Category: Plato

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.

A Platonist at Breakfast

Amazing what one can unearth with the WayBack Machine. This one first saw daylight on 3 March 2005. 

…………………………

I head out early one morning with the wife in tow. I’m going to take her to a really fancy joint this time, the 5 and Diner, a greasy spoon dripping with 1950's Americana. We belly up to the counter and order the $2. 98 special: two eggs any style, hashbrowns, toast and coffee. Meanwhile I punch the buttons for Floyd Cramer’s Last Date on the personal jukebox in front of me after feeding it with a quarter from wifey’s purse.

"How would you like your eggs, sir?" "Over medium, please."

The eggs arrive undercooked. Do I complain? Rhinestone-studded Irene is working her tail off in the early morning rush. I’ve already bugged her for Tabasco sauce, extra butter, and more coffee. The service came with the sweetest of smiles. The place is jumping, the Mexican cooks are sweating, and the philosopher is philosophizing:

"If it won’t matter by tomorrow morning that these eggs are undercooked, why does it matter now?"

With that thought, I liberally douse the undercooked eggs with the fine Louisiana condiment, mix them up with the hashbrowns, and shovel the mess into my mouth with bread and fork, chasing it all with coffee and cream, no sugar.

Who says you can’t do anything with philosophy?

Existence Exists: Analytic or Synthetic?

 Recently over the transom:

I am A. Kashfi, Professor of philosophy from Tehran University, Iran.

I am currently engaged in studying your esteemed book A PARADIGM THEORY OF EXISTENCE. In this book, you argue that “existence exists”. Regarding this proposition, a question has arisen for me. I would be grateful to have your response.

Is this proposition analytical or synthetic?

If this proposition is analytical, its equivalent would be: "Existence is existence" or "Existent is existent," which, as it is evident, doesn't contain particularly useful information.

If this proposition is synthetic, it requires that the concept of “existence” be distinct from the concept of “existent”. I want to know what the distinction between these two concepts is. Here, which concept "other than existence" (note: distinct from existence), in accordance with the synthetic nature of the mentioned proposition, are we attributing to existence?
 
In other words, I understand the proposition "A tree exists", but what does the proposition "existence exists", (given the synthetic nature of this proposition), mean?

Yours sincerely, A. Kashfi

Thank you for writing, Professor Kashfi. Nothing in philosophy fascinates me more than the topic of Existence, and so it is with pleasure that I think through your questions.

To understand what I mean when I say that Existence exists you have to understand that I distinguish between existing items (existents) and Existence.  Thus I do not use 'existence' as some philosophers do to refer to existents collectively.  Nor do I mean by 'Existence exists' what Ayn Rand means by it. The distinction between Existence and existents, as I construe it, is motivated by (i) the apparent fact, evident to the senses,  that there are many existents but that (ii) these existents all have something in common, namely, Existence. Existence is one to their many as that in virtue of which the many existents exist. The distinction gives rise to several questions. Here are four. First, what is it for an individual existent to exist? Second, what is Existence itself in its difference from individual existents? Third, how is Existence common to existents? Fourth, does Existence itself exist?

Reinhardt Grossmann proffers a quick answer to the fourth question: How could it fail to? "If existence did not exist, then nothing would exist." (The Categorial Structure of the World, Indiana UP, 1983, p. 405) Of course, he is not talking about my theory, but his own. He goes on to say that it does not matter to which category you assign Existence.  Whatever Existence is, it must exist if anything is to exist. I argue in my book that Existence cannot be a first-level property and thus that it cannot be that existents exist by instantiating Existence, not that this is what Grossmann maintains. Suppose that I am wrong and that Existence is a first-level property, a property of individual existents, and that the latter exist by instantiating Existence.  Then surely that property would have to exist if anything exists. Here then is an example of a meaningful use of 'Existence exists.' If Existence is a first-level property, a property of individuals, then Existence must exist if anything is to instantiate it.

The distinction between existents and Existence is nothing new. In Aquinas it is the distinction between ens/entia and esse.  In Heidegger it is the distinction (ontologische Differenz) between das Seiende and das Sein. We also find it it Islamic philosophy. Fazlur Rahman, glossing Mulla Sadra, writes, "Existence is that primordial reality thanks to which things exist . . ." (The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra, SUNY Press, 1975, p. 28. Diacriticals omitted.)

Sadra is clearly distinguishing between the things that exist (existents) and that in virtue of which they exist, Existence. There are of course very important differences between the three thinkers mentioned, and between their views and mine. But there is a close affinity between my view and that of Aquinas, and a somewhat close affinity between my view and that of Mulla Sadra.   

For Aquinas, Existence itself exists as God: Deus est ipsum esse subsistens. I am using 'Being' and 'Existence' interchangeably. For Aquinas, then, God is (identical to) self-subsisting Being.  God is both Being (esse) and the supreme being (ens).  In my jargon, the God of Aquinas is the Paradigm Existent. God does have have esse; he is (identical to) esse. So the Paradigm Existent  is both Being (esse) and being (ens). That is equivalent to saying that Existence exists. 

Aquinas is saying that Being itself is. On my reading, he is making three interconnected claims. (1) Being is not other than every being, as it is for Heidegger. His is not an 'alterity' theory of Being.  (2) Being does not divide without remainder into beings. He rejects what I call radical ontological pluralism.  (3) God (self-subsistent Being) is not a being among beings; God is the being, where 'the' connotes uniqueness. See God: A Being among Beings or Being itself? Aquinas thus rejects an ontic conception of Being/God. Everything other than God is in a dependent and derivative way or mode. It is important to note that God for Aquinas is not only unique, but uniquely unique: unique in his very mode of uniqueness. If you understand what Aquinas is saying, then you will understand what I am saying when I say that Existence itself exists. Existence itself is Existence in its difference from the phenomenal existents which derive their existence from the Paradigm Existent.

'Ens' (being) is the present participle of the infinitive 'esse' (to be). This linguistic fact points us in a Platonic direction: phenomenal existents (you, me, my cats, the Moon, Trafalgar Square, my bicycle, its parts such as the chain, and its parts, the links . . .) participate in noumenal Existence. In virtue of this participation, phenomenal existents exist and form a unified plurality of existents. This plurality is no illusion. It is real, but derivatively real. What is derivatively real, however, is not ultimately real. I agree on this point and others with Plato, Aquinas, and Sadra.

Taking a further step in the Platonic direction, I will note that instead of 'Paradigm Existent' I could have used 'Exemplary Existent.' Both exemplars (paradigms, standards) and universals are ones-over-many, but an exemplar is not a universal. Universals have instances, but Existence has no instances.  Exemplification is not instantiation.

As for Sadra, if Existence is the "primordial reality," then this is tantamount to saying that Existence itself exists. For if Existence is real, then it cannot have a merely conceptual or mental status, as it would be if it were a product of abstraction, and if it is the primordial reality, then everything other than it is real in virtue of being dependent on it. As for Heidegger, while he too distinguishes Being from beings, he denies that Being itself is. Das Sein ist kein Seiendes! The overly triumphalistic subtitle of my book, "Onto-theology Vindicated" was meant to signal my opposition to Heidegger, whose critique of what he calls metaphysics is in part a critique of onto-theology. An onto-theological approach to Being avoids both the alterity view and the ontic view. But to explain this in any depth is beyond the scope of this response. See my Heidegger category for more on Schwarzwaldontologie. See also Three Theisms: Ontic, Alterity, and Onto-Theological and their Liabilities.

Analytic or Synthetic?

I will now respond to Professor Kashfi directly. He asks whether 'Existence exists' is analytic or synthetic and finds difficulties either way. My short answer is that Kashfi's question is not relevant to my broadly Platonic view. His question, couched in Kantian terms, is modern; my theory, harking back to Platonic exemplarism, is ancient. His question presupposes that Being is a being among beings. But that I deny. Now to the details.

Immanuel Kant applies the terms 'analytic' and 'synthetic' to judgments (Urteile). In the simple categorical case, a judgment involves a relation between a subject-concept and a predicate-concept. Thus the judgment expressed by 'Bodies are heavy,' (Kant's example of a synthetic judgment a posteriori) relates the concept body to the concept heavy via the copula 'are.'  But there has to be more to it than this, Kant insists, since we need to know "in what the asserted relation consists." (CPR B 141) His answer is that the relation of subject-concept to predicate-concept in a judgment is grounded in the bringing-together of concepts in the objective unity of apperception.  It is this objective unity of apperception (self-consciousness) that is "intended by the copula 'is.'" (B 142) In  Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, section 22, Kant writes, "The union of representations (Vorstellungen) in one consciousness is judgment." If these representations are united in the consciousness of a particular person, then the judgment is "accidental and subjective." If, however, they are united in a "consciousness in general," then the judgment is "necessary and objective."  This consciousness in general is what in Critique of Pure Reason he calls the objective unity of apperception.

Kant's central problem, as explained in his letter to Marcus Herz, is this: On what ground rests the relation of that in us which we call representation to the object? A judgment is a representation composed of concepts which are themselves representations. Judgments purport to be true or objectively valid. Suppose I see a green tree and judge that the tree is green. The judgment purports to be true  whether I or anyone make it. The purport is that the tree is green in reality apart from us  and our subjective mental states. I have an empirical representation of  green and an empirical representation of tree.  What I don't have is an empirical representation of what the 'is' denotes.  I have no empirical representation of the copulative tie or, equivalently, I have no empirical representation of the existence of the green tree. (The tree is green if and only if the green tree exists.) So how do I know that the tree is green? How do I secure the objective validity of the judgmental representation? What is the ultimate ground of the synthesis of subject and predicate in the object?  What makes it the case that the judgment expressed by 'This body is heavy' is true independently of my particular mental state and thus true for all actual and possible finite cognizers? What assures me that the judgental purport is satisfied? This is Kant's problem. To put it oxymoronically, it is a classically  modern problem. (The modern period in the West begins with Descartes, 1596-1650.)

Kant's solution is a transcendentally idealist one. The ultimate ground of the synthesis of subject and predicate in the object is is supplied by the objective unity of apperception which is also the transcendental unity of apperception. This solution is fraught with difficulties. For me, the central difficulty is the one I tackled in my doctoral dissertation: what exactly is the status of this transcendental unity of apperception? But that is basically what Kant is maintaining: we, in our transcendental capacity,  constitute objects in their objectivity. For we are the source of the the objective synthesis that lends objectivity to judgments.

Whether a judgment is analytic (e.g., 'All bodies are extended') or synthetic ('This body is heavy'), all such judgments are about phenomenal particulars in space and time.  But neither Kant's transcendental unity of apperception nor my Paradigm Existent is a phenomenal particular in space and time. For Kant, the ultimate transcendental condition of anything's being an object is not itself an object among objects. Similarly, the The Paradigm Existent is not an existent among existents. It is no more such than the God of Aquinas is a being among beings. 

And so I say that the question 'Analytic or Synthetic?' is inappropriately asked of 'Existence itself exists.'

Kashfi writes, "If this proposition ['Existence exists'] is synthetic, it requires that the concept of 'existence' be distinct from the concept of 'existent'."  Kashfi thereby assumes something that I explicitly deny early on in my book, namely, that Existence is a concept. Concepts track essences. The concept triangle, for example, 'captures' the essence TRIANGLE. The existence of an existing thing, however, cannot be captured, grasped, 'made present to the mind'  by any concept.  Existence is trans-conceptual.

One reason is that existence is not essence. Another reason is that each existing thing has its own existence: Socrates' existence is his and not Plato's. The two philosophers differ numerically in their very existence. They differ numerically as existents. Thus their numerical difference is numerical-existential difference. But as Aristotle said (in Greek, not in Latin): Individuum qua individuum ineffabile est. Individuals as such are ineffable. That strikes me as obvious given that (i) there is and can be no concept that captures or grasps the haecceity (non-qualitative thisness) of an individual, and (ii) there are no haecceities except those of existing things.  (Pace Plantinga, there are no such metaphysical monstrosities as  uninstantiated haecceities.)  There are, in other words, no individual concepts. Definitions and arguments here and in the surrounding entries in the identity and individuation category.

Neither the existence of Socrates, the existence that is his alone and not possibly shared with any other existent, nor Existence itself in its difference from existents is a concept. My point is that Existence either in finite existents or in itself cannot be reduced to a concept. I am not saying that we have no concept of Existence; we do. It is just that the concept of Existence is the concept of something that is not and cannot be a concept.  Existence is in this respect like God. We have various concepts of God, but God is not a concept. Or do you think that a mere concept in a mortal's mind created the world? Similarly, do you think that that in virtue of which finite existents exist is a concept in a mortal's mind?  See The Concept GOD as a Limit Concept.

To understand what I mean by 'Existence itself exists,' you have to understand that Existence itself is like the Platonic Form/Idea, Humanity. The former, like the latter, is not self-predicable or self-instantiating: Humanity is quite obviously not human, nor a human. And because Humanity is not self-predicable, one cannot sensibly ask whether the predicate-concept human is analytically contained in the subject-concept Humanity or synthetically  attached to it. The Form/Idea Humanity exists by being (identical to) itself. Its Being is (identically) its self-identity unlike a particular human such as Socrates whose Being is not its self-identity. (If Socrates' Being were his self-identity, then he would be a necessary being, when in fact he is a contingent being.) The same goes for Existence in its different from existents: its Being is its self-identity, which implies that the Paradigm Existent is metaphysically necessary.

If Humanity were self-predicable (self-instantiating), then the Third Man Regress would be up and running. For if  'is human' is univocally predicable of both the Form Humanity and its phenomenal instance Socrates, then a second Form — call it Humanity II — would have to be introduced to explain what is common to both Humanity and Socrates. And so on into an infinite explanatory regress which, as explanatory, is vicious. (Sone infinite regresses are benign, e.g. the truth regress.)

The Form/Idea Humanity is a CASE of itself, but not an INSTANCE of itself. A case because Humanity  is not a universal what-determination abstractly common to particular phenomenal beings, but a paradigm or exemplar.  The standard meter bar in Paris might prove to be a useful analogy if you take it the right way (which is of course that way I want you to take it.) The standard meter bar is obviously not an instance of itself because it is a material particular, and such things do not have instances.  For the same reason, you cannot predicate the standard meter bar of itself.  The standard meter bar is nonetheless a case of itself in that it is a metal bar exactly one meter in length: it sets the standard by being (identical to) the standard.

Now the standard meter bar is a phenomenal particular relative to which other phenomenal particulars either measure up or fall short, whereas the Paradigm Existent is not a phenomenal particular.  This is a point of disanalogy. But if you understand how the standard meter bars functions as a paradigm, you should also be able to understand how Existence could so function, mutatis mutandis.

The Lethal Chamber of the Soul

I float the suggestion that the problem of the external world was originally ontological, not epistemological.

The material world is the great lethal chamber of the soul. Only spiritual heroes can arouse themselves sufficiently to escape from its stupefying effect upon consciousness. (Paul Brunton)

The Brunton quotation is distinctly Emersonian, as witness:

The influence of the senses has in most men overpowered the mind to that degree that the walls of time and space have come to look real and insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these limits is, in the world, the sign of insanity. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Oversoul")

The outer senses are seductive. To seduce is to lead astray. From the Latin infinitive ducere, to lead. Dux, ducis is one who leads, a leader. Hence il Duce who led Italians astray into Fascism. (The latter term is  used properly to  refer only to the political philosophy of Benito Mussolini.)  Here are some other English verbs that derive from ducere: deduce, reduce, induce, educe, educate, abduct, deduct, conduct, induct, etc. and their abstract and concrete nominal forms: abduction, induction, inductance, etc. and abductor, inductor, etc.

But I digress.

The outer senses are seductive. They lead us to posit their objects as ultimately and unquestionably real when they are not. The world of the senses comes to exhaust the cartography of Being. Simone Weil, Platonist that she is, is good on this.  As seductive, the outer senses are deceptive: they deceive us into thinking that what is only derivatively real, and thus a mix of the real and the unreal, is ultimately or fully real. The deception concerns not their being, but their mode of being.

Among the philosophical acts whereby philosophy and the philosopher first come to be is by the suspension of our natural world affirmation.  This suspension was ancient long before it was modern. The problem of the external world was originally ontological, not epistemological. The question concerned the mode of being of the objects of the outer senses, not "our knowledge of the external world," to borrow a title from Bertrand Russell's eponymous 1929 collection of lectures. The ancient question was not the question: How do we know that there is an external world? but the question: What is the ontological status (illusory, merely apparent but not illusory, fully real) of the external world? 

This curious shift from the ontological to the epistemological may be illustrated by the different attitudes toward the paradoxes of Zeno of Elea. What is Zeno arguing? Four possibilities of interpretation:

A. There is no motion. Motion is wholly unreal. Whatever is real is intelligible. (Parmenidean principle: Omne ens qua ens intelligibile est.) Nothing contradictory is intelligible. Motion is unintelligible because contradictory. Ergo, nothing moves. Motion is an illusion.

B. Motion is wholly real, 'as real as it gets.' The apparent contradictions involved in motion are merely apparent. The Zenonian arguments are fallacious and they can be shown to be fallacious. The 'calculus solution.' See Wesley Salmon.

C. Motion is phenomenally real, but not noumenally real. It is neither wholly unreal not wholly real. It is mere appearance.  Ultimate reality is motionless , but phenomeal reality is not nothing.

D. Motion is unintelligible but nonetheless real. Mysterian position. The Zenonian arguments cannot be refuted, but motion is nevertheless wholly real. Motion is actual, hence possible, despite the fact that we cannot understand how it is possible. 

Intimations of Elsewhere: Sensible Reminders of Hidden Beauty

Salzburg, Austria, December 1971. A young Austrian girl, radiant and beautiful, walked into the kitchen. I lost all desire for the food I had prepared.  My soul sprouted wings. The visible beauty triggered a memory of a timeless Beauty. Anamnesis pierced for a moment the amnesia induced by the bodily senses.

Dayton, Ohio, 1978. Gripped by the audible beauty of the Beethoven Violin Concerto in D major, the solo passage near the beginning of the Larghetto (26:33), upon return from a long, hard run, I could not eat the huge salad I had prepared. I set it down, my appetite gone.

Simone Weil (FLN, 318): "When once the whole of one's desire is turned toward God, one has no desire to eat when one is hungry."

The metaphysical elsewhere: beyond space, before time. Space- and time-bound as we are 'at present,' we must use spatial and temporal language to point beyond the spatiotemporal.

The intimations are rare. Don't ignore them, record them, honor and remember them. To dismiss them as the worldly are wont to do strikes me as the height of spiritual foolishness.

Platonism and Christianity: Josef Pieper on Phaedrus 246c

At the center of the confrontation between Platonism and Christianity on the question of the survival of death lies the tension: immortality of the soul or resurrection of the body? More fully:  immortality of the disembodied soul or resurrection of the en-souled body? Connected with this is the question of whether and to what extent Christianity has been illegitimately Hellenized, in particular, Platonized. Platonism holds that the soul is the true self and that death is liberation of the soul from its entrapment by the body. This puts Platonism at odds with Christianity which teaches the resurrection of the body and which comports better with the Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) view of the human person as a soul-body composite, and thus as essentially embodied. For Platonism, I am (identical to) my soul, and my body is an accidental adjunct. On the A-T view, however, I am not my soul, but a soul-body composite, both components of which are essential to me and to each other. But Platonism is one thing, Plato another. It is not clear that Plato was a Platonist.

Josef Pieper takes it a step further and roundly asserts that "Plato himself, however, is no Platonist." He refers us to the late dialogue, Phaedrus, and to the passage at 246c. The passage is concerned with the question "how it is that a living being is called mortal and immortal." Pieper takes Plato to be suggesting:

If ever immortality is conferred upon us, not just the soul but the entire physical human being will in some inconceivable manner participate in the life of the gods; for in them alone is it made real in its original perfection. . . . Plato himself, therefore, here concedes that it is a catachrestic, inadequate, use of language to call the soul immortal. (Death and Immortality, Herder and Herder, 1969, p. 116.)

Unfortunately, Pieper's interpretation, which attempts to assimilate Platonism to Christianity, is not borne out by the text:

This composite structure of body and soul joined together is called a living being and is further designated as mortal. Immortal it is not on any reasonable supposition: in fact, it is our imagination, not our vision, not our adequate comprehension, that presents us with the notion of a god as an immortal living being equipped both with soul and with body, and with these, moreoever, joined together for all time. (trs. Helmbold and Rabinowitz, emphasis added)

Pieper's mistake is a surprising one for a philosopher of his stature to make. But it is a mistake that does not detract much from the high quality of Death and Immortality, which I strongly recommend, and to which I regularly return.

Simone Weil in the Light of Plato

Substack notes on Phaedo 83.

Thomas Merton, Journals, vol. 4, p. 57 (10 October 1960):

The superb moral and positive beauty of the Phaedo.  One does not have to agree with Plato, but one must hear him.  Not to listen to such a voice is unpardonable, it is like not listening to conscience or nature.

Absolutely right.

The writings of Plato are inexhaustible  in their riches. For years I read and taught the Phaedo dialogue, without appreciating the theory of relations contained therein until I read Plato's "Phaedo" Theory of Relations by Héctor-Neri Castañeda.  I spent the summer of 1984 with Hector in Bloomington at Indiana University on an NEH summer seminar grant. Little did I know at the time that Frithjof Schuon, a very different type of philosopher than Hector, and one I admire more than Hector, was living in Bloomington at the same time. An opportunity missed!

Hector was a brilliant man, a creative powerhouse, and most generous in the help he gave his younger colleagues, but his approach to philosophy was merely theoretical; I discerned no spiritual depth in him. Schuon was roughly the opposite: spiritually deep but in need of some analytic discipline.  Plato combined the attributes of spiritual depth and analytic penetration that fall asunder in lesser mortals.

For Weil, Plato "has genius whereas only the word talent applies to Aristotle." ("Human Personality" in Simone Weil, An Anthology, p. 67) 

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.)

Adeimantus, Machiavelli, Bloom, and Strauss

Owl of Minerva bookishly bewingedRecent events make it clear that the West is on the wane. The sun is setting on the Land of Evening. As the West goes under, the philosopher, like the proverbial owl of Minerva, spreads his wings in the gathering dusk so as to attain an altitude from which to survey the passing scene.  He soars and he strains, to com-prehend and understand, and if he is of the tribe of Plato, he seeks to discern what might lie beyond the scene he surveys.  His flight is fueled by the thoughts of his great predecessors.

 

I found the following in Allan Bloom's interpretive essay on Plato's Republic which is appended to his translation thereof. (Allan Bloom, The Republic of Plato, Basic Books, 1968, p. 371, correction and emphasis added.)

Adeimantus' objection, then, is the same as Machiavelli's: the best regime is a mere dream, for a good city cannot avoid ruin if it does not do the things which will enable it to survive among vicious cities. It is foreign policy which makes the devotion to the good life within a city impossible [sic; read: possible]  One must be at least as powerful as one's neighbors and must adopt a way of life such as to make this possible. Poverty, smallness, and unchangingness cannot compete with wealth, greatness, and innovation. The true policy is outward-looking, and cities and men are radically dependent on others for what they must be. Without a response to this objection— which Machiavelli thought to be decisive for the rejection of classical political thought — the very attempt to elaborate a utopia is folly. (p. 371)

My gloss: An enlightened nationalism, while chary of intervention, cannot be isolationist.

And the following I found in Leo Strauss' essay "What is Political Philosophy?" in What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies, University of Chicago Press, 1988, originally published by The Free Press, 1959, pp. 40-41, emphasis and hyperlink added.

The founder of modern political philosophy is Machiavelli. He tried to effect, and he did effect, a break with the whole tradition of political philosophy. He compared his achievement to that of men like Columbus. He claimed to have discovered a new moral continent. His claim is well founded; his political teaching is "wholly new." The only question is whether the new continent is fit for human habitation.

In his Florentine Histories he tells the following story: Cosimo de Medici once said that men cannot maintain power with pater-nosters in their hands. This gave occasion to Cosimo's enemies to slander him as a man who loved himself more than his fatherland and who loved this world more than the next. Cosimo was then said to be somewhat immoral and somewhat irreligious. Machiavelli himself is open to the same charge. His work is based on a critique of religion and a critique of morality.

His critique of religion, chiefly of Biblical religion, but also of paganism, is not original. It amounts to a restatement of the teaching of pagan philosophers, as well as of that medieval school which goes by the name of Averroism and which gave rise to the notion of the three impostors. Machiavelli's originality in this field is limited to the fact that he was a great master of blasphemy. The charm and gracefulness of his blasphemies will however be less strongly felt by us than their shocking character. Let us then keep them under the veil under which he has hidden them. I hasten to his critique of morality which is identical with his critique of classical political philosophy. One can state the main point as follows: there is something fundamentally wrong with an approach to politics which culminates in a Utopia, in the description of a best regime whose actualization is highly improbable. Let us then cease to take our bearings by virtue, the highest objective which a society might choose; let us begin to take our bearings by the objectives which are actually pursued by all societies. Machiavelli consciously lowers the standards of social action. His lowering of the standards is meant to lead to a higher probability of actualization of that scheme which is constructed in accordance with the lowered standards. Thus, the dependence on chance is reduced: chance will be conquered.

I will take a stab at a gloss of the italicized passage. It is a grave error to aim at a utopian resolution of our political predicament. To seek the unachievable best is to preclude the attainment of the achievable good. The pursuit of unrealizable ideals will make hypocrites of us and what is far worse, murderers who will be able to justify mass murder  to achieve perfection as if anything truly straight could ever be made by human effort from the crooked timber of humanity.

 

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.

The Dialogue Form

Scott Johnson, Learning from Euthydemus:

The dialogue form is conducive to venturing otherwise forbidden thoughts in a time of persecution. The form might usefully be employed to address the shibboleths shoved down the throats of students like Euthydemus in our own day. Let us have our best teachers turn to the dialogue form with students touting “equity” versus equality, “affirmative action” and racial preferences versus equal treatment, the history of the founding of the United States versus the 1619 Project, the quandary of “reparations,” and so on.