Seaux What?

Critical Response to: Taking pause for Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will of Nazi Germany

2010-01-28T17:17:00.000-08:00

In the author's notes for this article Ken, you write, "Surely we are accountable for what we do, but doesn't that depend on whose side we give our allegiance, and who is in control and domination at the time?" This question is similar to the question raised by Dietrich von Bonhoeffer. Upon leaving his post at Union Theological Seminary and returning to Germany, Bonhoeffer wrote:

"I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people…. Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization" (Gesammelte Schriften 1:320).

In the question you pose, you have two premises which you try to aim toward the same end; however, these premises are contradictory and therefore cannot have the same end. Our accountability as individuals can never rest merely in obligation or duty to an authority to whom we have given our allegiance. In the end, we are always free to choose our actions. As Bonhoeffer argues, an ethics based on duty (the ethics which is the modus operandi of any totalitarian state or military organization) does not free man from individual moral accountability.

“The man of conscience, says Bonhoeffer, is torn between difficult choices, “becomes timid”, and chooses to bandage his conscience with lies so that he may avoid despair. Though it would seem as though duty would bring decisiveness to the “multiplicity of possible decisions”, duty itself cannot lead to an ethical choice, because the burden of responsibility lies, in the end, with its giver and not with its receiver and executioner. “The man of duty,” says Bonhoeffer, “will end by having to fulfil [sic] his obligation even to the devil” (Ethiks 5).

This however is a philosophical dispute and Ken's article is not about philosophy; it is an article about artistic excellence. There is no question that Leni Rienfenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" is a powerful piece of propaganda and a masterful documentary of the goals of the Third Reich. The topic of this article is the quality of Rienfenstahl's work not its intended purpose. It is clear to me that Ken's intent in writing this article is to encourage critical thinking among his readership. His intent is not to make an endorsement of the evil genocidal acts of the Nazi regime.

kbm, you accuse Ken of moral relativism. The way Ken states the question at hand makes it difficult to see that what he describes is not a moral relativism, but a duty ethics which is grounded in an objective, not a subjective reality, namely, in the person or organization giving the command or issuing the law. kbm, your name calling is scholastically objectionable. Comments should be focused on the article and not its author. It is most likely that all you know of Ken is the articles which he writes; therefore, it remains my firm conviction that you know him not at all.

To read Ken's article please follow this link.

Works Cited

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Ethics. Trans. Neville Horton Smith. Ed. Eberhard Bethge. New York: The MacMillan Co., 1964.

---. Letters and Papers from Prison. Trans. Reginald H. Fuller. Ed. Ebhard Bethge. New York: The MacMillan Co., 1965.

LaRive, Ken M. “Taking pause for Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will of Nazi Germany.” The National Examiner. 27 Jan 2010, . 28 Jan 2010.

Mengus, Raymond. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Decision to Resist.” The Journal of Modern History 64 Supplement: “Resistance Against the Third Reich” (1992): S134-S146.

The Searching Mind: Summary and Application

2009-08-18T09:02:00.000-07:00

In his book, The Searching Mind, philosopher and theologian Joseph Donceel, S.J., argues from reason alone for the existence of God (Donceel 55). Donceel begins his argument by saying that it is contradictory to deny the existence of God—“an infinitely perfect, necessarily existing being” (55). In so doing, he recycles a form of the Leibnitzian ontological argument the general structure of which is: 1) If God is possible, he exists; 2) God is possible; therefore, 3) God exists. Or to put it in terms of symbolic logic:

If (A) > (B)

(A)

∴ (B)

More complex than this simplified version of Leibnitz’s argument but following the same general structure, Donceel’s argument is basically this: 1) That God is possible; 2) God is possible; therefore, 3) God exists. For purposes of simplicity let’s look at each of these propositions separately, since Donceel has an argument for each proposition. In doing so, several other points will be elucidated, namely: the implicit presence of Donceel’s argument within any cosmological argument, that to deny God’s existence is a performative contradiction, that according to Donceel’s argument both Descartes’s ontological argument and Kant’s denial of God are wrong.

The major premise of this argument: “If the infinitely perfect being is possible, it exists,” Donceel claims is self-evident—that it “is evident as soon as one understands it” (90). To which he answers that our continual striving toward the infinite implies the existence of the infinite or at least its possibility (57). He explains the striving of the mind for the illimited thusly. He begins by saying that this striving is either caused by something within a human being or without a human being. It is not possible that it result from something within a human being, since human nature is finite. As such, it is not possible of for such a striving to originate from within a person. Therefore, this striving toward the infinite must find its origin in something outside of the human being—in a wholly distinct reality. Said reality cannot itself be limited, because such a being could not elicit a craving for the infinite. Hence an infinitely perfect being needs must exist, for it is only by its existence that the human craving/striving toward the infinite can be explained (63).

Donceel, further explains that he does not mean by his major premise that God derives his existence from his possibility. What he means is that “God’s positive possibility implies, as a previous condition, his existence” (70). “If God does not exist, he is not possible either” (70). Therefore, He is only possible if He exists. He explains this by making the distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic possibility. “A being is extrinsically possible if it either exists or can be made to exist.” As such, “a square circle is extrinsically impossible” (71). An intrinsically possible being is possible only if its concept is not contradictory in its constitutive notes. Thus to propose the nonexistence of a necessarily existing being is contradictory. “It follows that according to both meanings of the word ‘possible’ God is possible only if he exists, which is the same as to say: If God is possible, he exists” (71).

The minor premise of the argument, “The infinitely perfect being is possible,” Donceel says must be demonstrated (90). Donceel bases his argument for God’s existence in the dynamism of the human intellect. He begins his argument by saying that what is known to us by experience is known as finite. He claims that our knowledge of things as finite—as limited is rooted in our constant striving beyond things and “beyond all limits, toward the unlimited” (55). He claims that we can only know a limit as limit by surpassing it. Within the concept of “limit as limit” there are two elements: “until here” and “not further” (55). In this second element is implied that there is already something further—beyond the limit. For Donceel, that everything our minds encounter or may in encounter is known as limited can only be explained in that our minds strive beyond these limits (56). This dynamism of the intellect is not sated in or by the finite, for as soon as our minds grasp a finite reality they are already beyond it, striving towards another reality. Donceel says, “The awareness of the finiteness of all that which enters my mind can be explained only by the fact that my intellect keeps pointing toward the illimited, the intensively infinite” (56). At which point he makes the bold claim, “That is the way, and the only way, in which I know God” (56). Donceel then closes the argument for this proposition saying, “if I am a being who, by his innermost self, continually strives for the infinite, the infinite must at least be possible” (56). He holds that it cannot be admitted “that a human being would be an embodied affirmation of the contradictory, of the impossible” and “congenitally the faculty of the impossible” (56-57, 90). This requires that the infinite exists.

There are several hints interspersed throughout the Donceel’s text which suggest that Donceel’s argument is implicit within Aquinas’s cosmological argument or any cosmological argument, for that matter. The first of these suggestions comes in the closing of Chapter 1. Here Donceel suggests that, in the end, St. Thomas’s arguments do not end with God as the Unmoved Mover or the First Cause, “but as the Principle of all Intelligibility” (54). It is “a Principle which we do not actually grasp with our finite intellects, but one which we keep forever intending as lying beyond all that which we can grasp” (54). Later on he says that in St. Thomas’s First Way, it can be “difficult to see why finite effect demands for its explanation an infinite cause” (64). However, within his argument there is already present an aspect of the infinite in the minds striving toward infinity. He claims this to be a compelling reason in the case why an infinite should be demanded as an explanation for a finite (64).

For Donceel, to deny the existence of God is a performative contradiction. For Donceel, God is the “Principle of all Intelligibility” (54). He says:

We LIVE the principle and the affirmation before we can express them in words. They are our intellect in act, what scholastic philosophy called our “agent intellect.” Our only way of establishing validity is to try to show that those who deny them in words use them in fact, in their knowledge and their action. We must use “retortion” and show that, like the existence of God, the principle of intelligibility may be denied only through an affirmation which asserts it implicitly. (89).

To deny the existence of God, is to deny the Principle of Intelligiblity—it is to deny the very principle by which we think, by which we live, by which we act, and by which we even make the denial. Hence to say or to believe that God does not exist is to be in a LIVED performative contradiction.

Contrary to Donceel’s argument from the dynamism of the intellect, in Descartes ontological argument it remains impossible to determine whether contradiction is even possible. Donceel argues that we do not perceive contradictions because “the idea is surrounded by a haze, which may well hide the contradictions” (68). Therefore, he claims, that it is not possible to arrive at a “positive possibility of God” through an examination of an a priori idea of God. It is necessary that this examination be based on some experience. Only in this way could Descartes’s ontological argument be considered valid.

Donceel admits that Immanuel Kant got it right when he rejected the ontological argument on grounds that it illicitly moves from the “conceptual to the real order” (71). But that Kant got it wrong when he denied the existence of God. Donceel says that Kant claims that we need not affirm the existence of a necessarily existing being (72). By simply refraining from thinking of it we avoid contradiction. He says, “Kant admits here that the idea of a nonexisting necessary being is contradictory” (72). Therefore, according to Donceel, Kant is right in not affirming it and rejecting it. However, Donceel goes on to restate his previous explanations saying, “we cannot affirm the existence of an infinite” (72). But that we “coaffirm” implicitly its existence when we affirm that a finite reality exists, as such, we do so in every human action. Donceel holds that the distinction rests between the static Kantian conception of knowledge and a dynamic conception of knowledge. In a dynamic conception of knowledge, denial of this principle of coaffirmation is impossible. To Kant’s second objection, Donceel replies that while the denial of certain realities may not involve a logical contradiction; there are few realities which can be denied without a performative contradiction. Statements such as: “The world does not exist, “The Infinite Being does not exist” while they do not present logical contradictions, imply a lived performative contradiction “which occurs between the content of the affirmation and the act of affirming” (74). Thus, saying, “The Infinite Being does not exist,” presupposes the intention in the intellect of the Infinite Being.

Thus, in basing his argument in the dynamism of the intellect, Donceel avoids the pitfalls of both the ontological and the cosmological arguments. He is easily able to contend with the objections of both Descartes and Kant. In providing a concept of God, a denial of which is a lived contradiction, Donceel is able to supplant all criticism both on logical and performative grounds, and provides an argument for God’s existence which says more of God than do other cosmological arguments. For according to his argument, “we reach God as the Infinite Mystery” and the very “Principle of Intelligibility” (54).

Works Cited

Donceel, Joseph, S.J. The Searching Mind: An Introduction to a Philosophy of God. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979.

The Symposium Meets Derrida

2009-02-07T20:40:00.001-08:00

Alcibiades, you ask me, "Who or what is Eros?"

"Yes, Eáson, but more clearly than that: What kind of love is Eros for you?"

Your question reminds me of once when I was visiting with my dear friend, Derrida, I asked him to explain to me the concept of love. After a rather long pause he began to answer. He said that "we cannot speak of Eros apart from his object." Thus to answer the question: Who is Eros? Derrida said, "We must look to the beloved from the perspective of the lover." "We must become the lover to understand Eros." "For it is," said Derrida, "in the relationship between lover and beloved that Eros finds his identity." "Thus, the question the lover must ask himself is: Is my beloved a 'who' or a 'what'?"

"So," Derrida said, "let us first consider Eros as love for a 'what'." "In this regards, your beloved is a thing." "He or she is merely a thing of beauty — something to be possessed."

At this point I think that Derrida touches on what Pausanias said earlier this night in his story about Eros Pandemus, when he said, "they are in love with their bodies rather than their souls."

My good friend Derrida said that a love for that which is to pass away, that which is mutable, is a love that is far more likely to fail with the passage of time. He said, very clearly, "Love built upon that which does not endure itself will not endure — it will grow sick and die."

"So you see my dear Alcibiades, holding, as we do, that Eros is an immortal god, what he engenders within us must, at the very least, have some semblance of to his eternal nature." "But as you can see, if Eros in us is seeking after a thing, it cannot endure for long, for things change."

"Well, then: What does your friend Derrida say about love for a who?" "And how would you explain love for a 'who' in terms of our god Eros?"

"That is simple my friend."

"'Who' is a subject, as opposed to 'what' which is an object." "Thus, the 'who' as a subject remains a mystery, without ever being apprehended, thus even though it changes, this becoming is the who — the who remains."

"Remember what Pausanias said regarding Uranian Eros?" "The object of his love is the soul and not the body." "This is an important distinction because it speaks of a love for the soul, which is immortal and thus shares in the immortal nature of our god Eros."

"Eros, as a love for a 'who,' points to our love of the person, rather than love merely for their bodies." "Thus it points to a love which endures and engenders something of the immortal nature of our god."

"So you see Alcibiades, If we love the person — a who, when their body changes and grows old, we shall not soon abandon them, as would be the case if we loved a what — a body, which changes and can become ugly."

"Eáson, you make good points, what say you of his argument Socrates?"

Siddhartha: Reflection and Analysis

2009-02-02T17:11:00.000-08:00

Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse’s most famous novel, tells the story of Siddhartha, the son of a rich Brahmin priest. In search of truth, he becomes a wandering samana or ascetic as a young boy, a rich man in his middle years, and finally a ferryman in the twilight years of his life. He lives each of the four Hindu goals of life: Dharma, Artha, Kama, and Moksha. But more than this, I feel that Hesse tries in some way to demystify some of the key doctrines of Hinduism and Buddhism – Atman/Brahman; Moksha, Vedantic jnana and karma-yoga; dyana leading to Samadhi; and Samsara and Dukka.

In Hindu religion, one of the most important doctrines is that of the Atman or Great Self. And as I reflect on the novel, I think that the whole of Siddhartha’s journey to enlightenment hinges on this doctrine of the Atman, found in the imagery of the following quote about the river, taken from the chapter entitled “Ferryman”.

…today he saw one of the river’s secrets, one that gripped his soul. He saw that the water continually flowed and flowed and yet it was always there; it was always the same and yet every moment it was new. Who could understand, conceive this? He did not understand it; he was only aware of a dim suspicion, a faint memory, [and] divine voices. (Hesse, 102)

For it is at this very moment that Siddhartha returns to his ‘faith’ and, as it were, sees again, if only dimly, the Atman or the Great Self. After this ‘epiphany’, the river becomes, for Siddhartha, both mandala and mantra, in as much as it aids in taking him out of himself in meditation – dyana on the Atman. The river ‘speaks’ to him, for him, and in him, as Hesse writes, “…the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om – perfection”. I see in this metaphor of the river, the Atman, at once transcendent^¹ and eminent – “the unity of all things” (136). It is in the river, in the Atman, that Siddhartha comes to realize the ‘supreme truth’ that time is not real, but simply an illusion, which merely seems to separate us from all eternity, suffering from bliss, and evil from good. (143)

Aside from this major Hindu doctrine, Hesse also deals momentarily with the other doctrines and practices which I listed in the first paragraph. What is interesting to me is how each of these is manifested in the personal religiosity of Siddhartha, which mixes Hindu and Mahayana^² Buddhist traditions. This mixing of religious views shows the principle of dynamic syncretism which was prevalent in Hinduism at the time of the historical Gotama (Gautama). At the forefront of Siddhartha’s religious practices is the idea of jnana, as he is continually calling himself a “seeker of truth”. In his childhood even, he begins to question the teachings of the Brahmins, saying of his father, “Was Atman then not within him? Was not then the source within his own heart? One must find the source within one’s own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking – a detour, error” (7). In this quote is also found the root of his personal faith, which is that the source of peace – the path to ‘enlightenment’ is within oneself. However, it is not until the end of the novel that Siddhartha actualizes this belief. Through the first two parts of his life, both as samana and as lover & rich-man, he seeks the ‘Truth’ through teachers and their teachings, whether ascetics, Kamala, or Kamaswami. But again, it is only in the river (Atman) that he achieves ‘enlightenment’ and his lifelong seeking is answered.

Having reached ‘enlightenment’ Siddhartha returns from Nirvana and leads a life of karma-yoga as the ferryman, passively participating in the world while actively withdrawn in meditation/dyana on the river – on the Atman. Even then he is drawn back to Dukka or suffering caused by his desire to be with his son. However, after years spent listening to the river – to the Atman, Siddhartha ‘releases’ his son and gradually actualizes the belief he has held ever since he was a child that “One must find the source within one’s own Self, one must possess it” (7). And in the end, having become one Self with the ‘river’ and holding true to the words he speaks to the Illustrious One that wisdom cannot be communicated with words, he communicates with a kiss, the supreme truth of Atman to his friend Govinda. (47 & 149-152)

As a final reflection and insight of sorts, I find, as Siddhartha has found, that one must ultimately find oneself in one’s own self. While others may add to the insights we have a about ourselves, it is only from within that we can truly know who and what we are. Only I and God can know who I truly am. It is thus that each man’s path to ‘enlightenment’ will be different and will possibly take his entire life.

Works Cited

Hesse, Hermann. Siddhartha. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, and Auckland: Bantam Books, 1971.

Footnotes

1 as used by Emmanuel Kant’s philosophical system to describe that which exceeds the limits of experience

2 the Theravada tradition holds to the doctrine of Anatta (no-self) and is conservative in its practices and thus not in accord with the Siddhartha of this novel

Jacques Maritain: the Intuition of Being and Epistemology

2009-02-01T07:42:00.000-08:00

According to Robert Dennehy, in his article “Maritain’s ‘Intellectual Existentialism’: An Introduction to His Metaphysics and Epistemology”, Jacques Maritain’s metaphysics is intimately linked with his epistemology by what Maritain calls the “intuition of being” (Dennehy 202). In this relationship between his metaphysics and his epistemology, Maritain insists that metaphysics is primary and has priority over epistemology. Maritain calls his view of Epistemology a “Critical Realism” (Maritain, Distinguish to Unite or The Degrees of Knowledge 71). For Maritain, “what the mind knows is identical with what exists” (Sweet). Expressed differently, to know a thing means that the thing’s ‘essence’ exists ‘immaterially’ in the mind as an object of knowledge and we know the real by this concept or what Maritain calls “esse intentionale”. As said previously, Maritain forms an intimate link between his Metaphysics and his Epistemology. Robert Dennehy, in the section of his article introducing Maritain’s Epistemology, expresses this linkage saying “that if metaphysics studies being as being, epistemology studies being as known. I wish here to explore briefly this linkage, so as to understand Maritain’s approach to the real. In so doing, I hope to approach his epistemology in a similar manner and therefore be able to give a fair recounting of what Maritain calls a “realistic noetic^¹” comprised of ‘thing, object, and concept’. “For the real is intelligible and as such is knowable by means of concepts” (Dennehy 214)

Part 1: The Link?

For Maritain the link between metaphysics and epistemology exists in that the mind has as its “proper object” being. However, being for Maritain is a thing of great mystery. In his book A Preface to Metaphysics, Maritain says the following about being:

…being is a mystery, either because it is too pregnant with intelligibility, too pure for our intellect, which is the case with spiritual things, or because its nature presents a more or less impenetrable barrier to understanding, a barrier due to the element of nonbeing in it, which is the case with becoming, potency and above all, matter. (A Preface to Metaphysics 12-13).

It is because being, which is a mystery, is the object of knowledge that Maritain so tightly links the study of metaphysics to the study of epistemology. Yet as said earlier, metaphysics is the study of being as such, while epistemology is the study of being as known. In both cases however, the object is that of being. Since the notion of being is often misunderstood, Maritain is sure to clarify that by being he does not mean the “particularized being” which we experience every day and which is the object of the empirical sciences. To the contrary, Dennehy says that Maritain intends the very same understanding of being in his epistemology as he does in his metaphysics (Dennehy 204-205). What links these two fields is what Maritain calls the “intuition of being”. In metaphysics, this is an intuition of being as such. In epistemology, it is an intuition of being as known in a thing. In both instances there is a ‘knowing’ that takes place atemporally and pre-intellection, hence it is an intuition (Maritain, Distinguish to Unite or The Degrees of Knowledge 91).

Part 2: Thing & Object and Their Concept

As a critical realist, Maritain deals directly with the existent thing — the real. In beginning the section in The Degrees of Knowledge entitled “Critical Realism”, Maritain says that it is necessary to draw a distinction between the “thing as thing”, which exists for itself, and the “thing as object”, when it is made present to the faculty of knowledge, because the same thing is observed simultaneously, both in nature (so as to exist) and in the mind (as it is known) (90-91). While this distinction can be drawn and is necessary, epistemologically speaking, for Maritain, the two terms — thing and object — cannot be separated (93).

The thing in the world — the real — is simple enough to understand from the common sense. By thing Maritain means “an existence independent of my cogito, an existence posited in its own right before my act of thinking and independent of it” or to borrow language from the Philosophy of Nature “the ontological ‘for itself’” (91 and 93). The thing has an existence which is extramental or premental, existing before we know it — “it does not belong to the realm of the known as known” (91). Maritain is careful to say that by extramental existence he does not intend only “actual existence” but also “possible existence” (92). This is the case because our intellects in “simple apprehension, abstract from existence in act and in judgments”, judging not only what exists, “but also of a thing that can or cannot exist and of the de jure necessities contained in those essences” (92). These “possible existences” are possible existences in the extramental world. This “possible real”, Maritain is explicit, is not to be confused with a “being of reason”, which is what occurs in a faulty noetic when the actual real is taken to be the only real (92). Thing is also called by Maritain, objectifiable subject and transobjective subject. These names do not indicate a hidden-ness of the thing behind the object, but that “because it is itself grasped as object” while still constituent of “something irreducible in which the possibility of grasping something new remains open” (93-94).

As said above, the nature of thing to object is such that they are inseparable within a realistic noetic. Before continuing on to discuss the nature of concept it is necessary to look more closely at the relationship which bonds the notions of thing and object so tightly together. Maritain does so using Thomistic language. In his explanation, “the thing is the ‘material object’ of the sense and intellect” (93). The object therefore is the “formal object”. Both are grasped simultaneously and indivisibly by the selfsame perceptions — metaphysically they are one entity. Maritain says, the “intellect’s objects as such abstract from actual existence and in themselves involve only a possible existence” (91). In terms of metaphysical language, the intellect’s object exists as a pure potentiality, whereas the thing in itself exists with both potentiality and actuality.

Having intended to write a section devoted specifically to object as such, I have found it impossible to write about object apart from its extramental reality, namely thing. They are so tightly connected, that to talk of one is to talk simultaneously about the other. Maritain says,

Because being is the first thing given to the mind, it is impossible to think of a pure object separated from a being for itself, a being of which the object of sensation or understanding is but a determination or aspect. If such an object is not an aspect of a known thing, of a transobjective subject, then it will have to become an aspect of the knowing thing. (100).

It is indeed these two co-principles — thing and object — which comprise the known.

As Maritain transitions into the section of The Degrees of Knowledge entitled “the Concept”, he poses the following questions: “What is the means by which the union of the known and the knower is effected? What is the medium thanks to which the thing known exists intentionally in the knower and thanks to which the knower becomes the thing known? This medium, Maritain, calls the intellect. He says, “the intellect has intentionally become the object” (117). This takes place when the intellect is “actuated by the species impressa, and then producing within itself a species expressa of the intelligible order, an ‘elaborated’ or ‘uttered’ ‘presentative form’” (117). This elevates the object to the “highest level of actuality and intelligible formation”, and so they become “vicars of the object” — pure likenesses thereof. Therefore knowing “consists, not in making, but in being; to be or become a thing — either itself or other things” beyond the actuation of a substance (117-118).

To begin to understand the notion of concept it is important that it first be distinguished from object. Maritain says that object and concept are indistinguishable one from the other except for by their respective roles in the intellect. He says that one makes known (concept), and the other is known (object). Concept therefore is a formal sign the essence of which is to signify — “to bear the mind to something other than itself” (120). Concepts are the presentative forms retained in memory. They constitute “not the that which is known”, but the “means by which we know” (120).

Concepts exist in several classes, mathematical, geometric, and words. It is essential that concepts be both abstract and universal. For example, the utterance, “The car is red” contains two concepts ‘car’ and ‘red’. Each of these illicit within the intellect a calling forth, as it were, of the presentative forms contained within the memory of ‘car’ and ‘red’ which enable immediate knowledge of the object ‘red car’ (123). In such a way, full knowledge of the real is known, retained, and recalled, through the sense encounter with the thing and its being known as object, and its future signification as concept.

Works Cited

Dennehy, Raymond. "Maritain's "Intellectual Existentialism": An Introductin to His Metaphysics and Epistemology." Understanding Maritain: Philosopher and Friend. Ed. Deal W. Hudson and Matthew J. Mancini. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1987. 201-234.

Maritain, Jacques. Distinguish to Unite or The Degrees of Knowledge. Trans. Gerald B. Phelan. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959.

—. A Preface to Metaphysics: Seven Lectures on Being. New York: New American Library, 1962

—. The Range of Reason. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953.

Sweet, William. "Jacques Maritain." Sept. 2008. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed.Edward N. Zalta. 27 September 2008 .

Footnotes

1 By noetic Maritain means ‘source of knowledge’.

William Wordsworth: a Snapshot of a Mind Out of Time

2009-01-31T15:13:00.000-08:00

Born April 7, 1770 in Cooksmouth, Cumberland, William Wordsworth was the second son of attorney John Wordsworth. “Unlike the other major English romantic poets, he enjoyed a happy childhood under the loving care of his mother and in close intimacy with his younger sister Dorothy (1771-1855)” (Encyclopedia of World Biography). Wordsworth and his siblings, after the death of their mother in 1778, were cared for by Christopher Cookson their maternal uncle. Life in the foster home was happy, at least until the death of their father in 1783, at which point the financial situation of the Cookson house became very bleak, because Sir John Lowther, who owed their father more than £4000 in back-pay, refused to settle the debt with their uncle, causing great hardship for the family (Literary Encyclopedia).

In his youth Wordsworth attended Hawkshead Grammar School, where he fell in love with literature especially “the divine John Milton”. In his early adult life he attended university at St. John’s College in Cambridge, returning each summer to Cumberland — to the nature he loved so much. After he graduated from Cambridge he toured France, Switzerland, and Italy. Wordsworth — the “young idealist” was greatly impacted by his trek through France during a period of great “revolutionary fervor” (Enc. of World Biography).

Wordsworth was first published with his poems Descriptive Sketches and An Evening Walk in 1793. However, these preliminary works are hardly representative of the greatness he would later achieve. In 1798, Wordsworth, along with his close friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, a collection of works which was later described as a challenge to “the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers” (Enc. of World Biography). Most memorable from this collection is “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” better remembered by its shortened title “Tintern Abbey”, which is a medium length poem in blank verse iambic pentameter (Enc. of World Biography and “Tintern Abbey”). Thomas J. Brennan writes in his article “Wordsworth’s TINTERN ABBEY” that Wordsworth, in his poem, takes the ruin of the ancient abbey as a “central metaphor” for how he understood himself (15). In the poem, Wordsworth implies that as he has matured, so to has his experience of remembered things dulled — no longer does he envision his native land with the same passion he did in his youth. Yet he projects the intense emotions of his youth onto Dorothy his younger sister and offers a prayer that she may not dull as he has dulled (“Tintern Abbey”).

Despite what is considered today a breathtaking style, Wordsworth’s simplicity was not well received in his time, and his publications often failed to captivate his contemporary readers as they captivate us today. His works often “were mercilessly lampooned by critics as examples of the poet’s obsession with simplicity”. Wordsworth’s poetry, however, soon took root among readers of the nineteenth century, who struggled with the difficulties of the industrial revolution. It is for this ‘simplification of poetic style’ that Wordsworth is best known and remembered among writers of his period and genre (Literary Encyclopedia).

Though Wordsworth’s poetry is characteristically ‘simple’ it is by no means ‘plain’. True to the Romantic period, Wordsworth often uses emotion in describing his subjects. However, he is stylistically different from other Romantics. This is especially true when he writes about nature. Rarely using “simple descriptions”, “Wordsworth concentrates on the ways in which he responds and relates to the world”, using “his poetry to look at the relationships between nature and human life” and time. He believed that the experience of time in the realm of being is one of the greatest influences on our lives — both emotional and spiritual (“Wordsworth’s Themes”). “For Wordsworth, time is a necessary part of the human experience, and in the progression of time in human existence we find beauty and truth and meaning and ultimately — joy” (Peters 78).

So it is in “Tintern Abbey” that “human time” is portrayed as the principle of growth, whereas nature is relegated more or less to what Regueiro calls the “realm of being”. Regueiro goes on to say that “wholeness of being”, for Wordsworth, is not achieved by transcending time, but by going beyond nature, even if only by reflection and contemplation (Regueiro 59).

These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me

As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:

But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

And passing even into purer mind,

With tranquil restoration… (“Tintern Abbey” lines: 23-30)

It is in this way that Wordsworth’s metaphor seems to be unique, that it is softened and introduced through the use of structure and that it brings us into Wordsworth’s worldview. A worldview in which the ideas of “animate and inanimate realms” are blurred (Murray 7).

…Until, the breath of this corporeal frame

And even the motion of our human blood

Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul... [Italics mine] (“Tintern Abbey” lines: 43-46)

Here the juxtaposition of life and death — a life giving death, obscures the distinction between the physical (what Murray considers the animate) and the spiritual (inanimate), the eminent and the transcendent, the terminal and the eternal.

Wordsworth continues, in “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”, to reflect on the fact that the human senses are totally insufficient for the spiritual needs of life (Groom 94). And, as it were, he extracts himself from time, in the beginning of his reflection, and places himself in a scene, which is not unlike that of many creation myths and which bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the Judeo-Christian tradition (Ferguson138-139).

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Appareled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream…

The Rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the Rose

The moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare. (“Ode: Intimations on Immortality” lines: 1-5 and 10-13)

In her essay “The ‘Immortality Ode’”, Frances Ferguson suggests that for Wordsworth perfection is found in the “mind standing outside of itself” and that “the project of seeking a reflective vision of thought in its pastness is a self-dooming one” loosing all objectivity (Ferguson 137-141). Yet for Wordsworth, this remained a source of perturbation as he writes in Book XII of The Prelude: “Open; I would approach them, but they close / I see by glimpses now; when age comes on, / May scarcely see at all;…” (XII, 30-32). It was his drive to integrate this philosophy that lead to his highly simplified and structured style.

Works Cited

Brennan, Thomas J. (1). "Wordsworth's TINTERN ABBEY." Explicator 63.1 (2004): 13-15. Literary Reference Center. 26 October 2006. http://search.ebscohost.com.

Ferguson, Frances. “The ‘Immortality Ode’”. William Wordsworth. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1985. 137-150.

Groom, Bernard. The Unity of Wordsworth’s Poetry. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1966.

Murray, Roger N. Wordsworth’s Style. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967.

Peters, John G. "Wordsworth's TINTERN ABBEY." Explicator 61.2 (2003): 77. Academic Search Premier. 29 November 2006. http://search.ebscohost.com.

Regueiro, Helen. The Limits of Imagination: Wordsworth, Yeats, and Stevens. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1976.

Wordsworth, William. “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.” The Cornell Wordsworth. Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems, 1797-1800. Ed. James Butler and Karen Greene. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1992. 116-120.

---. The Prelude or Growth of a Poet’s Mind. Ed. Ernest de Selincourt. London: Oxford University Press, 1805.

---. “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”. The Oxford Book of EnglishVerse: 1250-1900. Ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1919. 536

"Wordsworth, William." Literary Encyclopedia (2005): 1. Literary Reference Center. 25 October 2006. http://search.ebscohost.com.

“Wordsworth, William.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2^nd Ed. Vol. 16. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.

Dietrich von Bonhoeffer: an Ethic of Resistance — Armed Opposition

2009-01-31T12:39:00.000-08:00

Hanged at Flossenbürg on the ninth of April 1945, for conspiracy to kill Hitler, Dietrich von Bonhoeffer was the spiritual leader of the German antitotalitarian resistance (Mengus S134). He was not predisposed to resistance by his upbringing, his faith, or his national traditions. Nor was his decision to enter Divinity School to prepare for Christian ministry driven by political reasons. He was a deeply spiritual man, who committed himself to a “relentless pursuit of God’s concrete commandment”, who “[if] he drew attention to himself…” “it was more through submission than resistance” (S138-S139). Yet his demeanor would change slowly, moving from a position of passive resistance, as witnessed by his radio broadcast in February 1938, in which he called Hitler the “Verführer” or the seducer (S140), to the decidedly active resistance, which led to his trial and eventual execution (S141). Why this change? How did he, as a Christian, justify the assassination of Hitler? It must be kept in mind that Bonhoeffer’s EthiksEthiks — they are intimately linked. cannot be separated from his involvement in the resistance movement or his involvement with the resistance movement separated from his

It all began for Bonhoeffer, while at Union Theological Seminary, in New York, when the Nazi government banned persons of Jewish origin from ministry within the church. He could simply not tolerate this action. Seeing the church as the “most natural ally” of “authentic humanity”, Bonhoeffer writes in a farewell letter to Reinhold Niebuhr:

I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people…. Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization. (Gesammelte Schriften 1:320, qtd. in Mengus S142)

So Bonhoeffer sees the Church as the instrument of salvation for the German people from a corrupt and evil government, which will destroy Christian civilization if left unchecked.

It is at this point in his life that he begins to develop and to write his Ethiks (S143). As most philosophers and ethicists begin their works, they discredit or point out those things upon which their theories are not contingent. Bonhoeffer too begins in this way. In the first chapter of his Ethiks, “Ethics as Formation: The Theoretical Ethicist and Reality”, Bonhoeffer gives a litany of concepts by which an ethical choice could be made, each of which he sees as insufficient or altogether incapable of providing the free person with concrete courses of action. “His position [against each of these] is characterized by an unusual search for concreteness and a pronounced attention to reality” (S138).

He says that through reason men have failed to “perceive either the depths of evil or the depths of the holy” and “blind[ed] in their desire to see justice done to both sides they are crushed between the two clashing forces and end in achieving nothing” (“Ethics 4”). Ethical fanaticism he finds even more distressing, because the fanatic, who believes that he can oppose evil “with the purity of his will and of his principle” attacks the symptoms of evil rather than the evil itself (4-5). The man of conscience, says Bonhoeffer, is torn between difficult choices, “becomes timid”, and chooses to bandage his conscience with lies so that he may avoid despair (5). Though it would seem as though duty would bring decisiveness to the “multiplicity of possible decisions”, duty itself cannot lead to an ethical choice, because the burden of responsibility lies, in the end, with its giver and not with its receiver and executioner. “The man of duty,” says Bonhoeffer, “will end by having to fulfil [sic] his obligation even to the devil” (5 emphasis added). Neither can “absolute freedom” be considered as a fruitful means by which to make an ethical choice, because, in his supposed freedom, man may “easily consent to the bad, knowing full well that it is bad” so that he may avoid what is worse (6). However, in so doing, he blinds himself to the worse and to the better, so that his options become ambiguous. Through private virtuousness some try to evade the task of making a public stand. While such a man does not steal or murder, and within his abilities he does what is good, he avoids even needed conflict and so remains deaf and blind — self-deceived about the reality of good and evil, he thinks himself capable of remaining beyond “contamination through responsible action in the world” (6). Bonhoeffer says, “these are the achievements and attitudes of a noble humanity”, comparing them to Don Quixote, who did not see the reality before his eyes (6-7).

After Bonhoeffer has discredited those means which he sees as insufficient, he moves on to what he sees as the only truly effective means, saying that we must “replace our rusty swords with sharp ones” (7). He gives as man’s new weapons simplicity and wisdom. For Bonhoeffer,

To be simple is to fix one’s eye solely on the simple truth of God at a time when all concepts are being confused, distorted and turned upside-down. It is to be single-hearted and not a man of two souls, an άνήρ δίψυχος (Jas. I.8). Because the simple man knows God, because God is his, he clings to the commandments, the judgments and the mercies which come from God’s mouth every day afresh. (7)

Looking only to God and never to the world, the simple man “is able to look at the reality of the world freely and without prejudice”. The man of simplicity is no longer attached to principles, but is liberated from the troubles of ethical decision (7).

For Bonhoeffer, the man of wisdom sees things as they really are — to their most fundamental and essential aspects. He is wise insomuch as he sees reality in God. “To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things” (7). Bonhoeffer says that the well informed man is not by necessity the man of wisdom. Having too many facts may cloud one’s perception of the truth. “To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom” (7). The wise man knows that reality can be helped by God alone. To look freely at God and at reality is to join simplicity and wisdom together. “There is no true simplicity without wisdom,” says Bonhoeffer, “and there is no wisdom without simplicity” (8).

Having said earlier that it is necessary to look at both God and reality in the same instance, Bonhoeffer offers the further clarification that it is not possible so to do while the two are so violently ripped apart and seemingly set against each other. Fallen man can only look wonderingly from one to the other, but not at both simultaneously. How then is man to achieve the union of simplicity to wisdom? It is at this point, where it seems as though all will fall apart in his Ethiks, that Bonhoeffer drives the wedge deeper between those systems that he earlier discredited and his own. He divorces his Ethiks altogether from secular ethics, and joins it firmly to the Christian faith (8). For him, the operative element of his ethical system is Divine Revelation, but more specifically Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ, man can “no longer see God without the world or the world without God. God has joined himself, in an immanent way, to His Creation and cannot thence be separated.

This leaves one to ask, how does this apply to resistance and planned assassination? In the writings of Bonhoeffer, one finds little which denotes anything directly related to the assassination attempts, but copious amounts are found about his concept of resistance — radical resistance. Raymond Mengus opens his essay entitled, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Decision to Resist” with the sentence: “Resistance does not happen unless persons actually resist” (S134). This sentence sums up Bonhoeffer’s frustration with those systems of ethics which he discredits at the beginning of his Ethiks. For him they did not provide concrete answers and did not move people to concrete and real action. We find, in an essay entitled “After Ten Years”, which Bonhoeffer wrote from prison, this explanation:

Who stands his ground? Only the man whose ultimate criterion is not in his reason, his principles, his freedom or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all these things when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and exclusive allegiance to God. The responsible man seeks to make his whole life a response to the question and call of God. (Letters and Papers from Prison 19 emphasis added)

As a pastor, Bonhoeffer considered it his vocation not only to have compassion on those who were “victims of exalted men”, but also to do what he must to stop them (Letter from Latrimal dated 6 March 1946, qtd. in Mengus S137). As God cannot be separated from his Creation, neither can Christ be separated from his Church (Ethics 9). So therefore,

We are not Christs, but if we want to be Christians we must show something of Christ’s breadth of sympathy by acting responsibly, by grasping our “hour,” by facing danger like free men, by displaying a real sympathy which springs not from fear, but from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer. To look on without lifting a helping hand is most un-Christian. The Christian does not have to wait until he suffers himself; the sufferings of his brethren for whom Christ died are enough to awaken his active sympathy.

Bonhoeffer, as both a citizen and Christian served his fatherland best through his radical opposition of those who would destroy the Christian society — the very life and morality of the German people. Pastor Bonhoeffer a “practitioner of responsibility for others before God, could do no less…” (Mengus S146).

Works Cited

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Ethics. Trans. Neville Horton Smith. Ed. Eberhard Bethge. New York: The MacMillan Co., 1964.

---. Letters and Papers from Prison. Trans. Reginald H. Fuller. Ed. Ebhard Bethge. New York: The MacMillan Co., 1965.

Mengus, Raymond. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Decision to Resist.” The Journal of Modern History 64 Supplement: “Resistance Against the Third Reich” (1992): S134-S146.

The Problem of Universals: a Survey

2009-01-31T09:25:00.000-08:00

Throughout the Medieval Period, the question of ‘universals’ was a problem for many philosophers, with most of them falling into one of three camps of semi-opposing views, namely the realists, the conceptualists, and the nominalists. While the idea of ‘universals’ existed at least since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers, most notably in Plato and in Aristotle, the problem seems to be introduced to the Medievals by Porphyry who lived at the cusp of the Medieval Period. In his introduction to Aristotle’s categories entitled the Isagoge. Porphyry writes,

I shall not say anything about whether genera and species exist as substances, or are confined to mere conceptions; and if they are substances, whether they are material or immaterial; and whether they exist separately from sensible objects, or in them immanently (Porphyry, in Preface to Isagoge).

Though it seems at first to be a problem of epistemology, which it is in a way, Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, in his article entitled What is the Problem of Universals?, claims that it is not, writing: “a natural understanding of the Problem of Universals is as the problem of the One over Many ”. Which if Rodriguez-Pereyra is correct, makes the Problem of Universals a problem of Metaphysics, namely a question of being. Rather than try to solve the Problem of Universals, here shall be put forth a survey of philosophical thought on the problem according to three major philosophers from the period in question. These will be delineated categorically into the three main schools of thought: the realists, the conceptualists and the nominalists, with a representative philosopher from each school.

Before beginning with the survey of the medieval philosophers it is necessary to put forth the defining characteristics of the three schools of thought. Realist philosophers hold “that universals are real and exist independently of anyone thinking of them” (“Realist.”). In dealing with the realists it is much simpler to adopt their terminology than to continue with the term ‘universal’. Beginning with Plato we see the term ‘form’ being applied to that which is universal. Among the realists this term has perdured until today, finding its way into modern Thomistic philosophers such as Jacques Maritain and W. Norris Clarke, S.J. Within this group of thinkers there are further subdivisions, generally those who hold that the ‘form’ is beyond the thing (Platonic realists) and those who hold that the ‘form’ is in the thing (Aristotelian realists). Conceptualists, on the other hand, hold that universals exist only in the mind and have no external or substantial reality (“Conceptualism”). The final school of thought — the nominalists hold that “various objects labeled by the same term have nothing in common but their name”, so that ‘universals’ have no independent existence, but exist only as names (“Nominalism”).

I. Realism

Early on in the Problem of Universals, there developed a rift within the realist camp, all the way back with Plato and Aristotle. And so it is fitting that the two sects of this school of thought are so named: Platonists and Aristotelians. However, since the quarrel at hand is not with the ancients but the medievals, those who adopt only parts of the platonic view are more properly called neoplatonists since they do not adhere to Plato’s teachings in its entirety, but make major adaptations to it, so as to render it compatible with their respective theologies (Gerson). But regardless of these adaptations, it is a distinctively platonic understanding of the ‘Problem of Universals’ which begins the whole issue, as mentioned in the introduction, namely that of Porphyry and his contemporary Plotinus.

Despite Porphyry’s failure to answer the question, Plotinus is definitive in his answer to the ‘Problem of Universals’ (Baird 29). Plotinus in his teaching held that true reality exists only beyond the physical world. This ‘true reality’ is infinite and indescribable by words since words are inherently finite. Adopting Plato’s words, he calls this ‘true reality’ the ‘Good’ or the ‘One’. He makes the case for ‘universals’ as remote, namely the ‘Good’ or the ‘One’, arguing from the transcendental of Beauty. First he posses the question, “Are they all made beautiful by one and the same beauty or is there one beautifulness in bodies and a different one in other things?” (Plotinus 31). He says, “Nearly everyone says..., being beautiful is being well-proportioned and measured”. If this is the case, he says that only “composite things” can be beautiful. Against this point he argues that beauty cannot be in things themselves, because “a beautiful whole can certainly not be composed of ugly parts: all the parts must have beauty”. “Surely we must say that being beautiful is something else over and above good proportion, and good proportion is beautiful because of something else?” So Plotinus ends by saying,

...beauty rests upon the material thing when it has been brought into unity, and gives itself to parts and wholes alike. When it comes upon something that is one and composed of like parts it gives the same gift to the whole: as sometimes art gives beauty to a whole house with its parts, and sometimes nature gives beauty to a single stone. So then the beautiful body comes into being by sharing in a formative power which comes from the divine forms. (Plotinus 32)

Later on when writing of the beauty of the soul as the form of the body, he says, “for since it is a divine thing and a kind of part of beauty, it makes everything it grasps and masters beautiful” (35 emphasis added). While Plotinus does not go as far as Plato in insisting in a separate “world of Forms”, he clearly holds that the forms are transcendental and are beyond the physical realm. The Platonic realist holds then that ‘universals’ exist in reality, not in the thing itself, but in some transcendent reality.

On the other side of this school of thought regarding ‘universals’ are the Aristotelian realists, who in the Medieval Period are exemplified by St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas lived during what could be said to be the transitional period leading up to the Renaissance. During this time the ancient Greek writers were being rediscovered, with Latin translations of the Greek and Arabic text of Averroës and Avicenna making their way through Europe. Aquinas eventually ended up in Paris, where he studied under Albertus Magnus who was one of the foremost proponents of the rediscovered Aristotelian writings. It was under the tutelage of Albert that St. Thomas Aquinas was first introduced to the writings of Aristotle. They were a perfect match. Aquinas’s methodical stolidity came together in an almost perfect harmony with the deliberateness of Aristotle’s writings to form one of the greatest minds of the Late Middle Ages. It is not sufficient to say that Aquinas was influenced by the writings of Aristotle, but in large part he seemingly adopted them as his own (Baird 307). This is most clearly seen in the Metaphysics of Aquinas, which is a Christian adaptation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

For Aquinas, to talk of ‘universals’ is to talk of ‘essences’. For Aquinas the problem of universals is one of the relationship of genera to species. In his treatise on being and essence entitled De Ente et Essentia, Aquinas formulaicly deals with this problem. As in most of his writings, Aquinas begins by giving the positions of others and systematically integrating them or discrediting them. He intimates that according to the Avicennaian interpretation of Aristotle ‘form’ and ‘essence’ are the same. Aquinas although he was heavily influenced in his philosophical formation by his reading of Avicenna’s commentary on Aristotle, makes a departure from the Avicennaian tradition when he writes regarding matter and form:

We cannot say, however, that either of these is the essence of the thing. That matter alone is not the essence of the thing is clear, for it is through its essence that a thing is knowable and is placed in a species or genus. But matter is not a principle of cognition; nor is anything determined to a genus or species according to its matter but rather according to what something is in act. Nor is form alone the essence of a composite thing,... (Aquinas, De Ente et Essentia, Ch. 2)

Aquinas then moves to argue that ‘essence’ cannot simply be something “super-added” to the hylomorphic union, because it would therefore be an accident and something extraneous. He says therefore “that the term essence, used with respect to composite substances, signifies that which is composed of matter and form.” “This is the quiddity of a thing.” Here Aquinas introduces what seems to be a weak point in his argument; he even points it out himself, writing, “But because matter is the principle of individuation, it would perhaps seem to follow that essence, which embraces in itself simultaneously both form and matter, is merely particular and not universal” (Aquinas). This entails that ‘universals’ have no definitions. However, as is so common to his style, Aquinas introduces this difficulty only to bring about a greater distinction. He clarifies saying that ‘mater’ as it has been considered up to this point “is not the principle of individuation”. Only what he calls ‘signate matter’ is the principle of individuation. He says, “Signate matter is not included in the definition of man as man,...” but only in the definition of particular things, calling “signate matter[,] matter considered under determinate dimensions”. “Hence, the essence of man and the essence of Socrates do not differ except as the signate differs from the non-signate.” From this point Aquinas goes on to delineate the difference of ‘essence’ in terms of ‘genus’ and ‘species’, writing, “the essence of a genus and the essence of a species differ as signate from non-signate”. “Therefore,” he writes, “genus signifies indeterminately the whole that is in the species and does not signify matter alone”. Genus is derived from matter, but it is not the matter and includes all that is similar from particular to particular. He finally ends by writing, “essence is found in substances and in accidents” and by ‘essence’ he means ‘universals’ (Aquinas). Therefore it is understood that for the Aristotelian realist universals are in the things which they signify.

II. Conceptualism

Marking the middle point between realism and Nominalism is the school of thought called Conceptualism. As such, one would tend to guess that Conceptualism does not make ‘universals’ into real entities existing either in another realm or in real things; nor does it make ‘universals’ out to be merely the names by which things are called. Conceptualism indeed makes ‘universals’ to be mere concepts in the mind, by which particular things are recognized as part of a kind. These concepts are more than the mere words or names by which things of a kind are called, but are the whole mental collection of similarities and dissimilarities derived from our sense perceptions of particular things (Baird 154-155). It is important to avoid crossing over into a Kantian Conceptualism, in which concepts are not based in reality.

Despite having a teacher who held that ‘universals’ were nothing but “vocal wind”, Peter Abelard, took the middle ground in the ‘Problem of Universals’, a position which today is called ‘Conceptualism’ or ‘Moderate Realism’ (Baird 154-155). In his work entitled Logica “Ingredientibus”, Abelard, as a result of his reading Boethius and Aristotle, begins by posing three questions. His first question is: “Do genera and species really exist or are they simply something in the mind?” The second is: “Granting they do exist, are they corporeal or incorporeal?” The final question is: “Do they exist apart from sensible things or only in them?” (Abelard 156). In his solution to the ‘Problem of Universals’ Abelard modifies the meaning of ‘universal’ adding a semantic aspect to its being primarily ontological, epistemological, or theological (Klima). In answer to the first question, Abelard answers,

...as a matter of fact they do serve to name things that actually exist and therefore are not the subjects of purely empty thoughts. But what they name are the selfsame things named by singular names. And still, there is a sense in which they exist as isolated, bare, and pure only in the mind... (Abelard 163).

Answering the his second question he says that ‘universals’ are both corporeal and incorporeal (163). They are corporeal by the nature of the things to which they point, and incorporeal because of the manner in which they signify things discretely as non-individuated. To his third question he answers that some exist in sensible objects, while other do not. But in answering this question another is raised, namely, “Do universals designate only sensible things, or is their something else they signify?” (164). To answer this question Abelard proposes the situation of a thing which has passed from being into non-being. Here the rose while it existed had predicated of it the universal ‘rose’, however, once the rose ceases to be, ‘rose’ as a concept continues to have meaning for and in the mind “even though it names nothing” (164). Therefore, for Conceptualism, ‘universals’ are concepts which exist in the mind, but are grounded in and derived from a sensible reality, perduring in the mind after the particular which it signifies has passed out of existence.

III. Nominalism

The nominalists, unlike the two preceding schools of thought, hold that ‘universals’ have no basis in reality, so that the “various objects labeled by the same term have nothing in common but their name” (“Nominalism”). Exemplar of this school of thought during the Medieval Period is the English philosopher William of Ockham, who writes in first part of his Summa Logicae, “the common term ‘universal’... is predicated of every universal and is opposed to the notion of a particular” (443). Ockham goes on to write, that the word “particular”, which signifies the ‘one’ cannot also serve to signify the ‘many’. From this he posits that “every universal is one particular thing and that it is not a universal except in its signification, in its signifying many things”. He argues therefore that there are two kinds of universals, universals by nature and universals by convention. It is universals of the second kind which Ockham posits exist only in the mind, saying that “a spoken word, which is numerically one quality, is a universal; it is a sign conventionally appointed for the signification of many things” (444). He goes on to say that no universal is a substance, but merely an intention of the mind, “which is identical with the act of understanding” (445). Which leads him to write, “For every one agrees that a universal is something predicable of many, but only one intention of the soul or a conventional sign is predicated” (446). He ends his argument by writing, “...propositions occur only in the mind, in speech, or in writing; therefore, their parts can exist only in the mind, in speech, and in writing” “Therefore,” he writes, “universals cannot conceivably be substances.”

IV. Conclusion

In summation, these three schools of thought concerning the ‘Problem of Universals’ served to spark much debate and was the cause of much contention among the Medieval philosophers. This diversity of positions has lead to a more holistic view of ‘universals’ by modern Aristotelians and Thomists. Each school of thought has its good points and bad points. Realism emphasizes that the root of our understanding of the world is grounded in the things experienced themselves, whereas Conceptualism shows the importance our capacity for abstraction plays in the process of cognition of real things. Nominalism has helped us to develop a semantic that is rooted in reality, through which we have been able to develop a comparative study of linguistics. No one of these systems is perfect, but studied together we are better able to understand the process by which we are able to know the world around us, and by which we are able to communicate what we experience to others.

Works Cited

Abelard, Peter. “Logica ‘Ingredientibus’” Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy. Trans. A. B.
Wolter. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2008. 156-164.

Baird, Forrest E., ed. "Plotinus." Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy. Upper Saddle River:
Prentice Hall, 2008. 29-30.

“Conceptualism.” Princeton WordNet: a lexical database for the English language.
27 January 2006. http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=conceptualism,
22 April 2008.

Gerson, Lloyd. "Plotinus." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 30 June 2003. Stanford
University. 22 Apr. 2008 http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2003/entries/plotinus/.

Klima, Gyula. “The Medieval Problem of Universals.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
5 April 2008. Stanford University. 22 Apr 2008
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/universals-medieval/#6.

“Nominalism.” Princeton WordNet: a lexical database for the English language.
27 January 2006. http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=nominalist, 22 Apr 2008.

Ockham, William. “Summa Logicae, Prima pars; XIV-XVI” Medieval and Renaissance
Philosophy. Trans. Michael J. Loux. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2008. 443-448.

Plotinus. "Enneads." Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy. Ed. Forrest E. Baird. Upper Saddle
River: Prentice Hall, 2008. 31-37.

“Realist.” Princeton WordNet: a lexical database for the English language. 27 January 2006.
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=realist, 22 April 2008.

The Problem of Time: “Of What Nature Is It?”

2009-01-31T09:13:00.000-08:00

Since the ancient Greek philosophers, ‘time’ has been a problem for the human intellect. As humans we have an insatiable desire to know the ‘being’ of things which we experience in the world, going beyond the question of merely “what is it?” to the questions of “how and why it is at all?”, so too have we desired to know time. For the ancient Greeks, time was based in the relationship of change to the Whole. Plato, for example, held that time is merely a moving image of Eternity – an Eternity which in reality was conceived by him to be timeless (Gunn 180). Aristotle goes on to define time as “number of motion in respect to ‘before’ and ‘after’” (The Physics, 219b.1). Professor J. Alexander Gunn, in his article entitled The Problem of Time, says, “[Aristotle] failed to distinguish the use of the term ‘time’ as concept from its use as percept” (Gunn 180). In like manner, Professor Gunn, critiquing the ancients, believes that the concept of time did not receive sufficient attention until the 20th century. However, science, in the 20th and 21st centuries, has attempted to define time in terms of a radical objectivity, and so has tried to make into an object something which, in fact, is more properly a subject (Zemach 144). And so the philosophical question, “what is time?” still persists today. As metaphysicians we see that the question which needs must be asked is even more fundamental – “What is the ‘being’ of time?” The problem in answering this question is that we are contiually trying to make time into that which it is not, namely a real being. To properly answer this question we must move beyond this tendency, which may be proported by many as merely a semantic choice, and realize that what is real in ‘time’ is the changing of real existent things.

Time it seems, since the very beginning of its philosophical discussion by the Greeks, has been divided into both subjective and objective aspects. This division of time into these two aspects, which various philosophers call by different names, such as: subject and object, concept and percept, mental and real, psychological and physical has often been done in ways which either radically separate the two aspects (destroying one of them) or radically unify them (making them one and indistinguishable from the other) (Gunn 182). Fr. W. Norris Clarke, S.J., in his book The One and the Many, defines the being of time as “a synthesis of real and mental being, founded in reality, existing formally in the mind” (Clarke 162). This definition of time will be taken as the standard by which the other definitions will be measured, because as we have admitted in class, Clarke’s definition seems to be the most holistic, seeing ‘time’ in its two aspects without their destruction or radical unification.

As said above, time, as it has come to be known today, has two aspects, which we discuss under various names that indicate the same aspects. Use of different terms is merely meant to accentuate particular understandings of the dual nature of time (Gunn 180-181). The definition of time’s duality as subjective and objective, for example, is meant to highlight its relative inaccessibility through the human senses. Time is seen to be subjective, insomuch as it is an issue of the ‘inner sense’, where judgments of time are made through intuition “of the relation of the order of our perceptions to the order of objective events” (Gunn 181). Time, defined in terms of concept and percept, views ‘time’ from an epistemological standpoint. On an epistemological basis, Gunn commenting on Bosanquet says, “the time problem [is] the meeting ground for extremes of thought, both realist and idealists” (Gunn 182). As found in Clarke’s own definition, time is a synthesis of mental and real being (Clarke 162). When Clarke writes, “Real change by itself is not enough to generate time”, he hints at the fact that time exists formally in the mind – in the consciousness, and seemingly removes the possibility that time can extist as something real (162-163).

As if the problems that philosophy had discovered regarding time were not sufficient, the late 19th and 20th centuries ushered in two new aspects: time as psychological and time as scientific, with each aspect proposing its own mutually incompatible definition of what is supposed by most people to be the same thing. The problem is that they are not. Psychological time is disinct from physiological time, in that psychological time is the experience of the passing of time or more precisely the experience of change which is relative to a mental state. In various mental states inidividuals may experience time as passing faster or slower (Clarke 166). W. Norris Clarke gives several examples of such altered mental states. Two such states include “dream time” and “mystical states”. In “dream time”, much change seems to happen in very small periods of “clock time”.1 In mystical experiences, Clarke says, “[we] even transcend time entirely into a kind of intense timeless presence” (166). In this it is clear that although our perception of time is “founded in reality” it is only so loosely, in that at least in the present ‘duration’ there is an awareness of the events which are happening therein and they are experienced in the order in which they are happening in reality. This looseness is in the perception thereof by individuals, who indeed experience similar durations dissimilarly, in regards to the rate at which each experiences change therein.

Modern science throws a curveball into this idea of ‘looseness’. There can be no temporal differential in a single spatio-temporal event. This flows from the principle of Physics in which two tangible objects cannot occupy the same point in space-time (Van Flandern). Again here in science, the problem of time as mental vs. real being rears it head. Most scientists hold that ‘time’ is a measure of change, simple and not a problem. However, the physics of the 20th century, beginning with Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, who published an Nobel Prize winning paper explaining the dialtion of time in relation to mass and velocity, sought to make time into a real thing such as the other forces of nature. Most hold that this is a problem of semantics rather than a problem of metaphysics on the part of the physicist who hold to the Lorentzian Theory of Relativity, in that their metaphysics is developed out of faulty semantic, namely they treat change and time as one and the same.

Yet in this plethora of distinctions, each of these sets of terms aims at a single definition of time, namely that time is a conscious awareness of a continuum of change in real things, “not merely the perception that things have changed, but a distinct perception of their changing”, in which we are able to distinguish between past and present and anticipate the future (Gunn 182; Leighton 561). In this there is yet another problem created for time, namely “What are past, present, and future?”, “How do we know them?”, “Where do they exist?”. Joseph A. Leighton in his article entitled Time, Change, and Time-Transcendence defines past, present, and future as durations within the continuum of time (Leighton 562). He goes on to define each of these temporal durations individually, beginning with the present. For Leighton, the present is always a specific duration “filled with a definite content of feelings, ideas, movements of attention,” and perceptions which serve to define the present moment as distinct from the rest of the temporal continuum, known as such by distiction from the “no-longer” and the “not yet” (Leighton 562; Gunn 183). Although the present must be of a specific duration, there need not be a definite awareness of such duration in the actually experienced present. “In truth,” Leighton writes, “in the actual present the self transcends change or mutually external time-lapses, through the act of synthesis by which it grasps a succession as one and continuous” (562). Yet, the present remains known only by intuition, in that as soon as it moves into the intellect it is in fact no longer present but past.

In the next section of his article Leighton goes on to define that temporal duration which we call ‘the past’. For him the past exists in the “living ‘now’ of experience” as a “reconstruction made by a thinking self ” (563). Therefore the present reality of the past depends on a filiation of interest and meaning in and with the present synthetic activity of a self. Any reconstruction of the past is dependent on the necessary assumption of a persistence of process or continuity of movement. The past, therefore, now lacks real being, in that it exists only in the mind as a reconstruction of former real actually happened events in continuity with the present.

If the past exists in the mind only as a recocstruction of former events, what exactly is future, if it is not the mere opposite of past? Leighton defines future as “the present forward-reaching”, which depends on the present in the same way as the present depends on the past. (564). “It is the incipient tension of developing, and as yet unsatisfied, interests, desires, [and] meanings” (564). He uses the analogy of a classically trained musician sight-reading a piece of music. The musician knows the melody (a continuity of notes) by his remembering the past notes, measures, and phrases, now hearing the present note, and, by means of anticpation, the note that is to follow. As he continues to play the pieice of music, his ability to accuratly anticipate future notes increases, he may even reach a point at which he can accuratly anticipate whole measures or even phrases of music, yet this skill remains anticipation and not knowledge, for that which he anticipates he has not yet encountered. Therefore the future is an anticipation of what is to be, founded in the present duration, in continuity with the past.

In summation, suffice it to say that as we develop a metaphysics, we must tackle time in such a way that we do not simply end in saying that it does not exist at all. For example, science and physics often end in either trying to make ‘time’ a real being or denying that it can exist all together. Rather we must seek a median approach similar to that of St. Thomas Aquinas as echoed by Fr. W. Norris Clarke, S.J., seeking to give it the clarity that Professor Joseph A. Leighton gives it. Time becomes a problem for metaphysics, science, and physics only when we try to force it to fit into a nature which is not its own. So long as we allow time to be “a synthesis of real and mental being, founded in reality, existing formally in the mind” time can be a meeting ground for First Philosophy and the Natural Sciences (Clarke 162).

Works Cited

Aristotle. "The Physics." The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon. New York:
Random House, 2001.

Clarke, W. Norris, S.J. The One and the Many. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
2001.

Gunn, J. Alexander. "The Problem of Time." Journal of Philosophical Studies (1929): 180-191.

Leighton, Joseph A. "Time, Change, and Time-Transcendence." The Journal of Philosophy
Psychology and Scientific Methods (1908): 561-570.

Van Flandern, Tom. Cosmology: Physics has its Principles. 12 Oct 2002. Online. 10 Apr 2008.

Zemach, Eddy M. "Time and Self." Analysis (1979): 143-147.

Footnotes

1I would prefer to use the term, ‘duration’ as defined by Joseph A. Leighton in his article Time, Change, and Time-Transcendence. He defines ‘duration’ as a distinct segment of time which can be reckoned as being past, present, or future. This ‘duration’ is not particulated, in that there is not a sense of it beginning with a specific event or ending with a specific event, but rather containing a certain series of events which bleed into that which is before and after.

Seaux What?

2009-01-31T08:28:00.000-08:00

So I've decided to begin blogging my academic life, my research, and my random thoughts. It has been quite a while coming. Considering, reconsidering, "should the whole world know?" Seaux what? (pronounced So What?) Finally, I realized I'm okay with who I am, so the rest of the world should be too. Let me begin, be saying that I think differently, because I take the time to think. So should you. That doesn't mean that we will be alike. Only when we think do our differences become important. The most important point I wish to make with this opening post is that differences often divide people, but that needn't be the case. Are we so insecure about our own position that we believe that no one else has a right to hold a different opinion? I would bargain to say, "Yes we are!" My challenge to you: think about what other people say, and even if you disagree, learn to say to yourself, "Seaux what!"

Seaux, what should be expected by those who read my blog? Academic and scholarly research primarily; however, from time to time, I will likely spout off my random thoughts and opinions.

Well, I hope you enjoy.