Chapter II

 

WHAT IS THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICAL THINKING?

 

 

A.        Question of Being

 

The question of metaphysics is the question of “What is being?” What does it mean to be? It calls to us from the dawn of human mindfulness. It is a dark question of philosophy, and also the light without which other questions would be dark. Ageless and fresh, it has been asked again and again. The asking will sill stand before us, even when our utmost answer has been tried. The question bespeaks an elemental perplexity that perennially calls for renewal. Even if the question is answered, the meaning of the preferred answer grows faint and needs refreshing. Again and again mindful human beings are troubled, shaken by this perplexity. This leads us to nature then of metaphysical thinking relative to the question of being.

 

Metaphysical thinking articulates the milieu of mindfulness within which this question can be heard. But then we have to consider that to be human is to be constituted in and by this milieu of mindfulness. We are what we are by virtue of our abiding in the milieu of being in a more or less mindful way. This makes doing philosophy or the question of being as the monopoly of philosophers, as elite thinkers. The question transcends the difference of the elite few and the many, because it strikes our humanity simply in virtue of its being, as mindful of itself and what is other to itself.

 

B.         The Source of Metaphysical Thinking.[1]

 

1    -           Astonishment As the Beginning of Metaphysical Thinking.

 

      The beginning of mindfulness and utterance of reality is the experience of the original astonishment before the immensity of its givenness. Being is given to us; we are given to be, and to be as mindful. Being is not something we produce. The excess of otherness, its alterity as given, arouses our astonishment that it is at all.

 

      At this level of the subject’s encounter with being, none of this is determinately known as such. It is in the level beyond any thought or linguistic utterance of the reality. The reality is lived, and enjoyed. There is something childlike and virgin about this, but not childish. Philosophers believe that if this childlike and virgin openness is lost completely, then metaphysics has truly reached its dead end. Therefore, Metaphysicians should really keep alive this elemental astonishment.

 

      There is a tendency to suppress this experience of astonishment of the immensity of the givenness of being. This is so, because we have this long established tendency to think that to be is, to be intelligible, and that to be intelligible is to be determinate. The original astonishment is not determinate in that way at all.

 

      We believe that we must make definite every indefiniteness, make determinate all indeterminacy. It is only in such way that we can properly know being. But this movement from the indefinite to definite is not a case of “done deal” thing, once and for all transaction of being. It is rather a continuing process of leaving behind the original astonishment, but without completely ceasing to be continually astonished. Therefore, astonishment maybe a beginning, but it is one, which is left behind as knowing, fulfills its own destiny of completely determinate cognition.

 

      Astonishment is deemed appropriate than the original “wonder” of the early Greeks to describe this primal stage of the subjects encounter with reality, the “alliance of being and the spirit”. “Wonder” in contemporary usage, easily slides to sentimentalism. We do not think our way into astonishment; we are overcome by astonishment. The givenness is offered for our beholding. We are patient to its giving in so far as we do not produce it, or bring it towards ourselves only for it just to be cognitively possessed by us.

 

2    -           Perplexity, the Movement towards Determinate Cognition.

 

      Perplexity is a movement of mindfulness that arises subsequently to the first astonishment. It is the mind troubled about the meaning of the original astonishment. Although there is still something indeterminate about perplexity, but there is already a concerted movement to overcome the indeterminate, a movement towards determinate cognition. Perplexity is felt as a lack of definite cognition, driving out, transcending beyond itself to overcome that lack. The desire for intelligible representation in our mind of such astonishing experience. If astonishment is patience to otherness, perplexity is not patient to the otherness of being. There is a sense of being troubled and perplex for the lack of understanding such experience.

 

3    -           Curiosity, the Beginning of Definite Cognition.

 

      Perplexity becomes curiosity when the indefiniteness of perplexity is focused more specifically on particular beings and processes. Perplexity may have an indefiniteness about it, in that one might be perplexed and not know quite what one is perplexed about. Curiosity, however, is more clearly definite; one is curious about this, that, or the other. It is with curiosity that definite questions arise about particular beings and processes, definite questions that seek determinate answers. Like perplexity, the movement of curiosity is also out of an initial sense of lack: I lack the definite knowing of this, that, or the other. However, I take definite steps to acquire proper determinate knowing. The goal is just such determinate cognition as it brings to an end the thrust of curiosity. Thus, it overcomes the initial lack of knowledge that drives the seeking.

 

C.         DEFINITION AND METHOD OF METAPHYSICS.

 

            The exposition of our course in metaphysics does not follow the way of the Scholastics’ treatment. Scholasticism starts usually with defining the object of metaphysics in a nominal manner. The discourse considers first of all being as being, as also the transcendentals. Then it tries to maintain these fundamental propositions giving justice in the good sense, that beings are not simple, but complex and multiple. It tries, therefore, to structure being elaborating the classical ontological categories  (act and potency, substance, accidents, etc.). The discourse concludes itself finally with the question of causality, in which the thought seeks to establish an ontological connection, and not more solely categorical and logical, between multiple and contingent being, and being as being, considered absolutely.

 

            Such procedure suggests a descending dialectic. This dialectic proceeds from form to form, deducing one from the other by means of the analysis of their mutual implications. For example, “One is”, from this the form “one” can be separated from form “to be”, by analyzing their propriety as the legitimacy of their separation. This legitimacy shows that if “one” is and if “to be” is not simply one, “to be” is not. Such dialectic, which moves from simple and necessary propositions, proceeds through a sort of fixations of the rational elements implied in the simple. Until the unity becomes problematic to the multiple, it renders problematic the ontological consistency. The method of descending dialectics, purely rational, strives therefore to bring back the diverse concrete under the unity of the principle.

 

            Now, the difficulty of such method is derived from the characteristic, but not evidently from the principle. The scholastics often say that the notion of being as it is is absolute, necessary and in some way evident in itself. In fact, it can not proceed itself to being (essere) without supposing it. The access to being (essere) is interior to being (essere). But it does not follow from that which is not a progression of the access of the idea of being in as much as it is. We do not have a sensible intuition of this idea, because it does not indicate something that is only sensible, in the popular sense of the word. The sensible is in being (essere), not in being in as much as it is. We do not have the intellective intuition of this idea, in the sense in which we intuit the clear and distinct concepts. The idea of being, in fact, is not susceptible to being (essere) put in front of the spirit. It implies in fact the spirit that receives it, because the spirit is also it, a being. The access to being (essere) is strictly interior to being (essere). It cannot be put in front of the spirit, if not through pure inconsistent imagination.

 

            Finally, putting back metaphysics in a place which renders it possible, it is finally worth saying in restoring it its spiritual verity, making it the science strictly formal, in which the principles and the content would be no other than the principles themselves of thought, understood as logical, formal thought, and the content the identity of the spirit itself. What is worth saying is the coherence of the spirit with its principles in which it shows the essence of its formal activity. Such process already ignores the movement of the spirit responding to the attraction of value, of being. It demands that the logical form of the spirit from here exhausts all the dynamism. But such pretext cannot be sustained, at least renouncing to recognize the spirit its essential openness and the foundation to which it is not. The deduction of logical principles, departing from the principle of non-contradiction, does not allow metaphysics to secure itself a fecund way.

 

            The principle of metaphysics is not “objective”, isolated in front of the spirit and available to a simple formal analysis. Here, the spirit does not accede without supposing it and  it does not place it  without explaining interiorly its movement. The metaphysical problems do not emerge from the sole consideration of their abstract forms, nor from the notion of being as being, but from the spiritual movement which put being in as much as it is. The philosophical method, therefore, must be reflective and transcendental. This method consists in explaining that which is fold up, in manifesting that which is hidden, in expressing that which is not perceived, in seeking explicitly that which is implicit by expressing it.

 

            Such method, therefore, is regressive. It seeks the conditions of the possibility of the movement of the spirit and of the event of being. These conditions are exercised particularly in judgment. The condition of possibility indicates why and how being in as much as it is, the manifestation as presence, is possible. So our virtual points of view on an object are integrated, and recognized as such in judgment, in a unity to which it sees the affirmation, in a totality present which point of view does not reach than an abstracted part. The totality of being is the condition of possibility so that we can judge our partial points of view. It perceives itself that the implicit progressively liberated is not implicit. It is necessary, related to the spiritual act which renders it possible. If it is not necessary, the act would not be possible, could not be producing itself. The explained necessity is therefore also an apriori. The spirit reaches this apriori as it reflects on its proper activity. And it is for this reason that the method can be descriptive not analytic nor logical.

 

            The method is so determined, that we can put it in a manner more precise context in which it develops itself. The more recent metaphysics, especially the consequent Thomistic renewal, have pressed as the point of departure of metaphysics the judgment, as it states that which is. Moreover, understanding well that judgment is not an intellective activity alone. Through its exercise, it puts many things in operation, for more practical than theoretical necessity, not as principle, but as an integrating element. Judgment cannot produce itself outside of language, nor in the society of which the language functions. Judgment is always done in context. However, the practical conditions of judgment are not reflected in our investigation. For being practical conditions of judgment, in fact, needs that the judgment can receive them to its interior. And it is that which happens, if it perceives itself in it more than an intellectual activity, and if it leaves itself guiding by a desire of being which does not measure and of which it fuels itself. This desire is not only intellectual, in the discursive sense, susceptible of becoming object of science. It is in a certain measure greatly voluntary. It gives space and movement to the intellective search which fulfills itself in judgment.

 

            This method is a shift from a formal model to a more integral and comprehensive model. Metaphysics, here, is going to treat reality in its totality, i.e. in the context of the dialectics of being and the spirit.

 

D.        THE FIRST PHILOSOPHY OR METAPHYSICS.

 

            Metaphysics is considered as the foundation of philosophical teaching. Minor and Major Logic precedes it in the sense that the first of thinking, it is convenient to know if it is possible to think practically and to such conditions (logic, language, etc.). The greater treatment of Philosophy (Cosmology, Anthropology, and Theodicy) follow metaphysics, because this gives them the basis of simple unity of the first principle. This way of situating metaphysics in the ensemble of treatments evoke the dialectical method which we have already encountered. However, the distinction among the treatments is not only formal. It begins from abstraction of one of the poles of the fundamental metaphysical unity. Cosmology isolates the moment of being by evoking therefrom the internal articulation. Anthropology happens more particularly of the spirit. Only metaphysics treats of the totality. It precedes other treatments for the fact that these, that seize a part of the totality, do not have a meaningful truth which in function of the totality. There, it follows, through the fact that the totality is constituted by the dialectics of  its parts - the idea of being in as much as it is, in  fact, is not evident in itself immediately. However, the idea of being in as much as it is is not the result of this dialectic which it renders possible and that it institutes forcing cosmology and anthropology to get out from their abstractions. It is for this reason that metaphysics precedes these treatments. Their development can culminate in a singular metaphysical deepening.

 

            The relation of metaphysics with natural theology is less easy to determine. The word ‘meta” means beyond and “after”. Metaphysics means therefore first of all that which is beyond the physical or of every science. Physics, in fact, seems to occupy itself of sensible and mobile beings. Mathematics is more elevated, if it judges itself more elevated that which is immobile as the numbers, although in a certain manner the number is not wholly separated from whatever “matter” (There is no pure mathematics). As to metaphysics, it would treat on the immobile being and separated from any matter. Now such being, in the Platonic tradition repressed by Aristotelianism, is divine. Thus, metaphysics is a theology, a discourse on God.

 

            Considered in this manner, being in as much as it is is God. Now, being in as much as it is is also the first principle of any science. On the first science to which the object is such being, all other sciences based themselves. No science can conclude of that which is not affirmed with firm premises. Only metaphysics affirms these premises, since it is by definition the science of the totality, of the first principle. The sciences therefore imply metaphysics for being sciences. This implication is such that metaphysical enunciation must precede scientific enunciation. If being in as much as it is is God, theology is the first science. God is the first cause and the ground of all that which is.

 

            It is certain that such propositions are strictly pagan. Moreover, metaphysics has no immediate evidence of it first principles. Because it has no evidence, it comes “after” physics. The principles, the first claim, are according to fact. The reflective analysis brings clearly, from the experience manifested more to the recognition of the conditions of possibility of this experience. The intellectual investigation takes always as point of departure sensible beings; departing from that which is less known in itself, from that which is more indeterminate, it becomes that which is more knowable in itself.

 

            This a posteriori character of metaphysics is not only pedagogical. It is also in a sense necessary. The principle, in fact, is not objective, it turn out to be exercised. The simplicity of the presence of being before the spirit, which tends towards it is never realized as a “thing”; it is exercised according to the discursiveness of the understanding, the multiplicity inherent to our existence. As a consequence, the implicit reflectively separated is the same implicit in the act of reflection - here it is not reflection without argumentation, and time because this could progress.

 

            The term “metaphysica” is very appropriate therefore to the science of being in as much as it is. The relation with philosophical theology hereafter receives a new light. Theodicy is not a discourse on specie of beings among others, however this is pagan thinking. It is not concern of a superior being, discovered by means of progressive elimination of that which does not gather. Philosophical theology explains the inside of metaphysics. This articulates the relation of the being which is, with the spirit which tends. Being considered ultimately by metaphysics is the “esse commune” which does not subsist, according to the Thomistic tradition more affirmed. This “esse commune” has the proper consistency and validity in that which make it to be, but it does not have in itself stability; it does not subsist. The spiritual movement cannot stop itself in the affinity to this form hereafter of all the forms. It tends, more broadly, uniting that which gives itself in this “esse commune”. The course in metaphysics concludes itself with the recognition of a promise fulfillment by means of the “esse commune, of which this however is not the origin, because it is not subsisting. Philosophical theology comes therefore to take the place of metaphysics, led to its ultimate possibility.