The Philosophy of Being in the Analytic, Continental, and Thomistic Traditions

Divergence and Dialogue

Joseph P. Li Vecchi, Frank Scalambrino, David K. Kovacs

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350103344
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Metafisica filosofica

This book provides a discussion of the philosophy of being according to three major traditions in Western philosophy, the Analytic, the Continental, and the Thomistic. The origin of the point of view of each of these traditions is associated with a seminal figure, Gottlob Frege, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Aquinas, respectively. The questions addressed in this book are constitutional for the philosophy of being, considering the meaning of being, the relationship between thinking and being, and the methods for using thought to access being. On the one hand, the book honors diversity and pluralism, as it highlights how the three traditions may be clearly and distinctly differentiated regarding the philosophy of being. On the other hand, it honors a sense of solidarity and ecumenism, as it demonstrates how the methods and focal points of these traditions constitute, and continue to shape, the development of Western philosophy. This book contributes toward an essential overview of Western metaphysics and will be of particular interest to those working in the history of philosophy and in the philosophy of being.

1

Introduction: Being in Three Traditions

Joseph P. Li Vecchi, Frank Scalambrino, and David K. Kovacs

§1 What Is the Philosophy of Being?

The philosophy of being is as old as philosophy itself; in fact, depending upon your understanding of philosophy, it may even be older. Thus, as long as there will be philosophy, there will always be the philosophy of being. However, books on the philosophy of being have tended to be written from the point of view of, or privileging, just one tradition from the history of Western philosophy.

So, on the one hand, the three of us thought it would be a valuable contribution to the literature regarding the philosophy of being, if we were to write a book that would specifically speak from the different points of view of three major philosophical traditions.¹ On the other hand, we thought an initial introductory section regarding the philosophy of being in general would help orient readers to the context of our book.²

§2 Brief History of the Meaning of the Philosophy of Being

It is widely considered standard that Plato (c. 428–348 BC) invented the subject of philosophy, as an academic discipline, that Thales of Miletus (c. 624–c. 548 BC) was the first Western philosopher, and that Pythagoras (c. 570–c. 495 BC) invented the term “philosopher.” Yet, despite the philosophical musings of Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535–c. 475 BC) regarding becoming, the study of the philosophy of being began with the philosophical poetry of Parmenides of Elea (c. 515–c. 450 BC).

Inaugurating the philosophy of being, then, Parmenides wrote, “That which is there to be spoken and thought of must be. For it is possible for it to be, but not possible for nothing to be.”³ This has often been restated in what may appear to be a rather jejune observation: “Whatever is, is.” While interpretations of Parmenides’s thought have varied, the influence of his cryptic lines is enormous and undeniable,⁴ especially, for example, on Plato, and on Plato’s student Aristotle (384–322 BC).⁵

In fact, Plato devoted an entire dialogue—the Parmenides—to wrestling, explicitly, with the ideas of Parmenides and his follower Zeno of Elea (c. 495–c. 430 BC). In addition, Plato also explicitly addresses the philosophy of being in his dialogues: the Republic, the Sophist, and the Timaeus.⁶ Moreover, the locus of the disagreement between Plato and Aristotle may have been precisely about how to understand being and existence.⁷ Certainly the question was forefront in Aristotle’s mind, as he went on to write that the first and the noblest of the sciences—what we standardly call “metaphysics”—is the science of “being as being.”⁸

What is more, whereas a number of philosophers working in the Continental Tradition still engage with the writings of Parmenides and Heraclitus, at least one major introduction to Thomas Aquinas’s (1225–1274) metaphysics portrays Aquinas as responding to what he took to be the “Parmenidean problem.”⁹ Thus, the legacy of Parmenides continues to ripple through the history of Western philosophy, as philosophers working in multiple traditions seek: To say something meaningful about being, about what it is to be or not to be.

Philosophers, however, have had complicated and at times strained relationships with each other over the years. For example, the thought of Plato and Aristotle was refined by thinkers Christian, Muslim, and Jewish, among others, and elements of Greek philosophy and monotheistic theology were at times synthesized, reinterpreted, and harmonized. The consequence has been that in recent years Western philosophy is viewed as having fragmented into different “schools” or “traditions.” Strangely, it is not always easy to say what separates the different schools of thought. It isn’t that our philosophical interests and inquiries are very different. At least part of what separates these schools from each other is that they have each developed their own ways of speaking, almost developing their own languages at times.

In retrospect, it seems inevitable that by the thirteenth century a genius like Thomas Aquinas would be developing what some commentators consider the greatest contribution to philosophy in history, calling it “perennial philosophy.” Being has a central place in Aquinas’s philosophy.¹⁰ In fact, his followers, known as Thomists, develop and adapt Aquinas’s thought to subsequent philosophical trends and problems by returning to core tenets of his philosophy of being. Yet, Aquinas was not the last genius in the history of philosophy.

By 1781 Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) had formulated, what the history of Western philosophy has taken to be, a revolutionary approach to the philosophy of being—the results of which serious philosophers have had to grapple with ever since. For example, his dictum, “Being is not a real predicate,” has had reverberations in both the Continental and Analytic Traditions. Interestingly, how predication relates to being is a central issue for each of the traditions discussed in this book. Thus, “Being is not a real predicate” can also be seen as the point of departure for the genius of the Analytic Tradition, Gottlob Frege (1848–1925).

§3 Brief Clarification regarding “Metaphysics” and “Ontology” in the Philosophy of Being

Especially given the above reference to Aristotle’s celebrated definition of “metaphysics” as “the science of being as being,” a terminological clarification may be helpful for readers. Namely, what is the difference between “metaphysics” and “ontology,” specifically in regard to the philosophy of being? On the one hand, this terminological clarification may be helpful since early twentieth-century textbooks of philosophy tended to define “ontology” as “the study of being in general.” On the other hand, although the distinction tends to be less relevant to the Analytic discussion of being, each of our three traditions may invoke these terms, and in a slightly nuanced way. Therefore, the following two points should be helpful regarding terminology.

First, though some philosophers may treat these terms as equivalent to one another and completely exchangeable, the Continental Tradition considers ontology to be the more precise term of the two. That is, ontology divides into general ontology and specific ontologies. Whereas the former refers to the study of being as being, the specific ontologies are: the cosmological, the theological, and the psychological (since beings can be divided into those three orders). Therefore, the Continental Tradition precisely distinguishes between these terms such that these four, that is, the three specific ontologies and ontology in general, are understood as constituting and containing all that is studied in metaphysics.

Second, according to the Continental Tradition, it was Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason that finally realized Aristotle’s ambition to articulate metaphysics as a science.¹¹ In other words, it was not until Kant formulated his Transcendental Method that metaphysics truly became a science—a science which the Continental Tradition calls “transcendental philosophy.” Importantly, then, Kant, in fact, considered the terms “ontology” and “transcendental philosophy” as equivalent to one another and completely exchangeable. Thus, even though the terms “ontology” and “transcendental” were already in use within the Thomistic Tradition and may have been considered standard in the vocabulary of Scholastic philosophy, Kant’s philosophy standardized these terms differently for the Continental Tradition.

§4 Brief Characterization of the Structure of This Book

The bulk of this book consists of three chapters, each describing a way that one philosophical tradition has dealt with philosophical questions regarding being. We have ordered these chapters in a way that reflects the historical development of the respective tradition: First, the Thomistic Tradition, as influenced by the thought of Aquinas; second, the Continental Tradition, presented as a tradition developing from the work of Kant; lastly, the Analytic Tradition, presented as a tradition developing from the work of Frege.¹² A reader may pick up the book and begin by reading any one of these chapters to get a sense for what that school of philosophy looks like; there is no need to read them in order, although that may provide an excellent sense for the history of Western philosophy over the past 800 years.

The final chapter, however, may be the most important, at least insofar as we seek to promote philosophical dialogue. That chapter does assume that readers have at least some familiarity with the book’s previous chapters, since we there engage with each other’s theories. Each of us will say what we find problematic about the theory of being proposed in the other two chapters, as well as what may be a strong point that the respective theories make. And we will each make some effort to defend our respective theories from criticisms. How we fare on this front is for readers to decide.

2

Being in the Thomistic Tradition: Real Objectivity and the Logic of Existence

Joseph P. Li Vecchi

§1 Introductory Remarks

1.1 The Thomistic Wellspring

According to Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), being shoots through a manifold containing all things actual, possible, and conceptual. We are able to investigate the gamut of this manifold in virtue of the insight that for everything it contains, there is at least one thing that we can know: “It is.” This insight is the wellspring of the philosophy of being in the Thomistic Tradition.

1.2 The Iter Thomisticum

Aquinas underpins and unifies his entire philosophical system with insights and conclusions about being. These trace a broad path, the iter thomisticum, extending from being as the first object of the human intellect¹ to the infinite and self-subsistent being.² Aquinas investigates the multifarious aspects of being in over one hundred works amounting to tens of thousands of pages,³ which over the course of seven and one half centuries have generated innumerable Thomistic interpretations, commentaries, and elaborations.⁴

For Aquinas, the investigation of being begins with the apprehension of material things through the senses.⁵ He investigates the proper objects of the “special sciences,” or branches of philosophy: being in matter and motion for physics, being that is the quantification of things for mathematics, being that is the origin of all things for rational theology,⁶ and so forth for philosophical anthropology, theory of knowledge,⁷ philosophical logic,⁸ ethics,⁹ political theory,¹⁰ and aesthetics.¹¹ He investigates being that all natural things receive as their actuality, primarily substances, and derivatively, their components, principles, and causes,¹² as well as being that is the proper object of the universal science.¹³ Finally, he investigates being in its purest and infinite form, the self-subsistent being from which all other beings come.¹⁴

Despite the centrality of the consideration of being in his thought, and the evidence of the path along which this consideration develops in his great synthetic works, the Summa theologiae and Summa contra Gentiles, Aquinas provides no dedicated exposition of the iter thomisticum. His “metaphysical primer” On Being and Essence, for example, largely focuses on the ontological role of essence in the various kinds of substances. Moreover, his more comprehensive Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, which addresses a wider array of his doctrines about being, nonetheless obscures the continuity of the iter thomisticum by following the somewhat haphazard order of presentation devised by Aristotle’s posthumous editors. While the Thomistic contribution to this book endeavors to draw attention to this continuity, it cannot, within the alloted space, present a comprehensive account of the iter thomisticum.

1.3 Goals and Limits

The goal of this book is nothing more or less than to provoke dialogue among three philosophical traditions about their points of divergence on the question of being. Since much of Aquinas’s all-encompassing treatment of being only indirectly concerns these points of divergence, the present chapter focuses on two topics in Aquinas’s philosophy of being that it takes to be most relevant to this goal. With respect to the Continental Tradition’s rejection of the possibility of knowing reality in itself (noumenon), it presents Aquinas’s doctrine on the obj...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents 
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: Being in Three Traditions
• 2 Being in the Thomistic Tradition: Real Objectivity and the Logic of Existence
• 3 Being in the Continental Tradition: Phenomenological Hermeneutics as Fundamental Ontology
• 4 Being in the Analytic Tradition: The Logic of Existence
• 5 Conclusion: Being in Three Traditions
• Notes
• Bibliography & Further Reading
• Index
• Imprint