Showing papers in "Review of Metaphysics in 1993"

Plotinus's Metaphysics: Emanation or Creation?

Abstract: ONE FREQUENTLY READS CASUAL REFERENCES to Neo-Platonic metaphysics as emanationist It is somewhat less common to find analyses of the term "emanation" so used In this paper I shall be concerned solely with Plotinus I hereby set aside all questions regarding any common denominator one might suppose between Plotinus and, say, Proclus There are several texts in the Enneads which employ noun and verb forms of [unkeyable] to describe the activity of the One in relation to complex entities For example, For the soul now knows that these things must be, but longs to answer the question repeatedly discussed also by the ancient philosophers, how from the One, if it is such as we say it is, anything else, whether a multiplicity or a dyad or a number, came into existence, and why it did not on the contrary remain by itself, but such a great multiplicity flowed [unkeyable] from it as that which is seen to exist in beings, but which we think it right to refer back to the One (5162-8)(1) This, we may say, is the first act of generation: the One, perfect because it seeks nothing, has nothing, and needs nothing, overflows [[unkeyable]], as it were, and its superabundance makes something other than itself (5215-10) The first remark I wish to make about these passages is the obvious one that to think of emanating or flowing in contrast to creating is to make a sort of category mistake For metaphors are not properly contrasted with technical terminology(2) If one wants convincing on this point, we need only recall that Aquinas sometimes uses the same metaphor in behalf of an explanation of creation, not in contrast to it(3) Conceding this, there is still the reasonable suspicion that some fundamental difference remains between Plotinus' metaphysics and a creation metaphysics such as that of Aquinas I conjecture that the reason for this suspicion is that Plotinus is supposed to be the faithful inheritor of the Parmenidean legacy which lays down the axiom that ex nihilo nihil fit Aquinas, however, understands creation as ex nihilo So it would seem just incorrect to construe the metaphors of emanation in a manner which would make Plotinus contradict that axiom This reasoning seems less cogent when we begin to explicate the term ex nihilo; for one thing Aquinas does not mean by creatio ex nihilo is temporal origin That God is the creator of all Aquinas believes he can demonstrate; that the world did not always exist is held by faith alone(4) Thus, the philosophical core of the notion of creation is casual dependence of being: Deus est causa universalis totius esse The proper effect of God's casual activity is the being of everything(5) Let us compare this with a text of Plotinus: But how is that One the principle of all things? Is it because as principle it keeps them in being, making each one of them to be? Yes, and because it caused them to be (531528-30)(6) A good question for proponents of emanationism in Plotinus to ask themselves at this point is how this passage and similar ones express a noncreationist metaphysics One proposal sometimes made in order to differentiate a non-creationist from a creationist metaphysics is that in the former creatures exist of necessity whereas in the latter they do not Indeed, Plotinus does say that what exists does so necessarily and not as a result of the discursive reasoning [unkeyable] of the [unkeyable] of all(7) By contrast, Aquinas says in many places that Deus produxit creaturas, non ex necessitate, sed per intellectum et voluntatem(8) Of course, Aquinas also says that God's knowledge is not discursive, and one of the reasons for this is that discursive knowing implies imperfection(9) But Plotinus, too, says that the One is perfect and that it acts according to its will [unkeyable](10) So, whereas Aquinas contrasts the alternatives of acting by necessity and acting by will (and intellect), Plotinus contrasts acting by necessity and acting on the basis of discursive reasoning …

Aristotelian Friendship: Self-Love and Moral Rivalry

Abstract: IN THE FIRST SEVERAL PARAGRAPHS of Nicomachean Ethics 9.8, Aristotle asks "whether a man should love himself most" (NE 1168a28),(1) and asserts that "men say that one ought to love best one's best friend" (1168b1). Yet earlier (1159a27) Aristotle describes loving as more essential to friendship than being loved; furthermore, he emphasizes that a man wishes well to his friend for his friend's sake, not as a means to his own happiness (1155b31). Note also Aristotle's continued emphasis upon man as a political animal. In the Politics as well as the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle describes the biological, even instinctive tendency of humans to seek each other's company. He considers it absurd for a man even to imagine living alone, since "without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods" (1155a5-6). It is only the human animal, however, who is even capable of that genuine friendship which, although rare (1156b25), Aristotle considers "not only necessary but also noble; for . . . we think it is the same people that are good men and are friends" (1155a28-31); these friends are "alike in their excellence" (1156b7), one loving another "as being the man he is" (1156a11). We would argue that this implies that in loving a friend men thereby choose what is good for themselves: "for the good man in becoming a friend becomes a good to his friend" (1157b28-31), and, simultaneously, his friend a good to him. Aristotle states that it is the recognition of my friend's good character (known by his actions) that incites me, so to speak, to wish for him whatever is good. The same is true in the other direction. Aristotle adds: "it is mutually known to them that well-wishing of this kind is [also] reciprocated" (1156a3-5). Just what are we wishing for our friend? If one values the person and his welfare, should one not take care to discern how best to serve him? It seems evident that the well-wisher (and well-doer) in a genuine friendship by definition cannot make serious blunders or be greatly unskilled. A developed sensitivity to needs seems assured. After all, one must know what the friend wants: genuine friendship requires time and familiarity to become established (1156b26). Friends trust not only one another, but also (and especially) each other's ability to recognize and even anticipate what each does in fact need.(2) What each wants--being good, hence consistent (and not weak-willed)--is that which is good for the other. That which is good for him is precisely what is good for the well-wisher, for he is another self. Since one's friend is similarly a good man, one chooses for him what one would wish for oneself. The Self in Friendship. What kind of "another self" is the good man's friend? It is noteworthy that Aristotle employs the noun "self" (autos) very seldom, and only in his ethical treatises. Moreover, it is only in the chapters on friendship that Aristotle refers to another self (allos autos) or considers self-love (philautia). "Self" for Aristotle uniformly describes the human agent responsible for his choices, the originating source of his own conduct. The term is central to Aristotle's analysis of friendship. "Self," we conclude, underlies the notion of what one is when being a friend of the genuine sort, and what goes on in this friendship, namely, self-loving. Whenever one friend acts (and desires to act) for his friend's sake, this is definitive of genuine friendship (Rhetoric 1361b35-40). For Aristotle, to be aware of one's friend is in effect to be that friend, by means of one's own activity of knowing him; one thereby knows one's self. In order to be able to know myself as friend, however, I must recognize my self in my friend, becoming identical, so to speak, with him. I thereby become aware that he is another self while recognizing that I am one just like him, another self. Aristotle's notion of self is not that of an impersonal, objective or transcendent mind; rather, the self is simply the individual who thinks, acts, has affections, wishes, and chooses. …

Aristotle on Property

Abstract: I JONATHAN BARNES HAS WRITTEN RECENTLY that "Aristotle's remarks [on property] in the Politica are too nebulous to sustain any serious critical discussion."(1) Some scholars are (a bit) more confident about successfully getting to the bottom of Aristotle's opinions concerning property, but few have dealt with the topic in any detail.(2) In this essay I shall investigate the relevant texts on property from the Aristotelian corpus, beginning with an especially careful look at Aristotle's criticism of Plato's communism of property. I shall also consider the historical and cultural context in which Aristotle was writing. The result will be, I hope, a full account of, and hence a better understanding of, Aristotle's views on property.(3) II It hardly needs to be said that Aristotle is not an ascetic of any kind: he believes that human happiness requires all kinds of external goods, including wealth or property.(4) The important question for us is, In what form (politically, socially) should property be held? Aristotle considers three possible arrangements concerning property(5) and its use: (1) property is private, use is common; (2) property is common, use is private; (3) property is common, use is common. Why does Aristotle not consider a fourth option: property is private, use is private? Miller claims he omits this option because "he is not defending a system of unqualified privatization."(6) But this is not the reason. As we shall come to find out (in section IV below) one friend giving something to another, or in fact any act of generosity, falls under private property, common use (view [1]). For instance, this horse is mine, but I share it with (that is, make it common to) my friend. Thus, this fourth option--private property, private use--is no option at all, for it would be a property arrangement that systematically rules out any kind of giving or sharing of one's private property.(7) Aristotle gives examples of each of these arrangements: For example, [1] the plots of land are separate [that is, private], while the crops are brought into the common [store] [unkeyable] and consumed [in common], just as some of the nations do. Or [2] the opposite: the land is common and farmed in common, while the crops are divided with a view to private use (some of the barbarians are said to share in common in this way, too). Or [3] the plots of land and the crops are common. (Politics 1263a3-8)(8) It is extremely important to keep in mind that the three examples he mentions are just examples. So although Aristotle's position will fall under one of the three possibilities--we later find he accepts view (1)--that position may be quite different from the example he gives here.(9) The question for Aristotle now becomes, Which is better, a private property arrangement (view [1]) or a system where property is common (view [2] or [3])? Aristotle presents several arguments against the latter and for a private property system. III Aristotle begins his criticism of the communism of property with what has been (correctly) called a "standing difficulty of communist schemes":(10) Now if the farmers were different [from the citizens], the manner [in which property would be managed (cf. 1262b37-38)] would be different and easier; but if they [that is, citizens who are farmers] do the hard work [unkeyable] by themselves, the arrangements concerning possessions will lead to greater discontent [unkeyable]. For in fact, when in enjoyment and in work they are not equal, but unequal, accusations [unkeyable] will necessarily be raised against those enjoying or taking many things while laboring [unkeyable] little, by those taking less while laboring more. (Politics 1263a8-15)(11) Is Aristotle criticizing the communism of property here simply because he thinks it is impractical (that is, it leads to greater discontent, which is inimical to the city's unity), or, beyond this, does he hold that such a system is unjust as well? …

American Philosophy Today

Abstract: PERHAPS THE MOST STRIKING FEATURE of professional philosophy in North America at this historic juncture (1992) is its scope and scale(1) The historian Bruce Kuklick entitled his informative study of academic philosophy in the United States, The Rise of American Philosophy: 1860-1930,(2) even though his book dealt only with the Department of Philosophy of Harvard University This institution's prominence on the American philosophical scene in the early years of the century was such that this parochial-seeming narrowing of focus to one single department--with its half-dozen or so philosophers--was not totally absurd for the period at issue But today it would certainly be so The American Philosophical Association, to which most United States academic practitioners of the discipline belong, presently has more than eight thousand members (see Appendix 1), and the comprehensive Directory of American Philosophers for 1992-1993 lists well over ten thousand philosophers affiliated to colleges and universities in the United States and Canada(3) Admittedly, this profession is small potatoes compared with other academic enterprises; the Scientific Research Society Sigma Xi currently has a membership of more than one hundred thousand scientists, and the Modern Language Association has more than thirty-two thousand members All the same, a small town of not inconsiderable size could be populated exclusively with contemporary North American academic philosophers To be sure, its demographics would be rather unusual Only just under twenty percent would be women; and blacks, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans would (each) constitute just over one percent of the population (However much it may annoy the liberals among us, the fact is that the condition of the American philosophy professoriate is still very much a matter of live white males teaching about dead ones)(4) The social classes above and below the middle are underrepresented in this community, and a disproportionate fraction of its members comes from families of professional status Moreover, for reasons that require a deeper sociological analysis than can be attempted here, the profession attracts a disproportionately larger fraction of Catholics (generally practicing ones), Jews (generally nonpracticing ones), and immigrants In an academic discipline of American philosophy's present size, two different--and sometimes opposed--tendencies are at work to create a balance of countervailing forces The one is an impetus to separateness and differentiation--the desire of individual philosophers to "do their own thing," to have projects of their own and not be engaged in working on just the same issues as everyone else The other is an impetus to togetherness: the desire of philosophers to find companions, to be able to interact with others who share their interest to the extent of providing them with conversation partners and with a readership of intellectual cogeners The first, centrifugal tendency means that philosophers will fan out across the entire reach of the field--that most or all of the "ecological niches" within the problem-domain will be occupied(5) The second, centripedal tendency means that most or all of these problem-subdomains will be multiply populated: that groups or networks of kindred spirits will form so that the community as a whole will be made up of subcommunities united by common interests (more than by common opinions), with each group divided from the rest by different priorities as to what "the really interesting and important issues" are Accordingly, the most striking aspect of contemporary American philosophy is its fragmentation The scale and complexity of the enterprise is such that if one seeks in contemporary American philosophy for a consensus on the problem agenda, let alone for agreement on the substantive issues, then one is predestined to look in vain Here theory diversity and doctrinal dissonance are the order of the day, and the only interconnection is that of geographic proximity …

Natural kinds: Direct reference, realism, and the impossibility of necessary a posteriori truth

Abstract: Scientists have discovered that water is [H.sub.2]O. "Water is [H.sub.2]O" is true. But is it a necessary truth? In other words, is it true in all possible worlds? Some people think it is. For example Hilary Putnam, in his well-known Twin Earth argument, concludes that "water is [H.sub.2]O" is necessarily true; thus a liquid which phenomenally resembles [H.sub.2]O and fits the description of water in almost all aspects, but has the chemical formula XYZ, cannot be water.(1) Saul Kripke has made a similar claim about the necessary identity between water and [H.sub.2]O. Because this type of truth is based on empirical discoveries, Kripke calls truths of this sort "necessary a posteriori."(2) The thesis shared by Putnam and Kripke has two premises: a realist view that natural kinds exist independently of human cognition, and a theory of direct reference of natural kind terms. Opposing the view that natural kind terms pick out objects through descriptions, Putnam and Kripke hold that natural kind terms pick out natural kinds in the world in a direct way. Based on these two premises, they argue that, if two natural kind terms, A and B, designate the same thing in the world, "A = B" expresses a necessary identity. Objections to the Putnam-Kripke thesis have been numerous.(3) My argument against this thesis takes a different route from that taken by most of their critics. I will grant Kripke and Putnam as many assumptions of their theory as possible, but show a different logical conclusion. In particular, I grant that Kripke and Putnam are right in their theory of how natural kinds are named; I also grant that they are right in their realist view of natural kinds. I will show that, contrary to their belief, even with these assumptions, their conclusion about the necessary a posteriori truth of natural-kind identity is flawed. Specifically, I argue that, if Kripke and Putnam are right, then in naming a natural kind, there is always a certain vagueness as to at what taxonomic level the term is posited, hence a vagueness as to the exact scope of that natural kind, and consequently, an inevitable indeterminacy as to what is named. This feature of natural-kind naming determines that true identity statements of natural kinds can never express necessary truth. I Indeterminacy of Natural Kind Term. I will begin with a difference between a kind and an individual and the implications of this difference for naming. Unlike an individual object a kind could, in principle, have an inexhaustible number of instances. This results in an important difference between naming a natural kind and naming an individual. In naming an individual, we can have the individual right in front of us and name it by ostensive definition. In naming a natural kind, we cannot have the kind right in front of us. Even if we could collect all instances of a kind which currently exist, we nevertheless would not have the kind at hand, because a kind is supposed to include instances which have existed in the past and instances that will come into existence in the future. That is to say, in naming we do not have direct access to a kind as we do to an individual. This characteristic of naming natural kinds, as I shall show, has direct consequences for determining what is named. According to Kripke and Putnam, a natural kind can be named by ostension through paradigmatic instances of a kind.[4] For example, we point to a glass of water and say, "Let's call this (liquid) ~water'." In doing so, we have directly named a kind of thing, namely, water. We might be wrong about the properties of the kind being named; water might turn out not to be colorless and tasteless even though we think it is. Should that happen, we would not think we had named something that does not exist, but rather that we had been wrong about the kind of thing we had named. This is so because, according to Kripke and Putnam, in naming we fix the reference directly to what is named, and what we have named is not dependent on the properties we have thought it to possess. …

Husserl and the Deconstruction of Time

Abstract: IN A RECENT AND PHILOSOPHICALLY RICH STUDY, David Wood has undertaken the deconstruction of time through an engagement with the thought of Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, and, of course, Derrida.(1) The present essay is not intended to offer a sustained criticism of Wood's arguments or to canvass what he says about the quartet of philosophers noted above; rather, with his book as background, the essay's purpose is to say something about only one of the four philosophers--Edmund Husserl--and particularly about the place of presence and absence in Husserl's phenomenology of time and the consciousness of time. The results may supply ammunition both to those inclined to criticize Husserl from a deconstructive point of view and to those bold enough to defend him. In any event, what Husserl has to say about these matters is worth considering for its own sake. His discussion of the different ways in which presence and absence enter into our temporal experience is subtle and nuanced. He draws delicate distinctions and points to continuities and discontinuities that deserve the philosopher's careful and sympathetic attention. I will focus on a few of these, hoping that they will suggest something of the rich resources for reflection on this topic that are present in Husserl's texts. I Wood hazards the prediction that eventually philosophers will turn "to time as the focus and horizon of all our thought and experience,"(2) a view quite in keeping with Husserl's conviction that time offers not only the most difficult but also the most important of all phenomenological problems.(3) But if time is thus to come into its own as the one philosophical problem "that is truly permanent," a legacy of thought about the temporal must first be set aside: "time has to be freed from the shackles of its traditional moral and metaphysical understanding."(4) Now in the thought of Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger, Wood thinks, one can see this process of liberation unfolding, even if none of them finally succeeds in securing time's freedom. Derrida, however, takes the process to a conclusion, although not quite the conclusion one might have expected: "The concept of time belongs entirely to metaphysics and it designates the domination of presence."(5) If the concept of time is intrinsically metaphysical, as this text suggests, then to purge it of its metaphysical character is to eliminate it altogether;(6) or as Wood nicely puts it, rescuing the concept of time "from metaphysics would be like rescuing a fish from water."(7) There would be no concept of time left at all. That is a conclusion, however, that Wood wants to avoid. He thinks that there are many times and many concepts of time rather than just one, as the tradition seems to hold, and that none of them is metaphysical. I will return later to this claim and its relevance to Husserl, but first it might be helpful to summarize briefly the reading of metaphysics at work here--a reading that receives a kind of canonical formulation in Derrida, but that the deconstructionist finds adumbrated in Nietzsche, Husserl (in some respects), and Heidegger. Wood's account is especially instructive for the Husserlian phenomenologist. So what are some of the key features of the "metaphysical," according to this way of reading the tradition? The history of philosophy, we are told, has been largely the history of metaphysics. The history of metaphysics in turn has been the history "of the privileging of a certain temporal/evidential value, that of 'presence'."(8) If one retorts that the history of metaphysics has been the history of reflection on Being and beings, the reply will be that metaphysics determines "Being as presence."(9) This does not mean that "presence" is some thing; it might be better described as a condition or state of something. But it is the sort of condition that tends to dictate the kind of thing that can enter into it. That thing is usually taken to be an "object" standing over against a contemplative knower, a "subject. …

Metaphysical Narration, Science, and Symbolic Form

Abstract: This essay addresses two questions: (1) Is the search for scientific truth a self-sufficient activity? or (2) Does scientific right reasoning depend upon a form of truth-telling that lies beyond the limits of scientific investigation? Put differently, is there a sense of metaphysics as a form of human culture that is the embodiment of this general sense of truth-telling? The answers to these questions involve the relationship of science, philosophy, and metaphysics. As a means for answering them I wish first to examine Ernst Cassirer's conception of science as a symbolic form. Then I wish to join this conception with Giambattista Vico's conception of metaphysical narration. Cassirer understands science, like culture, as arising from the distinctively human power to form the world through symbols. Scientific truth depends upon a particular use of this power of symbolic formation that exists within that system of symbolic forms we call culture. Vico understands the "civil world," or culture itself, to arise from a special sense of imagination (fantasia) that forms universals within its narrations. Within these narrations are stated the primordial truths of human culture upon which science is later to depend. My aim is to put Cassirer's conception of science together with Vico's conception of metaphysical narration. It is a long-standing point that scientific thinking involves metaphysical presuppositions. My interest is not in the interconnection of science and metaphysics as a traditional logical or epistemological question, but in their interconnections as cultural activities. I wish to approach this through Vico's original association of metaphysical knowledge with the basic human act of narrating a truth. I Science as Symbolic Form. Cassirer's notion of the symbol is a transformation of the Kantian notion of the "schema," that is, the notion of a "sensuous-intellectual form" that lies at the basis of knowledge. Kant reaches this notion of a schema through a process of making distinctions within his transcendental analysis of the elements of experience. Cassirer wishes to find this schema in experience as a phenomenon. He does so in his discovery of the symbol as the medium through which all knowledge and culture occur. Cassirer understands his philosophy as an idealism that he, in fact, traces back to the problem of form in Plato, but he insists that the object of which he speaks is truly "there." It is not a creation of the mind of the knower. This is a point on which he insisted in a lecture to the Warburg Institute in 1936, "Critical Idealism as a Philosophy of Culture," and later, to his students at Yale in the 1940s.(1) The notion of the perceptual object as something "there" being pregnant at the same time with something that is "not there" Cassirer connects to Leibniz's term praegnans futuri, as well as to the psychology of perception. In his full phenomenology of knowledge (Erkenntnis), which Cassirer claims derives most directly from Hegel rather than Kant or Husserl, he distinguishes three basic functions of consciousness.(2) These might be thought of as basic ways in which sensory content is symbolically pregnant for the knowing consciousness. The expressive function or Ausdrucksfunktion does not separate knower and known. It forms the object mimetically. It is the object "felt" and portrayed as a benign or malignant force. Culturally this function is developed in the symbolic form of myth. The representational function or Darsteuungsfunktion enacts a separation of knower and known. It is typified by the analogical power to "liken" things into groups, to develop a referential relation between knower and known and attain a logic of classification of objects. Cassirer sees this as tied to the powers of language, of logos as separated from mythos. This is the power of language to organize the world as a system of discrete objects. The significative function or Bedeutungsfunktion is the power of the knower freely to construct symbol systems through which the known can be ordered and which themselves can become elements in wider systems of symbols. …

Philosophy as Performed in Plato's "Theaetetus"

Abstract: I Phylosophy begins in wonder - so says Socrates in the Theaetetus - but where does it end? The Theaetetus itself ends in such a puzzling way as to be the cause of apparently interminable dispute. Although its theme is the nature of knowledge, neither Socrates nor his interlocutors ever present a definition that gains unanimous approval. The definitions of knowledge as perception ([Mathematical Expression Omitted]) as true opinion ([Mathematical Expression Omitted] and as true opinion with an account ([Mathematical Expression Omitted]) are all rejected. This fact has understandably inclined most interpreters to maintain that the dialogue fails to reach its explicit goal.(1) Nevertheless, Socrates' attitude about the apparent failure of his conversation with Theaetetus is markedly distinct from his express attitude (ironic or not) in those early dialogues with which the Theaetetus is often compared. Whereas early dialogues conclude with self-deprecation(2) and exhortation to continue the quest,(3) the Theaetetus concludes in satisfaction, indifferent to the possibility of further study (210b11-c4).(4) As midwife Socrates has successfully delivered Theaetetus of his phantom offspring; beyond that he can do no more (210c4-5). Thus the apparently negative conclusions of the dialogue are at least not negatively intoned, and readers can barely avoid the suspicion of having missed something. One response is to argue that an authorized definition of knowledge can be found by a careful reexamination of the very arguments Socrates rejects.(5) But the fact that our suspicion is aroused by a dramatic consideration (Socrates' attitude of satisfaction) commends a search for resolution through the drama, however that might happen to bear on the problem of knowledge. This paper examines the Theaetetus in the light of its juxtaposition of philosophical, mathematical and sophistical approaches to knowledge, which we show to be a prominent feature of the drama. These are obviously not the only grounds for understanding the conclusion of the Theaetetus, but the examination based on them has a persuasive result. Although it suggests that clarifying the nature of philosophy supersedes the question of knowledge as the main ambition of the Theaetetus, it hardly obviates Socrates' discussions of perception, opinion, and [lambda][omicron][gamma][omicron][zeta]. In fact, the characterization of philosophy presented in the Theaetetus is intrinsically related to the question about knoawlaedge. Just prior to the beginning of his epistemological investigation Socrates affirms (and his interlocutors accept) that knowledge and wisdom are the same [Mathematical Expression Omitted]; 145e6),(6) an identification of which we are persistently reminded.(7) Thus, the question about "knowledge itself" (146e9-10) cannot altogether be separated from the question of knowledge insofar as it is related to wisdom. The link between knowledge and wisdom provides transit to the digression on philosophy (172b-177c), in which connection it is worth recalling that in Plato the term [Mathematical Expression Omitted] variably used to name or describe, is never far removed from its original sense: loving wisdom or knowledge.(8) Consequently, we treat the Theaetetus as a work whose explicit question about knowledge is directly linked with the deeper issue of what philosophy is.(9) In what follows we argue that the Theaetetus ends well not because it discretely supplies a definition of knowledge, but because it clarifies a vision of philosophy in which the failure to arrive at an unobjectionable definition of knowledge - a failure which may always be expected (cf. 146a1) - is outweighed by the intellectual and moral gains of the search.(10) The evidence for this thesis comes in three stages. First, we examine the dramatic organization of the Theaetetus, specifically the disposition of the characters toward each other and toward the general question about knowledge. …

Hispanic Philosophy: Its Beginning and Golden Age

Abstract: HISPANIC PHILOSOPHY. The notion of Hispanic philosophy is a useful one for trying to understand certain historical phenomena related to the philosophy developed in the Iberian peninsula, the Iberian colonies in the New World, and the countries that those colonies eventually came to form.(1) It is useful for two reasons. First, it focuses attention on the close relations among the philosophers in these geographical areas; and second, other historical denominations and categorizations do not do justice to such relations. This becomes clear when one examines the standard general categorizations according to which the philosophical thought of the mentioned geographical areas is divided and studied: Spanish philosophy, Portuguese philosophy, Catalan philosophy, Latin American philosophy, Spanish-American philosophy, and Ibero-American philosophy. The category "Spanish philosophy" usually includes only the philosophy that has taken place in the territory occupied by the modern Spanish state, whether before or after the state was constituted in the fifteenth century as a result of the efforts of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. Thus, most histories of Spanish philosophy discuss the thought of Roman, Islamic, and Jewish philosophers who worked in that territory, as well as of medieval and subsequent authors who did likewise. In some cases, these accounts concentrate on Castillian-speaking philosophers, and at other times they also include those that speak Catalan and Portuguese. They generally ignore, however, the work of Latin American authors and seldom explore the close ties of those authors to philosphers working in the Iberian peninsula.(2) Something similar can be said about other peninsular histories of philosophy, with the added disadvantage that they, like those histories of Spanish philosophy that deal exclusively with Castillian-speaking philosophers, tend to ignore the developments in the Iberian peninsula that take place in linguistic and cultural contexts other than their own.(3) The reasons for these sometimes conscious oversights are rooted in nationalistic feelings dating back to historical conflicts and antagonisms which have little to do with philosophical, historical reality but which nonetheless affect historical accounts of that reality. New World histories of philosophy concerned with Latin America suffer similar shortcomings, although in this case their neglect concerns the thought of Iberian authors and their close relations with, and impact they have had on, Latin American philosophers.(4) Histories of Latin American or Ibero-American philosophy and thought tend to concentrate on developments in the New World, ignoring the strong relations that tie such developments to the thought from Spanish and Portuguese sources.(5) In the case of histories dealing specifically with Spanish American philosophy, the situation is even worse, insofar as they tend to ignore the Portuguese side of Latin America and the cultural and intellectual ties that relate it to the rest of the area.(6) General histories of philosophy seldom, if ever, do justice not only to the historical relations between Iberian and Latin American philosophers, but also to the philosophy of Spain, Catalonia, Portugal, and Latin America.(7) Indeed, it is particularly rare to find any reference to Latin American contributions to philosophy.(8) This becomes quite evident when one turns to particular periods of the history of philosophy, such as the period which will especially occupy us: the sixteenth century and part of the seventeenth century. This period is studied under such labels as "Renaissance philosophy," "Counter-Reformation philosophy," "Late Scholasticism," "Late Medieval Philosophy," "Second Scholastic," and "Silver Age of Scholasticism," to mention just the most frequently used. Some historians may want to argue that there is justification for this oversight in some cases. Indeed, one could argue that the impact of the Renaissance in Latin America came too late to be incorporated into a general history of the Renaissance, and also that the vector of influence went only one way, from Europe to Latin America, and not vice versa. …

How Are Souls Related to Bodies? A Study of John Buridan

Abstract: MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHERS HAD NO SINGLE RESPONSE to the difficult question of how souls are related to the bodies they animate. In this respect, the theory of psychological inherence advanced by the noted Parisian philosoppher John Buridan is a case in point. Buridan offers different accounts of the soul-body relation, depending upon which of two main varieties of natural, animate substance he is explaining. In the case of human beings, he defends a version of immanent dualism: the thesis that the soul is an immaterial, everlasting, and created (as opposed to naturally generated) entity, actually inhering in each and every body it animates, and thus numerically many.(1) But when his explanandum is the relation between nonhuman animal or plant souls and their bodies, Buridan is a materialist; that is, he regards the sensitive and vegetative souls of such creatures as no more than collections of material, extended powers exhaustively defined by their biological functions, and hence as corruptible as the particular arrangements of matter they happen to animate. In the larger context of medieval Aristotelianism, the fact that Buridan has a hybrid approach to the question of psychological inherence is neither remarkable nor especially interesting. Obviously, some combination of materialism and dualism seems called for if the soul-body relation is to be explained in a way that is both naturalistic and consistent with the possibility of personal immortality for some class(es) of corporeal, animate things. What is both remarkable and interesting, however, is the way in which Buridan manages the details of his hybrid account, that is, the particular explanations he gives under its materialistic and dualistic aspects. My aim in this paper is to examine Buridan's answer to the very basic question of what it means for the soul to inhere in the body. This question is discussed at several junctures in the third and final version of his Questions on Aristotle's De anima (hereafter "QDA"),(2) though as we shall see below, his explanation of how nonhuman souls inhere in their bodies is of a piece with the more general theory of inherence presented in his other writings. I Nonhuman Souls. The question of how the soul inheres in the body is first addressed as such in QDA 2.7. Like virtually all of the questions in this work, QDA 2.7 is based on a lemma from Aristotle's De anima: in this instance, the observation in De anima 2.2 that it is possible for some plants and animals to survive physical division, from which we are to conclude that before division, their souls are actually one but potentially many.(3) For Buridan, this claim raises the question of how we are to understand the presence of the soul's nutritive and sensitive powers in corporeal bodies: in what sense does the whole soul of an organism inhere in its body if a single division of the quantitative parts of that body gives rise to two new whole souls? Since QDA 2, like De anima 2, addresses the nature and function of the sensitive part of the soul, Buridan gives his answer in the context of the psychology of brute or nonhuman animals, creatures whose souls are paradigmatically sensitive. In the main part of QDA 2.7, Buridan introduces four metaphysical principles which he takes to govern the inherence of nonhuman animal souls, and thus also to explain how the sensitive and vegetative souls of such creatures can be in each part of their bodies. I shall discuss each of these principles in turn, and then examine Buridan's dualistic account of the relation between human souls and their bodies in QDA 3. A. The Extensionality Principle. The first principle governing the inherence of nonhuman souls in their bodies is attributed to Aristotle and defined as follows: "The vegetative soul, sensitive soul, and so forth in a horse are not distinct in different parts of the body, but the vegetative, sensitive, and appetitive [souls] are extended throughout the whole body of the animal [per totum corpus animalis extensa est]" (QDA 2. …

Heidegger and Derrida: Reflections on Time and Language

Abstract: Heidegger And Derrida Reflections On Although Martin Heidegger ahs been mentioned before as a precursor of deconstruction, Herman Rapaport is the first to develop the connections between the writings of the German philosopher and Derrida. Heidegger and Derrida discusses the French philosopher's adoption of certain Heideggerean themes and his extension or overturning of them. But Rapaport does more than show how deconstruction builds on the philosophical foundations laid by Heidegger (and also by Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud).

'Phaedrus.' (the Rhetoric of Jacques Derrida, Part 2)

Abstract: IN MY PREVIOUS ESSAY, I concentrated on the importance for Derrida of regarding a text, qua text, as an ahierarchical phenomenon, and of the unity of contradictions necessary for a deconstructive reading.(1) In this essay I shall discuss in detail the realization of the latter principle in Derrida's reading of Plato's Phaedrus.(2) This will illuminate the problematic relationship between the deconstructive interpreter and his text. Since the path is long, the reader will need to follow me patiently through the different and sometimes tedious stages of the discussion. I shall begin with Plato's notions considering the origin: The soul as a whole [[unkeyable]](3) is immortal, for that which is always in motion [[unkeyable]] is immortal. But that which is both a cause of movement for something else and is moved by something else is able to stop its moving, and therefore is able to stop being alive. Only that which moves itself ... is the beginning and the origin [[unkeyable]] of movement. Yet, it is an origin without a genesis [[unkeyable]]. For it is a rule of necessity that from the origin becomes all that exists while the origin itself becomes from nothing. For if the origin had become of something, it would no longer have been an origin ..., and since that which is moved by itself comes into being as immortal, one will not have to feel shame saying that this thing itself is the essence of the soul and its logos [[unkeyable]]. For any body which is moved by an external source is soulless, while the body which is moved by an internal source has a soul, since that is the essence of the soul's nature.... It is thus a rule of necessity that the soul would be without a genesis [[unkeyable]] in as much as it would be immortal. (245c5-246a2)(4) The expression [unkeyable] is usually translated as "the soul's essence and definition."(5) Although the validity of this interpretation cannot be disputed, in a metaphysical context(6) one might prefer to preserve the Greek original, [unkeyable]. Thus, there is almost an identity between essence and logos,(7) and therefore a reaffirmation of what Derrida calls the "logocentric hierarchy." This logos is the uncreated origin, and as such the beginning of everything. It is not, however, identical to the logos which is contrasted to writing, since it is definitely not what one might call speech. It is quite similar, though, as can be seen from the repeated use of the word "logos." What is this logos, then? The answer is found in the context. The passage preceding the one cited above makes a distinction between two types of soul: the human and the divine (245c3). In other words, Plato makes an internal division within the signifier "soul." The same technique is apparent here; we have, in fact, two kinds of phenomena under the heading of logos, and only the logos connected with the divine appears in the above section. The human logos is something different. This difference is marked in my analysis in the following manner: "Logos" refers to the divine Logos, and "logos" to the human logos. The division itself is far from new and the hierarchical aspects have been previously noted.(8) I give it emphasis here due to the fact that the Derridian avoidance of paying attention to such internal divisions will be revealed as a crucial element in his rhetoric.(9) Somewhat later in the dialogue, when Socrates deals with the art of eloquence ([unkeyable]; 266c3), it becomes evident that an internal division within the category of the human logos is also needed. While the Sophists Thrasymachus and Lysias are mentioned in connection with dialectic, Socrates and his interlocutor are searching for the definition of a different kind of art: rhetoric. The latter, says Phaedrus, has "escaped our notice," and Socrates agrees that it should be discussed (266c8-d4). Here Phaedrus comments, "No doubt, what is written in the books about the art of eloquence [[unkeyable]] is quite long. …

Thomists and Thomas Aquinas on the Foundation of Mathematics

Abstract: SOME MODERN THOMISTS, claiming to follow the lead of Thomas Aquinas, hold that the objects of the types of mathematics known in the thirteenth century, such as the arithmetic of whole numbers and Euclidean geometry, are real entities. In scholastic terms they are not beings of reason (entia rationis) but real beings (entia realia). In his once-popular scholastic manual, Elementa Philosophiae Aristotelico-Thomisticae, Joseph Gredt maintains that, according to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, the object of mathematics is real quantity, either discrete quantity in arithmetic or continuous quantity in geometry. The mathematician considers the essence of quantity in abstraction from its relation to real existence in bodily substance. "When quantity is considered in this way," he writes, "it is not a being of reason (ens rationis) but a real being (ens reale). Nevertheless it is so abstractly considered that it leaves out of account both real and conceptual existence." Recent mathematicians, Gredt continues, extend their speculation to fictitious quantity, which has conceptual but not real being; for example, the fourth dimension, which by its essence positively excludes a relation to real existence. According to Gredt this is a special, transcendental mathematics essentially distinct from "real mathematics," and belonging to it only by reduction.(1) Jacques Maritain read the works of Gredt, including his Elementa, and in his magistral Degrees of Knowledge he agrees with Gredt that at least the objects of Euclidean geometry and the arithmetic of whole numbers are entia realia in distinction to the objects of modem types of mathematics. which he calls entia rationis. The objects of the former types of mathematics. Maritain says, are real in the philosophical sense that they can exist outside the mind in the physical world, whereas the objects of the newer types of mathematics cannot so exist. A point. a line. and a whole number are real beings, but not irrational numbers or the constructions of non-Euclidean geometries.(2) Delving more deeply than Gredt into the nature of mathematics, Maritain stresses that when the mathematician conceives his objects they acquire an ideal purity in his mind which they lack in their real existence. By abstracting these entities from the sensible world the intellect idealizes them in such a way that not only their mode of being but their very definition is affected. There are no points, lines, or whole numbers in the real world with the conditions proper to mathematical abstraction.(3) Maritain also describes the purification or idealization of quantity in mathematics as a construction or reconstruction. He writes in his Preface to Metaphysics, "Quantity [in mathematics] is not now studied as a real accident of corporeal substance, but as the common material of entities reconstructed or constructed by the reason. Nevertheless even when thus idealized it remains something corporeal, continues to bear in itself witness of the matter whence it is derived."(4) He makes the same point in the Degrees of Knowledge: "In . . . mathematical knowledge, the mind grasps entities it has drawn from sensible data or which it has built on them. It grasps them through their constitutive elements, and constructs or reconstructs them on the same level. These things in the real [world] (when they are entia realia) are accidents or properties of bodies. but the mind treats them as though they were subsistent beings and as though the notion it makes of them were free of any experimental origin."(5) In The Philosophy of Mathematics Edward Maziarz sees the essence of the scientific habit of mathematical abstraction as the mind's becoming "conformable and identifiable to the nature of substance solely as quantified."(6) He hastens to assure us that the objects of mathematics are not completely discovered in nature, as the scientist discovers the properties of the elements, but neither are they pure products of the mind. …

The Ontological Status of Mathematical Entities: The Necessity for Modern Physics of an Evaluation of Mathematical Systems

Abstract: FAR FROM BEING A PURELY ESOTERIC CONCERN of theoretical mathematicians, the examination of the ontological status of mathematical entities, I submit, has far-reaching implications for a very practical area of knowledge, namely, the method of science in general, and of physics in particular. Although physics and mathematics have since Newton's second derivative been inextricably wedded, modem physics has a particularly mathematical dependence. Physics has moved and continues to move further away from the possibility of direct empirical verification, primarily because of the increasingly complex logistical problems of experimentation within the parameters of the very large and of the very small. As certain areas become more and more theoretical, with developments of this century in astrophysics, cosmology, and quantum mechanics, and more specifically, with the postulation of new hypothetical elementary particles based almost exclusively upon mathematical data, physics is forced to depend increasingly upon mathematics as a method for verifying physical possibility. Typically, a mathematical formulation descriptive of an empirically established phenomenon x is manipulated and made subject to derivation on the assumption that the new formulation will continue to correspond with physical reality, and may even yield new information about the phenomenon's behavior. Why, however, should a coherence between the empirically-defined world and mathematical processes be assumed? This coherence is, above all, dependent upon a hidden metaphysically strong presupposition about the ontological status of mathematical entities and their systems. That there is a metaphysically strong presupposition of the sort to which I refer is not immediately obvious, and I would like here to address three common refutations of this position initially given. Perhaps the most immediate is the insistence that mathematics serves a purely descriptive function in the sciences, that it acts only as a kind of language. Although this characterization is certainly applicable in some cases, it cannot possibly justify the present use of mathematics to make hypotheses and predictions in physics. It cannot explain the prescriptive use of mathematics to verify and suggest physical possibility. Assuming the prescriptive use of mathematics, another argument can be made that mathematics is simply logic, in its most absolute, noncontroversial tautological sense. Thus, the use of mathematics in physics simply ensures the same consistency, although in a much more easily manipulatable form, that would occur by our following out the implications of theories using what amounts to common sense reason, for it is obvious that our knowledge of physical reality (physics) must be limited by, or at least not be inconsistent with, our own mental principles of logic. Unfortunately, this tautological view of mathematics too is untenable; for besides its rather narrow view of the role of mathematics, it makes the mistaken assumption that mathematics as used in physics is in fact logical, never mind tautological. One need only think of the prominent use in physics of complex numbers and common surds such as the exponential function and pi to realize how many mathematical inconsistencies have been wholeheartedly embraced without question and with success. The intuitionist school of mathematics, very much concerned with consistency and solid grounding, deems the use of infinity as unacceptably anti-intuitive, yet where would its absence leave calculus, a veritable cornerstone of the foundations of physics? A merely tautological system would severely limit the present scope of the physical and even social sciences. The final and most common argument against inherent assumptions of mathematical Platonism in physics is simply that of cold pragmatism, which claims that we use the mathematical systems that we use not because we endow them with any real ontological status, but because they are effective. …

Postmodernity or Late Modernity? Ambiguities in Richard Rorty's Thought

Abstract: Is postmodernism a new, perhaps decisive stage that completes the unfinished project of modernity, as Jurgen Habermas and, in some respects, Jean-francois Lyotard claim? Or does it intend to break with that project altogether, as Derrida and Rorty maintain? The latter, more radical thesis tends to go hand in hand with the assumption of an essential continuity between modern and premodern thinking. Among those who defend the latter thesis we find Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and Rorty. Rorty's position has become somewhat questionable, however, since in the Introduction to his recent Essays on Heidegger and Others he distances himself from the very term "postmodern." "The term," he writes, "has been so over-used that it is causing more trouble than it is worth.... It seems best to think of Heidegger and Derrida simply as post-Nietzschean philosophers - to assign them places in a conversational sequence which runs from Descartes through Kant and Hegel to Nietzsche and beyond rather than to view them as initiating or manifesting a radical departure."(1) This way of contextualizing the so-called postmoderns with the moderns differs from the radical discontinuity Derrida proposes and that Rorty himself formerly appeared to advocate. Western philosophy would then follow a single course from its Greek beginnings to the present with some distinct swerves, of which the so-called postmodern is one, but with no radical interruptions. According to the recent view the ontotheological principles that guided Greek and medieval thought continue to operate in the rationalist and, indirectly, in the empiricist philosophies of the modern age. This essay will argue that there is discontinuity between modern and premodern and continuity between modern and postmodern. More and more interpreters agree that the basic critique of modern culture began with Hegel, the first philosopher to reflect systematically on modernity and the first to proclaim that philosophy is nothing else than the thought of its age.(2) He was also modernity's first radical critic. Yet Hegel limits his critique: he continues to accept the principle of subjectivity, both in its Cartesian epistemic and in its Lutheran religious formulations, as the great discovery of modern thought. "That substance is essentially subject, is expressed in the idea which represents the Absolute as Spirit - the grandest conception of all, and one which is due to modern times and its religion."(3) In this statement and in the entire Phenomenology of Spirit which it prefaces it appears that modern philosophy holds the key to solving whatever problems it has created. The Enlightenment, in Hegel's judgment, had unduly narrowed and thereby perverted the modern principle of subjectivity. That perversion alone is responsible for the alienation of the modern mind. Hegel's wayward followers Marx and Kierkegaard dispensed a similar mixture of praise and blame on modernity. Marx's critique of the capitalist economy extends to the earliest beginnings of the modem epoch. It derives entirely, however, from the Enlightenment principle of self-validating freedom. Marx so strongly emphasized that principle as to eclipse the idea of the individual subject that had given rise to it. The philosophy of the subject is a romantic illusion; the subject is itself the outcome of social-economic praxis. Thus Marx brought the modem idea of freedom to its extreme conclusion while reducing what had been its basis to one of its consequences. Clearly, Hegel and his followers were as much sons of the Enlightenment as they were its enemies. I The Postmodern and the Premodern. With Nietzsche the scene changes altogether. He questioned the foundations of modern thought and traced them back to Greek and Christian sources. The primacy of the logos, sustained since Socrates and deified in the doctrine of the Incarnation, implied for him a denial of the deeper impulse of life, a denial that exploded in the nihilism of late modern culture. …

On Plato's 'Sophist.'

Abstract: ONCE THE STRANGER TAKES OVER THE DISCUSSION at the beginning of the Sophist,(1) and agrees to discuss the sophist, the statesman, and the philosopher, it is hard to remember that Socrates had arranged to meet with Theodorus, Theaetetus, and young Socrates once more, even after he had left Theaetetus completely barren, at least temporarily, and had encountered a resistance on Theodorus's part to his further participation in any argument which the interval of a single day could not, it seems, have overcome (Theaetetus 169c6-7; 183c5-d5). The Stranger's intrusion thus makes us fail to notice that the only possible interest Socrates could have had in the same group would have been in young Socrates, about whom he knows only that he developed with Theaetetus a way of classifying two kinds of number: those with integral square or cube roots and those without. If Socrates had engaged young Socrates in a discussion, and informed Euclides about it in the same way as he had reported his discussion with Theodorus and Theaetetus, we know that Euclides could not have transposed Socrates' report into direct discourse and omitted Socrates' "I said" and "He said." A transposition of the kind Euclides practiced in the Theaetetus would have led to the indiscernability of the two Socrateses, since each would have addressed the other as Socrates, and there is no reason to believe that the wiser answers would have consistently belonged to only one of them. The dialogue between the two Socrateses, which does not occur at dawn on the day after Socrates' appearance before the kingarchon, would not perhaps be of any interest if it did not call attention to the characterization of thinking on which Socrates and the Stranger both agree: thinking is the silent conversation of the soul with itself (Theaetetus 189e4-190a7; Sophist 263e3-264a3). A double negation is assigned to thinking. Thinking is dependent in its presentation on the denial of two things that are indispensable for conversation: it must be before another, and it must be spoken. On the one hand, to strip speaking of its vocalic character is to assign it consonants by themselves and thus to deny it the possibility of any combination of elements, even though the combination of consonants with vowels is that which alone makes it possible to overcome the problem of nonbeing and falsehood (253a4-6). On the other hand, to strip speaking of a second participant in the conversation is to transform the single speaker into a double thinker, who retains in his doubleness the singular identity of the speaker, and who is going by the same name cannot control the split he needs in himself. Whatever thought one self gives birth to, the other self cannot test it "objectively" and must succumb, as fathers do, to favoring his own thoughts because they are his own. The Stranger's intrusion thus looks like a godsend for both Socrates and Plato. It is a godsend for Plato, since a philosopher of the same caliber as Socrates can continue the discussion in a form that Plato has no trouble transcribing. It is a godsend for Socrates, since he is not forced to face the true difficulty his own revision of Protagoras raises, namely, How is thinking possible if the thinker in becoming a double agent becomes thereby a double patient, and if whatever he thinks experiences a multiplicative effect that is in no time completely out of his control? Socrates proposes at the beginning of the Statesman to examine young Socrates as a means for his own self-knowledge (257d1-258a6). Whether or not he could have succeeded in such a task, we know that Plato could not have shown him in either his success or his failure had Plato continued to preserve the nonnarrated form of the Sophist and the Statesman. The missing dialogue Philosopher, which would have been the truth of which the Sophist and Statesman are two phantom images, could never have been written without Plato's reversion to Socrates' or Theodorus's narration of it. …

Rationality and Morality

Abstract: IT IS OFTEN ASSUMED that being prudent, being moral, and being rational are all distinct and distinguishable. It is widely accepted that being prudent is acting on behalf of, or with a regard for, one's own interests, whatever they may be; that being moral is acting on behalf of, or with regard for, the interests of others; and that being rational is acting completely clearheadedly and with full knowledge about oneself and everything else involved. It follows from these assumptions that one can act either prudently or morally without acting rationally, for one act either way without being fully knowledgeable and clearheaded about all that is involved. But can an act be both rational and immoral? Can it be rationally prudent and immoral? I Rationality. We may begin our inquiry by considering what it is to be rational. We need to distinguish between subjective and objective rationality. Subjective rationality is a matter of acting in accordance with one's perceptions and beliefs about the situation; objective rationality is a matter of acting clearheadedly, with full knowledge of the relevant action situation. That is, objective rationality is a matter of acting in accordance with the reality of the situation on the basis of one's beliefs about it. When we speak of rationailty, unless indicated otherwise, we shall mean objective rationality. The dominant view in our scientific age is that when one is fully knowledgeable about everything involved in an action situation, one's knowledge is of only the contingent facts and casual connections involved: such things as one's desires, preferences, feelings, powers, economic resources, time, and social relationships; similar things about the other people involved; and the other factual conditions of, and causal relationships in, one's environment. Of course one's desires, preferences, and feelings shift with changes in one's comprehension of the factual situation. But being fully knowledgeable about the situation must include being knowledgeable that one's desires, preferences, and feelings are based on a full comprehension of the situation. In addition, we may assume that being clearheaded in making a decision is a matter of making the decision with full awareness of the relevant facts and their casual dependencies and consequences, with none of these matters temporarily forgotten or overlooked. On these assumptions, it would seem that what one would do if one were fully clearheaded and fully knowledgeable about everything involved would depend not just on one's awareness of one's desires, preferences, and feelings, along with awareness of the other facts of the situation and their casual links, but more importantly on what one's desires, preferences, and feelings are. Thus for some the rational thing to do in any situation might be the narrowly self-serving thing. For others, the rational thing to do might be to act with a regard for the interests of their family and friends or some other group with which they identify, while ignoring the interests of all others except as facts that might affect the success of their action. For still others, the rational thing to do might be to deliberate about their action with a genuine regard for the well-being of all people who would be affected. For those who happen to be committed to the moral point of view, a rational action in a situation involving others would be a moral action; but it is widely accepted that the commitment to the moral point of view is simply a fact about some people that is based on either an arbitrary choice or social conditioning. Some hold, however, that there are reasons for anyone to adopt the moral point of view and that it is rational to be committed to the moral point of view and irrational not to be. If the reasons for adopting the moral point of view were prudential, to be moral would be to be prudential in a fully enlightened and clearheaded way. …

The Science We Are Seeking

Abstract: When in book 3 of Aristotle's Metaphysics we come upon the phrase that supplies my title, epizetoumenen epistemen (995a24), it does not yet have a haunting tone. Clearly Aristotle is engaged in an exceptionally long windup, but those who imagine that the methodology of the Posterior Analytics can be exemplified only in Euclidean discourse, and who thus have trouble with all the treatises, will already have thrown up their hands. Indeed, after the prolonged aporetic discussions of book 3 comes the firm statement at the opening of book 4: There is a science of being as being and of that which pertains to it per se. This amounts to the declaration that the discourse in which we are engaged exemplifies the methodology of the Analytics, meaning it has a subject of which properties will be demonstrated by means of principles. Almost immediately qualifications of a massive sort have to be made, lest the enterprise fall afoul of Pierre Aubenque's uraporia: Every science studies some genus. Being is not a genus. There is no science of being as being.(1) But it is not simply that the way this science is a science keeps presenting difficulties. There are recurrent problems having to do with what functions as its subject. The phrase "the science we are seeking" begins to suggest that we are engaged in a quest whose aim is unclear. Like Aubenque, we may even come to think that the science we seek can never be found. In what follows I wish to say a few things about how Thomas Aquinas saw the Metaphysics of Aristotle. Understanding Aristotle aright was a critical issue of his time, of course. The Latin West had become the sudden beneficiary not only of texts of Aristotle hitherto unavailable in Latin, but also of the Muslim and Neoplatonist commentators on Aristotle. It was Thomas's task to detach the real Aristotle from the accretions of these traditions, particularly from the Muslim commentators and most particularly from Averroes, whose status alters from the commentator par excellence to the depravator of Aristotle.(2) Although Thomas exhibits a remarkable acquaintance with Aristotle from the very beginning of his career, his commentaries on or expositiones of Aristotle fall to his final years, the effort fueled by the controversies in Paris generated by what has been called Latin Averroism or heterodox Aristotelianism. By the time Thomas wrote his commentary on the Metaphysics he had several versions of the work available to him.(3) A feature of a Thomistic commentary is its preface or proemium. Sometimes Thomas embeds his prefatory remarks within the commentary itself,(4) sometimes it is a separate essay, sometimes it is both.(5) The proemium to the commentary on the Metaphysics is a separate essay in which Thomas puts before us an account of the Metaphysics as a unitary effort. This requires him to suggest solutions to some of the more vexed questions that arise in the pursuit of the science we are seeking.(6) I The proemium functions as an overture, striking the major themes of the Metaphysics, and first of all its overture, the magnificent panorama of chapters 1 and 2 of book 1 in which Aristotle, ringing the changes on "all men by nature desire to know," moves from the outer to the inner senses, to reason itself; and, among rational activities, from art to science and onward and upward to wisdom itself, seen as divine knowledge. So too the proemium places the science we are seeking among the other sciences as their sapiential regulator and term. The argument of Thomas's proemium moves through six stages, which I shall summarize.(7) 1. That there must be a ruling science. When many things are ordered to one, one of them must be directive and rule and the rest directed and ruled.(8) But all sciences and arts are ordered to one end, namely, to man's perfection, that is, happiness.(9) Therefore, one thing must be regulative of the others, and it will be called wisdom because sapientis est ordinare. …