History of Philosophy

Brandon at Siris recently posted an excerpt from St Thomas on the value of studying the history of philosophy. I reproduce his quote in full:

He shows how men assist each other to know the truth; for one man assists another to consider the truth in two ways--directly and indirectly.

One is assisted directly by those who have discovered the truth; because, as has been pointed out, when each of our predecessors has discovered something about the truth, which is gathered together into one whole, he also introduces his followers to a more extensive knowledge of truth.

One is assisted indirectly insofar as those who have preceded us and who were wrong about the truth have bequeathed to their successors the occasion for exercising their mental powers, so that by diligent discussion the truth might be seen more clearly.

Now it is only fitting that we should be grateful to those who have helped us attain so great a good as knowledge of the truth. Therefore he says that "It is only right that we should be grateful," not merely to those whom we think have found the truth, and with whose views we agree by following them, but also to those who, in the search for truth, have made only superficial statements, even though we do not follow their views, for these men too have given us something because they have shown us instances of actual attempts to discover the truth.

- St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, John P. Rowan, tr. Dumb Ox (Notre Dame: 1961) p. 110 (Book 2, Lesson 1; Section 287).

I am certainly on board with the value of studying the history of philosophy. In fact my own education has been almost entirely from the "historical" perspective. I got my B.A. at St John's College, home of the original Great Books program, in which only primary sources are read, and the closest I ever got in class to a contemporary philosopher was Heidegger and Wittgensein, at the very end. And my graduate program at The Catholic University of America takes a similarly historical approach. And let's not forget my 450-page dissertation on an obscure corner of 13th century metaphysics! That said, history - even the history of philosophy - is not philosophy itself, and I couldn't really be considered a historian. As noted here a little while ago, while I largely study mediaeval philosophy, I'm really not a mediaevalist. Not that I think at all that these are bad things, and I would like to brush up my mediaevalist credentials - for instance, by studying paleography in more detail. But it's important to make distinctions about what you're doing, and scholarship is not the same thing as philosophy.

As with any virtue, there are two opposite vices to be avoided here. The history of philosophy is like a map. Setting out into the metaphysical unknown without it leaves you unable to avoid quicksand, tar pits, pointless detours, and dead ends, and you might never actually see anything of interest. Doing philosophy blind does not make you an intrepid explorer, it just makes you likely to go wrong. On the other hand if you examine the map simply as a set of geographical coordinates (or worse, an art object), and never do any traveling, then you can't be said to be doing philosophy at all. I know at least one eminent historian of philosophy who seems not to have any actual philosophical opinions of his own, despite being able to inform you with great accuracy and textual support of the opinions of others.

Now reading broadly in canonical (or obscure, if they're any good!) authors is certainly a good way to approach a philosophical question. Reading about a question tells me how other have approached and tried to answer it. But learning about how others have approached it is not the same thing as approaching it, any more than reading explorers' accounts is the same as exploring. One ought to do both, but remembering that philosophy is the love of wisdom, and scholarship, though it can bring knowledge, is not wisdom. The difficulty - because of course one would like to read every philosopher who has thought well, or even interestingly - is that if you wait until you've mastered the literature, you will never begin to actually do your own thinking. Mastering the literature can't be done. I can't read all of the good books of the past, and I can't even keep up with my contemporaries: there are too many of them and they write too much. But you have to start somewhere, knowing that you will never see everything you would like, and that you're not guaranteed at the beginning to end up where you would like. When I read one book I'm always choosing a particular dialogue partner and, for now, rejecting all the rest.

Knowing, then, that you can never master all of the thought of the past, at some point you just have to jump in and see if you can reason your way around a question. Do so without consulting a trustworthy road map at your peril, but remember that philosophy does not begin (or end) with footnotes.

Scholarship, however, does. If I do use a map, I'd better make damn sure I'm reading it correctly or it will do me no good. There's nothing more irritating than a philosopher pretending to be a scholar, using another thinker as a jumping-off point and then blithely distorting his position.

God as Being

The second paragraph of Scotus' De Primo Principio reads as follows (trans. Wolter):

O Lord our God, true teacher that you are, when Moses your servant asked you for your name that he might proclaim it to the children of Israel, you, knowing what the mind of mortals could grasp of you, replied: "I am who am," thus disclosing your blessed name. You are truly what it means to be, you are the whole of what it means to exist [or: you are true being, you are whole being]. This, if it be possible for me, I should like to know by way of demonstration. Help me then, O Lord, as I investigate how much our natural reason can learn about that true being which you are if we begin with the being which you have predicated of yourself.

In The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy Etienne Gilson comments on this passage:

Nothing can surpass the weighty fullness of this text, since it lays down at once the true method of Christian philosophy, and the first truth whence all the others derive. Applying the principle of St Augustine and St Anselm, the Credo ut intelligam, Duns Scotus, at the very outset of his metaphysical speculation, makes an act of faith in the truth of the divine word; like Athenagoras, it is in the school of God that he would learn of God. No philosopher is invoked as intermediary between reason and the supreme Master; but forthwith, after the act of faith, philosophy begins.

Gilson has a number of favorable remarks about Scotus in the present book. Here is another one, from an endnote: "Duns Scotus' proofs of God's existence should occupy a prominent place in any history of Christian philosophy, for they are immediately based on the idea of being and its essential properties, causality and eminence."

Philosophy: Where to Begin?

The study of Philosophy is not like other subjects. One cannot define philosophy without already doing it. The question "what is philosophy?" demands a philosophical answer. This is not the case for, e.g., history or mathematics - you don't have to be doing history or math in order to define them; you don't give a history of history in order to grasp what historical inquiry is. Instead, "what is history?" and "what is mathematics?" are themselves philosophical questions. The historian or mathematician may ply his trade without defining it, but this very practice of the discipline can only take place according to some implicit supra-historical or supra-mathematical conception of what is being done which can only be articulated in philosophical terms.

This fact in itself may lend some credence to Aristotle's notion that first philosophy is the architectonic science - the knowledge by which all other knowledge is measured and directed. But not every philosopher would accept this characterization of his discipline. There are almost as many conceptions of what philosophy is as there are philosophies! This is surely not the case with other subjects.

When one cannot even grasp what philosophy is without doing it, it seems that one cannot even begin to study it without having already begun. This raises, for me at least, the question of how one is to begin. As has been pointed out many times, in philosophy as in anything else a little mistake at the beginning leads to great errors in the end, so it seems very important to begin philosophizing from the proper place. Anything at all can be made to follow from a falsehood. If two philosophers do not at least broadly agree on what philosophy is, they are likely not to agree on much else in philosophy either. But how are we to adjudicate between them? Shall we conclude that, since philosophers agree neither on their principles nor on their conclusions, therefore knowledge or truth in philosophy is impossible and that there is only opinion or speculation? But this in itself is a highly contested philosophical position, and can only be defended by taking certain definite positions about truth and our relationship to it.

The question "where to begin?" seems equivalent to the question "how do I establish first principles?" Granted that we begin thinking always already holding any number of principles - I presume that there is no really presuppositionless thinking - the trick is to be able to identify those presuppositions which are both certain and fundamental, and to weed out those which are either false or doubtful. We cannot simply begin with our first principles, because the principles we happen to have when we begin need to be tested and approved or rejected. What is "first" in my mind and first in fact may not at all be the same. By what criterion, then, do I examine my own presuppositions?

The Separability Criterion and the Real Distinction

In this recent post Faber presented Giles of Rome on the separability criterion for a real distinction, and its application to essence and existence. Here is the money quote:

in the way in which we find objects separated in that way they are distinct from each other. If, therefore, they are separated only in thought then they are rationally distinct; if they are really separated, they are really distinct. And although there is some doubt whether those objects which are really distinct are also really separable, there cannot be a doubt that those which are really separate are really distinct. If, indeed, an essence were always joined to an existence, it would always possess an existence and it would never be able not to exist.

But it seems to me this very criterion could be used to argue against the "real distinction". According to the separability criterion, two things are really distinct if at least one of them can exist without the other. So according to the "real distinction", either a thing's essence or its existence can "exist" without the other, or both. And Giles argues (as Thomas does) that an essence is not always joined to an existence, ergo etc. But what else is this than to say that the essence "exists" without existence, either in the divine mind or in a created intellect? But if the essence exists there, is it really separated from existence? It seems not. Now, perhaps we don't want to call the kind of being an essence has in the mind existence. This seems right. But then there also seems to be reason to question whether the essence as it "exists" in the mind and as it exists in reality are numerically the same. Arbority in the mind and arbority as it exists as a formal component of this existent oak tree have the same formal ratio, that is, share in the same common nature; to that extent they are identical; but that formal ratio undergoes no change when the oak tree is created. It's not a subject which is actualized. The tree-ish act is not the act of the common nature, but the act of the substance, namely, this individual form united to this matter. And before the tree comes into existence this form, which qua arbority shares the same common nature with the concept in the mind, has no separate being. Since the act of existence is the act of a real singular form, and since the form which exists in the mind is identical with the real singular form only specifically and not numerically, it seems that before the singular form exists in act it is simply nothing. Therefore it is never separated from existence, and therefore it is not really distinct from it.

I have to admit that I am none too sure about this argument. As a matter of fact it seems more problematic for Scotus' metaphysics than for Thomas'. Since Thomas does not admit that there is a singular form in the same sense that Thomas does, it's easier to say that the universal essence is not identical with the form as actualized by the singular existence. Since there is no "Socrateity" in the mind of God we don't have to worry about the unique singularity of Socrates' essence. For Scotus, however, there is such a singular form, and so it would be easier to argue that Socrateity as distinct from Socrates' existence is present in the mind. The question I suppose is whether the ratio of the pre-created Socrateity in the divine mind is numerically identical with Socrateity as existing in Socrates. This bears more thinking about, since I'm not yet sure what to think.

Bonavanture and the Intellectual Life

Clearly, Bonaventure was an intellectual. But just as clearly, he saw the point of intellectual training to be integrated within a wider vision of the human person and the goal of human life. Outside the world of the biblical revelation the nature of that goal remains always an open question. But within the world of revelation, faith opens the vision of a final destiny with God that transcends even what the great Plato and Aristotle were able to think of as the final destiny of humanity.

Learning, therefore, is an important element in the spiritual journey, at least for certain people; though non necessarily for all. But even for those whose way to God includes the discipline of the intellectual life, the goal of intellectual culture is not knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Nor is it knowledge for the sake of the market place. Nor is it knowledge for the sake of fame and popularity. . . . It is clear that Bonaventure had a high regard for the intellectual life, but he never envisioned knowledge independently of the only goal that the human person finally has: loving union with God.

--Zachary Hayes, Introduction to On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology

Reflecting on Essence and Existence

I wanted to address some of what commenter "AT" says in this thread, not because I have a burning urge to refute him, but because this is a topic I'm none too sure of myself and I'd like to reflect on it. So I hope our commenter will forgive my using his remarks as a springboard. He writes:

To say something that doesn't exist has a potency to exist doesn't seem to make sense. If true this would mean the things created by God had a potency to be created. Where would this potency come from? Not from God because in God there is no potency. Also, creation was a free act of God and didn't depend on anything else.

I think that many theologians would admit that "the things created by God had a potency to be created". This potency doesn't come from anywhere except the intrinsic properties of the essences themselves. Now, the commenter makes two claims, each of which is true in one sense and - according to some theories at least - false in another respect.

1) The potency to be created cannot come from God because there is no potency in God.

I think we need to distinguish, as Faber does, between active and passive potency. God can't have passive potency whereby something other that himself can cause anything about or in him. But God can and does have an active potency to cause things other than himself.

I think that we would want to say that the "creatibility" of essences before creation comes from God, not insofar as he has the ability to create them, but insofar as he understands them. That is, the active potency of God to create (in the example) a rose, comes from, and is logically posterior to, his understanding of the essence of a rose, whether or not he decides ever to create any. "AT" says in another comment, "I think you will agree that God knows things which have never existed, don't now exist, and will never exist. In what sense could they be said to have a potency to exist?" To which I reply, that have a potency to exist insofar as they can exist but do not. It can't be the case the essence of a rose in itself is posterior to its existence, since it had to be an "existible" object, intelligible to the mind of God and willable by his will, in order for it to be created. This is because a rose has an intrinsic intelligible structure, a nature, a quod quid erat esse, which can be grasped and expressed whether there is an actually existing rose. This essence exists in the mind of God as an exemplar, a divine idea, and the existent rose is conforms to it, in a way analogous to the way the concept of the rose in our minds conforms to the essence as existing in the real rose.

To show that the essence pre-exists in the mind of God, before God decides to create it, we can advert to the (presumed) fact that there are other possible kinds of flowers which God also knows about, but has never created and will never create. The essences of these flowers remain externally non-existent, in the sense that there are no such flowers, but there still are such essences, in the sense that they are possible and God knows them to be such.

2) Creation is a free act of God and doesn't depend on anything else.

From the foregoing we can infer that creation, while indeed a free act, does depend on something else, namely the prior understanding of what is to be created, not as a cause of the act of creation per se, but as a sine qua non. For if the essence to be created was not an intelligible structure and if it were not already understood in the mind of God, God could never will to create it. This is no way compromises the freedom of divine action, since the act of understanding something as creatible in no way determines that it should be created, but it is a necessary condition (as Faber said a little while back, it's an essentially ordered co-cause).

The difficulty of the "real distinction" is that it treats essences as though they are the matter of existence. Just as matter, according to St Thomas, does not exist until actualized by some form, so form does not exist until actualized by existence. Can an essence, like the nature of a rose, be thought of in this respect?

But if we don't want to think of the form or essence as a potential principle, then we have to grapple with this separability criterion - which amounts to the claim that the essence can "exist" in the mind of man or of God, but without "existing" in its own right. Since the essences of elanor and simbelmyne "are", in the sense that I can tell you what sort of flowers they are and what their natural habitats are and what are the differences between them, and yet since they do not exist, since the flowers are fictional and there aren't any, it seems that it isn't true that if there is an essence then a thing of which it is the essence exists.

There's lots more to think about here, and perhaps I'll come back to it soon.

Unemployment

I know I'm departing from my usual beat, but this really irritates me:

U.S. payrolls unexpectedly fell in January, but the unemployment rate surprisingly dropped to a five-month low, according to a government report Friday that hinted at labor market improvement. . . . While a sharp increase in the number of people giving up looking for work helped to depress the jobless rate, some details of the employment report were encouraging. The number of "discouraged job seekers" rose to 1.1 million in January from 734,000 a year ago.

I'm no economist, and maybe I shouldn't open my big fat computer, but does this fool anybody? There are fewer jobs now than a month ago, but the unemployment rate fell? People have been out of work for so long that you don't bother to count them anymore, and you call it good news because fewer people are being counted? I honestly don't know who a story like this is aimed at, because I can't imagine anyone who would both read it and be stupid enough to be fooled by it. Here's what the story sounds like in my head as I read it: "Something bad happened, but surprisingly it was good, according to a report that hints that things are getting better even though they're getting worse. . . . While the numbers in the report show that our optimism is misplaced, some details of the report were encouraging. There's more bad news than ever!"

True Principles Can Be Derived From Deceived Senses

This is the point I was making in this post, and at the moment I thought I was thinking for myself, but it turns out that for some of the metaphysics and epistemology post I was vaguely recollecting things I'd read in Ordinatio I.3.4 a few weeks ago. Look at the following from Scotus [mildly paraphrased]:

"As far as the knowledge of principles is concerned, the senses are not the cause, but the occasion, of understanding. The intellect is not able to have the knowledge of simple notions unless this is accepted from the senses; but once these simple notions are accepted, the intellect can put them together by its own power and, if from the nature of these simple notions there is an evidently true complex concept, the intellect, by its own power and by that of the terms, can assent to that complex - but not in virtue of the sense from which it accepted the terms from without. For example: if the notion of "whole" and of "greater" is received from the sense power, and if the intellect puts together this proposition: Every whole is greater than its part, the intellect, in virtue of itself and of these terms, will assent to this complex notion with certitude, and not only because it sees these terms conjoined in reality (as if for instance it assents to the proposition Socrates is white, because he sees the terms [i.e. Socrates and whiteness] to be united in reality).

No, rather I say that if all the senses from which such terms were derived were false, or (what would be even more deceptive), if some senses were false and some true, still the intellect would not be deceived about such principles, because it would always have with it the terms which were the cause of the truth. For instance, if a man born blind were to be miraculously impressed with the appearances of whiteness and blackness in a dream, and if they remained in his imagination upon awakening, his intellect, abstracting from them, would compose this proposition: White is not black. And his intellect would not be deceived about this, although the terms were derived from an erring sense, because the formal ratio of the terms which he attained is itself the necessary cause of the truth of this negative proposition."

I think this is both true, and very similar to what I was saying in the previous post. But yesterday I'd forgotten all about having read it, even though it was fairly recently. It just goes to show that the modern academic obsession with footnoting is misplaced to some extent. I may never have an original thought, and if I did it would be impossible to prove, because what I believe I just thought up on my own may well be and probably is a composted sediment from something someone else once said or wrote. So why be so obsessed with attribution?

nihil sub sole novum nec valet quisquam dicere ecce hoc recens est iam enim praecessit in saeculis quae fuerunt ante nos
non est priorum memoria sed nec eorum quidem quae postea futura sunt erit recordatio apud eos qui futuri sunt in novissimo

Giles of Rome on the Real Distinction

Aegidius Romanus, Theoremata de esse et essentia (transl. M. Murray, p.61-62):

Theorem 12: "Everything that exists, except the First Being, is not its own existence, but it has an essence really distinct from existence and by reason of the former it is a being and by reason of the latter it is an existant."

[...]

"We ought to note, nevertheless, that some objects can be separated actually; others only in thought. Therefore, in the way in which we find objects separated in that way they are distinct from each other. If, therefore, they are separated only in thought then they are rationally distinct; if they are really separated, they are really distinct. And although there is some doubt whether those objects which are really distinct are also really separable, there cannot be a doubt that those which are really separate are really distinct. If, indeed, an essence were always joined to an existence, it would always possess an existence and it would never be able not to exist. Therefore, because sensible natures are able not to exist or because they are not always joined to existence, because they begin to exist sometime, we can say that they are in potency to existence and that they have no essence really distinct from existence."

There we have it, Giles of Romes' famous or, if your name is Cunningham, infamous separability criterion added to the real distinction. This set of theorems was Giles' first examination of the topic, save perhaps for his Sentences. Henry reacted to this treatise, which prompted a series of quodlibetal debates between the two. Giles eventually wrote a series of disputed questions about essence and existence, attacking Henry and clarifying his own position. This debate seems to have been heavily influential for the way in which later scholastics interpreted the formal distinction, although the only real literature on this is from thomist scholars, who have notorious blindspots. The separability criterion was certainly incorporated by Scotus and his early followers, and probably became standard among other schools as well. The first question of Peter Thomae's QQ. de modis distinctionis is about it, for example. Comparing this with Thomas of Sutton's version of the real distinction, which is obtains between anything distinct prior to the operation of the intellect, one could note that neither are explicitly found in the writings of Aquinas himself, but have been filled in by his later students (which has provided fodder for plenty of modern thomists, who, forgetting that thomism was not always as dominant as it was from the period 1879-1965, generally attack both for their alleged weak adherence to thomistic doctrine). It would be an interesting study to see if other theologians advanced similar views in the 1280's and on, and to see if the version of Thomas of Sutton might be the Oxford real distinction while that of Giles the Parisian real distinction. But that I will leave to the Thomists.

Here is another quote, from the introduction, p.ix:

"A clear thread runs from Duns Scotus, through William of Ockham to Suarez in the explanation of the distinction between essence and existence. There has been, on the part of these men, a violent reaction to the real distinction between essence and existence, as proposed by St. Thomas. This opposition is based on their rejection of essence and existence as real physical entities which, so they thought, would be required in the real distinction of St. Thomas. In other word, for these men the real distinction is only valid if applied to physical entities which are separable. Such, of course, is not the doctrine of St. Thomas; nevertheless these men have rejected the real distinction for this reason. Why historically this particular doctrine of physical entities was involved in the Thomistic real distinction is not, at the present time, so clear as historians of philosophy would like. It does seem, however, that Giles of Rome is at least partly responsible for this identification of the real distinction with physical entities."

Henry of Ghent's Krazy Kwestions

Speaking of Henry of Ghent, while it's true that the Summa quaestionum ordinarium has a lot of interesting-looking stuff in it - I've only read small portions here and there - there are more laughs in his quodlibets. This is true for a lot of scholastics, actually, since in a quodlibet anyone can ask whatever they like, and they frequently ask silly and crazy and awesome questions. Check out this epic run in Henry's Quodlibet XV:

q. 10. Whether the glorious soul, having resumed its glorious body, can see a sensible object without the sense medium.
q. 11. Whether a man generated by a man and a woman - if he were assumed into a unity of person with the Son of God - would be the son of that man.
q.12. Whether a master or scholar who is held to the canonical hours, if he were to fail to say them one day on account of study and reading, with the intention and hope of making it up and saying them another day, would sin mortally.
q.13. Whether the conception of the Virgin Mary should be celebrated on account of the conception.
q.14. Whether the indulgences of prelates are as efficacious as they sound.
q.15. Whether it is licit for masters to dispute about the power of prelates.
q.16. Whether a knight charging and flying ahead of his associates into an army of enemies performs an act of magnanimity.

This little collection of topics gives, all by itself a picture of medieval life as vibrant as a passage in Chaucer or Snorre Sturluson. Technical questions and wild hypothetical speculation and chivalry! q.12 gives you a perfect portrait of the troubled conscience of some poor cleric, guilty about the sort of procrastination I would no doubt be tempted to commit were I in his shoes. q.13 has someone really interested in a theological subject not yet settled by the Magisterium (or the subtle doctor). q.15 is a hilarious rebuke to q.14. I'd like to believe that at this session at the University of Paris in Advent 1291, or maybe Lent 1292, a good time was had by all.

Metaphysics Prior to Epistemology

It seems to be generally accepted that metaphysics is posterior to epistemology. After Descartes and Kant nearly everyone seems to take it for granted, even scholastics. For instance, the two books in the previous post, Degrees of Knowledge and Insight, both attempt, each in its own way, to construct a Thomistic-type metaphysics on the foundation of an analysis of the intellect and intellectual processes.

On the other hand, I'm very tempted to argue that the assumption that ever since the formation of the "critical problem" any future metaphysics must be constructed over an epistemological substratum is false, both according to 1) the order of being and 2) the order of knowing.

1). A. Metaphysics is first philosophy. But if it's posterior to epistemology then it's second philosophy. Ergo, etc.

B. Metaphysics is conceived by Aristotle as a science. But according to Aristotle science is certain knowledge logically derived from self-evident necessary first principles. But no singular contingent truth is necessary. Therefore no singular contingent truth is a principle of metaphysics. But the "critical problem" - how can I trust my senses, how do I know I'm not a brain in a vat, therefore how do I know my concepts conform to reality, etc. - is concerned with our knowledge of contingent truths. Therefore a resolution of the "critical problem" is not a necessary precursor to metaphysics.

C. Metaphysics is a science of the necessary, not of the contingent. There is no science strictly speaking of the contingently true. Therefore metaphysics is concerned with a) what is necessarily actual, and b) what is necessarily possible, but not with what is contingently actual. But however the "critical problem" is resolved, it is resolved to a contingently actual truth. For instance, if my senses are generally reliable and I usually perceive the world as it is, taking into account the ordinary risk of error, the fact that this world exists and that I know it is still contingently true. But if I am a brain in a vat and my perception is an illusion, this is also contingently true. Therefore the science of the necessarily actual and possible does not depend on the solution of the problem either way.

D. An accurate metaphysics can persist even if all of my judgments about contingent facts are false. For instance, if I were a brain in a vat, my conception of substance and accidents would remain unaffected. I would be in error about particular substances, but not about the underlying theory. A brain in a vat remains a substance, and its color an accident.

2. A. The possibility of attaining knowledge is not dependent on a proof that the knowledge is possible. A child does not learn semiotics before learning his letters. Phenomenology does not come prior to perception. If I can't prove I'm not a brain in a vat, that doesn't mean that I don't really know who the President is. So, to generalize, a proof that knowledge about reality is possible is not necessary in order to have knowledge about reality.

B. Furthermore, it is licit to argue from actuality to possibility. So: I do know who the President is. Therefore some knowledge about reality is possible. How? That's another question. The fact that I can't show how doesn't prove that it isn't so. A radical doubt which refuses to admit that I know who the President is or whether I have two hands is not asking for epistemology, but something else. It also redefines "knowledge", since it is obviously and trivially (pre-philosophically) apparent that I have knowledge of this kind. If Cartesian radical doubt insists that it is not knowledge in the most perfect sense of "science," then I readily grant this.

C. Even brain-in-a-vat type questions presume a metaphysics. If I am a brain in a vat, then there are bodies with certain properties, and a distinction between material and formal causes, and essentially ordered causal chains, and so forth. A radical skepticism which eschews all metaphysics whatsoever, which makes no claims at all about reality, can be nothing but simple negation. But no science can be founded on a negation. Ergo, etc.

I could go on about why I think the whole notion of Cartesian doubt (as opposed to something like Husserlian epoche) is a serious mistake, but that would take me away from the present topic. As for the thesis, I'd be very happy to read any refutations.

Epistemology Prior to Metaphysics

[I]f I am concerned to meet Kant's demands upon any future metaphysics, if I am impressed by Hume's argument that the central science is the empirical science of man, if I respond to Descartes' aspiration for bold yet methodical initiative, these themes from a past that is over are but overtones in the problem that is our existential situation. If its confusion is to be replaced by intelligible order and its violence by reasonable affirmation, then the nucleus from which this process can begin must include an acknowledgment of detached inquiry and disinterested reflection, a rigorous unfolding of the implications of that acknowledgment, an acceptance not only of the metaphysics that constitutes the unfolding but also of the method that guides it between the Charybdis of asserting too little and the Scylla of asserting too much.

--Bernard Lonergan, Insight, Chapter 16.

Every attempt at metaphysical synthesis, especially when it deals with the complex riches of knowledge and of the mind, must distinguish in order to unite. What is thus incumbent upon a reflexive and critical philosophy is above all to discriminate and discern the degrees of knowing, its organization and its internal differentiations.

Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, Preface

Scotus vs. Henry

Again. This time Scotus objects to Henry of Ghent's characterization of necessity in the Trinitarian processions. From Ordinatio I. Dist. 10.29:

Praeterea, quae necessitas distinguendi inter voluntatem quam ponit principium eliciendi actum, et naturam quam ponit coassistere voluntati elicienti, si tantum est inter ista distinctio rationis, sicut videtur alibi sentire de distinctione attributorum in divinis?

"Furthermore, how is it necessary to distinguish between the will which he posits as the principle of eliciting the act, and the nature which he posits as co-assisting the eliciting will, if there is only a distinction of reason between the two, as it seems elsewhere to think is the case with the divine attributes in God?"

So Henry makes a distinction between two principles in one place, and in another place says or implies that the distinction is only a distinction of reason and not something in reality, negating the explanatory force the distinction had in the first place.

I bring this up because I've seen Henry pull this exact same move in another context. In his Quodlibet IV.16, on spiritual composition, he says that there are various distinct principles in the angels which can account for its real non-simplicity. In order to make sense of the relevant distinctions he sends the reader to his Summa, where he makes a number of relevant distinctions, ranks them in a hierarchy of more and less compositive, and then ruins the whole thing by making it clear that they are all merely intentional distinctions. So where's the real composition?

I haven't read enough Henry to see if he does this sort of thing all the time, but it's pretty fishy.

Nostalgia

Browsing through my library this morning I discovered, tucked into the index, the receipt for my copy of Bernard Lonergan's Insight, which it turns out I purchased nine years ago today. Does that ever make me feel old! And it took me back to when I first read the book in the previous year as a 19-year-old sophomore. Insight and Maritain's Degrees of Knowledge were probably the two modern books that had the greatest effect on me that year and set the stage for my thinking for a long time. After I finished my B.A. and went to grad school I turned in my "Thomist" license plate and began studying more scholastics and fewer neo-Thomists, but I still owe those guys a debt of gratitude. In fact going through my shelves made me (as so often happens) think that it might be time to read some of these books again (and there are still a few by Gilson I've never gotten around to). But when is that going to happen?

All that being said, check out this bit from the preface to Degrees of Knowledge:

In truth, Thomism is a common task. One is not a Thomist because, in the emporium of systems, one chooses it as if one were choosing one system among others just as you try one pair of shoes after another in a shoestore until you find a pattern that fits your foot better. If that were the way it was done, it would be more stimulating to cut a system to one's own measure. One is a Thomist because one has repudiated every attempt to find philosophical truth in any system fabricated by an individual (even though that individual be called ego) and because one wants to seek out what is true - for oneself, indeed, and by one's own reason - by allowing oneself to be taught by the whole range of human thought, in order not to neglect anything of that which is. Aristotle and St. Thomas occupy a privileged place for us only because, thank to their supreme docility to the lessons of the real, we find in them the principles and the scale of values through which the total effort of this universal thought can be preserved without running the risk of eclecticism and confusion.

This sort of thing really impressed me as a teenager; now that I'm pushing thirty it raises my hackles. At this point I'm suspicious of any philosophical "system" whatsoever, even one so venerable as Thomism. As soon as one turns one's insights, principles, arguments, and conclusions into a "system" it begins to take on a life of its own, to become a thought-artifact. This seems to be just what Maritain likes about Thomism, which he claims is "organic" and grows through the ages through cooperative work, like a medieval cathedral. But there is inevitably born in its inhabitants and curators the urge to defend the cathedral from outside attack, even if the attack comes only in the form of suggestions for remodeling. It's not clear to me that this defensive posture is the same thing as "supreme docility to the lessons of the real".

This criticism by no means falls on St Thomas himself just because it seems empirically to describe "Thomism". But it's also not clear to me that Thomas either intended to or did build a "system" - and indeed Maritain implies the opposite - or that his particular "thought-world" is a preeminently exemplary vessel of the philosophia perennis in some sort of self-contained and exclusionary way. This is in part why I didn't trade my "Thomist" plate in for a "Scotist" one ("Bonaventurean" wouldn't fit, even if it were accurate!): I'm not at all convinced that there is a "Scotism" or a "Scotistic synthesis", rather than simply a series of uniquely penetrating insights and arguments fitting into and conditioning a common scholasticism - common not in the sense of there being a shared common "system", but a shared terminology, outlook, method, and basic conceptual structure. I don't see any reason why it isn't possible to consider oneself a "Scomist", as one eminent academic I know likes to call himself, or a "Scotaventurean" or "Thomiventurscotist", for that matter. I think it's easier and more sensible just to call oneself a scholastic.

Now this very lack of "synthesis" has led people to criticize Scotus on just this point: his thought is not constructive, but critical, etc, and he's presented as part of a larger story in which the thirteenth century is the age of constructing the great cathedrals of thought and the fourteenth is the age of gnawing at the mortar to see how strong they are. But there's good reason to doubt this story, at least as a story of why the fourteenth century is not so worthy of study as the thirteenth. Everyone would admit that St Bonaventure and St Thomas have a greater power of "synthesis" than Bl Scotus does. But Bonaventure's thought is still closer to Scotus' than to Thomas'. And synthetic power is no guarantee of the truth of any given principle or conclusion. This seems to me the main point. Once we've told ourselves that St Thomas was "supremely docile to the lessons of the real" we're already likely to a) assume that his contemporaries weren't so supremely docile and that b) arguments which if accepted would impair the cathedral of Thomism must come from an inferior docility. As I've said many times before, I think this sort of attitude locates Thomas' merits in the wrong place, needlessly denigrates everyone else, and is bad for the philosophic spirit. If rejecting it means "running the risk of eclecticism and confusion", well, confusion is a constant and unavoidable risk in philosophy. And I have to admit that I don't quite grasp Maritain's horror of eclecticism. I'm not even entirely sure I know what he means.

"Suppositum" defined

Two definitions of "supposit":

1) From Roy Deferrari's "Latin-English Dictionary of St Thomas Aquinas": "(2) That which underlies all the accidents of a thing, i.e. the individual substance of a certain kind which is the subject of existence and all accidental modifications which constitute the individual, synonym of hypostasis, subjectum, and substantia . . . - Kinds of suppositum in this sense are (a) suppositum aeternum seu increatum and suppositum temporale seu creatum, the eternal or increated and the temporal or created individual substance. - (b) suppositum completum ultima completione, the individual substance of highest completion . . ."

2) From Allan Wolter's Scotistic glossary: "The general name for a being that is per se in the third sense defined by Scotus. If the suppositum is of a rational or intellectual nature, it is called a person. Suppositum is a close Latin parallel to hypostasis, the term Greek theologians use to designate a divine person in the Trinity . . . Because of their interest in explaining the union of Christ's human nature and his divinity in the person of the Word, theologians were forced to develop some clear idea of what constituted a person, be he human, angelic, or divine. In this connection they went on to determine the analogue of person in a nonrational subsistent, and retained "suppositum" as a general designation for any full subsistent individual, be it rational or not. Boethius had defined a person as "an individual substance of a rational nature". Those who accepted this definition pointed out that "substance" was not to be taken in a categorial sense but as equivalent to a distinct subsistent, in the sense that Scotus seeks to clarify in discussing the various meanings of subsistent or per se being. Others stressed that "rational" was equivalent to "intellectual" in its most general sense, vis., as applicable also to the divine nature as well as to one which reasoned in the discursive manner characteristic of humans. Others, who unlike Scotus made matter the basis for individuality, had to qualify the term "individual". Richard of St Victor called attention to what seemed to be an even more serious drawback of the Boethian definition, namely, that, according to it, the divine nature itself would be a person in its own right. Hence he suggested an alternate definition, viz., that a person is "the incommunicable exisetence of an intellectual nature". "Existence" here seems to be simply the abstract form for "the existent" or "the subsistent". It implies that the subject characterized by it has substantial being (esse) in a transcendental or non-categorial sense, and that this being is complete and individual. It also connotes, says Richard, that this existent has this being in virtue of some property that indicates something of its origins, that is to say, it has this being of itself, or by creation, or by propogation, etc. In God the divine nature itself has such "existentia", for it has substantial being of itself. Now the three divine persons share this "existentia" commonly and hence indistinguishably, but each person also has his own incommunicable existence in virtue of which he is a discrete and unique individual. It is this incommunicable "existentia" in the divine intellectual nature that best defines what a divine person is. And more generally, it is the incommunicable existence of any intellectual nature that commonly defines a person, be he divine, angelic, or human. On this Richardian definition, which Scotus accepts and develops, a suppositum would seem to be the incommunicable existence of any nature, and a person would be an intellectual suppositum."