The lectures presented here are the by-product of my teaching in Yale's Directed Studies program from 1991 through 1993 (hence the title, for want of a better). In fact, being what they are, lecture notes for an introductory philosophy course, they present rather elementary material. Yet, I flatter myself, they do not lack certain originality in the treatment of some of the basic questions of traditional metaphysics and epistemology. In any case, over the past couple of years they proved to be quite useful in teaching my several other courses, especially in medieval philosophy. Thus, being too elementary for transforming them into scholarly papers, on the one hand, yet, containing what I think to be both philosophically interesting and pedagogically useful ideas, on the other, I decided to publish them here, in the Net's formally less stringent medium. Here they can easily be accessed by people who think what they need is a clear and simple discussion of the intriguing philosophical points themselves, rather than the meticulous and sometimes cumbersome scholarly discussions of the texts that raised them (a description which fits, at least, the majority of my students). Given these considerations (as well as the author's lack of time), the lectures are presented here basically unedited, in the form as they were actually delivered, without any notes or references (disregarding the occasionally inserted page numbers, serving as reminders for myself, referring to the texts we used in class). However, anyone who is interested in the more detailed scholarly discussion of some of the topics touched upon here may wish to check some of the papers listed on my list of publications. (A number of items on that list are in Hungarian, so if you want to see the correct accents you need a properly configured browser with foreign language support for Latin 2 encoding. But if you don't read Hungarian, just don't bother.)
In this lecture I wish to lay out carefully the logical structure of Plato's arguments in his Phaedo, to lay bare, as it were, the logical skeleton of this dialectical organism, so that we can have a better understanding what, how and to what extent supports its principal conclusion: the immortality of the soul.
The need to support this conclusion arises in the context of the dialogue from Socrates's paradoxically sounding remark that a true philosopher should be more than willing to die. For a true philosopher, as he later explains, spends after all his whole life preparing, indeed, striving for death, the dissolution of the soul from the body.
Nothing is easier, commit suicide! - might sound the immediate reaction to such a view.
But this is forbidden by divine command, for we are put to this life by the gods, our masters, from whom we are not allowed to run away - sounds the answer of Socrates.
But if the gods are our good masters, only a fool would want to escape from them, and a philosopher should resent dying - objects Simmias.
In response to this objection, Socrates justifies the philosopher's wish to die with the hope that after death the soul migrates to a far better place.
This hope is reinforced by considering in how many ways the body is a bad place for the soul.
First of all,
(1) the body hinders the cognition of the soul - a major complaint of the philosopher who wishes, above all, to know.
That the body hinders the cognition of the soul is so
(a) because the body contributes to cognition only by the senses, which are "inaccurate witnesses".
(b) because the soul can discover true existence only in thought.
(c) because the ideas, the true essences of things, are the objects of thought, and not of perception.
(d) because thinking is actually hindered by the operations of the body.
Again, that the body is a bad place for the soul is also shown by the fact that
(2) the body is the source of all base desires, which are the cause of all kinds of injustice among people,
(a) because of its requirement of food and
(b) because of its passions: wants, lusts, fears, fancies and the rest, which are the commonest motives for bad actions.
So the real purification of the soul from all these bodily taints is nothing but her separation from the body altogether.
But already before the actual separation of these two, namely before death, the true philosopher is always occupied in the practice of dying, of severing the ties between body and soul.
Indeed, it is only through this practice that true virtue is attainable, since the common virtues of non-philosophers, not stemming from this practice, are not real virtues, and are, in a sense, contradictory.
Because, for example,
(a) non-philosophers are courageous only out of fear from a greater evil, and
(b) they are temperate only out of intemperance, for fear of losing other pleasures, but one can never have true virtue on the basis of having its opposite vice.
So as a consequence, it is only true philosophers who are really virtuous, and only they are the chosen few who will be capable of enjoying the pure intellectual pleasures of the soul, when it is finally released from the body.
But all this presupposes that the soul does not perish with death, as the body does.
Socrates sets about developing his arguments for this conclusion by referring to an "ancient doctrine", which holds that the souls after death "go from here to another world, wherefrom they return hither to be born again from the dead".
The first argument is designed to give rational support to this ancient doctrine, and runs as follows:
(P1) If the souls are born from the dead, then they must have existed in another world before their birth in this world
For a soul can come back from the dead only if it existed before birth. But before birth it did not exist in this world. So it must have existed in another.
(P2) Opposites are generated out of opposites
For whatever becomes something was not what it becomes, and whatever it becomes it was not before.
(P3) The opposite of living is being dead
Therefore, by (P2) and (P3), the living is generated from the dead. And so the living soul is generated from the dead. From which, by (P1), it follows that the souls must exist in another world before their birth in this world.
The trouble with this argument is the insufficient division provided by (P3). For by admitting that the opposite of living is being dead, and hence conceding that the living soul is generated from the dead, one excludes the possibility of the living soul's simply coming into existence when it is born in the body. Indeed, the principle that opposites are generated from opposites holds only with presupposing the permanent existence of some subject of these opposites. In the case of simple generation, however, that is, when something comes into existence that did not exist before, this principle does not hold, unless we understand "opposites" broadly, including contradictory opposites. But then, the opposite of "living" is "not living" and not "being dead", with the assumption of the dead existing in some other world. However, that the soul is not living before being born, of course, does not imply that it exists in a different world, the world of the dead, for it may simply not exist at all.
But not paying attention to this possible objection, Socrates proceeds to develop two auxiliary arguments. The first relies on the supposition of the completeness of nature, namely that
(AUX1) to each process there should correspond an opposite process, and hence, to dying the return to life.
Again, one may object that even if we accept the perhaps not self-evident principle of the completeness of nature, the opposite of dying need not be return to life, but may be simply being born, i.e., coming to exist.
Socrates's second auxiliary argument sounds as follows:
(AUX2) If the process of dying were not compensated by the opposite process of the return to life, then the whole process would end with all souls being dead.
The first problem with this argument is that there is nothing really impossible in the conclusion that the process of generation and corruption sometime will come to an end, so this conclusion need not force us to admit that to death there should correspond an opposite process of rebirth of the same souls in different bodies. But further, this conclusion follows, of course, only if there is a finite number of souls (which is after all plausible to suppose) and if no new souls come into existence, which, however, is a doubtful and unproven assumption.
So the above arguments all are based on the assumption that dying and being born are just transitions of the soul from one region of existents into another, without her perishing and coming to existence. Hence the need arises to prove this, namely that death is only the separation of the soul from the body, without her perishing, and that birth is just the union of the soul with the body, without her coming to be.
The first argument to prove this conclusion is drawn from the theory of recollection:
(R1) If learning in this life is recollecting what the soul knew before this life, then the soul existed before this life.
(R2) But learning in this life is recollecting what the soul knew before this life.
So, the soul existed before this life.
But, of course, further proof is needed to show that learning is recollection.
After a brief reminder of "the experimental proof" in Meno, Socrates develops another, independent argument.
(P1) What someone recollects he must have known at some previous time.
(P2) If someone, perceiving or recognizing and thus knowing something, knows also another, then he is said to recollect this other thing (being reminded, as it were, of it by the first one).
To introduce the third premise of his argument, Socrates puts forward some assumptions, which we are supposed to accept without further proof:
(Ass.1.) There are ideas.
(Ass.2.) Ideas are not the particulars sharing in them.
(Ass.3.) The particulars fall short of the ideas in perfection.
On the basis of these assumptions we may reasonably accept the third premise, namely that
(P3) when we recognize things as being more or less such and such, we also know the idea, which is perfectly such and such.
For we could not recognize something as being more or less such and such unless we knew that what is perfectly such and such, and that is the idea of being such and such, the existence and properties of which we conceded with the previous assumptions.
So, by (P2) and (P3), when we recognize things as being more or less such and such, we recollect the idea that is perfectly such and such. Whence, by (P1), we must have known the ideas at a previous time.
However, to recognize anything as such and such involves recollecting the corresponding idea in any sense experience. So we must have known the ideas before any sense experience. But it is since the time of our birth that we have sense experiences. So we must have known the ideas before our birth. Hence, either we have this knowledge also at birth and continue to have it during our life, or we lose it at birth, and need to be reminded of it. But experience shows that we do not have this knowledge at birth and afterwards. So we lost this knowledge at our birth, and we recover it in our present life by being reminded of it by the senses. But the recovering of lost knowledge is called recollection. So our learning from sense experience, which reminds us of our knowledge lost at our birth, is duly called recollection. Q.e.d.
The real strength of this argument is its addressing the problem of how our intellectual concepts function not only in abstract thinking, but even in sense experience. The point in (P3) is the valid observation that in order to recognize anything in sense experience as being such and such, we have to have a concept by which we can recognize the thing as such. (For example, an Amazonian Indian, living in the jungle, would probably not recognize, say, a credit card as such, while we probably would not recognize the edible and poisonous plants in his environment, which he easily recognizes as such.)
The problem with the argument, however, is its reliance on the doctrine of the ideas, presenting it as the only possible account for our having general concepts. For there may very well be also other ways of acquiring or generating our general concepts, indeed, also in this life, for example by abstraction, as we shall see this in Aristotle's account of the matter. But then our prenatal acquaintance with the ideas is not necessarily required for explaining how we can have general concepts in this life, and so how we can recognize things as falling under this or that general concept. Indeed, the claim that our general concepts are involved in any sense experience, and that hence we have to have them from our birth may well be simply false. Children need to be taught to recognize things as being such and such, and if we don't have to presuppose their prenatal acquaintance with ideas, then their learning may involve genuine concept acquisition, rather than mere recollection.
As a corollary, however, it does follow from the above conclusion, according to which learning is recollection of prenatal knowledge, that our souls existed before our birth. For from the previous argument it appears that our souls could have acquired knowledge of the ideas, that is, our universal concepts, only before birth.
Unless - objects Simmias - they are given to us at birth.
But since in the previous argument it was also conceded that they are lost at birth, the objection is dismissed as frivolous.
A further worry emerges, however, from the consideration that the previous argument proved only the pre-existence of the soul before birth. However, what we were originally concerned with was its enduring existence after death! How do we know that the soul, even if it existed before birth, will not cease to exist with death?
But, as Socrates points out immediately, the previous argument, relying on the doctrine of recollection, together with the first argument, which showed that the living are born from the dead, imply the required conclusion, the immortality of the soul.
For if a given soul should exist before the birth of a given man, so that he will be able to recollect in his lifetime, and this soul is born from the dead, then it must have been the soul of someone who had died before, and so it must have survived the death of that person. And this, we may suppose, is so in any arbitrarily chosen case. Whence, the soul, generally speaking, should survive the death of the human person whose soul it is, that is to say, it is immortal.
But, in case anybody is still daunted by the childish fear that the soul gets somehow scattered after death, like fume blown away in the wind, Socrates supplies a further argument to show that the soul is simply not of such a nature as to be easily scattered by the blow of death.
(1) What is uncompounded is incorruptible.
(2) Ideas are uncompounded, unchanging and incorruptible
(3) Unchanging things are invisible and can be perceived only with the mind
(4) There are two sorts of things, namely visible and invisible
(5) The soul is invisible
So the soul is more like the unchanging ideas, than the changing body, whence it is simple and incorruptible.
The main problem with this argument is again its reliance on the doctrine of ideas. However, with the assumption of the existence of the unchanging heaven of ideas, it is easy to see that the soul, being more akin to the eternal ideas than to corruptible bodies is likely to be incorruptible itself.
An important new element in this argument in contrast with the previous ones is its explicitly aiming at probability, rather than demonstrative certainty. Indeed, this stage of the dialogue seems to pave the way for introducing the kind of attitude to be taken, according to Plato (actually worded by Simmias), towards this type of investigation: even if one cannot attain geometrical certainty in the question, one should rationally weigh the probabilities of the possible opinions and choose the more probable and more honorable opinion. This impression is reinforced also by the argument immediately following, which uses a form of reasoning later "canonized" in Aristotelian dialectics as "locus a minori".
The argument runs as follows:
(1) The body is less likely to remain after death than the soul.
(2) But sometimes human bodies are preserved for centuries after death, as is seen in the case of mummies.
So the soul is much more likely to remain.
The argument, as it stands, is of course, not demonstrative, for it may very well be the case that despite appearances to the contrary the soul is in fact even more corruptible than the body. What gives this argument its force, however, is the dialectical maxim, tacitly assumed in the dialogue, namely that if a property belongs to something which is less likely to have it than something else, then this latter will have it too. It is this maxim, starting from the assumption of a lesser likelihood (a minori apparentia), that joins the phenomenon of the endurance of dead bodies to the conclusion of the incorruptibility of the soul. But it requires that the soul indeed appear to be more likely to endure than the body, so Socrates provides further confirmation of this likelihood by making probable guesses about how the relationship between individual bodies and souls influences the soul's qualities and individual fate. Since all these considerations point toward the conclusion that the more the soul immerses in the body the more deteriorated it becomes, it appears to be more likely that the soul is a nobler kind of entity than the body is, whence, since incorruptibility is nobler than corruptibility, it is less likely to decay after death than the body.
But, as I said, these arguments do not attain, and indeed, do not aim to attain demonstrative certainty. Plato is keen to make this obvious, and is evidently eager to show the right attitude he expects the reader to take towards them. Characteristically, he makes Simmias, who is about to raise a serious objection, formulate explicitly what one should think about these and other arguments in this matter:
"I feel myself (and I dare say that you have the same feeling) how hard or rather impossible is the attainment of certainty about questions such as these in the present life. And yet I should deem him a coward who did not prove what is said about them to the uttermost, or whose heart failed him before he had examined them on every side. For he should persevere until he has achieved one of two things: either he should discover, or be taught the truth about them; or, if this be impossible, I would have him take the best and most irrefragable of human theories, and let this be the raft upon which he sails through life - not without risk, as I admit, if he cannot find some word of God which will more surely and safely carry him."
But until one gets this divine word, one cannot but use one's reason and take into account the objections that can be raised against the previous arguments. The first of these is formulated by Simmias as follows:
(Obj.1. Simm) That the soul is invisible does not prove sufficiently that it is of the same unchangeable nature as the ideas, for there are other invisible things, like the harmony of the lyre, which are dependent for their existence on their material subject, and hence are even more corruptible than those.
I think the most notable thing about this objection is its "modernity". Indeed, it most clearly expresses a view about the nature of the human soul which one frequently meets in modern discussions. According to this conception what the name "soul" denotes is not some spiritual substance inhabiting the body, and thereby imparting life to it, but rather it is the specific organic structure of the living body, not having its own substantiality, but being present, when the body is so structured, and ceasing to be present, when this bodily structure ceases to be.
The other objection, formulated by Cebes, argues that even if the soul has its own substantiality, this may not be enough for its immortality.
(Obj.2. Cebes) For even if the soul is of such nature that it is capable of outwearing the body which it actually inhabits, nothing guarantees that it will outwear all bodies that it will subsequently assume.
In response to the first objection Socrates first points out that the assumption that the soul is a kind of harmony contradicts the previously accepted theory of recollection:
(RESP1)
(1) If learning is recollection, then the soul pre-exists the body.
(2) If the soul is harmony, then it cannot pre-exist the body.
(3) But learning is recollection
So the soul cannot be harmony.
The only problem with this argument is its reliance on the theory of recollection. But two further responses intend to support the same conclusion on independent grounds.
Socrates's second response to the harmony-theory runs as follows:
(RESP2)
(1) The soul is harmony
But
(2) Something that is harmony can be more or less harmonious
However,
(3) nothing that is a soul can be more or less a soul
And so
(4) no soul is more or less harmonious than the other.
But
(5) a more harmonious soul would be a good soul, while a less harmonious soul would be an evil soul
Whence it follows that all souls are equally good or evil, which is false. So, having concluded to an evident falsity, we have to drop the assumption from which it followed, namely, that the soul is harmony.
This argument, unfortunately, simply does not conclude. For from the assumption that the soul is harmony and that a harmony can be more or less harmonious it simply does not follow that a more or less harmonious soul would be more or less a soul. So premise (3) (namely, that nothing that is a soul can be more or less a soul) does not exclude the possibility of there being souls that are more or less harmonious harmonies, unless we suppose that being a soul is just being a specific degree of harmony. But this is precisely what the upholders of the harmony theory would deny, when they claim that a more harmonious soul is a good soul and a less harmonious one is an evil one. So this argument does not refute the harmony theory.
Socrates's third response to the harmony-objection, put in a nutshell, is the following:
(1) Harmony does not rule its subject
(2) The soul does rule its subject, the body
So, the soul is not harmony.
The premise that the soul rules the body is evident from the everyday human experience that the soul can resist the desires and passions of the body, so it is the soul that will determine what the body should and will do, and not conversely.
However, despite the fact that the argument is valid, the justification of its dubious premise may not be entirely convincing. First of all, it is an equally common human experience that sometimes the soul yields to the passions of the body and nolens volens does what the body forces it to do.
To this, of course, one may easily answer that sometimes the soul is merely a weak ruler, but is, nevertheless, a ruler, which is shown by its mere capacity to rule, which would be out of the question, if the soul were just a harmony, a certain structural composition of the body.
On the other hand, one may question also this latter claim, and ask whether the above-mentioned human experience does indeed show the soul's capacity to rule, and whether this experience cannot be explained also on the basis of the assumption that the soul is after all but a certain kind of bodily structure. For one might as well say that when one resists bodily urges and desires all that happens is that certain urgent signals coming from one part of the body are simply suppressed by other bodily signals, and one need not suppose the activity of a spiritual substance residing in the body to explain what happens. For example, the heroism of people on a hunger-strike might be explained by the materialist by referring to nerve impulses coming from the cortex, which are responsible for these people's having such and such objectives, and which may be strong enough to suppress the nerve impulses coming from the vegetative nervous system. Since in such an explanation there need not be any reference to a spiritual soul governing the activities of the body, the above argument will not convince those who believe that the soul is just a certain specific bodily organization and what we describe as the activities of the soul are but certain activities of the body thus organized.
All these objections to Socrates's responses, however, do not prove that the harmony-theory is right. And in fact, the theory faces tremendous difficulties by its being committed to explaining human behavior exclusively in terms of bodily states.
This is precisely one of the topics taken up by Socrates introducing his final argument for the immortality of the soul, in answer to Cebes's objection.
After stating that this objection requires a general inquiry into the nature of causation and causal explanation, Socrates begins his discussion by telling about his dissatisfaction with the explanations of natural phenomena exclusively in terms of what Aristotle would call material and effective causes. Since, however, such explanations do not tell us anything about what things are for, to what end they work in the way they do, these explanations are certainly insufficient in the case of goal-directed phenomena, such as human actions and their means. But if also the whole natural world is goal-directed, obeying a divine ordination and government, then also natural phenomena are in need of teleological explanations, making clear how they fit into the great divine plan, directing everything to its proper end. It was precisely this idea that, according to the dialogue, attracted Socrates to the study of the works of Anaxagoras, who, however, beyond positing the world-governing Mind as the ultimate cause of all things, failed to give this type of explanations of natural phenomena. As a consequence, himself being unable to come up with the desired explanations, Socrates turned towards a simple, indeed, in his own description, simple-minded solution: the positing of ideas, and with this assumption giving explanations of phenomena in terms of what Aristotle would call their formal causes.
This type of explanation may be expressed schematically as follows:
If several things have a property F, then they have F because they share in the idea of F-ness itself
Even though this type of explanation in itself may not be very illuminating, nevertheless, if we couple it with the possible answers that one may give to the question: "what is F-ness?", then one can see how on the basis of such an explanation one may judge the validity of certain generalizations.
For example: on the basis of the above-mentioned principle, human beings are all humans in virtue of sharing in humanity. But supposing that humanity is nothing else but rationality coupled with animality, i.e., being human is nothing but being a rational animal, we can see that in virtue of being humans all of us are endowed with reason, even if this does not always and equally manifests itself in each and every case. The point in the above explanation, however, is that the individuals of the same species, despite all their individual variations, are in fact subject to certain valid generalizations, which renders the formulation of true universal claims about them possible.
To see that this is not an altogether trivial matter, consider an accidental collection of things, say the solid bodies in this classroom. Of these it is true that they all are extended. However, this is not true of them in virtue of their being in this classroom, but in virtue of their being bodies. So even if it happened to be so that in this classroom there were only extended things and there were no extended things outside this classroom, it would not necessarily be true that whatever is in this classroom is extended, while it is true that every body, whether in this classroom or not, is extended of necessity. And this, according to the explanation given above, is due to their sharing in the same idea of corporeity.
However, what makes this or that particular body subject to this necessary generalization is its own corporeity, its similitude to or share in the idea of corporeity. It is these and the like individualized properties that are responsible for the behavior of this or that particular individual, however, it is their being individual similitudes of the same universal idea that accounts for the universal traits of the behavior of all the individuals that have them.
Now whether or not we have any misgivings about the doctrine of ideas as being the only possible basis for valid necessary generalizations, the next point Socrates makes is certainly acceptable:
No individualized properties can change into their opposites.
Indeed, change occurs by a thing's exchanging one of its individualized properties for an opposite property, but it is never the property itself that changes into the opposite property. When a thing cools down, it exchanges its hotness for coldness, but it is not its hotness that changes into coldness, for its merely changing into its opposite would involve its remaining what it was: hotness. But nothing, while remaining hotness, can become coldness, even though what is hot can become cold remaining what it was, though definitely not remaining what it was like. What is hotness can become for example more or less intensive, but it can never lose its intensity so much as to turn into coldness while remaining what it was: hotness.
However, sometimes it is not only properties - argues Socrates further - that cannot change into their opposites, but also the things that bear these properties. Some things are so strongly stuck with some of their properties that they cannot, while remaining what they are and so remaining in existence, exchange them for their opposites.
Again, using later, scholastic, terminology we can say that Plato here introduces a distinction between essential and accidental properties:
(1) A property F is essential to a subject x if and only if x cannot lose F without ceasing to be what it is, i.e., ceasing to exist
A further postulate introduced by Socrates states a relationship between causation and essential properties:
(2) What is the cause of a property in other things has this property essentially
Now having all the general postulates of Socrates's theory at our disposal, we can add one particular premise regarding the soul, namely that
(3) the soul is the cause of life in any living thing
whence, by (2), it follows that the soul has life essentially. But then, by (1) the soul cannot lose life without ceasing to be what it is, namely, a soul.
This conclusion, however, is not what Plato intends to draw, namely that whatever is a soul cannot lose life altogether, unconditionally. For the above conclusion says only that whatever is a soul cannot lose life as long as it is a soul, which, however, leaves open the possibility that it loses life by ceasing to be a soul, that is, simply ceasing to be, just as fire can lose heat, by getting extinguished, i.e., ceasing to be fire, which is for it just ceasing to be.
On the other hand, one might try to save Plato's reasoning, by saying that since the soul's life is nothing but its existence, what the argument concludes to is the impossibility of the soul's emitting existence, which means that it will never cease to be, and hence will never cease to be what it is, namely a soul.
However, unfortunately, this defense will not do. For what the argument concludes to even with this addition is that the soul cannot lose its existence, without ceasing to be a soul. So all we can conclude to from these premises is that these three stand or fall together: (1) the soul's being a soul, (2) its being alive and (3) its being in existence. But concerning none of these can we conclude absolutely that it will belong always to what actually is a soul. What could prove this latter, would have to be some argument to the effect that what is actually a soul can never cease to be a soul, because being a soul is such a strong nature that simply cannot be destroyed. But this would only take us back to the dialogue's previous considerations about the divine nature of the soul, and so we seem to have made no progress.
But is this really so? Haven't we learned something fundamental about the soul and the possible considerations concerning its nature? Does the mere fact that Plato's arguments in this dialogue do not provide us with unshakable proofs of its intended conclusion render them worthless sophisms, not deserving any further attention? Does the fact that these arguments do not compel us to believe in the immortality of the soul mean that they have not provided us with reasons to choose to believe?
Unless, despite Plato's explicit warning, his readers have become misologues, giving up the reasoning game, and hence a part of their humanity altogether, the Phaedo's arguments will not cease to be a source of inspiration to anyone who wishes to think seriously about a subject that no human being can avoid thinking about sometime in this life: whether there is anything afterwards?
Porphyry's Introduction to Aristotle's Categories enjoyed immense popularity over several centuries. Its popularity, however, was not due to its intrinsic merits, its brevity, clarity and simplicity alone. For besides offering an ideal start-up for a course in Aristotelian logic, it also offered its commentators an opportunity to indulge in a discussion of one of the most intriguing of all metaphysical problems, the problem of universals. As John of Salisbury complained in his Metalogicon in the 12th century, teachers of logic of his time did not treat Porphyry's booklet properly, as an introduction, but, despite the author's expressed intention, they got involved in endless debates over metaphysical considerations, thereby "imposing an unbearable burden on the tender shoulders of their students".
But this indulgence, and sometimes over-indulgence in these debates, may perhaps be justified by more than sheer intellectual curiosity, or even intellectual pride, namely, by the intrinsic needs of a commentary. For a commentator of a text should in the beginning tell what the subject matter of his text is, what the text commented on is about. In the case of Porphyry's text, the answer seems to be simple. It's about universals. All right, but what on earth are universals? - ask the students immediately. And at this point, of course, a hell of further questions breaks loose.
Porphyry himself tries to get around these questions by simply listing them,
and putting them aside for a "higher" investigation. His approach, in
fact, is very much like that of some contemporary Oxford philosophers in that
he just tries to describe what ordinary language usage tells us about
universals, some simple facts on which everyone who speaks the language,
indeed, any language, can agree, regardless of their metaphysical preferences.
(Well, the big difference between him and our
So far, so good. But do these descriptions of the various kinds of universals give an answer to our commentators' question: what is this book about, what are the things thus described?
Well, all these descriptions involve the notion of predicability of many things, so no wonder in Latin Prophyry's work was often referred to as De Praedicabilibus, that is, On the Predicables. So this book, we can say, is about things that are predicable of many things. But, again, none of these descriptions tells us just what are the things that are predicable of many things. So Prophyry's roundabout approach could help our commentators only to be a little bit more specific when addressing the question of what his book is about, in that his descriptions told them that it's about things that are predicable of many, but did not help them much in avoiding the further questions stemming from his descriptions, concerning the nature of universals.
Now, to begin with, the obvious candidates for being the kind of things that are predicable of many things seem to be words. It is after all the word "man" that we can predicate of Socrates and Plato, and the word "animal" that we can predicate of donkeys and monkeys.
On the other hand, a word, whether written or spoken, seems to have nothing in itself that makes it predicable of many things, apart from what their users mean by them. A spatial series of ink-marks and a temporal series of sound-waves seem to be a word, indeed, the same word, only insofar as they express a concept, indeed, the same concept that speakers of a language associate with these sound-waves and with those ink-marks. In fact, users of different languages may have the same concept too, while they associate it with different sounds and different marks. What is more, even users of the same language may associate the same concept with different words, that is, with synonyms, or different concepts with the same word, in the case of an equivocal word. And so, in general, whether a word is predicable of this or that depends on the concept generally associated with it by the users of this word. But then, whether a word is predicable of many things or not depends on the kind of concept we associate with that word, namely whether the concept itself is universal or particular. So it seems that words are universal only insofar as they are associated with universal concepts, and so it is rather concepts that are primarily universal, and words are universal only on account of the universality of their concepts.
But then, if universals are primarily our concepts, namely acts of our minds by which we conceive of things, the question immediately arises how we can have these universal concepts, if the things from which we could acquire them, namely the things we perceive, are all particular?
Well, as we know, Plato's answer to this question was that it is not just particular, perceivable things from which we get our concepts. There are universal things, the ideas, and it is our direct, prenatal acquaintance with these that accounts for our universal concepts, while our experience of sensible particulars only helps us recover these universal concepts in this life, reminding us by their common features of the universal things they imperfectly imitate by these. So, from Plato's view we should conclude that universals primarily are these universal things, the ideas, for it is on account of their existence that our universal concepts exist, which then account further for our universal words.
Plato's answer, his theory of ideas and recollection, however, is flawed for several reasons, many of which were already spelled out by Plato himself in his Parmenides, such as the famous Third Man argument, which actually derives a contradiction from Plato's theory. From an Aristotelian point of view, however, the following consideration is of particular importance.
What do we mean by saying that Plato's ideas are universal, as opposed to the particulars, which participate in them? Well, what we mean by this is that they have just those properties which are common to several particulars from a certain aspect, but nothing else. For example, the idea of justice is only what belongs to justice insofar as justice, whereas just people and just acts have many other properties besides their justice, and so they can change with respect to those other properties, and even with respect to their justice. So a man or an act that is just here and now may be unjust elsewhere and at another time. For example giving an A on a good paper is a just act here and now, but in a reverse grading system, in which A is the worst grade, the same act would be unjust. But justice itself can never and nowhere cease to be justice and whatever belongs to justice insofar as justice, whence the idea of justice is unchangeable, and so eternal - says Plato.
But then, by the same token, the idea of triangle, for example, has to have only those properties that are common to all triangles, i.e., what belongs to a triangle insofar as a triangle. So, the idea of triangle should be triangular and also trilateral, for a triangle as such should be triangular and trilateral. And so it has to have three sides, for whatever is trilateral has to have three sides. And of these three sides either at least two have to be equal or all three must be unequal. So the idea of triangle has to be either isosceles or scalene, for any triangle, insofar as a triangle has to be either isosceles (i.e. having a pair of equal sides) or scalene (i.e. having no equal sides).
On the other hand, the idea of triangle cannot be scalene, for this would mean that a triangle insofar as a triangle would be scalene, whence all triangles would have to be scalene, and so no isosceles would be a triangle, which is false. And, by the same token, the idea of triangle cannot be isosceles either, for then whatever is a triangle should be isosceles, which is false again. But then the idea of triangle should be either isosceles or scalene and neither isosceles nor scalene, which is a contradiction. So nothing can be a universal triangle in the way just described, namely having all and only those properties that all particular triangles have in common, that is, what any triangle insofar as a triangle has.
But then, in general, no idea can be a universal thing in this way, namely having only those properties of their particulars which are common to them all, insofar as they all participate in this idea. For any such idea determines a range of further properties, some of which have to belong to anything that has the property exemplified by the idea, and so to the idea too; but none of these properties is such that it has to belong to everything having the property exemplified by the idea, so none of these can belong to the idea.
So, again, whatever is a man has to have some height, so the idea of man, being the perfect exemplification of the property "man", has to have some height too. But no particular height is such that what is a man has to have that height, for then every man should have the same height, i.e., they should all be equally tall, which is false. But then the idea of man cannot have any particular height, since it can have only those properties that belong equally to all humans, insofar as humans. So we arrive again at the contradiction that the idea of man has to have some height, but, at the same time, it can have no height.
Now Aristotle's ingenious solution to this problem of the universals lies in the observation that even if a man, for example, cannot be without any particular height, a man can be thought of without any particular height. To be sure, this must not be understood so that when we think of a man without any particular height, we would be thinking of a man who has no particular height, because that would imply thinking precisely of the impossibility we concluded to just now, namely that it is impossible that something should be a man without having any particular height, and so, such a thing is unthinkable. It is possible, however, to think of a man without any particular height in the sense that we can think of a man, while not thinking that the man has this particular height. For example, if I say, "Socrates is a man", then you certainly think of a man, Socrates, and by knowing that he is a man you also know that he has some particular height. You have no idea, however, what particular height he has. So even if you know that in virtue of being a man, Socrates has to be 6ft tall, or shorter, or taller, you certainly don't think that he is 5ft tall, or that he is 6ft tall or shorter or taller.
So even if no man can be without some particular height it is possible to think of a man without thinking of his particular height. But then, in general, we can conclude that it is possible to think separately of things, such as a man and his particular height, that cannot be separately. And this is precisely the point made by Boethius in his Commentary on Porphyry, namely that the intellect has the power to separate things which are together and cannot be separated in reality. So to think of a man in general, that is, to have and exercise the universal concept of man, does not mean to have our minds fixed on a universal man, i.e., a man that has all and only those properties that are common to all men, because that is impossible; but this rather means thinking of particular men in a universal manner, that is, thinking of them qua men and not thinking of those of their features that distinguish them. Now these latter distinguishing features are what later Aristotelians called "individuating conditions". Thinking of something without these individuating conditions in the manner just described, then, is what we call abstraction, the mental process by which we form our general concepts, that is, those mental acts by which we are able to conceive of particular things in a universal manner.
But then, we are already in a position to answer our question concerning the origin of our general concepts, without having to commit ourselves to the absurdities involved in the Platonic answer to this question. We acquire our general concepts from particulars by abstraction, separating in thought what cannot be separated in reality from their individuating conditions.
But what is it, then, that is so separated in thought, which could not be separated in the thing from these "individuating conditions"? Now this is what Aristotle calls the form of a thing, or at least one of the several forms that a thing has.
For forms according to Aristotle are of two basic types. Forms are either substantial forms or accidental forms. A substantial form of a thing is one that makes the thing that has this form actually existing, which means that for the thing to be is nothing but for it to have this form. An accidental form, on the other hand, makes a thing actual only in some respect, but, since for the thing to be is not for it to have this form, the thing may have or not have this form without perishing, which, as you recall, is just the way Porphyry defined accidents.
Now this conception of forms and the way they are related to our concepts has tremendous significance in epistemology, that is, in the theory of knowledge. For if for a thing to be is for it to have its substantial form, then this means that the thing will necessarily have all those of its attributes that it has in virtue of having this form, which we call its essential attributes, under all possible circumstances under which it exists at all. On the other hand, since by abstraction our intellects separate such forms from their individuating conditions in the particulars, by the resulting concept we shall be able to conceive all those things at once that have such a form, and attribute to all these things their essential attributes. So this conception can serve as a foundation for the possibility of our having universal and necessary knowledge, that is, scientific knowledge of the physical reality.
Unfortunately, however, not even this conception can guarantee that at any given time we are in possession of some particular piece of universal and necessary scientific knowledge. In fact, nowadays much of Aristotle's physics is irrevocably of the past. In view of what we know from modern chemistry, for example, nobody in their right mind would say that there are four elements in nature, one of which is water. Nowadays we just know (hopefully) that water is a compound consisting of H2O molecules.
On the other hand, should this kind of knowledge necessarily overthrow the general metaphysical framework of Aristotelianism? Should modern physics necessarily demolish the whole of Aristotelian metaphysics? On the contrary! The statement I just made, namely, that water is a compound consisting of H2O molecules, is precisely the kind of necessary, universal claim the validity of which could hardly be maintained without committing ourselves to some form of essentialism. For when we make this claim, we imply that this holds of any water sample at any time, under any possible circumstances. As long as something is water, it is a compound consisting of H2O molecules, that is to say, being a compound consisting of H2O molecules is an essential attribute of water.
To be sure, this claim is not necessarily true just because this is what we mean by the term "water". It was exactly the same kind of substance that was meant by users of the same term even before the discovery of water's chemical structure. Indeed, if this had somehow been implied in the meaning of this term, no chemical research would have been needed to make this discovery. So, since the necessity of such a scientific claim is not due to some linguistic convention (the commonly agreed meaning of the term "water"), it cannot be regarded as giving just a certain explication, a detailed description of our common concept of "water", accounting for the meaning of this term. Instead, we should say that it gives us an independent characterization of the thing that we conceived by this concept even previous to this scientific discovery.
But then, the necessary truth of this characterization depends on whether the thing so characterized does indeed necessarily have the attributes specified in this characterization, whether what is water is indeed necessarily a compound consisting of H2O molecules. Now Aristotelian essentialism does not tell us whether this particular characterization is in fact necessarily true or not. What it does tell us, however, is that there is some such characterization which, if it's correct, does necessarily and universally apply to the kind of things it characterizes.
To see this, consider the following. Aristotle tells us that things have substantial forms, that is, such forms that for the thing to be is nothing but for it to have such a form. It is such a form, however, which is abstracted from its individuating conditions when a substantial universal concept of the kind of thing in question is acquired. But the substantial attributes of things, that is, their species, genera, and differences, are precisely those terms which are predicable of them in virtue of being associated with such substantial concepts, and which, therefore, represent just these substantial forms. But then, these attributes are going to be true of these things just when they have the substantial forms represented by their corresponding concepts. But since for a thing to exist is to have such a substantial form, whenever such a thing exists, it will have such a form, and, consequently, whenever such a thing exists, its substantial attributes are going to be true of it. But this is precisely what is required for the universal and necessary validity of a scientific generalization concerning a kind of things. If the proper genus of water is truly the concept expressed by the term "compound", and if its specific difference is truly the concept expressed by the phrase "consisting of H2O molecules", then, since the genus and the specific difference are concepts abstracted from, and therefore representing, the substantial form of the thing, which the thing must have under any possible circumstances, provided it exists, this characterization will be true of anything that is water, under any possible circumstances under which it exists.
Now to see the significance of this result, suppose that things don't have substantial forms. This means that there is no such a form in a thing that for the thing to exist is to have that form. So, the same thing may have just any set of forms in any possible combinations, indiscriminately. But then, this would mean that of the same thing any possible combination of (compossible) terms could in principle be true. So even if we find that water is actually a compound consisting of H2O molecules, it is quite possible that the same thing will not be a compound consisting of H2O molecules in the next moment, or indeed, that the same thing which is now water will not be water. And this holds not only for this particular characterization, but for any other characterization whatsoever. So no universally and necessarily valid scientific claims can be made about the nature of things.
Abandoning essentialism, therefore, leads to an abandonment of necessary scientific truths. Embracing essentialism, on the other hand, guarantees only a possibility for science to make necessarily valid claims about nature, but, of course, it does not guarantee the correctness of any particular scientific claim. Now this is the reason why despite the fact that Aristotelian physics with its particular claims about nature is no longer tenable, Aristotelian metaphysics still lingers on in the discussions and attitudes of many contemporary scientists and philosophers, whom we may call scientific realists. Scientific realists view science just the way described, namely as supplying us with necessary and universal truths about the nature of things. But despite its appeal to scientific realists, the Aristotelian conception of essence, or substantial form is still puzzling even to these philosophers.
The source of this puzzlement is that contemporary philosophers tend to view essence as a sheer list of essential properties, or, rather, some obscure entity lurking behind the accidents of things, containing somehow only these essential properties. But this is precisely the wrong, Platonistic conception of essence, namely that of a thing containing only the essential properties of particulars. (And then, whether we think of such a thing as existing over and above, or only somehow inside the particulars is totally irrelevant, as we have just seen that such a thing cannot exist anyway, since supposing its existence leads to contradiction.)
However, keeping with the original, Aristotelian conception, there is nothing wrong with the concept of essence, or substantial form. According to this conception, a substantial form is something that we directly conceive by the substantial concepts of things (for we acquire these concepts precisely by abstracting substantial forms from their individuating conditions in the way I described). Therefore, to have the concept of, say, water, is not to have a set of properties in mind which something must have in order to qualify as water. If we have a substantial concept of a thing then by that concept we conceive the substantial form of the thing. If we have the concept of water, and this concept is a substantial concept of this kind of thing, then by this concept we conceive of the substantial form of water, for this form is precisely from where we acquired this concept, without having to rely on a set of identifying properties. But in virtue of having this concept we need not be able to re-identify this form by means of other concepts too, that is, we need not be able to provide the essential definition of water, which characterizes the same form, but by means of concepts other than the concept of water. Indeed, precisely because having the concept of water is not just having a set of identifying properties in mind, we can never arrive at an essential definition of water by just analyzing our concept of water, but this is a task of scientific research.
As a consequence, it is no wonder that Aristotelian essentialism could and did fail in science, as to many particular hypotheses Aristotle risked concerning the nature of things. On the other hand, the same Aristotelian essentialism need not have failed in the philosophy of science and in metaphysics, as to its most general principles concerning how our language and our concepts are related to the world, even if historically it did. But the actual historical defeat of Aristotelian metaphysics is a long and complicated story, which is a further issue in itself.
How is it possible that substances are good in that they are, although they are not substantially good? In his little treatise, "De Hebdomadibus", Boethius himself warns his reader of the obscurity of the question and of the abstruse character of the related speculations he is about to put forward. But the modern reader's puzzlement over his work probably exceeds by far anything that Boethius assumed.
Indeed, our puzzlement starts over the very title of the work. What can this strange phrase mean? To understand what it means and what its significance is, we have to know a little more also about its history. This title, translatable as: "Of Groups of Seven", was not given to the work by Boethius himself. It was introduced by medieval scribes for shorter reference, on account of Boethius's opening remarks concerning his "Hebdomades". But owing to the decline of Greek education, the medieval scribes and commentators of the work already had no idea of the significance of these remarks. The Greek phrase, "Hebdomades", meaning: "Groups of Seven", by all likelihood refers to a lost work whose main theses were gathered in groups of seven propositions put forward for meditation for every day of the week, entitled by Boethius "Hebdomades" probably in imitation of Plotinus's "Enneades", a work arranged by Plotinus's disciple, Porphyry, in groups of nine treatises. So it is probably concerning one of the theses contained in this lost work that Iohannes Diaconus (Boethius’s friend, who was to become Pope John I) asked for Boethius's fuller explanation, which Boethius provides in our little treatise.
That Boethius probably wrote a book after the model of Plotinus's work,
while modifying the arrangement to meet Christian religious habits, whether
it's actually true or not, has symbolic significance. For this expresses
precisely what renders Boethius's thought of utmost historical importance: his
grand plan of making the whole of Plato's and Aristotle's philosophy available
to Latinity, along with commentaries showing their basic harmony, thereby
continuing the Neo-Platonic tradition, and unifying their principles in a
Christian theological synthesis. In the turbulent age of the fall of the
In fact, it is only against the background of this conceptual unity that his and later scholastic philosophers' works are properly understandable, and therefore it is precisely our general lack of this conceptual background that renders works like his "De Hebdomadibus" so cryptic to the modern reader. Let me, therefore, try to sketch here at least some of the essential points of this background, on the basis of which perhaps we shall gain some insight into the main points of this grand system of thought. So let us see first what are in particular the points we are generally missing from the background of Boethius's question, what is it that renders this very question so enigmatic to the modern reader?
I think that besides the unfamiliar technical terminology, which, after all, one can easily acquire, the main reason that the modern reader may find Boethius's very question unpalatable is that it rests on certain assumptions we are no longer prepared to accept. Evidently, asking how it is possible that substances, that is, self-subsistent beings are good in that they are, although they are not substantially good, presupposes that every substance is good, which is to say that there are no bad substances. But, of course, for example, human beings are substances, i.e., self-subsistent beings, and, unfortunately, there are bad people. So some substances are evidently not good. Then why should we swallow such a presupposition, when it appears to be evidently false?
As a matter of fact, if we take a closer look at what Boethius himself says about his own assumptions, which he takes to be self-evident, we can see that probably many of these assumptions were not generally regarded as self-evident by his contemporaries either. When he puts forward what he regards as the axiomatic assumptions required for a resolution of the question, explicitly taking the axiomatic method of mathematics as his model, Boethius makes an interesting distinction concerning the self-evidence of these assumptions. He says that self-evident assumptions, what he calls here common conceptions of the mind, generally fall in two classes.
Common conceptions of the one kind are approved by anyone as soon as they hear them uttered, while common conceptions of the other kind are approved only by the learned, although these latter conceptions are somehow derived from those of the first kind. Now, evidently, there are self-evident propositions of the first kind. Boethius's own example serves as a good illustration: "If from equals you take away equals, the remainders are equal". Anyone hearing and understanding this proposition immediately assents to it, so that its denial would be unacceptable to him. But this also means that anyone understanding this proposition would find any apparent contrary evidence easily dismissible. Indeed, we may say that one can be said to understand this proposition properly only if he is able to dismiss any apparently contrary evidence and point out how the proposition is irrefutable by that evidence.
Suppose, for example, that I have one gallon of water and one gallon of gasoline in two dishes in front of me. I take away half gallon of liquid from each dish. Then I measure the remainder and I find that I have half gallon of water, but less than half gallon of gasoline left. Did I thereby refute our axiom? Of course, the whole room reeks of gasoline, at least as much as this "refutation" reeks of incompetence. Evidently, anyone understanding our axiom will immediately point out that the phrase "you take away" is not to be construed strictly and literally, and that despite the fact that I took away equal amounts of liquid, due to the fast evaporation of gasoline, it was not equal amounts by which the original amounts decreased, and this is why the remainders are unequal, not because of the falsity of our axiom.
So far, so good. But what about the other class of self-evident propositions? What difference does it make in self-evidence whether a proposition is approved by the learned? Isn't Boethius just trying to appeal to the vanity of his reader here? Well, the matter is certainly more important than that, and, in any case, Boethius definitely does not want to be popular in this work, so there is no need for him to flatter his reader. On the other hand, as we could see in the previous example, recognizing the self-evidence of a proposition does have something to do with competence. Indeed, we can say that recognizing the self-evidence of this proposition takes only linguistic competence: anyone who understands this proposition properly immediately assents to it, and knows how to eliminate the apparent contrary evidence, as demonstrating not the falsity of the proposition, but the linguistic incompetence of the person who was trying to refute it.
Again, in the case of a simple mathematical proposition, such as "1+1=2", understanding this equation properly is all that is required for assenting to it. Therefore, anyone having the elementary arithmetic competence of possessing the concepts of natural numbers, addition and equality will immediately assent to this proposition upon hearing and understanding it. Again, the proper understanding of this proposition will involve the ability to dismiss apparently contrary evidence: anyone having this kind of elementary mathematical competence will be able to point out why adding one droplet of water to another one, yielding just one bigger droplet instead of two, will not falsify this arithmetical truth.
We can say, therefore, that while in the former case it was mere linguistic competence that was required to recognize the self-evidence of the proposition, in the case of a simple mathematical proposition it is some elementary mathematical competence that is required. So cannot we say that in the case of a metaphysical proposition, it is some sort of "metaphysical competence" that is required? But what is this "metaphysical competence", and what is its relation to those ordinary sorts of competence we all are familiar with? Indeed, finding an answer to this question may just serve to understand what Boethius meant by saying that common notions of the second kind are derived from those of the first kind.
In the previous simple cases of linguistic and elementary mathematical competence we could see that competence involved possessing the proper concepts expressed by our self-evident propositions in such a manner that would enable their possessor to explain how these propositions can be maintained against apparently contrary evidence. Now, perhaps, we can say that the same applies to even less elementary cases, i.e., to cases in which more abstruse concepts and more sophisticated means of eliminating apparently contrary evidence are involved. Consider for example somewhat more advanced mathematics, like non-Euclidean geometry. On the basis of understanding the logical independence of the axiom of parallels from the rest of the Euclidean axioms we can accept the idea of a consistent geometry in which some denial of this axiom serves as a first principle. Of course, understanding non-Euclidean geometries will require a more sophisticated understanding of the elementary notion of a straight line, for example. This understanding is achievable by reflecting on how the axioms regulate the formation of our elementary notions, and so how the consistency of non-Euclidean axiom-sets allows the formation of the concept of a non-Euclidean straight line. But once this understanding is achieved, again, on the basis of this understanding one can easily eliminate apparently contrary evidence, say, our inability to draw or even imagine more or less than one straight line parallel to a given line on a blackboard, which is perceived to be contrary only because of the lack of the required competence.
But then, we can say that the "metaphysical competence" we are looking for is again nothing but the possession of some more sophisticated concepts, formed on the basis of our more elementary concepts available just to anyone, but the formation of which requires further careful reflection on these elementary concepts. However, once we have these more sophisticated concepts we shall have such a proper understanding of the first metaphysical principles that will enable us to see how we can eliminate apparently contrary evidence, perceived as contrary only for want of this kind of competence.
Anyhow, let us take a fresh look at the claim presupposed by Boethius's question from this angle. Let us see how, on the basis of a proper understanding of the claim that every being is good we can eliminate the apparently contrary evidence of the existence of bad people. To see this, we should first consider on what basis one can hold that such a claim is irrefutable, what understanding of the concepts of being and goodness are required to hold such a claim against the evidence of the existence of bad people (let alone other evils).
Saint Thomas Aquinas, who wrote an extensive commentary on the De Hebdomadibus, in his Summa Theologiae [ST1 q.5.a.1.] addresses this problem in the following way:
"It appears that to be good is really different from just to be. For Boethius says in his De Hebdomadibus: "I observe that it is one thing that things are good and it is another that they are". Therefore, for things to be and for them to be good are really different.
In response to this question we have to say that to be good and to be are in fact the same, they only differ in their concepts. And this should be obvious from the following. The concept of being good consists in being desirable, wherefore the Philosopher in bk. 1. of the Ethics says that good is what everything desires. But it is evident that everything is desirable, insofar as it is perfect, for everything desires its own perfection. On the other hand, everything is perfect inasmuch as it is actual, whence it is obvious that everything is good inasmuch as it is, for being is the actuality of every thing [...]. Therefore, it is clear that to be and to be good are in fact the same, but the concept of good implies the concept of desirability, which is not so implied by the concept of being.
To the first objection, therefore, we have to say that although to be good and just to be are in fact the same, as they differ in their concepts, it is not in the same way that something is said to be good, and that something is said to be, without qualification. For since the concept of being implies that something is actual, and actuality is properly opposed to sheer potentiality, something is said to be, without qualification, on account of that by which it is primarily distinguished from something that is merely in potentiality. But this is the substantial being of each and every thing. Therefore it is on account of its substantial being that anything is said to be, without qualification. On the other hand, it is on account of further, superadded actualities that something is said to be somehow, as to be white means to be somehow, for to be white does not remove sheer potentiality, absolutely speaking, because it just qualifies something which already is in actuality [by its substantial being]. But being good implies perfection, which is desirable and therefore refers to what is an end. So that thing is said to be good without qualification which has its final perfection. But the thing that does not have the ultimate perfection that it should have (although it does have some perfection insofar as it actually is) is not said to be perfect without qualification, indeed, nor is it said to be good without qualification, but only with some qualification. So it is with respect to its first being, which is its substantial being, that something is said to be without qualification, but it is said to be good with qualification, i.e., insofar as it is a being [and thus it does have some primary perfection]; on the other hand, it is with respect to its ultimate actuality that something is said to be with qualification, but it is said to be good without qualification. Therefore, what Boethius said, namely that it is one thing for something to be, and it is another for it to be good, should be understood as concerning some thing's being and its being good absolutely speaking, without qualification. For by its first actuality [i.e., by its substantial being] something is a being, absolutely speaking, but a thing is good, absolutely speaking, by its ultimate actuality [i.e. by its ultimate, proper perfection]. On the other hand, the thing is good with qualification, with respect to its first actuality [i.e., insofar as it exists at all, thereby having some perfection, namely the actuality of being], while with respect to its ultimate perfection the thing is with qualification, [i.e., it is somehow, possessing also some further perfection, besides just actually existing]."
In order to solve our initial difficulty with the existence of bad people, there are two points in this passage that we should understand very clearly here. The first is the idea of real identity and conceptual difference of being and goodness, while the second is the resulting difference in their predication with and without qualification. To understand these points we have to consider first how and in what respects we call something a being.
Primarily, we call something a being in the sense that it is one of the
actually existing things. In this sense a human being comes to be a being, when
he or she comes to be, absolutely speaking, that is, when he or she is born.
Again, this human being is a being as long as he or she lives, and ceases to be
a being when he or she dies. It is being in this primary sense-which in the
case of a living being is life-that
We should notice here that something's being in the primary, absolute sense is compatible with the same thing's not being in some respect. For example, my being, absolutely speaking, that is, the fact that I am alive, is compatible with my not being now in Hungary, not going to the library and not meeting my friends there. On the other hand, given the fact that I'm a human being, which means that I'm a thinking, perceiving, living body, my being implies that I have to be somewhere, and I have to be doing something, compatible with my nature, such as giving a lecture at Yale. Indeed, being of this nature, my being here and doing this is incompatible with my being elsewhere and doing other things in those other places at the same time. So having this nature necessarily delimits the kinds of superadded actualities I can have at any given time. Therefore, my being without qualification, given the fact that I am of this limited nature, while implies several kinds of superadded actualities, not only permits but also implies several sorts of non-being in some respects. Obviously, as I am a body, my being, absolutely speaking, implies my being somewhere, but being a finite, delimited body, my being somewhere also implies my not being elsewhere. And the same goes for all other bodies. What is more, even if there were an infinite body, occupying all places in the world, whereby it could be said to be everywhere, even that body could not be said to be totally everywhere, for it is only some part of it that could be said to be here, while its other parts would be elsewhere. So even that infinite body would be delimited in its being, just like I am: being a body, that is, being extended in space, it could not be wholly everywhere, because being a body implies having parts located in different places. In fact, from this we can immediately see that if there is a being that has no such parts, and which, therefore, is not a body, but which still can be said to be somehow in a place, namely, by exerting its activity in this place, then such a being can be wholly everywhere, that is by exerting its activity fully in all places. It is in this way that we can say that God is totally everywhere, by exerting fully His creative power in maintaining the existence of everything, everywhere in this world.
Now having thus seen the implications and the limitations a given thing's nature imposes upon its secondary actualities, even if the thing has its primary, substantial being, we can easily understand how these various sorts of being are related to the thing's goodness, and so how a thing's being good insofar as it exists by its primary, substantial being is compatible with the thing's being bad, despite the identity of being and goodness in general. For, as Aquinas explained, just as the thing is called a being without qualification on account of its substantial existence, while it is called a being with qualification with respect to its secondary actualities, so is it called good without qualification with respect to its secondary actualities, while it is called good with qualification with respect to its substantial being. As we could see, the reason for this difference is not that being good is a different actuality from being in general, but that we can call something good on account of its perfection, which, absolutely speaking, involves also the secondary actualities of a thing required by its nature, while just to be, without qualification, although it is some perfection, does not imply the presence of the required secondary actualities.
Our bad person, therefore, is good, insofar as he is, that is, with respect to his substantial being, but he is not good, absolutely speaking, because he lacks the required secondary actualities, the kind of perfection a human being has to have to be called good without qualification, namely, the perfection of a human life, which is living a life according to what is best in us, that is, a virtuous, spiritual life.
So, on the basis of this more sophisticated understanding of the claim that every being insofar as a being is good, we can see how, despite appearances, the existence of bad people does not refute this claim. But, perhaps, even if now we see how we can maintain such a claim, we still cannot see why we should maintain it. Even if now we see how we can maintain the real identity of unqualified being with qualified goodness and of unqualified goodness with qualified being, we may still ask: why should we?
From the passage quoted from Aquinas we may gather the answer, if we consider again what we should understand by calling something good. As the Philosopher says: good is what everything desires. But the same idea is expressed by Boethius, saying that everything that is tends to some good. For we call good what is the end of action, for the sake of which something is done, whereby it is the cause of the causality of the agent, because the agent does not act, unless for the sake of the end, which is its good. But the natural object of all desire is perfection, which is the completion of the thing's being to the extent required and permitted by the thing's nature. So it is clear that it is always some being that is desired, and so it is being, insofar as it is the object of desire that is good. So we have to maintain that being, that is, to be, and goodness, that is, to be good, are the same, only the concept of good adds to the concept of being the aspect of desirability, whence any being is called good insofar as it is an object of some desire.
But, again, for a full understanding of this reasoning we have to see very clearly how we should interpret the further claims involved in it, namely, that every action tends toward some good, and that this good is perfection, whence it has to be some being. So we have to consider, again, the most plausible objections that can be raised against these claims.
First of all, it does not seem true that every action tends toward some good. For evidently, in the case of voluntary actions performed by intelligent agents, the agent, if not omniscient, can be mistaken about the effect of the action, and so although the agent is intending some good, the action will tend toward something bad.
Again, from experience we know that human agents often do and intend to do something bad. So they are not simply mistaken about the outcome of the action, but directly intend the bad effect, qua bad, what they wish to achieve by their action.
Furthermore, in the case of natural agents, not acting by free will and intelligence, it is not at all clear that the notion of acting for the sake of something good is applicable at all. For even if perhaps in the living world we can make some sense of what it is for a living being to act for its own good, whether or not it recognizes it as such, as a plant or an amoeba certainly does not, what would we say about the actions of a tornado, a volcano, or just the falling of a stone? How could these actions be regarded as tending toward some good?
Furthermore, what can we make of the idea that all these actions tend toward some perfection? For if we grant that all sorts of perfections are some form of being, either primary, substantial, or secondary, accidental being, how can we account for all sorts of destructive actions both in nature and in the sphere of voluntary actions?
Indeed, finally, how can we account for suicide, a manifest example of self-destruction depriving the agent of all perfection?
Now, again, in addressing these difficulties we must not forget that if we deny a principle, by the very act of denial we do not treat it as a first principle, since a first principle is something that if we properly and competently understand it, we cannot but assent to it, so by such a denial we just reveal our incompetence in understanding it. In the case of the principle that every action tends toward some good we know why we have to hold it, at least in the case of voluntary agents, for it is evident that an agent insofar as an agent will perform an action only for the sake of reaching some end, which, as such, is the good to be obtained by the action. We just don't know how to account for apparently contrary cases. So let's see these first.
The case of the mistaken agent seems really simple. The agent's action tends toward something which is bad, but which appears to the agent as good, so it seems that to accommodate such cases we only need to extend the interpretation of our principle to apparent goods. But there still are some problems with this simple solution. An apparent good is not some kind of good, it is simply not good at all, just like forged money is not a kind of money, but it is no money at all. So it seems that this extension of our interpretation of this principle is no more justified than the extension of the principle "you can legally buy goods for money" to forged money. So why should we accept this extended interpretation in this case?
The reason for this is that even if what the agent perceives as good is in fact not good, it will not move the agent to act, that is, it will not move as something good, unless the agent perceives it as something good. So the act evidently tends toward some perceived good, which is the end of the action precisely because, and only insofar as, it is some perceived good, regardless of whether it is in fact good or not. So insofar as this principle expresses the necessary relationship between agent, action and the end of action, it is evidently true, regardless of whether the end of action in itself is really or merely apparently good. So any agent insofar as an agent acts for the sake of something good, qua good, whether what it acts for is in fact good or merely apparently good. Consequently, it would be a mistake to modify our principle so that it will explicitly refer to some apparent good. For the agent is not moved by an apparent good as such, but by some perceived good as such. A hungry man may be misled by mock food, but he is deceived by mock food precisely because he did not desire mock food, as such, but real food, as such, which he perceives as good for him, insofar as he perceives it as capable of appeasing his hunger.
So the case of our principle and that of "you can legally buy goods for money" are not the same. For the principle: "every action tends toward some good", according to the right interpretation, i.e., taking "good" to refer precisely to that for the sake of which the agent is acting, is going to be true regardless of whether the end of action in itself is really good or not for the agent, that is, whether or not it is really going to confer some perfection on the agent, even if it is evidently for the sake of such a perfection that the agent desired it. On the other hand, the claim: "you can legally buy goods for money" will not be true regardless of whether we interpret it for real money or for forged money.
And by this we can also see the solution of the difficulty concerning evil intentions, when the agent is not mistaken, but seems to be acting for the sake of something bad. For in fact, even in these cases the agent acts only for the sake of some perceived good as such, which he or she intends to reach by some perceived bad. But also in this case the end of action is that for the sake of which it is done, which moves the agent as something desired, and so as some perceived good of the agent. This is most manifest in the case of bad actions committed for the sake of some perceived profit for the agent.
But what shall we say, then, of self-destructive actions, or of the ultimate self-destructive action, that is, suicide? What profit, what perceived good would the agent hope to gain, when knowingly deprives him- or herself of the very possibility of any good at all? Well, suicide is an act of desperation, an act of riddance of some greater evil. So when the agent suffers some ultimate deprivation of a natural good state, say, health, what is ultimately desired is that natural good state, which, however, at the same time is perceived as unattainable. So desiring that natural good state the agent terminates the insufferable unnatural state, by terminating his or her own existence altogether.
But all these considerations leave the cases of involuntary natural agents unaccounted for. Very briefly, two further points need to be considered here.
The first is the goal-directedness of the actions of instruments, as their action is being directed toward some end by the action of some voluntary agent. So even if a hammer may not be said to have a goal of itself, clearly, as the tool of a craftsman it does have a definite purpose and function in the operation of the craftsman, who directs its action toward some good perceived as such by him.
The second point is regarding all agents in the world as instrumental to God's intelligent voluntary action. Even without going into further details we can see that if God is an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent agent, then all actions of all natural agents can be viewed as directed to their proper ends by God's continuous creating activity, maintaining their nature and through this their characteristic operations. That in this case the perceived or unperceived good of these particular instrumental agents will be their own good is clear from the consideration that God directs their operations, in accordance with their nature by necessity or by freedom, towards the greatest good, that is towards Himself, which consists in these agents' assimilating themselves to God as far as their nature permits, that is, in achieving the maximal perfection allowed to them by their nature and by their individual proper operations.
From this consideration we can also see why it is so that not every individual of any nature possesses this maximal perfection at any time. For given the limitations of any finite nature, the perfection of one is often the privation of the other. The perfection of the life of the wolf requires sometimes the privation of the life of the lamb. So this is why the natural desire of the wolf toward something good, the preservation of wolf-life, involves coincidentally the privation of lamb-life. And the same goes for all destructive actions in nature.
Again, we can also see from this how we should understand Boethius's other principle according to which everything tends to its like, from which he concludes that everything is good, given that everything tends to some good. For, apparently, when the hungry wolf desires the lamb, it does not desire its like, on the contrary, the hungry wolf would certainly desire anything but another hungry wolf. On the other hand, what the hungry wolf desires is the state of the sated wolf. So the lamb is desired by, and, therefore, is good for the wolf not insofar as a lamb (for, say, a rabbit would do as well), but only insofar as it is conducive to this particular form of self-perfection of the wolf, that is its being sated. So despite appearances to the contrary, the wolf's desire per se is directed towards its like, namely the sated wolf.
However, one can object to this interpretation by saying that the hungry wolf is dissimilar to the sated wolf precisely in respect of the per se object of its desire, namely, in respect of being sated, wherefore it is not true to say that everything desires its like per se, that is, insofar as it is desiring. On the contrary, it seems that what desires does not have that what it desires, so it is dissimilar to what it desires, precisely in respect of what it desires, of necessity. As Socrates says in the Symposium: "it's necessary that this be so: a thing that desires desires something of which it is in need; otherwise, if it were not in need, it would not desire it". [200a-b]
To this, first of all, we have to say that Socrates's maxim is valid only for cases of desire for taking, but not for cases of desire of giving, that is, giving not for the sake of getting something in exchange, but just for the sake of giving. Such is the parents' love towards their children, or God's love towards His creatures. Secondly, even if, in cases of desire for taking, what desires does not have that what it desires in particular, and in that respect it is dissimilar to what it desires, Boethius's axiom does not concern such particular desires. Such particular desires are always instrumental to the universal, overarching desire of the thing's total activity, the thing's being in its specific nature, in which something similar is desired, namely, the preservation of the thing's being and well-being. When the hungry wolf desires to be a sated wolf, and so in this particular respect it desires to be what it is not, this desire of a particular dissimilarity is instrumental to a universal desire of similarity. For feeling hunger is instrumental for the wolf to stay alive, which is shown by the fact that a wolf that does not feel hunger will not hunt and will die. So when a hungry wolf desires to be a sated wolf, then it is a living, healthy wolf that desires to be a living healthy wolf, so in this respect it desires its like. As Socrates also says in the Symposium: "This is what it is to love something which is not at hand, which the lover does not have: it is to desire the preservation of what he now has in time to come, so that it will have it then". [200d-e]
That Boethius's axiom is indeed to be taken in this sense is shown by his subsequent argument [ll. 62-68.], in which he argues that things that are good cannot be good by participation, that is, having goodness as their accidental feature. For here he argues that what are good by participation cannot be good in virtue of their own being, wherefore they are not good in that they are. But then, they do not tend to some good, which is their like, which was conceded in the first argument. So also in the first argument [ll. 57-60.], tending towards its like has to be understood as a thing's tendency towards its like in its substantial being, that is, as the thing's tendency towards self-preservation. Therefore it is in this sense that, despite appearances to the contrary, the hungry wolf's desire for a lamb, which is its desire to be a sated wolf, is its desire towards its like, in that by this desire it is in fact a living wolf that desires to be a living wolf, that is, by the very activity of its life, which is its substantial being, it tends towards the preservation of this substantial being. So by its being it tends towards its own good, which is nothing, but itself in continued being, which is therefore its like in being, and so we can say that the wolf is itself good in its being. But in regard of their substantial being all substances are alike, so what goes for the wolf in respect of its substantial being goes for all substances in the same respect. So all substances in respect of their substantial being, that is, in that they are, are good.
But then it appears that they are substantially good. For whatever belongs to a thing insofar as it is belongs to the thing necessarily as long as it is. But what belongs to the thing necessarily as long as it is, appears to belong to it substantially, just like rationality, which belongs necessarily to a human being as long as he or she is, belongs to him or her substantially, that is, in virtue of what he or she is.
However, it cannot be the case that goodness should belong just to any created substance in virtue of what it is, that is, substantially, despite the previous conclusion that everything is good insofar as it is. For being substantially good is being good in essence, which means to have goodness as the thing's essence. But it is only God, the First Good, who has His goodness as his essence, so if everything is good by its essence, then everything is God, which is nonsense. So creatures cannot be substantially good. But since everything that has some property has it either substantially or accidentally, that is, in Boethius's terminology, by participation, and creatures cannot be good substantially, nor by participation, it seems that they can in no way be good, which contradicts our painfully established conclusion that everything is good insofar as it exists.
Boethius provides a solution to this problem by the following thought-experiment. Suppose the impossible, namely, that creatures exist and they are good, without God keeping them in existence. But then, since for a creature to be and to be something, like to be colored, to be here, to be of this weight, height, etc. are different, then also for them to be and to be good would be different. For otherwise all their properties were identical with their substance, and so the goodness of a creature would be identical with its substance, and also its whiteness and its weight and its height, etc., and so also these, say, their height and weight would be identical, which is nonsense.
On the other hand, if they did not have these material properties, like height, weight, color, etc. which all imply spatio-temporality, and therefore, some limitation of being, but they had only goodness, which does not have such spatio-temporal implications, because also a spiritual being can be good, then they could have this goodness as their substance. But if they had only goodness, which were to be their substance, then there would be no distinction between them, and so there would not be many things but only one, and that one would not be a creature but rather the First Good itself, that is, God.
So, on the basis of these considerations the following answer can be given to the original question. Creatures are good in that they are, that is, in their being, because their substantial being, deriving from the First Good itself is good. If, per impossibile, they could exist without God's maintaining their existence, then their existence would not be their goodness, so then they would not be good in that they are. However, since they in fact exist, because they receive their existence from the First Good, their existence is good, so they are good in that they are. Still, creatures are not substantially good, that is, their goodness is not their substance. This is precisely why for them to be good absolutely speaking is not for them to be absolutely speaking, but for them to be absolutely speaking is for them to be good only with qualification, that is, insofar as they are, insofar as they receive their being from what is absolutely good in what it is, that is Goodness itself, which is God. For it is only the unlimited divine nature that IS, totally and absolutely, without limitation, in full actuality of infinite energy, which therefore is the totality of unlimited perfection, and so is good, without limitation or qualification, since for Him to be is to be good, to be eternally living, thinking, happy, caring, providing, just and anything we can think of without limitation of perfection, indeed, exceeding in perfection anything we can think of, given the limitations of our own thought. So it is God alone who is substantially good, and it is only He, for whom to be good in his being is to be good absolutely speaking, while for creatures to be good in their being is not for them to be good absolutely speaking, but only insofar as they share in divine goodness by their being.
But, then, why cannot we say that they are white, or of any other accidental quality, in that they are, or isn't their being white a form of their being, and therefore their share in divine perfection? Yes, their being white is their share in divine perfection, still we cannot say that this belongs to them in that they are. For to be white is not just to be, for to be white is accidental, while to be is essential even to what is actually white. But we can say that they are good in that they are because their being derives from the First Good, which is essentially good. On the other hand, we cannot say that they are white in that they are, even if they got their whiteness from God, for their being white does not derive from The First White, but from God, who is not white, as being white per se implies being colored, and therefore, being a body, and therefore having spatio-temporal limitations in being, which cannot apply to the absolute being, God.
But then why cannot we say that anything that is just is just in that it is? Certainly, justice does not have such implications of limitation of being as whiteness does. But justice does have something to do with action: we cannot call somebody just, who does not act justly. But for us to be, and to be active are not the same, as we are not always in full activity throughout our being. But God is. So for Him to be, to be active, to be good and to be just are the same, his infinite divine essence. On the other hand, for us to be is to be good with qualification, insofar as by our being we share in divine goodness. But for us to be just is not only to be, but to act justly, and so it is only by that activity that we shall have our share in divine justice.
So if we want to be godlike, which is to want to be happy, for happiness is the perfection of a complete life, and so it is the unlimited perfection of divine life which is complete happiness in an absolute sense, then we have "to strain every nerve"-as the Philosopher says in the tenth book of the Ethics-"to live in accordance with the best thing in us", that is, to live a life by which we can have as much share in divine happiness as much our nature in our present condition allows us to have, so that we can leave this life well-prepared for a higher form of existence.
But isn't this just the message of Plato? Again, isn't this the message of
Christianity, too? Indeed, on a larger scale, isn't this the message of all
spirituality amassed in the history of mankind in all cultures and in all ages?
In the age of the fall of the
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10. Diversum
est esse et id quod est. |
10. Existence [esse] is different from that which is [id quod est]. |
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11. Ipsum
enim nondum est; at vero id quod est, accepta essendi forma, est atque
consistit. |
11. For existence itself not yet is, but that which is, when it has taken on the form of existence [essendi forma] is and subsists. |
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12.Quod est participare aliquo potest, sed ipsum esse nullo modo aliquo participat. Fit enim participatio cum aliquid iam est. Est autem aliquid cum esse susceperit. |
12. That which is [quod est] can participate in something, but existence itself in no way participates in anything. For participation comes about when something already is. And something is when it has received existence. |
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13. Id quod est habere aliquid, praeterquam quod ipsum est, potest; ipsum vero esse nihil aliud praeter se habet admixtum. |
13. That which is can have something besides what itself is, but existence itself has nothing mixed with it besides itself. |
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14. Diversum
est tamen esse aliquid in eo quod est et esse aliquid. |
14. However, it is different [for a thing] to be something in that [it] is [esse aliquid in eo quod est] and to be something [esse aliquid]. |
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15. Illic enim accidens, hic substantia significatur. |
15. For the latter signifies accident, while the former [signifies] substance. |
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16.Omne quod
est participat, eo quod est esse, ut sit; alio vero participat ut aliquid
sit. |
16. Everything that is participates in existence in order to be, and it participates in something else in order to be something. |
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17. Ac per
hoc id quod est participat eo quod est esse, ut sit; est vero ut participare
alio quolibet possit. |
17. But hence, that which is participates in existence in order to be; and it is, in order to participate in something else. |
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18. Omni
composito aliud est esse, aliud ipsum est. |
18. In every composite [thing] existence is one thing, and [the composite thing] itself is another. |
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19.Omne
simplex esse suum et id quod est unum habet (1). |
19. Every simple thing has its existence and that which [it] is as one. |
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20.Omnis diversitas discors; similitudo vero appetenda est. |
20. Every diversity repels, but similitude is desirable. |
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21. Et quod
appetit aliud, tale ipsum naturaliter esse ostenditur quale est iliud ipsum
quod appetit. |
21. And what desires something else is shown to be naturally like that which it desires. |
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22.
Sufficiunt igitur quae praemisimus; a prudente viro interprete rationis suis
unumquodque aptabitur argumentis. |
22. These preliminaries suffice; the careful reader of the reasoning will adapt each of them to its appropriate arguments. |
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20. [...]
Sicut ante dictum est, illae propositiones sunt maxime notae quae utuntur
terminis quos omnes intelligunt. Ea autem quae in omni intellectu cadunt, sunt
maxime communia quae sunt: ens, unum et bonum. Et ideo ponit hic boetius
primo quasdam conceptiones pertinentes ad ens. Secundo quasdam pertinentes ad
unum, ex quo sumitur ratio simplicis et compositi, ibi, omni composito etc..
Tertio ponit quasdam conceptiones pertinentes ad bonum, ibi, omnis diversitas
discors. |
20. [...] As was said above, those propositions are known the most whose terms everybody understands. Now those that fall into every intellect are the most common [notions], which are [the notions of] being, one, and good. Therefore, Boethius here posits first some conceptions that belong to being. [10-17] Secondly, some [conceptions] that belong to [the notion of] one, from which the concepts [ratio] of simple and composite derive, here: 18. In every composite ... [18-19] Thirdly, he posits some conceptions that belong to [the notion of] good, here: 20. Every diversity repels ... [20-22] |
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21. Circa ens autem consideratur ipsum esse quasi quiddam
commune et indeterminatum: quod quidem dupliciter determinatur; uno modo ex
parte subiecti, quod esse habet; alio modo ex parte praedicati, utpote cum
dicimus de homine, vel de quacumque alia re, non quidem quod sit simpliciter,
sed quod sit aliquid, puta album vel nigrum. Primo ergo ponit conceptiones
quae accipiuntur secundum comparationem esse ad id quod est. Secundo ponit
conceptiones quae accipiuntur secundum comparationem eius quod est esse
simpliciter, ad id quod est esse aliquid, ibi, diversum est tamen. Circa primum duo facit. Primo ponit
differentiam eius quod est esse, ad id quod est. Secundo manifestat huiusmodi
differentiam, ibi, ipsum enim esse nondum est. |
21. In connection with being [ens] we consider existence itself [ipsum esse] as something common and indeterminate, which is determined in two ways. In one way it is determined by the subject that has existence; in the other way it is determined by the predicate, as when we say of a man or of any other thing, not that it is, absolutely, but that it is something, say, white or black. Therefore, first he posits conceptions concerning the relationship of existence [esse] to what is [id quod est]. [10-13] Secondly he posits conceptions concerning the relationship of that which is to be absolutely speaking [eius quod est esse simpliciter] to that which is to be something [eius quod est esse aliquid], here: 14. However, it is different ... [14-17] Concerning the first point he does two things. First, he posits the difference between existence [quod est esse] and what is [quod est]. Secondly, he clarifies this difference, here: 11. For existence itself not yet is ... |
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22. Dicit
ergo primo, quod diversum est esse, et id quod est. Quae quidem diversitas
non est hic referenda ad res, de quibus adhuc non loquitur, sed ad ipsas
rationes seu intentiones. Aliud autem significamus per hoc quod dicimus esse,
et aliud: per hoc quod dicimus id quod est; sicut et aliud significamus cum
dicimus currere, et aliud per hoc quod dicitur currens. Nam currere et esse
significantur in abstracto, sicut et albedo; sed quod est, idest ens et
currens, significantur sicut in concreto, velut album. |
22. So he says first that existence is different from that which is. But this difference is not to be understood here as one concerning things, about which he is not speaking as yet, but the concepts or intentions [of existence and of that which is] themselves. For we [intend to] signify one thing by saying 'existence' [esse], and another by saying 'that which is' [id quod est], just as we [intend to] signify one thing when we say 'running', and another when we say 'that which runs'. For running and existence are signified in an abstract manner, just as whiteness; but that which is, that is, being, and what runs, [are signified] in a concrete manner, just as [what is] white. |
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23. Deinde cum dicit, ipsum enim esse, manifestat
praedictam diversitatem tribus modis: quorum primus est, quia ipsum esse non significatur
sicut ipsum subiectum essendi, sicut nec currere significatur sicut subiectum
cursus: unde, sicut non possumus dicere quod ipsum currere currat, ita non
possumus dicere quod ipsum esse sit: sed sicut id ipsum quod est,
significatur sicut subiectum essendi, sic id quod currit significatur sicut
subiectum currendi: et ideo sicut possumus dicere de eo quod currit, sive de
currente, quod currat, inquantum subiicitur cursui et participat ipsum; ita
possumus dicere quod ens, sive id quod est, sit, inquantum participat actum
essendi: et hoc est quod dicit: ipsum esse nondum est, quia non attribuitur
sibi esse sicut subiecto essendi; sed id quod est, accepta essendi forma,
scilicet suscipiendo ipsum actum essendi, est, atque consistit, idest in
seipso subsistit. Non enim
ens dicitur proprie et per se, nisi de substantia, cuius est subsistere.
Accidentia enim non dicuntur entia quasi ipsa sint, sed inquantum eis subest
aliquid, ut postea dicetur. |
23. Next, when he says: 11. For existence itself ... , he clarifies the above-mentioned diversity in three ways. The first of which is that since existence itself is not signified as the subject of existence, just as [the act of] running is not signified as the subject of running, therefore, just as we cannot say that [the act of] running itself runs, so we cannot say that existence itself is. But just as that which is is signified as the subject of existence, so that which runs is signified as the subject of running. Therefore, just as we can say of that which runs, or the runner, that it runs, insofar as it is subjected to running, so we can say of being, or that which is, that it is, insofar as it participates in the act of existing [inquantum participat actum essendi]. And this is what he says, namely, that existence itself not yet is, for existence is not attributed to it as to the subject of the act of existence; but that which is, when it has taken on the form of existence [essendi forma], namely, by receiving the act of existing itself, is and subsists, that is, subsists in itself. For only a substance, to which subsisting belongs, is said to be properly and per se a being. For accidents are not said to be beings, as if they themselves existed, but insofar as something is subjected to them, as will be said below. |