Aristotle – Maverick Philosopher

The Aporetics of Primary Substance

I am nothing if not self-critical. And so a partial retraction may be in order. In A Problem for Hylomorphic Dualism in the Philosophy of Mind, I opened with:

1) A primary substance (a substance hereafter) is a concrete individual. A man, a horse, a tree, a statue are stock examples of substances. A substance in this technical sense is not to be confused with stuff or material. Substances are individuals in that they have properties but are not themselves properties. Properties are predicable; substances are not. Substances are concrete in that they are causally active/passive.

What I wrote is not obviously wrong as a summary of what Aristotle means by ‘primary substance,’ (πρότη οὐσία) and I could cite Aristotle commentators who have maintained something similar. But it is not obviously right either. Although it comports well with what we find in the Categories, it does not agree with what we read in the later Metaphysics, and in particular, Metaphysics VII (Zeta). For in the latter work, Aristotle maintains the surprising thesis that each primary substance is identical with its essence. (VII.6) This is what Aristotle seems to be saying at 1031b18-20 and at 1034a4-6 in Metaphysics Z. In the first of these passages we find, “each thing-itself [auto hekaston] and its essence are one and the same . . . .” In the latter place, we read, “in the case of things that are said in respect of themselves and primary, X and the essence of X are the same and one . . . .” (Montgomery Furth tr.)

Why is this surprising?

Well, if following the Categories we take Socrates to be a clear example of a primary substance, and if a primary substance is identical to its essence (substantial form), then it is difficult to see how Socrates could be a hylomorphic compound, which he surely is, if not according to the Categories, then according to the Metaphysics. After all, a composite composed of two complementary but non-identical elements cannot be identical to either. The following is quite obviously an inconsistent triad:

1) Socrates is a matter-form composite, a hylomorphic compound, a unity of two complementary but non-identical ‘principles’ (archai) or ontological factors, matter and form, neither of which can exist actually (as opposed to potentially) without the other. That is: no actual parcel of matter can exist without having some substantial form or other, and (contra Plato), no substantial form of a material thing can exist without material embodiment.

2) Socrates is a primary substance.

3) Every primary substance is identical to a substantial form (essence, eidos).

These propositions are collectively inconsistent: any two of them, taken in conjunction, entails the negation of the remaining one. The triad above is known in the trade as an antilogism, and to each antilogism, there are three corresponding valid syllogisms.

Syllogism A is an argument from (1) and (2) to the negation of (3). Syllogism B is an argument from (2) and (3) to the negation of (1). Syllogism C is an argument from (3) and (1) to the negation of (2). Each of these syllogisms is valid, but only one is sound. Which one? That is the problem.

The problem can also be framed as follows. The limbs of the antilogism cannot all be true. So which limb of the antilogism (inconsistent triad) should we reject? Aristotle cannot abandon (1), for that would be to abandon hylomorphism. And he cannot abandon (3) given the textual evidence cited above. So it seems that (2) has to go. Or rather, (2) has to go if we assume that the Metaphysics is an advance over the Categories and represents Aristotle’s mature position.

The rejection of (2), however, would appear to send us from the frying pan into the fire. If Socrates is not a primary substance, what would be? But before explaining this incendiary transition, let us first try to understand what motivates Aristotle’s surprising identification of primary substances with substantial forms at Metaphysics VII.6.

Why does Aristotle identify primary substances with substantial forms?

We begin by reminding ourselves that Aristotle’s inquiry into primary substance is a quest for the ultimately real, the ontologically basic, that upon which the reality of everything else depends. For Aristotle, ontology is ousiology, the search for the primary ousiai or substances or primary beings. He never doubts that there are primary beings (basic entities or basic existents) upon which all else is ontologically dependent. And so he never countenances the possibility that the solution to any of the aporiai he sets forth could be solved by denying either the existence of substances or their plurality. Being is many, not one, and the many beings are fundamentally real in that they are the supports of their properties and remain self-same over time. In contemporary analytic jargon they persist by enduring not by perduring.

That there is a real plurality of primary substances is thus a fundamental presupposition of Aristotle’s ousiological ontology. The existence of primary substances/beings, as a presupposition of ontological inquiry, is thus not a matter for inquiry. What is a matter for inquiry is the question: Which items are the items that satisfy the requirements of primary substance? That there are primary substances the Stagirite takes for granted; what they are is up for grabs.* Hence it cannot be simply assumed that concrete individuals such as a man, a horse, a tree, or a statue are primary substances despite the intuitive appeal of this notion and the support it finds in the Categories. This is something to be investigated.

Now there are three main candidates for the office of primary substance. The three candidates are matter, form, and the hylomorphic compound, the composite of matter and form.

So either Socrates, who stands in here for any primary substance, is identical to matter, or he is identical to form, or he is identical to a matter-form (hylomorphic) composite. Now he can’t be identical to matter as Jonathan Lear explains:

. . . matter cannot be primary substance, for it is not something definite, nor is it intelligible, nor is it ontologically independent. As Aristotle puts it, matter is not a ‘this something.’ [tode ti] His point is not that matter is not a particular, but that matter is not an ontologically definite, independent entity. (Aristotle: The Desire to Understand, Cambridge UP, 1988, 271)

That sounds right. Primary substances are ontologically basic existents upon which all else depends for its being. An ontologically basic existent must be something definite (horismenos) that is both intelligible (understandable) and ontologically independent (choristos). A smile, for example, is intelligible, and it is definite, but is not ontologically independent and thus not a substance. A smile cannot exist in itself, but only in another, namely, in a face. You could say that the being of a smile is parasitic upon the being of a face. You can have a face without a smile, but not a smile without a face.

Lear is arguing on Aristotle’s behalf: (i) Primary substances must be ontologically independent and definite; (ii) matter is neither ontologically independent nor definite; ergo, (iii) matter is not primary substance. So far, so good.

You might object that the matter of Socrates and the matter of Plato are definite. But what defines or delimits these parcels of matter are Socrates and Plato, respectively, or rather what I will call their ‘wide essences’ or ‘wide quiddities’ by which I mean the conjunction of essential and accidental determinations appertinent to each: these parcels are two because Socrates and Plato are two, and not the other way around.

Lear, then, is right: matter cannot be primary substance.

Surprisingly, however, Socrates cannot be identical to a hylomorphic composite either. For “a composite is ontologically posterior to its form and matter.” (Lear, 277) Nothing counts as a primary substance, however, unless it is ontologically prior to everything else. Thus Lear is arguing:

4) Nothing is a primary substance unless it is ontologically independent, ‘separate’ (choristos).

5) Every hylomorphic compound or material composite is ontologically posterior to, and thus ontologically dependent on, its components, matter and form.

Therefore

6) No hylomorphic composite is a primary substance.

There is no way around this argument, as far as I can see. Therefore, of the three candidates, matter, form, and the hylomorphic compound, Aristotle concludes that substantial form is primary substance. (Note that accidental forms such as Socrates’s snubnosedness cannot be primary substance because of their lack of ontological independence.) But what is substantial form? Substantial form is essence where essence is ‘the what it is’ (to ti esti, τὸτί ἐστι) of the thing, a calque of which is the Latin quidditas, whatness, quiddity.

Aristotle’s conclusion, then, in Metaphysics Zeta, is that, “each primary substance is identical with its essence.” (Lear, 279) Essence is what the mind comprehends, or at least apprehends. Essences are made for the mind, and the mind for essences. In this way the intelligibility requirement is satisfied. Matter as such is unintelligible, and hylomorphic compounds are intelligible only in their formal aspects. Essences are the ontological correlates of definitions. A good definition ‘captures’ an essence in words. Thus ‘Man is a rational animal,’ while defining the term ‘man,’ points the mind beyond the word on the linguistic plane to to the essence on the ontological plane. These last sentences are my gloss on Lear’s gloss on Aristotle.

From the Frying Pan into the Fire

Aristotle is telling us that Socrates is identical to his essence or substantial form. This identification satisfies the intelligibility requirement. Recall, however, that there are two requirements that need to be satisfied for anything to count as a primary being or basic entity. Intelligibility is not enough. The other is that the item must be ontologically independent (choristos). But independent is precisely what Aristotelian forms are not. For Plato, forms are ontologically independent of the phenomenal particulars that may or may not embody them here below. Plato’s Forms exist whether or not they are embodied or exemplified. Not so for Aristotle who, figuratively speaking, brings the forms from their heavenly place (topos ouranios) down to earth. An Aristotelian substantial form of a material thing cannot exist without being embodied, ‘enmattered.’ On a hylomorphic assay of concrete individuals (a rock, a tree, a cat, a man, a statue), matter and form are two complementary but non-identical components neither of which can exist without the other.

Aristotle appears to have painted himself into a corner. He assumes, reasonably enough given what our outer senses reveal, that the world we encounter consists of a plurality of basic entities or primary substances.

Relatedly, how is it logically possible for all of the following propositions to be true given what Aristotle appears to be maintaining in Metaphysics Z?

4) Socrates and Plato are numerically different human primary substances.

2) A primary substance is (identically) an essence or substantial form.

5) Socrates and Plato have the same substantial form or essence, where the essence is the ontological correlate of the definiens of the definition that applies to them both univocally, namely, ‘A human being is a rational animal.’

I’ll end with a suggestion: Platonism lives on in Aristotle inasmuch as the substantial form is the primary substance, and not the concrete material particular. The difference between the two titans of Greek philosophy is less than you thought. It is sometimes said that every philosopher is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. My suggestion implies that this is not so. It is rather that every philosopher qua philosopher, if he is the real deal, is a Platonist. Plato dominates his best student. If so, A. N. Whitehead vindicatus est: all of philosophy is but a series of footnotes to Plato, the ‘divine’ Plato as I sometimes call him. Or as our very own Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Plato is philosophy and philosophy Plato.”

My claim about the dominance of Plato is obviously tendentious. But if a man cannot be tendentious in the pages of his own weblog, where can he be tendentious?

For commentary on Raphael’s painting see my Substack entry, A Battle of Titans.

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*Aristotle takes it for granted that there is a plurality of primary substances. Is that self-evident? Put the question to Spinoza, and he would say that there is exactly one primary substance, deus sive natura, and that what Aristotle takes to be primary substances are mere modes of God or nature. What would Plato say? Well he certainly would not say that Socrates and his toga are primary substances; they are merely phenomenal particulars, and insofar forth insubstantial, a blend of being and nonbeing. He would give the palm to the eide, which are many, and beyond them to the Good, which is one.

Aristotle also takes it for granted that there are primary substances. Is that self-evident? Not to the exponents of the Madhyamika system. See T. R. V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism.

Mind-Body Dualism in Aquinas and Descartes: How Do They Differ?

Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, views the soul as the form of the body. Anima forma corporis. Roughly, soul is to body as form is to matter. So to understand the soul-body relation, we must first understand the form-matter relation. Henry Veatch points out that "Matter and form are not beings so much as they are principles of being." (Henry B. Veatch, "To Gustav Bergmann: A Humble Petition and Advice" in M. S. Gram and E. D. Klemke, eds. The Ontological Turn: Studies in the Philosophy of Gustav Bergmann , University of Iowa Press, 1974, pp. 65-85, p. 80) 'Principles' in this scholastic usage are not propositions. They are ontological factors (as I would put it) invoked in the analysis of primary substances, but they are not themselves primary substances. They cannot exist on their own. Let me explain.

A substance is a thing to which it belongs to be not in a subject. The name 'thing' (res) takes its origin from the quiddity [quidditas = whatness], just as the name 'being' (ens) comes from 'to be' (esse). [Ens is the present participle of the infinitive esse.] In this way, the definition of substance is understood as that which has a quiddity to which it belongs not to be in another . (Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk 1, Ch 25)

a) The form of a material substance is not itself a substance, but a principle that cannot exist on its own, but only in tandem with a material factor together with which it constitutes a substance. A form-matter composite is not constructed from pre-existing 'building blocks.'

b) The souls of humans are not substances along Platonic-Augustinian-Cartesian lines, but forms of the bodies whose souls they are.

c) The souls of humans are subsistent forms that can exist on their own after the deaths of the bodies whose forms they are.

Soul a Mere Life-Principle? How then Explain Conscience?

Aristotle, and following him Aquinas, thinks of the soul as the life-principle of a living body, that which animates the body's matter. A natural conception, but a dubious one, as it seems to me, one not up to the task of accounting for conscience. We humans are not just alive, we are also conscious both in the mode of sentience and in the object-directed mode as when we are conscious of this or that. The philosophers' term of art for this object-directed type of consciousness is intentionality. A special case of object-directed consciousness is knowledge of things and states of affairs. Beyond this factual knowledge there is presumably also moral knowledge, knowledge of right and wrong. Whether or not conscience is indeed a source of knowledge, it is a faculty of moral discernment and evaluation. An exercise of this faculty results in an occurrent state of consciousness which is a state of conscience.

So life, consciousness, and conscience are all different. Panpsychism aside, something can be alive without being sentient, a unicellular organism, for example, and of course anything sentient is conscious. Now we are not merely sentient, but also conscious of this and that. Beyond this, we command a faculty of moral discernment and evaluation which is what conscience is.

It is clear that to be alive is not the same as to have a conscience. Plants and non-rational animals are living things but have no conscience. My cats, for example, are alive, and moreover they are conscious, but they cannot tell right from wrong. If they think at all, they do not think in moral categories. They do not evaluate their actions or omissions morally. They lack the capacity to do so. Humans have the capacity for moral discernment and evaluation, if not at birth, then later on, whether or not they exercise it, and whether or not their consciences have been well formed.

Now the soul is presumably the seat of conscience: it is in virtue of my having a soul that I have a conscience, not in virtue of my having a body.* But then it would seem to follow that the soul of a man cannot be a mere life-principle. For it is not in virtue of my being alive that I have a conscience. The argument, then, is this:

1) Being alive and having a conscience are different properties. Therefore:

2) It is not in virtue of my being alive that I have a conscience.

3) It is in virtue of my having a soul that I have a conscience. Therefore:

4) The soul cannot be merely the life-principle of my body.

Possible Objection

At best, what you have shown is that the soul cannot be merely a life-principle. But what is to stop this principle from doing other jobs as well? However it is with non-rational animals, in a human being, the soul is not merely (i) a life-principle but also (ii) the locus of conscience, (iii) the subject of intentional states, and (iv) the free agent of one's actions.

In a later entry I will respond to the objection.

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*If there is post-mortem judgment, it will be the soul that will be is judged, and judged morally, not the body, which implies that the soul is the seat of conscience and free agency. "What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world but suffer the loss of his immortal body soul?"

A Problem for Hylomorphic Dualism in the Philosophy of Mind

Edward Feser's Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature may well be the best compendium of Thomist philosophical anthropology presently available. I strongly recommend it. I wish I could accept its central claims. This entry discusses one of several problems I have.

The problem I want to discuss in this installment is whether an Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) hylomorphic analysis of human beings can make sense of our post-mortem existence as distinct persons. Thomas Aquinas maintains that after death the souls of rational animals, but not the souls of non-rational animals, continue to exist as disembodied forms, numerically distinct among themselves. What the following argument seems to show is that the survival of distinct souls is impossible on hylomorphic dualism. I will not be questioning whether in fact we survive our bodily deaths. In question is whether A-T style hylomorphism renders it intelligible.

1) A primary substance (a substance hereafter) is a concrete individual. A man, a horse, a tree, a statue are stock examples of substances. A substance in this technical sense is not to be confused with stuff or material. Substances are individuals in that they have properties but are not themselves properties. Properties are predicable; substances are not. Substances are concrete in that they are causally active/passive.

2) Material substances are analyzable into matter (ὕλη, hyle/hule) and form (μορφή, morphe). A-T ontological analysis is thus hylomorphic analysis.

3) The soul of an animal, whether rational or non-rational, is not a complete substance in its own right, but the (substantial) form of its body. Anima forma corporis. Hylomorphic dualism is not a Cartesian dualism of complete substances, but a dualism of ontological constituents of one and the same complete substance.

4) Substances of the same kind have the same substantial form, where the substantial form of a substance is the conjunction of the essential (as opposed to accidental) properties that make the substance the kind of substance it is. Unlike Platonic Forms, Aristotelian forms cannot exist except as instantiated in matter.

5) There are many numerically different human beings (human substances). I assume that the reader is familiar with the distinction between numerical and qualitative identity and difference. (Comments are enabled if you have questions.)

6) Since these substances of the human kind have the same form, it is not their form that makes them numerically different. (4, 5) What then grounds their numerical difference?

7) It is the matter of their respective bodies that makes numerically different human beings numerically different. (2,6) Matter, then, is the principium individuationis, the principle of individuation, the ontological ground of the numerical difference of material substances, including human beings. It is matter that makes Socrates and Plato numerically different substances, not the substantial form they share.

8) A human being is a person.

9) A person is an individual substance of a rational nature. (Thomas, following Boethius)

10) There are many numerically different persons. (5, 8)

11) Only embodied, 'enmattered,' persons are numerically different from one another: embodiment is thus a necessary condition of difference of persons. (7) It is matter that makes a person the particular person that he is. The matter in question is not materia prima, but what Thomas refers to as materia signata (designated matter, signate matter) in his De Ente et Essentia. As Feser puts it in his Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (2014, p. 199): "The matter that is the principle of individuation is, in Aquinas's view, matter as made distinct by quantity or dimension — designated matter . . . .

12) At death a person suffers the loss of embodiment, which implies that after death, a person survives, if at all, as a disembodied form (until the general resurrection, at which time the disembodied soul/form acquires a resurrection body).

Therefore

13) After death a human person ceases to exist as the particular person that it is. But that is to say that the particular person, Socrates say, ceases to exist, full stop. What survives is at best a form which is common to all persons. That form, however, cannot be me or you. Thus the particularity, individuality, haecceity, ipseity of persons, which is essential to persons, is lost. (11, 12)

Norms in Nature? Some Doubts

Substack latest. It opens like this:

Our friend Malcolm Pollack, riffing on some complaints of mine about Michael Anton's talk of natural rights, wrote the following:

Rights are normative in their essence, while Nature simply is. Therefore, I see only two possibilities:

1) “Natural” rights flow from an intrinsic source of normative authority. Since brute and indifferent Nature cannot be such a source, then for such rights to exist in themselves, as opposed to being mere conventions and intuitions, requires the existence of God. They are therefore “natural” rights in virtue of our nature qua creations of a transcendent and normatively authoritative Deity.

2) There is in fact no such authoritative source, and so natural rights are nonsense. (Upon stilts.) It may be in our nature to have the intuitions we do about possessing such rights, but it is a category error to imagine that rights themselves can originate in the material world.

In response, I pointed out that this is far too quick inasmuch as there are Aristotelians who seek to ground norms in nature herself. These thinkers do not accept what to Pollack and the modern mind seems self-evident, namely, that there is a gap between the normative and the factual that disallows any derivation of normative claims from factual ones. One prominent Aristotelian is Philippa Foot. So let's see what she has to say.

A Battle of Titans

Substack upload.

It is sometimes said that there are only two kinds of philosophers, Platonists and Aristotelians. What follows is a quotation from Heinrich Heine which expresses one version of this useful simplification. Carl Gustav Jung places it at the very beginning of his Psychological Types (Princeton UP, 1971, p. 2. Jung does not properly source the Heine quotation.)

Democrat Election Skulduggery

The Dems are now a hard-Left party. For a leftist, the end justifies the means. If you have to cheat to win, then you cheat. And so they cheat. Case in point: Arizona election fraud. See here, here, and here.

When caught, leftists lie about their cheating and about their lying. Do leftists ever tell the truth? Yes, of course — when it serves their purpose. Truth is not a leftist value. Their highest value is power, its gaining and maintaining.

Animal Awareness: Aristotle, Galileo, Kant

This just over the trans0m from Edward Buckner. I have added my comments in blue.

Aristotle: Even if all animals were eliminated and thereby all perceptions (since only animals perceive), “there will still be something perceptible—a body, for example, or something warm, or sweet, or bitter, or anything else perceptible.”

BV: Evaluation of the above requires that we get clear about the sense of 'perceptible.' There are at least the following three senses:

1) X is perceptible₁ =_df it is logically possible that x be perceived.

2) X is perceptible₂=_df it is nomologically possible that x be perceived.

3) X is perceptible₃ =_df x is able to be perceived by some sentient being.

I suggest that (3) is what we normally mean by 'perceptible.' What (3) says is that for a thing to be perceptible, there must be at least one existing perceiver with the ability to perceive the thing. On (3), then, Aristotle is mistaken. So on a charitable interpretation, he probably means something like (2): many if not most natural things are such that, if there were an able-facultied perceiver on the scene, one or more natural things would be perceived, and would be perceived as having in themselves such qualities as being warm, bitter, or sweet. Aristotle is a realist about what we now call secondary qualities.

Galileo: “tastes, odors, colors, and so on are no more than mere names so far as the object in which we place them is concerned, and that they reside only in the consciousness. Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be wiped away and annihilated.”

BV: Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) belongs to the modern period which he helped inaugurate, along with Rene Descartes (1596-1650). The main point to note for present purposes is that Galileo reduces the sensory qualities that Aristotle viewed as properties of things themselves to perceiver-relative 'secondary qualities.' So if "living creatures were removed," then at least the secondary qualities would be "removed" along with them. That's quite the contrast with Aristotle. The Stagirite is a realist about warmth, etc,; the Italian is an idealist about warmth, etc.

What would Kant’s view be? Does he think that if all perceiving beings ceased to exist, then appearances would cease to exist? But appearances, according to him, are things like trees and rocks. Does he then think that if all perceiving beings ceased to exist, trees and rocks, and all other non-sentient things, would cease to exist? We should be told.

BV: Underlying Ed's questions is the question: Who or what is the knowing subject for Kant? For Aristotle, the knowing subject is the concrete man embedded in nature, a hylomorphic composite in which anima forma corporis. For Kant, however, the concrete man, the man of flesh and blood embedded in nature, with both animal body and animal soul, is blosse Erscheinung, a mere appearance or phenomenon, and thus an object of knowledge, but not the subject of knowledge, i.e., not the knowing subject. For Kant, the knowing subject is transcendental. This is Kant's view whatever you think of it. It is undoubtedly fraught with difficulties, but my sketch is accurate albeit superficial.

And so the answer to both of Ed's questions is in the negative.

Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Divine Simplicity

Dominik Kowalski has a question for me about footnote 3 in Peter van Inwagen's "God's Being and Ours" in Miroslav Szatkowski, ed., Ontology of Theistic Beliefs, de Gruyter, 2018, pp. 213-223. (Van Inwagen's essay is right after my "Does God Exist Because He Ought to Exist?, pp. 203-212. I managed to upstage van Inwagen, but only alphabetically.) Here is footnote 3:

Catholic philosophers have often said not that God’s existence is a consequence of his nature but that his existence and his nature are identical. This doctrine is one of the many implications of the more general “doctrine of Divine Simplicity”, according to which phrases like ‘God’s power’, ‘God’s wisdom’, ‘God’s love’, ‘God’s nature’ and ‘God’s existence’ all denote one and the same thing, namely the Divine Substance – that is, God, God himself, God full stop. The doctrine of Divine Simplicity, however, presupposes an Aristotelian ontology of substance and attribute (for present purposes, “Aristotelianism”). From the point of view of a Platonist like myself, the doctrine of Divine Simplicity is wrong simply because it presupposes Aristotelianism, and Aristotelianism is false.

Here is Dominik's question:

Where does that idea come from? [The idea that DDS presupposes an Aristotelian ontology.] Seriously, I don't understand. It might be disputable whether we can reconcile Plotinus' understanding of the way the One exists with a Thomistic view about God, but divine simplicity is a core pillar of (Neo-)Platonist arguments, e.g. the argument from composition. As said, perhaps the identification of God with existence is a newer concept due to development by philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition, but prima facie I think formulating the dispute the way van Inwagen does, muddies the water. Divine Simplicity mustn't be identified with an explicitly Thomistic formulation, this just undersells the disputes the doctrine has historically surrounded [undersells the disputes that have historically surrounded the doctrine].

1) Kowalski is right that the ontological simplicity of the Absolute is at the core of Platonism and Ne0-Platonism. The Good of Plato, the One of Plotinus, and the God of Aquinas are all ontologically simple. The theology of Aquinas quite obviously incorporates this neo-Platonic element, along with other elements, some of which do not comport well with the neo-Platonic element. No Absolute worth its salt can fail to be simple, and the God of Aquinas is the Absolute in his system. For Aquinas, Deus est ipsum esse subsistens. Literally translated, God is self-subsisting To Be. Intellectual honesty demands that we admit that this God concept teeters on the brink of unintelligibility. But it is defensible as a Grenzbegriff, a boundary or limit concept. See The Concept GOD as Limit Concept.

God is not a being among beings, but Being itself. In this respect God is like the One of Plotinus. There is no Many in which the One is a member. The ONE is not one of many. Similarly, in Aquinas there is no totality of beings in which God is a member. God is not one being among many. He is utterly transcendent like the One of Plotinus and the Good of Plato. And yet, God is not other than every being, every ens, for he himself is. If God were other than every being, then he would be other than himself, which is impossible. This distinguishes the God of Aquinas from Heidegger's Being. For Heidegger, das Sein ist kein Seiendes, Being is other than every being, everything that is. For Aquinas, Gott oder das Sein ist selbst seiend, God or Being is himself being. Or, as I say in my existence book, The Paradigm Existent, the Unifier, is not a being (which would imply that it is a being among beings), but the being, the one and only being (ens) that is identical to its Being (esse) . That is indeed one of the entailments of DDS: there is no real distinction in God as between God and Being and between God and his Being.

2) As for Peter van Inwagen, he, like so many hard-core analytic types, uses 'Platonism' and related expressions in a loose and historically uninformed way. He calls himself a Platonist but he certainly does not accept 'into his ontology' — as these types say — Platonic Forms or Ideas (eide), Platonic participation (methexis) of phenomenal particulars in Forms, and the rest of the conceptual machinery which naturally within Plato's system implies levels/grades of Being and modes of Being which Dominik, as a German speaker, can understand as Seinsweisen or Seinsmodi. In the essay in question, van Inwagen comes out unequivocally against modes of Being. (I employ the majuscule 'B' in 'Being' so as to mark the crucial distinction between Being and beings, esse et ens/entia, das Sein und das Seiende. Observing that distinction is initium sapientiae in ontology.)

Van Inwagen's main man is Willard van Orman Quine who contributed to the misuse of the good old word 'abstract' with his talk of 'abstract objects.' So-called abstract objects are not products of abstraction. Van Inwagen buys into this lapse from traditional usage along with his colleague Alvin Plantinga. Accordingly, there are properties, but they are 'abstract objects' which exist just as robustly (or just as anemically) as 'concrete objects.' So-called abstract objects are, besides being outside of space and time, causally inert. So it is no surprise that Plantinga and van Inwagen reject the DDS claim that God is identical to each of his omni-attributes or essential properties. To their way of thinking, that identity claim makes of God a causally inert abstract object, which of course God, as causa prima, cannot be.

3) When van Inwagen says that DDS presupposes an Aristotelian ontology of substance and attribute, what he says is true inasmuch as said ontology is a constituent ontology (C-ontology). This is what he, as a self-styled 'Platonist' objects to. I explain C-ontology in my Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on DDS. See section 3. Here is part of what I say in that section:

Since a Plantinga-type approach to ontology rules out DDS from the outset, no sophisticated adherent of the doctrine will adopt such an approach. The DDS defender will embrace an ontology that accommodates an ontologically simple being. Indeed, as Nicholas Wolterstorff (1991) notes, classical proponents of DDS such as Aquinas had a radically different ontological style, one that allowed for the coherent conceivability of DDS. They did not think of individuals as related to their properties as to abstracta external to them, but as having properties as ontological constituents. They, and some atheist contemporaries as well, think in terms of a “constituent ontology” as opposed to what Wolterstorff calls a “relation ontology” or what might be called a “nonconstituent ontology”. Bundle theories are contemporary examples of constituent ontology. If properties are assayed as tropes and a concrete particular as a bundle of tropes, then these tropes or abstract particulars are parts of concrete particulars when suitably bundled. Properties so assayed are brought from Plato’s heaven to earth. The togetherness or compresence of tropes in a trope bundle is not formal identity but a kind of contingent sameness. Thus a redness trope and a sweetness trope in an apple are not identical but contingently compresent as parts of the same whole. A model such as this allows for an extrapolation to a necessary compresence of the divine attributes in the case of God. Aquinas, the greatest of the medieval proponents of DDS, is of course an Aristotelian, not a trope theorist. But he too is a constituent ontologist. Form and matter, act and potency, and essence and existence are constituents of primary substances. Essence and existence in sublunary substances such as Socrates are really distinct but inseparably together. Their unity is contingent. This model permits an extrapolation to the case of a being in which essence and existence are necessarily together or compresent. Constituent ontology, as murky as it must remain on a sketch such as this, at least provides a framework in which DDS is somewhat intelligible as opposed to a Plantinga-style framework on which DDS remains wholly unintelligible. The arguments for DDS amount to arguments against the nonconstituent ontological framework.

Combox open. I invite Dominik to tell me whether I have answered his question to his satisfaction.

Felicitas Theoretica et Visio Beata: Monasticism and Christianity

The bliss of the bios theoretikos as described by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics is the model for the Beatific Vision as described by Thomas Aquinas. The ultimate salvific state is a contemplative state. Monasticism is an institutional expression of this root commitment. The monk's life is decidedly biased toward the intellectual and the theoretical. As opposed to what? As opposed to a life in which praxis is paramount.

Question: Is the life of the monk the highest life for the Christian? Is the monastic life the highest form of imitatio Christi? Christ was no anchorite. He did not flee from the agitation of the cities and from the people except for relatively short periods. He associated with the canaille, with publicans and prostitutes. His ministry was among them where he risked everything and in human terms lost everything.

Despite their drastic differences, Socrates too moved among the people and met a predictable fate. He lived in no ivory tower where he could think and write in peace and in leisurely retirement. He wrote nothing. His academy was the agora. His was the dialectic of the streets, not that of the learned essay. A battle-hardened soldier, he knew how to translate military valor into civil courage. Among his interlocutors were powerful and vicious men. He took risks, offended them, and was executed by the State. But back to Christ. Let us hear St. Neilos the Ascetic. This is from his Ascetic Discourse in the Philokalia, that marvellous compendium of Patristic teachings.

For philosophy is a state of moral integrity combined with a doctrine of true knowledge concerning reality. Both Jews and Greeks fell short of this, for they rejected the Wisdom that is from heaven and tried to philosophize without Christ, who alone has revealed the true philosophy in both His life and His teaching. For by the purity of His life He was the first to establish the way of true philosophy. He always held His soul above the passions of the body, and in the end, when His death was required by His design for man's salvation. He laid down even His soul. In this He taught us that the true philosopher must renounce all life's pleasures, mastering pains and passions, and paying scant attention to the body: he must not overvalue even his soul, but must readily lay it down when holiness demands.

The apostles received this way of life from Christ and made it their own, renouncing the world in response to His call, disregarding fatherland, relatives and possessions. At once they adopted a harsh and strenuous way of life, facing every kind of adversity, afflicted, tormented, harassed, naked, lacking even necessities; and finally they met death boldly, imitating their Teacher faithfully in all things. Thus through their actions they left behind a true image of the highest way of life.

Although all Christians should have modeled their own life on this image, most of them either lacked the will to do so or else made only feeble efforts. There were, however, a few who had the Strength to rise above the turmoil of the world and to flee from the agitation of cities. Having escaped from this turbulence, they embraced the monastic life and reproduced in themselves the pattern of apostolic virtue. They preferred voluntary poverty to possessions, because this freed them from distraction, and so as to control the passions, they satisfied their bodily needs with food that was readily available and simply prepared, rather than with richly dressed dishes. Soft and unnecessary clothing they rejected as an invention of human luxury, and they wore only such plain garments as are required for the body. It seemed to them a betrayal of philosophy to turn their attention from heavenly things to earthly concerns more appropriate to animals. They ignored the world, being above human passions.

I draw your attention to the third paragraph. Christ did not flee from the agitation of the cities. He did not ignore the world and its turmoil. He was not above human passions. The God-Man was fully human. He did not die like a Stoic sage. He experienced to the full the brutality of the brutal Romans, dying like a man in utter agony of body and in despair of spirit, abandoned.

So the question is: Is the monastic way a way to evade true imitation of Christ? I myself am of the monkish disposition and not at all inclined to go into the agora like Socrates or into the temple with its moneychangers like Christ. Luther I find repellent; the anti-rational but also anti-mystical Kierkegaard fascinating but wrongheaded; the Roman church wishy-washy despite its deep depths of mysticism; it is the East and the mystical depths of Orthodox Christianity that attract me. Athens is closer to Constantinople than to Rome.

And so I ask my question in the spirit of Socratic self-examination. I do not have an answer. The unexamined life is not worth living, and the highest examination is the examination of one's own life.

Conceiving the Afterlife: Life 2.0 or Beatific Vision?

‘Political’ is not a Dirty Word

Years ago I heard a man on C-Span whose name and the name of whose organization I have forgotten. The man headed an outfit promoting a strict interpretation of the U.S. constitution. Throughout his talk he repeated the remark that his organization was not political, not political, NOT POLITICAL!

Nonsense, say I. What the hell else could it be? What could be more political than questions about constitutions and their interpretation, and organizations that promote a particular style of constitutional interpretation?

'Political' is not a dirty word. How could it be when the human being, by nature, is zoon politikon, a political animal? Aristotle, who made the point, also appreciated that the political life cannot be the highest life. That honor goes to the theoretical life. The vita activa subserves the vita contemplativa. The doctor angelicus follows in the footsteps of the Peripatetic.

After MacIntyre: On Deriving Ought from Is

Are there any (non-trivial*) valid arguments that satisfy the following conditions: (i) The premises are all purely factual in the sense of purporting to state only what is the case; (ii) the conclusion is normative/evaluative? Alasdair MacIntyre gives the following example (After Virtue, U. of Notre Dame Press, 1981, p. 55):

1. This watch is inaccurate.

Therefore

2. This is a bad watch.

MacIntyre claims that the premise is factual, the conclusion evaluative, and the argument valid. (The argument is an enthymeme the formal validity of which is ensured by the auxiliary premise, 'Every inaccurate watch is a bad watch.') The validity is supposed to hinge on the functional character of the concept watch. A watch is an artifact created by an artificer for a specific purpose: to tell time accurately. It therefore has a proper function, one assigned by the artificer. (Serving as a paperweight being an example of an improper function.) A good watch does its job, serves its purpose, fulfills its proper function. MacIntyre tells us that "the concept of a watch cannot be defined independently of the concept of a good watch . . ." and that "the criterion of something's being a watch and something's being a good watch . . . are not independent of each other." (ibid.) MacIntyre goes on to say that both criteria are factual and that for this reason arguments like the one above validly move from a factual premise to an evaluative conclusion.

Speaking as someone who has been more influenced by the moderns than by the ancients, I don't see it. It is not the case that "the concept of a watch cannot be defined independently of the concept of a good watch . . . ." A watch is "a portable timepiece designed to be worn (as on the wrist) or carried in the pocket." (Merriam-Webster) This standard definition allows, as it should, for both good and bad watches. Note that if chronometric goodness, i.e., accuracy, were built into the definition of 'watch,' then no watch would ever need repair. Indeed, no watch could be repaired. For a watch needing repair would then not be a watch.

MacIntyre is playing the following game, to put it somewhat uncharitably.

He smuggles the evaluative attribute good into his definition of 'watch,' forgets that he has done so thereby generating the illusion that his definition is purely factual, and then pulls the evaluative rabbit out of the hat in his conclusion. It is an illusion since the rabbit was already there in the premise. In other words, both (1) and (2) are evaluative. So, while the argument is valid, it is not a valid argument from a purely factual premise to an evaluative conclusion.

So if the precise question is whether one can validly move from a purely factual or descriptive premise to an evaluative conclusion, then MacIntyre's example fails to show that this is possible.

What MacIntyre needs is the idea that some statements are both factual and evaluative. If (1) is both, then (2) — This is a bad watch — follows and MacIntyre gets what he wants. But if (1) is both, then (1) is not purely factual. The question, however, was whether there is a valid immediate inference from the purely factual to the normative/evaluative. The answer to that, pace MacIntyre, is in the negative.

Is Man a Functional Concept?

But now suppose that, with respect to functional concepts, the move from fact to value is logically kosher because functional concepts embed criteria of evaluation. Then this discussion is relevant to ethics, the normative study of human action, only if man is a functional concept. Aristotle maintains as much: man qua man has a proper function, a proper role, a proper 'work' (ergon). This proper function is one he has essentially, by his very nature, regardless of whatever contingent roles a particular human may instantiate, wife, father, sea captain. Thus, " 'man' stands to 'good man' as 'watch' stands to 'good watch' . . . ." (56) Now if man qua man has a proper and essential function, then to say of a particular man that he is good or bad is to imply that he has a proper and essential function. But then to call a man good is also to make a factual statement. (57)

The idea is that being human is a role that includes certain norms, a role that each of us necessarily instantiates whether like it or not. There is a sort of coalescence of factual individual and norm in the case of each human being just as, in Aristotle's ontology, there is a sort of coalescence of individual and nature in each primary substance.

But does man qua man have a proper role or function? The moderns fight shy of this notion. They tend to think of all roles, jobs, and functions of humans as freely adopted and contingent. Modern man likes to think of himself as a free and autonomous individual who exists prior to and apart from all roles. This is what Sartre means when he says that existence precedes essence: Man qua man has no pre-assigned nature or essence or proper function: man as existing individual makes himself what ever he becomes. Man is not God's artifact, hence has no function other than one he freely adopts.

Although Aristotle did not believe in a creator God, it is an important question whether an Aristotle-style healing of the fact-value rift requires classical theism as underpinning. MacIntyre seems to think so. (Cf. p. 57) Philippa Foot demurs.

Interim Conclusion

If the precise question is whether one can validly (but non-trivially) move from a purely factual or descriptive premise to an evaluative conclusion, I have yet to see a clear example of this. But one ought to question the strict bifurcation of fact and value. The failure of entailment is perhaps no surprise given the bifurcation. The Aristotelian view, despite its murkiness, remains a contender. But to be a contender is not to be a winner.

The Aristotelian view is murky because it seems to imply that a bad man is not a man, just as a bad watch is not a watch. If it is built into the concept watch that it tell time accurately, then a watch that is either slow or fast is not watch, which is plainly false if not absurd, implying as it does that no watch could ever need repair. Clearly, there is nothing in the concept watch to require that a watch be accurate. There are good watches and bad watches. Similarly, there are good men and bad men. If to be a man is to exercise the proper function of a man, then there would be no need for correctional institutions.

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*A trivial argument from 'is' to 'ought' exploits the explosion principle, i.e., ex contradictione quodlibet. If anything follows from a contradiction, then from a contradictory premise set of factual claims any normative claim follows.