for allowing me to take the first steps in the direction of another beginning.
NOTE 1. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999).
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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS Robert A. Delfino is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St. John’s University, Staten Island, New York. He received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His primary interests are in metaphysics and ethics, with special attention to St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle. Recently, he has published “Aristotle on the Value of the History of Philosophy for Philosophy” and “Mystical Theology in Aquinas and Maritain.” Currently, he is editing several books in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy (SHWP), a special series of VIBS. He maintains the official webpage of the American Maritain Association, and welcomes e-mail comments at:
[email protected] Jorge J. E. Gracia is Samuel P. Capen Chair and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is the author of fourteen books: Surviving Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality: A Challenge for the 21st Century (2005), Old Wine in New Skins: The Role of Tradition in Communication, Knowledge, and Group Identity (2003), ¿Qué son las categorías? (2003), How Can We Know What God Means? The Interpretation of Revelation (2001), Hispanic/Latino Identity: A Philosophical Perspective (2000), Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundations of Knowledge (1999), Filosofía hispánica: Concepto, origen y foco historiográfico (1998), Texts: Ontological Status, Identity, Author, Audience (1996), A Theory of Textuality: The Logic and Epistemology (1995), Philosophy and Its History: Issues in Philosophical Historiography (1992), Individuality: An Essay on the Foundations of Metaphysics (1988), Introduction to the Problem of Individuation in the Early Middle Ages (1984, 1986), The Metaphysics of Good and Evil According to Suarez (1989), and Suarez on Individuation (1982). He is also the author of over 200 articles and the editor of two dozen volumes ranging in subjects from metaphysics, hermeneutics, and medieval and Latin American philosophy, to ethnic and racial issues. He has been president of the Metaphysical Society of America, Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, Society for Iberian and Latin American Thought, International Federation of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and American Catholic Philosophical Association. He was the first Chair of the APA Committee for Hispanics in Philosophy and has been a member of the Executive Committee of the Eastern Division of the APA and Chair of the Program Committee. He sits on the boards of more than twelve philosophy journals and edits an interdisciplinary series on Hispanic culture and thought. John D. Kronen is a full Professor of Philosophy at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul Minnesota. He is the author of several articles in the areas of medieval philosophy, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion in such journals as The Review of Metaphysics, Faith and Philosophy, The American Catholic Philosophi-
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About the Contributors
cal Quarterly, and The Modern Schoolman, as well as being the co-translator, with Jeremiah Reedy, of Suarez’s “On The Formal Cause of Substance,” Metaphysical Disputation XV, published by Marquette University Press. Daniel D. Novotny is working on his doctoral degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has studied philosophy and classics at the Charles University in Prague and philosophy at the International Academy for Philosophy in Liechtenstein. His interests include metaphysics/ontology (currently working on categories in Boethius) and philosophy of human nature (currently working on a critique of Searle’s mentalistic physicalism). Russell Pannier is professor of law at the William Mitchell College of Law. He has published articles in the areas of philosophy of logic, metaphysics, ethics, jurisprudence, and constitutional law. He is currently working on a book on St. Thomas Aquinas with Thomas D. Sullivan and Jeremiah Reedy (De Ente et Essentia: An Introduction to Aquinas’s Basic Ontology). Peter A. Redpath is presently Full Professor of Philosophy at St. John’s University, Staten Island, New York, executive editor of VIBS, a founder of the Gilson Society, chairman of the Board of the Angelicum Academy, member of the Board of the Great Books Academy, former associate editor of the journal Contemporary Philosophy, former vice president of the American Maritain Association, and a member of the Board of the Yves R. Simon Institute. He is the author and editor of numerous philosophical books and articles. Jonathan J. Sanford is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He is well acquainted with Gracia’s thought, for he took classes with Gracia. While completing his graduate studies, Gracia served as the chair of his dissertation committee, and the two have collaborated on several projects, including “Ratio quarens beatitudinem: Anselm on Rationality and Happiness” and the “The Metaphysics of the Matrix.” Sanford co-edited, with Michael Gorman, Categories: Historical and Systematic Essays, which was published in 2004 by the Catholic University of America Press. He has also published on figures and issues in Ancient and Medieval philosophy, as well as phenomenology. His main interests include the study of Aristotle, the connections between Aristotle and the early phenomenological movement, and the nexus between metaphysics and ethics. Josef Seifert was born in 1945 in Seekirchen near Salzburg. He received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Salzburg in 1969 and his habilitation from the University of Munich in 1975. From 1973 to 1980 he was professor and Director of the Ph.D. program (chairman of graduate program) of philosophy at the University of Dallas. In 1980 he co-founded and directed the International
About the Contributors
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Academy of Philosophy in Irving, Texas, and has been Rector of the IAP in Liechtenstein since 1986. He is presently also Professor of Philosophy at the IAP with special emphasis in Epistemology, Metaphysics and Philosophical Anthropology. He has received the following honors including: Honorary Member of the Medical Faculty of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in Santiago (since 1993), EU (European Community) Medal of Merit recipient, and recipient of the EU Order of Merit (Ordre de Merite), 23 May 1997 for the Founding of the International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality Liechtenstein and for philosophical work of “highest European Standards” 23 May 1997. He was awarded Man of the Year in 1998 by the American Biographical Institute Board of International Research. He has published over 300 philosophical articles in nine languages. Among his most recent monographs are: Überwindung des Skandals der reinen Vernunft. Die Widerspruchsfreiheit der Wirklichkeit-trotz Kant (2001), Ritornare a Platone (2000), Philosophy, Truth, Immortality. Three Prague Lectures (1998), and What is Life? The Originality, Irreducibility, and Value of Life (1997). Thomas D. Sullivan is Professor of Philosophy and Aquinas Chair in Philosophy and Theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. His writings range across Logic, Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Metaphysics.
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INDEX ability, intellectual, 100, 111, 136, 151, 154, 160, 162 absoluteness, 155, 156, 158 abstraction, 73, 76, 170 a. of form, 79 three types of a., 78–80 accident, 54, 58, 154, 156, 172 act, 167 actus actumm (act of all acts), 25, 154 a. of adoration and love, 30, 31 a. of apprehension, 79 a. of intuition, 103 a. vs. potency, 4, 25, 83 a. of predication, 98, 116–119 a. of speech, 117–121, 206–208, 210, 211 a. of understanding, 137 activit(ies)(y), 26, 55, 61, 63, 77, 100, 161 a. of ancient Sophists, 113 a. as an end, 76 essential a., 110 intellectual a., 107 108 intentional a., 99, 137 metaphysical a., 95 moral a., 147 philosophical a., 136 self-a., 165 act-of-being (actus essendi), 24 actualization, 25, 28 Adam and Eve, 166 aims, 102, 167, 198 Hume’s a., 187 a. of science and philosophy, 109, 111 Anderson, Philip, 1 angels, 26, 156 animals, 24, 26, 157, 161, 222 Anselm of Canterbury, 28 anthropology, 10 philosophical a., 85, 173 antiquity, pagan, 106, 107 Aporetics, 113
apprehension, 76, 78–80, 84 a. of form, 18 a. of identity statements, 103 a. of objects, 161 argument(s), 2, 4, 7–9, 17, 19, 39, 48–51, 58, 69–72, 75, 76, 105, 109, 129– 132, 138, 141, 143, 146, 153, 157, 161, 172, 173, 181, 182, 189, 190, 193, 195, 214–217, 220, 222–227, 231–235, 237 a. from authority, 91 dialectical a., 164 logical a., 21 indirect a., 47 modus tollens a., 59 moral a., 162, 164 philosophical a., 10 Aristotelian-Thomistic framework, 16, 17 Aristotle, 1–4, 6, 11, 18, 19, 21–23, 25– 27, 30, 33, 39, 51, 53, 56–65, 69–74, 76, 78–80, 89–91, 112, 120, 122, 133, 138, 147, 151, 179, 185, 186, 194, 213, 215, 236, 237, 241 Categories, 11, 57, 59 Metaphysics, 1, 4, 6, 18, 23, 30, 56–58, 122, 241 arithmetic, 5 Armstrong, David, 216 art, 23, 35, 106, 114, 120, 139 aim of a., 195 a. of conviction, 113 a. of speech, 113 a. of Protagoras, 113 arteries, 7 assertion(s), 28, 31, 36–38, 40, 108, 115, 153, 164, 180, 184, 207, 221, 227 Buddhist a., 152 contradictory a., 114 identity a., 208–210 predicative a., 208, 209, 219
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Index
astronomy, 2 Atomists, 25 Augustine, St. Aurelius (Bishop of Hippo), 90, 107, 111, 142 Auyang, Sunny, 3–5, 12 How is Quantum Field Theory Possible?, 3 Averroes (Ibn Rushd), 138 Avicenna (Ibn Sina), 138 Ayer, Alfred Jules, 180, 186 Language, Truth, and Logic, 180 Barth, Karl, 146, 149 beauty, 28, 29, 145 being (to be) (esse/ens), 17, 18, 22, 24–28, 30, 32–34, 38, 41, 49–51, 59–61, 63–65, 70, 73, 74, 78–81, 83, 84, 91, 93, 94, 119, 121, 134, 135, 147, 154, 156, 158, 168, 169, 195, 196. See also essence absolute b., 23, 30–32, 40, 42, 47, 50 accidental b., 57 authentic b. (seienden), 25, 30 b. as being (ens in quantum ens), 1–9, 11, 13–19, 21–26, 30, 32, 35, 39– 41, 47, 50–53, 56, 6, 71, 76, 80, 94, 170, 173, 185, 186, 200 b. itself, 29, 31, 34, 148, 173 categories/kinds of b. (genera), 22, 23, 26, 32–36, 38–42, 50, 57–60, 100, 161 causes of, 80, 154 common b. (ens commune), 80 composite b., 154 conditions of b., 98, 224, 239 death as b., 27 four sense of (Aristotle), 57, 58 linguistic b., 120 moral b., 149, 162 necessary b., 18, 152, 153 negation of b., 83 non/not being, 18, 31, 32, 60, 61, 93, 115, 119 vs. nothingness, 22, 31, 32, 35, 40, 50, 214 ontology, b. subject of, 84
philosophy of b., 21, 41 possible b., 18, 93 predication of b., 84 principles of b., 25, 81 properties of b., 3, 27, 40, 80, 81, 148, 156 real b., 24, 26, 27, 33, 39, 41, 48, 49, 168, 196, 198 source of b., 30 transcendental b., 40 unity of b. (ens), 26 being(s) (entia), 27, 28, 32, 50, 115, 148, 149, 154–156, 158, 163, 164, 195 divine b., 30 in each b. (in quolibet), 28 human b., 28, 76, 78–80, 99, 108, 117, 118, 133, 142, 151 (in)finite b., 29–31, 51 spiritual b., 149, 151, 167 supreme/ultimate, 31 belief(s), 100, 101, 107–110, 112, 161, 187, 189 b. system, 109, 112 b. of theists, 152 biologists, 7 birth, 155, 162 blood, 7 Boethius, 76, 94 De Trinitate, 76 Brahmins, 156 Brunner, Emile, 146 Calov, Abraham, 148, 174 Calvin, John, 146 Cantor’s Theorem, 204, 205 capillaries, 7 Cassiodorus (Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator), 106 categor(ies)(ization)(y), 2–4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13–15, 18–27, 31–42, 47–50, 54–65, 69–75, 79, 81–85, 91–94, 96, 101–105, 114–121, 123, 133, 134, 141–143, 149, 156, 157, 159, 160, 166, 170, 171, 173, 176–189, 198, 200, 203–228, 231–240, 242–243
Index Categories (Aristotle), 11, 57, 59 caus(ation)(e)(s), 3, 14, 21, 22, 24, 26– 30, 41, 51, 53, 56, 63–65, 79, 84, 94, 96, 100, 116–118, 122, 123, 143, 151–155, 157–159, 160, 165, 167, 179, 182, 186, 189 final c., 24, 56, 100, 152 first c., 21, 22, 53, 56, 63, 64, 153, 155 ultimate c., 3, 14, 65, 153, 161, 186 chaos, 166 Chat-World, 3 chemistry, 1, 2 Christ, 91, 152, 155, 164, 169, 171, 173 Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation (Ritschl), 147 Christianity, 145, 157, 162 class(es)(ification), 99, 133, 217, 238 c. of beings, 4 c. of categories, 204–206, 208, 211, 215, 219, 227 c. of entities, 203, 207, 208, 211, 227 c. of linguistic expressions, 205 c. of properties, 204 c. of thinkers, 160 c. of universals, 211 collection(s), 40, 60, 73, 107, 136, 137, 151, 216, 217, 222, 242 c. of beings, 7, 16–19, 50, 51 c. of conclusions, metaphysics as, 84 c. of disciplines, 170 c. of perceptions, 182 Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Aquinas), 3 common sense, 5, 181, 187, 188, 241 Hume’s c. s., 189 community, 23, 35 Christian c., 164, 168 linguistic/of speakers, 226 composition, 156 concept(ion)(s), 205, 216, 218, 220–224, 226, 231, 232, 235, 236 transcendental c., 238 conceptualism, 37, 54, 82, 104, 212, 218 conceptualists, 37, 218, 231
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conditions, 24, 48, 54, 61, 62, 71, 72, 78, 98–102, 104, 105, 109, 112, 114– 116, 123, 133, 134, 137–140, 142, 143, 147, 187, 188, 195, 197, 206– 209, 219, 223, 224, 239 conformity, 76, 122 Congress, United States, 1 connection(s), 55, 69, 73, 78, 183, 190 necessary (causal) c., 183, 188, 189, 234 consciousness, 24, 26, 27, 165, 187 self-c., 155 consequence(s), 6, 7, 14, 17, 105, 115, 199, 205, 209, 210 contradiction, 22, 34, 36, 37, 42, 93, 101, 108, 162, 214, 216, 232, 237 non-c., 114, 141 Copi, Irving M., 37, 44 cosmology, 159 philosophical c., 150 quantum c., 2, 12 cowardice, 76 Creator, 27, 151, 153 creature(s), 151, 154–159, 164–167 curiosity, 162 Curtius, Ernst Robert, 106, 107, 125 European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 106 Cyc, 3 Daedalus, 110, 111 Dasein (man), 25 De Trinitate (Boethius), 76 death, 27, 91, 106, 166 decay, 79, 162 deductions, 59 Deely, John, 105, 106, 109, 125, 130, 132 definition(s), 8, 10, 17, 18, 38, 40, 51, 54, 55, 58, 62, 78, 79, 82, 97–99, 103, 105, 115, 116, 129, 133, 142, 143, 220, 221, 225, 226 d. of category, 33, 36, 54, 56, 60, 62, 63, 65, 104, 119, 142, 218, 219, 238 d. of God, 155 d. of humanbeing, 117, 118, 133, 142, 234
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definition(s) (continued) d. of metaphysics, 32, 40, 53–55, 76, 81, 96–99, 102, 103, 105–107, 120, 129, 133, 134, 145, 148, 170, 179, 186, 188, 189, 203, 204 d. of personhood, 160 d. of predication, 71 d. of religion, 162 Delfino, Robert A., 16, 75, 89, 91–94, 243 demiurge, 27 demonstration(s), 1, 31, 57, 59, 66, 77, 86 Descartes, René, 109, 133 designer, 152, 153 dialectic, 25, 59, 90, 164, 225 differences, 37 d. bet. Aquinas and Gracia, 15 d. bet. Aristotle and Gracia, 70 within beliefs, 100, 107 unifying d., 122 in views of metaphysics, 194 d. within being, 23, 24 dignity, 26, 28, 150, 153, 182 disagreements d. concerning nature of categories, 231 d. concerning nature of metaphysics, 95, 194, 198 Delfino’s d. with Gracia, 84, 94 d. in interpretations of Hume, 179 d. among theologians, 10 Seifert’s d. with Gracia, 21, 32 disposition, 76, 77, 111, 132, 134 divine, the 8, 10, 13–15, 49, 168. See also God divinity, 14, 19, 39, 49, 81, 85, 171, 180 doctrine, sacred, 90, 137 dream(s), quixotic, 111 Duns Scotus, John, 22, 28 duration, 148 ego, 161 ego cogitans (thinking ego), 39 electrons, 1 Empedocles, 115 empiricism, 187, 190 Empiricus, Sextus, 113
ends, 152, 161, 166 e. of finite spirits, 167 moral e., 166, 172 utilitarian e., 53 ultimate e., 21 English, 130, 131, 141, 208, 218, 219 ens. See being entity, 2, 3, 7, 17, 33, 36–38, 81, 98, 103, 116, 147–149, 155, 187, 188, 203, 205, 207–211, 213, 219, 223, 226, 227, 228, 237–239, 240 classes of e., 211, 227 common sense e., 189 conceptual e., 60, 205 derivative e., 189 (extra-)mental e., 54, 82, 218, 221–224 fictitious e., 188, 189 ideal e., 24 immanent e., 215, 232 infinite e., 26 linguistic e., 54, 98, 102, 205–210, 218–221, 231 logical e., 24, 26 material e., 206 mind-independent e., 205, 218 neutral e., 218, 225 observable/non-observable, 185 ontological e., 57 phenomenal e., 153 predicated e., 207 primary e., 189 spiritual e., 172 vs. natural e., 148, 150, 199 (non-)(spatio-)temporal e., 215, 216 theoretical e., 186 transcendental e., 60, 213–216, 232 Ephectics (epochê), 113 epoché, 38 esse. See being essence (essentia), 14, 17, 28, 39, 41, 49– 51, 57, 78, 79, 98, 112, 116, 120, 156, 209, 213, 214. See also being e. vs. cause, 117, 118 e. divine e., 30 e. vs. existence, 23–26, 90, 119, 148
Index essence (essentia) (continued) ideal e., 24, 26 irreducible e., 30, 36 essentialism, 41, 49 theological e., 165, 166 ethics, 140, 146, 147, 149–151, 170, 173 European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (Curtius), 106 evil(s), 76, 166 exclusivity, 112, 140 existence, 148, 160, 180, 182, 186 (non-)existent, 5, 25 experience(s), 25, 30, 34, 100, 101, 103, 116, 139, 148, 155, 165, 173, 186, 212–216, 237, 241 e. of the beautiful/art, 195 collective e., 75, 95, 108, 109, 112 common e., 112 (non)empirical e., 101, 108 knowledge arises from e., 196 mystic e., 155 object(s) of e., 116, 117 philosophical e., 95, 97, 109 expression(s), linguistic, 33, 36, 37, 54, 57, 64, 81, 142, 165, 185, 187, 204, 205, 208, 210, 218, 219, 225, 226, 235 e. of moral nature, 168 e. of opinions, 181 prospositional e., 103 Fabro, Cornelio, 24, 43 faith, 90, 107, 111, 137, 163 Christian f., 152, 160 falsity, 57, 61, 235 Father of the Universe, 27 Fathers, 147, 175 forbidden tree, fruit of, 166 form(s), 169, 209, 219, 222, 226, 227, 232 Frank, Franz Hermann Reinhold, 155 Frege, Gottlob, 5, 215, 219, 220, 223, 224 Garrett, Don, 179 Garvie, Alfred, 152 gen(era)(us), 4, 32–34, 36, 38–42, 55, 58, 59, 61, 99, 100, 156, 188, 197 quasi-g., 156
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Gilson, Étienne, 24, 25, 43, 97, 132, 154 glorificatio Dei (glorification of God), 31 goal(s), 96, 97, 111, 197 of deductions, 59 of explaining metaphysics, 105 of inclusivity, 105 the unity of metaphysics, 39, 48 God, 1, 3, 9–11, 13–16, 18, 19, 25–27, 30, 31, 39, 42, 44, 47–50, 65, 77, 80, 81, 85, 90, 106, 136, 137, 146, 149–159, 162–169, 171– 173, 181, 186, 195, 199, 200 gods, 151 Gómez, Emma Ingala, 47, 231 goodness, 28, 29, 121, 148, 156, 162 goods, 28 Gorgias, 112–115, 117, 120, 141 grace,158, 159, 166 Gracia, Jorge J. E., 1–11, 13, 19–23, 27, 32–42, 47, 53–57, 59–65, 69, 90, 75–77, 79, 81–85, 89, 95–123, 129, 142, 145, 146, 159, 164, 169– 173, 179, 185–190, 193, 203–228, 231, 232, 236, 237, 241 HowCan We Know What God Means, 136 Metaphysics and its Task, 3, 13, 21, 32, 42, 47, 53, 56, 65, 75, 82, 95, 129, 136, 143, 186, 193, 203, 209, 212, 231, 232, 234, 242 A Theory of Textuality and Texts, 137 ground, 7, 17, 22 g. of being, 164, 168 ontological g., 57 g. of perfection, 154 g. of speculative sciences, 76 ultimate g., 30, 31 g. of the world, 150 habit (habitus), 110–112, 132, 134–136 Harnack, Adolf, 145 Hartle, James, 2 Hartshorne, Charles, 186 Heidegger, Martin, 3, 25, 204, 238 heterogeneous parts, 23 historical contingency, 11
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holy war, 154 hope(s), 10, 111, 122, 163 hostility, 154, 168 How Can We Know What God Means (Gracia), 136 How is Quantum Field Theory Possible? (Auyang), 3 human beings, 24, 26, 27, 78, 79, 85, 90, 95, 99, 118, 133, 139, 143, 156, 159, 161–163, 166, 168 human nature, 79, 95, 179–181, 184– 189, 200 Hume, David, 2, 89, 134, 179–190, 198–200 Treatise of Human Nature, 180 Husserl, Edmund, 3 idea(s), 90, 93, 102, 147, 152, 157, 158, 160, 161, 165, 182, 183, 185, 188, 189 ideal, the, 28, 106 idealis(m)(ts), 37, 164, 165 idolatry, 154 immutability, 156 impossibilit(ies)(y), 82 inclusivity, 105, 112, 141 individual(s), 6, 7, 16–19, 42, 47, 48, 50, 51, 61, 79, 91, 102, 115, 117– 120, 142, 164, 234 induction, theory of, 62 infinity, 29 insight(s), 28, 117, 155, 160, 242 inspection, 103 instantiation(s), 49, 211, 214–218, 220–223 intellect, 29, 76–78, 80, 82, 85, 107, 111, 135–137, 145, 155 intention(s), 95, 108, 111, 132 intuition(s), 5, 21, 105, 106, 114, 117, 131, 207 aesthetic i., 163 (non)empirical i., 101, 108 posteriori i., 103 investigation(s), 2–4, 6, 9, 22, 26, 31, 35, 38, 41, 56, 60, 64, 72, 77, 147, 161, 185, 225, 241 ontological i., 205 philosophical i., 205
Islam, 155 jargon, metaphysical, 183, 200 John of Damascus, 147 John of St. Thomas (John Poinsot), 89, 91, 94 Tractatus de approbatione et auctoritate doctrinae divus Thomae , 89 judgment(s), 29, 76, 80, 113, 134, 135, 137, 160, 165, 195, 227 moral j., 161 value j., 147, 161, 162 justice, 27–29, 31 Kant, Immanuel, 3, 10, 149, 152, 154, 163, 196, 237, 238 kingdom of God, 159, 168, 168 knowledge, 1, 3, 4, 10, 13, 15, 17, 22, 23, 27–30, 32–35, 49–51, 57, 60, 63, 64, 72, 73, 75, 76, 81, 101, 102, 104, 106–113, 132, 134, 137–139, 141, 148, 152, 154, 163, 168, 170, 171, 180, 183, 184, 196, 197, 241, 242 eternal k., 171 k. of God, 10, 164, 165 metaphysical k., 23, 29, 35, 137, 152 moral k., 162 possible k., 60 practical k., 163 revealed k., 91 scientific k., 57, 59, 63, 76, 91, 134 theoretical k., 112, 120, 163 Knowledge Representation (Sowa), 3 Kronen, John D., 145, 193, 194, 198, 199, 201, 243 Laertius, Diogenes, 113 language, 10, 34, 50, 136, 212, 220, 241 l. of adventure, 141 Aristotelian l., 168 contemporary common l., 114 natural l., 204, 205, 208, 221 ordinary l., 2, 5, 105, 106, 109, 110, 117, 118, 130–132, 140 Language, Truth, and Logic (Ayer), 180 law(s), 152, 161 causal l., 161
Index law(s) (continued) l. of God/divine, 166, 168 logical l., 37 l. of mechanism, 160, 163 natural l./l. of nature, 161–163, 167 practical l., 163 l. of spiritual life, 163, 164 universal l., 16 learning, 106, 139, 140, 181, 184, 198, 242 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 28, 134 Lenat, Douglas, 3 Leo XIII, Pope, 91 life, 23, 25, 27, 28, 35, 41, 63, 157, 161 mental l., 187 spiritual l. (geistiges Leben), 147, 148, 163, 164 location, 34, 35 temporal l., 213 logic(ians), 11, 34, 37, 50, 121, 140, 150, 180, 231 modal l., 5 philosophical l., 37 second-order l., 226 Lotz, David, 146 Lotze, Hermann, 152 Loux, Michael, 186 Luther, Martin, 146, 154 MacDonald, George, 169 many, primary substance predicable of, 236 Marxists, 25 materialism, reductive, 160, 161, 168 materiality, 24, 79, 81, immateriality, 92 mathematics, 2, 5, 77–79, 83, 84, 161, 184 matter, 24, 25, 78, 83 corporal m., 82 intelligible m., 79, 80 necessary m., 167 prime m., 157 sensible m., 79, 80 ultimate m., 158 Maurer, Armand A., 109, 110, 132, 136 “The Unity of a Science St. Thomas and the Nominalists,” 109 mechanics, quantum and fluid, 2
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medieval schoolmen, 147 memories, 164 Meno (Plato), 110 Menon, 110, 111 Metaphysical Disputations (Suárez), 196 metaphysical point of view, 23 Metaphysics and its Task (Gracia), 3, 13, 21, 32, 42, 47, 53, 56, 65, 75, 82, 95, 129, 136, 143, 186, 193, 203, 209, 212, 231, 232, 234, 242 Metaphysics (Aristotle), 1, 4, 6, 18, 23, 30, 56–58, 122, 241 microscope, 7 Middle Ages, 106, 110, 238, 240 mind(s), 11, 17, 42, 76, 78–80, 82, 110, 118, 134–136, 152, 155, 157, 163, 168, 186, 188, 213, 214, 221 m./object-of-m. distinction, 188 openness-of-m., 38 understanding as act of m., 137 modalit(ies)(y) of being, 23, 24, 32, 33, 40, 41, 50 moral order, 166 morality, 161, 165, 166, 241 motion(s), 25, 78, 79, 115, 158 pre-m., 159 motive(s), 162, 166 Mover, Unmoved, 27, 90, 91, 151, 153 mystics, 155 nature (natura), 78, 147–149, 151, 209, 210 n. of being/existence, 22, 81, 119 n. of categories, 36, 38, 205, 218, 224, 225, 227, 228, 231, 232 n. of corporeal matter, 82 n. of definition, 98 n. of God/divine n., 9, 19, 149, 152, 155–159, 165, 166, 168 human n., 28, 78, 79, 95, 149, 168, 171, 179–181, 184–186, 188, 189, 200 n. of metaphysics, 1, 36, 65, 69, 72, 89, 95, 97, 107, 122, 123, 136, 140, 145, 146, 150, 153, 155, 160–164, 166, 169, 170, 172, 194, 195, 198, 242, 243 moral n., 147, 168
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Index
nature (natura) (continued) n. of philosophy, 106, 108, 112, 129, 130, 132, 133 n. of pure perfection, 28 rational n., 172 spiritual n., 147, 151, 162 n. of uncaused cause, 153 n. of wisdom, 63 necessity, 5, 6, 38, 41, 121 conditional n., 116 n. of metaphysics to theology, 149 negation(s), 82 n. of being, 83 n. of metaphysics, 37 neo-Platonis(m)(ts), 120, 157 neo-Sophism, 106 neutralism, categorical, 231, 242 Newton, Isaac, 8 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 25 nominalis(m)(ts), 37, 54, 82, 104, 109, 135, 212, 218, 231 non nihil (not nothing), 32 Norton, David Fate, 188 nothing(ness), 18, 22, 23, 30–32, 35, 40, 42, 50, 51, 54, 61, 65, 71, 73, 81–83, 92, 208, 214, 235, 237–239 Novotny, Daniel D., 179, 193, 194, 198– 201, 243 nuclei, atomic, 1 nutrients, 7 object(s), 148, 152, 158, 161, 222 o. of consciousness/mind/human experience, 26, 82, 88, 116, 117 of metaphysics, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 13–15, 18, 19, 21, 24, 26, 33–35, 38–40, 47, 49–56, 58, 60, 63, 65, 69, 73– 77, 81–85, 91–94, 96–101, 103, 105, 108, 115, 129, 148, 161, 195–199 o. of natural philosophy, 78 o. of the neutrally immaterial, 82–84 phenomenal o., 151, 160 o. of predicative speech, 207, 208 o. of science, 78, 79
one (unum), 5, 15, 22, 80, 113, 119, 121, 122, 156 o. with/of God, 151, 156, 157 ontological question, 135, 187 ontological status, 133 o. s. of categories, 8, 81, 104, 119, 203–205, 210, 212, 214, 220, 225–227, 231 o. s. of objects of metaphysics, 54, 134, 135 ontology, 14, 23, 41, 60, 74, 84, 85, 94, 179 common sense o., 187, 188 empiricist o., 188 Gracia’s o., 211 Hume’s o., 186–189 proto-phenomenological o., 188 operators, modal, 5 opinion(s) (doxa), 90, 101, 107, 108, 110, 182 contrary o., 181 negative o., 112 opposites, 22, 23, 31 ousiology (the science of substance), 26 Owens, Joseph, 107, 109, 113, 132, 133, 136, 137 Pannier, Russell, 1, 13–19, 47, 73, 203, 231–233, 235, 243 pantheism, 25 Parmenides of Elea, 110 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 3 Pelikan, Jarslov, 145 perception(s), 115, 134, 148, 182, 186–189 Perera, Fernando, 3 perfection(s), 21, 24–31, 39, 42, 47, 148, 151, 152, 154, 156, 157 person(hood), 23, 24, 26, 27, 31, 35, 39, 41, 42, 47, 51, 61, 64, 72, 73, 76, 77, 89, 100, 111, 112, 137, 149, 150–153, 160–166, 168, 169, 171–173, 199, 242 created personhood, 151, 163–165, 167, 168, 173 distinction bet. p. and spirit, 149 distinction bet. p. and things, 150, 152, 163, 169, 173, 198
Index person(hood) (continued) God’s personhood (uncreated), 151, 154–156, 158, 166 personalis(m)(ts), 146, 150, 160–162, 169 personality, 151, 155, 162, 164–167, 169 philosoph(ers)(y),1–3,5,9,10,17,19,21, 22, 30,32,34,41,42,48,53–56,77–79, 82, 83, 89–91, 93, 95–103, 105–115, 12–123,129–141,143, 147,148,150, 154,179–181,183,184,186,187, 193–197,199,200, 204,207,212, 231,232,238,242, 243 p. of categories, 41 p. of God, 30 p. of first/highest causes/being), 21, 41, 53 metaphysics vs. p., 102 photons, 1 physics, 1–3, 5, 8 piety, 152 place, 39, 51, 57, 79, 148 Plantinga, Alvin, 10 plants, 24, 26, 85 Plato, 25, 27, 29, 31, 56, 65, 81, 107, 110, 111, 113, 115, 119, 120, 122, 143, 213, 233, 238 Republic, 29 Theaetetus, 115 plurality, 4 poetry, 106 possession, 53 habitual p., 110 spiritual p., 161 possibility, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 17, 23, 37, 93, 158, 208, 224, 226 Posterior Analytics (Aquinas), 11, 90 potency, 4, 25, 78, 83, 154 power(s), 77, 150, 151, 183, 184 causal p., 189 p. to control natual laws, 163, 164 ethical p., 163 God’s p., 157, 162 intellectual p., 63, 76, 77, 94, 114, 115, 171, 172 spiritual p., 162, 163
257
practice of metaphysics/philosophy, 75, 91, 95, 97, 103, 107–115, 138– 140, 180, 193, 200, 204, 226 predicat(es)(ion), 33, 36, 49, 54, 56–59, 84, 98, 116, 118, 119, 121, 142, 143, 155–157, 164, 198, 205, 208, 210, 226, 234, 235, 237, 239 accidental p., 234 analogical p. 238, 240 essential p., 104, 219, 234, 235 necessary p., 104 true/false p., 59, 61, 62, 71, 72, 104, 239 univocal p. 238 pre-Socratics, 110 principles, 3, 4, 23, 24, 26, 32, 40, 41, 50, 56, 80, 133, 149, 161, 164, 181, 186, 187 causal p., 161 p. of demonstrative reasoning, 90 first p., 21–23, 36, 47, 53, 63, 64, 120 limiting p., 25 metaphysical p., 22, 72, 121, 123, 149, 153, 227 moral p., 163 transcendental p., 23, 26 universal p., 82 priority, 26, 79 proofs, 2, 5, 146, 163, 182 p. for the existence of God, 146, 150–153 proposition(s), 22, 24, 37, 57, 58, 76, 96, 102, 104, 114, 116, 117, 134– 136, 142, 205, 211, 217, 221, 222, 224, 227, 231 Protagoras, 113–115, 117, 120 prote ousia (primary substance), 36, 39 Protestant Church, 145 Protestant Orthodox, 147, 154, 157, 165 Protestant Scholastic(ism)(s), 148, 156 Protestants, 145 proto-phenomenology, 187 Pyrrho(nism), 113 qualities, 28, 58, 79, 135, 136, 158, 171 Quenstedt, Johannes Andreas, 156 Quine, Willard Van Orman, 89, 212, 226
258
Index
ratio formalis (formal ground), 28. See also ground rational animal, 78, 117, 118, 133, 142, 225 realis(m)(ts), 37, 54, 62, 82, 104, 212, 218, 231, 243 neoplatonic r., 147 phenomenological r., 28, 41 semantic r., 238 realist theories, 218, 221 realization, 5, 28 reasoning, 179–181, 183, 185, 189, 200, 234 causal r., 185 demonstrative r., 90 dialectical r., 90 metaphysical r., 181 natural r. about God, 9 syllogistic r., 11 Redpath, Peter A., 73, 95, 129–143, 195, 243 reductionism, 48, 121 empiricist r., 187 non-r., 36 relationship(s), 1, 7, 151, 152, 155, 158, 164, 171, 207 r. among categories, 54, 56, 75, 81, 85, 102, 170, 171, 186, 189, 203 God’s r. with creation, 158, 159 Republic (Plato), 29 research(es), 1, 109, 110, 122, 181, 184 retributive theory, 166 revelation, 9, 10, 19, 146, 153, 164, 169 Rhetor/rhetoric, 106, 142 Ritschl, Albrecht, 145–173, 198, 199 Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, 147 Rothe, Richard, 147 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 111 rule(s), 24, 100, 114–119, 136, 140, 141, 157, 160 semantic r., 219–221 Russell, Bertrand, 211, 212, 233, 234 sacrifice, 166 Sanford, Jonathan J., 53, 69–74, 195, 243 Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst, 145, 147, 156
scholastics, 14, 23, 51, 132, 148, 156 science(s), 1–5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 15–17, 21, 22, 26–28, 32, 37, 43, 42, 55, 56, 58– 61, 63–65, 70, 72, 75–82, 84, 90, 91, 93, 94, 100, 103, 106, 108, 109, 111, 113, 114, 120, 126, 134, 138, 139, 160–162, 164, 170, 183, 184, 195, 197, 241 s. of categories, 55, 56, 60 s. of first causes, 22, 56 Hume’s s. of human nature, 179–181, 184–189, 200 philosophical s., 84 speculative s., 75, 76, 78, 79, 82, 85, 91 seeking (zêtêsis), 5, 53, 107, 111, 113, 120, 194 Seifert, Josef, 21, 47–52, 195, 231, 235– 237, 243 selfhood, 164 semantics, 5, 98 logical s., 185 sentence(s), 14, 36, 53, 58, 98, 110, 120, 134– 136, 206, 207, 227, 234, 236, 239 declarative s., 15 identity s., 15, 49, 81, 101, 102, 104, 114–116, 119, 141–143, 208, 209 predicat(e)(ive), 98, 101, 102, 112, 115, 116, 119, 208 quantificational s., 227 token s., 143 true s., 71, 239 similarities, 15, 16, 56, 60, 147, 160, 216, 217, 232 simplicity. 30, 156, 188 divine s., 158 sinner(s), 166 skeptic(ism)(s), 112–115, 141, 145, 228 Skepticism, 113, 141, 145, 228 Smith, Norman Kemp, 187 Socrates, 36, 48, 110, 111, 114, 117, 122, 142, 143, 206, 208, 209, 220, 221 something (aliquid), 22, 27, 30, 32, 33, 50, 51, 54, 58, 65, 73, 78, 98, 101, 102, 115–119, 134, 135, 137, 138, 206, 214, 238
Index Sophists, 112, 113, 115, 120 Sowa, John F., 3 Knowledge Representation, 3 space, 188, 224 space-time realm, 212 species, 4, 40, 50, 99, 163, 183, 188, 212, 215, 237 speech, 113, 115 s. act, 117, 118, 120, 206 hypostasized s. a., 121 predicative s. a., 206–208, 211 essential s., 116, 142 s. about God, 161 theoretical vs. practical s., 120 Spinoza, Benedict (Baruch) de, 151 spirit, 39, 147, 148, 151, 156, 159, 162, 163 cognizing s. of man, 148 Divine S., 165 finite s., 151, 167 Spirit among s., 166 uncreated s., 156 spiritual life (geistiges Leben), 147, 148, 163, 164 spontaneity, 162 Strauss, David Friedrich, 147 Stroud, Barry, 187 structure(s), 11, 188, 222 s. of categories, 2, 8 conceptual s., 5 s. of physical theories, 5 Suárez, Francisco, 132, 196, 198 Metaphysical Disputations, 196 substance, 15, 21, 24–27, 33, 39, 43, 48, 51, 54–58, 78–81, 83, 92, 133, 155, 156, 172, 179, 189, 195, 235 inert s., 159, 171 material s., 149, 151, 198 s. metaphysics, 168 natural s., 163, 72 primary s., 36, 57–59, 236, 237 secondary s. (deutera ousia), 33 thinking s., 134 suffering, 27, 57, 156, 166 Sullivan, Thomas D., 1, 13–19, 47, 73, 203, 231–233, 235, 243
259
Summa theologiae (Aquinas), 77, 137, 153 Super Collider, 1 superconductivity, 1 superficiality, 135 syllogism, 11, 59 system(s), 5, 109, 114, 147 belief s., 109, 112 s. of four classical Aristotelian causes, 24 linguistic s., 117 metaphysical s., 65, 145 s. of ontologies, 3 philosophical s., 110, 112, 114, 132, 135, 139 science as a s., 109 s. of all systematic views, 103 theological s., 146, 147 theoretical s., 112 term(s), 33, 36, 37, 102, 105–107, 112, 187, 188, 204, 205, 208, 218, 225, 226, 235 ambiguous t., 183 categorial t., 19, 48, 54, 55, 61, 62, 71–73, 81, 93, 133, 188, 219, 225, 231, 235, 240 common general t., 5 complement t., 92 t. in identity sentences, 81, 102, 103, 119, 208 linguistic t., 84, 96, 99, 123 meaning of t., 98, 121, 183 (im)personal t., 90, 150, 157 predica(ble)(te) t., 15, 33, 48, 49, 62, 72, 92, 98, 101–104, 115, 116, 119, 121, 137, 142, 205, 207, 209, 218, 225, 235, 236, 238, 239 t. referring to individuals, 48 subject t., 98, 102, 116, 137, 206, 208, 209, 227, 239 transcendental t., 15 undefin(able)(ed) t., 8, 72 Theaetetus (Plato), 115
260
Index
theolog(ians)(y), 9, 10, 14, 19, 23, 30, 85, 90, 91, 109, 136, 137, 145–147, 149, 150, 153–161, 165–167, 169–171, 173, 180 Theology and Metaphysics (Ritschl), 147, 150, 171 A Theory of Textuality and Texts (Gracia), 137 thing(s), 5, 33, 34, 36, 40, 54, 57, 58, 71, 78, 80, 98–100, 115–118, 123, 134, 148–150, 155, 170, 186, 198, 199, 210, 237, 239, 240 caused t., 151 t. outside world of human experience, 215 perceived t., 115 perfect t., 154, 157 predicable t., 236 t. willed by God, 168 things in themselves, 23 thinkers, 4, 15, 104, 107, 110, 135, 138, 162, 172. See also personalis(m)(ts) contemporary t., 146 first/second-order t., 145–147 Greek t., 122 19th C. liberal t., 145 Thomas Aquinas, St. (Angelic Doctor), 3–6, 9, 15–17, 24, 29, 49, 73, 75, 78–80, 82, 85, 89, 90, 109, 110, 133, 134, 137, 140, 145, 147, 153–158, 167 Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 3 Posterior Analytics, 11, 90 Summa theologiae, 77, 137, 153 Thomis(m)(ts), 9, 15, 16, 89–91, 93, 94, 132, 242 existentialist t., 26, 41 neo-t., 49, 82, 91, 94 tissues, body, 7 token(s), 60, 216–218 linguistic t., 206, 209 Tractatusdeapprobationeetauctoritate doctrinaedivusThomae(Poinsot),89 traditionalists, 11
transcendentals, 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 13–15, 19, 21–23, 27, 39, 47, 156, 237, 239, 240 Treatise of Human Nature (Hume), 180 Troeltsch, Ernst, 145 truth(s), 2, 16, 21, 24, 30, 31, 58, 76, 77, 90, 107, 113, 114, 132, 134–139, 141, 152, 156, 164, 168, 169, 195, 197, 206, 225, 232 t. of Christian doctrine, 90 t. conditions, 104, 105, 109, 112, 116–118 t. and falsity, 57 t. from God, 10 t. of metaphysical doctrine of God, 154 necessary t., 235 revealed t., 91 t. of science or philosophy, 138, 139 t.-value of assertions, 207 Übermensch (overman), 25 unit(ies)(y), 4, 11, 22, 23, 29, 30, 77, 80, 93, 94, 115, 121, 122, 148, 156, 163, 193, 194 accidental u., 172 u. of being, 26 God’s u., 156, 165 hyper-u., 156 u. of metaphysics, 39, 42, 48, 84, 93, 97, 122, 194 partial vs. total u., 119 u. of science, 85, 108 supreme u., 29 among Thomists, 89, 90 u. of the world, 150 “The Unity of a Science St. Thomas and the Nominalists” (Maurer), 109 universals, 6, 60, 79, 82, 91, 210, 211, 212 value (bonum), 22, 28, 30, 148, 149, 161 absolute v., 27, 28 v. of the infinite being, 30 metaphysical v. of the glorificatio Dei, 31 v. of metaphysics, 147, 148, 172 v. of natural theology, 169 v. of personal spirit, 151
Index value (bonum) (continued) v. of persons, 149–151, 153, 160, 165, 168, 169, 173 v. of proof of the existence of God, 151 v. of Thomas’s philosophy, 91 veins, 7 voluntarism, theological, 165, 166 Warren, David, 3 Weinberg, Steven, 1, 2 Welch, Claude, 146, 171 Whitehead, Alfred North, 107 will, 116, 155, 158, 159, 163, 167, 168 w. without direction, 168 divine/God’s w., 165, 166, 168 William of Ockham (Occam), 84, 109, 135 will to power, 25 Wippel, John F., 80, 81, 83 wisdom, 27, 28, 30, 63, 106, 111, 112, 154 wish(es), 108, 111, 138, 139 Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann, 2, 204 Wolff, Christian, 147, 149 world(s), 5, 27, 31, 39, 58, 65, 77, 91, 97, 100–103, 105, 107, 109, 110, 117, 131, 133–135, 137, 139, 140, 149, 150, 152, 153, 155, 157–159, 161–163, 165–167, 187, 193, 195, 197, 222, 234, 241, 242
261
common w., 167 w. of conceptual, logical entities, 26 w. of human experience, 212, 213–215 natural w., 151, 160, 163, 186 outside w., 188 phenomenal w., 151 possible w., 6, 24 w. of reality/being (real), 26, 59 w. of science and common sense, 180 w. of spiritual beings, 167 world-picture, theoretical, 2 worth, 151, 164, 166 ethical w., 163 moral w., 167 w. of personhood, 169 Zabeeh, Farhang, 180 Zetetics (seekers), 113
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Noel Balzer, The Human Being as a Logical Thinker
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Archie J. Bahm, Axiology: The Science of Values
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H. P. P. (Hennie) Lötter, Justice for an Unjust Society
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Archie J. Bahm, Ethics: The Science of Oughtness
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Joseph P. DeMarco, A Coherence Theory in Ethics
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Sidney Axinn, The Logic of Hope: Extensions of Kant’s View of Religion
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Messay Kebede, Meaning and Development
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Michael H. Mitias, Editor, Philosophy and Architecture.
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William Pencak, The Conflict of Law and Justice in the Icelandic Sagas
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Daniel Statman, Moral Dilemmas
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Corbin Fowler, Morality for Moderns
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Dennis Rohatyn, Philosophy History Sophistry
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Gregory F. Mellema, Collective Responsibility
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Leena Vilkka, The Intrinsic Value of Nature
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C. L. Sheng, A Utilitarian General Theory of Value
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106. Dennis Bonnette, Origin of the Human Species. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 107. Phyllis Chiasson, Peirce’s Pragmatism: The Design for Thinking. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 108. Dan Stone, Editor, Theoretical Interpretations of the Holocaust. A volume in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 109. Raymond Angelo Belliotti, What Is the Meaning of Human Life? 110. Lennart Nordenfelt, Health, Science, and Ordinary Language, with Contributions by George Khushf and K. W. M. Fulford 111. Daryl Koehn, Local Insights, Global Ethics for Business. A volume in Studies in Applied Ethics 112. Matti Häyry and Tuija Takala, Editors, The Future of Value Inquiry. A volume in Nordic Value Studies 113.
Conrad P. Pritscher, Quantum Learning: Beyond Duality
114. Thomas M. Dicken and Rem B. Edwards, Dialogues on Values and Centers of Value: Old Friends, New Thoughts. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 115. Rem B. Edwards, What Caused the Big Bang? A volume in Philosophy and Religion 116. Jon Mills, Editor, A Pedagogy of Becoming. A volume in Philosophy of Education 117. Robert T. Radford, Cicero: A Study in the Origins of Republican Philosophy. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 118. Arleen L. F. Salles and María Julia Bertomeu, Editors, Bioethics: Latin American Perspectives. A volume in Philosophy in Latin America
119. Nicola Abbagnano, The Human Project: The Year 2000, with an Interview by Guiseppe Grieco. Translated from Italian by Bruno Martini and Nino Langiulli. Edited with an introduction by Nino Langiulli. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 120. Daniel M. Haybron, Editor, Earth’s Abominations: Philosophical Studies of Evil. A volume in Personalist Studies 121. Anna T. Challenger, Philosophy and Art in Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub: A Modern Sufi Odyssey 122. George David Miller, Peace, Value, and Wisdom: The Educational Philosophy of Daisaku Ikeda. A volume in Daisaku Ikeda Studies 123. Haim Gordon and Rivca Gordon, Sophistry and Twentieth-Century Art 124. Thomas O. Buford and Harold H. Oliver, Editors Personalism Revisited: Its Proponents and Critics. A volume in Histories and Addresses of Philosophical Societies 125. Avi Sagi, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd. Translated from Hebrew by Batya Stein 126. Robert S. Hartman, The Knowledge of Good: Critique of Axiological Reason. Expanded translation from the Spanish by Robert S. Hartman. Edited by Arthur R. Ellis and Rem B. Edwards.A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 127. Alison Bailey and Paula J. Smithka, Editors. Community, Diversity, and Difference: Implications for Peace. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 128. Oscar Vilarroya, The Dissolution of Mind: A Fable of How Experience Gives Rise to Cognition. A volume in Cognitive Science 129. Paul Custodio Bube and Jeffery Geller, Editors, Conversations with Pragmatism: A Multi-Disciplinary Study. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values
130. Richard Rumana, Richard Rorty: An Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Literature. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 131. Stephen Schneck, Editor, Max Scheler’s Acting Persons: New Perspectives A volume in Personalist Studies 132. Michael Kazanjian, Learning Values Lifelong: From Inert Ideas to Wholes. A volume in Philosophy of Education 133. Rudolph Alexander Kofi Cain, Alain Leroy Locke: Race, Culture, and the Education of African American Adults. A volume in African American Philosophy 134. Werner Krieglstein, Compassion: A New Philosophy of the Other 135. Robert N. Fisher, Daniel T. Primozic, Peter A. Day, and Joel A. Thompson, Editors, Suffering, Death, and Identity. A volume in Personalist Studies 136. Steven Schroeder, Touching Philosophy, Sounding Religion, Placing Education. A volume in Philosophy of Education 137. Guy DeBrock, Process Pragmatism: Essays on a Quiet Philosophical Revolution. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 138. Lennart Nordenfelt and Per-Erik Liss, Editors, Dimensions of Health and Health Promotion 139. Amihud Gilead, Singularity and Other Possibilities: Panenmentalist Novelties 140. Samantha Mei-che Pang, Nursing Ethics in Modern China: Conflicting Values and Competing Role Requirements. A volume in Studies in Applied Ethics 141. Christine M. Koggel, Allannah Furlong, and Charles Levin, Editors, Confidential Relationships: Psychoanalytic, Ethical, and Legal Contexts. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology
142. Peter A. Redpath, Editor, A Thomistic Tapestry: Essays in Memory of Étienne Gilson. A volume in Gilson Studies 143. Deane-Peter Baker and Patrick Maxwell, Editors, Explorations in Contemporary Continental Philosophy of Religion. A volume in Philosophy and Religion 144. Matti Häyry and Tuija Takala, Editors, Scratching the Surface of Bioethics. A volume in Values in Bioethics 145. Leonidas Donskis, Forms of Hatred: The Troubled Imagination in Modern Philosophy and Literature 146. Andreea Deciu Ritivoi, Editor, Interpretation and Its Objects: Studies in the Philosophy of Michael Krausz 147. Herman Stark, A Fierce Little Tragedy: Thought, Passion, and SelfFormation in the Philosophy Classroom. A volume in Philosophy of Education 148. William Gay and Tatiana Alekseeva, Editors, Democracy and the Quest for Justice: Russian and American Perspectives. A volume in Contemporary Russian Philosophy 149. Xunwu Chen, Being and Authenticity 150. Hugh P. McDonald, Radical Axiology: A First Philosophy of Values 151. Dane R. Gordon and David C. Durst, Editors, Civil Society in Southeast Europe. A volume in Post-Communist European Thought 152. John Ryder and Emil Višňovský, Editors, Pragmatism and Values: The Central European Pragmatist Forum, Volume One. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 153. Messay Kebede, Africa’s Quest for a Philosophy of Decolonization
154. Steven M. Rosen, Dimensions of Apeiron: A Topological Phenomenology of Space, Time, and Individuation. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology 155. Albert A. Anderson, Steven V. Hicks, and Lech Witkowski, Editors, Mythos and Logos: How to Regain the Love of Wisdom. A volume in Universal Justice 156. John Ryder and Krystyna Wilkoszewska, Editors, Deconstruction and Reconstruction: The Central European Pragmatist Forum, Volume Two. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 157. Javier Muguerza, Ethics and Perplexity: Toward a Critique of Dialogical Reason. Translated from the Spanish by Jody L. Doran. Edited by John R. Welch. A volume in Philosophy in Spain 158. Gregory F. Mellema, The Expectations of Morality 159. Robert Ginsberg, The Aesthetics of Ruins 160. Stan van Hooft, Life, Death, and Subjectivity: Moral Sources in Bioethics A volume in Values in Bioethics 161. André Mineau, Operation Barbarossa: Ideology and Ethics Against Human Dignity 162. Arthur Efron, Expriencing Tess of the D’Urbervilles: A Deweyan Account. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 163. Reyes Mate, Memory of the West: The Contemporaneity of Forgotten Jewish Thinkers. Translated from the Spanish by Anne Day Dewey. Edited by John R. Welch. A volume in Philosophy in Spain 164. Nancy Nyquist Potter, Editor, Putting Peace into Practice: Evaluating Policy on Local and Global Levels. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 165. Matti Häyry, Tuija Takala, and Peter Herissone-Kelly, Editors, Bioethics and Social Reality. A volume in Values in Bioethics
166. Maureen Sie, Justifying Blame: Why Free Will Matters and Why it Does Not. A volume in Studies in Applied Ethics 167. Leszek Koczanowicz and Beth J. Singer, Editors, Democracy and the Post-Totalitarian Experience. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 168. Michael W. Riley, Plato’s Cratylus: Argument, Form, and Structure. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 169. Leon Pomeroy, The New Science of Axiological Psychology. Edited by Rem B. Edwards. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 170. Eric Wolf Fried, Inwardness and Morality 171. Sami Pihlstrom, Pragmatic Moral Realism: A Transcendental Defense. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 172. Charles C. Hinkley II, Moral Conflicts of Organ Retrieval: A Case for Constructive Pluralism. A volume in Values in Bioethics 173. Gábor Forrai and George Kampis, Editors, Intentionality: Past and Future. A volume in Cognitive Science 174. Dixie Lee Harris, Encounters in My Travels: Thoughts Along the Way. A volume in Lived Values:Valued Lives 175. Lynda Burns, Editor, Feminist Alliances. A volume in Philosophy and Women 176. George Allan and Malcolm D. Evans, A Different Three Rs for Education. A volume in Philosophy of Education 177. Robert A. Delfino, Editor, What are We to Understand Gracia to Mean?: Realist Challenges to Metaphysical Neutralism. A volume in Gilson Studies
