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Understanding the Origins of Greek Philosophy in order to
Move toward an Understanding of Natural Law
Lonergan Institute for the “Good Under Construction” @ 2016
What all men learn is shaped by Homer from the beginning1
Introduction
History: the Nature of History
What is History? A two-part answer is possible. First, history that is written about: it functions as an
objectification of human self-interpretation (as an objectification of the human spirit) since the stuff of
human living is constituted by how persons regard life and their places within it. 2 Human history as
written is not that old. For instance, how old is the Jewish Old Testament? Was it not composed
largely during the time of the Babylonian captivity?
Second, history is that which is written. There are three types here which have evolved: 1) occasional
or apologetic history (as, for example, the historiography of the the Greek and Roman historians); 2)
technical or documentary history (written by the Bollandists, Mabillon OSB, von Ranke, and Pastor);
and 3) explanatory or scientific history as instanced by Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History.
Lonergan’s understanding of human history speaks about 3 vectors: progress, decline, and redemption.
Progress is characterized by authenticity where persons operate intelligently without interferences that
obstruct human inquiry. Situations develop and life unfolds as persons attend to problems as they arise
and creatively respond to create new situations. If progress were always unobstructed, the result would
be automatic progress (exemplifying a law of automatic progress which explains human life, a notion
that generally lost favor in the West as a result of the First World War, if not earlier).
Decline is characterized by bias (psychological, egotistical, group, and general) whereby human beings
live in a way that is somehow restricted and not fully human. This produces distortions in human
development and, as a result, human progress fails and implodes on itself.
1Xenophanes of Colophon, fr. 10, cited by W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy,
vol. 1, The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans (Cambridge: University Press, 2000), p. 371.
Please find here another set of notes that have been composed to help students move toward an
understanding of natural law as this exists as an element within the teaching of the Catholic Church.
These notes have also not been proofread by other persons and so, for this reason and other
considerations, pertinent corrective suggestions would be appreciatively received. The text that is
being given here exists as a first edition. It is always being improved in some ways: through
corrections and additions.
2See Bernard Lonergan, “The Philosophy of History,” Philosophical and Theological Papers
1958-1964, eds. Robert C. Croken, Frederick E. Crowe, and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of
Toronto, 1996), p. 73.
2
Redemption is characterized by the gift of God’s grace which comes from above, to enter human
history in a way that heals. It operates through the Law of the Cross within the Christian dispensation
and creates a space in human history for new beginnings: it overcomes decline to make way for human
creativity.
Philosophy as an historical event
...any one who thinks, and is determined to let nothing stop him from
thinking, is a philosopher, and hence Plato is able to say that
philosophy...is the same as thought...3
The appearance of philosophy as an historical event required conditions which, once fulfilled,
encouraged its birth to introduce new elements into the human self-reflection which is constitutive of
our human history.
The Greek discovery of the mind4 (which originated early in the 7th Century BC)5 is discussed by
Bruno Snell, a professor of classics in Hamburg, in his well known book that has itself become a
classic: its title, The Discovery of Mind. The Greeks were the first intellectuals, the first protagonists of
the mind, who stressed the importance of study and examination in a "cult of the rational." Snell
speaks of “plateaus of meaning.”6 He identifies factors (the “build-up”), what was happening amongst
the Greeks in their culture, which led to the birth of Greek philosophy. The first step was “the
development of Greek categories.” “The Greeks acquired from the Homeric similes the ability to
distinguish different characters. A lion never retreats; Hector is a lion – and so on for Thersites and all
the people in the Iliad and Odyssey.”7 “Then Snell has the lyric poets with the expression, the
objectification, of strong emotions, and different kinds of feeling: the warrior types, the lovers, and so
on. And then the tragedians presenting decision, the deliberation over decision and the consequences
of it – all set before people’s eyes in the drama and become part of the Greek language. Their world
mediated by meaning was increased enormously by this process. Then there were the Sophists with all
their arguments, and the criticism of the Sophists by Socrates and Plato and by Aristotle – and the birth
of philosophy out of that. Then the post-philosophic poetry. The people who are worn out by the postphilosophical world, which has become pretty tawdry, retreat to Arcadia with its shepherds and lambs –
the Eclogues of Virgil. Also Theocritus, and then the comedy of manners, in Greece and later in Rome
3R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Philosophical Method (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino
Publishing, 2014), p. 15.
4Bernard Lonergan, "Theology as Christian Phenomenon," Philosophical and Theological
Papers 1958-1964 eds. Robert C. Croken, Frederick E. Crowe, and Robert M. Doran (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1996), pp. 245-247: Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder,
1972), pp. 90-96 (hereafter cited as MIT).
5According to Karl Jaspers (Richard Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 4), "The axis of
world history seems to pass through the fifth century BC in the midst of the spiritual process between
800 and 200 BC which saw Confucius, Lao-Tse in China, the Upanishads and Buddha in India,
Zarathustra in Persia, the Old Testament prophets in Palestine, Homer, the philosophers and tragedians
in Greece."
6Bernard Lonergan, Caring About Meaning: patterns in the life of Bernard Lonergan, eds.
Pierrot Lambert, Charlotte Tansey, Cathleen Going (Montreal: Thomas More Institute, 1982), p. 89.
7Lonergan, Caring About Meaning, p. 89.
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– Plautus and Terrance.”8 Snell illustrated differentiations of consciousness: “the world mediated by
meaning, and human beings and societies constituted by meaning.”9
During the 5th century BC, roughly between 800 and 300 BC, a series of cultural changes drastically
altered human self-conceptions in different, disparate parts of the world. 10 Without any apparent
interaction, Confucius, Lao-Tao, the Upanishad authors, Buddha, Zarathustra, the Old Testament
prophets, Homer, and the Greek philosophers and tragedians initiated a spiritual revolution which, until
recently, formed the outlook of the modern world. Its sufficiency was not widely questioned until,
perhaps, the first third of the 19th century (and the coincident rise of popular journalism). What
happened in these early centuries and why did it happen?
In ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Crete, and the valleys of the Indus and the Hoang Ho, great stable
empires had flourished. As men and women had worked together to create irrigation schemes and to
build cities, they conceived human order as a pattern which should reflect the order that was obviously
perceived in the natural world. A “cosmion” vision of society is dominant. A human society, if it
wants to be a good society, should be stable: an equilibrium characterized by a balance of forces. It
should adopt or reflect the order which already belongs to the external world of the cosmos. Recurrent
human cycles reflect the ongoing and permanent cycles of nature. A good human society is one, thus,
that does not really change. Change is incidental. It is essentially unnecessary and, at times, even
dangerous. Social ordering within a given society tends to be fixed and eternal and its leaders, godlike, divine. Culture comes to men and women as a “gift of the gods.” It lacks a history since it is not
essentially a human product.
The breakup of these civilizations accordingly created conditions which forced individuals to ask
questions about possible, alternative sources of meaning. What are they and do they exist? A shift
moved from a “cosmion” to a “macroanthropos” vision of society in a manner which was largely due to
a breakdown in the kind of order which was needed if one is to have a functioning human society. It
was becoming somewhat obvious to some persons (if not to all) that the order or the structure of the
cosmos is no longer an adequate source of meaning and order for the being of a human society. In
other words, insights into the existence of a given social order and personal existence within this order
are beginning to point toward this inadequacy and even to the wrongness of this type of thinking
although, by attending to external symbols of one kind or another, it is to be admitted that, by this
means, some truth can be discovered with respect to the data of our human consciousness. In this
context thus, what is now needed is some type of differentiation that could lead us toward a better
understanding of the kind of data which exists as our data of consciousness, our consciousness existing
as the proximate source for the being of a renewed or reconstructed social and spiritual order as this can
exist for us within the order of time and space, within a history which joins different kinds of events
with each other in a manner which is constitutive of a given history. Within pre-philosophic, prescientific thought, an absence of an adequate account which can distinguish between the being of
verbal, notional, and real distinctions11 tends to lead toward a symbolic construction of our human
8Lonergan, Caring About Meaning, p. 90.
9Lonergan, Caring About Meaning, p. 90.
10Karl Jaspers, Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (Zurich, 1949), pp. 18 ff., cited in Eric
Voegelin, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction (Chicago & London: University of
Chicago Press, 1983), p. 60.
11Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J., Method in Theology (New York, Herder and Herder, 1973), p.
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world: feeling, doing, knowing, and decided are not distinguished from each other. 12 All exists in a
jumble. The cognitive function of meaning is not distinguished from its constitutive and efficient
functions nor from its role in the communication of feeling and belief. What happens here ultimately in
the breakdown of the pre-existing symbolic order is a search for something other which is more eternal
and enduring than the being of any cosmos. A new, distinct, higher realm of meaning can be hopefully
discovered and thematized and then lived in a manner which points to a progression in how we think
and live as human beings.13
In Egypt, social breakdown between the Old and Middle kingdom led to the rise of a new form of
religious consciousness as this emerged through belief in the god, Osiris. In ancient China, feudal
disintegration resulted in the rise of Lao-Tse and Confucius. In India, just before the rise of the Maurya
Empire (322 BC), a series of wars and conflicts were marked by the appearance of Buddha and
Jainism. In Greece, in the Hellenic Polis, disintegration led to the rise of philosophers, and later, the
rise of Christianity.
This shift in consciousness required a more adequate and differentiated set of symbols in order to
communicate the intelligibility of society, and the discovery of this intelligibility will be such that the
real source of order will be seen to exist within or as the realm of our interiority. As Voegelin had
written: “The horror of a fall from being into nothingness motivates an intolerance which no longer is
willing to distinguish between stronger and weaker gods, but opposes the true god to the false gods.
This horror induced Plato to (1) create the term “theology,” to (2) distinguish between true and false
types of theology, and to (3) make the true order of society dependent on the rule of men whose proper
attunement to divine being manifests itself in their true theology.”14
The question of ultimate intelligibility, ultimate truth, ultimate goodness as the source of all
intelligibility, all truth, all goodness, as the term of our self-transcendence, as the completion of our
capacity for self-transcendence is a datum of our consciousness which exists as one of the most
pressing datum or the most interesting datum which we can attend to as it exists within ourselves, in
our consciousness. It is the one that underpins, penetrates, and goes beyond every human operation.
This is why it comes to the fore as one of the most important questions in human history and why we
can speak about transitions as, through history we move we move from one type of explanation to
another type of explanation though all attempt to provide an answer which attempts to explain why
things are the way that they happen to be. Specifications of cause are “historically and culturally
conditioned” even if we find continuity in the kinds of question which are being posed or asked.15
Early Philosophers of Nature: the Pre-socratics
The Pre-socratics date from early 7th Century BC to Socrates (d. 399 BC). No surviving works exist
306.
12Lonergan, Method in Theology, p. 90.
13Bernard Lonergan, The Way to Nicea: The Dialectical Development of Trinitarian Theology,
trans. Conn O'Donovan (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), p. 109.
14Eric Voegelin, Order and History, vol. 1, Israel and Revelation (Baton Rouge, LA: Lousiana
State University Press, 1994), p. 9.
15Giovanni B. Sala, Lonergan and Kant: Five Essays on Human Knowledge, trans. Joseph
Spoerl, ed. Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), p. 99.
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since only fragments in other writers exist. They asked the fundamental, radical question which is
basic to the rise of philosophy and science: what is real? what is being? As applied to the nature of
external things where nature refers to the “totality of phenomena,” 16 it is the first question that is raised
in our waking to consciousness and it presupposes two things in our minds (within our understanding):
(1) a knowledge of the difference between appearance and reality, the way things are versus the way
they seem to be; and (2) a knowledge that all the different things that you study have one thing in
common: that which gives existence or being to a variety of different things. Hence, c. 600 BC, for the
first two centuries of thought, the early philosophers sought to identify the basic principle (the arche,
the principium, the source, the point of origin) which guides the cosmos from within as an abiding,
orienting, directing, normative nature, a common principle of some kind which, for different reasons, is
differently identified in Asia Minor and in Sicily and southern Italy. 17 The Greek signification refers to
φύσις or, as transliterated into English using the Roman alphabet, the physis of things or, as we would
say in the most common form of English translation that we currently use: the nature of a thing, the
nature of a thing as opposed to the being of a thing in terms of its contingency (how it exists within one
given condition and how it exists later within another possible condition). Different notions or
differing anticipations about the possible meaning which can be ascribed to nature, as an unchanging
condition or principle, point to different understandings which have arisen within different philosophies
or sciences about that which allegedly exists as this principle of nature although, in terms of etymology,
a common root points to a pre-philosophic determination of meaning which refers to the derivation of
physis from its Greek root, phy; meaning, to grow or to become.18 If physis initially refers to a growing
thing, or to a process of growth, or to the totality of growing things in terms of the entire physical
world, a more technical, recondite understanding can refer to the origins of this growing as this exists
within becoming, growing things and also possibly to the term or the realization of the growing which
exists within things, given the origins of a given thing.19 The origin of a thing, as its cause, points to
the realization of a thing in terms of final effects or ultimate results. A chronology in the order of
philosophical reflection can be found and presented to us as we move from the simplest of possible
explanations for the nature of nature toward later explanations which evince a growth in complexity.
The larger number of variables and relations, the greater the differentiation in the extent and the depth
of our understanding. Growth in understanding points to growth in the meanings that can be ascribed
to the principle of nature.
in Ionia on the west coast of Asia Minor: the Milesians
On the coast of Asia Minor, the first beginnings of Greek philosophy can be traced to occur in citystates which formed highly civilized communities that were characterized by a certain amount of
religious indifference. Miletus was originally a Greek colony in Asia Minor which, in time, became a
major sea-port and the most important city-state in Ionia. “The arts, trade, commerce were well
developed.”20 From it arose the Milesian school of philosophy which rejected mythical explanations
16Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 82.
17R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945), pp. 4344.
18Robert M. Grant, Miracle and Natural Law in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought
(Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 1952), p. 5.
19Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 5.
20William A. Stewart, Introduction to Philosophy or Lonergan for Beginners, unpublished text
(Halifax: Saint Mary's University, 1981), p. 20. Stewart quotes from Frederick Copleston, A History of
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f o r natural events in favor of a rationalist approach which looked for explanations through the
mediation of some kind of predominant material cause that is to be identified and proved through the
reasonableness of arguments that are offered in proof of evidence. In attending then to the nature of
naturally existing things or in looking for an explanation which accounts for the existence of naturally
existing things, as a precondition which should be alluded to, or as a precondition which exists as a
species of prior development which must be before one can move toward possible questions which
would ask about the being of a predominant cause, two developments need to be distinguished from
each other and, at the same time, combined with each other: (1) “natural things” as an aggregate exist
apart from “artificial things” as an aggregate or, in other words, naturally existing things differ from
artificially existing things: bluntly put, “natural things” exist on their own or they happen on their own;
they are not produced through some kind of skill or industry; (2) “natural things” all share a common
number of attributes or characteristics which apply to all of them: bluntly put, “natural things constitute
a single 'world of nature'” and this “world of nature” differs from the being of some other kind of
world.21 Granting this understanding about that which constitutes or exists as nature, it is then believed
or assumed that a common material principle of some kind must account, in some way, for everything
which somehow exists in nature although it should be noted too that the early philosophers of nature
should not be regarded too quickly or too readily as materialists who simply believed that the reality of
a given thing is to be measured by whether or not it exists as a datum of sense.
The basic question is: what is the nature of nature (as physis); or, in other words, what is the natural,
the rational, or the scientific cause (as opposed to any magical, mythological, religious, or allegorical
species of cause) which accounts for the growth and present organization of the world within which we
live and experience life?22 What is its intelligibility or meaning? More specifically, and empirically,
what are things made of? If we are to move from an experience of multiplicity to an experience of
oneness or unity, we ask: what is the basic or the primitive stuff out of which things are made? 23 The
asking of this last question assumes that some sort of underlying, formless matter exists that takes on
different forms. Hence, our first question: “what is the original, unchanging substance which underlies
all the changes of the natural world with which we are acquainted?” or, alternatively, “how can we
form a clear mental picture of the universal primitive substance?”; 24 and then a second question follows
from this: “what can we say about [the being of] this single substance [in terms of how it exists or how
it functions as a cause relative to the being of many different effects which exist in our world]?” or,
alternatively, “how, from this primitive substance, can we deduce the world of nature [as it is and as we
experience and know it]?”25
Most of the earliest philosophers thought that the principles which were in the nature of
matter were the only principles of all things: that of which all things that are consist, and
Philosophy, vol. 1, part 1 (New York: Image Books, 1962), p. 30, to the effect that the philosophy
which originated in Miletus is “the fruit of a mature civilization.”
21Collingwood, Idea of Nature, pp. 29-30.
22Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 83; Daniel J. Sullivan, An Introduction to
Philosophy: Perennial Principles of the Classical Realist Tradition (Charlotte, North Carolina: Tan
Books, 2012), p. 11.
23R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature, as cited by Joseph Flanagan S.J, Quest for SelfKnowledge: An Essay in Lonergan’s Philosophy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), p. 27.
24Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 29; p. 43.
25Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 30; p. 43.
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from which they first come to be and into which they are resolved as a final state (the
substance remaining but changing in its modifications), this, they said, is the element
generated or destroyed, since this sort of entity is always preserved, as we say that
Socrates neither comes to be absolutely when he comes to be beautiful or musical, nor
ceases to be when he loses these characteristics, because the substratum, Socrates
himself, remains. So it is, they say, with everything else: there is always some
permanent substance, or nature (φὐσις), either one or more, which is conserved in the
generation of the rest from it.26
After identifying some kind of basic stuff, in dealing with the aforementioned second question, we
must ask about how we can account for all the variety and the diversity which exists within the world
as we experience and know it. How is change to be explained or how what causes things to change
within our world?27 In other words, or more precisely, in asking these two sets of questions, the presocratics posed the problem of the “One and the Many” which became a standing problem for later
philosophers in their attempts to reduce diversity and multiplicity to an intelligibly understood unity
and then, from this unity, move back toward a comprehensive understanding of many different things
as these things exist together.28 By a form of analysis (or resolution), we move toward a first principle
or a set of first principles which can be used to explain all things and then, by a form of synthesis (or
composition), we apply or work from one or more first principles to explain all other things in terms of
how they all derive or are ordered by a government which, in some way, first principles exercise
through the kind of being which belongs to them. How, in an explanation, do we combine that which
never changes with that which is always changing? How can one be derived from the other? How too
can we go back and forth from one to the other?
Thales of Miletus (fl.c.585 BC29), the "father of demonstrative geometry," (“universally believed to
have introduced geometry [abstract geometry]30 into Greece”31) is regarded as the first man to whom
the name of "wise" was given i.e., the Seven Sages of Greece. 32 He was a politician, geometer,
astronomer, engineer, and a thinker who lived in Miletus. He traveled widely and visited Egypt where
he is said to have calculated the height of a pyramid by measuring its shadow at the precise moment
when the length of his own shadow was equal to his height.33 He is credited with making advances in
mathematics which moved beyond purely pragmatic concerns to theoretical generalizations expressed
in theorems34 and also with correctly predicting the solar eclipse in 585 BC. He was not interested in
26Aristotle Metaphysics A, 983b6ff.
27John Lawrence Hill, After the Natural Law How the Classical Worldview Supports Our
Modern Moral and Political Values (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2016), p. 21.
28Stewart, Introduction to Philosophy or Lonergan for Beginners, p. 20.
29Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R., A History of Ancient Western Philosophy (New York: Appleton,
Century, Crofts, Inc., 1959), p. 6.
30Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe
(London: Penguin Books, 1989), p. 22.
31Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 52.
32Richard Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners (New York: Writers and Readers Publishing,
1992), p. 5; Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 6.
33Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy, trans. Paulette
Møller (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994), p. 32.
34Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 53-4.
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myth but in knowledge of the world and the stars (using his knowledge of the stars “to try to explain
rationally the nature of the heavenly bodies themselves and their movements” 35); he was a practical
thinker who asked about the unity of things, working from observation of natural phenomena. 36
“Aristotle...refers to Thales as the first person to have relied upon experience and evidence for his
explanations rather than just retelling the [old] divine myths.” 37 Significantly, “it was Thales who first
attempted to explain the variety of nature as the modifications of something in nature.”38
Thales...says the principle is water (for which reason he declared that the earth rests on
water), getting the notion perhaps from seeing that the nutriment of all things is moist,
and that heat itself is generated from the moist and kept alive by it...., and from the fact
that the seeds have a moist nature, and that water is the origin of the nature of moist
things.39
Water is the basic substance and it explains change. Arche ton panton hudor. “The principle of all
things is water.”40 This water in Thales can be described as a species of “plasm” 41 or seminal fluid. It
is “impregnated with life.”42 Thales had a primeval or primitive notion of water as an underlying,
basic, fundamental vital stuff (it is utterly lacking in any form and so it is lacking in any specifications
of intelligibility, having no nature of its own) although this vital stuff functions as a principle of unity
in its connection with life in general. From water all things emerge (for instance, air is evaporated
water)43 and, throughout change, all things remain fundamentally identified as water. “An active
magnet and an active worm are both of them water and nothing but water.” 44 This is true even if no
explanation is ever given or no explanation has come down to us about how exactly this occurs (how,
through change and time, stability endures) although, as one argument which suggests or which points
to the “fundamentality” of water, it can be noted and it was noted at the time, according to Aristotle's
testimony that, if you push a log or any wood that is floating on water down into the water, temporarily
submerging it, the wood in question will always resurface and float again on the water's surface).45
In the context of Thales's thought, the kind of water that he refers to is to be regarded as an abstraction
albeit, a particular species. It is something that is taken from our experience of water as a species of
matter although, given the lack of form or the lack of intelligibility in determining and identifying the
kind of species which belongs to this species of matter, the species of matter which is employed or
35Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 11.
36Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 10.
37Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Beginning of Philosophy, trans. Rod Coltman (New York:
Continuum, 2000), p. 16.
38Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 68.
39Aristotle, Metaphysics A, 983b20ff. Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 31, cites the same text
for his claim that, according to Aristotle, “every animal's life begins in seminal fluid.”
40Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M, Philosophia Perennis Volume 1 An Introduction to Philosophy as
Wisdom (Richmond, VA: Saint Benedict Center, 1995), p. 92.
41Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 12.
42Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 11.
43Koestler, Sleepwalkers, p. 22.
44Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 52.
45Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 57; Gadamer, Philosophy, p. 78; p. 85, citing
Aristotle, Metaphysics.
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which is proposed by Thales is to be regarded as fundamentally ambiguous. It is indeterminate,
homogeneous in this sense. In Thales's notion of water, the absence of form in understanding is joined
with an absence of concreteness which would directly refer to the acts and the data which belong to our
acts of human sensing. We cannot point to the kind of water which encapsulates or accurately
represents the notion of Thale's “basic stuff” even if, with Thales and others who descend from the
teaching of Thales and who belong to the Milesian Ionian school of thought, that which exists in fact as
the “basis stuff” from which all else emerges or passes into is something which is extended in space,
occupying space according to the manner of its existence.46
On a side note, Thales’s interest in water is perhaps explained, to some extent, by his travels in Egypt
where he would have observed how the crops began to grow as soon as the floods of the Nile receded
from the land areas of the Nile Delta. Perhaps he also noticed that frogs and worms appeared wherever
it had just been raining.
With respect however to the possible form or the line of Thales's argument: if there is change thus
(instead of chaos), since there must be some thing which changes and yet does not change, what could
this be?47 What substance must underlie grass to allow it to be transformed into milk? Since Thales
was familiar with the four elements of air, fire, water, and earth, in assuming that all things must
ultimately be reducible to one of these four, water is the most obvious in terms of its transformations:
rivers turn into deltas, water into ice, then back into water, which in turn can be changed into steam
which becomes air, and air, in the form of wind, fans fire. Hence, all things are composed of water.
This is an obvious explanation given the phenomenon of growth and development. Within water there
exists a self-moving, generative force. The two are not clearly distinguished: water as a material
principle and water as an active principle.
When we look at fragments of texts that have come to us about the teachings of Thales and if we attend
to Milesian conceptions of the world, it should become obvious to us that “Thales conceived the world
of nature as an organism: in fact, as an animal.” 48 The world (the earth and the heavens) is “ensouled.”
It is a “living organism or animal.” It accordingly has its own form of self-movement if, in fact, it is
living and if, in fact, anything which exists with a soul of its own is to be understood as capable of its
own kind of self-movement. Within the larger organism, lesser organisms are said to exist with souls
of their own. Every distinguishable thing that is characterized by its own degrees of self-movement is
to be regarded in itself as “a living organism in itself and also [as] a part of the great living organism
which is the world,” the earth being one of these organisms which, in its condition, in its selfmovement, floats upon a body of water and grazes on the water, “repairing its own tissues and the
tissues of everything in it by taking in water from this ocean and transforming it, by processes akin to
respiration and digestion, into the various parts of its own body.” Everything is passing away and so
“in need of constant renewal or replacement.” However, despite the self-movement which exists in
every kind of living thing, the self-movement which exists does not explain itself. The vital processes
which pertain to the life of the greater “cosmic animal” accordingly have God as their primary agent.
The world depends on God for the kind of being that it has, God being not an architect but, instead, a
magician who sets up a process of differentiation within an undifferentiated primary matter which
46Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 51.
47Donald Palmer, Looking at Philosophy: The Unbearable Heaviness of Philosophy Made
Lighter, 6th ed. (London: McGraw Hill, 2012), pp. 12-15.
48Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 32; p. 73.
10
functions as a base, a point of departure.49
While this conclusion is today rejected in terms of content, its form and presupposition are highly
valued: in terms of form, it is no great leap to go and say that "all things are composed of atoms" and,
with respect to presupposition, an ultimate stuff is said to exist behind appearances: it explains change
while remaining unchanged in itself.
Thales, too,...seems to have held soul to be a motive force, since he said that the magnet
has a soul in it because it moves the iron.50
Certain thinkers say that the soul is intermingled in the whole universe, and it is perhaps
for that reason that Thales came to the opinion that all things are full of gods.51
Thales had a notion of psyche as a principle of explanation given a new question which asked about the
psyche or conscious self given a statement about magnetism: "the magnet has a soul" and "all things
are full of gods"52 While the meaning is unclear, perhaps, seeing how the black earth was the source of
everything from flowers and crops to insects and cockroaches, he imagined that the earth was filled
with tiny invisible "life-germs" or perhaps his statements avert to a hidden power in things since
everything is filled with mysterious forces (perhaps the first hint of any kind that the psyche explains
the source of motion)
Please note that Thales’s ruminations about psyche possibly represents a move, on his part, away from
a material or a materialist type of monism which refers to the primacy of an all encompassing material
principle toward a more sophisticated view of things that would begin to speak about the existence and
the importance of an immaterial, intelligible principle which portends the possible and the later
emergence of an intellectual type of monism that would want to speak about the primacy of immaterial
things and the primacy of an immaterial principle which would hold forever and which is to be
understood as the fundamental point of origin for the being of all other things. 53 On the other hand
however, it can probably can be said about Thales that he was a hylozoist. “All matter is animated.”
Matter and form have not been clearly distinguished from each other.
Anaximander of Miletus (c.610-c.546), cited as a teacher of Hecataeus,54 and “known in Greek
49Collingwood, Idea of Nature, pp. 33-34.
50Aristotle De An., I 2,405a19-21; Oxford tr. (DK, 11A 22).
51Aristotle De An., I, 5,411a7-8; Oxford tr. (DK, 11A 22). Hence, if Aristotle faithfully reports
these alleged teachings or beliefs of Thales (and others of his ilk), it can be argued that the immanence
of forms within matter is not originally an Aristotelian notion (not originally an Aristotelian teaching)
but, instead, a notion or a belief that comes to us from earlier teachings and earlier understandings that
have existed about the nature of the world and how it can be said that matter and form relate to each
other although, undoubtedly, in the hands of Aristotle, within his science, this teaching about the
immanence of forms was given a species of technical formulation. Cf. Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p.
59.
52Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 32.
53Adrian Pabst, Metaphysics: The Creation of Hierarchy (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), p. 6.
54Albin Lesky, History of Greek Literature, trans. James Willis and Cornelius de Heer
11
tradition as the countryman, pupil, associate, and successor of Thales,” 55 constructed the first map of
the world for the explorer-merchants of Miletus and he also wrote a treatise on the nature of the
universe (the order of the world which, as a cosmos, exists as an ordered whole). It is the earliest
cosmology that we have from within the birth of science and philosophy in the Greek world. 56 The
earth was seen to be freely suspended in space “as a solid cylindrical body.” 57 Instead of gods and
goddesses that are to be associated and identified with the the being of various stars and planets and so,
from this, divine movements that are to be espied and explained from our earthly vantage point as
onlookers (according to the teaching of Babylonian and Egyptian conceptions, dating from
approximately 3000 BC, if not earlier),58 the heavenly bodies exist as compressions of air that, as
matter, are already known by us in a rudimentary, preliminary way within the context of our current
experience and knowledge of material things. Similarly, extraterrestrial movements are to be explained
by mechanical kinds of movement which also belong to the compass of our current experience and
knowledge as this pertains to the external kind of movements which belong to earthly objects. Instead
of a sun god who is traveling in his boat across the sky, the sun should be conceived to exist as if it is a
hole in a rotating wheel that is filled with fire and rotation of the wheel explains why the sun is present
to us at certain times and why it is not present at other times. 59 Hence, through this kind of thinking: a
common law or the same set of laws (one order of laws) is postulated to encompass, for the first time,
the kind of being which exists on earth and the extraterrestrial kind of being which exists outside of our
immediately existing material world. An identical set of laws pertaining to mechanical kinds of
rotating motion applies to all moving rotating objects: whether on earth or not on earth. 60 Our world, in
all its fullness, possesses a fundamental oneness in an intelligibility that is commonly shared and
participated in, all pointing to an overarching unity which transcends other ways of thinking and any
conceptions which would want to speak about the world as if it were divided into two parts, consisting
of two different orders, two different stories, or two different levels that are informed by different laws
where one set of laws applies to one sphere and another, a second sphere. From the initial creation and
the employment of the material analogies that Anaximander favors, other analogies can then be found
in a way which can add to the intelligibility of the world in a way which is constituted by the being of
but one single perspective.61
(London: Methuen, 1966), p. 220. See Appendix I for an account of Hecataeus.
55Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 12.
56Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of
Western Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 26.
57Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 33.
58Koestler, Sleepwalkers, p. 19.
59Koestler, Sleepwalkers, p. 23.
60Kuhn, Copernican Revolution, p. 27.
61Please note here that a unified view of the universe which thinks in terms of a common set of
applicable laws was an achievement which has largely come to us from the 17th Century, given the
pioneering work of Copernicus, relatively speaking, and the later achievements of Galileo Galilei and
Sir Isaac Newton. From the 4th Century BC until the 17th Century, an understanding of the universe
which thought in terms of two distinct spheres was widely regarded as both mandatory and normative.
It was how we were to think about the order of things in our universe. The parameters which referred
to the kind of the universe which comes to us from Anaximander were not widely known or accepted
until a much later period in the history of astronomy and in the wake of developments in thinking and
understanding which were only anticipated in a rudimentary and elementary way by the kind of
thinking and the suppositions that we find in Anaximander's analysis. Why assume that one world
12
As we move from the realm of heavenly spheres toward the movement of things which exist within our
world, on a more humble note, with respect to our proximate world as this is accessible to us within the
context of our ordinary experience, Anaximander adds to our understanding of the world by suggesting
that all living creatures have somehow arisen from water and that men have evolved from fish.62
According to Anaximander, as a point of departure that we should use for our understanding of all
things (hence, a new understanding of the world which rejects any kind of thinking which would try to
picture it as a species of closed box, as a “circular disk floating on water”):63
...the first principle of existing things is the unlimited [the apeiron];...but into those from
which the existing things have their coming to be, do they also pass away [alternatively,
“The unlimited is at the beginning of the whole. There, where existing things have their
origin, their becoming, their passing away also takes place”], 64 according to necessity;
for they give justice and make amends to one another for their injustice, according to
the ordering of time.65
Anaximander questioned Thales’s formulation about the primacy of water: since, if all things were
water, then long ago everything would have returned to water, how could water have become the
deadly enemy of fire?66 How can a quality give rise to its opposite? How can one element become
another especially if the first and alleged primary element is unlimited? 67 “Why, if the various kinds of
natural substances are all made of the same original matter, do they behave in different ways?” 68
Hence, since the ultimate stuff behind the four elements cannot be itself one of the elements, it has to
be an intermediate, unobservable, unspecific, infinite, indeterminate something-or-other, an unnamed,
called "the unlimited,” “the indefinite,” or “the borderless” (“an indeterminate something” that is
signified in Greek as aoriston ti or more simply as apeiron): "all things arise out of the boundless."
This "unlimited" or “boundless,” this “indefinite” or “indeterminate” designates the single primary
substance of the world (which exists as a kind of prime matter)69 within which a natural law exerts
belongs to us as human beings (we live within this world) and another world belongs to deities of one
sort or another who happen to live within in? Is distance a sufficient reason for distinguishing these
two worlds from each other in a way which effects or which entails some kind of complete separation?
Why not assume that the kind of motion which exists on earth is none too different from the kind of
motion which pertains to the movement of heavenly bodies? Cf. Kuhn, Copernican Revolution, pp. 2729.
62Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 6.
63Koestler, Sleepwalkers, pp. 22-23.
64Gadamer, Philosophy, p. 86, giving an another translation.
65Fr. 1, found in Simplicius, Phys., 24.14-20; cf. 150.20-25 but quoting from the Physical
Opinions of Theophrastus.
66Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, pp. 15-16.
67Aristotle Phys. III, 204b24.
68Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 37.
69Hill argues in his After the Natural Law, p. 22, that, proleptically from Anaximander's notion
of apeiron, Aristotle obtained his notion of prime matter as this came to exist within his understanding
of metaphysics as an ontological principle or constituent of being which needs to be invoked in order to
explain the being of contingent things as these things exist within the world of our ordinary, contingent
13
itself to maintain a seesawing balance between the different elements as they encroach on each other
and as they make reparations to one another.70 Water douses fire or heat absorbs moisture. Reality is
thus more complex than what first appearances suggest. At the beginning of things a primordial
mixture containing all the known elements existed. Change (differentiation) is explained, however, by
the influence or the causality of an immanent, eternal, rotating motion that, from an undifferentiated
mixture of things that are all somehow lumped together, separates and distinguishes “the opposites hot
and cold, moist and dry, and so on.”71 A metaphor describes this process of separating out, separating
off, differentiation, i.e., “a court scene in the marketplace of an Ionian city-state” 72: “time, the judge,
evens out the tensions arising among things from their respective encroachments upon one
another...darkness at night is succeeded by...light during the day...cold...by...heat in summer....”
“Injustice” alternates with “reparation.”73 The result is the emergence of a plurality of worlds who exist
spatially outside each other and who individually exist also in a divine way as a god.
In this less materialistic view which is more abstract and philosophical, the world (the universe) is a
mixture of opposing qualities which are best interpreted not as distinct properties but which are cited
instead as substantive things: for example, “the hot,” “the cold,” “the wet,” and “the dry.” A primary
substance cannot be defined since opposed things within it are somehow fused together in a
constitutive indistinct relation.74 The “boundless” is characterized by the following four attributes. It is
(1) immortal (“eternal and ageless,” “deathless and indestructible”). It is to be identified with God.
Since all created things are limited, the source of all things must be something other than created
things. It is unlimited or infinite since it has no boundaries: no beginning and no end. It is like a circle
or a sphere which has no beginning or end.75 It (2) governs everything: it “encompasses all and steers
all things.”76 Anaximander’s theory offers a primitive theory of evolution given his talk about an
obscure process of separating out through the opposition of one quality to another in the world as in
wet versus dry or hot versus cold... This evolutionary process is also organic since it is a process that
begins from a seed or a cosmic egg. 77 Heat is the first agent of change: drying up moisture and acting
on moisture to produce animal life. 78 Our world is only one of a myriad of worlds that evolve and
dissolve in something called the “boundless.” 79 It has (3) unity and neutrality although concrete things
are plural and specific. It is (4) invisible. This quality denotes the appearance of a distinctively
philosophic attribute since, for the first time, an invisible, non-perceptible principle is used to try to
explain the empirical world. The meta-empirical explains the empirical since the empirical world is not
in itself intelligible.
experience.
70Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 16.
71Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, pp. 13-14; as Collingwood, Idea of Nature,
p. 37, cites Anaximenes: “...opposites are differentiated and segregated out of the original
undifferentiated matter by its rotary movement.”
72Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 14.
73Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 84.
74Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 79.
75Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 84-85.
76Aristotle Ph., III 4,203b11-14; DK, 12A 15.
77Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 91; Gadamer, Philosophy, p. 89.
78Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 92-93.
79Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 32.
14
He was the first to posit it as unlimited, so that he could make use of it
unstintedly for the generation of things.80
A problem arose, however. His followers asked: "how much better is an ‘unspecific, indeterminate
something-or-other’ than nothing at all?"81 Hence, Anaximander’s principle is the same as nothing at
all and, since from nothing comes nothing, one must search for some kind of ultimate stuff until one
finds it.
Anaximenes of Miletus (c.570-c.525), was a pupil of Anaximander who held, with Thales, that the
earth is flat like a table although “borne upon air” 82 and not floating on water. Little is known of his
life.
As our soul, being air, keeps us together, so do breath and air encompass the whole
cosmos83 or, in the wording of another translation: Just as our soul, being air, holds us
together, so do breath and air surround the whole universe.84
As a scientist who preferred, with Anaximander, to take a mechanical view of things in his belief that
changes (or differentiations) should be explained mechanically, he identified the basic ultimate stuff
accounting for all natural change as some sort of primeval air or vapor since all changes occur as the
result of a process of condensation and rarefaction: in this case with respect to the nature or the origins
of our world, a condensation and rarefaction which occurs with respect to the utility of primeval air and
the kind of motion which exists when we refer to the kind of inner causality which exists with respect
to how the world exists in the way that is does.
To explain thus why different kinds of things behave differently in our world, according
to Anaximenes, as an experiment or apt demonstration which points to a first principle,
we should attend to how or why a man can blow a breath which is sometimes hot and
which is sometimes cold. As Collingwood phrases the kind of argument that, allegedly,
we can find in the longest surviving fragment which we have from Anaximenes: “It all
depends...on whether you blow with your mouth wide open or nearly shut. Open your
mouth wide when you blow, and your breath will come out warm. Blow with your lips
close together, and it comes out cold. What is the difference between the two cases?
Only this: that when you blow with your mouth wide open the air comes out at a low
pressure, whereas when you blow with your lips nearly closed the air is compressed.” 85
Differences in air pressure accordingly account for how different things exist in our
world; all the differences which emerge in a way that, in turn, distinguishes the being of
all different kinds of things which exist within our world. The rate of motion in moving
80Simplicius, In Cael., 615.15-16; DK, 12A 17.
81Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 20.
82Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 19.
83Fr. 2.
84Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 12. Hence, in n. 1, Sullivan argues that this is “the
first instance in the history of philosophy of the comparison between man and the world, the view that
man is a microcosm, a world in miniature, or conversely that the macrocosm, the great world, is like
man magnified.”
85Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 38.
15
air either condenses it or it rarefies it. Into the matter or the phenomenon of motion or
movement, an intelligibility is introduced; or an intelligibility is discovered perhaps for
the first time.
Within this general context thus, primeval air exists in itself as a formless, invisible matter from which
all things were made.86 It is, on the one hand, divine in an immanent way as a species of material
substance although, on the other hand, it is divine in a transcendent way if it is conceived to exist as a
wrapping or an envelop which holds our world together.87 It is one and unlimited (existing in three
dimensions à la Anaximander)88 although per se it is not indeterminate in terms of how it exists.89 It
exists, rather, as a “determined body”90 which becomes visible to us through “the cold and the hot and
the wet and the moving.”91 Through a rotating, eternal, vital, inner motion or process which exists
within the materiality of primeval air (despite the invisibility of this air), condensations and
rarefactions, as these processes come and go, account for the different things which come to exist
within the universe,92 a universe which is constituted by a plurality of worlds who differ from each
other in terms which refer to the ordering of a temporal succession, one world in its existence
succeeding another in its existence. Through this immanent, inner motion, condensed portions move to
the center of the universe, forming the earth while rarefied portions move to the periphery, forming the
stars.93 The same amount of matter can occupy a larger space or a smaller space (matter and space
referring to each other in the absence of any kind of real distinction that would exist between them). 94
Winds, clouds, and mist exist, for instance, as condensed air, and water exists also as condensed air
since we observe that, when it rains, water is pressed from the air, and when water is pressed even
more, it becomes earth (mud, dirt, and stone) since perhaps, in his experience, Anaximenes had seen
how earth and sand were pressed out of melting ice.95 The ordinary air we experience (so-called
"commonsense" air) is to be regarded as a half-way house between all other forms into which
"primordial air" can be transformed through condensation and rarefaction.96 The rarefaction of air
leads to steam, smoke, and fire. Change is constant within the universe and the key for understanding
change is the variation of quantity which occurs either through the condensation or rarefaction. Hence:
all differences in quality are reducible to differences in quantity (more stuff being packed into a
specific space or a looser packing of matter with the same size of space), an idea with which many
scientists would accept in our day. Different arrangements within space as a consequence of the kind
of motion which exist in variations of air pressure account for why different things in our world behave
in different ways.97 Instead of a single substance of some kind which accounts for the existence of
things, more principally, the explanation is the existence of a varying arrangement of things (a species
of formal determination: configuration or form instead of matter and the indeterminacy which belongs
86Flanagan, Quest for Self-Knowledge, p. 27.
87Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 36.
88Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 36.
89Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 19.
90Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 19.
91Hippolytus, Ref., 1,7,2; DK, 13A 7.
92Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 19.
93Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 36.
94Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 73.
95Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 32.
96Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 20.
97Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 39.
16
to matter when it is considered apart from the being of any kind of form or intelligibility) although, as
we have already noted, in Anaximenes, air is seen to exist as a primitive substance, lying in some way
at the origin of earth, water, and fire. It is common to all things although what is primary now is not
this common denominator but, instead, the natural changes which are undergone by this substance and
the kind of change which occurs within the kind of motion or movement which is proper to the being of
our physical world.
Xenophanes
Xenophanes was still more critical. He rejected the multitude of anthropomorphic gods;
for him, god was unity, perfect in wisdom, operating without toil, merely by the thought
of his mind. In contrast, human wisdom was imperfect, caught in semblance, but still
the best of the virtues and, indeed, to be attained by long seeking.98
Xenophanes of Colophon (c.570-c.470)99 came from an inland Ionian city 15 miles north of Ephesus.
He is regarded as a philosopher by some and not by others. His status is ambiguous. He is regarded by
some as the founder of the Eleatic school of thought in science and philosophy. 100 His surviving
writings are all in verse (118 lines) and it seems that he functioned as a professional rhapsodist and poet
who traveled about Greece and lived by reciting his own poems instead of the Homeric epics recited by
the traditional rhapsodists.101 Aristotle and Theophrastus did not believe that his verses contained any
cosmological teaching even if some claimed much later that, for him, earth is the first principle of
everything: “from earth are all things and to earth all things return...” 102 In general, today, he is
regarded as more a poet who did not attempt to articulate a well thought out philosophy.
Xenophanes did not make anything very clear, nor does he appear to have grasped the
nature of either of these two kinds of unity [monism versus pluralism], but gazing upon
the whole heaven he says that the One is god.103
In theology, he initiated early philosophical criticism of Homer by making the following two points.
First, the gods and goddesses of Homer's verse frequently behaved in an immoral fashion (in a manner
which bespeaks human beings but which does not befit divine beings).
Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods everything that is a shame and reproach
among men, stealing and committing adultery and deceiving each other.104
98Lonergan, Method in Theology, p. 91.
99Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 363.
100Koestler, Sleepwalkers, p. 24.
101Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 23.
102Xenophanes, as cited by Koestler, Sleepwalkers, p. 24.
103Aristotle, Metaphysics A 5,986b22-24 cited by Owens, History of Ancient Western
Philosophy, p. 25.
104G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a
Selection of Texts (Cambridge: University Press, 1962), p. 168.
R. C. Jebb in Homer: An Introduction to the Iliad and the Odyssey, p. 88, notes that, in the
history of literature, this quotation citing Homer contains the earliest mention of Homer's name in an
existing extant text. A poem written earlier by Callinus (fl.c.690 BC) mentions Homer but the poem is
17
Second, and more fundamentally, in Homer (fl.c.850) an anthropomorphic characterization
distinguishes how one should understand the nature which properly belongs to the gods and goddesses
of ancient Hellas. As Xenophanes noted:
...mortals consider that the gods are born, and that they have clothes and speech and
bodies like their own.
The Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs
have light blue eyes and red hair.
But if cattle and horses or lions had hands, or were able to draw with their hands and do
the works that men can do, horses would draw the forms of the gods like horses, and
cattle like cattle, and they would make their bodies such as they each had themselves.105
Please note thus a possible obvious parallel to ideas that were expounded many centuries later by the
German philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach (d.1872): a projection of Homer's imagination explains the
gods and goddesses of Homer's verse. From the thoughts, dispositions, and self-expressions of a man
comes the god or gods who, by their portrayal and depiction, reveal the character and condition of a
man's relation to himself.106
In a change of approach that perhaps begins to introduce a new theology of God, Xenophanes notes as
follows:
There is one god, among gods and men the greatest, not at all like mortals in body and
mind.107
He sees as a whole, thinks as a whole, and hears as a whole.108
lost.
As a supplementary note, it is worth noting that, according to Moses Hadas, A History of Greek
Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), p. 40, late in the 5th Century BC, the comic
poet and playwright Aristophanes (c.450-c.385 BC) made similar criticisms of Euripides (c.480-c.406
BC): aesthetic considerations aside, Euripides's poems and plays merit censure because of the
toleration which they extend to a life of moral turpitude. He portrays heroes as "lame and scattered"
and his heroines as "love sick or incestuous."
105Kirk and Raven, Presocratic Philosophers, pp. 168-169.
106Ludwig Feuerbach, "God as a Projection of the Human Mind: From The Essence of
Christianity", in The Existence of God, ed. by John Hick (New York: Macmillan Company, 1966), pp.
191-2. In What is God? How To Think About the Divine, p. 40, besides the name of Ludwig Feuerbach
and that of Mark Twain, John F. Haught lists the names of five important thinkers who have
propounded a projection theory accounting for the origin of belief in God: Voltaire, Marx, Nietzsche,
Durkheim, and Freud.
107Fr. 23; tr. Freeman, cited by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 23.
108Fr. 24; tr. Freeman, cited by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 24.
18
But without toil he sets everything in motion, by the thought of his mind.109
And he always remains in the same place, not moving at all, nor is it fitting for him to
change his position at different times.110
Hence, "it is good always to show respect for the gods": "men of good sense ought to praise god first
with well-spoken accounts and pure words."111 Judging from these surviving fragments, for
Xenophanes, the divinity of God is to be interpreted non-anthropomorphically. 112 God is unlike us.
His probable bodily shape is akin to a sphere.113 He is one, unity and “identical with the universe.” 114
He is self-sufficient and not to be viewed as involved in a hierarchy of gods with some more powerful
than others.115 He is perfect in wisdom, operating without toil, merely by the thought of his mind. 116 In
contrast, human wisdom is imperfect, caught in semblance (opinion), but still the best of the virtues
and, indeed, to be attained by long seeking.
And no man then has seen the truth nor will there ever be any who knows about the gods
and all the things that I mention. For if he should succeed in the highest degree in
saying something completely correct, nevertheless he himself does not know it; and
‘seeming’ is wrought upon all things [= but in all things there is opinion117].118
Let these things be reputed as similar to what is true [as resembling the truth119].120
Sensation is relative, varying from person to person.121
If God had not made yellow honey, men would think figs were much sweeter.122
Painstaking human inquiry is worth doing for the fruit that accrues in terms of a more developed human understanding. An notion of progress is implied.
The gods did not reveal to men all things in the beginning, but in the course of time, by
109Fr. 25; tr. Freeman, cited by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 24.
110Fr. 26; tr. Freeman, cited by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 24.
111Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorokraiker 9th ed., edited by Walter Kranz (Berlin,
1960), quoted by Laszlo Versenyi, Man's Measure: A Study of the Greek Image of Man from Homer to
Sophocles (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974), p. 132.
112Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 373.
113Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 376-7.
114Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 377.
115Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 373.
116Lonergan, Method in Theology, p. 91.
117Fr. 34 cited by Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 395.
118Fr. 34, cited by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 24.
119Fr. 35, cited by Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 396.
120Fr. 35, cited by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 25.
121Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 402.
122Fr. 38, cited by Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 401.
19
searching, they find out better.123
In conclusion, the Milesian school represents an advance in critical analysis which can be summarized
in the following terms. First, this stage of analysis, as preliminary, lacks distinctions that arose later
and which have since become common. There is no distinction (no clear unambiguous distinction), for
instance, between form and matter or between soul and body. Anything identified as a basic principle
of explanation is regarded as vital and so it is to be regarded as the source of its own motion and
activity. Second, the world of physical nature is regarded as itself self-causing or as self-moving and
one searches within this nature for the internal causes that are constitutive of the movements which
exist within nature and which are constitutive of the world which exists about us. Third, explanation
does not posit as a basic principle of explanation anything which is both definitive and non-material.
One’s basic principles are either totally indefinite, undifferentiated, homogeneous, and indeterminate
(hence, they cannot be identified at all) or they are something which seems to be material although the
exact status of this materiality is ambiguous or, less harshly, it seems or it appears to be ambiguous.
Fourth, material basic principles are supposed to exist as correlatives of our sensing experience. They
are that which is seen, tasted, heard, touched, and smelt. However, as, for instance, in Anaximenes’s
postulate of primordial or basic air which cannot be directly experienced by us through any of our
human acts of sense, these material principles are not pure in their materiality. They do not exist as
purely material correlatives (perhaps unlike the water or the moisture of Thales’s water, depending on
the interpretation that is given about the explanatory status of Thales's water: how primitive is it? How
similar is it to our experience of water?). However, as impure or as mixed correlatives of sense
experience, it follows from this that these basic material principles all occupy a species of intermediate
status. They are not entirely or fully given to us within our experiences of sense and, at the same time
too, they are not fully or entirely given to us within any kind or species of transcendent experience.
They do not exist as pure correlatives that belong to our different acts of understanding since they
possess properties and attributes that belong to our different acts of human sensing, attributes which
can be sensed by us to some degree within our different acts of seeing, touching, hearing, smelling, and
tasting. The ambiguous status which informs these basic material principles accordingly points to the
beginnings of a form of critical analysis that has not yet fully matured or ripened, a species of analysis
which contains a number of unresolved contradictions, the discovery of these contradictions in turn
leading to corrections of one kind or another which ultimately lead us toward a revision of our
grounding assumptions and a change which, in time, leads to the birth of a new science (a new way of
understanding about how the world of our external experience is to be grasped by us through our acts
of understanding as these acts succeed the kind of knowing which always belongs to us by way of our
prior acts of human sensing).
As an example, for instance, of a contradiction which, initially, less obviously points to the kind of
fallacious reasoning which exists within the Ionian tradition of scientific inquiry (a contradiction which
became more obvious and apparent to ourselves and to others as a consequence of our later subsequent
reflection), in the science or the philosophy of Anaximenes, physical space is seen to exist as
something which is always filled with varying quantities of air (whether as condensed or as rarefracted
or combinations of both although the air as air is always invisible though it allegedly exists as a
material thing). A given space retains the dimensions of its size despite changes in quantity which
could be existing within it. More air, more matter can be pressed into a given space or, conversely, the
quantity of matter which exists within a given space can be lessened or decreased in some way. All
123Fr. 18, cited by Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 399.
20
quantities aside however, from the indeterminacy of the basic substance which entirely fills a given
space, an indeterminacy can be deduced with respect to the condition or the character of the existing
space. The indeterminacy of the space is but a function of the indeterminacy of the co-extensive
matter, the matter which occupies the space of a given space. Within these terms of reference, matter
and space do not differ from each other. They can be identified with each other. An absence of
identity can only be known if we were to believe or argue that the nature of matter within space differs
from the nature of the space which contains the ascribed matter. Each would have an intelligibility that
is distinct from the other.
These things being said thus, given the kind of approach in Anaximenes that is taken with respect to the
materiality of air as air informs the dimensions of a given space, the absence of being as this exists with
respect to the being of a void in space or the emptiness of an assigned space within space is something
which cannot be distinguished from the absence of being which also exists if we should refer to the
indeterminacy of air as this allegedly exists within the parameters of a given space. The absence of
being or the indeterminacy which exists with respect to the being of air cannot be distinguished from
the absence of being or the indeterminacy that would exist with respect to an emptiness which allegedly
exists within a delimited volume of space. Or, in other words, through our speculations and thinking,
through our suppositions and postulations, two kinds of nothingness can be spoken about. Allegedly,
two kinds of nothingness can be distinguished from each other. A first nothingness pertains to a void
in space and a second nothingness pertains to the matter which allegedly exists within the same space.
However, between these two kinds of nothingness, no real distinction is to be alluded to if, in both
cases, indeterminacy or nothingness exists (nothingness as the absence of something which can only
exist and be if it were to exist as a determination of some kind or other). Determination goes with
being. Determination informs being and, paradoxically, absence of determination, with that which
exists as non-being.
Allegedly of course, matter and emptiness or, in other words, matter and absence of matter totally
differ from each other. Each excludes the other since matter is defined the application of spatial
parameters and a corresponding lack of emptiness while on the other hand emptiness, by a lack of
matter which exists to the extent that spatial dimensions are not applicable or determinable. Affirm
one, matter or absence of matter, and one must negate the other. However, if the absence of being
which exists with respect to an empty space is defined by an indeterminancy or an absence of being
which exists with respect to any occupying matter, it would follow from this that, in real terms, “the
conception of matter cannot be distinguished from the conception of [a] void [in space].” 124 In drawing
this type of conclusion however, a contradiction immediately presents itself to us when, operatively, we
realize that voids or instances of empty space cannot be conceived independently of that which exists
for us as matter, a plenum of matter. Given the nature or the meaning of that which exists as matter
(that it exists in some way as a distinguishable thing), that which exists as a void or the intelligibility of
that which exists as a void is foreign or extraneous to that which exists as the meaning or the nature of
matter. In other words or henceforth: that which exists as a void cannot be deduced or obtained from
that which exists as matter since the intelligibility of a void cannot be deduced from the meaning or the
intelligibility of that which exists as matter.
In addition also, by way of supplement, when we think about how indeterminacy differs from
determinacy and how these variables relate to the question of being or the question of real existence, if
124Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 51.
21
we should begin to think about the intelligibility or the nature of matter, in some way, as soon as we do
this, the intelligiblity or the nature of matter is given to us as a species of determination. Perhaps we
can speak about a first determination. Meaningfulness or intelligibility always points to some kind of
determination that exists initially within the form, the shape, or the determinacy of our understanding, a
determination that is directed toward a cognitive awareness of external determinations (the possible
existence of these determinations). This is not that. A distinction initially exists within our minds
although in a manner which is turned toward determinations which would seem to exist within the
world that we are seeking to grasp, understand, and know. However, if, on the other hand, matter is
associated with indeterminacy or with a lack of determinacy or if this association is retained to some
extent in how matter is to be thought about and conceived, the absence of determination will not refer
to an absolute kind of determination or an absolute kind of indeterminacy but, instead, to something
which exists in a relative way and so, if we should want to truly grow in the extent of our
understanding and knowledge, this relativity would be something which we would have to discover and
know about through cognitive operations which would move into a species of verification. However, if
this relativity is not discovered or identified for what it is as a species of determination (a degree of
determinacy existing with and combining with a degree of indeterminacy which would also exist), then,
in the methodology of Milesian Ionian science, its approach is seen to fail through a lack of
comprehensiveness that is understood and known if we were to refer to the presuppositions or the first
principles that are endemic to the practice of this early form of scientific thinking. The form of
analysis is too limited. It cannot move toward a fuller kind of the understanding that can only be given
to us if all relevant variables can be identified and distinguished from each other in a way which points
to distinct roles that each variable plays and the due weight or the influence which also belongs to each
variable. It is a major problem, a major task, to identify all relevant variables which need to be
considered. It is a second major problem, a second major task, to determine how all these variables
relate with each other. A given variable exercises a greater influence to the degree that it is joined to
other variables and not to the degree that it can be seen to exist on its own, by itself, in some kind of
isolation that can be imagined and perhaps, at times, experienced.
The inadequacies of Milesian Ionian science being noted thus, in Anaximenes a shift portends the
genesis of a different type of inquiry because of a change in methodology which is now beginning to
occur. Instead of an exclusive emphasis that had been given to the primacy of an indeterminate species
of primacy substance (or, in other words, in conjunction with the being of this type of focus), another
focus also exists if we attend to a way of thinking that wants to identify quantifiable arrangements that
exist within matter: arrangements that can be measured and perhaps given a value which refers to a
number. Numbers point to the degree or the quantity of density in matter or, conversely, to the degree
or quantity of rarefraction which also exists within matter. Numeric designations can be used to refer
to the structure of our physical, material world. Certain numbers designate the being of certain parts
and differences in number also point to differences which exist among varying parts. In the emergence
of this new interest and the adoption of a new approach, a new way or a new direction is suggested that
can begin to move toward finding determinations which transcend the indeterminacy of an imagined
species of primary matter or the indeterminacy of an imagined species of “basic stuff.” In and about
the neighborhood of Miletus and from the tradition of the Milesians, a new point of departure can be
detected when we think about the possible early education of Pythagoras and the life and work of
which is associated with his name and the school of philosophy and science that has always been
associated with the use of his name.
The Eleatics: Southern Italy and Sicily
22
the formalist approach
They changed the nature of explanation through a shift in basic question. Instead of searching for the
“stuff” from which everything is made, they began to search for the forms, patterns, or structures that
organize or “make intelligible” the basic “stuff.” There was a discovery which occurred here: “matter”
cannot really explain itself and one cannot matter by referring to anther matter. A change occurred in
the manner of questioning and, with respect to the discovery of “forms” as an explanatory principle, it
has been said that this was the most important discovery that was ever made in the history of
philosophy.125
To understand the nature of this shift a bit more fully: try explaining what a tree is by appealing to
something else that you see or by some basic stuff from which all things were made. If you appeal to
something else, like water or air, why would this tree be distinct from those other things? What makes
it different: more water, more air? Likewise, if you say that it is made from some primordial stuff, why
is it different from anything else, since everything else is made from the same stuff?
In a new point of departure, the Eleatics shifted from asking "what is the basic stuff out of which things
are made?" to "what are the forms that made the basic, indeterminate stuff come to be and to behave in
the determinate ways that it does?"126 What accounts for the order of the universe, its kosmiotes?127 In a
change that can be attributed to an inverse insight,128 it was realized that matter is simply not
understandable in itself. Instead, it becomes intelligible in and through the different forms that make
such matter come to be what it is and to behave as it does. The "nature" of things is to be found in their
forms, not in their being as formless matter nor in the being of some underlying primitive substance.
To reiterate: this dramatic reversal was primarily a reversal not in thinking, but in questioning. Earlier
pre-Socratic thinkers questioned with a false assumption though they were unaware of the assumption
and that it was false. To ask about a basic stuff is to ask an unanswerable question if we presume that
the basic stuff lacks any form or determination. The Pythagoreans started Greek thought off onto a
whole new line of inquiry by making new discoveries that led to the posing of a different type of
question that, ultimately, would be more fruitful. Instead of asking about the matter or stuff of things,
they began wondering about the forms or proportions that make different matters come to be the way
they were and are. Plato and Aristotle differed in their answers about what the "forms" were, but they
were still both Pythagorean in the way that they wondered and raised questions. Citing Aristotle with
respect to the beliefs of the Pythagoreans:
...things themselves are numbers...they represent numbers...they [the Pythagoreans]
125Hugo A. Meynell, “How Right Plato Was,” Redirecting Philosophy: Reflections on the
Nature of Knowledge from Plato to Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), p. 241.
126Flanagan, Quest for Self-Knowledge, p. 27.
127Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 226.
128Flanagan’s example of inverse insight in Freud, p. 28: instead of asking why a person
behaves in a strange and unreasonable way (why an inebriated person acts unreasonably), ask why
reasonable people prevent their reasoning from operating so that they can act as if they had no reason
(why does a reasonable person place him or herself in a mental state in which his or her reason cannot
function properly?)
23
supposed the elements of numbers to be the elements of all things and the whole heaven
to be a harmonia and a number...129
...the so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only
advanced its study, but also have been brought up in it they thought that its principles
were the principles of all things.130
Pythagoras of Samos (c.570-c.495 BC), a contemporary of Anaximenes and, perhaps, also a pupil of
Anaximander, he was a curious blend of both scientist and mystic. He was known as a man of wide
learning who had many interests.131 He was also a religious leader who also lead a school of
philosophy (the first time that this has occurred) in a positive relation which exists between science and
religion: in the wording of one judgment which speaks about this relation, “disinterested science leads
to purification of the soul and its ultimate liberation.” 132 If the end or purpose of philosophy is to
contemplate eternal truths (eternal realities), the purpose or end of religion is the contemplation of
mysteries.133
Pythagoras founded a cult that lasted for 400 years which can be described in terms of three aspects or
characteristics. (1) Politically, it originated the idea of small communities who could hold property in
common and where women possessed equal opportunities in education but whose members also could
participate in some responsibilities of the city-state in which they resided. The members of this new
community came to be regarded as radicals who abstained from beans (eating beans was regarded as
cannibalism since one can see that each bean, inside, contains a small embryonic human being); they
abstained from eating whole loaves of bread; they would not sit on a quart measure; and they lived by
esoteric rules based on asceticism, numerology, and vegetarianism. One member of the order,
Hippasos, was said to have been banished for revealing the order’s most closely guarded secret: the
hypotenuse of a triangle is a surd (it cannot be written as a ratio of whole numbers). 134 (2) Religiously,
the Pythagorean order was not inspired by traditional Greek Olympiad religion, but by a more eastern
Orphic mystical tradition with its rites of initiation and purification [katharsis] and its revelations that
was centered about the figure of a fiddling musician named Orpheus, his music functioning as a
principle of order in the world. Through legendary stories that we have about Pythagoras, he was
considered to be an inspired religious leader, blessed with miraculous powers. He espoused belief in
immortality of the human soul and its transmigration or metempsychosis (the belief that, at death, the
soul moves on to inhabit another body).135 Nothing can be said to be absolutely new since the soul is
continually transformed into another living thing in an endless, continuous cycle. Whatever comes into
existence is born again in cyclic revolutions forming recurrent cycles. 136 The soul is itself a harmonia
129Aristotle, cited by Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 220; p. 237.
130Aristotle, Metaphysics, A 5, 985b23-26;Oxford tr. (DK, 58B 4) as quoted by Owens,
History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 34.
131Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, citing Heraclitus and Empedocles, p. 32.
132Koestler, Sleepwalkers, p. 28.
133Plutarch, as cited by Koestler, Sleepwalkers, p. 28, when speaking about the role of
geometry among the Pythagoreans.
134Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 149-50; Osborne, Philosophy for
Beginners, p. 8.
135Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 181.
136Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 7.
24
that is constituted by numbers.137 (3) Ethically, there are two points to note. First, harmony [armonia]
and mathematical proportions are associated with the value of being ethical 138 where, within this
context, opposing impulses are counterbalanced or opposed in a manner which points to a relation of
concordance, an experience of complementarity, and a gathering of notes or elements that is
represented by a species of acoustic property which exists as a harmony of different tones instead of an
experience of sound which would exist as a discordance (the sound, noise and not music). One must
love harmony and the young must be instructed in mathematics, music, and astronomy. Second,
friendship and a feeling for community are important. “Friends have all things in common” is a saying
attributed to Pythagoras.139
Pythagoras was born on the island of Samos opposite Miletus but, disliking the dictatorship of
Polycrates (c. 540-522),140 he traveled to Egypt and then settled for about 20 years in Croton on the
southern coast of Italy where there existed a medical school. He later moved to Metapontum on the
Gulf of Tarentum where he died. His house was made into a temple.
No writings of his survive: only his ideas which were made known by his disciples and which were
possibly developed or modified in various ways by his disciples in ways that preclude our being able to
determine what exactly was his own work versus the developments of later thinkers.141
As a philosopher-scientist, he founded the formalist tradition in western and Greek thought although,
within the Pythagorean tradition, an understanding of the world is maintained or it is retained in a way
which points to the thinking of the Ionian scientific tradition and the continuing influence of
Anaximander and Anaximenes with respect to how the world of our experience is to be viewed and
understood. Citing R. G. Collingwood on this:
Like Anaximander, he pictured the world as suspended in a boundless three-dimensional
ocean of vapor and inhaling nourishment from it.
Like both Anaximenes and
Anaximander, he thought of it as a rotating nucleus in this vapor, having the earth at its
center; the rotary movement serving to generate and segregate opposites. A new
discovery of his own seems to have been that the earth is spherical in shape.142
He studied mathematics in medical school and came to discover something new: the ratios of concord
between musical sounds and number (by halving the length of a string on a lyre, the string will vibrate
twice as fast and one produces a note one octave higher; 143 divide it however into a third or fourth, and
you will likewise change the string’s behavior, the rate of vibration). Changing the ratio changes the
rate of vibration (the way the string behaves where, “in a regular [pulsating] rhythm,” a vibrating string
assumes or falls into a pattern which is constituted by a “determinate series of geometrical shapes”). 144
If one produces the same rhythm on two different strings, one gets the same note. Pythagoras
137Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 307-9.
138Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 32.
139Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 32.
140Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 6.
141Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 49.
142Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 50.
143Flanagan, Quest for Self-Knowledge, p. 27.
144Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 52.
25
accordingly began to discover that a “form” exists within music, and this form cannot be regarded as a
“material” explanation for music since, if this were the case, the sound would exist as a function of the
material that has been used to make a vibrating string. The world within which we live can be
accordingly explained by numbers or ratios of numbers. The experience of a quality can be reduced to
the determination of a number or ratio and, from this, a way of thinking and conception which believes
in a value which accrues to the mathematization of nature and the experience which we have of this
nature.145 The reduction to number adds to the being or the reality of things that we can come to
understand through the apprehension of numbers and the determination of number ratios that can be
used to speak about the existence of proportions, ratios identifying the being of proportions or the being
of relations whose reality is such that they transcend the givens of any relata that are being joined or
connected with each other through the being of a proportion or the being of a relation.
Hence, on the basis of this discovery in acoustics (the order which exists within music serving thus as a
fundamental paradigm), Pythagoras claimed that the central part of reality is not some kind of material
thing but, instead, it is a structure, a relation, a proportion, or, in other words, a form (in Latin, forma)
that can be mathematically represented and constructed in terms of numbers and so, on the basis of this
insight (this hypothesis), we have the origins of a subsequent development within science and
philosophy which gives to idea, schema, or eidos (form in Greek) a meaning which refers to how a
thing looks or appears from our human point of view in terms of an inner and yet obvious “pattern,”
“figure,” or “shape” which is somehow visible to us in its immanence, something which can be directly
seen by us if we should refer to the kinds of figures or shapes that are seen and considered within that
branch of mathematics which is known to us as geometry. Its subject matter is explained by questions
which ask about the shape, size, and relative position of figures and the associated properties of
space,146 and so, from the practice of geometry in the kind of play which belongs to it by way of the use
of numbers, from geometry as a point of departure, we can attend to possible arrangements which can
exist within varying accumulations of matter in a way which transcends the common experience of
matter that we normally have whenever we attend to that which is simply given to us through our
various acts of human sensing.
By way of further explanation, the visibility of geometrical forms as this is given to us
within the play of lines and positions that can be drawn or imagined is to be contrasted
with the play of contours and shapes that can exist within the context of our ordinary
human experience (outside of mathematics). In mathematics, geometric shapes are
abstracted from the kind of shapes that we find within the givens of our ordinary sense
data. These geometric shapes are not distinguished from each other on the basis of their
materiality (the materiality of the inscribed or drawn lines that we can construct at will if
we should wish to tackle a problem as this comes to us within the practice of our
mathematical inquiry and activity).147 Differences are known not through apprehensions
of size or quantity: as, for instance, what is the difference between this triangle and this
other triangle? Is the difference only one of size? Is one triangle bigger or smaller than
another triangle? Between some shapes in geometry, in some cases, the only difference
is undoubtedly a question of size. A given size is bigger than another size. However, as
we attend to all the many different shapes which can exist within the permutations of
145Koestler, Sleepwalkers, p. 28.
146Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometry (accessed February 23, 2016).
147Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 51.
26
geometric form, it should be obvious to us that an explanation of these differences or a
way of speaking about these differences would have to transcend any questions or
determinations that are limited to apprehensions of size, quantity, or magnitude. If
questions of size refer to quantifiable determinations, the other traits or characteristics
which are known or experienced by us within the practice of geometry are to be
regarded as attributes which exist as qualities. That which cannot be quantified can
exist thus as that which exists as a quality. Quantitative differences are succeeded or
they are transcended by another set of differences that can be referred to in terms which
speak about qualitative differences. For examples: of necessity, we can say in a given
case, that this line must always intersect with this other line or this angle must always
equal this other angle despite any differences in the length of lines or the size of angles.
To indicate where necessities exist in mathematics, numbers can be used as a form of
denotation that is not limited to specifications of size and quantity. Numbers can be
used to determine or fix positions: where a given “x” is located relative to where a “y” is
located. The way that numbers are used within the context of our ordinary experience
(as measures of size) can be transcended by how numbers are used within the practice of
mathematics and the kind of experience which belongs to us whenever we engage in
mathematical operations of one kind or another. A greater abstractness always exists
with respect to numbers within mathematics. We move from the data of our ordinary
sensing experience into the kind of data which belongs to the play and the use of
mathematical images and the kind of construction which belongs to the order of
supposition and speculation which is endemic to the kind of thinking which belongs to
the practice of mathematics.
On the basis thus of developments in mathematics and the application of mathematics to the study of
our externally existing world, in the hands of Pythagoras and his followers, our new object of focus in
science and philosophy is turned toward the existence of different patterns or forms and any changes of
pattern or form that can possibly exist within the being of our world (the world within which we
happen to live, exist, and experience). Forms explain not only why certain things have shapes which
typically belong to them but also why they behave in the way that they do, in ways which typically or
normally belong to them, setting them apart from the being of other things. 148 Why, for instance, does
this animal behave in a way which differs from these other animals that we call “cats”? If we happen
to know (even if partially) the form or the intelligibility of a dog and also the form or intelligibility of a
cat, another form could possibly explain why or how these two forms differ from each other and so, to
understand and know about this third form could be the goal of new questions which perhaps we can
ask and have yet to pose. The intelligibility of a form can elicit questions about why it exists with the
intelligibility that it happens to have and so, as a result of this type of inquiry, through the asking of
new further questions, a hierarchical ordering among the different kinds of forms can be found in a
manner which points to the ordering of a world (a cosmos) which, in its own right, is to be regarded as
a form although as a form with a generality which surpasses the applicability or the generality of other
forms. In some cases, according to one approach, forms exist or they inhere within the being of other
forms (for example: the nature or the form of our human understanding exists within another form
which refers to the form or the nature of a human being) while, in other situations, because of a
different approach, the intelligibility of a form at one level is transcended by the intelligibility of a
higher form which exists at a higher level, a form which is able to relate a number of lower forms
148Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 55.
27
together in a manner which points to the intelligibility or the meaning of the unifying, organizing
relation which exists in the intelligibility and meaning of a higher form. If one form exists within
another form, if we begin our inquiry and questions about the being of this higher form, from it, we can
move toward an understanding of forms which exist at a lower level. In any given case or situation,
decisions must be made about what would be the better or the best point of departure if, by our
understanding of one form, we want to move toward another form and a possible understanding that we
can have of it.
From Pythagoras and his school also, other than the emergence of a new focus in our thinking and
analysis and so from this, a new way of speaking (a new order of conceptualization) which comes to us
initially from developments within the discipline and practice of mathematics, it is to be admitted too
that changes within the kind of conceptualization or the kind of symbolization which occurs within
mathematics have also led to changes in the kinds of images that are needed if certain new
developments are to emerge within the practice of mathematics, these developments in mathematics in
turn presaging future developments in any science which uses mathematics as both an investigative tool
and as a way of communicating any discoveries that can be achieved within the practice of this science.
For instance, with respect to a key innovation that comes to us from Pythagoras and which has been
passed down into later forms of scientific inquiry: instead of using letters to represent numbers,
Pythagoras (the Pythagoreans) used dots to identity distinct numbers (to distinguish them from each
other in a manner which was akin to the use of pebbles in the counting of numbers) and soon, as
Pythagoras discovered, if we work with these pebbles or dots to put them into different visible patterns
which would obviously differ from each other in the manner of their configuration, we should find, for
instance, that dots organized into squares always point to the existence of square numbers and, by
adding a succession of odd numbers, in an unending way, we can generate a series of square numbers:
the entire series of square numbers.149 The discovery of a given pattern or figure in a “number-shape”
points to a new distinct ordering of numbers which would accordingly differ from other possible
orderings of numbers. Hence, in some way thus, if we can work and play with different figures or
patterns that can exist among an indeterminate multitude of different numbers, if we can determine new
figures or new patterns which can exist among numbers, we should be able to move toward a
knowledge of other numbers, discovering how other numbers can be known by us or about how,
possibly, they can be produced or generated by us in an orderly, infinite fashion if we should continue
to work with dots and the differing ways that we can combine and organize them. 150 In the new kind of
phantasm or the images that emerged for Pythagoras when he accordingly moved from depicting
numbers as letters to depicting numbers as dots, the new images that were created served to trigger new
acts of understanding in mathematics and science which would have probably not existed if we were
required or if we were forced to work with images that could not point to the possible being or the
possible existence of new forms which are represented by the denotation of new numbers.
Through a mathematization of nature which is initial and incipient, an ordered cosmos - a universe as
something which exists as if “combined into one”151 - this cosmos is accordingly constructed through a
process which can be understood to exist as a generation of numbers. The numbers have both a formal
and a material significance where, in terms of their more important formal significance, all forms can
be determined or defined in terms of numbers and the generation of numbers: through the discovery of
149Koestler, Sleepwalkers, p. 30.
150Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 13-14.
151Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 12.
28
numbers and the construction of new numbers and any ratios which can exist among numbers. 152 An
orderly, ordered universe is thus built out of chaos through the imposition of that which would exist as
a limit on that which would seem to exist as an unlimited and the effect is the construction of
something which would exist as a new limited, a new determination. 153 The subsequent generation of
new numbers is key if, in our understanding of the universe, we are to have an ordering principle that
would function for us as a fundamental point of departure. In the emergence of our world, unformed
matter is converted into numbers and ratios of numbers; hence, into delimitations which accordingly
bring form into that which exists as matter.154 In some form or in some way, within this context, it is
said thus (among the Pythagoreans) that fire exists at the center of the universe.155
Hence, as we attend to the kind of shift which occurs among the Pythagoreans, mathematics ceases to
have a merely practical or commercial utility. As Pythagoras believed or as he seems to have believed:
numbers themselves must be real. If forms are defined or determined by numbers, as things exist both
as form and also as number; the reality of things is to be equated with the reality of form and also with
the reality of number. Numbers are things which are themselves generated from a set of elements:
ultimately, from both the Limited and the Unlimited (the Limited and the Unlimited exist as two
principles) and, secondarily, from the odd, the even, and the unit.156
...they thought that finitude and infinity were not attributes of certain other things, e.g. of
fire or earth or anything else of this kind, but that infinity itself and unity itself were the
substance of the things of which they are predicated. This is why number was the
substance of all things.157
The Unlimited was to be identified with that which exists as the sensible since, according to Aristotle
(in his testimony), “the Pythagoreans place the infinite among the objects of sense (they do not regard
number as separable from these), and assert that what is outside the heaven is infinite.” 158 The
Unlimited or Infinite refers to that which exists as unformed matter, “imaged as breath or air.” 159 It is
inhaled by the heavens.160 In this inhaling, that which exists as void is also inhaled from the Unlimited.
Mathematically, the Unlimited exists as extension but it is an extension that is not delimited or
differentiated by the generation and the imposition of any numbers or figures. 161 It is even while the
Limited is odd. Together, they form the one which then becomes the principle of all other numbers and
of everything else within the universe.162
152Koestler, Sleepwalkers, p. 30.
153Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 247-248.
154Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 279.
155Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 282-293.
156Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 240.
157Aristotle, Metaphysics, A 5, 987a15-19; Oxford tr. (DK, 58B 8) quoted by Owens, History
of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 35.
158Aristotle, Physics, III 4, 203a6-8; Oxford tr. (DK, 58B 28), quoted by Owens, History of
Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 35.
159Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 340.
160Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 35.
161Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 340.
162Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 35.
29
Evidently, then, these thinkers also consider that number is the principle both as matter
for things and as forming both their modifications and permanent states, and hold that
the elements of number are the even and the odd, and that of these the latter is limited,
and the former unlimited; and that the One proceeds from both of these (for it is both
even and odd), and number from the One; and that the whole heaven, as has been said, is
numbers.163
...they say plainly that the one has been constructed, whether out of planes or off surface
or of seed or of elements which they cannot express, immediately the nearest part of the
unlimited began to be constrained and limited by the limit.164
Since the one cannot be reduced to either the Unlimited or the Limited, dualism is basic to the structure
and order of things.165 It is fundamental to the structure and order of reality. When the Unlimited is
drawn or when it is breathed in by the unit, unit-seed, or limiting principle, number is imposed on it to
generate differing series of numbers and distinct forms of matter. Time emerges from a movement or a
duration that had lacked a beginning, an end, or any internal divisions.166 The Limit is the growing
cosmos.167
...they thought that finitude and infinity were not attributes of certain other things, e.g. of
fire or earth or anything else of this kind, but that infinity itself and unity itself were the
substance of the things of which they are predicated. This is why number was the
substance of all things.168
Extending the notion of reality to that which transcends the material domain (as reality ceases to
depend on observation as it becomes something that can be abstracted to, while remaining objective),
Pythagoras discovered that, in pure mathematics, numbers possess their own being and reality. Where
before mathematics had only a practical function, he postulates the being of a pure mathematics that
advances the development of abstraction as numbers become things themselves (realities in their own
right). Numbers are the substance of things and not their attributes. In his appreciation of a purely
speculative or theoretical mathematics, Pythagoras is reputed to have been the first person to have
coined the term “philosopher” or “lover of wisdom” (philosophos).169 The life of a philosopher most
resembles spectators who go to the Great Games. Some go to compete; others to sell wares. However,
some go simply to watch the games. The highest form of life accordingly belongs to the philosopher
who spends his time contemplating truth. The philosopher as a “lover of wisdom” differs from
someone who is a philomythos, a “lover of myth.”
163Aristotle, Physics, IV 6, 213b22-24 (Oxford tr.); cf. Fr. 196, 1513a30-33, DK, 58B 30
quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 35.
164Aristotle, Metaphysics, N 3, 1091a15-18; Oxford tr. (DK, 58B 26), quoted by Owens,
History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 36.
165Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 37.
166Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 340.
167Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 340.
168Aristotle, Metaphysics, A 5, 987a15-19; Oxford tr. (DK, 58B 8) quoted by Owens, History
of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 35.
169Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 32; Strauss, Natural Right and History,
p. 82.
30
Hence: “things are numbers.”170 Ultimately, “all things are numbers.” 171 “The Pythagoreans, because
they saw many attributes of numbers belonging to sensible bodies, supposed real things to be
numbers...”172 As numbers emerged as real things, things are regarded to exist essentially as numbers,
as things which are defined by numbers (although it is to be noted that the early Pythagoreans did not
distinguish between the being of material and formal causes: a number has both a formal and material
significance).173 From a unit-point which is to be equated with the number one, comes lines; then,
surfaces; and then, solids.174 In any case, as a result in the subsequent development of this kind of
thinking, another level of reality emerged with a value that transcended or which went beyond that
which is strictly observed. For example, 2 + 2 = 4 is a proposition which always holds. “Numbers are
eternal while everything else is perishable.”175 The harmony, the balance, the order which exists within
the universe is a result of numbers, and the practice of mathematics will express this harmony and
simplicity in a correlation which exists between the terms and relations of this order and the terms and
relations that are constitutive of mathematical formulas.
A cosmic harmony exists given an
interrelation of things that is based and grounded in numbers. By way of a digression which attends to
questions that ask about the immanence or the transcendence of numbers:
It is also true, allegedly for the Pythagoreans, that “things imitate numbers,” according
to the wording that we find in a report that comes to us from Aristotle. 176 The full
significance is, for some, a matter of dispute. According to this text, as it is more fully
cited:
...the Pythagoreans say that things imitate numbers; Plato that they
participate in them: a purely verbal change.177
On the one hand, the reference to imitation implies transcendence, the transcendent
status of numbers, while, on the other hand, participation implies immanence, numbers
existing within the being of things. However, if Aristotle refers to an alleged
insignificant verbal change that comes to us from Plato on how Plato understands the
teaching of the Pythagoreans with respect to the location status of numbers, it would
seem that no real contradiction exists if we move from the first proposition and first
predicate to the second proposition and second predicate. Numbers exist in both a
transcendent and an immanent way or, in another way of speaking, the transcendence of
numbers implies their immanence and their immanence, their transcendence. No real
170Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 168.
171Koestler, Sleepwalkers, p. 30.
172Aristotle, Metaphysics, N 3, 1090a20-23; Oxford tr. Cf. A 8, 990a21-29 (DK, 58B 22).
173Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 236-8. Later, on p. 326, Guthrie argues
that “the early Pythagoreans were not aware of the inconsistency involved in building a universe out of
numbers. They treated numbers as if they were corporeal (they ‘had magnitude’), but they did not say
to themselves that ‘numbers are corporeal,’ having neither the words in which to say it nor a grasp of
the dichotomy which the words imply.”
174Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 259.
175Koestler, Sleepwalkers, p. 28.
176Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 36.
177Aristotle, Metaphysics, as quoted by Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 61.
31
separation is to be alluded to in how transcendence and immanence are to be understood
(whether we refer to numbers or other kinds of things which can exist). The question
here of a real separation comes to us from other sources (other persons) and perhaps also
in ways that would raise questions about the legitimacy of adverting to some form of
mutual exclusion that would exist between transcendence, on the one hand, and
immanence, on the other hand.178
As we have noted, music exists as a paradigm. Hence, from this, Pythagoras created an entire cosmic
theory on the basis of the circular movement about a circular or spherical earth which, together, creates
a musical harmony or composition which is known as the “Music of the Spheres” (sometimes cited as
the “Harmony of the Spheres”).179 The movement of a given planetary object sounds its own note a
mathematical harmony can be deduced to exist throughout the entire universe since all harmonies can
be represented by ratios of whole numbers, each sound having its own numeric designation in a manner
that can distinguish between tones and semi-tones. By extending this notion of harmonies to all things
in a cosmic theory that is known as the "Music of the Spheres" 180 (the “Harmony of the Spheres”),
through geometry, we can then begin to explore the configuration and shape of perfect solids. For
example, Pythagoras believed that the dodecahedron somehow embodied the structure of the entire
Universe (we recall here that, Mnesarchos, Pythagoras's father had been an engraver of gems and that
Pythagoras would have probably noticed that the forms of different crystals imitated different
numerical shapes: the pyramid and double pyramid in quartz; the hexagon in beryl; and the dodocaeder
in garnet ).181
Practical results followed from measuring and counting everything: for example, applied numbers
occur in music and astronomy (given the harmony of the spheres); in medicine, health is defined as a
178Collingwood, Idea of Nature, pp. 63-65. Collingwood argues that the Pythagoreans largely
conceived of forms as existing immanently within our physical, natural world although, in order to talk
about the character of this immanence, they used “transcendence-language.” Perhaps, we could say
that they used language which comes to us from religious concerns and beliefs. The explanation could
also be an argument which alleges that the immanence of something cannot be discussed without also
speaking about its possible transcendence and vice versa. Each points to the other. However, a third
explanation can be offered to the effect that, in their day and context, the Pythagoreans were not
blessed by understandings which could then point to a clear distinction which exists between sense and
intellect and the contrasting terms which belong to acts of sense versus later acts of understanding.
Lacking an understanding which knows about the reality of certain distinctions thwarts the possibility
of being able to speak in a way that can acknowledge the being of contrasting variables and, at the
same time too, point to interactions which can exist between these variables and how the being of one
variables elicits or points to the being of another variable, variables corresponding to each way which
points how differing variables exist as pairs.
179See Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 167. Adopted by Plato and described
and attested by Aristotle: “this is the view that physical objects moving as rapidly as the heavenly
bodies must necessarily produce a sound; that the intervals between the several planes and the sphere of
the fixed stars correspond mathematically to the intervals between the notes of the octave, and that
therefore the sound which they produce has a definite musical character.”
180Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 23.
181Koestler, Sleepwalkers, p. 31.
32
species of equilibrium (“music purges and cleans the soul”); 182 and, for Plato, mathematics is necessary
for the study of philosophy. Inquiry in science and philosophy occurs from what is self-evident where,
from what is self-evident, we can deduce everything else. Pythagoras was the first to develop a
systematic reason in terms of deductions: we begin with an axiom that is self-evident, and by
proceeding step by logical step, we can come to a conclusion that is far from self-evident in itself and
yet it is true if we have shied away from making any contradictions. Hence, in science and philosophy,
inquiry begins with self-evident axioms.
Later Pythagoreans
Philolaus of Croton or Tarentum (c. 474-400 BC) allegedly wrote On Nature.183 He is credited with
teaching that the soul is an immortal harmonia; solids can be constructed out of points, lines, and
surfaces; the earth, as a free and unattached planet, moves about a central fire. 184 For the first time,
motion is attributed to the earth's being and existence. 185 A pupil, Eurytus, in southern Italy, allegedly
worked out definite numbers for “the respective natures of man, horse, and other living things.” 186
None of his works survive.
Archytas of Tarentum (fl. 388-350 BC), a pupil of Philolaus and a close personal friend of Plato. He
was renowned as an general and politician in the western area of the Greek world. He was also a first
rate mathematician (for instance, by a construction, he solved the problem of how one duplicates a
cube187) and he argued insistently that mathematics is the key for explaining all things in reality.
Correct knowledge of all things is mathematical. The natural world, literally, is constituted by
mathematical objects.
Mathematicians seem to me to have excellent discernment, and it is in no way strange
that they should think correctly concerning the nature of particular existences. For since
they have passed an excellent judgment on the nature of the Whole, they were bound to
have an excellent view of separate things.188
He was interested in problems dealing with pedagogy and in applying numbers and numerical
calculations to determining human morals and conduct. 189 He was known as a leader with respect to
developing the Pythagorean science of harmonics and music (he determined the numerical ratios
between the notes of the tetrachord in three types of scale: diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic 190) and
was the first to systematize mechanics by applying mathematical principles. 191 He invented mechanical
182Koestler, Sleepwalkers, p. 28.
183Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 33.
184Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 333.
185Koestler, Sleepwalkers, p. 43.
186Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 33, citing Aristotle, Metaphysics, N 5,
1092b10-13; DK, 45, no. 3).
187Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 335.
188Fr. 1; tr. Freeman, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 34.
189Fr. 3, cited by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 34; Guthrie, History of
Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 336.
190Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 335.
191Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 34.
33
toys (for example, a dove that flew and a rattle for children).192
Intimations of a Philosophy based on Self-Knowledge?
...a new turn emerged with Heraclitus. He maintained that the mere amassing of
information did not make one grow in intelligence. Where his predecessors were
opposed to ignorance, he was opposed to folly. He prized eyes and ears but thought
them bad witnesses for men with barbarian souls. There is an intelligence, a logos, that
steers through all things. It is found in god and man and beast, the same in all thought in
different degrees. To know it, is wisdom.193
Heraclitus of Ephesus (c.540-475 BC), commonly cited as the “philosopher of change” 194 who was
also cited in later antiquity as the “weeping philosopher” 195 who laughed at the follies of mankind, was
an Ionian from Ephesus and, allegedly, one of Xenophanes’s students, who spoke negatively later in his
writings about Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus. Pythagoras was to be regarded as an
imposter.196 In his singularity, Heraclitus “had no recognizable predecessor in his own type of thinking,
and left no known disciples.”197 He allegedly descended from the high nobility since many of his
sayings evidence a strong bias against democratic tendencies and a sarcastic contempt for the general
run of humanity.198 Bluntly put, as he put it: “most men are bad.” 199 He also criticized the veracity that
was attributed to the truth of Homer’s epic narratives: Homer’s verses merit criticism on both moral
and metaphysical grounds.200
Hence, “Homer deserved to be whipped.”201 Other poets and
philosophers also came under some shape criticism.
192Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 335.
193Lonergan, Method in Theology, p. 91.
194Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 18.
195Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 408-9.
196Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 17.
197Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 52.
198Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 409-13.
199Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 17.
200Philip Wheelwright, Heraclitus (New York: Atheneum, 1964), p. 29 and p. 83. Criticizing
Homer, fragments 27, 92, and 93 bluntly assert as follows:
Homer was wrong in saying, "Would that strife might perish from
amongst gods and men." For if that were to occur, then all things would
cease to exist.
Men are deceived in their knowledge of things that are manifest-even as
Homer was, although he was the wisest of all Greeks. For he was even
deceived by boys killing lice when they said to him: "What we have seen
and grasped, these we leave behind; whereas what we have not seen and
grasped, these we carry away."
Homer should be turned out of the lists and flogged, and Archilochus too.
201Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 17.
34
Much learning (polymathie) does not teach anyone to have intelligence (noos); for else it
would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus.202
His complaints about Pythagoras and the value of factual scientific inquiry indicate that he preferred to
engage in a different type of method, a different type of inquiry: hence, “I searched myself.” 203 The
object is self-knowledge. As Guthrie articulates the meaning of Heraclitus’s method: “I turned my
thoughts within and sought to discover my real self”; “I asked questions of myself”; “I treated the
answers like Delphic responses hinting, in a riddling way, at the single truth behind them, and tried to
discover the real meaning of my selfhood; for I knew that if I understood my self I would have grasped
the logos which is the real constitution of everything else as well.”204
In writings which survive from a unified prose composition that is no longer extant, Heraclitus
expressed himself in poems and epigrams that resemble the oracles and pronouncements of a prophet.
As he himself noted:
The Lord who owns the oracle at Delphi neither speaks nor hides his meaning but
indicates it by a sign.205
Over 100 fragments of text survive from a lost work that has been interpreted by some (primarily, by
Aristotle, for example) as a work on nature but which has also been viewed as a treatise on moral
philosophy (as this was argued by Diodotus: what is said about the physical order is said to
communicate truths about human conduct).206
Since antiquity, Heraclitus (fl.c.504-01 BC) has been interpreted as someone who deliberately wrote in
riddles and who has not been easy to understand. “He sets out nothing clearly.” 207 Hence, we have
Heraclitus “the obscure,” or Heraclitus “the dark,” or Heraclitus the “Obscure Philosopher.” 208
Theophrastus claimed that the incoherence of Heraclitus’s writings on nature is to be explained by his
“impulsiveness or restlessness.”209 But, as Diogenes Laertius notes in his Lives:
According to some, he deliberately made his...[treatise On Nature] the more obscure in
order that none but adepts should approach it, and lest familiarity should breed
contempt.210
"Riddling Heraclitus" is a quotation Diogenes takes from Timon of Phlius (c.320-c.230 BC) although
Diogenes also notes that, occasionally, the meaningfulness of some of his sayings shines through to
202Fr. 40, cited by Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and
Literature, trans. T. G. Rosenmeyer (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1982), p. 144.
203Fr. 101, quoted by Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 417.
204Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 419.
205Fr. 93 quoted by Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 414.
206Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, pp. 42-43.
207Diogenes, quoted by Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 411.
208Heinrich A. Rommen, The Natural Law A Study in Legal and Social History and
Philosophy, trans. Thomas R. Hanley (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1998), p. 5.
209Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 42.
210Diogenes IX, 6.
35
enhance a reader’s understanding.
Occasionally in his treatise he fires off something of brilliant clarity, such that even the
dullest can easily grasp and experience an elevation of spirit; and the brevity and weight
of his expression are incomparable.211
In Heraclitus's writings, examples apparently abound of the same object or thing having a number of
different references.212 Something, in one place, refers to a god but, at another place, it denotes a form
of matter or a rule of behavior. When Michael Grant in Greek and Latin Authors 800 B.C.-A.D. 1000
summarizes some of Heraclitus's teaching by identifying the Heraclitan governing principle of the
universe with the Word or Logos or wisdom which may or may not be referred to as Zeus, he invokes
the text of a surviving fragment which reveals an inarticulateness which was not without its
consequences for later generations as, gradually, the name and reputation of Heraclitus was associated
with an allegorical method of interpretation which connected the names of the Greek gods with a
plethora of different meanings.213 Quoting the pertinent fragment:
Wisdom is one and unique; it is unwilling and yet willing to be called by the name of
Zeus.214
When, seven centuries later at the end of the 2nd Century, Sextus Empiricus produced a paraphrase of
Heraclitus's teaching on the nature of the Logos (in Against the Logicians), he introduces his summary
with a quotation that allegedly comes to us from one of Euripides's plays The Trojan Woman, which
was first performed in 415 BC.
To see into thy nature, O Zeus, is baffling to the mind. I have been praying to thee
without knowing whether thou art necessity or nature or simply the intelligence of
mortals.215
While a comparison of these lines with the text of the original play reveals a free rendition of the
playwright's words, its use nonetheless points to a tradition which acknowledges the influence of
Heraclitus's approach. An enigmatic style of writing and speaking cannot favor an interpretation of
texts that only seeks the sense of a strictly literal meaning. Following in the footsteps of their Master,
Heraclitans need not attend only to what might be the literal meaning of various words and phrases.
Other meanings exist which can be apprehended.
Given the ambiguity that attends understanding exactly what Heraclitus meant, there is, thus, no
agreement on where or how to begin. However, since the opening words of a lengthy initial fragment
speak about a logos that he is about to speak about with respect to the words and deeds of men, it seems
that this focus on logos serves as a central theme for connecting all the different topics and questions
that Heraclitus considers and discusses.
211Diogenes IX, 7 cited by Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 411.
212Kirk and Raven, Presocratic Philosophers, p. 187.
213Michael Grant, Greek and Latin Authors 800 B.C.-A.D. 1000 (New York: H. W. Wilson
Company, 1980) p. 191.
214Wheelwright, Heraclitus, p. 102, no. 119.
215Wheelwright, Heraclitus, p. 69.
36
The following logos, ever true, men are found incapable of understanding, both before
they hear it and when they once have heard it. For although all things take place in
accordance with this logos, they seem like people of no experience, when they make
experience of such words and deeds as I set forth, distinguishing each according to its
nature and declaring how it is. But the rest of men do not know what they are doing
after they have awakened, just as they forget what they do while asleep.216
Our primary object as human beings is to live our human lives in a way that conforms to a common
intelligible principle which is not understood by most men but which needs to be acknowledged if
one’s life is to be lived in a truly human way.
Therefore one should follow the common; but though the logos is common, the many
live as though they had a private wisdom.217
To identify this logos or message that Heraclitus wants to speak about (even if it is not a purely private
possession), the following things can be said. Since change is necessary for life, it occurs not
chaotically but in an orderly fashion that betrays an element of rationality that is given in the being of
an unobservable universal logos (denominating our reason or logic but defined as the "union of life and
rationality") which providentially and wisely governs change to make it rational and something which
is not purely arbitrary. For example, a river is an ordered flowing. Logos functions as the immanent
principle of order that gives birth to the world and which creates order in the world: as a measure,
"logos steers all and runs through all" to produce unity and harmony and an identity of opposites 218
(what to us appears to contrast with each other is to be understood as evidence of a greater, underlying
unity). “Having listened, not to me, but to the logos, it is wise to agree (homologein) that all things are
one.”219 While this wisdom serves as an explanatory principle to link many things, it appears to be a
knowledge that is also quite practical.220 “Men who love wisdom must be inquirers into very many
things indeed.”221
This "universal reason" or "universal law" as intelligence or reason is common to all persons and
guides all persons though most prefer not to live by it. It includes acts of thinking and reflection, 222
and by somehow sharing in it, we become capable of these processes which exist as thinking and
reflecting.223 Admittedly, on the other hand, “the opinions of most people are like the playthings of
infants." While this wisdom is best encountered not by the solitary individual but by one living within
the common life of a city-state, it is yet a wisdom that is somehow transcendent even if one may decide
not to give it a divine name that is drawn from the traditional religious mythology.
One must speak with intelligence and trust in what is common to all, as a city in its law,
216Fr. 1, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, pp. 44-45.
217Fr. 2, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 45.
218Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 442-446,
219Fr. 50, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 46.
220Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 46.
221Fr. 35, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 46.
222Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 426.
223Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 430.
37
and much more firmly; for all human laws are nourished by one, the divine, which
extends its sway as far as it will and is sufficient for all and more than sufficient.224
That which alone is wise is one; it is willing and unwilling to be called by the name of
Zeus.225
This unity which is wisdom is a unity or a “harmony of opposites” since the ordering and functioning
of the universe is effected by an ongoing, varying balance of opposing forces which defines a fragile
equilibrium that, when in effect, creates an apparent rest or an apparent peace. 226 Grasping this hidden
tension is not easy (“the real constitution of things is accustomed to hide itself” 227) although, once
understood, it reveals how unapparent connections between opposing forces create energies that make
things happen within the universe.
They do not apprehend how being at variance it agrees with itself: there is a connection
working in both directions, as in the bow and the lyre.228
Hidden, recondite connections between opposing forces exert a stronger influence that connections
which are more apparent. “An unapparent connection is stronger than an apparent [connection].” 229
Constant changes of direction that are fueled by a constant, unending strife in ongoing realignments of
opposing forces account for the dynamism that is so essential and necessary for life within the world.
In contrast with Anaximander, conflict between opposing forces does not produce injustice. It
produces justice. In another and yet similar way, Heraclitus also opposes the teaching of Pythagoras
who had taught that a healthy tension between opposing forces leads to a species of neutralizing
process which leads to some kind of equilibrium.230 On the contrary, for Heraclitus:
(We must not act like) children of our parents.231 The ‘mixed drink’ also separates if it is
not stirred.232 One must know that war is common and justice strife, and that all things
come about by way of strife and necessity.233
All things exist in a condition of constant flux, or constant change, or constant movement with nothing
abiding forever (hence, a universal flux).
All things are changed for fire and fire for all things... "You cannot step in the same
river twice" hence, when I step into the river for the second time, neither I nor the river
are the same... Everything changes but change itself... Everything flows... [Panta rhei]
All things flow; nothing abides... Upon those who step into the same rivers different
224Fr. 114, quoted by Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p.425.
225Fr. 32; tr. Freeman, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 47.
226Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 440.
227Fr. 123; tr. Kirk, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 47.
228Fr. 51; tr. Kirk, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 47.
229Fr. 54; tr. Kirk, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 47.
230Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 447-448.
231Fr. 74; tr. Freeman, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, pp. 47-8.
232Fr. 125; tr. Freeman, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 48.
233Fr. 80, quoted by Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 447.
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and again different waters flow...234
However, this ongoing change that is characterized by an ongoing realignment of opposing forces
possesses a particular form that is characterized by a species of dialectical relativity: bipolar opposites
take on contrasting attributes and functions as relations to an environment changes.
Sea is water most pure and most polluted; for fish it is drinkable and life giving; for
men, undrinkable and destructive...235 Donkeys prefer chaff to gold...236 Cold things
warm themselves, warm cools, moist dries, parched is made wet...237
Judgments thus vary with respect to what is to be affirmed as good (at any one time).238
If never ill, not know what health is... If never hungry, no delight in being full... If war
did not exist, we would not appreciate peace... Without a winter, never see spring...
Without evil, there would be no good and visa versa... Disease makes health pleasant
and good, hunger satisfaction, weariness rest...239
In the dialectical relativity which we find in the world, it is thus possible to speak about unity in
diversity or, on the other hand, diversity in unity. The diversity which exists in the world does not
undermine the unity of things since this diversity is, in fact, essential to it.240
Fire, cosmic fire, functions as a regulating medium for an unending process of change which exists
within our world. Hence, it is to be identified with reason or the logos.241 In this way, we can speak
about Fire as “the essence of all things.” 242 It functions as a transforming agent but in a manner that
resembles monetary exchanges which employ fixed measures (relatively speaking).
This (world-) order did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be:
an ever-living fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures... 243 All things are
an equal exchange for fire and fire for all things, as goods are for gold and gold for
goods...244 Fire’s changes: first sea; and of the sea, the half is earth, the half lightning-
234Fr. 12; tr. Kirk, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 48; Maluf,
Philosophia Perennis, p. 93; Rommen, Natural Law, p. 5.
235Fr. 61, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 48.
236Fr. 9; tr. Freeman, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 48.
237Fr. 126; tr. Kirk, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 49.
238Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 48; Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 34.
239Fr. 111; tr. Freeman, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 48.
240Stewart, Introduction to Philosophy or Lonergan for Beginners, p. 132. Stewart notes here
that, when Heraclitus refers in his way to the existence of unity in diversity or diversity is unity, in this,
Heraclitus makes an original contribution to philosophy.
241Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 432; Maurice Nédoncelle, Is there a
Christian Philosophy?, trans. Illtyd Trethowan (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1960), p. 32.
242Stewart, Introduction to Philosophy or Lonergan for Beginners, p. 132.
243Fr. 30; tr. Kirk, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 49.
244Fr. 90, tr. Kirk, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 49.
39
flash...245
Fire is very basic (earth, water, and air all exist as different forms of fire). Earth melts into water;
water changes into air; and air, into fire; and, conversely, fire into air, air into water, and water into the
matter of earth.246 Fire is Heraclitus's “One-in-Many.” 247 It is the basic stuff or first principle of the
universe (understood metaphorically more than literally, 248 although, on the other hand, it has to be
admitted that Heraclitus’s notion of logos refers to something which exists in a material way since, as
yet, among the Presocratics, no notion existed of something that is essentially spiritual in contrast to
something which is essentially material). As Heraclitus wrote in one fragment: “Things that can be
seen, heard, learned - these are what I prefer.”249
A central fire exists that never dies although the nature of that which is most fundamental lacks a
material name, strictly speaking, since the nature of what is most fundamental is best defined in terms
of reality that is to be understood in terms of change, motion, process, or conflict: "War [strife,
struggle, tension] is father of all and king of all, and some he reveals as gods, others as men, some he
makes slaves, others free."250 “Thunderbolt steers all things.”251 Only analogously does fire express the
nature of what is most basic and fundamental since something about the nature of fire explains both the
appearance of stability and the fact of change: the flame’s form is stable and, yet, in the flame
everything changes. As a metaphysical consequence, reality is composed not of a number of things but
of a process of continual creation and destruction: “stages or states of dynamic tension” which exist in
“a kind of equilibrium between opposing forces.” 252 The world is characterized by opposites which are
necessary if the world is to exist.253
The emphasis on the inevitability of constant change also has moral consequences however, both for
the universe and for the human order. As a result of logos, because of logos, a cosmic justice maintains
equilibrium in the world.254 For human beings, admittedly, a pessimistic view of life ensues in a mood
or a world view that is informed by a sense of nostalgia and loss.
You cannot go home again. Your childhood is lost... The friends of your youth are
gone... Your present is slipping away from you... Nothing is ever the same...
For good reasons thus, as has been already noted, Heraclitus was called "the Dark One," or the “dark”
philosopher: skoteinos, tenebrosus, although the earliest source for this attribution is Cicero who
explains that the reason is the obscurity of his speculations on nature. 255 As we try to summarize the
245Fr. 31; tr. Kirk, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 49.
246Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 19.
247Stewart, Introduction to Philosophy or Lonergan for Beginners, p. 132.
248Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 29.
249Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 429.
250Fr. 53, quoted by Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 446.
251Fr. 64, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 49.
252Stewart, Introduction to Philosophy or Lonergan for Beginners, p. 132.
253Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 34; Stewart, Introduction to Philosophy or Lonergan for
Beginners, p. 132.
254Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 8.
255Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 42.
40
gist of Heraclitus's moral teaching: the constant shifts in life’s circumstances when these are conjoined
with frankly acknowledging the value of maintaining a necessary tension amid opposites reveals a
moral imperative which presents itself as the need to make constant adjustments that respect the
presence of this necessary tension.256 The tension cannot be allayed or denied; it must be appreciated
for the value which it possesses as a driving force, both in the world of nature and in the world of
human affairs. Moral wisdom is displayed by trying to achieve an equilibrium between opposing
forces which can be interpreted as embodiments of value.
In the self-knowledge which leads to wisdom and, thence, knowledge of the logos, a number of
considerations explain the character of this type of self-knowledge and one’s approach to it. First,
purely human understanding is insufficient. One needs to rely on things that are divine.
For human êthos does not have right judgments, but divine (êthos) has.257
The limitations of human understanding account for why we often tend to misjudge and misdiagnose.
To god all things are beautiful and good and just, but men have supposed some things to
be unjust, others just...258 The eyes and ears are bad witnesses for men if they have
barbarian souls...259
Some kind of training is necessary if men are to make good use of the materials that are given them in
their traditional education since, in some way, human character needs to be formed. “Êthos for a man
is his guiding genius.” 260 Religious belief plays a role since “(most of what is divine) escapes
recognition through unbelief.”261 How a person moves into self-knowledge appears not to be spelled
out although Heraclitus admits that full self-knowledge is not really possible.
You would not by your going discover the limits of soul though you traveled over every
path, so deep has it a measure.262
Heraclitus conceives of the human soul as akin to fire or air which is properly “dry” as opposed to
being “wet” or intoxicated.
A dry (desiccated) soul is the wisest and best... 263 A man, when he gets drunk, is led
stumbling along by an immature boy, not knowing where he is going, having his soul
wet...264
The human soul survives death for a time and will receive some type of reward or compensation.
256Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 51.
257Fr. 78, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 49.
258Fr. 102; tr. Kirk, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 49.
259Fr. 107; tr. Freeman, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 49.
260Fr. 119, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 50.
261Fr. 86; tr. Freeman, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 50.
262Fr. 45, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 50.
263Fr. 118; tr. Freeman, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 50.
264Fr. 117; tr. Freeman, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 50.
41
There await men after they are dead things which they do not expect or imagine.265
In conclusion, a number of points can be made about the significance of Heraclitus as a thinker. First,
given the reliability of our sense perceptions and the ebb and flow of our actual existence and, on the
one hand, our desire for something that is changeless and timeless (that we should be united to such a
thing), as a poet of tension, Heraclitus can be regarded as the first philosopher who formulated an
eternal philosophical problem which confronts the givens of reason with the givens of our experience.
Where reason looks for what is permanent in life or for what is eternal in life in order to use this
knowledge as a species of first principle for organizing and guiding our lives if we are to give our lives
a measure of stability and permanence, experience confronts us with the confusing flowing world of
our everyday life. And so, it is a problem for us to work with our sense perceptions in such a way that,
from these perceptions, we can extract a rationality, a reason, or a form which could reveal the presence
of an underlying unity or connection. Plato’s study of the Heraclitan teaching that the sensible world is
essentially characterized by a constant flow or flux accordingly led him to conclude that it is not
possible to have a scientific knowledge of the sensible world, the world that is given to us through our
different acts of human sensing,266 although admittedly, from the vantage point of a later context, from
other aspects of the Heraclitan teaching, we can also ask if Heraclitan notion of logos and how it exists
in a hidden way (being not obvious to us through our different acts of human sensing) is something
which is susceptible to another way of thinking or another way of speaking which could then speak
about its potential knowability if our point of reference is now the kind of knowing which exists in our
human acts of understanding, a kind of knowing which begins with our acts of sense perception but
which transcends these same acts of sense perception. To refer to our acts of sense perception and to
identify the kind of world that exists for us through our acts of sense perception supposes acts of
cognition which are not to be equated with acts of sense perception.
Second, with respect to the origins of a philosophy about the possible meaning and being of natural
law, explicitly speaking, Heraclitus only distinguishes between human laws and divine laws; he only
refers to the being of human and divine laws. According to Heraclitus: our human laws depend or, in
some way, they come from divine laws. 267 In general, law exists as “a universal principle of divine
origin.” “All human laws are nourished by one divine law.” 268 However, two teachings have been
ascribed to Heraclitus that can be cited as likely points of origin for the existence of a new, third
species of law which exists as natural law: two teachings or two positions that had been expounded by
him and for which we have documentary evidence. One refers to a notion of necessity as this exists
within the world of our ordinary experience.269 “We must recognize that war is common, strife is
265Fr. 27; tr. Freeman, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 50.
266Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 450.
267According to Heraclitus, “those who speak with understanding must hold fast to what is
common to all as a city holds to its law, and even more strongly. For all human laws are fed by the one
divine law. It prevails as much as it will, and suffices for all things with something to spare.” Cf.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fragments_of_Heraclitus#Fragment_114 (accessed October 25, 2016).
268 Tony Burns, Aristotle and Natural Law (London: Continuum International Publishing
Group, 2011), p. 142, citing T. A. Sinclair, A History of Greek Political Thought (London: Routledge,
1959), p. 30; p. 48.
269Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 19.
42
justice, and all things happen according to strife and necessity [italics mine].”270 The other, a teaching
about the meaning and being of logos. “Having harkened not to me but to the Word (Logos) it is wise
to agree that all things are one.” 271 In the later development of Platonism as a distinct school of
philosophy, the logos was identified with the being of a world of intelligibility, existing as “the home
of Ideas.”272 So great was the impression of this teaching on the mind of Plato in the context of his
thinking and understanding. Together, these two teachings (these two ideas) came together in a way
which eventually led to a nascent idea of natural law as this arose within a history of reflection which
predates Plato, passing initially from Heraclitus through later philosophers of nature (prior to Socrates)
on into the reflections and the teaching of Sophist philosophers and then, from there, on into the
philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, shifting subsequently into the teachings of Stoic philosophers to
conclude finally with how the idea of natural law was conceptualized and make known to us by the
later teachings of Philo of Alexandria (c.20 BC-40 AD): how he came to speak about the meaning and
being of natural law.273 First the idea exists centuries before we have adequate words or concepts. In
the history of philosophy, back and forth, as we move from texts to questions and then back to the
reading of texts, as we move from earlier ways of thinking and speaking in ourselves and others toward
later ways of thinking and speaking, a real distinction can be verified in terms which distinguish
between the prior acts of understanding that are given to us (prior to the exposition of any concepts or
words, the articulation of any kind of technical language) and later acts of conceptualization which
translate or which transpose ideas that have been initially understood, finding ways of speaking and
writing which put these same ideas or meanings into forms of accessible, communicable speech if other
persons are to know about the meaning and being of ideas that, perhaps, in their own way, they can
now begin to grasp and understand through the kind of language which we can use as ways of referring
to them.
With respect then to the meaning or the significance of these two teachings, Heraclitus mentions
necessity without specifying any meaning for it. In the world that we know through our different acts
of sense perception, we immediately sense struggles and conflicts (collisions of one sort or another)
and we also sense that, when certain things occur, they have to occur in a certain way and not in some
other kind of way. The regularities point to some kind of “mustness” or necessity: a “mustness” or
necessity that has yet to be grasped and understood although, if we should rely only on our acts of
sense perception, it would seem that we would be inclined to think about necessity in terms which
would speak about mechanical or material forms of necessity. If a flat pebble is thrown to hit a surface
of flat water at a certain angle, it has to go in one particular direction and not in some other direction.
If wind blows in a given direction, unfurled flags would have to wave along the lines of the same
direction. Apart then from an understanding that can introduce distinctions and which can indicate why
per se a regularity is not to be equated with the being of a necessity, the regularities and constancies
which exist in sense data would seem to exist for us as symbolic carriers of meaning. Necessities of
one kind or another can be suggested to us although, apart from understanding, these necessities will
not be understood in terms of how they exist as necessities or why they exist as necessities. Heraclitus,
through his usage, to the degree that he refers to necessity and speaks about it - in doing this, he
270Cf. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/ (accessed October 25, 2016).
271Cf. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/ (accessed October 25, 2016).
272Nédoncelle, Christian Philosophy, p. 32.
273Helmut Koester, “ ΝΟΜΟΣ ΦΥΣΕΩΣ The Concept of Natural Law in Greek Thought,”
Religions in Antiquity Essays in Memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough, ed. Jacob Neusner (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1968), pp. 521-541.
43
suggests or he implies that he also has an understanding of necessity (an understanding that he is not
yet able to put into communicable words or which, for his own reasons, he chooses not to put into
words). In any case however, whatever could be the extent of our understanding and interpretation, the
reference to necessity and its existence within the world of our experience points to the presence of
some kind of constancy, rule, or norm that somehow exists within the being of our physical universe.
This necessity, in turn, then points to the being of possible aberrations which could indicate that
something is not rightly or properly occurring. The compulsion that we accordingly find within the
being of the physical order of our world cannot help but point to consequences and ramifications for
how we are to exist within this same world if we are to live within it in a manner that is not be lacking
in understanding and wisdom. What kind of respect are we to give and to grant in a way that could
change how we ourselves live and exist? What is the ethical impact? What is the cognitive impact?
How are we to respond?
With respect to the meaning and being of logos and any ramifications which would refer to the being of
natural laws, in the thinking and the thought of Heraclitus, in the context of his day at this stage in the
history of philosophical reflection, the laws of city states are to be understood as manifesting or as
participating in a law which is best denoted if we should refer to it as the law of God (divine law). Its
eternal character points to its divinity. Hence, within this context, no real distinction would seem to
exist between the fabric of our human laws and this higher divine, eternal law which exists as logos or
which is designated in a way which would refer to it as the being of logos “through which the the
substanceless and impermanent world finds its 'hidden attunement'.” 274 However, on the other hand,
since laws differ as we go from one city-state to another city-state, it is to be noticed that human laws
exist at one level (at a lower level) and that an eternal, divine, natural law exists as another level (at a
higher level, at a greater remove).275 These two kinds of law cannot be identified with each other
although, on the other hand, no real gap or separation exists between them. The relation that exists
between them is not mutually exclusive. A species of tension exists between them even if we admit or
as we admit that, in some way, our manmade particular human laws participate in this higher law
which exists as a species of universal. An eternal, divine, natural law is to be identified with that which
exists as the logos of the universe which, in its hiddenness, is not so easily understood and known by us
as we exercise our acts of cognition. It is easier to speak about the existence of this higher law than it
is to speak about its specific nature and content although, at this point in the reflections of Heraclitus
and in the history of philosophy, no real distinction is to be admitted if we were to try to distinguish
between that which would exist as natural law and that which exists as divine law. The cosmic logos of
Heraclitus is to be identified with that which exists as natural law (God and nature being one) since, in
the manner and teaching of Heraclitus, the natural world which exists around us is something which
exists in an unending, eternal kind of way. Our world does not exist as if it were a contingent thing,
existing in a contingent way.
On the basis of texts then that have come down to us about the teaching of Heraclitus, it is accordingly
suggested to us that, from the Heraclitan identification of fire with wisdom, the Stoics developed their
own notion of a cosmic logos which they retroactively ascribed to Heraclitus’s notion of it. 276 Hence,
for the Stoics, the logos “is the organizing force of nature, it is the thought and speech of man, it is the
reason conceived as as identical with God, and it is the master, the mediator and the original world274Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 23.
275Rommen, Natural Law, p. 6.
276Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 53.
44
stuff all at the same time, although it refers especially to the world-soul.” 277 Subsequently, in the wake
of Gnostic notions which speak about a “revealer” and a “message from on high” and in the wake too
of late Old Testament notions which speak about a personification of God's wisdom (according to Philo
of Alexandria, the Logos exists as “the first-born son of God”), 278 in the later but nascent understanding
of Christian faith which emerged in the development of Christian theology, it follows from all this that
we acknowledge the truth of a belief about God which says that God wants to express himself so much
and so thoroughly that, in the end, the expression becomes another person. Logos as both word and
rationality was thus often used as a way one could refer to God: "God is day and night, winter and
summer, war and peace, hunger and satiety." God or the deity was something that embraces the whole
world and so, from this standpoint, God can be seen most clearly to exist within the constant
transformations and contrasts of nature. God, the Logos, is characterized by a fundamental "one-ness,"
existing as the source of everything which exists and as the source of all the changes which occur
within our world.
Back to the Eleatics
Where Heraclitus emphasized process, Parmenides denied both multiplicity and motion.
Though his expression revived the myth of revelation, his position at its heart was a set
of arguments. While he could not be expected to formulate the principles of excluded
middle and of identity, he reached analogous conclusions. For he denied the possibility
of “becoming” as an intermediary between being and nothing; and he denied a
distinction between “being” and “being” and so precluded any multiplicity of beings.
While his specific achievement was only a mistake, still it provided a carrier for a
breakthrough. Linguistic argument has emerged as an independent power that could
dare to challenge the evidence of the senses. The distinction between sense and intellect
was established. The way lay open for Zeno’s paradoxes, for the eloquence and
skepticism of the sophists, for Socrates’ demand for definitions, for Plato’s distinction
between eristic and dialectic, and for the Aristotelian Organon.279
Parmenides of Elea (fl. 500-450 BC), who has been cited in one way or another as the father of
rationalism in philosophy,280 discovered the form or the meaning of being (what being is; how it differs
from non-being or how it differs from the condition of becoming) and, on this basis, he became the
father of the problem of being (being versus becoming). As a well respected thinker, he was a
contemporary and, allegedly, a successor of Heraclitus although it is said about him that, in his early
years, he was a follower of Ameinias, a Pythagorean. 281 Historically, he was the most important
philosopher who belonged to a group that was centered in Elea in southern Italy (the Eclectics). It was
rumored that at age 65, he went to Athens and that, allegedly, Socrates listened to him there. 282 Plato
refers to three meetings with Socrates. Elea itself, on the west coast of the Italian peninsula, was
founded in 540-539 BC. It possessed Ionian roots since its refugee settlers came from Phocaea, the
most northern city of Ionia.
277Nédoncelle, Christian Philosophy, p. 32.
278Nédoncelle, Christian Philosophy, pp. 32-33.
279Lonergan, Method in Theology, pp. 91-92.
280Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 22.
281Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 57.
282Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 47.
45
Parmenides's famous writing (later referred to as On Nature) is a poem that was partially preserved in a
book entitled the Physics, written by Simplicius in the 6th century AD. There are two basic components
to the poem, both of which are preceded by an introduction, known as the Proem, that describes
Parmenides’s journey to the place of the sun where he is instructed by a goddess who tells him to learn
the truth which is opposed to opinion and the apparent kind of knowledge which is commonly found
among human beings who, as human beings, for all intents and purposes, know nothing. 283 As
similarly with Hesiod, through a form of religious revelation, Parmenides is “borne aloft into the
presence of an unnamed goddess, and inspired by her with knowledge of all things, both of the
undaunted, convincing ‘Truth,’ and of the ‘Opinions [doxai] of mortals.’”284 While the way of thinking
to which Parmenides is to be initiated is unfamiliar to most men, this new unusual way is a path or a
road whose following is sanctioned by Right and Justice. 285 This road, allegorically, is an “uttering
many things.”286 The mares drawing his chariot represent “pondering many things”; justice, the
“manifold avenger” who holds keys which unlock heavenly gates.287 The reference to “many things”
seems to refer to the changing data that are sensibly experienced; by working through the changing,
shifting world that is presented through the senses, our cognition can arrive at a world which transcends
the human senses.288 Light symbolizes the goal of this special journey where, within this light, truth is
revealed to ourselves and to Parmenides. In his own journey, Parmenides is “carried up into the light,
[he is] guided by the sun maidens who toss aside their veils, while the chariot’s axle blazes in its
sockets.”289
The first way of inquiry is the Way of Truth, the way of reasoning as pure thinking or as “pure
thought,”290 or, alternatively, the Way of Being where, by following in this particular way, by moving
beyond the kind of initial knowing which exists in our acts of sense perception or, in other words, by
engaging in “sheer thinking,”291 we are led to a transcendent notion of being, a Parmenidian notion of
being: being as distinct from becoming and change and as it exists with a transcendence that does not
belong to the immanence or the immediacy of becoming and the experience of change which we
always have through the perceptions which immediately exist for us through our different acts of
human sensing.292 Pure thought or pure thinking leads to pure Being.293 Hence, Being in all its fullness
is accessible only through the kind of thinking and the activity which exists within the life of our
human reason. In the kind of knowing which exists in our acts of sensing, things “come in and out of
being.”294
283Snell, Discovery of the Human Mind, p. 147.
284Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, pp. 58-9.
285Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 59.
286Fr. 1.2, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 60.
287Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 60.
288Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 60.
289Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 60.
290Snell, Discovery of the Human Mind, p. 149.
291Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 69.
292Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, eds. Frederick E. Crowe and
Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), pp. 388-389.
293Snell, Discovery of the Human Mind, p. 149.
294Leszek Kolakowska, Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? 23 Questions from
Great Philosophers, trans. Agnieszka Kolakowska (London: Allen Lane, 2007), p. 11.
46
To understand what could be meant by “sheer thinking” or “pure thinking,” try to
distinguish between two basic views or two basic takes on the nature of our human
cognition. A first view notes or opines that our human acts of cognition are constituted
by acts of sensing which are combined with acts of intellection that are commonly
referred to by us as “acts of the mind” (or as “acts of the intellect”). However, it is a
major task to distinguish each of these acts and to determine how these acts are all
related to each other in a way which acknowledges the due weight or the role which is
played by each act. The second view separates acts of sensing from acts of thinking
(from the intellectual acts which exist as our mental acts, our acts of the human mind).
Within the contours of this approach, some prefer to associate the dynamics of human
cognition with sense (with that which exists for us as our different acts of human
sensing); others, with intellect (with that which exists for us as our different acts of
thinking or reasoning). For empiricists or positivists, the real is that which is sensed or
that which can be sensed. Where human thinking or reasoning exists, no real
contribution to be ascribed to how they exist or to the tasks that are performed by our
various acts of thinking and reasoning. For rationalists, however, the real is that which
is thought or it is that which is conceived by our thinking and thought, our acts of
thinking leading us to the formation of concepts and definitions. If empiricists and
positivists denigrate the role of thinking and reasoning and if they prefer not to move in
a direction which could lead them into our acts of thinking and understanding,
rationalists prefer to not move in a direction which could lead them toward our various
acts of human sensing and the kind of data which exist if we should refer to the givens
which come to us through our various acts of human sensing. While, for the empiricists,
a proposition is true if it directly relates to or if it mirrors the content of an act of sense,
for the rationalists, a proposition is true if, from the subject of a proposition, its predicate
is somehow immediately given or, in some way, it is implied. The predicate exists
within the terms of meaning which belong to the being of a given subject. Given what a
subject is, certain consequences follow. For a simple example, we can say perhaps that
“all men are mortal” or that “man is a rational animal” although, upon reflection, we
would have to admit that the truth of these propositions would seem to suggest that,
ultimately, our evidence comes to us from the data of our human experience, the kind of
experience that is given to us through our various acts of human sensing and the data
which accompanies these acts. Hence, a better example of the kind of truth that can be
known without having to refer to specific acts and data of sense would seem to be the
teaching of a law in logic which says about contradictions that “a thing cannot be and
not be at the same time, or a thing must either be or not be, or the same attribute cannot
at the same time be affirmed and denied of the same subject.” 295 Propositions are true if
their meaning is articulated in a way which points to their obviousness or their selfevidence, the obviousness or the self-evidence of meaning immediately pointing to the
reality of their truth (the obviousness or the self-evidence of truth). The definition of a
circle in mathematics always points, for example, to all the attributes which must belong
to the being of any kind of circle in mathematics. The definition of a square similarly
points to all the attributes that must belong to the being of a square. Conversely, it is
295Cf. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Principle+of+contradiction (accessed January 11,
2016).
47
impossible, in any definition, to speak about the meaning or the intelligibility of a square
circle.
Absence of truth is implied by absence of meaning or by absence of
intelligibility. In the kind of thinking or the kind of discovery that we find in
Parmenides, the thinking power of the mind is discovered in a way which surpasses the
capability or the capacity which exists within our various acts of human sensing. While,
undoubtedly, Thales used his mind (his reasoning, his thinking) to argue that water
should be regarded as a fundamental first principle in the existence of our world as it is
(his discovery is not to be correlated with an act of sense, it does not exist as an act of
sense, although his discovery is to be supported by many different acts of sense), on the
other hand, it was Parmenides who discovered that the human mind has a power or an
authority which exists independently of anything that could be given to us directly from
our various acts of human sensing. Our acts of sense always belong to us as living
human subjects. We begin our lives with our acts of human sensing. However or
hence, it is the rare person, it is not given to everyone that we should all individually
know about the power of our individual human minds and what our minds can grasp and
know independently of anything that can be directly given to us through our various acts
of human sensing. The kind of apprehension which exists for us through our various
acts of human sensing is not to be identified or correlated with the kind of apprehension
which exists for us through our various acts of thinking and understanding. The lack of
identity points to tensions which can often exist between these two orders of human
cognition and, if some kind of reconciliation or complementarity is to be reached, some
other kind of cognitive act must be invoked in order to establish where positive relations
exist between our different acts of human sensing and our different acts of human
thinking, reasoning, and understanding.
Succinctly put: on the basis of our thinking and reasoning and the kind of contemplation and revelation
which exists within our thinking and reasoning, we realize that, from non-being or nothing (from the
condition of nothingness or the absence of reality), we cannot get being (the condition of beingness)
and, conversely, from being or reality (from beingness), we cannot get non-being or nothing (the
condition of nothingness, the absence of reality). In being or from being, from reality, we cannot get
non-being or the absence of reality. Being or reality excludes non-being or lack of reality. Within
being or reality, non-being does not exist. Non-being cannot exist. An order of mutual exclusion exists
between being and non-being, reality and un-reality, a form of mutual exclusion which excludes any
kind of positive relation that could conceivably exist between being and non-being, reality and unreality. Each totally excludes the other. If something exists, then, necessarily, it cannot not be. 296
Hence, from this, on the basis of this insight, we can conclude: “Being, the One, is, and...Becoming,
change, is illusion.”297 Change is impossible if, for any kind of understanding that we would have
about change, we would be working from a basic premiss which would say that change requires being
to arise from non-being or from a prior condition of nothingness. From nothingness, nothing can ever
arise.298 No being, no reality, can ever emerge. According, however, to another way of speaking which
296Kolakowska, Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?, p. 11.
297Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 48.
298Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics A Contemporary Introduction (n.l, Editiones
Scholasticae, 2014), pp. 31-32; The Last Superstition A Refutation of the New Atheism (South Bend,
Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, 2008), pp. 52-53. As Feser goes on to argue, in one sense, Aristotle
accepts the teaching of Parmenides with respect to the infertility of non-being. From non-being you
48
also tries to summarize the principles teachings which come from Parmenides's insights:
Everything which is is a being. If a thing is not a being it is a non-being, nothing. But
change could come about only through a mixture of being with something else - with
nothing, in other words. Change, therefore, is impossible. [Change is an illusion, a trick
of the senses].299
In this Way of Truth thus, its central theme is: “Only Being is” (“Being” cited as a predicate apart from
any subject or without any subject)300 and so “Not Being [nothing] cannot be.” From a judgment or an
affirmation that avers being (the reality of being), Being emerges as an immediately determinate
concept. It is an idea that has a definite meaning which we can put into words. From it, we can derive
specific properties; specific presuppositions; and specific consequences. It is not really possible to
think that that which is is, in fact, not. Non-being and being mutually exclude each other.
Accordingly, a determination of being emerges in terms of a univocal notion of being or, in other
cannot get being. Being cannot be derived from that which is lacking in being. It cannot be derived
from something which does not exist. Nothingness and being must always exclude each other. In the
analysis thus which we find in Aristotle, potency cannot be reduced to act or converted to act from the
standpoint of that which exists as potency or, in other words, that which exists in a condition of potency
cannot shift into a condition of act by means of itself (through some kind of self-realization that would
somehow allegedly exist within potency), potency being that which is lacking in determinations of one
kind or another or potency as that which is lacking some kind of being which, possibly, it could have.
However, in another sense, Aristotle does not accept the teaching of Parmenides since, in the kind of
analysis which Aristotle uses, change is considered not in terms of non-being and being but in terms of
potency and act, potency and act referring to two different kinds of being that a given thing can have
without risk of some form of self-contradiction. “There is being-in-act – the ways a thing actually is;
and there is being-in-potency – the ways a thing could potentially be.” Cf. Feser, Scholastic
Metaphysics, p. 32. Aristotle takes the kind of absolute notion that he finds in Parmenides's notion of
non-being and he adapts it. He relativizes it. Into it, he introduces a distinction or a differentiation
which refers to differing degrees or different kinds of non-being. A given thing exists with the being
which it happens to have. It exists in a certain way. Hence, a being exists in terms of being-in-act.
But, at the same time too, this being-in-act conditions or it accounts for why, in the factuality or the
beingness of its existence, a given thing is susceptible to experiencing changes or realizations of one
sort or another that would come to it from sources, acts, or actualizations that are other than potency,
existing outside or beyond a given potency, or existing in an external manner relative to the being of a
given potency. That which exists as being-in-potency depends on that which exists as being-in-act
since a given thing undergoes changes in a way which does not destroy its proper being or its proper
existence, its being-in-act, if all changes occur in a way which is entirely suited or which is connatural
with how a given thing exists in terms of how it exists within a condition of act. All potencies are
known through their acts which would reduce or convert them into a condition of act. If, by means of
being-in-act, certain potencies can never be realized or reduced through a transition that would move
from a condition of potency to condition of act, then, within this situation, these absences of being are
to be regarded as instances or as illustrations of non-being. Employing an example or an analogy
which comes to us from Feser, the roundness of a rubber ball refers to its being-in-act; its squareness,
non-being; and its flatness or squishyness, being-in-potency. All three exist at the same time,
simultaneously. Cf. Scholastic Metaphysics, pp. 32-33; Last Superstition, p. 53.
299Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 20.
49
words, as a univocal conception of being: simply put, “being...cannot be something other than being [it
cannot be other than itself], and the only other thing than being is nothing...non-being...non-being is
not.”301 Being (ens) is one in idea and nature.302 Whatever is cannot be apart from the “what is” of
being. One cannot think about pure non-being (about nothingness since non-being or nothingness is
unthinkable). It is unintelligible. It is not to be confused with any kind of notion which would want to
think about the existence of some kind of empty space. 303 Conversely, we cannot think “that (what is)
is not” given the problem of a self-contradiction which would exist in saying that what is or that which
exists is not or that it does not exist or, more simply, we have self-contradiction when we say that
nothing exists.304 Not-being cannot be or exist. It is simply not. As the negation or the privation of
being, it is nothing. Existence or an act of being or existence can never be properly predicated of nonbeing or nothingness. According to one explanation which argues that we cannot properly think about
that which does not exist (since all thinking, by its very nature, is directed to being in terms of
something which is or exists):
The one, that (it) is, and that (for it) not to be is not possible, this is the way of
conviction, for it follows truth: the second, that (it) is not, and that (for it) not to be is of
necessity, which is a path, I tell you, that is entirely outside the scope of inquiry; for you
could neither recognize (that which) is not, for this is not possible, nor could you
express it. For that which it is possible to think is the same as that which can be.305
Thinkability or apprehensions of possible intelligibility are to be associated with being and not with
non-being. Quoting Parmenides, “it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.” 306 The
thinkability or the possibility of being immediately points to the reality of its being or the being of its
being because, if something could possibly be, it would exist not in a condition of being but in a
condition of nothingness and, from non-being or nothingness, we cannot get being. Hence, possible
being does not exist. To speak about possible being is to be speak about absence of being or
nothingness and this is an unintelligible way of speaking. Nonsensical. Possible being, because it
exists as an inner contradiction, is something which is unreal (it is lacking in intelligibility). The
unintelligibility of anything which could exist as some kind of possible being accordingly points to the
necessity of being in things which happen to exist. The lack of contingency or any form of becoming
points to an absolute givenness of being which, in turn, points to its necessity (a conclusion or a point
of view which jives with a commonly accepted belief among the ancient Greeks that the world or the
universe does not exist as a created, contingent thing; the world or the universe is something which has
always existed in an eternal way).307
With respect then to the properties of Being or “what is,” “the one that is,” Being (or the world within
300Kolakowska, Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?, p. 11.
301Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought (s.l.: Ex Fontibus
Co., [2015]); see http://thesumma.info/reality/reality6.php (accessed April 15, 2017).
302Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1, 5, 9, as cited by Garrigou-Lagrange,
Reality, http://thesumma.info/reality/reality6.php (accessed April 15, 2017).
303Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 69.
304Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 63.
305Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, pp. 60-61.
306Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 49.
307Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 49.
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which we live and exist, the world which can only be known for that which it is through our clear
thinking although, paradoxically, it exists as a physical world), 308 - this World or Being (that which is
Being) is (1) uncreated (since being cannot emerge from not-being); (2) indestructible (since nothing
apart from being can arise from being); (3) complete and entire (since a complete identity exists
between subject and being: “there is not and will not be anything else apart from being” 309); (4) eternal,
timeless; (5) indivisible (since any trait or characteristic as existing would have to be or exist and this
would coincide fully with being); (6) immobile (since changes of location suggest becoming and
ending); (7) unique; (8) one; (9) spherical; (10) indivisibly whole; (11) fully perfect; and (12) perfectly
self-identical, or equally real in all directions, homogeneous (since being is fully determinate or
complete and not lacking in any kind of way).310 All these characteristics function as signs or marks of
truth in the Way to Truth.311 All designations that are developed to refer to gradations that are
experienced in the visible world are artificial constructions which all refer to Being. 312 As noted above,
Being necessarily exists. It is not possible for it not to be. 313 “(For it) not to be is impossible.” 314
“What is, is, and cannot not-be.”315 With respect to what is not, “(for it) not to be is of necessity.” 316
Necessarily, reality or Being either is or is not. One cannot have it both ways as if Being and not-Being
308Collingwood, Idea of Nature, pp. 69-70.
309Fr. 8.36-37, quoted by Owens, p. 65. As Copleston frames the kind of argument that
Parmenides was apparently using: Being cannot be added to because if it is not one and complete in
itself but in fact divided within itself, then this division would require some kind of cause that would be
other than being. In some way, it would have to exist outside of being. But, this is a contradiction in
terms since Being as Being is all encompassing. It includes everything which exists. Citing Copleston
on Parmenides: “Being cannot be divided by something [that is] other than itself” because, besides
being, “there is nothing,” nothing which exists. Cf. History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 50.
310Lonergan, Insight, p. 388, citing F. M. Cornford, Plato and Parmenides (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1939), pp. 28-52. As Copleston, p. 50, argues with respect to the intelligibility of
Parmenides's arguments: if Being is equally real in all directions, then, from this, we can understand
why Being is spherical in shape.
311Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, pp. 63-64.
312Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 66.
313Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, 1994 ed., s. v. “Parmenides of Elea,” by Simon
Blackburn, p. 278. See also Mortimer J. Adler, Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy
(New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1997), p. 30: “Whatever is, is; whatever is not, is not.” If we were
to try to argue that Being exists not necessarily but in some kind of contingent way, we would have to
advert to the presence of some kind of cause and this cause would have to exist and so participate in
Being before Being would exist. But, in making this kind of argument, we would be contradicting
ourselves. In arguing also that Being can possibly pass out of existence, we would also contradict
ourselves since, in this type of argument, we would have to advert to the presence or the being of a
cause which would act to convert Being into non-Being. But, in the presence of non-Being, we cannot
speak about anything which exists. We cannot speak about the being or the presence of any cause. Cf.
Edward T. Oakes, “The Coming Middle Ages,” Wisdom and Holiness, Science and Scholarship:
Essays in Honor of Matthew L. Lamb, eds. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (Naples,
Florida: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2007), p. 279.
314Parmenides, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 62.
315W. K. C. Guthrie, The Presocratic tradition from Parmenides to Democritus, vol. 2 (New
York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 16.
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could possibly exist together as some kind of hybrid (as some kind of “in between”). Hence, in a
manner which points ahead to the principle of contradiction as this exists within logic, it (reality or
Being) cannot either be and, at the same time, not be. What is or what exists is said to be “held fast by
the power of necessity.”317 Hence, if Being or reality is, if it exists in a primordial kind of way, we
cannot move from it toward any lack of being (toward the condition of non-Being). 318 As another way
of speaking about it, as being, as existing, as “is-ing,” Being cannot have any holes within it nor a
vacuum within it since there is no place where Being is not. No distinction can be made between the
being of a given subject and the fact of its existence as being. 319 Absence of being implies the absence
of a given subject, there being nothing for anyone to talk about. Hence, from this, as a general
conclusion: change, motion, or becoming is impossible since change would mean that Being would
have to go from where it is to where it is not. But this is not possible since Being is already
everywhere. While our senses tell us about change and variety (becoming and plurality), these exist as
316Parmenides, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 62.
317“Parmenides,” Fragment 8, 1.26ff, in Kirk and Raven, Pre-Socratic Philosophers, p. 276,
quoted by Matteo, p. 13. Please note, at this point, that necessity does not refer to some kind of given
or a term which would exist for us through an act of sensing but as a given which exists for us through
an act of understanding which apprehends, in a given case, that something must be so and that it cannot
be or exist in some other kind of way. Apprehensions of necessity are to be correlated with acts of our
minds (intellectual acts, mental acts). It is one thing to come up with a probable estimate (to think or
suppose that this is greater than that) but it is another thing to know that this cannot be greater than that
or that this is necessarily other than that. Cf. Christopher Friel, “Lonergan, Wittgenstein and
Cognitional Theory,” unpublished paper, p. 88.
318Mieczyslaw A. Krapiec, History of the Origin of the Theory of Act and Potency,
http://ptta.pl/pef/haslaen/a/actpotency.pdf (April 21, 2012). In Krapiec's explanation of Parmenides's
thesis, the principle of identity is to be regarded here as the “chief law of the intellect” since, according
to the Parmenidian notion of Being that Parmenides derives from the principle of identity, if, indeed,
Being is to be regarded as something which is “identical with itself, unchanging, single and not subject
to any motion or becoming,” if we suppose the truth of this thesis about the meaning and nature of
Being, we can then say that Being is to be regarded as the only reality (as the only thing) which really
and truly exists. Motion or movement should be regarded as an illusion. Being never moves anything
of itself by itself and it never undergoes any movement (no motion or change). If, strictly speaking
A=A, then A cannot be anything else. It cannot be non-A; it cannot be anything else that is other than
A. We cannot speak about a relation to something which exists which we can refer to as B or C or any
other variable. It is not possible for us to speak about Being or reality in a way that refers to any
differentiations that would exist within A and which are real and which we cannot equate with A as A.
This truth or these truths which are grasped by our minds (our understanding) hold out against any
views which might want to regard motion or movement or any kind of development which exists as a
part of any reality or being which we are understanding. Yes, motion or movement (transitions) are
grasped by our senses. They are noticed; they are experienced by our senses. But, on the other hand,
because A=A exists as a basic truth of reason (it is a principle which we can use to speak about the
principle of contradiction and the meaning of this principle), motion can never exist as a term nor as a
conclusion nor as a truth that we can know about through our understanding. It cannot exist as
something that we can grasp or understand through our understanding.
319Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 62.
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illusions. Hence, only our minds know that which exists as truth, and this truth is that “Being is.”
Hence, for this reason thus, the human mind can never cut itself off from Being; it is always fully
united to all the being of the universe, whether we refer to anything which is visible or anything which
is invisible.320
Parmenides was thus the first thinker, the first philosopher, to clearly advert to a dichotomy that exists
between sense and intellect (the world that is known by the senses, our acts of human sensing, and the
world that can be known by the mind, our acts of understanding and judgment). 321 Something is
obvious to us if we limit our acts of cognition to our acts of human sensing but something is not
obvious to us if we begin to think things out and so notice that, between being and non-being, a relation
of mutual exclusion is to be adverted to. A mutual exclusion exists (a real distinction). So, in the
history of Greek philosophy or in the development of Greek philosophy as the position of one school
triggers the thought and the insights of another school, where the Milesians sought Being in matter, and
the Pythagoreans, in form, in our current context, Parmenides emphasizes Being where Being is reality.
Being is “the basic stuff of reality.”322 It is something which is “somehow material”323 and hence,
320Fr. 4, cited by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 65. Since the human mind
is always fully united to Being, it is thus suggested that the human mind does not need to move toward
Being or truth through any kind of inquiry which would move from lack of understanding and
knowledge toward an experience of understanding and knowledge. However, as Steward notes, p. 133,
when the illusionary nature of becoming or change is compared with the fullness of reality which exists
in Being, the being of things, questions about the nature of human cognition are raised and introduced.
Parmenides's poem speaks about the difference between truth and opinion as this is communicated to
us by way of a form of divine revelation. But, with the reception of this kind of apprehension as this
exists among human beings, further questions are raised for philosophers to address and talk about.
321In a manner which can perhaps help us understand the kind of advancement that is to be
adverted to in the thought and philosophy of Parmenides and, at the same time, help us understand why
we should avoid too simple an understanding about the nature or the extent of Parmenides's
achievement, please distinguish between an operational distinction that we can find in the analysis of
Parmenides and the absence of an articulate understanding of this same distinction. In his analysis,
Parmenides grasped that, through our acts of sensing, we encounter one type of cognitive object and
that, through our acts of thinking and self-reflection, we encounter another type of cognitive object and
that, between these two kinds of object, no interconnection exists. A form of mutual exclusion exists.
It is one thing thus to have an act of self-understanding and the species of self-awareness which goes
with this understanding and, on the other hand, another thing to have an understanding that has been
put into words and a form of communication both with oneself and others that is entirely lacking in any
form of ambiguity. The more novel and startling an understanding, the more strange and difficult is its
subsequent, adequate articulation. Between the time or the event of understanding and the emergence
of a conceptualization that faithfully reflects the contents of that which has been intelligently
understood, further thought and reflection is needed. Not everything is given at once (as we move from
the thinking and poetry of Parmenides, c. 451 BC, toward the teaching and the conversational prose of
Plato's dialogues, c. 385 BC).
322Stewart, Introduction to Philosophy or Lonergan for Beginners, p. 132.
323Stewart, Introduction to Philosophy or Lonergan for Beginners, p. 132. Please note here,
with respect to the distinctions that one finds in Parmenides, that the postulation or supposition of a real
distinction is to be distinguished from the beginnings or the origins of that which exists as a real
distinction. In Plato's philosophy, matter and form exclude one another. The two should never be
53
finite. It is “unorginated, [and] indestructible.” It cannot not be since from nothing comes nothing.
Being cannot emerge from its lack or absence; as noted, it cannot emerge from non-being. 324
Conversely, as we have already noted, from being, one cannot get an absence or a privation of being;
one cannot get non-being or nothing or obtain non-being or nothing. From an absence of being one
cannot get that which exists as a being. Succinctly put in another way, through the use of a syllogism,
Parmenides's argument can be framed in a manner which runs as follows:
The new or different being would have to come either (a) from being, or (b) from nonbeing.
But not from being, for if it comes from being it already is and there is no real
becoming.
Nor from non-being, for if it arises out of non-being, then non-being must already be
something for being to be able to arise out of it. But, this is a contradiction.
Therefore change, becoming, movement are impossible. “It” [Being] is.325
confused. But, while, amongst the presocratic philosopherss, different philosophies speak here about
matter and there about form, the postulation of a real distinction between matter and form is a different
type of question. Its early existence is a conclusion or a postulation cannot be too readily assumed.
We look at the past from an understanding of philosophical principles which we already have and so,
for us, a real distinction exists between matter and form. But, amongst the Greeks, time, study, and
discussion had to occur before a refinement of meaning could possibly occur and then, from there,
reach an understanding and judgment which can speak about a real distinction between manner and
form (materiality versus intelligibility).
324Please note that, if we jump centuries ahead into Aristotle, we can begin to understand why,
in his metaphysics, we cannot get act from potency. If something is in a state or a condition of
potency, a lack of determination, that which is in a state or condition of potency cannot realize or move
itself into a condition of being which is known as act (act in metaphysics).
325Stewart, Introduction to Philosophy or Lonergan for Beginners, p. 132. Citing the text of
other words that have been used to explain the kind of reasoning which exists within Parmenides's
arguments (as this is given to us by Copleston in his History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 50):
Why do we say “more accurately, It is [Being is]?” For this reason: If
something comes into being, it must arise either out of being or out of
not-being. If if arises out of being, then there is no real arising, no
coming-to-be; for if it comes out of being, it already is. If, however,
it arises out of not-being, then not-being must be already something,
in order for being to be able to arise out of it. But this is a
contradiction. Being therefore, “It” arises neither out of being nor out
of not-being: it never came into being, but simply is. And as this
must apply to all being, nothing ever becomes. For if anything ever
becomes, however trifling, the same difficulty always recurs: does it
come out of being or out of not-being? If the former, then it already
is; if the latter, then you fall into a contradiction, since not-being is
nothing and cannot be the source of being. Change, therefore,
becoming and movement are impossible. Accordingly “It is.” “One
path only is left for us to speak of, namely, that It is. In this path are
very many tokens that what is, is uncreated and indestructible, for it is
54
Being can be understood perhaps as a particular kind of form where to say that something is means
only or simply that something exists.326 What is especially significant about the world, even the
physical world, is the fact that it exists.327
The second way of inquiry is the Way of Belief, 328 the Way of Seeming,329 the Way of Opinion, the
Way of Mortals, or the way of appearance which somehow tries to view being or reality as a
combination of being and non-being which is illogical and self-contradictory since, at the same time,
not-being cannot have the status of being.330 The two always exclude each other: belief does not exist
within truth and truth does not exist within belief. No kind of inner connection exists between them
and no kind of co-operative relation can be postulated or supposed as a species of mutual help. In
Parmenides's context, in the context of his criticism, bluntly put: “to believe is to be deceived.” “Belief
is...sheer error.”331 Parmenides's goddess notes that we cease to follow the Way of Truth if we rely on
our ordinary experience and on the testimony of our senses.
At this point I stop giving you my reliable account and thought about truth; from here
on, learn of things as they appear to mortals, listening to the deceptive construction
(cosmos) of my words.332
Human beings employ two forms for thinking and knowing that contradict each other. One is
legitimate and the other is false. The varying combination accounts for human thinking as it commonly
or conventionally exists. To explain how this is done:
They [many human beings] have established (the custom of) naming two forms, one of
which ought not to be (mentioned): that is where they have gone astray.333
The first form is alleged to be fire, flame, or light which is to be identified with being since its
characteristics are the same as those that belong to being. Citing Parmenides:
They have distinguished them as opposite in form, and have marked them off from
another by giving them different signs: on one side flaming fire in the heavens, mild,
very light (in weight), the same as itself in every direction, and not the same as the
other.334
The second form, however, which is to be regarded as the opposite form is earth, night, darkness, or
complete, immovable and without end.”
326W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers: From Thales to Aristotle (New York: Harper &
Row, 1975), p. 48.
327Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 71.
328Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 68.
329Lonergan, Insight, p. 388.
330Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 63.
331Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 69.
332Fr. 8.50-53, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 67.
333Fr. 8.53-54; tr. Freeman, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 67.
334Fr. 8.55-58; tr. Freeman, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 68.
55
non-being (given its characteristics which are the same as those belonging to non-being).
Parmenides:
Citing
But this too is by itself the opposite, unknowing night, dense and heavy in form.335
In combining these two forms thus in an ever varying, changing proportion of light and darkness, the
logical result of this way of thinking or cognitating is an illogical or irrational view of the world since
light cannot be truly mixed with darkness.
But since all things are named Light and Night, and names have been given to each class
of things according to the power of one or the other (Light or Night), everything is full
equally of Light and invisible Night, as both are equal, because to neither of them
belongs any share (of the other).336
Darkness is such that it combines with light in varying proportions “to make that which is appear as
men ordinarily see it.”337 Variations in the constitution of an individual’s thinking and knowing
subsequently act to modify the kind of world or reality that a person will know or thinks that he knows.
True knowledge transcends a knowing of appearances. Reality is only grasped in moments of special
inspiration and illumination through a self-transcendent form of light which reaches all things
instantaneously and which goes beyond the life and activity of the senses.338 While “that which is” is
identical with the sensible world, the reality of the sensible world is only grasped or known by the mind
or reason functioning through the form of light.339
The result is a world characterized by plurality and change, a world in terms of how it appears to
mortals. One will speak about and be interested in points and the void (rather than the sphere of Being)
such as the Pythagoreans. While some scholars think that this second way is simply a collect of
erroneous opinions, others that it presents earlier views that Parmenides once had but which later he
transcended. Some say he added this section because some account of the world of appearance had to
be given since it was such an obvious fact. To overcome the pitfalls which are caused by overly
relying on the evidences of human sense, one must come to being by engaging in rational judgments
that employ reasoning (logos) in painstaking arguments characterized in terms which speak about “with
much contest.”340 As Parmenides's goddess advises him on how he must act and behave: “Do not trust
sense experience....but judge by means of the logos the much-contesting proof which is expounded by
me.”341 Hence, later on, when speaking about Parmenides and the significance of his insight on the
stability of what the human mind perceives, Aristotle notes that no knowledge of the sensible world can
ever truly occur unless some unchanging things are present.342
335Fr. 8.58-59, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 68.
336Fr. 9; tr. Freeman, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, pp. 68-9.
337Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 74.
338Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 70.
339Aristotle, Metaphysics, IV, 5,1010a2-3; DK, 28A, 24; Oxford tr., cited by Owens, History
of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 71.
340Fr. 7.5 quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 63.
341Fr. 7 quoted by Snell, Discovery of the Mind, p. 149.
342Aristotle, On the Heavens, III, 1,298b15-24; DK, 28A, 25, cited by Owens, History of
Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 73.
56
Zeno of Elea (born c. 495-490 BC), the alleged founder of dialectic (in Aristotle’s judgment), was a
disciple and associate of Parmenides about whom little is known. He perhaps taught in Athens. He
built up arguments to support the Parmenidian denial of motion and plurality. He proved the
impossibility of motion by using the method of reductio ad absurdum: begin by accepting your
opponent’s premises; then, demonstrate that they lead logically to an absurdity or contradiction. This
makes the initial premisses look ridiculous. This indicates that the arguments of opponents are even
more absurd that anything taught by Parmenides as difficult as it might be initially to accept the basic
premisses of Parmenides.
He uses arguments against plurality.343 He begins by supposing that the quantitative nature of all
existing things.344 Being is correlated with quantity: with more and with less. Plurality makes things
both finite and infinite in number. Finiteness derives from the fact that any given number of them
(however numerous) is always determinate or finite. Infinity simultaneously derives from the
possibility of always being able to divide every material thing into parts ad infinitum. Real quantity is
not distinguished from abstract, mathematical quantity. This position is internally incoherent.
Moreover, plurality implies that things will be infinitely large and lacking any size at all. Bisection
into an infinite number of parts implies that a thing is infinitely large which is internally incoherent. At
the same time, things will become so small that they will come to have no size.
...each must have some size and thickness and each part of it must be at a distance from
the other. And the same reasoning holds good of the one that precedes it; for that also
will have size and there will be one preceding it. It is the same, then, to say this once
and to say it always; for no such part of it will be the last, nor without proportion to
another. So if there are many things, they have to be both small and large; so small, on
the one hand, as to have no size; so large, on the other, as to be infinite.345
In order to speak of plurality or many, one must have a notion of unit, but, if things are ultimately
divisible, one can never arrive at a unit which would allow one to speak of plurality or many. A unit or
“one” that would function as a constituent cannot be identified.
He uses a number of arguments to argue against the reality of motion. A first argument relies on a
notion of place which regards it as a thing that is located in a material container. 346 As Aristotle
queries, “if place is something, in what will it be?” 347 The argument is as follows: what is moving
moves either in its place or in a place where it is not located. But, if it is located in its place, it is a rest
and so not moving. On the other hand, if it is not in its place, it “it is just not there to move or to do or
undergo anything at all.”348 Motion is an illusion.
Aristotle cites four riddles or paradoxes that are employed by Zeno to argue against the reality of
343Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, pp. 81-4.
344Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 81.
345Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, pp. 82-3.
346Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, pp. 84-5.
347Aristotle, quoted by Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 85.
348Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 84.
57
motion. First, in the Riddle of the Racecourse or Stadium, a moving object can never cross over. 349 In
crossing a stadium, granting motion, one can never reach the other side since, before getting to the
other side, one must go halfway, but before going halfway, one must go halfway of the remaining
halfway, but before going halfway, one must go halfway ad infinitum. Since the argument never ends,
motion must be impossible even if it were possible. Where, in mathematics, one can speak of a length
that is infinitely divisible, this notion is applied to a material length which has a definite measure in
terms of so many units. A material notion of length is blended with an abstract mathematical notion of
length.
Second, in the Riddle of Achilles and the tortoise, the tortoise has a head start and Achilles tries to
overtake him, but as he reaches one point, the tortoise has moved yet further, ad infinitum. Given the
hypothesis of motion, Achilles can never catch him. As before, an abstract, mathematical notion of
length is combined with a material notion of length and the attribution of definite measures for length.
However, in this argument, instead of lengths of space being divided into equals, lengths are divided
proportionally.350
Third, in the Riddle of the Flying Arrow, according to Pythagorean theory, the arrow should occupy a
given position in space at any given moment, but since, to do so, it would have to be at rest, the flying
arrow is at rest which is a contradiction. This argument presupposes a material notion of space that
Aristotle criticizes but, more importantly, it invokes a notion of time that consists of a series of
indivisible units described as instants or “atomic nows.” 351 At any given moment, an arrow is in a
definite place and its flight is constituted by “a series of motionless moments.” 352 But, from a series of
montionless moments, we cannot get movement. We cannot move from a condition of immobility to a
condition of mobility. For a more apt, contemporary example that illustrates the point of Zeno's
arguments here, think about the being of a modern motion picture. The term “moving picture” is an
illusion. What we have is a series of still photographs and when they are displayed to us in a sequence,
we get an illusion of movement in the images that are shown. The illusion of movement is constructed
from images that, in fact, exist in a condition of rest.
Fourth, in the Riddle of the Moving Rows, in the middle of a stadium three rows of bodies of equal
length are lined up, parallel to each other. Each row is divided into four segments of equal length. The
top row is stationary. Below, the second row is located to left of center. Beneath this second row, the
third row is located right of center. At the same time, the second row moves to the right which the
third moves to the left, and when the motion is completed, the second and third rows are perfectly lined
up beneath the first row. During the time of motion, the first B passed 4 C segments and 2 A segments.
In the same length of time, B went twice as far in C units than in A units although all these units are of
equal length. If time is measured in terms of local motion, distance traversed by an object in motion,
half a given time equals the whole of a given time. This contradiction again indicates that motion is an
illusion. The thesis of motion leads to contradictory conclusions. An exact correlation exists between
indivisible, discrete units of length and indivisible, discrete units of time. Each unit of length is
correlated with a unit of time.
349Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 85.
350Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 86.
351Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 86.
352Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 22.
58
In conclusion thus with respect to Zeno’s arguments, fidelity to human reasoning reveals internal
contradictions in the common sense understanding of ordinary human experience. For instance, men
tend to assume that given lengths are composed of definite parts or units which are constitutive and, at
the same time, they assume that given lengths are indefinitely divisible. 353 But, for purposes of
coherence and to avoid contradiction, we cannot have it both ways. According then to the wording of
one explanation that is given about why, hypothetically, in a race between the two, Achilles can never
catch up to a Tortoise who has been given a head start in the race that is being run:
Before Achilles can catch the Tortoise, he must cover half the distance between himself
and the Tortoise. But before he can reach the halfway point of that distance, he has to
cover half the first half. But half that distance has to be covered first, and so on and so
on. It may be infinitesimally small, but there is always a first half of some distance to be
covered before any of the further points can be reached. Achilles, then, cannot even get
going, let alone reach the Tortoise.354
In the same way too, an arrow cannot reach the midpoint of its supposed flight. 355 At any given
moment, it is always in a condition of rest.
Summary: Notice how the Pythagoreans attended to what is known by understanding, and began a
type of search seeking the “form” of something. The Eclectics attended to characteristics that belong to
Being, which is known in judgment. Both groups began to attend to a dimension of the human mind
and to reality that was not recognized before. Notice, that the discovery of forms and of Being, which
are components of that which we know, simultaneously brings about a discovery of the human mind.
In conclusion thus, while the Ionians tried to say what one could see by experience (accepting plurality
and trying to seek a unifying immanent principle), the Eleatics of southern Italy tried to indicate what
could be perceived through reason which involved getting behind the appearances of things. While
both the Pythagoreans and the Milesians spoke about plurality, admitting its existence (hence, that
which exists as “the Many”), the Pythagoreans spoke about a plurality in a way which practically
excluded that which exists as “the One” which was something that existed as a more abstract kind of
thing (given its anti-sensualistic basis). While Heraclitus tried to do justice to these two traditions by
his concept of unity-in-diversity through that which exists as the logos, he was uneasy with respect to
the stabilizing function of this same logos. On the other hand however, the Eleatics claimed that we
must be radical and so claim and refer to that which exists as “the One,” not trusting thus in our
experience but, instead, relying on the use of our reason (reason instead of experience). Hence, a
number of philosophical problems were posed by this whole development with respect to what should
be the relation between the “One and the Many” (as this was typified by the conflict that existed
between the philosophies of Parmenides and Heraclitus). Citing these problems to a larger or a lesser
degree: (1) Parmenides and Zeno, in their manner of thinking, suggested the need to re-evaluate a
monistic presupposition which, heretofore, had been accepted by all Greeks in their manner of
thinking: a view which had espoused the belief that reality is composed of only one thing (one kind of
thing) since the holding of such a view directly led to a number of untenable conclusions in the wake of
the kind of philosophy which comes to us from the originating thought of Parmenides; (2) the relation
353Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 89.
354Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 21.
355Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 22.
59
which exists between reason and experience excited controversy and many disputes since, here also,
the thought of Parmenides and Zeno led to a crisis in Greek philosophy because of a thesis which
suggested that a strong distinction should always be made between any information that comes to us
from the five external senses and any information that comes to us from the use of pure reason, a
distinction which was later developed into the founding of two traditions or two schools of philosophy
which have existed as Empiricism and Rationalism;356 (3) a related tension arose between that which
exists as an intelligible world and that which exists as a sensible world (the intelligible versus the
sensible); (4) another tension arose between that which exists as being and that which exists as
becoming (stability versus change); and (5) other related tensions distinguish between the universal and
the particular, the substantial and the accidental, the cosmic and the psychic, the first cause and
secondary effects, the collective and the individual, the realm of transcendence versus the realm of
immanence.357 A common thread flows through these problems and disputes. While subsequently, in
the context of his own day, Plato spoke about two worlds which exist with a line that is to be drawn
between them, through a kind of resolution, Aristotle proceeded to speak about how change and
stability exist together within the same world since we should not sacrifice change for stability nor
stability for change. We can be loyal to reason and, at the same time, not deny the data of our human
senses because of a reconciliation that can be indicated in a way which points to a synthesis of two
together, reason and sense. The two exist and function together in a way which points to a form of
mutual dependence. In fact, we can refer to a species of mutual causality or a species of mutual
priority that exists between the work of intellect and sense (sense relative to the being of reason and
intellect and, conversely, reason or intellect relative to the being of sense).
As a result of these controversies thus, the later Pre-socratics (who were sometimes referred to as the
"pluralists") attempted to resolve these new problems that they had inherited from the Milesians and
the Eleatics although two directions or two approaches can be found: the first, let us examine anew how
the physical world exists (as we find this approach, for example, in the thinking and the analysis of the
Atomists); and the second, let us turn from the physical or the material world of things and reflect on
the being of man and how we exist as human beings.
the younger philosophers of nature: the Pluralists
Their goal was to reconcile Parmenides’ fundamental insight on the unchangeabilty of Being with
evidence for change by trying to show that change was superficial: it did not touch the core of things
which remained unchanged. The method is by a physical analysis of being which showed that things
were made of changeable combinations of unchangeable elements.
3 major thinkers, schools
Empedocles of Acragas (c.521-461 BC, born in Agrigentum, Sicily), was a philosopher, politician,
and poet who was talked about by Diogenes Laertius as a somewhat mysterious personality, a
democratic leader. Little is truly known about him. Traditional sources allege that he was of
aristocratic birth.358
356Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 32.
357Pabst, Metaphysics, p. xxx.
358Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 103.
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Empedocles, whom Diogenes describes (citing Alcidamas's treatise on Physics) as a student of
Parmenides, expressed his thoughts in two poems of hexameter epic verse consisting of 5,000 lines of
which only 450 have survived359 About 150 fragments survive. His other writings are lost. As
Aristotle noted in On Poets, cited by Diogenes, "Empedocles was of Homer's school and powerful in
diction, being great in metaphors and in the use of all other poetical devices" 360 In long fragments of
two poems (The Purifications and On Nature), he expounded his vision of the world where, in the first
poem, he articulates a doctrine of purifications recalling Pythagoras, blood being seen as an instrument
of thinking. While several surviving fragments testify to a teaching on the existence of four eternal
elements or “roots” (Fire, Air, Earth, and Water) through whose combination everything in the universe
comes to exist (including the "long-lived gods"), a surviving text from the Poem on Nature indicates
that Empedocles sometimes used divine names for the names that denoted the four natural elements.
Quoting the appropriate lines:
Hear first the four roots of all things: shining Zeus, life-bringing Hera, Aidoneus and
Nestis whose tear-drops are a well-spring to mortals.361
No disagreement exists about the name of Nestis standing for Water but, unfortunately, because of the
ambiguity that attends Empedocles's expression, little agreement exists on the meaning of the other
names. While some say that Zeus is Fire, Hera Air, and Aidoneus Earth, others argue that Zeus is Air,
Hera Earth, and Aidoneus Fire362 The variety attests to an absence of fixed meaning in the 5th Century
(75 to 100 years after the introduction of new meanings for divine names either by Pherecydes or by
Theagenes) and a lack of control which attends the kinds of meanings that can be apprehended when
persons, engaged in critical analysis, employ a means of communication which does not easily lend
itself to an exact and precise statement of what may be an understanding or judgment on a given topic.
A free and shrewd use of one's imagination admits few limits to the many meanings which one may
discover.
First familiar with the Pythagorean school and later with Parmenides, Empedocles sought to reconcile
these with the older physical school. His aim was to reconcile the fact of change and motion with
Parmenides’ rational principle that Being is one and change, an illusion. Heraclitus and Parmenides
each erred in thinking that only one element or substance exists: neither water nor air can change into
something else since the fact of change must be explained by some other factor that is not an element 363
Empedocles’s method is as follows: he posited that everything was composed of four passive and two
active elements: reality can be reduced to 4 ultimate and unchangeable elements: fire, air, earth, and
water ("the four roots" that, in varying proportions, compose all things in compounds): hence, basically
nothing changes (as in Parmenides).
When a piece of wood burns, the crackling and sputtering reminds one of water; the smoke reminds
one of air; the fire is seen; and the ashes signify earth. Their continual mingling and mixing explain
359Diogenes VIII, 56; Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1953 ed., s.v. "Empedocles," by Alexander
James Dow Porteous.
360Diogenes VIII, 57.
361Empedokles of Akragas Poem on Nature 6, quoted in John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy
(Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company, 1969), p. 205.
362Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, p. 229, n. 3.
363Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 36.
61
change (as an artist would mix a basic set of colors to produce hundreds of variations) and the world’s
formation occurs because of two forces or causes: love and strife. “Substance" is to be distinguished
from "force" in a view that is today accepted in modern science since all natural processes are
explained as interactions between different elements and various natural forces. Love (represented by
the goddess Aphrodite) is the force of unity that brings together unrelated items to produce new
creations and strife or hate (represented by the god Ares) is the force of destruction breaking down old
unities into fragments.
This theory was later accepted by Freud who named the two forces, Eros and Thanatos (the life instinct
and the death instinct); as in Empedocles, these forces formed the bases of all organic matter. 364 In an
early theory of evolution, it is said that the cosmic process is ever changing: the world originally was
perfect in starting out as a sphere of perfectly mixed elements under the domination of love, but, with
the entry of hate, original balance and unity is disrupted as hate causes the elements to separate. Love
gains ground again however to re-unify things again in an unending process that has no beginning and
no end.
Note the traditional Greek view of perfection associated with balanced forces. Love brings together
certain kinds of monsters (..."many heads grew up without necks, and arms were wandering about
naked, bereft of shoulders, and eyes roamed about alone with no foreheads" and those that could
survive, did survive). Aristotle criticized this view as "leaving too much to chance" although
Empedocles’s attempt to look for active moving causes anticipates the thinking and teaching of
Aristotle.
Empedocles proposes a theory of perception: the eyes consist of earth, air, fire, and water like
everything else in nature.365 Hence, the "earth" in our eyes perceives what belongs to the earth while
the "air" perceives what is of the air, and so on with fire and water. Lacking any of these four
substances, one’s eyes would not be able to perceive what is of earth, air, fire, and water in nature.
Empedocles also experimented with a water-clock of brass; claimed himself a god; the earth is like a
ball, plants have sex. It is said that he died by leaping into Mount Etna.
From Aristotle, we have text which suggests that, implicitly in Empedocles, there exists a belief and a
teaching about the existence of natural law. The context, as Aristotle notes, is a moral teaching that
comes to us from Empedocles to the effect that we should not kill living creatures. Natural law differs
from conventional, positive law (man-made laws). Conventional law exists at a lower level and it is to
be regarded with a degree of distain in situations where here, for instance, in the example which is
given, according to conventional law, it is not just for some persons to kill living creatures while, for
others, it is not wrong to do so. Citing Empedocles's teaching:
Nay, but, an all-embracing law, through the realms of the sky
Unbroken it stretcheth, and over the earth's immensity.366
364Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 37.
365Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 38.
366Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1, 13: 1373b17-18 (trans. W. Rhys Roberts). See Randall, Aristotle, p.
283, who offers a differing translation: “But a universal precept, which extends without a break,
throughout the wide-ruling sky and the boundless earth.”
62
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae in Ionia (c.534-462 BC) was a leading scientist who belonged to a circle
that gathered around the Athenian politician Pericles and who had early connections with the Milesian
school. He later moved to Athens at the age of 40 to become the first real philosopher established
there. Although a friend of Pericles, he was not involved actively in politics since he remained
essentially a philosopher who contemplated the world. He was forced to flee Athens when later he was
accused of atheism and impiety. He claimed that the sun was not a god but a red-hot stone, bigger than
the entire Peloponnesian peninsula.367 The moon is earth.368 In addition, after studying a meteorite, he
argued that all heavenly bodies were made of the same substance as the Earth. Hence, there could be
human life on other planets. Moreover, the Moon has no light of its own since its light comes from the
Earth. He also theorized an explanation for solar eclipses.
He wrote one treatise published “not much before 464 B.C.”369 Important fragments of it are quoted by
Simplicius although there has been some difficulty understanding what he said. In accepting
Parmenides’s logical insight and in attempting to reconcile it with the evident fact of change, he
criticized Empedocles’s theory as too simplistic.370
According to Anaxagoras: nature is constructed from an infinite number of invisible minute particles
but, despite how much everything can be divided into even smaller parts, even within the smallest
parts, fragments exist of all other things.371 If skin and bone are not a transformation of something else,
there must also be skin and bone in the milk we drink and the food we eat. The identity of a thing
already exists in every tiny part. For example, in a hologram depicting a car, we will see a picture of
the whole car though we only have the part of the hologram that shows a bumper. Also, with our
bodies, the nucleus of a skin cell from one’s finger contains not only the characteristics of one’s skin
but the same cell will reveal what kind of eyes one has, the color of one’s hair, the number and type of
one’s fingers, and so on. Every cell carries a blueprint of the way all the other cells are constructed
because "something of something" exists in every cell where the whole exists in each tiny part. He
replaced the "four roots" with minuscule particles which have something of everything in them and
which he called "seeds" or "infinite seeds" where each seed resembles a chemical element. While
every object in the world contains seeds of all the elements, in each object, the seeds of one element
predominate.
In all things, there is a portion of everything . . . For how could hair come from what is
not hair? or flesh from what is not flesh?372
To explain what order is or what accounts for the order which we can find within our world, allegedly
for the first time, it is said that Anaxagoras first clearly distinguished between matter and mind, hylo
and nous, because it was he who replaced the overly mythical and physical figures of love and strife
that we find in Empedocles with the being of only one force: something which allegedly possesses a
mental character and which he referred to as Nous (signifying Mind or Intelligence). The universe is
367Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 39.
368Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 114.
369Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy, p. 114.
370Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 39.
371Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 38.
372Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 39.
63
organized out of chaos according to an intelligent, rational order that is directed by a supreme,
limitless, guiding, ordering principle which exists as Mind or Nous (existing in itself as “the finest and
purest of all things...having knowledge about everything and the greatest power...” and in a manner
also which is independent of matter, the existence of material conditions: it is “infinite and self-ruled,
and is mixed with nothing, but is alone, itself by itself”).373 This Nous or Mind is akin to a god who
creates objects out of "seeds" or elements. Its mention is the first time that the being of understanding
is proposed as the fundamental principle of all things, existing (apparently) as an immaterial principle
which, in turn, by its being, hints or points to the existence of another level of being in reality (another
kind of being) which would exist as a spiritual order of things. On the one hand, in the language or
conceptuality of Anaxagoras, Nous or Mind exists as the most immaterial kind of being which exists
among the order of material beings although, in surviving fragments, it is also noted that Nous is “the
thinnest of all things” and that it occupies space. 374 The immaterial or spiritual attributes of Nous were
later distinguished and more fully worked out by Socrates and Plato (physical categories are more
clearly distinguished from the being of immaterial categories and attributes) although it is said, about
Socrates, that it was the teaching of Anaxagoras about Mind which first inspired him to take a direction
in philosophy which moved toward a thesis and a belief in the primacy of our intellectual life over any
point of view which would want to speak about an alleged primacy of matter: matter over mind instead
of mind over matter. From Anaxagoras comes a tradition which speaks about how Mind precedes
Matter and not Matter, Mind.375
In adverting to a principle of explanation which can speak about why the world exists in the way that it
exists, it is said thus that, in Anaxagoras, we have the beginnings of a notion of cause which refers to
the being of final causes.376 Final causes explain why or for what purpose there exists an order within
our world as we experience it (why, instead of a chaos, there exists a cosmos with the kind of order
which it has) while, on the other hand, efficient causes exist as a way of referring to the presence of
material causes or the activity of physical forces which would exist together as secondary causes,
functioning as possibly the means whereby the Mind brings things into being. In conclusion then,
harmony exists within the world that we live in because an intellect exists as a species of governing
principle and, in himself, man has something special which is to be identified with the being of his
intellect.
The early, Greek Atomists (c. 420 BC), who are regarded by some as, philosophically, the first
materialists in the history of philosophy, 377 consist of two important persons, Leucippos (fl. 430 BC)
and Democritos (c.460-370 BC). Leucippos, the founder of the Atomist School, possibly came from
Milesia and, according to Diogenes Laertius, he wrote a book. Little about him is known. Democritos
of Abdera, who was known as the “Laughing Philosopher,” came from northern Greece and he was a
contemporary of Socrates although he is ranked as a pre-socratic thinker because atomism is seen as the
last attempt to construct a philosophy of nature which could understand the many different mechanisms
which are operative within the being of our physical, natural world.
373Anaxagoras, as cited by Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 70; Hill, After the
Natural Law, p. 24.
374Anaxagoras, as cited by Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 70.
375Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 24.
376Cf. http://www.iep.utm.edu/anaxagor/ (accessed July 15, 2016).
377Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 25.
64
In criticism and in opposition to these kinds of efforts, Socrates rejected the claims of physical science
to answer all the questions which exist concerning human life and, today, after 100 years of positivist
thought and feeling, we are beginning to feel that we cannot solve our theoretical or practical questions
solely by means of the various sciences since, for some problems and difficulties, we need to go to
other types of thinking and reflection (as Bergson had argued, like Socrates).
A sharp break accordingly occurred after the thought and time of Democritos. His theory was
criticized by Aristotle (Plato had wanted to burn his writings) although, later on, his thought received
the support of the Athenian philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC). Democritos distinguished and
attempted to reconcile 4 elements in his theory. Listing these:
(1) Matter is divided into an infinite number of separate small particles, very fine ultimate particles that
are un-cuttable and which account for the presence of stability within the universe. 378 They cannot be
reduced to smaller particles through some kind of infinite regress which could possibly occur since the
attempt to do so would inevitably lead to the dissolution of atoms and so the non-existence of atoms.
The term "a-tom" (atomos) means "un-cuttable" or "indivisible" (as “cannot be split”). As uncreated,
indestructible, firm, solid, eternal, indivisible, and containing no holes, each atom exists as a little piece
of "Parmenidean Being."379 Atoms exist as “the most basic unit of reality.” 380 They are the most basic
stuff of reality.
(2) Other than the existence of atoms, a void or empty space exists in which these same particles move
about since no movement is possible if all the atoms which exist are, in fact, linked up with each other
in a contiguous manner. According to Democritos, you can cut an apple with a knife because space
exists between the atoms.381 In claiming, however, that the universe consists only of being and nonbeing (the atoms and empty space), the atomists went beyond Parmenides in assigning to non-being a
real status in the universe which before it had not had but which is now introduced in order to explain
motion since the presence of a void or non-being possesses a kind of reality which belongs to it because
it is the place or the site of motion.
(3) The atoms differ only in shape and volume. They cannot be identical since if they were, there
would be no satisfactory explanation for how they could combine to form many different things. 382 As
noted, they are unlimited in number and variety. Some are round and smooth and others are irregular
and jagged.
(4) All change is the result of the movement of the atoms (where in the death of bodies the atoms which
exist to constitute a given body disperse to form new bodies). The varying interaction and combination
of the atoms with each other shapes the whole universe and everything in it where even the gods and
the human soul consist of atoms (special round smooth "soul atoms" that disperse at death and which
would accordingly preclude the possibility of any form of consciousness after death). The atoms move
in a purely mechanistic way without possessing any kind of final direction but, in fact, always obeying
the inevitable laws of necessity. We think here about the kind of trajectory which can exist when a
378Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 43.
379Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 42.
380Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 25.
381Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 10.
382Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 43.
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given billiard ball hits another ball at a certain point and angle. However, since atoms have "hooks"
and "barbs," when they do collide, they form or attach to each other in a way which forms the
particular kind of body which is the being of a new body. However, as a consequence: freedom, the
existence of freedom, cannot be reconciled with the existence and the play of necessity and so, if we
should speak about freedom, we should speak about something that is void of any substance or reality.
In conformity then with modern scientific theory, nature is build up of different atoms that join and
separate from each other repeatedly where, for example, a hydrogen atom at the end of one’s nose
could have come from an elephant’s trunk although, on the other hand, the indivisibility of atoms is a
thesis that is today rejected since atoms can be divided into protons, neutrons, and electrons which
perhaps can be further divided although all agree that, in the end, something finite must exist as some
kind of ultimate specification of being.383 Not until the chemist Dalton in 1800 did there occur a
significant advance on this theory of atomism which comes to us from the early Greek atomists.384
Democritos posits no cause for motion nor any directing force since the universe exists purely as a
mechanical result of physical chains of causation that are characterized by necessity and which are
determined by the being of natural laws. Everything that happens has a natural cause which is
inherent in the thing itself. According to Leucippos, allegedly: "Nothing occurs by chance. All is from
necessity." No real distinction exists between necessity and chance since chance is but the absence of
consciousness with regard to our having a knowledge of something which would exist as an ordering
principle or variable while necessity is nothing other than the absence of an explanation. As had been
the case with the earlier teaching of Heraclitus, Leucippos does not provide a definition for the
meaning of necessity.385 Neither does Democritos who speaks about atoms moving “according to
necessity.”386 Since Leucippos admits that he cannot explain how or why the universe exists in the way
that it exists, he posits a form of pure mechanism as both a reflection and an indicator of his lack of
understanding. At the same time too, it is to be admitted that the materialism of atomist philosophy
(for instance, the materialism of the atoms as first principles) suggests that the appropriate notion of
necessity would be one that is determined by some kind of physical or mechanical necessity.
In general, the atomists were unable to conceive and formulate what it means to have free choice given
their description of motion as something which proceeds from necessity, a necessity for nothing. Later,
Aristotle criticized this atomist theory given the intelligibility of his belief in teological notions while,
on the other hand, the atomist explanation of necessary movement was something that is based on
ignorance (with respect to the meaning of necessity). According to Democritos, the movement of
atoms in space explains how our sense perception operates: for instance, when I see the moon, it is
because "moon atoms" are penetrating my eyes.387
In his ethics or moral philosophy, he advocated a refined form of hedonism as in the “essence of
happiness is tranquility.” In another quotation that could be related to this hedonism: “speech is the
shadow of action.”388
383Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 44.
384Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 10.
385Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 19.
386Democritos, A 83, as quoted by Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 19.
387Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 45.
388Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 25.
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a summary...
In conclusion, by 370 BC, Greek philosophy had been led to a thorough going materialism and a
rigorous determinism since there existed nothing in the world but material bodies (no freedom, only
necessity).389 Summarizing the pre-socratic philosophers of nature whose work occurred in the
boundaries of the Greek world (in the cities of Ionia, southern Italy and Sicily, and in the north): first,
from the Milesians came the idea of the unity of the universe and the idea that the fundamental
principle of unity is material; second, from the Pythagoreans came belief in the transmigration of souls
from which came three ideas which were later developed by Plato: immortality, the destiny of the
human soul, and the necessity of preparing for the soul’s future destiny; third, from Parmenides came
an emphasis on there being something eternal in being which is stable; fourth, from Heraclitus came
belief in the transitoriness of all sensible things; fifth, from Anaxagoras, belief that the mind is the
mover of everything in the cosmos. Although Socrates criticized Anaxagoras’ use of the mind, since
he inherited and accepted Anaxagoras’ notion of the mind as causal, he said that we should go inside
the mind.
On the permanence of their achievement,390 the following can be said: they pioneered a kind of thinking
which led to the birth of philosophy and science; they were the first to elucidate the dichotomy between
reason and the senses; they were the first to develop a theory of evolution; and they made the first
effort to solve the riddle of how mathematical numbers hold sway over the flux of experienced things.
On the other hand, after 200 years of thought, they created more confusion given the many differing
opinions on what is real as opposed to what is not real. The only thing the philosophers succeeded in
doing was to undermine the traditional religious and moral values, leaving nothing substantial in their
place. As Aristophanes noted: "When Zeus is toppled, chaos succeeds him, and whirlwind rules." 391
Besides, times were changing socially, politically, and intellectually. First, the old aristocracy,
dedicated to the noble values of the Homeric legends, was losing ground to a new mercantile class
which was no longer interested in the virtues of honor, courage, and fidelity but in power and success.
Second, one achieved these values in an incipient democracy through politics where access is provided
by the study of rhetoric (i.e., law): the art of swaying the masses with eloquent, though not necessarily
truthful argumentation. Third, in the 5th Century, Athens grew to an unparalleled level of culture with
creativity in all fields (in conjunction with the development of democracy). The Athenian golden age
lasted from 470 to 430 BC until the start of her war with Sparta after her earlier victory over the
Persians. Socrates was born in 470 and Plato in 427 and the interval witnessed cultural expansion and
the birth of democracy. The word "democracy" was mentioned by Solon, the lawgiver, in his code of
laws in 594 since it was Solon who suppressed the rule of tyrants in Athens and emphasized the selfrule of citizens. Please note though that democratic life was partly based on slavery since only onesixth of the members of a city-state counted as citizens once one excluded all slaves, children,
foreigners ("barbarians"), and women (who possessed almost no civil rights). Fourth, a reaction
against the presocratic philosophy occurred in the 2nd half of the 5th Century BC when Socrates was in
middle age because of a tired feeling which prevailed that the philosophy of the physicists was too
remote and abstract from everyday life. It produced a shift of interest from nature to humanism (what
389Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 42.
390Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, pp. 42-43.
391Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 4.
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is man?) since, ordinary men, when confronted with choosing between belief in the old philosophy and
what was seen in Athenian daily life, desired to consider those problems which more directly
concerned themselves and other people.
Philosophies of Man
The Sophists were the next group of philosophers although they were not really philosophers as such
since they are better described as rhetoricians who became known as sophists (a sophist is defined as "a
wise and informed person").392 They originally worked as itinerant teachers, traveling about the Greek
city states and giving lessons to whoever would pay them, 393 charging fees for admission to their
lectures that dealt with the nature of power and persuasion (not reality or truth). The sophist name does
not predate the 5th Century.394 The need to impart a series of skills that make for success in the world
explains the many different subjects which the sophists taught. The arts of public address, or rhetoric,
formed the staple of the sophist curriculum. As traveling teachers, they appeared in the milieu that first
surrounded Pericles since, in the background of Athenian democracy, they found an environment
which favored their teaching for the following three reasons: (1) there existed a need for intellectual
training for political life since, in rule and government by the people, only more educated and clever
men could obtain and acquire power through the use of new democratic institutions as this was given,
for instance, in addressing general assemblies of the citizens (hence, eloquence and the power of the
word were needed in order to acquire skill in the arts of persuasion in order to form arguments that
were needed in order the more skillfully to defend at any time any given thesis that was being proposed
or criticized); (2) there existed a tendency in Athens toward relativism in moral and religious beliefs
since, in contrast to the little prior questioning which had existed in the practice of traditional Greek
religion and morality, with the rise and practice of democracy, people could talk and apply their critical
reason to the questions and concerns of the day; and (3) a greater cosmopolitan spirit grew out of
expanded commercial ties. Three traits characterize the sophists: 395 (1) like the physical philosophers,
they criticized the traditional mythology which had existed as ways of speaking about world (possibly
in some way explaining it by telling stories of one kind or another); (2) they evinced skepticism and
even cynicism by rejecting the value of any philosophical speculation that were seen to be fruitless 396
i.e., man cannot know the truth about the riddles of nature and the universe since no absolute norms
exist for determining right from wrong, truth from falsehood, although, here, Socrates tried to show
that some norms are absolute and universally valid; and (3) they had a practical interest and a concern
for the art of living within society despite the kind of form or organization which existed within a given
society.
As transition figures, they made a number of positive contributions. (1) Firstly, they directed attention
in philosophy toward man, the subject, as men became interested in understanding themselves and in
understanding how they should think and live within the world of human things as this exists for us as
392Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 62.
393Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd ed., s.v. "Sophists," by Guy Cromwell Field.
394According to Kathleen Freeman in Ancilla to The Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A complete
translation of the Fragments in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 1978) p. 125, sophistes originally meant "skilled craftsman" or "wise man"
but, by the end of the 5th Century, it had come to have the special meaning of "professional teacher."
395Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 62.
396Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 54.
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our human point of departure. This represented a shift toward an interest in ethics that moved away
from a focus on understanding and knowing the exterior world of the cosmos since the sophists focused
on problems that differed from man to man in a way which accordingly encouraged a species of
subjectivism against which Socrates negatively reacted. As an object of sophist inquiry: how can man
do things for himself? (2) Secondly, the Sophists connected culture with politics for the first time
since, for them, education had a practical function in a tradition that has come down to us from the
Greeks. The aim of all good education is “to train men to be good citizens; to [help them] take their
full share in the life and government of their city.” 397 Many of the sophists were themselves skilled
politicians who contributed to the history of Greek democracy. (3) Third and lastly, the Sophists
founded the first pedagogical system of training in the west which consisted of two major parts, the
first grounding and leading to the second. The first part consisted of formal training in three
interrelated subjects or three interrelated arts which move initially from the study of Grammar or
grammatics toward Dialectic (the study or the use of Logic) and then, from there, toward the kind of
communication which occurs through the ways and forms of Rhetoric. 398 By way of further
explanation in a way which attends to the origins of philosophy in terms of how it can begin to emerge
within the lives of individual human beings:
Combining these disciplines together in a way which constitutes the so-called Trivium
(literally, “the place where three roads meet”), in the troika of Grammar, Dialectic, and
Rhetoric, one accordingly uses “verbal symbols [in order] to think and communicate.”399
One discipline leads to the other. In the study of human language and speech, for the
first time in human history, within the human order of things, when engaging in human
studies, Grammar emerges as a new, distinct discipline. The Greek sophists took
linguistic phenomena and they subjected it to a reductive analysis which served to
determine an array of elements and parts (an descending order of “nouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, moods, conjugations, and declensions” as one moves
from the principle parts of speech and what these parts represent toward subsidiary
constructions that are employed as qualifications of one kind or another). 400 In the study
of Grammar, one looks at how many different terms fit together to constitute the
structure or the order of human discourse within a given linguistic tradition. The order
397Christopher Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education (Steubenville, OH: Franciscan
University Press, 1989), p. 6.
398Stratford Caldecott, Beauty in the Word Rethinking the Foundations of Education (Tacoma,
WA: Angelico Press, 2012), p. 9. As Caldecott cites Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141 AD), from his
Didascalicon, 82, in a way which identifies this species of training in education which is signified in
Latin as the Trivium and which became the basis of a liberal, non-utilitarian form of education in the
West (the so-called “liberal arts” as opposed to the practical, the mechanical, or the “servile arts” which
served to impart a set of marketable skills that could be used by persons to gain their livelihood, earn
some kind of income to meet current living expenses); in the words of Hugh of St. Victor: “Grammar
is the knowledge of how to speak without error; dialectic is clear-sighted argument which separates the
true from the false; rhetoric is the discipline of persuading to every suitable thing.” Cf. Stratford
Caldecott, Beauty for Truth's Sake On the Re-enchantment of Education (Grand Rapids, Michigan:
Brazos Press, 2009), p. 20.
399Caldecott, Beauty in the Word, p. 9.
400Caldecott, Beauty in the Word, p. 36, quoting Kenneth L. Schmitz, The Recovery of Wonder,
pp. 16-17.
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which is discovered, as it is understood, then points toward the order or the structure of
our human reason and so it serves as a basis for attending to the different forms of
thinking and argument that are operative within the activities of our human reasoning:
identifying these different forms and determining where valid forms of reasoning exist
and how they can be distinguished from other forms of reasoning that are not to be
regarded as right or valid. On this basis then, as one moves from the literary and
mythological kind of education which exists in Grammar toward the critical and
philosophic kind of education which exists in Dialectic, from one's thinking and
understanding, one moves into an expressiveness and a suggestiveness which exists
through all the various arts of communication and persuasion and so, within this
discipline, one learns how to discuss, debate, and argue on both sides of any given
question. One understands the kind of reasoning which could exist on either side of a
given issue and, from the kind of order and fruition which exists through the arts of
communications, language experiences a growth in the manner of its denotation and
connotation and this development is then brought into the order of Grammar in a way
which adds to the character of our human speech, adding to the goodness or the nobility
which exists already in the patterns which are operative within the flow of our human
speech.
A recurrent circuit accordingly joins the remembering and recollection which exists
within Grammar with both the thinking and understanding which occurs within
Dialectic and the actuation of communication which exists within Rhetoric.
Developments within Grammar condition developments which exist within Dialectic
and these developments in turn condition developments as these were to emerge in
terms of how persons should communicate with each other within the context of an
inherited social order.401 In other words, if the manner of our human thinking and
understanding is to grow in a way which could engender (in us) the subsequent birth of
science and philosophy, leading us to the birth of science and philosophy as new habits
of mind and thought which have arisen within our individual subjectivities, then the
necessary prerequisite would seem to be a species of prior cultural development which,
in its own way, already knows about the meaning of certain terms and phrases and so,
by means of this significance, it would already know about the being of certain realities:
realities that are known by us in an a priori kind of way. Circa 1159, according to John
of Salisbury: “Grammar is the cradle of all philosophy, and in a manner of speaking, the
first nurse of the whole study of letters.”402 If, for instance, the birth of philosophy in the
Greek world is regarded by some as an inexplicable miracle for which no adequate
explanation can be given, then the better explanation could very well be one which
argues that the birth of philosophy and science in the Greek world is to be explained by
the strangeness or the miracle of Greek culture, the predisposing kind of culture which
arose among the ancient Greeks, prior to the emergence of philosophy as we have come
to know about it, in our own day, through ways and means of our current western
culture. Hence, if, originally, in the Greek world, a prior kind of cultural achievement
was needed and was necessary if, in its wake, the birth of philosophy and science was to
401Caldecott, Beauty in the Word, pp. 37-38.
402John of Salisbury, The Metalogicon, 37, as quoted by Caldecott, Beauty in the Word, pp. 3637.
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follow as a happy fruitful addition (development), then, for this reason or for the same
reason, if, within ourselves, the ways and means of philosophy and science are to
emerge as a species of internal form or catalyst which acts to shape and orientate our
minds and hearts in a new direction, then its necessary prerequisite must also be a prior
level of cultural achievement which, in some way, would have to exist within ourselves,
informing the form of our humanity. Certain kinds of culture take away from the
possibility of our ever being able to enjoy acts of understanding which could come to us
from the arts and the heritage of philosophy and science. But, on the other hand too, for
us, other kinds of culture are absolutely necessary if the understanding of philosophy
and science is to come to us (to emerge in us) and so effect a personal kind of impact or
a species of conversion which, radically, could change how we think about our world
and about how, as human beings, we can begin to be and exist in ways which, before,
we had not conceived or thought possible. As Plato was to express this thesis in the
context of his day and time: “the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of
the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming to that of being, and learn by
degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other
words, of the good.”403 The “road to reason” or the cultivation of that which exists as
human rationality is by way initially of the “ordering of the human soul” as this can be
achieved through an education in terms of “love, ...discernment, and ...virtue.”404
The second part of the Sophist educational program (which, in the Latin world, was denoted in terms
which spoke about a Quadrivium or, in other words, a “'meeting of four ways'”), largely drew on the
mathematics of the Pythagoreans in a way which dealt with how mathematical symbols were used or
how they could be used in the four disciplines which exist as Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and
Astronomy (respectively, in the study of number, arithmetic as the study of pure number; geometry as
the study of number in space; music as the study of number in time, as this is given in “song, poetry,
story, and dance”;405 and astronomy as the study of number in both space and time). 406 The sophist
understanding of formal numbers was largely borrowed from the Pythagorean tradition of mathematics
although this same understanding was also much used by Plato who regarded it as central for the
training of philosophers because of the degree of abstraction which always exists in mathematics. As a
general conclusion that can be drawn about the shape and the aims of Sophist pedagogy, it can be said
that the training which was given attempted to train human minds in how to think and in what not to
think.
Protagoras (c . 480-410 BC), a native of Thrace in northern Greece, 407 the most famous and least
cynical of the Sophists, was an essentially practical man and a friend of Pericles who made successive
visits to Athens (coming there in middle age) and who, according to Diogenes Laertius, was eventually
forced to flee Athens on a charge of blasphemy. Apparently, his book on the gods was publicly burned
in Athens. He was known as a lawyer who could win cases in any trial.
403Plato 1892, 3:218, as cited by Caldecott, Beauty for Truth's Sake, p. 22.
404Caldecott, Beauty for Truth's Sake, p. 38.
405Caldecott, Beauty for Truth's Sake, p. 38, citing an understanding of music as this comes to
us later from the context of Plato's philosophy, Plato's Laws.
406Caldecott, Beauty in the Word, p. 9; Beauty for Truth's Sake, p. 23.
407Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 26.
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He taught that the way to success was through a careful and prudent acceptance of traditional customs
not because they are true but because an understanding and manipulation of them is expedient if we are
to get on with life and function in society.408 He is famous for the phrase: Homo mensura or "Man is
the measure of all things, of those that are that they are, of those that are not that they are not."
Controversy exists over the meaning and application of this phrase in two questions. Does man refer to
the individual or the society as in a state? Do the "things" refer to the objects of sense perception or to
other fields as, for instance, ethical values? According to Copleston, Plato’s testimony in the
Theaetetus depicts Protagoras as referring in the first case to the individual man and secondly only to
the objects of our sense experience. In a speech by Socrates, it is noted that when the same wind blows
one may feel chilly and the other not, or one may feel slightly chilly and the other quite cold.
Protagoras supplies the basis of relativism by noting that neither are mistaken since both are right.
Truth exists as a private, individual possession.409 “No one thinks falsely.”410 However, since Plato’s
Protagoras does not depict Protagoras as applying the above dictum in an individualistic sense to the
being of ethical values, the question of application arises although Copleston notes that sense
perception and the intuition of values in ethics do not necessarily stand or fall together in relation to our
having of certain knowledge and the possibility of truth that can exist for all.
Protagoras’s teaching in regard to ethical judgments and values can be summarized in the following
terms:
(1) Firstly, according to the Theaetetus, sense perception in each individual is equally true as we move
from person to person. Opinion regarding an object of sense is equally worthy. Since the human
subject and objects of perception continually change, knowledge of the senses is historical or, in other
words, it is entirely relative.
(2) Secondly, things are in so far as they are perceived by man since man exists as the only standard,
the only basis or criterion of judgment. Real knowledge of really existing things is not possible for us
given the reasonableness of a skeptical attitude about the value and the possibility of appealing to truth
(truth as an objective apprehension of the being of real things) as the means of settling any possible
disagreements that can exist among questioning, arguing human beings who differ from each other. 411
In this context, the rationalism of the early Greek historians reflects the rationalism, the attitude, of the
early Greek physicians. According to Alcmaeon of Croton (c.480-440 BC), the first great doctor in
Greek medicine and author of a book on Natural Science, questions involving certainty in knowledge
best belong to the gods:
Of things invisible, as of mortal things, only the gods have certain knowledge; but men
can only follow the signs [traces] given to them in the visible world and by interpreting
them feel their way towards the unseen.412
(3) Thirdly, Protagoras manifests an agnostic attitude toward belief in God: "With regard to the gods, I
408Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 51.
409Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 26.
410Protagoras, as quoted by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 27.
411Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 11.
412Diogenes VIII, 83; Chester Starr, The Awakening of the Greek Historical Spirit (New York:
Alfred Knopf, 1968), p. 113.
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cannot feel sure either that they are or that they are not, nor what they are like in figure: for there are
many things that hinder sure knowledge, the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of human life."
Yet, as with law, despite the deficiencies which exist, we cannot get along without religion.
(4) Fourth and lastly, in a teaching which has been used and interpreted in a manner which should refer
to the existence and the nature of natural law, Protagoras (and many other Sophists in the 5th Century
BC) distinguished between “nature” (physis) and “law” or “custom” (nomos),413 or, according to
another way of speaking, between that which is natural versus that which is legal, conventional, or
man-made,414 or possibly, according to a third way of speaking, between that which is allegedly natural
in law and that which is allegedly conventional or legal in law,415 although, technically speaking, with
respect to the use of words and concepts and the articulation of a concept which would directly refer to
the meaning and being of natural law, in the Athens of the 5 th Century BC, no Sophist text explicitly
refers to a “law of nature” or to the being of “natural law” (according to its Greek designation, νόμος
φύσεως),416 although, on the other hand, if we should try to move from our concepts back toward
originating ideas, from the order of concepts back toward a prior order of ideas, a case can be made for
the origins of an understanding of natural law as this rightly comes to us from the Sophists of 5 th
Century Athens, an understanding which was inherited by a later generation of philosophers and which
passed, from them, into the history of later philosophical reflection and further specifications of
meaning which have become more exact, fitting, and precise. From the 5 th Century Sophists comes a
philosophical understanding and a language which can speak about the difference or the dichotomy
which must always exist between nature and law although, from the viewpoint of the earlier myths and
stories which have come down to us from the poetic verse of Homer and Hesiod, this difference has
always existed among the ancient Greeks. In some way, this difference was known by them. Witness,
for instance, the story of Prometheus. From the gods he steals fire for the purposes of our subsequent
human use (despite incurring the anger of the gods). Similarly too, with Hercules. Though his own
ingenuity and dexterity, he “subdues nature...in order to establish civilization, the seat of nomos.”417
Our human laws, if added to the givenness of things, can add to the quality or the goodness of these
same things (law exists at a higher level than nature; hence our laws would differ from nature in this
way and any laws which exist within nature) or, alternatively and commonly, through their falsehood,
our human laws can detract from the quality or the goodness of those things which exist in nature,
outside of our human control.418 Laws can exist at a lower level than nature and so, in this way too, our
human laws would differ from the things of nature. Truths exist within nature but not so, necessarily,
within the kind of order and imposition which exists in the legislation and the observance of our human
laws.
However, if we should want to speak about a preliminary or a nascent idea of natural law (apart from
the manner of its later conceptualization and articulation), then, from within this context of
signification, as a preliminary point or as a preliminary point of departure, natural laws or nature can
be said to refer to things which exist in an unchanging way, things which are not subject to any kind of
413Koester, “Concept of Natural Law in Greek Thought,” Religions in Antiquity, pp. 525-426.
414Burns, Aristotle and Natural Law, p. 141.
415Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 27; Rommen, Natural Law, p. 9.
416Koester, “Concept of Natural Law in Greek Thought,” Religions in Antiquity, p. 522.
417“Introduction to Classical and Medieval Sources of Natural Law,” Cf.
http://www.nlnrac.org/classical (accessed November 12, 2016).
418Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 5.
73
human creation, not subject to any kind of human government, control, or manipulation. On the other
hand, conventional laws or human customs refer to laws which have been created by human beings
within the context of society and human social life. They exist properly as artifacts or as tools for
effecting salutary changes that can arise within the human order of things. These laws arise within
conditions of space and time amid differing sets of circumstances, given the influences of “custom,
climate, and self-interest” as, for instance, the lure of individual self-interest as this can exist in human
beings or the sway of class interest as this has existed with respect to the growing dominance of a
newly emerging ruling class. With Heraclitus, we would say with many Sophists that, while “in God's
view, all things are fair [noble] and good and just,” on the other hand however, it is us “men [who]
have made the supposition that some things are just and others are unjust.” 419 Justice exists as a matter
of convention (according to our human determination of it) although, as a kind of first principle that no
one can deny, law in general is something which exists fundamentally as an inherent, intrinsic good. It
is always necessary in the life of every human society since it is founded on ethical tendencies of one
kind or another that are implanted within us as human beings (a sense of the difference which exists
between right and wrong) although individual varieties in law, as we find them in particular states,
point to a relativity which exists with respect to the form of many specific determinations. Take, for
instance, a secondary principle which says that modesty in dress is first and foremost a matter of social
convention. Looking about, we see that what passes as modesty in one state might not pass as modesty
in another state. Other similar examples can be cited. Hence, no law of one state is truer than that of
another state although, on the other hand too, if a real distinction exists between what is naturally or
rationally, reasonably right and what is legally or conventionally right, 420 certain laws can be sounder
and wiser than the being of other laws or, in some cases, they will be sounder and wiser than the being
of other laws, other nomoi, to the degree that they conform to the reality of things which exist in nature
(apart from the subjectivity of our individual human existence) and to the necessity which belongs to
the way of naturally existing things, a necessity which points to requirements which must be met first,
as a species of precondition, if, in their lives, human beings are to live within a world of things which
already exists for them, enjoying the kind of life which they should properly have as human beings.421
As a basic position that is taken within this context thus, if we should refer to the being of natural rights
(all those things which should rightfully belong to us as human beings): then, “only what is naturally
moral and naturally right can be properly called moral and right.” 422 Within the given natural order of
existing things (in how we happen to be exist or be as human beings apart any individual variations
which would refer to differences in subjectivity as we move from one human being to another human
being), an ideal or a standard of some kind exists and so this ideal or standard is such that, universally,
it is binding on all human beings and on all human decisions. That which exists as naturally right or as
naturally moral underpins that which would exist for us as a human right or that which exists for us as a
human obligation. Hence: conventional laws and standards (the laws of a polis) are subject to possible
criticism and revision on the basis of principles which are constitutive of who and what we are already
as human beings, constituting thus, for all intents and purposes, a species of higher law (allegedly, a
natural law,423 or perhaps, more accurately, according to the wording of some Sophist conceptions, an
419Heraclitus, Fragment 102; cf. Fragments 58, 67, 80, as cited by Leo Strauss, Natural Right
and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 93.
420Rommen, Natural Law, p. 8.
421Koester, “Concept of Natural Law in Greek Thought,” Religions in Antiquity, pp. 525-526.
422Rommen, Natural Law, p. 9.
423Tom L. Beauchamp, Philosophical Ethics: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy (New
74
unalterable, unwritten law which would refer to the being of divine law, cited as the “law of the
Gods”),424 although, admittedly, while particular laws and standards tend to be conventional and
variable, in general however, as a general principle, as human beings, we are always obliged to obey
the laws of our respective political communities (conventional though they be) since, minimally, our
human existence is not possible without laws of some kind and the obedience which should be given to
laws and the regulation which exists within the customs and the legislation which belongs to the order
of our human world and the human laws which are constitutive of this world. At the same time too
however, in the understanding of law as this has prevailed in general among the ancient Greeks, no
valid objections can be made against a thesis which would want to argue that the conventional laws of a
state can serve higher purposes and interests and that they often serve higher purposes and interests:
through a form of moral agency or a causality which rightly exists in laws, an agency which can
creatively form the structure and the order of a newer, better kind of political community and so, by
this means, assist all the individuals who are living within a particular state, encouraging them or
assisting them in the development of their individual moral characters. 425 Laws exist in our society
because their source is the kind of activity which belongs to the work of our human reason and the
good which exists within this work.426
On this basis thus, since man cannot live without the kind of regulation which exists in laws and, yet
too, because some laws can be better than other laws, this distinction accordingly hints or, in its own
way, it points toward the nascent development of a theory of natural law which seems to come to us
initially but pointedly, after Heraclitus, from the observations and the beliefs of Hippias of Elis (b. c.
460 BC), a younger contemporary of Socrates and Protagoras, who adhered or who believed in the
reality of a universal brotherhood which exists among all human beings, to the effect thus that, later,
allegedly, as a consequent principle of natural law, it can be said that “all men are by nature relatives
and fellow citizens, even if they are not such in the eyes of the [conventional] law.” 427 According to
one summary of this basic position: “distinctions based on race, noble birth, social status or wealth, and
institutions such as slavery, had no basis in nature but were only by nomos.”428 Apart then from the
York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1982), p. 206.
424Koester, “Concept of Natural Law,” Religions in Antiquity, p. 523.
425H. D. F. Kitto, The Greeks (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books Ltd, 1981), p. 94.
Kitto distinguishes between Roman and Greek laws (their differing conceptions of law, the purpose and
the function of law). Roman law is governed by practical concerns and interests; Greek law, by a
concern for a form of higher morality that could be worth preserving or implementing within a given
social order. To Greek conceptions of law, a form of moral idealism exists. Law exists as a species of
higher good because of all the good things that laws are able to achieve at a lower level. By way of
examples here, in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that “law supports” a virtuous form of
existence, it “advances the lives of individuals,” and it “promotes” the being of a “'perfect
community'.” Cf. Simona Vieru, “Aristotle's Influence on the Natural Law Theory of St Thomas
Aquinas,” Western Australian Jurist 1 (2010): 116, citing John Finnis, “Natural Law and Legal
Reasoning,” Law and Morality, eds. Kenneth Himma and Brian Bix (Ashgate, 2005), pp. 3-4;
http://www.murdoch.edu.au/School-of-Law/_document/WA-juristdocuments/WAJ_Vol1_2010_Simona-Vieru---Aristotle-and-Aquinas.pdf (accessed October 28, 2016).
426Koester, “Concept of Natural Law in Greek Thought,” Religions in Antiquity, p. 526, citing
Plato, Laws, 890d.
427Rommen, Natural Law, p. 8. Italics mine.
428W. K. C. Guthrie, The Sophists, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 3, part 1 (Cambridge:
75
existence of individual human communities and the differing laws which vary as we move from one
community or state to another community or state, a world community among human beings also in
fact exists and it has always existed if we should think about the being of mankind in general and the
collective existence of human beings within that which exists as the “human lot.” This world
community, by its very being and meaning, transcends the being and the goodness of individual local
communities which exist at inferior, lower levels. If the polis or the city state exists as essentially a
variable artificial construction, the brotherhood of all human beings (since this brotherhood has always
existed and because it is given to us through the prior givenness of all human beings who exist and live
together within the same set of physical boundaries) – this brotherhood must be such that it properly
points to the naturalness and the givenness of a cosmopolitan world community (its existence, apart
from any influence which could be cast by us through the making of individual human choices or its
existence as the condition or the precondition of all of our subsequent human choices and, from this
too, the later emergence of individualism as both a philosophy and a distinct way of life). Our human
brotherhood accordingly exists by nature as a species of fundamental first principle; individual states,
by contract or by convention.
Since all human beings exist thus with a fundamental oneness which points to the reality of mankind in
general and with a fundamental oneness which also points to the equality of all persons with respect to
the status that each enjoys (the dignity of one person is not lesser or greater than the dignity of another),
from this it accordingly follows that human beings as human beings have fundamental rights which
must be acknowledged and respected by all. These rights do not vary if we move from one individual
to another individual or if we move from one group to another group (from one city state to another
city state). In other words, more specifically, citing words that have come to us from Alcidamas (fl. 4th
Century BC) as a conclusion that can be legitimately drawn, “God made all men free; [hence] nature
has made no man a slave.”429 The existence of slavery is something which human beings have brought
into being by themselves (as a result of their decisions) and it is something which can be abolished and,
eventually, it would seem that it is something which should be abolished. In the text of his Messeniac
Oration, Alcidamas allegedly reiterates a teaching that comes to us previously from Empedocles to the
effect that, in the words of Empedocles (as these come to us from Aristotle): “an all-embracing
law...extends without a break throughout the wide-ruling sky and the boundless earth.” 430 In a manner
which accordingly recalls and which reiterates the teaching of Protagoras, within the context of our
moral lives as human beings, we can rightly conclude that certain things, certain practices, are only
right or good because they are right or good by nature in terms of how they exist in themselves and not
because they have been legally prescribed and so judged to be legally right or legally good. 431 Nature
or “the natural” exists as a kind of ultimate measure and beyond it, we cannot properly go without
transgressing the kind of nature which belongs to us as human beings or the kind of nature which
belongs to the being of other existing things (although, admittedly, from the viewpoint of our
perspective as human beings, different interpretations exist about what exactly is natural or what exists
by nature and what is not natural or what does not exist by nature).432 From the kind of viewpoint
which exists with respect, for instance, to a hedonist philosophy of ethics, it could be alleged that
Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 118, as cited by Burns, Aristotle and Natural Law, pp. 121-122.
429Rommen, The Natural Law, p. 8 (my italics).
430Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1, 13: 1373b17-18, as cited and translated by Randall, Aristotle, p. 283.
431Rommen, The Natural Law, p. 8.
432Robert Spaemann, “Hedonism,” Happiness and Benevolence, trans. Jeremiah Alberg
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), p. 31.
76
“every living being strives by nature to feel good”433 and that our desires cannot be known or measured
in any other kind of way.
These disputes and reservations aside however, between divine law or that which would exist as natural
law and the being of conventional man-made laws, a real distinction exists. Citing words from Hippias
to this effect: specifically with respect to the being of a higher, natural, divine law, unconventional
“unwritten laws” exist in an “eternal and unalterable” way. They “spring from a higher source than the
decrees of men.”434 Hence, with respect to their point of origin, no real distinction would seem to exist
between that which exists as divine law and that which exists as natural law. The two exist together in
the context of a fundamental unity and it is only from the viewpoint of a later differentiation in thought,
word, and concept that the two have been distinguished from each other in a manner which ascribes or
which realizes that, for each species of law, there exists a different meaning and significance. The
divine law points to one order of being; the natural law, to another order of being and so a relation or an
ordination of some kind which would have to exist between these two orders of law if, in some way,
each order participates in something which is both real and good.
Alongside or perhaps within the context of ways of thinking that have been informed, to some extent,
by Sophist considerations, it is to be admitted also that, culturally, among the Greeks of the late 5 th
Century BC, a sense or an understanding of necessity is being joined to a sense or to an understanding
of nature, the two going together and no longer existing apart from each other in a relation of mutual
exclusion. Beyond hints and clues that come to us from surviving philosophical texts, references to a
“necessity of nature” begin to appear in works of literature and in the texts of some historical narratives
in a way of thinking which begins to transcend the aforementioned distinction that had been made
between the being of nature and the being of law (physis versus nomos).435 Euripides, the poet and
playwright, is cited as a someone who, in his own way, refers to an alleged “necessity of nature” (citing
text from The Trojan Women 886, in a petition that is addressed to Zeus: “Hear my prayer, Lord,
whether you are a human thought or a natural law!”),436 and then, in one or more of his works, it is said
that the historian Thucydides also connects nature with law when, allegedly, he speaks about how the
right of might or the law of “might is right” is to be regarded as an “eternal law” which is derived from
that which exists as “'necessary nature'.”437 Some kind of positive relation exists between those things
which exist by nature and those things that exist within the human order of things, the kind of goodness
which exists within the human order of things having truly a worth or a goodness which belongs to
them if they respect the kind of worth or the goodness which already already exists within the nature of
things which exist within the greater world of things within which we live and exist. On the possible
relation which can exist between the good of conventional human order and the kind of good which
exists by way of that which is good by nature:
With respect to the being of conventional rules and regulations and how they reflect
local particular conditions and how they might not reflect local particular conditions, if
we should move from the economic order of things to the political order of things in a
433Spaemann, “Hedonism,” Happiness and Benevolence, p. 31. Italics mine.
434Rommen, The Natural Law, p. 8.
435Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 19.
436Cf. http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/TrojanWomen.htm (accessed
October 26, 2016)
437Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 19.
77
given society, in the same way as this exists within the economic order of things, city
states or political orders of one kind or another are to be regarded as also the product or
the effect of human decisions that have been made at a certain point and time and for
different reasons that are invoked to explain the specific decisions which are made.
These polities do not exist in any kind of prior way. Their existence is thus not per se
natural (something which exists already as a species of fundamental given) since every
given polity exists as a consequence of human negotiation and decisions which have led
to a some kind of contractual agreement which explicitly known or implicitly known
(more often than not). A given order can conceived, formulated, and then adopted and
so, before any given state or political order can be brought into being, a “state of nature”
is said or believed to exist as a kind of prior condition and, within this “state of nature,”
only that which exists as natural law is the kind of law which is in force.
Later developments or differing interpretations about the nature of this “state of nature,”
however, point to differences that can exist within the thinking and the conceptuality of
a political culture that has been constructed for the purpose of coloring or changing an
ordering of things which exists within a given political state. A negative or a dark view
about this alleged prior “state of nature” tends to point toward a political order which
emphasizes the autocratic power of the state. But, on the other hand, a positive or an
optimistic view of this prior “state of nature” tends to point toward a political
philosophy which wants to hinder or which hedges the power of the state. In this
context, a given political order is seen to be subject to laws which the state cannot itself
change although, in the context of further reflection and thought, a negative view with
respect to an allegedly existing prior “state of nature” which tends to lead toward an
autocratic conception of the power of the state does not preclude the possibility that
other laws are being considered and acknowledged in a way which would also point to
their unchangeableness.
Simply put for illustrative purposes: in the respective
philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, each works with a different
understanding about what is to be said about the kind of human nature which properly
belongs to us as human beings. In other words, to determine the significance of the
unchanging laws which are said to exist as a fundamental point of departure - to
establish the identity of these laws and to know about the kind of order which exists
between them – this is to engage in a task that is filled with controversy, the plethora of
controversy suggesting the need for a radical form of inquiry that can establish the
requisite set of first principles which are needed if a comprehensive kind of knowledge
can be reached (one that can identify all the relevant variables and, at the same time,
identify the due weight or the significance which properly belongs to the influence of
each variable).
In conclusion thus we can believe that, in the foundations of Sophist philosophy as this comes to us
from the teachings of Protagoras, the relativism which we find in Protagoras is not to be regarded as a
species of absolute. The relativism that is present is not radical or total. It can be tempered if we
should attend to common properties which exist among all men (among all human beings) and if, from
these common properties or attributes, we can attend to common conclusions or common effects that
can be reached by all men to the degree that each person exists as a human being, sharing an identical
humanity with all other human beings.
78
Summarizing at this point, Protagoras’s emphasis on subjectivity, relativism, and expediency can be
regarded as the backbone of Sophism in general as a distinct school of thought although, admittedly,
the claim that objective truth is something which does not exist is “itself a claim to know an objective
truth.” Hence, as a consequence, “all relativism [as a thesis or belief] is self-destructive.”438
Among prominent Sophists, we find as follows:
Thrasymachus who argued that "justice is the advantage of the stronger" 439 or "justice is in the interest
of the stronger."440 He drew "might is right" conclusions as a result of his utter relativism. All
discussion about morality is useless except as it is about struggle for power.
Gorgias (c.483-375) who seems to have wanted to de-throne philosophy in order to replace it with the
study and practice of rhetoric and so focus on the importance of training persons on how they should
debate and argue with each other.441 In his lectures and in a book or three books, he "proved" the
following three skeptical theses: (1) there is nothing; there is no truth; (2) if there were anything, even
if there were truth, no one could know it; and lastly (3) if anyone did know it, if truth were known, no
one can communicate it to anyone.442 The point, of course, is that, if you can "prove" these absurdities,
you can "prove" anything.443
Callicles who again argues that “might makes right.” 444 Viewed by some as one of the most cynical of
the Sophists, he claimed that the traditional morality was just a clever way for the more numerous weak
masses to shackle the fewer number of strong individuals. 445 The strong should throw off these
shackles since doing so is somehow "naturally right" given that what matters is power and not justice.
In the animal kingdom and in the wars which exist between states, nature teaches us that “the stronger
naturally overcomes the weaker.”446 Hence, in the context of democracy, law is to be equated with
injustice. Power is itself a good because it conduces to our survival which is itself a good because it
allows us to seek pleasure in the enjoyment of food, drink, and sex (the goal of the enlightened man
which he seeks qualitatively and quantitatively). The traditional Greek virtue of moderation is for the
being of simple, feeble human beings.
Critias who was to become the cruelest of the Thirty Tyrants, overturning democracy and temporarily
establishing an oligarchical dictatorship. He taught that the clever ruler controls his subjects by
encouraging their fear of non-existent gods.447
In the criticisms of the Sophists which were later offered in the history of Greek philosophy, Socrates
438Andrew Beards, Philosophy The Quest for Truth and Meaning (Collegeville, MN:
Liturgical Press, 2010), p. 53.
439Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 11.
440Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 53.
441Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 53.
442Maluf, Philosophia Perennis, p. 97.
443Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 53.
444Rommen, Natural Law, p. 8.
445Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 53.
446Rommen, Natural Law, p. 10.
447Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 54.
79
did not like their uncertainties in his search for certainties nor did he like their subjectivism, their
skepticism, and their nihilism and their emphasis on the values of manipulation and expediency. Plato
mentions them critically and once called them "shopkeepers with spiritual wares" since he and others
were angered by their habit of destroying ethical values for payment. To meet the demands of an
energetic and ambitious clientele, the sophists developed a method of interpretation that, for problems
encountered when reading texts or reciting verse, encouraged a dexterous use of one's reasoning for the
purpose of then articulating solutions which could win another's attention because of the ingenuousness
that attended a proffered explanation.448 A Sophist interpretation was to be clever but it need not be
right or correct. The object was not truth but a meaning whose expression would attract notice and win
a measure of worldly acclaim. The reasoning of interpretation serves purposes beyond itself and for
ends that often serve base motives even if it is true, at times, that a sophist interpretation can serve a
pedagogical purpose in helping to train the mind. For these reasons, Plato strongly criticized the
sophist approach; the method merits rejection. In one section of dialogue taken from the Protagoras,
Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias, and Socrates discuss an apparent contradiction in lines of verse that are
taken from Simonides of Ceos (c.556-468 BC), a famous poet of lyrics and elegies.449 Protagoras
alleges a contradiction but Socrates appeals to Prodicus for a way to prove that the contradiction is only
apparent.
Prodicus responds by affirming that a real distinction exists between "being" and
"becoming." Socrates then gives a lengthy interpretation of his own: Simonides's poem should be read
as an attack on a saying of Pittacus of Mytilene (c.650-570 BC) who had said that "Hard is it to be
noble." Should he succeed in making this saying look ridiculous, he would establish a reputation for
himself and "become the favorite of his own day." Socrates then supplies an ingenious explanation
which is not necessarily true, and his explanation bluntly illustrates the case that no interpretation of
poetry, however ingenious, can necessarily effect an agreement on what could be the meaning of a
poem. He closes by stating the following principle:
No one can interrogate the poets about what they say, and most often when they are
introduced into the discussion some say the poet's meaning is one thing and some
another, for the topic is one on which nobody can produce a conclusive argument. The
best people avoid such discussions...450
In conclusion, at best, the Sophist approach produces no meaningful results even if, when used, it does
not seek to mislead or to deceive another person. A third criticism notes that their skepticism
encouraged bad habits and degrees of cynicism.
Socrates
The intrusion of the systematic exigence into the realm of common sense is beautifully
illustrated by Plato’s early dialogues. Socrates would ask for the definition of this or that
virtue. No one could afford to admit that he had no idea of what was meant by courage
or temperance or justice. No one could deny that such common names must possess
some common meaning found in each instance of courage, or temperance, or justice.
448Atkins, pp. 41-42; Pfeiffer, pp. 32-35.
449Plato Protagoras 339-347.
450Plato Protagoras 337.
80
And no one, not even Socrates, was able to pin down just what that common meaning
was.451
Socrates (470-399 BC), age 70 at the time of his death (as recorded by Plato) had a father who was a
mason; his mother, a midwife. He was known to be extremely ugly: potbellied, with bulging eyes, and
a snub nose although the inside was said to be "perfectly delightful." 452 "You can seek him in the
present, you can seek him in the past, but you will never find his equal." He never wrote anything. He
lived in Athens during her bloom around 450 BC and at the time of her decline toward the end of the
century. He was a strong enigmatic figure who spent most of his time talking with people in the
marketplaces and squares of Athens and who was subject at times to fits of abstraction lasting for hours
on end: speaking about the value of understanding the world of physical nature, "the trees in the
countryside can teach me nothing."453 As a young man in his 20's, he turned away from cosmological
speculation to an interest in the problem of man since he felt that what Anaxagoras had to say about
mind or nous did not go far enough. Citing Cicero on Socrates: he "called philosophy down from the
sky and established her in the towns and introduced her into homes and forced her to investigate life,
ethics, good and evil."454 While initially he was thought to be a Sophist, in fact, he became or was their
bitterest opponent in his belief that, indeed, “there really was such a thing as justice and injustice, right
and wrong, truth and falsity” and that “they were supremely important” and “could be known.” 455 For
Socrates, “the unexamined life is not worth living."456
Calling himself a "philo-sopher" as "someone who loves wisdom," he began to go his own way, noting
to himself: "One thing only I know, and that is that I do not know anything." The Oracle at Delphi had
said to him: "None is wiser than Socrates" which he, in turn, interpreted as meaning that he is wisest
who realizes that, like Socrates, he has little wisdom. He would try to make his fellow men aware of
his own ignorance by asking questions and meeting objections. For instance, Socrates said that, if there
was an afterlife, he would pose the same question to the shades in Hades. He wanted to base all
argumentation on objectively valid definitions which focused on knowing who man is. Since he was a
man who would listen to his own inspiration and who in turn inspired others, he had more followers
than students. Hence, he was a danger to the establishment. He claimed to have a "divine voice" inside
him. He refused to be involved in condemning people to death and to inform on political enemies. A
parallelism exists between Socrates and Christ: 457 both were enigmatic; neither wrote anything forcing
us to rely on accounts written by their followers; both were masters at the art of discourse; both had a
personal sense of authority; both believed that they spoke on behalf of something greater than
themselves; both challenged the power of the community; and both died as martyrs after trial (in both
cases, with the possibility of evasion).
Our knowledge of Socrates is beset by the Socratic problem of sources that differ much on him.
Hence, where do we go for an accurate portrait of Socrates’s character and ideas since he wrote nothing
himself? There are four main sources given as follows.
451Lonergan, Method in Theology, p. 50.
452Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 63.
453Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 63.
454Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 67.
455Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 29.
456Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 11.
457Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 66.
81
(1) Plato was the most important source since he was a student of Socrates when Socrates was in his
50's. Through his dialogues, the early and middle dialogues supply much of the information that we
have on Socrates. But, there is a problem: according to Aristotle, Plato uses Socrates in conversation as
an instrument for presenting his own ideas, employing a literary technique that was often used at that
time (a technique that was also employed by the students of Pythagoras). It is difficult to distinguish
between Socrates and Plato. Two schools of thought exist on who was the real Socrates. On the one
hand, Copleston argues that the Platonic Socrates was not the real Socrates since we must trust what
Aristotle says. Since Aristotle had been first trained in Plato’s school where the doctrine of ideas as
taught occupied a central place, he must have known what was actually Plato’s teaching. But, on the
other hand, Burnet and Taylor argue that neither Xenophon nor Aristotle sufficiently understood Plato
since Xenophon was too simple in his journalism and Aristotle erred in his views of Plato. While Plato
could have been somewhat poetical in his expression, this is no argument in favor of inauthenticity.
Only in his later dialogues does Plato develop his own ideas. The metaphysical doctrine of the forms
was Socratic essentially although it received a Platonic development. In conclusion, while Copleston
prefers the Aristotelian Socrates, most historians argue for some sort of compromise between these two
positions. Mlle De Vogel argues that Plato tried to give a realistic portrait of Socrates but that Plato
was less of an historian and more of a poet. Aristotle should not be neglected.
(2) Xenophon as a journalist (and also as a general) reported conversations with Socrates in his
Memoirs of Socrates although perhaps he did not understand Socrates correctly.
(3) Aristophanes as a playwright of comedies who caricatured Socrates in The Clouds as a comic figure
of the late 5th Century. He presented Socrates pejoratively as a sophisticated sophist.
(4) Aristotle knew Plato (d. 348 BC) but did not know Socrates and thus the question arises if he truly
understood the witnesses of Socrates. He made a few remarks that are important since they help us
determine what Socrates’s actual teaching was: he claimed that Socrates did not separate the forms
which make the doctrine of separate forms a distinctly Platonic contribution.
On the character of Socrates, Plato knew him best as a person. As noted, physically Socrates was an
ugly little man. As a former soldier, he was physically fit and was known for courage in battle. He
was somewhat ascetical in his way of living although he could drink. He was shabbily dressed and
always barefoot. He loved to spend his time arguing in the market-place and streets of Athens. He
possessed a strong moral character and was fearless about what he said. Since he said what he believed
to be true, he got into trouble as a non-conformist. He was deeply concerned with asking ethical and
moral questions and he looked for universal definitions with respect to the just, the true, and the good.
Philosophy was a way of life for him and not simply a profession.
At his trial, he comes across as the victim of an anti-intellectual spirit in Athens where he was charged
with teaching false doctrines, impiety, and corrupting the youth at the end of the 5th Century BC. He
was brought to trial by a number of powerful figures in Athens who had hoped to humiliate him by
forcing him to grovel and beg for mercy. But, instead, he humbled his persecutors and angered the
unruly jury of 500 by lecturing them about the extent of their ignorance and selfishness. Also, when
asked to suggest his own punishment, he recommended that the Athenians build a statue in his honor
and place it in the main square. The enraged jury, by a slim margin, condemned him to death by a vote
of 280 to 220. While the jury soon was ashamed of their act and embarrassed that they were about to
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execute their most eminent citizen and while they were prepared to look the other way when Socrates’s
prison guard was bribed to allow him to escape, he did not flee when he could have done so since he
had always insisted on obedience in his life and therefore he would not flee despite the pleas of his
friends. He claimed that if he were to break the law by escaping, he would be declaring himself an
enemy of all laws and this is a position that he cannot take. Therefore, rather than indicate any
disrespect for the laws of Athens (as a city state), he would drink the hemlock poison and philosophize
with his friends until the last moment, talking with them about the immortality of the human soul and
about the blessings of death when now, through death, a philosophic soul is able to enter into a realm of
being where wisdom is found in all its clarity and fullness. 458 In death thus, he became the universal
symbol of martyrdom for the sake of Truth.
On the elements or the tenets of Socrates’s thought that we are sure about (the conclusions or the
beliefs that are to be associated with his life and work), the following four points should be mentioned:
(1) Man is to be equated with his soul since man is his soul (it is the source of all truth). In describing
the soul as the intellectual and moral personality of man, Socrates became the first philosopher to give
a clear and coherent conception of the soul, the word he used being "psyche," a term previously used
by poets before the Pre-socratic philosophers but referring to a general life force which is needed for
life that, as a substance, penetrates everything. Socrates transformed it from that which had existed as a
shadowy reality to become a personality where thus man’s first task is to care for his soul. To harm the
soul through an unjust act or evil deed is far worse (we inflict a greater injury on ourselves) than to
harm or hurt our bodies.
For Plato, the soul and its care was the only important part in man. In the context of his
own thought, Plato later gave a metaphysical explanation of the soul in terms of its preexistence and so education serves to remind us of what we have seen in a previous life.
(2) Man takes care of his soul when he knows what is good. “Knowledge is virtue and ignorance,
vice.”459 In attempting to try to define what is good by asking questions that elicit universal definitions,
Socrates emerged as the father of moral philosophy. “The crown of all philosophy, of all wisdom, is a
philosophy of morals.”460 Knowledge enjoys a kind of prior necessity since to have a good personality
requires a prior knowledge of that which is good.
(3) When you know the good, you will act well and do good (ignorance or lack of knowledge being the
overriding cause of Evil): "He who knows what good is will do good." Here we have the Socratic
paradox in a statement that sounds contradictory: the wise man is virtuous since no one is voluntarily
evil but, to do good, one has to know the good. Knowledge of the good through the practice and the
actuation of our inquiring reason is both the necessary and the sufficient cause for doing the good in a
life of virtue although, since Socrates was not stupid, such a claim causes us to ask about what Socrates
could have meant when speaking about "knowing the good." As stated, if indeed, “virtue is
knowledge,” the acquisition of virtue is seemingly turned into a species of intellectual affair. It exists
through a life that is given to a life of reason. 461 The voice of reason trumps the sway and pull of
458Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 38.
459Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 31.
460Socrates, as cited by Maluf, Philosophia Perennis, p. 98.
461Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 46.
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tradition in a culture and society.462
To explain a bit more here: apparently, in terms of his own personality, for Socrates,
knowledge does not exist as a purely intellectual thing since another form of knowledge
exists which is charismatic or inspirational. In deference to the teaching of the French
philosopher Henri Bergson, it is claimed that Socrates had an intuitional contact with
virtue that attracted people to him. Since he was in contact with virtue, he stressed the
value of education through virtue which, for him, consisted of words and a certain
inspiration that united the intellectual aspects with an intuitive dimension. Hence, virtue
is knowledge which cannot simply be taught by a teacher unless the teacher also inspires
his pupils toward virtue, a life of virtue. Socrates’s theory of knowledge existed as a
kind of midwifery where the teacher seeks to awaken something which is inside a
student since truth is something that sleeps in our souls from the time of birth until later
teaching makes it conscious and then the student begins to learn. Real understanding
must come from within a person and, by using our innate reasoning, we can begin to
grasp the being of philosophical truths. In general, in the kind of education that we have
in Socrates, in education we have both an implanting and an awakening. Knowledge of
good and evil lies within an individual and not within a society.
(4) In Socrates one finds belief in immortality, Socrates being the first Greek philosopher to believe in
immortality as can be seen in Plato’s Apology of Socrates which recounts the story of his trial where he
declares his hope of seeing his friends again in another life though he also voices an agnostic touch
when he says "I hope" and "maybe." For the first time in Greek philosophy, the final good is related to
the being of another, other life.
On the significance of Socrates's methodological achievements as this refers to the development of a
form of scientific inquiry as this applies to a possible understanding of who or what we are as human
beings, in the structure or the form of Socrates's Socratic dialogue, a species of method or technique is
employed within the practice of philosophy (and thus within science) where “knowledge was to be
sought [from] within the [dynamics or the life of the individual human] mind.” 463 Distinguish a “way
of thinking” as one form or mode of human cognition from a “way of observing” external data as this is
462Kolakowska, Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?, p. 6.
463Collingwood, Philosophical Method, p. 10; p. 17. Please note Collingwood's argument to
the effect that “Socrates...found in mathematics a model for dialectical reasoning.” Developments in
mathematics with respect to how mathematics is done in its way of thinking and reasoning as one
moves from principles that are postulated to conclusions that are reached leads to possible
methodological developments within the practice of philosophy and science. The way of thinking in
mathematics suggests a way of thinking that can also exist within the practice of philosophy and
science even if it should be the case that the way of thinking which exists within philosophy and
science is not to be identified with the way of thinking which exists within mathematics even if it is to
be admitted that, at the hands of some philosophers, mathematical ways of thinking have been
promoted as the best way to think and reason if, in other contexts, we are to engage in the work of
thinking and reasoning. Within this context, we can think about the work of the French philosopher,
René Descartes (d. 1650), who had advocated mathematical forms of reasoning within the practice of
reasoning in philosophy and science.
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given to us through our different acts of human sensing (a second form or mode of human cognition). 464
With respect to the way of thinking that is to be associated with the kind of analysis which exists in
Socrates, a positive relation or a connatural relation can be admitted if we admit that, in the concerns
and interests of mathematics, in the ingress and development of mathematical speculation as we find
this among the Pythagoreans and their work in mathematics, a degree of distance or a distancing is to
be assumed or it was undertaken or effected from the mere givens of sense and perception when
mathematicians work with the being of imagined numbers and figures in order to raise questions and
solve problems that are not immediately applicable or which are not immediately relevant to any
function or purpose which exists for us within the context of our concrete human living. In the kind of
adaptation that we find within the structure of Socrates's method (in his characteristic mode of inquiry),
a dialectical form of argumentation that distinguishes between the truthfulness of a particular thesis and
the probable error or wrongness of another teaching or thesis is joined to displays of irony within the
structure of this form of argumentation. In the context of Socrates's day, as the precondition of the kind
of dialogues or conversations that are to be associated with the life and work of Socrates, “dialectic” in
Greek refers to a “conversation” or “dialogue” and, in the context of conversations and dialogues
among differing participants, the “art of conversation” [tekhne dialektike] emerges as a method of
thinking and reasoning if we are to move from thesis or proposition A to thesis or proposition B. 465
Conversations are to be conducted in a certain way where, in the dialogues and conversations of
Socrates, an ironical form of argumentation is placed or it is found to exist within the general form of
the dialectics that belongs to the conduct of Socrates's argumentation. Throughout thus, the ultimate
aim or purpose is twofold: (1) one exposes fallacies which exist in all false claims to wisdom and
knowledge and then, from there, (2) one encourages or moves a person towards a new way of thinking
which could possibly lead or internally engender a knowledge of man’s human nature in a way that
would be undoubtedly true and not false (although, for Socrates and perhaps also for ourselves,
apprehensions and realizations of truth are only possible for us after much hard work in the context of a
life that is given to an ongoing, lifetime quest that is geared toward a possible discovery of universal
definitions that can articulate the meanings of terms or concepts whose meaning or intelligibility is
desired or sought by us within the context of our own inquiries). As Socrates had noted toward the end
of his life at the time of his trial in 399 BC, "Athens is like a sluggish horse and I am the gadfly trying
to sting it into life."
In a method of inquiry that consists of questions and answers, a dialectic of questions and answers
(where, like a midwife, Socrates attempts to draw truth from within a person - from within their
individual minds - incrementally, through a logical ordering of a series of questions which are
posed),466 according to the account that comes to us from Plato, three constitutive divisions or three
464Collingwood, Philosophical Method, p. 12.
465Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 132.
466Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 12. James Joyce suggested that Socrates learned this
method of useful discovery from his wife, Xanthippe. In his “Insight Revisited,” in A Second
Collection: Papers by Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J., eds. William F. J. Ryan, S. J. and Bernard J.
Tyrrell, S. J. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974), p. 258, Bernard Lonergan suggests that, with
respect to this mode of inquiry which consists of questions and answers, we have evidence which
points to the validity of an argument that would claim that Plato is to be regarded as a methodologist.
As Lonergan attempts to speak about it, Plato's “ideas were what the scientist seeks to discover” and
“the scientific or philosophic process toward discovery was one of question and answer.”
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constitutive elements are to be distinguished within the range or the compass of the kind of procedure
which Socrates applies and employs in the manner of his argumentation. 467 (1) A problem or question
is first posed. For instance, what is justice? What is virtue? What is truth? What is beauty? What is
piety? What is democracy? Feigning ignorance in a use or a display of Socratic irony, Socrates would
become excited and enthusiastic whenever, apparently, he would find someone who claimed to know
something which was allegedly true. (2) He begins then to find "minor flaws" in his companion’s
proffered definition and slowly he would begin to unravel it, forcing his dialogue partner to admit his
own ignorance. In one dialogue, for instance, Socrates’s partner dissolves into tears. (3) An agreement
is reached by the two conversationalists who admit, to each other, their mutual ignorance and who
agree to pursue the truth in a serious manner, wherever it leads. The object is a species of universal
definition for a given concept, term, or reality which always applies or which always holds whenever a
given concept or term is invoked or employed within a given context – whenever the reality in question
is being referred to. Instead of a meaning which is somehow added to an understanding which we
already have or which enlarges or augments a meaning which is in some way already known, the object
is another kind of meaning which has yet to be discovered. A difference in quality is to be adverted to
as we move from pragmatic conceptions of meaning and understanding toward a technical formulation
of meaning and a species of theoretical understanding which can withstand any possible criticisms that
could be launched against its truth or validity.468 A scientific type of knowledge is to be entertained:
truth which exists as “science” (epistémé in Greek; scientia in Latin).469 This is what is to be desired
and worked towards in our thinking and understanding.
In the employment of this methodology, however, almost all of the Socratic dialogues end in an
inconclusive manner since Socrates himself was not able to give to anybody any definitions or truths
that have been conceptualized into universally applicable definitions since he does not know these
truths himself although, as a consequence of the discussions which have occurred, in a form of teaching
which points to a nascent philosophy of natural law, we should all begin to realize and know that
certain laws exist on a higher plane, laws that we might not directly know about through our own acts
of understanding but, yet, laws which point to the being or the existence of natures, intelligibilities, or
truths which, in their own way, always hold and exist. They are always true and at no time can they
ever be false. If our human nature accordingly exists as a constant, a nature which refers to the
intelligibility about what it means to be human, then, from the constancy of our human nature, we can
move toward the constancy of that which should exist in the living and practice of our ethical moral
lives in the activities which we do.470 How we behave (our good behavior) is to be ruled (it should be
ruled) by principles which already exist within the nature and existence of things (our point of
departure being the principles which are constitutive of the kind of nature which we always have as
human beings). Our behavior should not be ruled principally by principles that we can bring into a
condition of being by any decisions that we can make as human beings whenever we function as
human agents.
In this context thus and in a manner which refers to both the primacy and the difficulties of selfknowledge (moving toward any growth in our self-knowledge) we can understand why, in the context
of his day, the Oracle of Delphi referred to Socrates as the “wisest man in Athens because [among
467Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 58.
468Collingwood, Philosophical Method, p. 11.
469Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 132.
470Copleston, History of Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 111.
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Athenians] he was the only one who knew that he did not know anything.” 471 If often the best kind of
knowledge which we can have of things is a species of learned ignorance,472 the experience that we
have of this ignorance should encourage us toward a way of living that is entirely dedicated to an
ongoing search for truth as this is grounded and as this exists primarily within ourselves through any
growth in self-understanding and self-knowledge that can come to us or which can be given to us. The
truth of things exists inchoately within the compass of our minds (within our current understanding of
things) even if the truth of things refers to the being of realities which exist outside or independently of
ourselves in terms of kind of being which we have within conditions that are determined by the
conjugates and properties which belong to space and time. We cannot be simply told or informed
about the truth of things by other persons despite their good intentions and despite how good and how
necessary is the help of other human persons for the good that can come to ourselves as a result of their
interest and companionship.
On the influence of Socrates in the wake of his death in 399 BC, other than a pervasive influence in the
rise of western philosophy following his life and death, he also exerted some direct influence within the
inner dialectic of Greek philosophy: not only with reference to Plato but also in a number of small
schools that appealed to Socrates’s direct influence even if Socrates’s views were often combined with
other elements to suggest, at times, a superficial connection with Socrates’s thought. There are three
schools to be distinguished:
(1) the School of Megara (near Corinth) where Euclid, its head, seems to have been an early disciple of
Socrates and was apparently present at his death. Though little traditional friendship existed between
Athens and Megara, it seems that Plato and other disciples of Socrates fled to Megara to seek refuge
after Socrates’s death. Euclid combined certain insights from Socrates and Parmenides (of the Eleatic
school) that accepted one universal principle now called "the moral good." A speciality of the school
was dialectical controversy which involved games of reasoning for the reasoner which reminds one
Zeno of Elea.
(2) the Cynic School (founded around 400 B.C.) given the fact that, allegedly, one day Socrates stood
gazing at a stall selling all kinds of wares and said: "What a lot of things that I do not need." 473 Its
name perhaps came from the fact that its founder Antisthenes (445-365 BC) taught at Athens in a
room called the "Kynosarges" or "Hall of the Dog" since Antithenes was not of pure Athenian blood.
Antisthenes was a friend of Socrates who admired his independence of character in terms of money and
riches although Socrates was as he was because he was concerned with the greater good of obtaining
wisdom. Since Antithenes regarded such a freedom from wants and desires as an end in itself, he
equated it with virtue and happiness in such a way that it led him to posit virtue as complete selfsufficiency for its own sake (which differs with Socrates’s view of self-sufficiency as a means to
something else). Since Antithenes was interested only in the practical side of morality, he opposed the
kind of knowledge that Plato looked for in terms of the reality of objectively existing ideas: "I see a
horse, not horseness!" He wanted to be able to live independently and he argued that it was impossible
to make significant statements. Diogenes (c.350 BC), a pupil of Antisthenes, succeeded as head of the
Cynic School at a later date by exaggerating Antithenes’s position into a contempt for current morality
471Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 31-32.
472Michael H. McCarthy, Authenticity as Self-transcendence: The Enduring Insights of
Bernard Lonergan (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), p. 57.
473Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 130.
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which led him to repudiate all civilized customs. He lived a life as primitive as a dog: hence, the Greek
kuvikos, meaning "dog-like" from which we derive the word "cynicism." 474 Legend has it that he lived
in a tub, and reputedly owned nothing but a stick, a cloak, and a bread bag. To show contempt for
public opinion, he masturbated in the marketplace. Allegedly once visited by Alexander the Great who
asked him if he could do anything for him to which Diogenes replied: "Yes. Stand to one side. You
are blocking the sun."475
(3) the Cyrenaic School (of Cyrene in north Africa) where Aristippos, its head, advocated a hedonism
of the moment despite having been in the Socratic school since he seems to have been more influenced
by Protagoras’s claim that only sensations give us certain knowledge in life. Although Socrates had
claimed that the good must be the goal of one’s life if one is to be happy, Aristippos defined the good
only in terms of pleasure and in obtaining as many pleasures as possible: "the highest good is pleasure;
the greatest evil is pain."476 Since the aim of life is to attain the highest possible sensory enjoyment,
one’s way of life should seek to avoid pain in all forms.
Plato
At a certain stage in Plato's thought there seem to be asserted two really distinct worlds,
a transcendent world of eternal forms, and a transient world of appearance 477...the world
of theory and the world of common sense...Plato's phainomena and noumena478...the
ascent from the darkness of the cave to the light of day is a movement from a world of
immediacy that is already out there now to a world mediated by the meaningfulness of
intelligent, reasonable, responsible answers to questions.479
Plato (427/8-348/7 BC), who was regarded by some as the father of idealism as a distinct school of
philosophy, was born of an old aristocratic family. He had two brothers and a sister who had a son,
Speusippos, who succeeded Plato as head of the Academy. He was given a typical education though it
was said that Athens itself was his most notable educator. As an author, he first wrote poems and then,
in his 40s, began to compose his more famous dialogues. Later disillusionment with life in Athens (in
a manner which was especially fueled by the military defeat of Athens at the hands of Sparta in 404)
led him to the thought and the practice of philosophy as the starting point of his subsequent thought and
reflections. At age 20, he had met Socrates, his subsequent philosophical work serving as an
intellectual monument to Socrates where, in order to propose a solid theory of doctrine for the arts and
practice of government, as a preliminary, he sought to establish a stable philosophic base. On the death
of his beloved Socrates in 399, at age 29, he left Athens for a time before eventually returning to found
the Academy in 390. Besides visiting Egypt, he made three journeys to southern Italy of which his
most important visits were to Sicily where he probably met some disciples of Pythagoras who probably
influenced him with respect to the role and the significance of abstraction as a way of thinking or
474Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 22.
475Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 130.
476Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 132.
477Lonergan, Method in Theology, p. 50.
478Lonergan, A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J., eds. William F. J.
Ryan, S. J. and Bernard J. Tyrrell, S. J. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974), p. 226.
479Lonergan, A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J., ed. Frederick E.
Crowe, S. J. (New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1985), p. 193.
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cogitating which moves away from the givens of sense perception toward the givens of number and the
primacy of mathematics within the practice of philosophy and science; more precisely, from the
Pythagoreans, to an initial extent,480 the primacy of form or the primacy of structure replaces the
primacy of matter. A thing's form or a thing's structure (alternatively, a thing's essence or a thing's
nature)481 explains a thing's being and how or why it exists and behaves in the way that it does. Plato
later used the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers in order to develop his metaphysical doctrine of the
Forms and how these exist with a reality which is peculiar to their order. He later claimed, in the
context of his own thought, that the study of mathematics was the best preparation for the work and
pursuit of philosophy.
With respect to Plato's Academy, it was established in a grove not far from Athens, so named since it
was housed in a building that was devoted to the legendary Greek hero, Academos. It was the first
university in the west in the eyes of some ("let no one ignorant of geometry enter here" 482) and it
endured for about 900 years.483 In conjunction with gymnastic training, basic studies were in
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and the harmonics of sound employing dialogue and discourse. The
Academy had scientific equipment and a library. Its educational aim was: to train men’s minds to
enable them to think for themselves in the light of reason. Its method seems to have been research
under supervision in a joint effort that involved both pupil and teacher (employing a form of dialectical
480Please note, at this point, that to Plato belongs the credit for first positing a real distinction
(a clear distinction) between the materiality of that which exists as matter, a material principle, and the
immateriality of that which exists as form, a formal principle. They two are not to be confused with
each other. Such a distinction did not exist among the Pythagoreans although, given the mathematical
kind of analysis which they engaged in, a basis was created which eventually led to conclusions which
pointed to the reality of a real distinction. Matter and form can be related to each other (they are
related to each other) although, in their individual reality, they totally differ from each other. They
exclude each other. Cf. Collingwood, Idea of Nature, pp. 55-56.
481Please note also, at this point, that a careful analysis can reveal or, in fact, should reveal
why a thing's form can be distinguished from a thing's essence although, in both cases, the form of a
thing and the essence of a thing share a common nature, a common intelligibility, which would then
explain what a given thing is or why it exists or behaves in the way that it does. The form of a thing is
another way of speaking about the nature of a thing or the intelligibility of a thing. The essence of a
thing is known by us through the realization of a definition which emerges as the term of an act of
conceptualization which itself emerges or proceeds from a prior act of understanding. In understanding
or grasping the essence of any given thing through an act of conceptualization, a thing's form or a
thing's nature is joined to a specification of matter which has been universalized, a specification of
matter which refers not to any instances of particular matter (the terms that belong to our different acts
of sensing) but to an apprehension of matter which exists as common matter or universal matter. If, for
instance, we should know the essence of an oak tree, we would know this in terms of two universals
which have been joined together: a form or a nature has been joined to a specification of materiality
that belongs to each and every oak tree or, in other words, a specification of matter which belongs to all
oak trees. The materiality or the common matter of all oak trees is not to be confused with the
materiality or the common matter which belongs to maple trees. Operationally speaking, in articulating
these distinctions, the form of analysis which is employed is a way of thinking that comes to us from
the later science (or the later philosophy) of Aristotle, Plato's most famous pupil.
482Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 13.
483Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 40.
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method). In 366 and 361, he made two more trips to Sicily and in one bad experience he had to flee
Syracuse in his failure to educate as a philosopher the son of the tyrant of Syracuse who hated
philosophy. Here he had tried to implement his belief that heads of state needed to be philosophers if
they were to be good rulers.
The key to understanding Plato's philosophy lies in an understanding of what was happening in Athens
in his own lifetime. An overemphasis on the golden age of Pericles in Athens blinds us to the fact that
this was a short period of only about 30 years in the middle of the 5th Century. Instability soon came
in with the inception of the Peloponnesian War in 430 when Athens then went through a number of
political regimes that were denominated by tyranny, oligarchy, and bouts of popular democracy. By
Aristotle’s time, democracy was in disrepute in contrast to the time of Pericles which had favorably
viewed democracy as a good. Aristotle described democracy as the power of the poor to oppress the
rich. In view of the degrading character of public life, Plato’s first question therefore asked if society
was somehow fatally corrupt. The climatic character of Socrates’s death then caused him to ask who
and what man was if men could put somebody like Socrates to death. Since Plato looked for stability
in an unstable world, he asked where we should look for it where, in the context of this search, he
engaged in dialogues with Socrates before the bar of history, Athens needing a reformer (like Socrates)
who could introduce a measure of stability into the social order. His concern for establishing a stable
base for the reform of Athenian life led him to assert the doctrine of the forms which allowed him to
speak about what is abiding and eternal in both the natural and human worlds.
On Plato’s writings (Socrates’s Apology, 7-8 letters, and about 34 dialogues), their character differs
from Aristotle’s in two respects. First, most scholars feel that we have all of Plato’s actual writings
while little of his oral teaching is preserved through the surviving notes of his students. Second, with
the exception of two or three dialogues in political philosophy, the Platonic dialogues cannot be
ordered in a systematic way since he did not write them in that way. One can approach Aristotle’s
work systematically but not Plato's. Three periods can be distinguished in the context of Plato's
writing. First, his dialogues of the first period consist of true Socratic conversations since, soon after
Socrates’s death, his words were still fresh in his mind. Scholars note the lively character of the
conversations. Second, gradually, on the basis of what Socrates had been teaching, from about 385 BC
on,484 Plato began to introduce two new teachings of his own: (1) his own ideas through the mouth of
Socrates when his ideas had become fixed (Aristotle later noted in his Metaphysics that Socrates
himself had not separated forms from the sensible world but that this separation and the transcendence
of forms is to be regarded as a Platonic idea) and (2) myths of his own where, by an innovation in his
literary style, he introduced the myth as a species of symbolic story by which he could expound some
of his doctrine. He adds poetical elements, the most beautiful dealing with the themes of immortality
and death and the formation of the world in the Timaeus by the Demiurge. Third, at the end of his life,
Plato tends to leave the dialogue form by giving more prosaic continuous expositions of his doctrine.
Dramatic and poetic notes disappear in dialogues that contain conversational responses of an
elementary "yes" or "no" character coming from shadowy characters, the Timaeus being an example of
this. In conclusion, despite some discussion about the presence and absence of authenticity, 34
dialogues are generally accepted as authentic, the most famous from the above three periods being: the
Protagoras, the Apology (Socrates’s trial), and the first book of the Republic; the Phaedo, the
Symposium, and the rest of the Republic; and the Parmenides, the Timaeus, and the Laws. Not all of
Plato's writings have survived.
484Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 58, n. 1.
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A scholarly approach to Plato’s philosophy ought to be done in a twofold manner: systematically as
this is done by Copleston and analytically as this has been done by others (for example, A. E. Taylor)
in a manner which involves an analysis of the ideas that are to be found in Plato’s dialogues. 485 A
systematic approach may not be the best to use because Plato never systematized his own work
although, on the other hand, a systematic approach is of value for us as students and readers for the
kind of comprehensiveness which it attempts to achieve and accomplish.
These things being said however, for the sake of a more thorough study of Plato's thought, no substitute
exists for the good and the value of fully entering into one of Plato's dialogues as this is given to us in
his texts as, in a personal manner, we try to participate in the conversations that are being produced or
reproduced for our benefit, the adoption of an impersonal attitude being inadequate, simply insufficient
(even if it should work or even if it best works for a study of philosophy and science as we should find
this in the conceptuality which comes to us from the thought of Aristotle and Aquinas). In the context
of Plato's dialogues, the dramatization of the conflicts and tensions that exist between different persons
(who exist as interlocutors) suggests that, as readers, we all need to enter into the drama of concrete
situations as we should find them in any given text since Plato’s philosophy is not only a critique of the
ups and downs of Athenian life but, at the same time too, it also summons readers to engage in a radical
form of self-questioning. The object is a reordering of our own thinking and understanding in a way
that can bring a new order of objects into the compass and the grasp of our human apprehension. 486
From the possible genesis of an intellectual kind of conversion, a moral type of conversion can become
more likely in terms of how we should begin to live and exist as human beings. By way of dialogue
and discourse, an unrestricted eros is shown to exist within human souls: as a species of first principle,
a desire for an unrestricted knowledge of things leads to a higher and a greater desire which yearns for
an unrestricted experience of all things that are good or this unrestricted desire for understanding is
absorbed by a higher and greater desire which exists as an unrestricted experience of all things that
happen to be good.487 The desire for understanding is explained by the being of a moral or ethical
desire which is the proximate ground of human moral activity.
In order to create conditions that could then lead to the raising or to the lifting of our human morality
activity (one that is less subject to contradictions and the anomie of relativity, relatively speaking),
begin to move toward an understanding of being or reality as this exists in the construction and the
elaboration of metaphysics and then, from there, move toward a political and a private morality that are
both grounded in realities which never change, realities which exist within a world that is constituted
by the being of eternally existing Ideas, eternally existing Forms. Plato speaks about Ideas; Aristotle,
Forms. In a manner which points to the urgency or the primacy of Plato's practical concerns, the
reform of the state is such that it cannot occur unless it is in the hands of persons (whether one or
many) who are endowed with a knowledge of eternal Ideas or Forms: persons, individuals, who
understand and know about the good of metaphysics; persons who are trained in the arts of
philosophical reflection. For both Socrates and Plato, our human ignorance accounts for all kinds of
evil that inevitably result since we cannot realize an ideal state (a truly good state) that is founded on
the practice of justice if we should not know what, in fact, justice is as a condition or virtue (its Idea, its
Form, its nature, its intelligibility; or justice as it exists in itself as the primary or chief principle of an
485Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy Volume I, p. 140.
486McCarthy, Authenticity as Self-transcendence, p. 56.
487McCarthy, Authenticity as Self-transcendence, p. 57.
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implementable order that will determine the kind of order which should exist within a given state, the
good of order within a state facilitating all attainments of virtue and good habits that can be acquired
and practiced by individuals who should live within the confines of a particular state). 488 From the
ordering that is given in justice comes the possibility of our human freedom, our human freedom
existing not as a departure from the influence of existing laws but as movement toward the being of
laws which serve to create a context that is ordered in a way which creates a just context. As living
human beings, we all need to meditate on the meaning and being of justice (on the kind of order which
exists within justice as its meaning and reality) and politicians, most especially, must be philosophers
since they need real insights (true, critical philosophical insights) if they are to operate successfully
within the context of their public life, making decisions that are geared toward the realization of the
public common good which can only truly emerge if a good order of things exists within the life of a
political state.
Because of our ignorance, in the context of our life and work, if we are to be proximate sources of good
in the conduct of our individual lives, we must always go back and attend to the order of our thinking
and understanding, re-examining our thinking and understanding, and so ask if, in fact, we really and
truly know what we are in fact claiming to understand and know in a given concrete context (as this
was done or as this is illustrated for us, for instance, in the text of Plato's Republic where the first book
poses a question which looks for the being of an intelligible, intelligent answer to a question which asks
“what is justice?”; how can we distinguish between the presence and absence of justice in the context
of our human life?).
With respect then to the ways and means of Plato's approach, the method which he uses in the
articulation and the labors of his philosophy, understanding this method of inquiry best prepares us for
understanding the kind of results which Plato achieved in his conclusions and judgments since, through
Plato’s notion and practice of dialectics (the kind of dialectical reasoning that he was using in order to
sort differences and move toward a possible conclusion), we have a point of departure for
understanding Plato's world of Ideas or Forms in a way which could lead us toward a true knowledge
of them and a kind of life which could exist for us as the living of a truly good moral human life.
Through an analysis of the arguments that can be found in Plato's Socratic dialogues, three techniques
can be accordingly identified (three techniques that are used with each other, depending on the
conditions of appropriateness which exist at a given time, in a given case): 489 (1) the errors or
falsehoods which exist in an opposing point of view are shown and known through a series of questions
and answers which reveal where contradictions and falsehoods exist; (2) from a series of true
propositions about particular cases, generalizations are drawn, again with the help of questions and
answers; and lastly (3) with the help of questions and answers, definitions or concepts are defined
through an interplay of analysis and synthesis in the movements or the kind of ordering which is
occurring in the context of Plato's human reasoning (a reasoning which we can also participate in by
the acts of reasoning which can also exist for us within the context of our personal performance). In
Plato, a form of analysis works with distinctions to differentiate the meaning of a genus, indicating the
being of different species and then, from a species, the being of different subspecies; and then, by
moving from the kind of movement which exists in analysis to the kind of movement which exists in
synthesis, species are brought together and they are collected and combined in a manner which points
to the being of a genus and then too, from a collection of genera, the being of an even higher genus (a
488Rommen, Natural Law, p. 12.
489Berman, Law and Revolution, pp. 146-147.
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genus which points to a higher kind of being within the general order of things which is constitutive of
metaphysics in terms of the object which is the subject matter of metaphysics).
By way of contrast thus, this notion of dialectic differs from both the Sophist art of discussion and from
the Socratic form of dialectic which had consisted of a system of questions and answers that are needed
if we are to arrive at the being of general definitions that could be always valid and true. In Plato,
much more is involved than what is given in merely searching for Socratic definitions that would
always be valid and true. Within the order of the kind of dialectical method that is to be associated
with Plato's way of thinking, three steps can be distinguished in a manner which combines
metaphysical components with cognitional components where, as a result, Plato's teaching about the
being and the reality of Forms is joined to a species of serious discussion that is evidenced in the type
of dialectic that is to be found in the praxis of a Socratic discussion as this occurs within any given
dialogue.490 As a general principle or first premiss thus: “knowledge is true belief [that is] backed up
by discourse.”491 With respect however to the manner or the form of discourse, a species of
fundamental unity (a tight relation) exists between the being or the use of metaphysical and cognitional
principles where each suggests or points to the other: (1) the Spirit or Nous or Mind ascends to the
world of the Forms; (2) the Spirit dwells in the world of the Forms for purposes of contemplation; and
then (3) the Spirit descends again to the world of sensible things to bring into this world the influence
of the Forms for purposes of introducing some kind of order where order has not previously existed.
Three motions are involved. By a kind of analysis, we move toward the world of the Forms. We move
toward first principles. Then, by a kind of synthesis or composition, we move from the higher world of
Forms or Ideas toward the world of sensible things, moving through a non-mechanical form of
deduction from the general to the particular (from the generality of an Idea or Form to the particulars
that are given to us through our different acts of human sensing).492 However, in doing this, as a result,
through the interaction of these two movements as they work together, an effect or a third movement or
change is effected which is the discovery of previously unknown relations which exist within a world
of lower existing things. In the practice of philosophy thus, through employing dialectical forms of
reasoning as this reasoning encounters differences and distinctions within the being of things,
interactions between variables connect variables with each other in a way which points to a species of
union which is the being of a previously unknown relation (a relation between two or more variables).
In any relation, in the most basic kind of relation, “x” is related to “y,” or “x” is said to be related to
“y.” One variable is joined or it is ordered to another, both ways (vice versa). However, as this
relation exists, endures, and lives, as this relation is understood and articulated, it can begin to point to
the possible being (the possible discovery) of other variables (a third variable) which can now be
known for the first time. A given relation, to the degree that it is more fully understood and known, by
means of its reality or its intelligibility it soon points to the being of other possible relations and, from
these relations, the possible being of other variables. If, in Sophist eristic arguments, the manner of
proceeding is governed by the desire or the object of defeating or vanquishing an opponent apart from
any considerations that pertain to the goodness and value of truth, in dialectical arguments (properly
understood), its ground or basis is a desire and a search for truth; hence, its consequent object is an
understanding or a comprehension of things which is able to grasp as much truth as this can be known
or experienced by us as a term that belongs to a given act of understanding.493 A Sophist understanding
490Meynell, Redirecting Philosophy, p. 247.
491Plato, Theaetetus, 202C, as cited by Meynell, Redirecting Philosophy, p. 247 & n. 19.
492Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 133, p. 151.
493McCarthy, Authenticity as Self-transcendence, p. 57.
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of dialectic cannot be associated with a Platonic understanding of dialectic.
To illustrate the reciprocal or the species of tight relation which exists between the dialectical kind of
reasoning that we find in Plato and the objects that are known (objects which can be known) through
the kind of reasoning which Plato employs, in Plato’s "simile of the Line" that is given in one of his
major works, the Republic, states of awareness in our human cognition correlate with states of being or
ontology as this is illustrated below in the following chart.494 Cognitional and metaphysical variables
point to each other in a context which associates reason with a kind of intellectual seeing which exists
as a kind of intellectual intuition (a species of contemplation):
States of Awareness (Epistemology)
States of Being (Ontology)
Examples
Pure reason, pure reasoning, mind as
nous
Forms, Ideas
Form of Beauty
Intellection, noesis, understanding,
theorizing
Concepts, theory, or
definitions (not to be
understood as empirical
generalizations but as
"images" of something higher
that is given in the "Forms")
Concept of Beauty
Belief (classes as opinion because it
Particular objects (as in a
is grounded in the uncertainties of our particular horse or a particular
sense perception, aisthesis)
act of justice)
Individual beautiful
entities
Conjecture, mere sensory awareness
(as persons mistake images for
reality)
Images (shadows and
reflections)
Imitations of beautiful
entities as in paintings,
photos, reflections, &
shadows
Turning then to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, as this is given in chapter 7 of the Republic, besides
illustrating the difference which exists between appearance and reality, this allegory also points in an
allegorical fashion to Plato’s dialectical understanding of education (his notion of a good education)
where the cave represents shadowy existence with its opening leading toward light or truth and where
its prisoners, chained by the neck and legs, represent most of humanity who remain in false opinions in
having an inadequate view of the world although some manage to free themselves and find reality by
turning their heads (symbolizing how we each find reality through some kind of conversion). Things
can be richer from what is usually seen as witness the ascent we can make from the cave toward its
mouth where we are able to deliver ourselves up to the light and so we can return later to the cave in
order to help our fellow human beings. By describing the importance of descending into the cave by
someone who has seen the light (which represents the Good), Plato shows his concern for introducing
something stable into the conduct of ethical and private life in the education of other persons. To see
and sense how Plato argues by way of the allegory of the Cave, we can cite from Plato's account in the
Republic as this is given to us in one translation:495
494Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, pp. 60- 64.
495See http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/platoscave.html (accessed August 26, 2016).
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[Socrates is speaking with Glaucon]
[Socrates:] And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or
unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth
open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their
childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only
see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above
and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners
there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like
the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the
puppets.
[Glaucon:] I see.
And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and
statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which
appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.
You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one
another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?
True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never
allowed to move their heads?
And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the
shadows?
Yes, he said.
And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they
were naming what was actually before them?
Very true.
And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would
they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they
heard came from the passing shadow?
No question, he replied.
To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.
That is certain.
And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and
disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly
to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer
sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of
which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying
to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching
nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision,
-what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to
the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, -- will he not be perplexed?
Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects
which are now shown to him?
Far truer.
And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes
which will make him turn away to take and take in the objects of vision which he can
see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now
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being shown to him?
True, he said.
And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and
held fast until he 's forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be
pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will
not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities.
Not all in a moment, he said.
He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see
the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the
objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the
spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the
light of the sun by day?
Certainly.
Last of he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but
he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him
as he is.
Certainly.
He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the years, and is
the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things
which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold?
Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him.
And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellowprisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity
them?
Certainly, he would.
And if they were in the habit of conferring honours among themselves on those who
were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before,
and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to
draw conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would care for such honours and
glories, or envy the possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer,
Better to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to endure anything, rather than think
as they do and live after their manner?
Yes, he said, I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false
notions and live in this miserable manner.
Imagine once more, I said, such an one coming suddenly out of the sun to be replaced in
his old situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes full of darkness?
To be sure, he said.
And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the
prisoners who had never moved out of the den, while his sight was still weak, and before
his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new
habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say
of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not
even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the
light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.
No question, he said.
This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the previous
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argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you
will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the
soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have
expressed whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or false, my
opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen
only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all
things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world,
and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the
power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have
his eye fixed.
Asking Plato's basic question: How should I live?496
In the consequent elaboration of his philosophy as Plato moves from asking ethical or moral questions
toward asking metaphysical or ontological questions, in order to construct or to reveal an enduring
order of existing things that is constitutive of reality (the being of things), as the basis or as the
fundamental context for our possibly having a rational understanding of human moral life, Plato points
to a metaphysical order of things by constructing and moving toward a metaphysical system that
employs the following two step movement:
(1) Beginning with Socrates or, with Socrates, Plato first looks for general definitions of universal
applicability through initially posing questions that directly relate to questions or concerns about
virtuous forms of human living (given here that, in his day, Socrates had believed in the existence of
objectively true definitions since he rejected a Sophist thesis which had asserted that man is the
measure of all things). Hence: What is Justice? What is Temperance? What is Virtue? What is
Goodness?497 Since virtue is knowledge, arriving at true definitions is necessary if we are to have
virtue, if we are to live virtuously. However, from this point, Plato proceeds to ask about the real
nature or the status of these definitions. Are they more than abstract? Do they have their own reality
and what kind of reality is to be ascribed to them?
(2) Where Socrates leaves off, Plato begins to ask other questions about the existence of other realities.
For instance, he begins to compare the objective character of the unknown content of the Socratic
definitions with the real existence of numbers (given the Pythagorean influence on Plato and their
thesis that things are numbers: the world can be explained through a geometrical pattern which can be
classed as a reality which transcends our sense experience, being objective and unchangeable). Hence,
through a species of expansion in inquiry, we have this progression or movement in Plato's analysis:
What is Triangle? What is Circle? What is Round? What is One? What is Ten? What is Number?
What is Up? What is Down? What is Right? What is Left? What is “Is” Itself? 498 Moral goodness as
it exists in itself (along with these other realities) could be a reality or a thing from which one can
deduce a doctrine which affirms the existence of a world of eternally existing realities that is separate
or apart from the world that we commonly experience and know, eternal realities that are called Forms
or Ideas which can only be known by us through our human minds or through our intellects and not
496John M. Rist, Real Ethics Reconsidering the Foundations of Morality (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 6.
497Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 40.
498Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 41.
97
through our senses and even if, in the context of our human language and speech, we should use
different words for the same thing, different words which refer to the same thing, the same reality.
Similarly, when we apply the same predicate or the same word to a variety of different things, the
sameness in meaning or the sameness in reference is explained by a quality which exists independently
of the existence of any varying quantities.
Determinations of quantity are transcended by
determinations of quality. Redness or whiteness exists independently of any differences which would
refer to determinations of time and space. Goodness or Justice, for instance, possess a form of
objective existence. They exist independently of our minds and the way of thinking which belongs to
our individual minds. Without their existence apart from our world (their objective existence),
everything would collapse within the world within which we live and exist. If our world were to be
destroyed, these higher realities would continue to exist in an eternal, unchanging kind of way.
To explain a bit more by way of contrast: while Kant also believed in the existence of a
double world, unlike Plato, he denied that it is possible for our theoretical reason to
know things as they are (as they exist). While Plato assumes that we can have
knowledge (true knowledge) and that the only true objective knowledge is one which
refers to a world of eternal realities, Kant says that we cannot reach a world of forms
through reason. While Plato regarded the world of the senses as not real but shadowy,
for Kant, the mind can only work with sensed phenomena: it is not able to enter the
noumenal or real world where, for instance, while we must be just in our behavior, we
cannot define the content of justice. While Plato’s Ideas consist of many different kinds
and degrees, as a whole at the top of the structure there exists the Idea of the Good, the
supreme idea that links politics with ethics.
Plato on Knowing and Being
Respecting Plato’s metaphysical theory, since, for Plato, real knowledge is restricted to a knowledge of
things that never change, there must be immutable things, a world of immutable things. He declines to
question the reality of our human cognition in terms of its ability to enjoy a knowledge of reality. On
the origin of our real knowledge and how we reach it, Plato notes that more exists in knowledge than
what experience can account for where, here, Plato disagrees with Aristotle who claims that knowledge
is somehow abstracted or immaterially separated out from its initial givenness that is given to us in our
experience. Since sensible things are particular and changeable, their very changeability prevents us
from considering them as real, substantial, or important.
Citing an example that was used by Plato, when we pronounce a judgment on the beauty of something,
we need a notion of what beauty is and since we need a higher or a transcendent notion of beauty in
order to compare and contrast any instances of beauty that we encounter within our current form of
human existence, this notion of beauty must come from somewhere else; exist somewhere else. Where
Aristotle argues that we abstract the notion or the idea of beauty by bringing together a number of
particular instances that exist within our sensible apprehensions (our sense perceptions), for Plato, since
the reality of beauty is a much richer thing that anything that can be given in sense, cognitionally, it can
only be accounted for by a theory or a doctrine of reminiscence which reveals or points to how, from
the context of our current viewpoint, allegedly, mythical elements at times continue to work within the
texture of Plato's thought given his belief in the pre-existence of the human soul, the human soul
existing or referring to the being of a rational human soul which is to be identified with the being of the
human mind. While Plato’s discussion of reminiscence is itself rather vague, in his theory of education
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as anamnesis (as recollection or as remembering), he believes that our reminiscence of a previous life
explains both our real knowledge of things as this exists for us within our current life and also our
ability to reconstruct or to rebuild in fabrications of various kinds that we engage in as makers and
doers. The making that we do succeeds the knowing that we have.
Since we have already existed prior to our birth in this world, our birth entails a fall of some kind: a fall
of our individual souls into a material body where, by this fall, a screen rises that now obscures what
had been clearly known before. As long thus as we are still in our bodies, as long as we remain in our
bodies, truth sleeps inside us. In a mythical view of Original sin, in a Platonic interpretation of
Original sin as this has existed for some Christians, since the soul has forgotten its past, in some way,
the truth inside ourselves must be awakened by a teacher who makes us each remember what we have
already seen and known.
Again, by way of contrast and in a way which brings out the peculiarities of Plato's own
teaching, the 3rd Century AD neoplatonist philosopher, Plotinus, introduced an
important difference in his method when he argued that man should not lose his memory
of the present (instead of his memory of the past) since, for Plotinus, the whole of reality
is to be equated with that which exists as the One which is itself so rich and so full of
being that it cannot be called being anymore. This One, as a terrific source of being,
overflows into other beings through a species of elastic emanation where, the further
away something is from the Divine Being, the less being it, in fact, possesses. Thus, the
goal of our lives is to remember where we belong at the end of this elastic since man’s
tragedy is the fact that he forgets who he is although, for Plato, man’s tragedy lies in the
fact that he has forgotten who he was (what he has been).
Plato illustrates the rationality of his theory in the Meno by a story about Socrates who elicited, from an
untutored slave boy, the answer to a difficult mathematical problem by having him answer yes or no to
a series of simple questions that led to the construction of a square twice the area of a given square.
The slave boy always knew the answers to the questions that were posed although, self-consciously, he
did not know that he knew these answers. Plato’s theory of recollection is thus the source of a Freudian
conception of the unconscious where the task or role of the psychoanalyst is to help a patient remember
things that have been forgotten at a conscious level. One moves to apprehensions that exist in a
preconscious way.
At the same time too, in the kinds of judgments which we make as human knowers and also by the
kinds of questions which we ask as potential knowers, the transcendence or the self-transcendence of
the human mind is a reality which is made apparent to us in the awareness that we have of ourselves in
our different acts of human cognition and, at the same time too, in order to secure or to explain the kind
of self-transcendence which belongs to us as human knowers, Plato moves toward the construction of a
metaphysics that can serve as a species of adequate foundation. The truth or the stability of our
judgments turns towards foundations that exist within the order or the science of being which exists
within our knowledge of metaphysics.499
499Robert Spitzer, Finding True Happiness Satisfying Our Restless Hearts (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2015), pp. 62-64; Soul's Upward Yearning Clues to Our Transcendent Nature from
Experience and Reason (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2015), p. 122.
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Since the Ideas come not from sensible things (allegedly, the Ideas do not exist within sensible things),
Plato’s world view in this context is clearly divided into a species of dualism with reminiscence
(memory) the only real link between the existence of two worlds that we can know about as human
beings and, in different ways, live in and belong to. One world is immediately known by us within the
context of our current material, physical life (strictly though our various acts of human sensing); the
second world, through the instrumentality of the first kind of knowledge that is given to us within our
various acts of human sensing if this first kind of knowledge is seen to exist as a point of departure
when we then move toward the kind of human knowing which properly exists for us as Knowledge
(true knowledge).
With respect to the first kind of knowing and the first world that is known by us as an initial point of
departure, for Plato, unlike Aristotle, sensation functions at times as a species of alarm clock (it exists
as a species of pointer or as a warning). The sensible world is always immediately given to us at the
very start of things within the order of our human cognition and, at the same time too, it can serve as
the occasion for our obtaining real knowledge of another world which exists through the real
knowledge that we can have of something that is somehow really inside ourselves, something that
exists within us (within our subjectivity): the world as the object or the term of our intellectual
knowledge; the world as the object of our receptive and our active intelligence though we often employ
a type of language which would have us speak about how our mental or our psychological knowing
exists as a species of spiritual or intellectual intuition: an internal spiritual seeing versus an ocular,
outer, visual seeing.
However, since our human knowing is not something which is purely mental or intellectual (since,
then, with it or through it, it would be impossible us to commit any error or make any mistakes), it is
something which must somehow arise through an interaction of sorts which must exist between
perceiver and perceived, a perceiver and a perceived, under the overall guidance of that which exists as
the human soul or the human mind where, in the context of our human understanding and knowledge,
the soul moves itself in its understanding and knowing. Understanding exists as an activity and not as a
passivity or reception. It is the soul (the “eye of our soul,” 500 or the spiritual soul) which apprehends
things like identity, difference, existence, and number through anamnesis or the remembering of our
individual souls.501 Through these categories thus, the real or true world of things is known, an
intelligible, immaterial world and not a material, physical, sensible, perceptible world (what is real is
that which is intelligible)502 although, oddly enough and perhaps incoherently,503 the physical
perceptible world is only known for that which it is if it is understood or grasped from a point of view
which is grounded in the being of a world which is imperceptible because, as we have noted, it exists
entirely as an intelligible world and it is only known through that which exists as our intellectual or
mental acts.
500Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 44.
501Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 14.
502Meynell, Redirecting Philosophy, p. 252.
503Contrast a way of speaking which says about Plato's understanding of science and cognition
that the physical or natural world is such that it can only be known by us through our acts of human
sensing and not by any other means. Literally, if this is so, then our knowledge of subsistent, eternal
forms is of no avail to us with respect to understanding the world within which we happen to live. Cf.
Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 70.
100
In Plato’s theory of hypothesis and deduction, a hypothesis (literally, a "putting-underneath”) has to
explain “the facts” or, in other words, "save the appearances," since, if, in some way, a fact does not
square with a proffered hypothesis, a new hypothesis is needed in a search that must always head us
toward the being of a bigger, more comprehensive general thesis. 504 The ultimate search is always
directed toward a giant hypothesis which would explain that which exists as the good.
Although Plato’s view of reality can be constructed in terms of a twofold differentiation of levels (a
Parmenidean kind of being or a Parmenidean notion of being that opposes a Heraclitean kind of being
or a Heraclitean notion of being),505 it can be considered in the following threefold manner as we begin
from that which allegedly exists at the top and as we would move downwards toward lower levels of
being. The existence of different levels within the order of being suggests that some things possess
more reality or more being than other things and so, as a consequence, being itself has a connotation or
a significance which points not to a Parmenidean, univocal notion of being or a Parmenidean, univocal
concept of being (“besides being there is only non-being, and non-being is nothing”)506 but, instead, to
a variable notion of being which exists as a species of analogy as we move from something that we
know to a possible knowledge of something that perhaps we will begin to know. 507 An analogous
notion of being or, more succinctly, by way of an analogy of being [an analogia entis], different kinds
of being can be distinguished from each other in a way which shares a common meaning (the
truthfulness about the being of existence) while, at the same time, also moving beyond or transcending
an undifferentiated notion of being which would seem to follow and to be determined and limited if we
were to focus our attention solely on the principle of the Excluded Middle as this exists as a law within
the order of deductive logic (i.e., a statement of fact is “either true or it is not true”), 508 and so, as a
consequence of this rule, conclude about being (about the being of all things in general) that something
either is (it exists) or, on the other hand, it does not exist. Within this perspective of having to choose
thus between being and non-being, beyond any question which simply asks if something exists or if
something is true, nothing more is to be asked about, noticed, or said. Nothing more about being needs
to be adverted to.
To clarify how we are to understand what we mean when we speak about the analogy of
being, its meaning can be more fully understood if we attend to the wording and the
meaning of an opposing, contrary notion: a univocal or an unequivocal notion of being
or, in other words, a conception or a meaning for being which thinks in terms of its
having a univocal significance (hence, univocal being [ens univocum], or the univocity
of being).509 To begin with a point of origin which would seem to come to us initially
from the 11th Century AD and the thought of a Muslim philosopher, Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna
c. 980-1037):510 although a real distinction exists between God and creatures (God being
504Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 14.
505Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 37.
506Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1, 5, 9, 138, summarizing the teaching of
Parmenides.
507Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 36.
508Caldecott, Beauty in the Word, p. 149.
509Pabst, Metaphysics, p. 196.
510Please note the hesitancy and the equivocation. Alpharabius (c. 870-950) or Al-Fārābī, as
he was known within the Arab world, an earlier Muslim philosopher from the 10th Century, has been
credited with developing a notion or a conception of being which is to be identified with a univocal
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the creator of creatures and all creatures existing as created things that differ from God),
in our understanding of divine and human things as this exists within us as human
subjects, in any predications that can be entertained about the being of God and about
the being of created things, the meaning of any predicates or attributes that are ascribed
to God do not differ from the meaning of any predicates or attributes that are ascribed to
the being of other things. For example, if we say that God is good, the goodness of
creatures does not differ from the goodness of God. In the kind of argument that
Avicenna uses: being, as a determination of qualities or properties, or being as an
essence, exists as a kind of a priori. As a kind of universal essence that informs the
being of all things and which exists apart from the being or the existence of any given
individual thing,511 the existence of any given thing existing as an accident relative to the
primary kind of being which belongs to the denotation and the connotations of an
essence,512 this being which exists as being in terms of being (or, in other words, being
qua being) – this being is endowed with a wholeness, an absoluteness, and an integrity
of its own. It excludes any kind of differentiation into predicates that we would use to
speak about the being of existing things (the existence of individually existing things),
and this wholeness or integrity (or this absence of differentiation with respect to the
nature or the meaning of being as being) is something which commonly belongs to both
the being of God and the being of all creatures. If something is or if something exists,
then, in virtue of its real being or its real existence, it shares in the same properties or in
the same attributes which belong to all things in terms of their real being or their real
existence. Belaboring the point a bit: whatever is said about God means the same as that
which can be said about human beings and vice versa.513 Hence, if within the order of
scientific determination and predication, predicates enjoy a form of invariant
significance, then, from such a standpoint, predicates that are used to speak about a
notion or a univocal conception of being. Within an understanding of causality which thinks in terms
of emanations and of the emanation of one thing from another (of an effect from its alleged source or
its originating cause), then, within this kind of thinking and imagining and an analogy which suggests
that that which is emanated is akin or it is identical in nature to that which is doing the emanating;
hence, from within this point of view, it follows from this that the kind of being which the first cause or
the grounding source enjoys does not differ from the kind of being which belongs to everything which
would exist as a consequential effect. The predications which exist among any alleged effects, the
predications that we initially come to know about as these apply to the being of created effects – these
can all be applied with the same meaning or with the same significance to their likely point of origin: to
the origin which exists as their originating cause, this cause being conceptualized in different ways: as
either the First Principle or the First Cause in philosophy or the being of God in faith and religion if we
should move from a species of conceptuality which belongs to philosophical thinking and analysis to a
conceptuality which belongs to the kind of thinking and understanding which is peculiar to the
discipline of theology (the inquiries and the reflections which are proper to the work and the practice of
theology). Cf. Pabst, Metaphysics, pp. 159-160.
511Pabst, Metaphysics, p. 12, pp. 161-162.
512Pabst, Metaphysics, p. 12, p. 161.
513Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized
Society (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 2012), p. 37; Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the
Religious Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 26-27.
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given kind of thing cannot be used to speak about other kinds of things in a way which
would point to any real differences which would exist among these other things. In the
context of any kind of theology, in anything which is said about God, we would have to
speak about how God exists in the same way that we would use to speak about how we
exist as human beings and so, as a result, inevitably, a form of reductionism is
introduced into the manner of our thinking and speaking. Such is its effect thus that it
subtracts or it takes away from the transcendence which especially belongs to God,
relative to the being of everything else which exists within the horizon of the kind of
world which is given to us within the context of our sensing experience. As used,
univocal determinations of meaning function as a species of leveling agent if we should
want to try and understand the order of our world in a way that would want to think of it
as a hierarchy of ordered causes that are all related to each other according to a manner
of descent which would point to a form of asymmetrical arrangement. Some causes
have a greater influence than the being and the effect of other causes; a greater or
greatest cause would exist as a first cause and first principle; and lesser causes all exist
as instrumental causes of one kind or another as we move from the individuality of
higher kinds of being toward the particularity and the individuality of lower kinds of
being.
With respect then to the existence of different kinds of things and how, in fact, they are ordered to each
other, a tripartite ordering of distinctions is to be adverted to:
(1) A real world of unchanging things exists by itself and it refers to an unchanging intelligible world
of pure Forms or Ideas (the forms being referred to as "ideas" which can only be known by us through
our acts of the mind and not through our acts of sensing, existing not merely as ideas that are located
within our minds). From sensible similarities that are experienced by us through our various acts of
human sensing, we cannot immediately assume or suppose that, as a consequence, an objectively
existing intelligible Form or Idea is to be postulated as a reality that is to be known by us through an act
which would differ from an act of human sensing 514 although, on the other hand, we can move from
experiences of resemblance (as in this looks like that according to our apprehensions of sense) toward a
possible explanation of the resemblances that we could be experiencing in a given case in our
apprehensions of sense.515 By means of Forms or Ideas, we can explain why, in our experience,
resemblances exist: why “x” resembles “y.” As explanations which would always hold (otherwise,
they would not exist as explanations), because these objects of thought or intellection are essentially
immutable and unchangeable (they function as a limited number of basic patterns for all that we
perceive within our world), their role and task implies a form of objective status which differs from
Socrates’s notion of objective status as this had applied to the status or the being of universal concepts
or universal definitions although, if we should want to account for the validity of any kind of universal,
eternal knowledge that we could possibly have which can be expressed as a concept or definition, we
would have to turn to the Forms or the Ideas of Plato which exist as “eternal, immutable, subsistent,
immaterial, intelligible” realities although, admittedly, they do not exist as living, conscious, intelligent
realities.516
514Meynell, Redirecting Philosophy, pp. 242-243.
515Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 37.
516Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Incarnate Word, trans. Charles C. Hefling Jr., eds. Robert M. Doran
and Jeremy D. Wilkins (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), p. 395.
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For the sake of further understanding by way of contrast, please distinguish between a
general category or concept which can be used to refer to a resemblance or a similarity
of some kind that is experienced by us in our acts of sensing and a general category or
concept which can be used to refer to an Idea or a Form that is grasped by our
understanding. An Idea or Form is something which is understood. Names or labels
can be used to distinguish a class of objects that is known in terms of how a group of
particulars resemble each other. Many living creatures can be subsumed under a general
label which refers to them all as “cats,” the class of all cats. However, if we are to
understand what exactly is the nature of any given cat or why a given creature is a cat
and not some other kind of being, we would need to refer to the thesis and the
apprehension of a possible explanation and, if or when this kind of understanding is
given to us, we would then have that which would exist as the Idea or the Form of a cat.
A nominalist or an empiricist species of cognition is to be associated with a familiarity
which refers to the experience of resemblances that can be known by us through our
descriptions (nominalism exists as a school of thought within philosophy); but, on the
other hand, in contrast with nominalism, a realist species of cognition exists through
explanations that are known by us through an understanding and a knowledge of Ideas
or Forms. The realism which exists is something which is understood if we should refer
to how it is constituted by how acts of understanding exist within an understander and
so, from these acts of understanding, we have the experience of a datum which exists as
an understood, grasped meaning. The meaning exists as an intelligibility. It is the term
of our understanding by means of a specific act of understanding: a direct act of
understanding if we take this expression from the conceptuality that we find in Bernard
Lonergan's study of human cognition as this exists in his Insight: A Study of Human
Understanding.
As a fundamental idea that Plato adhered to all his life, universals really and truly possess an objective
ontological status since, as thought and because thought and not sense grasps reality, the objects of our
thought must exist as universals which always hold. No deceptions are possible because they are
intelligible in themselves (akin, for instance, to the unchanging nature of a triangle or the unchanging
nature of a square in mathematics),517 and so they must have a species or a type of reality which
surpasses any kind of reality which belongs to things that are always changing, especially anything
which is capable of changing itself and which, by its self-changing, is always ceasing to be what it is or
what it has been as it moves from its current condition of being toward a condition of non-being,
relative to its current condition of being. With respect to changing things and especially with respect to
self-changing things, a lack of fullness perennially exists with respect to the manner of their existence
as a given thing is always becoming something else, the something else in turn possibly changing to
become something else again ad infinitum. Self-changing things are “inherently transitory.”518
In time, as Plato began to develop his basic thesis, he began to devote more attention to the nature of
concepts in a manner which appears to be more concrete: giving to concepts such as “horseness” and
“tableness,” for instance, a species of universal status that is conjoined to a form or a manner of
existence that is somehow other or objective. However, in doing this, his theory became more
517Collingwood, Idea of Nature, pp. 56-57.
518Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 56.
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confused since it is not so easy to identify the objective essence of that which exists as “horseness”
with the objective status of “horseness” in terms of its having its own real being or its own form of real
existence. In this context thus, to avoid confusion, please distinguish between the objectivity of an
apprehended idea (its transcendence, relative to the being of an object which is sensed) and the
objectivity or the transcendence of an idea if we should now refer to it as a true idea or a real idea: an
idea which exists as a fact. Understanding differs from judgment; acts of direct understanding from
acts of reflective understanding; hence, the transcendence of one kind of act and object from the
transcendence of the other kind of act and object. Although, with Socrates, it is easier to talk about the
objective existence of values (the true, the good, the beautiful), on the other hand, with respect to the
objective existence of Ideas or essences, in his own way and without distinguishing between the
transcendence of an understood idea from the transcendence of a rationally affirmed idea (an idea
which exists as a fact), Plato never ceased to believe in the objective existence of universal concrete
concepts. They possess their own objective ontological status. Since the objects that are grasped in
universal concepts correspond to universal terms of predication, they must exist somewhere within a
transcendental world of things, apart from the being of our sensible world. For instance thus, the
general word "horse" refers not to any particular horse but to any horse wherever and whatever. There
exists, somewhere or other, an ideal horse which exists outside of space and time. The idea is real; it is
the idea which is real. A particular horse exists as something which is only apparent to us as particular
horses are encountered by us through our various acts of human sensing.
However, in saying all these things, to avoid further confusion or to introduce a possible explanation,
perhaps it would be best to say that we should distinguish between two notions of reality or two
anticipations about the nature of reality that are operative in the context of Plato's thought, two notions
of reality that are not entirely distinguished from each other within the context of Plato's thought. One
kind is known inwardly by us through a true predication that is directly experienced by us within the
life of our cognitive souls (our intellectual souls); the other refers to a form of existence which is
somehow external or "out there": a species or a notion of being which is derived or which is modeled
on the extroversion that we can come to know about if we should attend to how we experience or know
about objects within the kind of confrontation which exists within the functioning of our sense
perceptions. Taking this model and applying it thus, in the Timaeus, Plato teaches that God, the
Demiurge, forms our world according to a set of exemplary eternally existing Forms. The Forms exist
apart from the Demiurge in the same way that the data of sense (the objects of sense) exist apart or
externally from the different acts of human sensing.
The otherness or the externality of a
transcendental order of forms resembles the otherness or the externality which belongs to the immanent
kind of order which exists if we should refer to the kind of subjective immediacy which belongs to us
within our sense perceptions: our human acts of sensing encounter objects that are other than ourselves,
other than the subjectivity which individually belongs to us in our acts of sensing, and these same
objects function as provocative external agent objects in activating the kind of receptivity which
belongs to our different acts of human sensing when a given act of sensing is reduced or put into a
condition of act as a species of effect. Acts of sense are caused or they are elicited by what these acts
sense. For an example, think about how the external sounding of a bell intrudes upon our sense
perception in a way which produces the sounding which exists within our acts of hearing. The louder
the sound, the more likely will be our hearing of it. The hearing will be inevitable and unavoidable.
We try to control the hearing but not always with success.
However, within the context of this way of imagining, thinking, and speaking, the problem of a bridge
will be created in terms of how we are to understand the dynamics of our human cognition. The
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unchanging intelligible forms exist in a manner which continues to be apart or separate from the
subjectivity of our individual human existence. Plato cannot explain too well how the world of sense is
fruitfully joined to the higher world of Ideas, how these two worlds are related to each other in a
complementary manner (cognitionally: the goodness or the perfection of the one kind of act which
exists in understanding adds to the goodness or the perfection of the other kind of act which exists in
sensing). Both the world of sense and the world the ideas exist as externalities. While, in his later
dialogues, Plato speaks about a species of participation (cited as methexis) where, in some way, the
world of sense participates within a world which exists if we should refer to the higher, transcendental
world of Forms (hence, in some way, as with Aristotle, ideas or forms participate or exist within
matter; the participation of one in the other points to a form of union or a communion which exists
between the two), the problem of status and relation remains in the articulation of his thought and so, in
voicing objections of one kind or another, some critics have argued that, in further determining or
expanding the world of Ideas or Forms (what exactly exists within this larger world of Ideas),
allegedly, to an excessive degree, it is said that Plato unnecessarily duplicates the world of our ordinary
experience. In shifting from the world of sense to a world which is constituted by an extraordinary
species of human experience that is given to us within our understanding, this other second world is
that which is given to us if our point of reference is a knowledge of objects or Forms that never shift or
change with respect to the determinations which respectively belong to them. By their very nature,
they are not subject to any kind of change. Never is their content receptive or open to the possibility of
revisions which would exist as changes and alterations, changing an idea in a way which precludes the
being or the emergence of a new idea.
With respect to this world of the forms, in terms of attributes or characteristics which refer to a
differentiated understanding that we can have about the being of this world, three points or three
characteristics can be distinguished and noted:
1. This world of the forms is hierarchically arranged and, in the language of the Republic,519 the Idea of
the Good is identified as the Form which exists at the top (in a manner which points to a link which
exists with the teachings of Plato’s ethical theory) although, in the language of the Symposium, it is the
Idea of the Beautiful which is identified to exist at the top as the primary principle of order for all else
with respect to the forms that follow520 although, on the other hand, in the Phaedrus, arguments are
given to the effect that beauty exists as “the first effect of the Good in the world.” 521 Apprehensions of
beauty in sense point toward the reality which exists as the Idea of the Good. In the tradition which
comes to us from the teaching of Plato's Republic: “the greatest thing to learn is the idea of the Good
and that even if...we should know all other things...it would avail us nothing without knowing the
Good.”522 As the sensible world and an awareness of it depend on the shining of the Sun as a selfemanating external cause, so too, the forms and our knowledge of them depend on a similar shining or
a similar communication of the Good in terms of how the Good exists as the “form of forms” or as the
“author of all things,” enjoying a form of existence which extends to all things: existing within all
forms through the goodness which exists within all forms and existing also within all particulars (which
exist within our world) through the goodness which exists within the being of particular things 523
519Plato, Republic 6, 505a 1-10; 509b 6, as cited by Pabst, Metaphysics, p. 2.
520Meynell, Redirecting Philosophy, p. 249.
521Pabst, Metaphysics, p. 56, citing Plato, Phaedrus, 250 C-D.
522Plato, Republic 6, 505a, as cited by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 38.
523Pabst, Metaphysics, p. 33 & n. 79, citing Plato, Euthydemus, 281 E; The Republic, 6, 508 B;
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(according to a manner which is best symbolized by the shining of the Sun and by means of a
knowledge of this Good which is best gained through the kind of knowing which exists in the
receptivity of contemplation and by the seeing which exists in contemplation). Hence, to the degree
that a knowledge of the Good enters into our human consciousness and so changes us in our selfunderstanding and in our manner of living, the Good exists within us as an productive, efficient cause.
In conjunction with this efficient causality, by also attracting all things to itself as an ultimate final
cause, the Good, in its government, grounds the whole of being or reality as its source of being and
principle of order, all knowledge of anything being ultimately knowledge of that which is the Good.
All things which exist seek the Good. All things seek the Good for its own sake: in Plato's words,
working “with an intuition of its reality” although they are “baffled and unable to apprehend its
nature.”524 Similarly too, to the degree that it can be said that the intelligibility of the Good enters into
the being of things through a form of participation that is enjoyed by the different being of things, by
this means too, the Good exists as a species of formal cause albeit, as an overarching formal cause. 525
The participation of all things in the Good is explained by a prior condition which is the
communication of the Good with respect to the being of all other things: all other forms and all
particular, existing things.526
In the kind of unity and relation that is imparted to all the Forms or Ideas which exist within the world
of unchanging Forms, possibly, we can speak about this wholeness in a way which would accordingly
think about it as a species of “immaterial organism or animal.” 527 If the Milesians were able to think
about the physical world as if it were a species of material organism, the use of this kind of analogy
suggests a similar analogy which can begin to think about the world of unchanging Forms as a species
of spiritual or intellectual animal that is endowed with a life of its own, Plato's Idea or Form of the
Good suggesting or pointing toward an understanding and a conception of God that can be found in the
articulation of his thought.
With respect to Plato's notion or conception of God, three possibilities have been
postulated with respect to Plato’s notion of God as we can find this in various texts and
passages: (1) in the Timaeus and the Laws, God exists as a soul, as a principle of action
and activity, and not as a form or Idea since God's agency needs to be postulated if we
are to account for the existence of change within the world of our ordinary experience;
(2) in the Republic, if the highest form or Idea among all the existing forms is the Idea
7, 516 B; Philebus, 64 E, 65 A 3-5, 66 A-B.
524Plato, Republic 6, 505e, as cited by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 39.
525Pabst, Metaphysics, p. 3; p. 12. Please note, at this point, that an understanding of final,
efficient, and formal causes is something that comes to us from Aristotle and with how he works with
final, efficient, formal, and material causes in order to explain how things exist within the world of our
ordinary human experience. Hence, if we are to understand these causes, we should attend to the kind
of thinking and understanding which comes to us from Aristotle through the kind of conceptuality that
he uses in order to speak about the meaning of these four kinds of causes. In attending to the kind of
meaning which exists in Plato's thought, the conceptuality of these causes (which comes to us from
Aristotle) is used as a heuristic or as a hermeneutic for understanding the significance and the import of
Plato's meaning perhaps be more fully grasped and understood.
526Pabst, Metaphysics, pp. 33-34.
527Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 73.
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of the Good and if this form or Idea is the source or the origin of all the forms which
exist and if all the other forms can be known through the degree that we know
something about the Idea of the God, then we can suppose or conclude that God is to be
identified with Plato's supreme Idea of the Good; and (3) in the Timaeus also, God exists
as a species of maker or creator: he is the Demiurge where, by beholding the order of
pre-existing, eternal forms, he models and fashions the kind of world which exists and
which we happen to live in.528
On the relation of the Ideas with each other and so the kind of life that would exist among the different
Forms, joining them all with each other, Plato offers little in terms of a clear explanation other than
suggesting, in various ways, that the Good exists as a “relational absolute”: it exists as the Form of
forms and, through the kind of primacy which it exercises through a causality which joins final
causality with efficient causality and formal causality, all other (subordinate) forms are ordered in
terms of how they relate to each other within the structure of a participative hierarchy. 529 Despite the
existence thus of an internal structure, how this structure is to be understood is, however, not too clear
to us nor was it possibly too clear to Plato although one negative or positive feature (depending on
one's point of view) can be possibly alluded to if, within the world of the Forms, we should suppose a
general absence of any movement that would sharply differ from the obvious kind of movement which
we find within the lower world of the senses that is directly known by us through our different acts of
human sensing. The kind of life which exists within the world of the Forms is distinguished by how all
the forms are uniquely joined and related to each other in a way which would have to point to an
assembly of the similarities and differences. Hence, within the world of the Forms, a dialectical kind of
being can be adverted to: one which is not lacking in having a dynamism of its own as in proposition
and truths which would say that “this is not that” and that “this suggests this and not that.”
2. Not only do all forms and notions belong to this transcendent ideal world but these forms also belong
to our human souls. Our souls participate in them for, though we each have our own minds, our minds
in our thinking and understanding can enjoy a oneness which exists among them because our individual
minds participate or they know about the same Form or Idea that is being known by us as individuals as
if we exist as one mind. Through the principle of a transcendent Form or Idea, forms and ideas unite
our minds with each other and, at the same time, they also unite the being of many distinct physical
objects with each other through the mediation of a form or idea that is being understood and known at a
given time, in a given context. However, Plato's doctrine of the soul is difficult to understand because
he is not that clear about what he means when he talks about the Soul and also about the souls of this
world.
3. Knowing the Ideas requires recollecting what the human soul had once beheld within the
transcendental world of the forms which differs from Aristotle's notion of abstraction which affirms or
supposes that Ideas exist within the concrete.
In conclusion, Plato’s world of forms consists of universal forms and of individual souls prior to their
falling into a body which exists as the prison of the soul (in Plato's language). According to Copleston,
Plato did not mean that his Ideas should be seen to exist in a space that is apart from the sensible world
and sensible things since incorporeal essences do not have to occupy a place in the usual sense of the
528Meynell, Redirecting Philosophy, p. 249.
529Pabst, Metaphysics, p. 2.
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term. Plato only wants to show that the Ideas, in their importance, possess a transcendental meaning:
things such as Beauty and Justice have an objective transcendental status, an objective reference, since,
as transcendental things, they will not perish or decay (Plato’s doctrine of the forms being a
philosophical answer to the social and political instability of the contemporary Athens of his day). For
Athens to reform itself, it needs a new metaphysics because of an intimate connection which exists
between metaphysics and political theory. In the Sophist, Plato argues against Protagoras and other
sophists who had taught that man was the measure of all things since Plato opposes all kinds of
relativism in knowledge because the reform of political life in Athens cannot occur if such relativity is
taught and held. Instead, a level of stability exists within the cosmos which, as known and taught,
makes for virtue: knowledge is virtue, civilization being something that can be taught and
communicated to other persons in a way which spreads civilization. Political knowledge can be
transmitted from one generation to another. Instead of teaching Athenians the arts of persuasion and
argument, one should develop an education with respect to in all that is stable (given the existence of
objective truth as this is headed by Goodness).
(2) The world of Mathematical Objects exists as an intermediary between the two worlds of Form and
sense which explains why mathematics must be studied in order really to educate someone for a
knowledge of the Ideal World. This betrays the influence of the Pythagoreans on the thought and
teaching of Plato. Since mathematical truths do not change, the doing of mathematics reveals the
being of an eternal world which is informed by a fullness of being that entirely differs from a species of
world or a species of being which is only partially realized at any given time and which can never exist
with a fullness which would point to the realization of all properties that a given thing could possibly
have.530 It can be said, for instance, that, as human beings, we engage in different tasks (do different
things) but, in doing different tasks, normally, we cannot all do them at the same time, simultaneously.
Our consciousness varies as we move from one preoccupation to another or one task to another and, at
the same time too, in the context of our lives and our self-reflection, we know too that we are not
always conscious. Sometimes we are awake and, at other times, we are awake. The variability that we
experience points to a certain lack of fullness which exists with respect to the kind of being that we
have. However, on the other hand, in a way which points to the existence of a different kind of being
(a different kind of reality), we notice that it is always true that, in adding the angles of a triangle, the
sum is always 360 degrees. All the properties of a triangle are given at once. Certain kinds of being
are not in any way lacking in being or reality and so, through the experience that we have of ourselves
engaged in mathematical reasoning and by apprehending the kind of world that comes to us through
our mathematical reasoning, we can discover and appreciate the powers of our human reason as this
reasoning exists in itself (with a degree of autonomy which belongs to it) and, at the same time, we can
advert to the limitations of our sense perception and the kind of activity which belongs to us in our acts
of human sensing.
(3) The world of the Senses refers to an imperfectly existing world that is unreal because it is
constantly changing (constantly in a condition of flux; hence hard to determine or “pin down,”
indeterminate). It exists in a way which presents shadows or pale images of reality to us since we
cannot pretend that such a thing truly is but only that it is constantly shifting and becoming, being
always other than being because existing within a condition of becoming. As existing (for want of a
better predicate), it exists more as non-being than as being. In one sense, as referring to a locus or
530Collingwood, Idea of Nature, pp. 74-75.
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place, it is the “source of change, multiplicity, and imperfection,” 531 although, on the other hand, for an
true understanding of change, instead of arguing that causes actively determine effects as these exist
passively within the world of our sensing experience (“prior causes lead to later effects”), 532 the priority
of Forms or Ideas and the participation of all lesser things within the being of these Forms or Ideas
explains why change within our sensible world can be explained through a species of attraction which
is exerted by the perfection or the goodness of transcendent Forms or Ideas. 533 These draw the lesser
being of things toward themselves in a way which enhances the being of these lesser things, adding to
the being of these lesser things, giving to these lesser beings an intelligibility or a reality that,
otherwise, they would not have had. The kind of openness which exists within the being of lesser
things accordingly points to a species of causality which exists in a species of understanding in Plato's
understanding of the world: transcendent, final causes point to a kind of orientation which can exist
within the being of things as, with respect to the perfection of a given thing's existence, this same
perfection or this same existence can receive additional attributes and qualities that can only add to the
perfection which a given thing already enjoys. As this is best demonstrated for us if we should refer to
the kind of existence which belongs to us as human beings: when, as human beings, we attend to the
being of moral qualities and attributes which exist as transcendent Forms or Ideas, we should be
changed (we can be changed) by them: by that which we have come to understand and know and so, on
the basis of this kind of change, we can begin to move from an initial kind of human existence toward a
higher form of human existence: a way of living which is more intelligent, wise, and good.
Knowledge of this realm of sensible things qua sensible things is not really possible for us because they
are sensible or, in other words, from the context of another point of view which can be seen to exist as
a complementary point of view: “all [that] there is to know about the physical or natural world is
known to us [only] by perception.”534 The givenness or the phenomena of the physical, natural world is
given to us directly, on its own terms, to the degree that it is perceptible to us (to the degree that it can
be perceived by us) and so it is directly knowable only by way of our various acts of human sensing.
Hence, in Plato's judgment, as this is expressed in some of his texts, that which is simply or merely
given to us through the acts of perception which exist in our acts of sensing is to be classified not as
knowledge, not as true knowledge, but as a species of apprehension which exists as opinion or as belief
(doxa in Plato's terminology).535 To the degree then that, in our sensible experience, everything is
constantly changing or shifting, to the same degree then, the direct knowledge that we have of these
shifts in our acts of sensing is to be correlated with ongoing occurring changes which must always exist
in the kind of apprehensions that we are having and which exists whenever we think about the role of
opinion or belief as this exists within human cognition and the special status which properly belongs to
that which exists as opinion or belief.
In conclusion thus, as we attend to the later dialogues of Plato, although these three different levels are
all distinct from each other, at the same time too, in some way, they are all related to each other
through the idea or the principle of participation which somehow points to how the sensible world
participates in the higher world of ideas.536 No absolute gulf exists. Forms exist in a transcendent way
531Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 44.
532Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 37.
533Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 37.
534Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 70.
535Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 69.
536Collingwood, Idea of Nature, pp. 70-72.
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if we should speak about their purity, or their absoluteness, or if we should speak about the absence of
any kind of defect. Forms perfectly exist if we can see them as products or as terms that belong to our
acts of understanding, proceeding from our acts of understanding. A form must exist in a given kind of
way and in no other kind of way if it is to exist with an absoluteness and a perfection which transcends
the being of material conditions. In this sense then, we can refer to Ideas or Forms in their ideality.
They exist as ideals. They exist as final causes or as objectives for us in our human actions and, in this,
they exist as norms or as standards by which we can judge the wisdom and the goodness of our human
actions, determining either their value or their lack of value, taking our knowledge of the highest causes
of things and then applying them to ourselves in order to determine how we are to govern ourselves and
also, possibly, the behavior of other human beings.537 Proximate or approximate forms that exist within
things as imperfect embodiments of form can be compared with forms which exist in a disembodied,
perfect way (hence, forms which exist in an absolute and perfect manner). The roundness of a circle is
not the roundness of a wheel despite the similarity or the suggestiveness of that which exists as the
roundness of a wheel.
For this reason thus, we can understand why, in Plato, in an approximate or in an imperfect sense,
forms also exist within matter. Forms exist within matter in a way which recalls the earlier teaching of
the Pythagoreans and in a way which also anticipates the later more explicit teaching of Aristotle and
others of his school who, in their own way, all hold that the transcendence of the forms was not to be
understood in a way which would take away from the reality of their immanence within concretely
existing things: i.e., their existence within material conditions and circumstances. To forms belongs a
transcendence (a stability) that is not affected by the givenness or the circumstances of material
conditions nor by any changes which can occur among varying sets of material conditions (despite the
immanence of forms to the degree that they are found to exist within changing material conditions and
as, by our acts of abstractive understanding, we determine or we understand these forms by detaching
material conditions from the being of the relevant forms which, to some extent, exist within these same
conditions). In the teaching that we have from Plato about the reality of participation, no teaching is
given which can explain or talk about how this participation exists (how precisely it occurs) or how it
can be known or articulated in a way which knows about distinctions and a larger number of
distinctions than that which had been known through the kind of analysis which Plato uses and which
he had expressed in various places within the corpus of his surviving writings.
Plato's political philosophy
Plato’s The Republic, allegedly his most important dialogue, deals with the essential relation which
exists between public and private ethics, Justice being the regulating principle of ethics and politics that
one must desire for its own sake. Given that for Plato, the state is the individual writ large, the finality
or the purpose of the state resides in the perfection of its individual citizens and visa versa. Good
politics is necessary for ethics while the good state cannot function without good citizens. In its first
pages, Plato introduces the myth of the ring of Gygnes to ask how we would stand with Justice in the
face of temptation: as a metaphor, this "ring" is used to illustrate the objective value of Justice which
537John P. O'Callaghan, “Videtur quod non sit necessarium, praeter theologicam disciplinam,
aliam doctrinam haberi: Legitimacy of Philosophy as an Autonomous Discipline and Its Service to
Theology in Aquinas and Ralph McInerny,” Theology Needs Philosophy: Acting Against Reason is
Contrary to the Nature of God, ed. Matthew L. Lamb (Washington, DC: Catholic University of
America Press, 2016), p. 21, citing Plato, The Republic, Books 6 and 7.
111
does not depend on whether or not a human subject is invisible. In answering this question, the
Republic, in its approach to morality, looks for a metaphysics of stability.
Summarizing the 9 books of the Republic: Book 1 opens by asking what Justice is where, since no one
seems to know what it is, everything is thus bad in Athens. Book 2 searches for the real nature of
Justice: despite all temptations and fears of punishment, should we stick to an abstract principle of
Justice? In arguing for the absolute good of Justice, Plato claims that a connection exists between the
ethical problem of happiness and the problem of following the unchangeable Idea of what is Justice.
As Socrates had done, Plato argues that happiness results from following the objective truth and not
from meeting pragmatic needs. In describing Justice, using Greek medical science as a model, Plato
draws a parallelism between the tripartite structure of the ideal state and man’s tripartite physical and
psychic nature, public and private morality being closely connected.
Body
Soul
Virtue
State
head
reason=intellectual life
wisdom
rulers=philosophers
chest
will=higher, spirited
emotions that are the
source of actions
courage
auxiliaries=soldiers
abdomen
appetite=lower, animal
desires
temperance
laborers, artisans (who
can use money, own
property, and wear
decorations in
moderation)
Man is ethical or virtuous when the lower desires are subordinated to the higher emotions and when the
emotions are subordinated to the mind or nous, man’s physical structure being made up of the
corresponding levels or organs of stomach, heart, and head. Such a view indicates that Plato belongs to
the intellectualist tradition in philosophy as this was chiefly founded by Socrates who believed that one
would be good by knowing the good although Plato was not as one-sided or as simplistic as Socrates
given his belief in the subordination of one part to another.
Books 2 to 5a examines the structure of the ideal state (the first utopia) without referring to who should
rule the state. For Plato, like the old Hindu caste system and its division into priest, warrior, and
laborer castes, the ideal state similarly consists of the same 3 classes that are to be correlated with
man’s appetites, courage, and reason: the lower class of artisans (the masses or hoi polloi) who work to
provide the material necessities of life; the Guardians (or soldiers) who defend the city and provide for
its order; and the rulers or elite guardians who must be philosophers: people with knowledge who
possess a sound mind. The soldiers and rulers who understand the corrupting effects of greed will live
an austere way of life, embracing a form of absolute communism: sleeping and eating together; owning
no property; receiving no salary; and having sexual relations on a pre-arranged schedule with partners
who are shared by all.538 Beyond musicians and singers, most artists will be excluded from the ideal
state for 4 reasons:539 (1) ontological: since art deals with images (the lowest rung in the "Simile of the
Line"), art is an imitation of an imitation of an imitation: it is "thrice removed from the throne"; (2)
538Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 71.
539Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 71-72.
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epistemological: the artist is at the conjectural stage (he knows nothing but claims to know something);
(3) aesthetical: art expresses itself in sensual images (it distracts us from Beauty itself which is purely
spiritual); and (4) moral: art is created by and appeals to the appetitive side of the soul (it is either erotic
or violent, or it is both: hence, it incites us to anarchy; even Homer must be censored). Philosophy
must take over the role that was previously played by art. If there is order and a harmony of the parts
of the soul with the parts of the city with everything in its place, Justice will prevail since Justice exists
as harmony, Justice being the sovereign moral value that cares for harmony (which sense still exists
within our modern notion of justice with its emphasis on everything having its proper place in society).
In the end, public and private morality both depend on one and the same wisdom. However, in an nonideal world, the better type of political order combines monarchy with democracy in a rule of One and
the Many.
Books 5a to 7 discuss the education of the ruler. Key is the claim that who should rule is he who
knows, sees, and contemplates: he should rule who is the political aristocrat, the philosopher-king. The
philosopher has a duty to society: he must study and train himself by studying the other sciences like
mathematics in order to be convinced of the objective character of moral values; when people live by
the scheme of objective values, the state will be organized where what had happened to Socrates will
not happen again to someone else. While Plato presented the doctrine of the Philosopher-King as an
anecdote, he later came to hold it less rigorously given how bad things in Athens had become.
That a philosopher is laughed at shows how the philosopher is always an object of mockery (perhaps
reflecting Plato’s difficult experience in Sicily). However, at the same time too, it illustrates Plato’s
doctrine of the Philosopher-King. When the man who has seen the light is killed by his fellow
prisoners, Plato clearly alludes to the death of Socrates. The dialectic of neoplatonism will differ on
this point of a return since it lacks the descending 3rd step, Plato’s 3rd step being essential for his
political ethics because one must return to the City to bring the Forms to it in order to help the city’s
citizens. We recall or simply indicate here that Plato came to philosophy through politics since, within
politics, a firm link joins public and private morality because the goal of a sound political system is the
virtue of its individual citizens while the virtue of the citizens is to make a good state: man can only
live a good life within a good community since a well organized state inspires citizens to live a good
life. Hence, a loose connection exists between the two states given a cohesion between Plato’s
metaphysical system and his ethical system: from knowing and living an ethical life, good ethics in
turns founds good political life (and its possible reform and renewal). With Plato, one needs to know
his metaphysics in order to grasp his ethics while, with Kant, one needs to know his ethics before
knowing his metaphysical system (cf. Kant’s The Metaphysics of Morality).
Book 8 onwards returns to the actual situation of the need for philosopher-kings. Where book 8 deals
with mob psychology, he goes on to discuss the problem of Justice in relation to happiness and, at the
end, he discusses the fate of the soul in the afterlife and so affirms the soul’s immortality.
Plato and Natural Law
In the surviving texts that we have from Plato, a teaching about the being and nature of natural law is
not explicitly given although, in two texts, for the first time, Plato's Greek refers to “natural law” in
words which work with the designation of it which exists as nomos tēs phuseōs.540 In the Gorgias,
540Plato, Gorgias 483e, as cited by V. Bradley Lewis, “Platonic Philosophy and Natural Law,”
113
Callicles, a Sophist philosopher, refers to “natural law”: he speaks about men who only pursue their
own desires and self-interest where Plato has Callicles say that, in doing so, such men “follow nature –
the nature of right – in acting thus; yes, on my soul, and follow the law of nature.”541
However, in Plato's rendering of these words, a particle is introduced in a way which points to the
newness and the strangeness of this expression: a new concept which exists for us as a complex
concept because, for the first time, it combines the formerly disparate, simple concepts of nomos and
physis. Hence, how or why it should be regarded as a paradox that Plato has constructed. 542 Two
contraries are brought together into a new union of the two which points to a species of contradictory
meaning which suggests that, perhaps also within the human order of things, in conjunction or beyond
the regularities which exist within the order of physical nature, there could also exist regularities within
the human order of things.543 Physical and human regularities both exist in a way which can be known
by us if we should engage in inquiries that are best suited to their proper discovery. In the context of
the discussion at hand within the Gorgias, Gorgias, who is also a Sophist philosopher, is distinguishing
between events which occur “by the decrees of necessity” and other events which occur either “by the
plans of chance” or “by the plans of the gods.” 544 If the gods were seen to intervene in human affairs in
an essentially arbitrary, happenstance fashion, then the plans of chance and the plans of the gods would
not differ from each other. In the contrast which accordingly exists between necessity and chance,
necessity is to be associated with the workings of nature in a manner which should point to how, in
some way, recurrent normative patterns exist within a world which is not subject to our human control
(the greater, naturally existing world of external nature) but, as we have been noting, we cannot live
wisely and well as human beings if we ignore how these patterns serve as a basis of directives or
precepts for how we can live in a better proper way: indicating in some way what would be good for us
to do or avoid and what would also be not good for us to do or avoid.
More specifically, in the particular context of the Gorgias, in a manner which recalls or which points to
the similar teaching and beliefs of Thucydides as this comes to us in the context of another dialogue
(from the text of Plato's Republic), in a technical manner, through the mouth of Callicles, as we have
already noticed to some extent in the language which is used by Callicles, Plato speaks about “natural
law” in a way which joins it to an alleged right which we have as willing human beings: a right which
exists as the “right of the stronger,” a right which says that “might is right.” It would seem thus, given
how this thesis is presented, that the legitimacy of this right is grounded in the meaning and the being
of a “natural law” (a necessity which exists within nature itself since, within the being of the physical
world which surrounds us, it would seem to be the case that stronger creatures always prevail over
weaker creatures: “mice are eaten by hawks”). Appositely: the appeal that is made to nature
“demonstrates that 'it is right that the better man should prevail over the worse and the stronger over
the weaker',”545 although, in the context of other dialogues and on the basis of his own point of view, in
http://www.nlnrac.org/classical/plato (accessed October 4, 2016), p. 1, n. 4. Other sources also refer to
the Timaeus 83e although, in the context of the Timaeus, nomos tēs phuseōs refers to the normal and
the natural functioning of the human body. Cf. Koester, ”Concept of Natural Law,” Religions in
Antiquity, p. 523; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law#Plato (accessed October 4, 2016).
541Plato, Gorgias 482c-483e, as cited by Burns, Aristotle and Natural Law, p. 146.
542Koester, ”Concept of Natural Law,” Religions in Antiquity, p. 523.
543Burns, Aristotle and Natural Law, p. 141.
544Plato, Gorgias 483e, as cited by Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 20.
545Burns, Aristotle and Natural Law, p. 147, citing Plato, Gorgias 483b-e.
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the Protagoras, for instance, Plato derives this right of the stronger not from the purported existence of
any necessities which exist within the natural world of existing things but from the import and the
legislation of some of our conventional human laws since, in his judgment, this type of right cannot be
derived from the kind of being which is to be properly found within the order of external nature (from
anything which exists in a manner which is allegedly “according to nature” as something which is
beyond or which is outside of the reach of our human control).546
According to the kind of understanding which we can find in Plato and according to the kind of
language which we can use to speak about this understanding, it is to be admitted about biological
urges and imperatives that they exert an influence on us in the conduct of our human affairs. No one
can deny this. Plato does not deny this. However, this influence is quite other, it differs from the kind
of imperative and the influence that is cast for us by our acts of understanding and judgment when our
apprehensions are directed toward an awareness of realities which exist as manifestations of truth,
goodness, justice, and beauty. Apprehensions of beauty, in having a sensible base, by appealing to our
acts of sense perception, can suggest or they can point us toward apprehensions of truth, goodness, and
justice which exist at a higher level. While some natural laws exist as laws which resemble the kind of
law which exists with respect to the being of material or mechanical processes, other natural laws also
exist (they can be found) if, with Plato, we should attend to the being of immaterial realities and to the
order of constitution which belongs to these realities. To attend to a critical understanding and a
knowledge of our human behavior and how we are to live and understand as human beings, another
kind of inquiry is needed if we are to know about the being of precepts, norms, and laws that are also
natural since, as natural, we cannot change them in a manner that would be essentially arbitrary (as we
would want them to be). We cannot change them in a manner would would suit the orientation and
objectives of each of us in the pursuit of our personal desires and interests although, admittedly, in his
language, in the use of his words, Plato does not explicitly refer to “natural laws” or “laws of nature”
which refer to the being of immaterial realities. It is only by a kind of inference thus that we can
suppose that this type of language is possibly applicable and suited to the kind of meaning that Plato is
attempting to understand and express in the larger context of his analysis.
In parenthesis, apart from questions that have to do with the being of human moral issues, in the
Timaeus, “natural law” exists within a context of meaning which only refers to the difference between
health and disease. Disease or lack of health is said to be “contrary to the laws of nature.” 547 In Plato's
reference to “natural law” or the “way of nature,” a contradiction is alluded to since good health, as the
absence of disease, is given to us (it would be given to us) if nothing disrupts the proper functioning of
our bodily processes.548 What should be in terms of the laws of nature, in fact, already is in the context
of present good health which is spoken about and defined in terms which refer to the proper
functioning of our bodily processes.
As regards the meaning of natural as this applies to Plato's understanding of human affairs, elsewhere,
in other texts, according to the more traditional form of usage which Plato has inherited from others in
the context of his philosophical reflection, as we have been noting, Plato refers to things that are simply
“natural” (phusei) or to things that are simply “according to nature” (kata phusin), these references
accordingly suggesting to us that Plato was not unfamiliar with the earlier Sophist notion of the relation
546Plato, Gorgias 483e, as cited by Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 20.
547Plato, Timaeus, 83e, as cited by Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 20.
548Plato, Timaeus, 83e.
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which exists between nature and convention. Certain things exist by nature. Other things exist by
convention. According to the kind of choice which exists within the conventional human order of
things, things do not have to be in the way they happen to be (according to the way that they have been
made as us as willing human agents). In the kind of criticism that is given by Plato through the
mediation of his Socratic dialogues, the enacted laws of city states should not be seen to be necessarily
just or, in some sense, as ultimately final.549 They can be disregarded to the degree that they are lacking
in the reasonableness and the rationality which should belong to them and so, by means of this
distinction, by a kind of application, to the degree that our human behavior is at times irrational and so
“contrary to nature” and at other times rational and so “according to nature,” similarly, in the same
way, our conventional man-made laws can be distinguished from laws which can be said to exist at a
higher level, existing by nature, because they are grounded in the being of truths or realities that no one
can ever truly doubt or question. On the basis of an understanding and a knowledge of metaphysics,
we can say that that which is essentially just and good and temperate is something which exists by
nature (the just as just, the good as good, the temperate as temperate). 550 So substantive are the being
of these realities is that, as a consequence, they are bereft of the relativity which is always to be
associated with the possibility of caprice which can exist in our human willing and judgment (the
caprice which can exist in human choice as human choice, given the nature of choice as choice when,
in any given situation, option A can be chosen instead of option B even if no reason exists for why A
should be selected instead of B).
Statutory laws, positive laws, or customary laws exist at a lower level and so, in agreement with
Sophist objections and concerns, conventional laws can be subjected to criticism in a way that could
lead to either their revision or, more radically, to their rejection and replacement. As Plato observes,
for instance, in the Laws: “laws which are not established for the good of the whole state are bogus
laws.”551 They can be altered and put aside on the basis of higher principles which are grounded in the
being of transcendently existing reasons which exist with a reality which refers to the being of
transcendental ideas or the being of transcendental forms. As noted earlier, Plato speaks about ideas;
Aristotle, forms. Laws are only truly laws if they can participate or belong to the nature, the Form, or
the Idea of law as law: law as it exists as law or law as transcendent law, law in terms of what it is
supposed to be and how it is supposed to exist as a truly binding norm.
Hence, instead of a sharp distinction which would continue to exist between the being of “nature” and
the being of “law,” in the context of Plato's dialectical analysis, “nature” and “law” can be brought
together in a way which points to a form of interaction. They can be thought together as two principles
of order, both serving to effect or to create a new, improved human order of things. If the nature of law
and the nature of justice are both adequately understood (their meanings point to each other), if their
ideality and reality is both grasped and understood (the reality comes from the ideality), then law,
justice, and nature would exist together or we could say that they all exist together. In the subsequent
making of any laws in our human societies, all the enacted laws should reflect the abiding nature of that
which exists essentially as the meaning and being of law and justice. From the meaning and essence of
law, from the meaning and essence of justice (natural justice as opposed conventional justice points to
the being of natural law and not conventional law), from all this, we would have the being or the
existence of laws which would truly exist as just or righteous laws (hence, apart from any alterations or
549Beauchamp, Philosophical Ethics, pp. 206-207.
550Plato, Republic, 501b, as cited by Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 5.
551Plato, Laws, 4, 715.
116
changes that, at will, we could possibly want to introduce and to effect). These laws would exist for the
sake of the common good of all persons who would happen to live within a particular society. 552
Through the order which they would introduce, they would reflect an order of things which cannot
change or pass away (the being of truth and the goodness of virtue within the order of right living) and,
at the same time too, they would make for the good kind of government and administration which
should exist for the life and the well being (the flourishing) of our various public institutions. Within
the ups and downs which exist within the human order of things, recurrent patterns of behavior can be
discovered in a way which should point to the being of realities that would transcend the matter and the
business of our current human practice and so, from a knowledge of these realities, new recurrent
patterns of behavior could be possibly known: patterns of activity which we could bring into the being
of our personal and social operations in a way which would change the functioning of a given political
order, creating an order which had not existed before, or changing a political order in a way which
would add to its intelligibility, its goodness and its fruitfulness. The absence of convention points to
the being of transcendent dimensions and, as a consequence, from this, an understanding of law and
justice which would point to its cosmic aspects: a notion of natural law that is not subject to any kind of
human change that we would want to make (it is natural and not artificial) and yet, at the same time, a
notion of natural law which is germane to the human order of things, properly belonging to the human
order of things. It applies to how we are to live within the human order of things without being
something which exists as a function of this same order. If, by one kind of inquiry, we can know about
the existence of natural laws that are physical, chemical, or biological, by another kind of inquiry, we
can know about the existence of natural laws that are appropriately social and human.
To indicate the identity of these higher principles (some of these higher principles) by referring to
points and details that can be derived from the general contours of Plato's philosophy (for purposes of
information and illustration), the Idea or the Form of the Good is to be regarded, it exists as the highest
principle within the order of existing things that comprises the whole of the universe. In Plato's words,
it exists as "the brightest thing that is."553 It is the cause of all things within the world and, when it is
seen and known by us, to the degree that it can be seen and known by us, it will lead us to act more
wisely in the conduct of their lives and in any decisions that would determine the laws of our respective
political states.554 In Plato's Republic, simply put thus, in words that Plato uses: an ideal state is
described in terms which speak about “a whole city [that is] established according to nature." 555 The
nature refers to that which is entirely reasonable and rational with respect to the being of the first
principles of a rational political philosophy where, in fact, within any given human context, whether
within a political philosophy or outside of it, if something is to truly and fully exist in the manner
which should belong to it, it must exist in a manner which is determined by the being of rational
considerations which always exist in an objectively unchanging, eternal way. These are removed or
they are detached (they are excluded) from the being of any kind of arbitrary human change that could
possibly come from persons who are devoid of the kind of understanding and insight which is needed
by us if we are to move, firstly, toward a theoretical or a metaphysical understanding of Natures,
Forms, or Ideas which exist in their own right as substantive realities and then, from there, secondly,
move toward an understanding which belongs to the practice of our human ethics and all the decisions
which are needed by way of implementation if we are to move from the order of knowing which exists
552Rommen, Natural Law, p. 13.
553Plato, Republic, 518c-d.
554Plato, Republic, 517b-d; 540a.
555Plato, Republic, 428e.
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in our acts of cognition toward the order of doing and execution which would occur in the wake of our
prior acts of understanding and cognition. In Plato, right knowledge always leads us toward the kind of
performance which exists in right actions.
in conclusion
A number of points can be made with respect to a number of consequences (or allegedly the “fallout”)
that has resulted and which has emerged for us within the subsequent history of reflection and thought
within the kind of work which belongs to philosophy: within (1) the philosophy of ethics, (2) the
philosophy of science, and (3) the philosophy of religion, not excluding however how (4) Plato's notion
of beauty or how his notion of the Beautiful has had a fructifying influence as a possible, initial point of
entry (serving, in other words, as a point of departure) for anyone who could be begin to have an
interest in the value of asking philosophical questions: pursuing personal studies and reflections that
could lead into higher reflections as these exist within philosophy and the kind of manifestation which
exists within culture. By way of an abbreviated discussion which points to the possible truth of a
judgment which comes to us originally from A. N. Whitehead and which says that the subsequent
history of thought in western philosophy is to be regarded as a footnote that has been appended to the
texts of Plato's philosophy,556 evidencing the kind of causality or the kind of stimulus that has always
belonged to the accumulation of insights and oversights that we find in Plato's thought:
First, with respect to ethical questions and how we should live a truly good life, since Plato’s
aspirations and philosophy is entirely directed toward a knowledge of stable, fundamental, and final
realities (from a knowledge of metaphysical realities, one best moves toward a knowledge of moral
realities), his philosophy has been described as a study of how we are to die well: how we are, in fact,
to cross over from the being of one world to the being of another world within the context of our
present life prior to any kind of physical death which would inevitably come to us as human beings at
the conclusion of our life on earth.557 In referring to Socrates and by means of the person and figure of
Socrates, Plato’s philosophy has sought to teach us how we are to undergo a species of radical change
within ourselves (a change which exists as a moral and as an intellectual species of conversion that can
be given to us within the context of our current life) since, if we are philosophical, if we are truly
philosophical in how we think and live, then, even if and as we die within ourselves by way of a change
of self which occurs in how we exist and think as human beings, through this type of death, we will
achieve a true kind of morality as, gradually and increasingly, our souls are joined and assimilated to
the being a greater, primary world from which we have all originally emerged and come from. As our
human souls remember this primary world through an interior process of recollection, we will be
moved and stirred by an inner yearning and seeking that soon wells up from within ourselves: a
desiring and appetite that wants to return to the world of our origins through an eros which can be
identified as a species of love. Death then, when it comes, comes and exists as a liberation as, now, we
are separated and disjoined from our mortal bodies in a manner which is akin to the birth of philosophy
within our souls (within our rational life) as this occurs and as it is achieved through any kind of
growth in knowledge that can come to us whenever we engage and enter into a form of self-liberation
which properly belongs to us as human beings through the kind of philosophical activity which belongs
to us: as we exercise the powers of our rational human souls in a manner that tends toward the
556Koestler, Sleepwalkers, p. 55.
557Stratford Caldecott, Not As the World Gives The Way of Creative Justice (Kettering, OH:
Angelico Press, 2014), p. 30; Beauty for Truth's Sake, p. 21.
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actuation of our human reason as this is given to us by way of a reminiscence which remembers truths
and realities that had been previously known, truths or realities that we have long since forgotten but
which can now be brought back and put into a form of conscious awareness (an awareness which has
now become explicit). As a general maxim thus: to know any kind of truth is always to liberate
ourselves as we discover the reality of our human spirit and the kind of transcendence which properly
belongs to our spirit. Despite the difficulties, we can more easily understand and work with the
transcendence of our human spirit than with that which exists and which is given to us as an outer,
external world which exists in a shadowy kind of way because, in its being, it is something which is
none too reliable, steady, or constant.
Second, with respect to the kind of knowledge which properly belongs to the nature of scientific
activity as a distinct species or form of cognition, in Plato's philosophy of science, a number of points
presage or we can say that they suggest an understanding of science that belongs to the extent of our
current understanding. Three points stand out. (1) First, if we are to move toward any kind of
scientific understanding, we must prescind or we must move away from the kind of knowledge that
belongs to our acts of human sensing. A real distinction exists between the direct objects of our human
experience and the direct objects of our understanding and, if we are to understand the objects of our
human sensing, we must move into a species of cogitation activity that moves to another set of objects
and properties. (2) Second, an apprehension of the being of intellectual objects and properties is
greatly helped if, by means of mathematics and through the use of mathematics, these objects or
properties are given a form of denotation that is grounded in the use of mathematical symbols.
Numbers express quantities and, as the same time too, they can indicate where proportions exist as
differing variables are related to each other in ways which point to the being of a greater scheme of
things that can be known and mapped out more easily if mathematics is used as a species of scientific
tool. So much of this goes with so much of that. Between, say, x and y, a relation exists which
corresponds or which resembles a second relation which exists, say, between m and n. Mathematical
equations introduce an order of things into the world of our ordinary experience in a manner that
cannot be rendered if we continue to rely on a kind of knowing that is more closely linked to our acts
and data of sense than the kind of knowing that also belongs to us in our human reasoning and the kind
of distancing that can effected if, through our acts of inquiry, we move from the acts and data of sense
toward the acts and data of our understanding. The abstractness of mathematics introduces a greater
degree of abstractness into the conduct of our scientific inquiry than would be the case if we should
think about the possible objects of our understanding in ways that would want to limit the kind or form
of denotation to a symbolism that is more closely related to the language of our ordinary speech than to
the technical kind of language and denotation which belongs to the kinds of procedure which exist
within mathematics. (3) Third, in its truthfulness, the kind of understanding which exists in science is
best described as probable and not as certain. In Plato's language, in the Timaeus, we refer to how a
given understanding of things would exist as a “likely story.” 558 As a consequence of probability and
because of judgments which are grounded in the sense and rationality of probability, a provisional
understanding of things, as this exists within science, is not to be confused with the kind of provision or
the kind of contingency which exists whenever opinions or beliefs are espoused in a manner that is
divorced from the presence of any kind of evidence. Truths which are known through apprehensions of
evidence exist more surely or with a greater degree of stability and credibility than any claims or
assertions that are made in a manner that is bereft of any kind of evidence or proof.
558Meynell, Redirecting Philosophy, p. 248, citing Plato, the Timaeus.
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Third, with respect to how Plato exists as a philosopher of religion, since philosophy in the Platonic
tradition requires a conversion of the whole human self that is not limited to only our acts of thinking
and reasoning, Plato should not be viewed as, strictly speaking, a rationalist but as something or as
someone who was more than that: existing as a spiritual or as a spiritualist type of thinker. Since
Plato’s philosophy involves more than having a rational grasp of reality (where this reality is
understood to refer to the being of an externally existing world), his thought requires elements of
estrangement from the world of our ordinary experience and so, in the kind of distancing which is
needed in our thinking and reasoning, our present life is turned or it becomes a kind of preparation or a
function of some kind of higher form of existence, an aspect that was later noticed and picked up by
early Christian theologians who tried to incorporate Plato’s philosophy and thought into the newly
emerging being of a Christian Catholic theology. Persons like St. Augustine (and others) turned to both
Plato and Plotinus in the declining days of the Roman Empire in order to escape or to look toward other
sources of meaning in ways that could enhance the possibility of our human salvation and, in a related
way, also increase or add to the extent of our human understanding. Hence, within this context, a
struggle soon ensued between a Jewish conception of man and a Platonic conception of man. How to
combine the two together? Where Plato believed that our current human life was not as it seemed to
appear and look and that, as messengers and helpers, we must go back down into the cave of mortal
human existence in order to convince and help our fellow human beings, in the Platonic philosophy of
Plotinus, instead of reaching out to our fellow man, we must seek to be free of the material order of
things where these impinge or influence us in how we live and think. Where in Plato, a basis exists for
having legitimate political desires and interests, in Plotinus a break or a total severance from the
contemporary order of things which exists within our world is to be encouraged and esteemed. In a
more radical kind of way, one would try to live apart from other human beings, separately from the
being of other persons. Better to live the life of a hermit.
Fourth and lastly, in Plato's notion of the Beautiful or in his notion of beauty, a foundation is given or,
better still, a foundation is laid for subsequent reflections that would try to distinguish that which is
beautiful or the Beautiful as a reality that exists on par (comparably) with the Good and the True, that
which is good and that which is true. If Truth exists as a transcendental (it cuts across the being of all
cultural differences) and if Good also exists as a transcendental (it also transcends the being of all
cultural differences), cannot the same thing be said about the being or notion of Beauty and any
instances or manifestations of beauty? If truth and goodness inform each other (each is the other), why
not beauty? Is not the good, beautiful and is not truth, beautiful also? In fact, with further reflection, if
truth is grasped by understanding minds as an intelligible understood entity (it is not informed by the
presence of any material determinations), and if good is understood as a practicable deed or action that
is to be brought into a concrete form of existence within the being of spatial and temporal conditions,
then, given the kind of cognition which belongs to us as human beings, our acts of sense constantly
interacting with our acts of understanding, can experiences of beauty serve as the best point of entry for
us if we are to move toward other apprehensions which know about the being of truths and yet other
apprehensions which know about the goodness of different things? In other words, apprehensions of
beauty exist in a manner which is closer or more adjacent to us in the kind of knowing which exists for
us in our various acts of human sensing. In our human lives, we sense before we understand. Our acts
of human sensing exist before we begin to move toward our later acts of understanding. One type of
act precedes the other and, so, this difference accordingly points to a kind of priority which can be
ascribed if, with Plato in his Symposium, we should refer to the Idea or the Form of Beauty as the chief
of all the forms, governing all else in the hierarchy of different forms and ideas. Pedagogically or
cognitionally, we understand the kind of supremacy which should be ascribed to the role and the
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function of Beauty although, from a point of view which attends to the primacy of a metaphysical
perspective, we can understand why Truth can be regarded as the chief of all forms since from the
primacy of understanding and through our apprehensions of differing truths, we can then move toward
apprehensions which can know about realizations of being that are possible but which can only be
brought into being through externalizing actions which move from the kind of order and acts which
belong to our human cognition toward another order that is constituted by the doing of actions that are
other than those which belong to the performance or the actuality of our human cognition. While Plato
does not speak (in so many words) about the primacy of the Idea or Form of Truth (he speaks about the
primacy of the Beautiful and, elsewhere, about the primacy of the Good), we can wonder and perhaps
suppose, reading his texts and then arguing that, in the meaning of Plato's thought, the primacy of Truth
within the order of Ideas is to be regarded as a forgone conclusion. Absent the primacy and, from this,
absent the being of any kind of goodness. In a tradition of thought that comes to us from Socrates and
which dominated the subsequent history of western philosophy until into the life and times of St.
Thomas Aquinas in 13th Century: from our knowing, comes our willing, our doing. Our acts of willing
and doing are ruled by our acts of understanding and knowing. We do what we know.
Aristotle
In Aristotle, there are not two sets of objects but two approaches to one set. Theory is
concerned with what is prior in itself but posterior for us; but everyday human
knowledge is concerned with what is prior for us though posterior in itself. But, though
Aristotle by beguilingly simple analogies could set up a properly systematic
metaphysics, his contrast was not between theory and common sense as we understand
these terms but between episteme and doxa, between sophia and phronesis, between
necessity and contingence...in Aristotle the sciences are conceived not as autonomous
but as prolongations of philosophy and as further determinations of the basic concepts
philosophy provides. So it is that, while Aristotelian psychology is not without profound
insight into human sensibility and intelligence, still its basic concepts are derived not
from intentional consciousness but from metaphysics. Thus “soul” does not mean
“subject” but “the first act of an organic body” whether of a plant, an animal, or a man. 44
Similarly, the notion of “object” is not derived from a consideration of intentional acts;
on the contrary, just as potencies are to be conceived by considering their acts, so acts
are to be conceived by considering their objects, i.e. their efficient or final causes. 4 5 As
in psychology, so too in physics, the basic concepts are metaphysical. As an agent is
principle of movement in the mover, so a nature is principle of movement in the moved.
But agent is agent because it is in act. The nature is matter or form and rather form than
matter. Matter is pure potency. Movement is incomplete act, the act of what is in
potency still.559
Aristotle (384-322 BC), Plato’s most prominent pupil, was born at Stageira in Thrace on the very edge
of the Greek world although he was of pure Greek blood. His native city was under the influence of
the rising power of Macedonia, formerly part of the former Yugoslavia. His father was court physician
to the King of Macedonia, which indicates that his family belonged to the Greek tradition of medicine
and that he came from a tradition of scientific interest...with his "feet on the earth and not his head in
the air," so to speak, thus underlining a major difference in attitude between Aristotle and Plato. From
559Lonergan, Method in Theology, pp. 95-96.
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an early interest in medical science, Aristotle became interested in biology which explains his emphasis
on the importance of the individual man (which, in turn, further emphasizes the difference between
Plato and Aristotle since, for Plato, the first science was mathematics) although, for Aristotle, if we
should want to find any absolute notions, we can get these by abstracting them from the concreteness of
the world within which we live. For example, since, for Aristotle, “horseness” does not exist
somewhere amid individually existing concrete things, we should study all the horses of our experience
and their characteristics and then, from these characteristics, move toward “horseness” as a form that
can be converted into a communicable concept, a communicable definition. Where Aristotle gets the
abstract from the concrete, Plato gets the concrete from the abstract.
Aristotle never met Socrates but, on being sent by his father to Plato’s Academy when he, Aristotle,
was 17 and Plato was 61, he stayed on at the Academy and studied there for 20 years although he left
the Academy soon after Plato’s death in 348 because of disagreements with its new chiefs. In
Aristotle's own words: "Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth." 560 In the beginning, however,
much of his thought was still influenced by Plato. With Xenocrates, he left Athens to live for a few
years with Hermias, an aristocrat from Asia Minor, who perhaps was the closest model or example of a
philosopher-king that was ever produced by Plato’s Academy. For 2-3 years in Lesbos, he spent his
time studying biology, especially marine biology: "We must not feel a childish disgust at the
investigation of the meaner animals for there is something marvelous in all natural things." 561 His
detailed studies referred to over 500 different species in labors that attempted to classify the being of all
life forms. Then, he returned to his native city for a while but later he returned to Athens where, in
335, he founded an academy of his own, known as the Lyceum where Plato’s philosophy was both
taught and criticized. This school had more of a scientific character and apparatus than had Plato’s: it
had a good library that was arranged in a manner which resembled that kind of library that we would
find within a natural history museum. When teaching, Aristotle would walk and talk and so, from this
habit, the Lyceum students became known as peripatetics. Later, for three years, beginning in 343, he
resided at the Macedonian court, serving as the tutor of the young Alexander the Great although his
efforts were not too successful since it was said that Alexander disliked philosophy. As a consequence
of anti-Macedonian feeling that was aroused in Athens by the orator, Demosthenes (who feared that
Macedonia would conquer Greece), on the death of Alexander the Great in 323, Aristotle was forced to
flee the city after a charge of impiety was brought against him. He gave the direction of his school to
Theophrastus and then withdrew to Chalcis in northern Greece in order to escape death and "to save the
Athenians from sinning twice against philosophy." Dying the following year, in his will, he showed
concern for his family and also for his slaves since many of his slaves received their freedom while all
were secured from being sold.
Aristotle’s surviving writings differ from Plato’s since, with the exception of a few fragments that he
had composed in the form of dialogues for the benefit of the general public (for popular consumption),
all current texts are derived from student notes which have made it difficult for us to read and interpret
Aristotle accurately. At the same time too, with respect to their writing style, these surviving texts are
characterized by a dryness and a precision which differs from the more lively style that is found in
Plato's dialogues. Lack of coherence in these student notes makes it difficult for us to understand
clearly what exactly Aristotle was saying and what he could have meant and so it is argued that this
lack of coherence is a factor which helps to explain why his work continues to excite further study and
560Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 16.
561Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 16.
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comment and an ongoing genesis of new possible interpretations. While classical sources refer to 170
titles, only 47 texts are preserved.562 His writings are classified in a 3-fold manner. (1) Pedagogical
works consist of notes that were taken in connection with his teaching. Although these comprised his
most important writings, the inner construction of these materials appears to be incomplete. These
texts include as follows: the Organon (treatises on logic; organon referring to “the tool or instrument of
knowledge”),563 the Physics, the Metaphysics, the De Anima (on the human soul), ethical works
consisting of three treatises with the Nicomachean Ethics being the most important, and, lastly, an
assortment of various political and rhetorical works (the Politics, the Poetics and the Rhetoric). (2)
Philosophical dialogues consist of works that were published by him and written in the style of the
Platonic dialogues. They are sometimes referred to as the Exoteric Works since they were all designed
for readers who were beginners in the study of philosophy. We have only a few of them and they are
little used. (3) Encyclopedic works consist of such things as his lists of constitutions, a history of
astronomy, his names of plants and animals, a survey of sporting events in Athens, and so on. In
general, since the more these different writings are studied the more complex appears to be their
structure, it seems that different parts were written at different periods of time although it has been
difficult to establish their true chronological order despite many attempts to do so.
Aristotle had a large conception of philosophy: he was the first to divide and then subdivide all the
different areas of inquiry into a general classification of knowledge. All the sciences are to be divided
and classified according to two criteria: (1) their individual finality as distinct sciences (the objects of
their individual study: their purpose in terms of what they are meant to study and do) and (2) their
degree of abstraction (by the distance which exists as we move from the givens of our sense perception
toward the givens of our understanding which exist as intellectualized, intellectual objects that have
been apprehended by us through our acts of understanding within a given context, different kinds of
understanding corresponding to different kinds of intellectual object). Three major divisions in
philosophy are to be distinguished from each other:
(1) The theoretical or contemplative sciences consist of three parts: physics, mathematics, and first
philosophy (i.e., metaphysics). Logic was not included since, for Aristotle, logic is to be regarded as a
prior, necessary instrument that is to be used before there can be the doing of any kind of philosophy.
Briefly put, theoretical philosophy is defined by our having knowledge as its proper end
and goal (a knowledge of things that, in themselves, never change) 564 and the sciences
which belong to theoretical knowledge or philosophy, in turn, are divided according to
varying degrees of abstraction. The physical sciences or physics is the science of the
study of all things in motion (whether living or non-living). Where living things initiate
motion, non-living things can only receive motion through the action of external causes
(which exist as external sources). Living things are classified as plants, animals, and
human beings according to what they can do or, in other words, by how they exist and
live. Mathematics exists as a distinct form of theoretical science (it exists at a more
abstract level than the kind of science which exists in physics); and, similarly, at a
higher level, metaphysics exists as a theoretical science. Its abstractness transcends the
562Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 106.
563Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 49.
564Lonergan, Second Collection, p. 140, citing Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 1, 33, 88b 30 ff;
Nicomachean Ethics, 6, 5, 114a 24 ff.
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kind of abstraction which exists in mathematics. If mathematicians work with symbols
and images that are freely constructed in a manner which is removed from the
immediacy which exists within our different acts of human sensing, metaphysicians
work with concepts and notions that are removed or which differ from the being of any
kind of image whatsoever, whether we should speak of images that are given to us
through our different acts of human sensing or other images that are given to us through
our different acts of human imagining. From the being of intellectual objects or from a
species of data that is constituted by us through our prior acts of understanding as these
acts of understanding exist in other, lesser disciplines, the being of metaphysical terms
or the being of metaphysical objects is to be correlated with acts of understanding which
exist, most remotely, at the highest of levels.
(2) The practical sciences (praxis) consists of the political and ethical sciences, the two being closely
related in terms of how Aristotle understands them as a species of human action or activity. An
individual can only be good within the context of a good society. Man, by nature, is a social being
where, within this context and given the kind of nature which belongs to us as human beings, it follows
from this that “it is in acting well, not simply in making [anything], that human life finds its
fulfillment.”565
(3) The productive or the poetical sciences refer to that which we can realize or do and so, within this
classification, we have Aristotle's theory on the fine arts (his works on aesthetics). For Aristotle,
beyond the kind of action or activity which which exists simply in thinking and reasoning, in the kind
of action which exists in a manner which transcends our acts of thinking, reasoning, and understanding,
two kinds of externalizing action can be distinguished and, so, two kinds of science. A real distinction
obtains between that which exists as praxis and that which exists as poiesis. In Aristotle's own words:
“the reasoned state of capacity to act is different from the reasoned state of capacity to make.” 566 The
theoretical and practical sciences cannot be reduced to the productive or the poetical sciences (or, in
other words, to the use or the actuation of instrumental or technological forms of human reason).
According to Aristotle, philosophy is a strictly scientific species of activity. As he had noted when
referring in a critical manner to Plato's understanding of ethics and the human soul: make a small
mistake at the beginning of things in the context of one's inquiry and one's errors will be multiplied
later a thousandfold.567 As a distinct species of inquiry, by its very nature thus, philosophy must go
from the experience of a “mere fact” to the experience of a “reasoned fact.” It must transcend the
givenness of any kind of pure facticity which exists within our world (as we commonly experience this
facticity through the deliverances of sense in the context of our sense experience). For example, if we
advert to the kind of transcendence which exists in general within philosophy, one of Aristotle's central
points (one of his principal contributions) was his doctrine of four necessary causes that should be
invoked if we are to understand anything which exists within our world, the world of our ordinary
565Holger Zaborowski, Robert Spaemann's Philosophy of the Human Person: Nature,
Freedom, and the Critique of Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 11-12.
566Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1140a1, as cited by Zaborowski, Spaemann's Philosophy, p.
11.
567Aristotle, as cited by Anthony McCarthy, “The Sexual Revolution's Strange Turn,” Catholic
Herald (September 2, 2016), p. 24: literally quoting Aristotle employing the following words in
translation, “a small mistake at the beginning is multiplied later a thousandfold.”
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experience (everything which is subject to change and which undergoes any kind of change): simply
put, (1) material cause, (2) efficient cause, (3) formal cause, and (4) final cause. The ultimate cause of
everything is treated within his discussion of First Philosophy, later referred to as Aristotle's
Metaphysics. Material cause is the "stuff" out of which something is made as in a chunk of marble
from which a statue is carved. Formal cause is that which something strives to be (it exists both within
our minds within our understanding and also within the potentiality which exists as matter, matter as
material potentiality). Horses exist as distinct individuals; but, as we have noted, “horseness” exists as
a species of universal. It exists as a species of formal cause which exists within all horses or which
pertains to the being of all horses. Efficient cause is the means, the instrument, or a force or action
which is expended in order to effect a change in something which exists as an other (in some way).
The hammering of a chisel to carve or make something is to be regarded as an efficient cause. Lastly,
final cause refers to why an action or an object exists. Why does this object exist with the formal cause
which it happens to have? Why does this object exist in the way that it does or why does something
behave in the way that it happens to behave?
With respect to questions about how, in Aristotle, we are to engage in the kind of critical thinking and
knowing that belongs to the practice of philosophy and science, to understand the methodological
achievements and developments which come to us from Aristotle's analysis, a useful division, for the
sake of our convenience, distinguishes between the practice and study of deductive logic as a guide that
should be used to avoid contradictions in the manner of our reasoning and thinking and a larger view of
cognition which refers to an inductive logic of discovery which attends, in general, to the nature of our
human cognition as it moves from a partial knowledge of things that is already given to us in our
understanding toward a greater knowledge of the same things. Hence, within this context, questions
are asked about what is the form or the structure of our human inquiry. What exactly is the form or the
structure of our critical acts of human reasoning and thinking? If, with logic or through our logical
operations, through the making of non-contradictory inferences, we can work from the intelligibility
which exists within propositions which exist as initial premisses toward the kind of intelligibility which
would exist within our subsequent conclusions, with other operations or by means of combining our
logical operations with non-logical cognitive operations, at a more basic level, we can work toward an
understanding or a knowledge of initial first premisses that can then be used as a basis for making
logical deductions or moving toward conclusions which can be presented in a way which points to how
they exist as conclusions which follow from the intelligibility which already exists within our initial
premisses. The achievements of Aristotle's methodology accordingly divide into two basic parts: (1) a
theory of syllogistic reasoning as this exists with respect to the being of our logical operations and (2) a
theory of cognition as this exists more broadly with respect to the nature of our human cognition in
general and how it exists as a species of knowing that particularly belongs to us as human beings,
functioning as human agents. Our human knowing differs from the kind of knowing which properly
belongs to animals. How we exist as human beings determines the kind of knowing which belongs to
us as human subjects and, at the same time too, that which exists for us as the humanly known or, in
other words, the kind of being which is given to us in our knowing, the kind of being which is informed
by the being or the nature of the known (the known as the known is being known by us through our
various cognitive acts).
However, this being said, if we are to avoid a misunderstanding or a misconception which could begin
to think that the known is to be seen as some kind of human projection, a concluding preliminary note
needs to be adverted to in a way which acknowledges, as a general backdrop, that Aristotle adhered or
believed in the truth of a realist understanding of human cognition which holds that our human thinking
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and reasoning normally leads us toward true apprehensions of reality. Whether we speak about a
deductive form of logic (deductive logical operations) or an inductive logic of discovery which works
with deductive forms of logical reasoning in conjunction with other kinds of cognitional acts, in either
case (whether deduction or induction), these operations are all necessary if we are to move into contact
with reality through our apprehensions of anything which would exist for us as an understanding and
knowledge of meaning and truth. Admittedly, in itself (or apart from ourselves), truth (or, in other
words, truly existing being or truly existing reality) – these things always exists “objectively” as if they
were things which somehow exist externally, on the “outside” or independently of how, subjectively,
we exist and think as human beings. 568 Being, truth always differs from ourselves even if, by our
knowing and living, we can participate within the order of being which refers to the being of truths that
are known by us through the being or the actuation of our human cognition (although, today, this view
is not widely shared among many modern logicians who prefer, instead, to focus on the being and the
apprehension of patterns which are said to exist within the contours of our human thinking and
reasoning: patterns which are internally valid because no contradictions can be found among a set or a
group of propositions as we go from one proposition to another, the law of contradiction existing as a
principle of reason which is being observed in a given situation within the conduct or the operation of
our human acts of thinking and reasoning). Truth as union and participation is other than truth as
coherence and consistency.
To understand what has happened, in the later philosophy of Immanuel Kant (d. 1804), a
major shift occurred in our understanding of human cognition because of an idealist
understanding of knowledge which came to us from Kant's cognitional philosophy, the
acceptance of this philosophy in turn leading to a change of focus in the practice and
study of logic. In this later newer context, in the study of logic, we attend to inner
structures as these exist within the unfolding of our thinking and reasoning within the
context of its speculative activity and also in the construction of valid arguments. The
criterion or test of truth, or the criterion or test of validity in dealing with the question of
truth, is resolved by simply attending to the coherence of a given idea as it is expressed
in differing propositions and concepts. The clearness of an idea, in its expression, points
to its reasonableness, its would be truth. The object of our focus ceases to be a possible
correspondence or a possible unity which should exist cognitionally between the being
of a human knower and the being of something which is other than a human knower (or,
in other words, the unity which should exist between the teaching of a given proposition
that a given person accepts and believes and that of reality to which a given proposition
refers or that of reality that a given proposition is about).
If we should advert to the parameters of the older understanding and teaching that comes
568To avoid any misunderstanding at this point, please distinguish between metaphysics and
cognition (that which exists as metaphysics or ontology and that which exists as the cognition of a
knowing subject). Truths, as truths, refer to a cognitional species of reality. They exist as terms which
belong to the experience of our human cognition. However, through truths, through the experience of
truth in the context of our human cognition, realities are known which belong to a transcendent order of
being which is the subject matter of metaphysics or ontology. Truths function in a mediating kind of
way as a species of middle term since, through an experience and a knowledge of truth, the subjectivity
of a knower is directly joined to the being of a reality which exists independently of whether or not it is
being known by a given subject at any given time.
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to us from Aristotle and the origins of this teaching as it exists in words and concepts,
according to one possible translation that has been given of a text that comes to us from
Aristotle's philosophical psychology as this exists in his De Anima (On the Soul): with
respect to the kind of unity which exists between ourselves as knowing subjects and
something else which is known by us as human subjects, our sensing in act is always
that which is the sensible in act (a unity or an identity exists between our acts of sensing
and that which is sensed by us within our various acts of human sensing) and, from
there, as we move from sensing toward understanding, our understanding or intelligence
in act is that which is the intelligible in act (a unity or an identity exists between our acts
of understanding and that which we are understanding through our various acts of
understanding, that which is being understood by us in a given act of understanding). 569
Act and term (the understanding and that which is understood) cannot be separated from
each other. According to various alternative translations: (1) “in the immaterial order
[of things] one and the same is...[that which] understands and...[that which] is
understood;” (2) “in the immaterial order, the 'understander and the understood are
identical';” or (3) “understanding (to nooun) and what is understood (to nooumenon) are
the same.”570
Briefly alluding to an explanatory discussion which would want to attend to the being of
cognitive operations which are not to be equated with logical forms of deduction, if we
should attend to the kind of analysis which, in fact, we find in Aristotle's understanding
of human cognition, in the De Anima, 3, 4, 430a 3-4, it is argued there that, if material
coordinates or material properties are somehow omitted or abstracted out by us through
our acts of understanding (perhaps we can speak about material conditions which are
somehow “bracketed”), an identity is then seen to emerge between an act of
understanding and that which is understood by this same act. An act of understanding
possesses a spiritual or an immaterial nature (it transcends the existence or the givenness
of material conditions, being not an act of sense) and, similarly, what is being
understood as an intelligibility which exists as the term of a given act of understanding,
in its own way, also possesses a spiritual, immaterial, intellectual nature. A materiality
which accompanies our acts of human sensing is transcended by an immateriality which
accompanies our acts of human understanding. The being of a sensible form is
transcended by the being of an intelligible form or, alternatively, with a greater degree
of nuance, it can be argued that the kind of transcendence which exists in our
apprehension of intelligible forms is of a kind that it transcends the kind of
transcendence which also exists within the context of our human hearing, a
transcendence which can also be noticed by us when rhythmic vibrations are
experienced by us in a way which knows that the reception of a sensible form is not to
be confused with the matter of its originating source and the possible reception of any
matter which has been sensed or matter which can be sensed.571
569Aristotle, De Anima, 3, 430a 2, as cited by Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 14, a. 2.
570Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Early Works on Theological Method 1, eds. Robert M. Doran and
Robert C. Croken (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), p. 135, citing Aristotle, De Anima, 3,
4, 430a 3-4; Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, eds. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), p. 46; Incarnate Word, p. 395.
571Collingwood, Idea of Nature, pp. 86-87.
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Aristotle's understanding of logic
In a methodological note which refers thus to the role or the significance of Aristotle's logic, it is to be
admitted that, in some of his logical texts, Aristotle has identified his understanding of logic with the
proper kind of method which belongs, in general, to the ways and means of our scientific inquiry. As
we have already noted, logic exists as a species of necessary, preparatory tool for any kind of later
work which is to be done within philosophy and science. In the study of logic, through the
instrumentality of our human reason or by the use of our reasoning, we attend to our reasoning; we
attend to how we function in our acts of human reasoning in a way which can know about how we
should properly order all its parts or elements into an order which is distinctive of the kind of activity
which properly belongs to us with respect to the being and the functioning of our human reason. 572
Hence, as we have noted and as we attend to the conceptualization of Aristotle's language (in the
Greek), in order to signify what is being meant by “tool” or “instrument,” Aristotle speaks about an
organon: a "tool for [our] thinking" as this applies to any objects that we would want to ponder and
think about.
As a species of cognitive guide or norm, logic should order or it must order the form of our thinking
and reasoning when our reasoning is engaged in deductions of one kind or another from something
which is known at A toward something which would be known at B and so, as a discipline or method,
in the logic of Aristotle according to his understanding and his conception of it, logical categories and
forms are specified in a manner which has continued to exert immense influence within the
development of western thought in philosophy although, admittedly, Aristotle himself never spoke
about "logic" but preferred instead to speak about “analytics.”
In understanding Aristotle's logic, two aspects need to be distinguished if we are not to confuse a
purely logical form of thinking and reasoning with a form of thinking and reasoning which transcends
the sufficiency of logical considerations qua the being of purely logical operations.573 (1) Where
Aristotle treats of logic in terms of our being able to make valid inferences through syllogisms
(inferences and conclusions are logically valid because they flow or they come from propositions
which do not contradict each other in terms of how they relate to each other), we have a species or a
type of logic which is akin to the ways and means of a mathematical form of logic. In the workings of
a mathematical or symbolic logic, the meanings of terms and propositions is of no real interest or value.
Everything is geared toward a mechanical way of proceeding in the having or the making of any
deductions in order to avoid contradictions in terms of how subjects and predicates are to be related to
each other within the wording of the species of logical argument which exists when we refer to the
order of a syllogism. Quoting a commonly cited example: if every man is mortal; and Socrates is a
man; therefore, Socrates is mortal.574 If A is B and B is C; then, A is C. (2) On the other hand
however, arguments which exist as syllogisms, in their brevity and compactness, exist in order to
572Kevin White, “Philosophical Starting Points: Reason and Order in Aquinas's Introductions
to the Posterior Analytics, De Caelo, and Nicomachean Ethics,” Theology Needs Philosophy: Acting
against Reason is Contrary to the Nature of God, ed. Matthew L. Lamb (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 2016), p. 150.
573Lonergan, Understanding and Being, pp. 48-52.
574Scott M. Sullivan, An Introduction to Traditional Logic: Classical Reasoning for
Contemporary Minds, 2nd ed. (North Charleston, SC: Booksurge Publishing, 2006), p. 121.
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communicate an understanding that has been grasped about the meaning or the truth of a given
proposition or thesis where, within this larger more comprehensive context, syllogisms exist as
scientific syllogisms (as a form or species of proof or demonstration). They exist as explanatory
syllogisms in order to show how or why, in a given instance, we could have intelligently moved from
something which exists within an order of description toward something which exists now within a
higher order of meaning which refers to the good or the truth of a proffered explanation. If descriptions
are familiar with how things seem or appear to be in the kind of being which they have, explanations
claim to know about how things truly are or exist (appearances often differing from that which exists as
the truth of reality). In attending to how syllogisms exist as explanations, within this context, in
Aristotle, logic is not to be understood as if it were something which exists in some kind of purely
formal way (i.e., through the mediation of algebraic symbols and movements which exist within the
play of a mathematical form of logic) nor, on the other hand, is logic to be regarded as merely a play
with the words of our language and speech (existing essentially as kind of “word game”).
Moving on thus, to understand where or why, in Aristotle's understanding of logic, there exists a
discussion and a focus on the virtue and necessity of coherence in the kind of thinking which we should
always do as intelligent reasonable human beings, a useful point of departure presents itself if we
should attend to how first principles exist within any given science: first principles which have been
grasped in some way and known in some way since, from their being, by a kind of application or a
proceeding from them, very many things can be allegedly understood within the compass or the range
of a given science. For an example here, in the physics of Aristotle, it was believed, as a fundamental
notion within an explanatory understanding of physics, that every existing thing (or every form of
existing thing) as it exists within our physical universe is such that it is geared to occupy “its natural
place in the universe.”575 Everything always moves toward its natural, supposed, or intended place
within the order of the universe or, in other words, we say that this orientation is such that, by using it,
a general order is revealed or, in our study of the physical world in physics, we construct a general
order which reveals the intelligibility of our universe (as, initially, we experience this same universe
through our various acts of sense perception). By working with this fundamental presupposition within
physics as a species of first principle, we can know about a general form or scheme which reveals the
larger order that is constitutive of the being of our entire physical universe.
However, if we compare first principles that belong to a given science (hence, they would exist as
secondary first principles) with first principles which can be said to exist in some kind of more basic,
fundamental way (first principles that are foundational for every form of human thinking in whatever
science, in any kind of thinking which pretends to be entirely rational and reasonable), secondary first
principles existing as non-contradictory derivatives, then, from within this context, from the usefulness
or the explanatory power of secondary first principles, we can raise questions about the meaning or the
condition of rationality as this exists whenever, in any given science, we move from secondary first
principles toward any conclusions that can be drawn from the being of any secondary first principles.
With respect to the being of first principles in general, some are to be regarded as secondary or as
consequential to the existence of other first principles that are more primary although, through our
reflection on the kind of order which exists within a given science and among the given sciences, we
should find that some first principles are primary in a relative sense while other first principles are
primary in an absolute sense. In the shifts which occur whatever, the character or the quality of
575Isaac Asimov, Understanding Physics Volume 1 Motion, Sound and Heat (New York:
Barnes & Noble Books, 1993), p. 4.
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reasonableness is something which is continually presenting itself to us as an inherent, intrinsic
condition even if it can be argued that, in a given case, a secondary or subsidiary first principle is to be
regarded as more truly an assumption than a truth which has been proved from an external point of
view or a truth which can be known or shown to be true through arguments which are to be regarded as
self-evident or conclusive. In either case (whatever we decide: whether we should speak about the
being of an assumption or the being of a pregnant, suggestive idea that is somehow given to us for
reasons that we have not yet entirely grasped or understood), in some way, in the reasoning which
occurs in the light of all secondary first principles as these exist within any given discipline, the
rationality of our thinking and understanding is a phenomenon which, in turn, points to the necessity or
the “mustness” of a more basic set of first principles which, if known, would then serve to explain the
being or the condition of rationality as this exists as a distinct reality, being common to the supposition
or the entertainment of all secondary first principles within science and any conclusions that can be
drawn by us on the basis of any principles which can be known and employed by us within the conduct
of our scientific inquiry within any given discipline or subject of study.
With Aristotle thus, in our understanding of first principles, we should distinguish between that which
would exist for us as provable, demonstrable first principles (hence: provable, demonstrable premisses
that can be known in their truth) and that which would exist for us as unprovable, indemonstrable first
principles (hence: unprovable, indemonstrable premisses). The most basic set of first principles (that
we can allude to and, in some way, know about) exists not as demonstrables which can be confirmed
and proved by various arguments of one kind or another and a point of view which would exist
externally to the meaning of these same principles but, instead, such a set – the most basic set of first
principles – this specification of set is to be regarded as consisting of indemonstrables. So true are they
in fact (they are so basic and foundational) that they cannot be proved by any kind of argument or any
point of view that would exist in some kind of outside, external way. For instance: if coherence is
necessary in any argument that we would want to make, how can we argue the truth of coherence
without observing the necessity of coherence in any argument that we would try to propose? By way
then of the kind of proof that can be offered with respect to the being or the truth of indemonstrable
first principles: at some point we should find that, in dealing with these kinds of principles, in trying to
propose any provable arguments, we immediately discover or we should immediately notice that,
within our efforts or despite our efforts, whenever we are engaged in our various acts of thinking and
reasoning, we are always having to assume the truth of the thesis or the truth of the theorem that we are
trying to prove and so, whenever we are doing this in any given case, we should discover and realize
that we are dealing with a first principle which would exist, technically, as a indemonstrable (as a
species of indemonstrable). Its truth is so basic or its truth is so fundamental that it exists as a kind of
indisputable, ultimate ground: its reality or truth is fundamental with respect to both the order or the
laws of all existing things (Being, for short) and also the order or the laws of our human knowing
where, here, the order of being (the order of existing things) is to be regarded as the subject matter of
metaphysics and the order of knowing, the subject matter of an inquiry which asks about the nature of
our human cognition.
In this context thus, no separation or gap can be alluded to, no separation or gap can exist between the
order of existing things and the being or the order of our thinking minds and so, within this context,
logical laws exist as metaphysical laws and, conversely, metaphysical laws exist as logical laws. With
our minds, or with our understanding, we cannot go outside of our own minds or outside of our own
understanding in order to find non-rational ways of thinking and speaking which could then prove the
truth of a given thesis that we might want to think about or suppose. The condition of reasonableness
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and the condition of irrationality necessarily exclude each other in a way which explains why being and
lack of being are such that they always totally exclude each other. In these types of cases thus, in
attending to the meaning of indemonstrables, the necessity that is experienced within the order of our
thinking, understanding, and knowing must always point to a like necessity which always also exists
within the order of being or the order of all real things. A real distinction cannot be employed to
distinguish between that which exists as a basic principle within the ordering of our human thinking
and reasoning and that which exists as a species of basic principle within the order and the science of
being which exists within the study and the science of metaphysics.
From the science of logistics that we accordingly find in Aristotle, for examples of indemonstrables
which point to why they exist as indemonstrables and not as demonstrables, naming some of them, we
can consider the principles of (1) identity, (2) contradiction, and (3) excluded middle. Respectively
stated through employing a species of algebraic formula: (1) A is A (whatever is, is; or, alternatively,
“a thing is always the same as itself”);576 (2) A cannot be B and not B, or appositely: “'A is B' and 'A is
not B'”577 (a thing cannot both be and not be so and so at the same time and in the same way); and (3) A
either is or is not B, or appositely: “either A is B, or A is not B” 578 (a thing either is or is not so and so;
a statement of fact is “either true or it is not true”).579 Employing an explanatory form of paraphrase:
“...if we think about anything, then (1) we must think that it is what it is; (2) we cannot think that it at
once has a character and has it not; [and] (3) we must think that it at once has a character or has it
not.”580 These principles, taken together, accordingly articulate or they put together a set of necessary
576Caldecott, Beauty in the Word, p. 149.
577Caldecott, Beauty in the Word, p. 149. As Aristotle says about the principle of
contradiction, in making an affirmation and then affirming its negation, “these two cannot be true
together.” Cf. On Interpretation, 7. As Aristotle more fully elaborates his thesis in the Metaphysics,
“there is no affirming and denying the same simultaneously.” Cf. Metaphysics, 4, 3, 1005b29, as
quoted by Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae, q. 94, a. 2; 2a2ae, q. 1, a. 7. In Latin, non est simul
affirmare et negare. Something cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. Cf.
Metaphysics, 4, 3, 1005b18: literally, “the same attribute cannot both belong and not belong to the
same subject at the same time and in the same respect.” Simul introduces a qualification which
includes both meanings, a qualification which introduces a circumstantial factor in how the principle of
contradiction is to be understood and how it is to be applied in judging the truth or falsehood of any
given thesis which presents itself for consideration. Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae, q. 94, a.
2, vol. 28 (London: Blackfriars), p. 80, n. e. As Aquinas notes in the Sententia super Metaphysicam, 4,
6, 600, without the introduction of these qualifications, apparent contradictions would be mistakenly
viewed as real contradictions when this is not truly or really the case.
578Caldecott, Beauty in the Word, p. 149.
579Caldecott, Beauty in the Word, p. 149.
580Joseph, Logic, p. 18. While, according to some points of view, it is said or it is commonly
taught that the fundamental principle of our human reason is, in fact, the principle of contradiction,
please note, however, that if we should want to refer to the metaphysical insight which we have from
Parmenides to the effect that, fundamentally, Being is and, conversely, Being cannot not be (Being or
reality is identical to itself), then, on this basis, we can argue that the principle of identity should seen
to exist as as the first principle or the fundamental law of our human reason and, at the same time, also
argue that, from Parmenides, we have a metaphysical insight which grounds the cognitional kind of
insight which we have from Aristotle when he identifies the principle of identity as a fundamental law
of our human reason in conjunction with the being of other laws and principles.
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first principles which, if known, designate truths which refer to the fundamental truths of our human
minds, the fundamental truths of our human reason. Our minds cannot think in a coherent manner or
they cannot operate intelligently if they do not always abide by these basic laws, principles, or norms
which exist operatively within the ordering of our minds (within our questioning, our thinking, and our
understanding) and which would exist also within the intelligibility and the conceptuality which
belongs to how these aforementioned principles are employed as a basis for putting ideas or
understandings into communicable words, transitioning from the apprehension of an understood idea to
the expression of a verbalized articulate concept. These basic principles are necessary for us as a basis
for all our subsequent acts of thinking and reasoning if our acts of thinking, reasoning, and
understanding are to exist intrinsically or inherently as rational, reasonable things (as rational,
reasonable activities of order, discovering and encountering order as it exists within things and, at
times, also introducing order into sets of conditions where, previously, order had not existed or where
order has yet to be realized). As we have just noted above for instance with respect to the principle of
contradiction (sometimes referred to as the principle of non-contradiction): it is not possible to say
about something that something is and is not at the same time and in the same manner. In
understanding how these principles of identity, contradiction, and excluded middle relate to each other,
suffice it to say that, on the basis of the principle of identity, through our understanding and reflection,
we can move toward the principle of contradiction, and then, from there, we can move toward the
principle of excluded middle. To avoid any connotations which could refer here to mechanistic
determinations of meaning, we best speak not about any kind of derivation that we do without our
thinking and reasoning but, instead, about how we can move from one principle to another on the basis
of a suggestiveness which exists within each principle and an inference which is grounded in the
quality of this suggestiveness. A meaning or an idea that is well understood, or which is more fully
understood points, to the being of other meanings or the being of other ideas.
For the sake of further elaboration, within the kind of thinking which we can associate
with the kind of analysis that we find in Aristotle, other indemonstrables can be alluded
to: for example, (1) the principle of inference as this exists within the shifts and
movements of our human reasoning and (2) the principle of sufficient reason (which, for
some, is known as the principle of intelligibility). With respect to inference and the
different kinds of inference which exist within the structure of our human reasoning,
three different kinds have been used to posit the reality or the truth of a thesis or the
reality or truth of a thing’s existence: (1) a priori inferences move from causes to
effects; (2) a posteriori inferences move from effects to causes; and (3) a simultaneo
inferences suggest a species of knowing which refers to what happens when we speak
about the immediacy of an intuition. In a simultaneo inferences, in apprehending the
meaning of a concept or the definition of a given meaning, its truth or reality is
something which is directly and immediately revealed to us (it is immediately
apprehended by us within the context of our human knowing). Truth or reality
manifests itself merely in the meaning of a concept or idea. Something is true or it is
real by definition (as soon as a meaning is grasped by us in an act of understanding that
grasps it and as soon as this meaning is put into words which we can repeat to ourselves
or say to others). Citing a commonly given example: “A finite whole is greater than any
of its parts.”581 We cannot understand the meaning of “part,” or the meaning of
581Mortimer J. Adler, Aristotle for Everybody Difficult Thought Made Easy (New York: Simon
& Schuster Inc., 1978), p. 155.
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“whole,” or the meaning of “greater than” unless we refer to the meaning of the other
two terms. The correct understanding or the truth of a “part” presupposes correctly
understanding the truth of a “whole” and also correctly understanding the truth of a
“greater than” which knows about how a whole is to be compared when it is related to a
part. In another way of speaking, we say that a predicate exists within a given subject.
If we should understand and know a subject, we immediately understand and know the
predicate. We know about the predicate. For examples here: “all men are mortal” and
“fire burns.”582 In these cases, we do not move from “x” to “y.” Both are given
together.
The principle of sufficient reason, as an indemonstrative, points to the intelligibility of
being (the intelligibility of things which exist) and the necessity of this intelligibility (its
necessary existence) if the being of things is to be known since being (the being of
things) can only be known through the principle and the experience of intelligibility as
this exists for us within the dynamics of our human cognition. 583 If intelligibility is
absent, no given thing can be distinguished from the being of every other thing and so, if
distinctions cannot be grasped and understood, nothing can exist in terms of the kind of
being which is proper to it. Only an amorphous mass will exist or, in other words, an
undifferentiated specification of being: a datum or data instead of things.
On the basis then of these fundamental laws of human reason and in a manner which, in some way,
refers to these fundamental laws of human reason, in his Prior Analytics, Aristotle adumbrates a list of
all the possible syllogisms which exist within the ambit of our human reasoning, indicating which are
valid and which are not valid. Forms of inference are always valid in a logical perspective where
contradictions are absent as, in each case, we move from the givens which exist in a set of initial
premisses toward conclusions which exist already implicitly within the givens of premisses which exist
in a syllogism.
In order now to understand Aristotle in terms of his teaching about the good and the form of
syllogisms, in his Prior Analytics, syllogisms are identified and explained. A syllogism, as a form of
argument, consists of a subject, a predicate, and a middle term which connects a subject to a predicate,
indicating why a predicate exists within a subject or why a predicate is to be predicated or ascribed of a
given subject;584 hence, a syllogism which exists as a scientific or explanatory syllogism (syllogismos
epistêmonikos).585 In our acts of sensing, we encounter something that we want to understand,
something about which we can possibly pose questions. Taking an example that comes to us from
Aristotle, we have the experience which we have of the moon. Through our acts of sensing, we see the
moon at night when no clouds obstruct our vision of it. It is seen by us if nothing is blocking our line
of sight. Now, sometimes, our vision of the moon is entirely obstructed by clouds in the sky and
sometimes our vision is partially obstructed by clouds that partially obstruct our line of sight. But,
what is happening when, on unclouded nights, suddenly and rapidly, a darkening of the moon occurs: a
582Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 133.
583Anthony M. Matteo, Quest for the Absolute: The Philosophical Vision of Joseph Maréchal
(DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1992), pp. 115-116; p. 139.
584Lonergan, Verbum, p. 28, citing as follows: “The Aristotelian formulation of understanding
is the scientific syllogism.”
585Lonergan, Understanding and Being, p. 48.
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darkening which is described by Aristotle as “the inability of the moon at its full to cast a shadow, there
being nothing visible in the way.” 586 In other words, we experience no moonlight when suddenly the
moon cannot be seen on a cloudless night or we experience less moonlight when, suddenly, part of the
moon cannot be seen by us on a cloudless night. No act or datum of sense immediately reveals why no
explanation is needed: why no questions need to be asked. Our point of departure at this point is but a
material kind of fact which simply says that “the moon is being deprived of its light.”587
And so, in searching for some kind of reason or explanation, we ask about the being of a possible cause
where knowing the cause immediately points to the presence or the givenness of an adequate
explanation. We raise questions that could possibly take us toward an object or a thing that could be
given to us within a kind of apprehension which can exist within our cognition: an apprehension which
would not exist as an act of sensing but which exists in fact as an act of understanding, a prospective
act of understanding. In thinking about this question or in thinking about this problem and in playing
with images and configurations that can indicate how we can experience disruptions within our own
lines of vision whenever, in our world, we want to see certain objects and why, at times, we cannot
immediately see them, it can dawn upon us, it can come to us by way of an insight or an act of
understanding that the reason must be the being of some other kind of obstruction: instead of clouds
(because we cannot speak about clouds on a cloudless night), we refer to an obstruction or we postulate
an obstruction which must somehow exist between the moon and the sun (the sun functioning as an
illuminating source, relative to the reflection of the moon). Of course, if we were to imagine ourselves
living on the surface of the moon, it would be very obvious to us, through our acts of seeing, that, at
times, the earth obstructs the passage of light from the sun to the moon. The earth can totally obstruct
this passage of light or it can partially obstruct this same passage of light. However, because, as a
precondition for us, our point of departure is not the moon but our location on the surface of the earth
(in looking toward the moon as a visible object we never see the earth), it is thus by our reasoning and
through our understanding that we can connect the moon and its deprivation of light with the possible
obstructing influence of the earth's position. For some strange reason that has yet to be grasped and
understood through inquiries that would ask other new questions, at various times, between the sun and
the moon, the earth exists as a species of interposition. We do not understand why, in fact, the earth
should find itself at times between the sun and the moon (further inquiry and understanding would be
needed here) although, in fact, as a new point of departure, we can now begin from an initial
understanding which knows about why lunar eclipses exist (what causes them: answer, it is the
interposition of the earth) and so, in the light of this understanding, we can then speak about what, in
fact, is a lunar eclipse. We can identify a specific meaning, we can put a definition into words about
what exactly is the nature of a lunar eclipse. From understanding something about why a lunar eclipse
exists (admittedly, this is a limited, a restricted understanding), we can understand that which happens
to exist as a lunar eclipse even if, admittedly, other questions have yet to be asked and other questions
are left unanswered (for the time being) in the inquiries that we are engaged in.
When we move then into an articulation of the understanding which has been thus given to us in a
given case, in specifying our steps and a connection which exists between that which exists as a subject
and that which exists as a predicate, the result (in the understanding of Aristotle's logic) is the formulae
or the structure of a syllogism. The conceptuality or the terms of the syllogism (the relation between a
586Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 2, 8, 93a38-39, as cited by Patrick H. Byrne, Analysis and
Science in Aristotle (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), p. 89.
587Byrne, Analysis and Science in Aristotle, p. 90.
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subject and a predicate through the mediation of a middle term) express the train of thought which has
existed within the flow of our understanding (among our prior acts of understanding). As a first
premiss or major premiss (by way of an abbreviated example that is given here for purposes of
illustration): “every illuminated object having an obstruction between it and its illuminating source is
deprived of its light”; as a second premiss or minor premiss: “the earth is an obstruction between the
moon and its illuminating source (the sun)”; hence, the conclusion: “therefore, the moon is being
deprived of its light.”588 Something which is, in some way, known by us (through how our prior acts of
human sensing combine with our prior acts of understanding) is now being understood by us in a
manner which points to its clear expression and, in this type of situation, the use of syllogisms
illustrates how this kind of change is effected in us (how this kind of change occurs in us by way of the
kind of cognition which belongs to us as cogitating, conscious human subjects).589
In his analysis of syllogisms and in analyzing the kind of reasoning which exists in syllogistic forms of
thinking and reasoning, in the conceptuality of his understanding thus, it can be said about Aristotle
that his doctrine or that his teaching about syllogisms has emerged or that it has come to stand for a
species of norm or intellectual standard: an inherited, classical system of human reasoning which
served to initiate, in subsequent centuries, the entire logical tradition of the west as it has emerged since
Aristotle's time and day (although Aristotle was not the first person to engage in syllogistic forms of
argument, in either the Greek world or possibly in other worlds). 590 In the context of his teaching thus,
the basic building block of all rational argument is to be identified with the form of the syllogism
because it exists as a structure that is able to present reasons that can explain how or why, in a given
case, in some way, X is related to Y. Using it or by means of how it exists as a form of communicable
human argument, a datum of sense which has been understood or a fact which has been sensed (as one
species of datum) is shown or it is presented in a way which points to how it has been converted into a
fact which has been grasped and understood and then judged to be true. In the kind of transition which
exists in Aristotle, what has existed as a datum of sense now exists not simply as a fact nor as an effect
but as a “reasoned fact” or as an understood cause.591 To elaborate a bit more fully:
In Aristotle, in the kind of knowing which exists in the conduct of analysis in science,
this movement of thought and inquiry moves from the experience of sensed effects
toward understanding and an experience of causes that have been understood or which
can be understood. In the language which Aristotle uses, the effects or the changes
which are noticed exist initially as “facts”; however, the causes exist as “reasoned
facts.” Knowing in terms of learning and discovery begins with what we first know or
what is first given to us within the kind of understanding which we first have of the
world that happens to exist around us. This knowing begins with an experience of socalled “elemental facts”: facts which refer to changes of one kind or another as these are
known by us through the kind of knowing which exists in our acts of human sensing and
which can be reported through our initial descriptions of them, our acts of inquiry
588Byrne, Analysis and Science in Aristotle, p. 90. To understand why or how we can
distinguish between the being of major and minor premisses, see Sullivan, Introduction to Traditional
Logic, p. 122.
589Lonergan, Understanding and Being, p. 48.
590H. W. B. Joseph, Introduction to Logic (Cresskill, NJ: Paper Tiger, Inc., 2000), p. 249.
591Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 1, 13; Patrick H. Byrne, Analysis and Science in Aristotle
(Albany: State University of New York, 1997), p. 89; pp. 201-203.
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beginning with our ordinary experiences and descriptions and then moving from there
toward apprehensions which could exist as scientific descriptions. 592 From these
experiences then, by a subsequent process of reasoning, we can then move toward
causes which are first or primary within the order of being (the order of existing things)
even as they exist as last things or as final things within the order of our inquiring
human cognition. What is first for ourselves in the data of our human experiencing
gives way, through understanding, to what is first in the order of being or first in itself as
a fundamental point of departure for the being and existence of existing things. In
Aristotle's own words: “what is last in the order of resolution or analysis [in the order of
our human knowing] is first in the order of becoming or production [in the order of
reality or being],” or according to another translation which refers to what is said by
Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics, 3, 3, 1112b24: “the first link in the chain of causes
is the last in the order of discovery.”593
If, for example, with respect to “the order of discovery,” as this pertains to a form of
self-inquiry which asks about who and what we are as human beings, in this context, our
inquiry moves toward some kind of answer by first attending to the objects or the
content of our sensing and thinking: the givens that come with these acts. We begin
with these objects or content and then we move toward identifying the acts or operations
which bring these objects into our consciousness of them. Then, from these acts or
operations, we can move toward how they recurrently exist for us as habits, continually
bringing new objects into our awareness of them or other, familiar objects that we have
known before in the context of our previous cognitive experience. The habits, in turn
however, reveal the kind of potencies that we have as human beings: all that which we
can possibly do as human beings, our potencies existing as natural potencies. They are
entirely suited to the kind of being that we happen to be and so, by attending to these
potencies and by knowing these potencies, we can then move toward an understanding
and a manner of speaking which knows about the reasons, the elements, or the
components which are constitutive of what a human being happens to be (what it is that
makes a human being a human being); hence, distinguishing a human being from the
being of every kind of being. As human beings, one species of cause exists as an
interior formal principle. An intellectual soul is joined to another species of cause
which exists as an exterior material principle. A soul and a body go together. But, if we
attend to the order of being which works with causes as first principles, as points of
departure (the order of being as opposed to the order of our human knowing), instead of
moving from objects toward something which would exist as the specification of a
human essence, we can move from that which exists as the essence of our humanity
toward the different objects which can be intended by the species of self-transcendence
which is constitutive of who and what we are as human beings (how we exist and be as
human beings, living as human subjects).594 What we experience and know and how we
592Patrick H. Byrne, “Insight and the Retrieval of Nature,” Lonergan Workshop 8 (1980): 8-9.
593Jeremy D. Wilkins, Method, Order, and Analogy in Trinitarian Theology: Apropos Karl
Rahner's Critique of the 'Psychological' Approach, unpublished paper (Houston: University of St.
Thomas, November 25, 2009), p. 13, n. 29.
594McCarthy, Authenticity as Self-transcendence, p. 63, citing Aristotle, De Anima, 2, 4,
415a14020.
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live and act is explained by how we exist as human beings. Our cognitional operations
are explained by metaphysical causes although, through the causality of our cognitional
operations, metaphysical principles can be understood and known by us in terms of how
they all relate to each other.
In the use of syllogisms thus, syllogisms which reflect the being of prior cognitional operations,
conclusions are indicated and these same conclusions are shown to be reasonably true in a manner
which accordingly points to a self-evident form of rational certainty which exists within syllogisms.
The sureness and certainty of conclusions is such that the use of syllogisms surpasses the value of
working with all other possible forms of human argument.595
Within this context thus, in Aristotle, two kinds of argument can be distinguished from each other if we
are to avoid any ambiguities that could be caused by confusions of one kind or another. (1) Some
arguments are probably true where the form of reasoning refers to the arts and skill of dialectics as this
comes to us originally from the dialectics of Socrates although by way of the mediation and the kind of
expansion which comes to us from the later dialectics of Plato. The premisses which are used as points
of departure for the subsequent drawing of conclusions are subject to dispute although, in some cases,
they can be widely believed by many persons or, in other cases, they can be espoused by persons who
595Bernard J. F. Lonergan, “The Syllogism,” Shorter Papers, eds. Robert C. Croken, Robert
M. Doran, and H. Daniel Monsour (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), p. 14. Please note,
however, as a qualification and as we allude and defer to a distinction that comes to us originally from
the teaching of Aquinas: that which is self-evident to the thinking and understanding of one person
might not be self-evident to the thinking and understanding of another person. Cf. Aquinas, Sententia
super Metaphysicam, 4, 6, 607 [Aquinas's Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics]; Aquinas also, as
cited by R. J. Snell, Perspective of Love: Natural Law in a New Mode (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick
Publications, 2014), p. 97. As both Aristotle and Aquinas admit: a lack of learning or, in other words, a
lack of understanding in some persons explains why some persons seek demonstrations for things that
cannot be properly demonstrated to themselves or to others (the reality of their truth should be selfevident and all too obvious) and why, too, some persons cannot distinguish between what they should
seek demonstrations for (the reality of truth is not too obvious or self-evident) and what they should not
have to prove or properly demonstrate. A certain lack of wisdom explains why some indemonstrable
principles are adverted to within a given context and why they are used as points of departure for a
form of speculative thinking and understanding which tries to relate many different variables into a
oneness or whole which is to be regarded as an order of intelligible relations (an order which allegedly
speaks about causes and effects and how the existence of a given variable influences the possible being
of other variables). Hence, from these considerations, we can conclude and surmise that the quality or
the condition of a species of apprehension which is grounded in an experience of self-evidence in terms
of something which is immediately grasped and known by us apart from the making of any later
judgment in a reflective act of understanding – the apprehension or the understanding is
indistinguishable from the kind of understanding which would exist in a judgment – the experience of
self-evidence that we have and which can very from person to person, in turn, requires or it suggests to
us that this type of apprehension could be open to a form of training or some kind of education that
could possibly enlarge or extend its scope: enhancing the ability which a given person has to
experience apprehensions of meaning and truth that would appear to be immediately obvious and selfevident, no proofs or arguments being required and, at the same time too, no proofs or arguments being
possible.
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are regarded as experts within their respective fields. Citing two examples: “man is a political animal”
or “philosophy is desirable as a branch of study.”596 Both propositions can be contested. A given
premiss can be probably true but not necessarily true. The truth is likely although it is not self-evident.
In determining any premisses that are probable, inductive and deductive procedures can be used as
needed as, respectively, we would move from particulars in sense toward a general principle which
exists in our understanding or from a general principle which exists in our understanding toward any
particulars which can exist in sense. 597 In dialectical forms of reasoning and thinking, participants in a
conversation try to persuade each other. One tries to find premisses that the other will accept so that
the other will draw the particular conclusions that one would want the other to draw and to hold. 598
Valid methods of dialectical reasoning, if properly employed, should always lead participants toward
the set of right premisses that are in fact needed if certain questions and problems are to be successfully
understood and, by this understanding, answered or solved.599 (2) Other arguments however are
certainly and inevitably true (they exist as apodictic arguments) because their form of reasoning works
with demonstrations from premisses that are necessarily true (premisses whose truth no one can truly
doubt or question since the assigned or the obvious predicates already exist within the subjects that are
being considered as is the case, for example, in the following propositions: “all men are mortal” and
“fire burns.”)600 If you have the subject, you have the predicate. In the apodictic form of
argumentation which works from the truth of self-evident premisses, demonstrations are employed and
constructed in order to move from that which is known to be true at A to that which can be known to be
true at B in a manner which no one can reasonably question or refute.601 As with the premisses that are
used in the context of dialectical arguments, first principles can be determined on a basis which works
with both the use of inductive and deductive procedures. We can move from the particulars of sense
toward a generality that is known in our understanding or from a generality that is known in our
understanding toward any particulars which exist in sense.602 Both types of procedure can be used
interchangeably as the need arises in any given context. It is said, it is alleged, in fact, that, with
respect to either dialectical arguments or apodictic arguments, the human mind (our human thinking
and understanding) is always continually moving from one type of procedure to the other, back and
forth, as the need arises and as circumstances permit. It is only by a kind of introspective analysis that
we can distinguish between the being of these two kinds of intellectual movement.
Hence, in Aristotle, by combining self-evident premisses with the form and use of demonstrative
reasoning (and only by the use of demonstrative reasoning) – it is only by these means that we can have
any real knowledge (any genuine knowledge): in the language of Aristotle, a true knowledge or a
scientific knowledge which exists as epistēmē.603 The kind of knowing or the kind of reasoning which
exists as it moves from premisses which are self-evidently true explains why this type of knowledge is
itself both true and certain,604 and if, in another context, we should try to work toward conclusions
596Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 133.
597Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 133.
598Randall, Aristotle, pp. 38-39.
599Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 134.
600Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 133.
601Meynell, Redirecting Philosophy, pp. 254-255.
602Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 133.
603Meynell, Redirecting Philosophy, p. 255, citing Aristotle.
604Lonergan, Second Collection, p. 140, citing Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 1, 2, 71b 25 and
72a 37 ff.
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which are only probable and which are not certain or necessary in how they would follow from a prior
set of first principles that are probably true, we would be working with a lesser notion of science, a
weaker notion of science, or, in other words, an analogical kind of science because its manner only
resembles (it does not imitate or reflect) the kind of knowing which only properly occurs if we should
work with the kind of self-evidence which exists in demonstrations which work from premisses which
exist as analytic principles (the predicates already existing within the being of subjects). 605 It is always
the case thus that a weaker or a lesser notion of science exists if (1) we should work from first
principles that could very well be necessarily true but which are not evident to us in the context of our
human knowing, or if (2) we should work from first principles which are, in fact, not necessary but
which are essentially speculative and tentative, being only fitting, convenient, or suitable for us at a
given time within a given context.606 To give a possibly valid example: if, for instance, in the science
of physics, it is discovered (or if it has been discovered) that the constant speed or the invariant velocity
of a moving object is intrinsically unintelligible (changes in speed or velocity – only these changes
would seem to be intelligible), then, in order to understand the kind of motion which exists in human
economic activity, we should attend to variations or rates of change which can occur within the pace of
our human economic activity. That which is static and unchanging is unintelligible. That which is
dynamic and constantly changing - only this is intelligible and so this is the proper object of the kind of
scientific activity which can exist for us in the science or the study of economics.
In looking for arguments which would accordingly evince certainty from within ourselves and also
from within the thinking and understanding of other human beings, syllogisms, according to their
structure, immediately or understandably lend themselves to a probative, demonstrative form of
argument which thinks in terms of truths which would have to be definitively and undoubtedly true
because, in a syllogism, a prescribed order determines how, in the conceptuality of our syllogistic
reasoning, we can move from the intelligibility which exists within an arrangement of archai or
premisses that are individually self-evidently known to be true toward the intelligibility which is shown
or displayed (which is thus known to exist) within the wording of a resulting necessary, obvious
conclusion. A new, self-evident intelligibility is immediately suggested and and presented to us and it
is known through a rational arrangement of terms which exists within and among the premisses that
have been collected by us within the prior order of one's arguments and thinking where, here, one
proposition overlaps or relates to a second proposition through a middling predicate, a middling
property, or a middling attribute that is, in some way, shared or which, in some way, is common to both
propositions, connecting the two propositions with each other. As Aristotle would have it or as he is
often cited and quoted in philosophical literature: in our knowledge of science, we only truly
understand something “when we know the cause, know that it is the cause, and know that the effect
cannot be other than it is.” 607 To repeat a property (or a characteristic) which has already been noted:
the certainty of our knowledge is such that things cannot be understood and known to be in any other
kind of way. This X has to occur or this Y has to be in only this kind of way and in no other kind of
way.
605Lonergan, Second Collection, pp. 47-48.
606Lonergan, Second Collection, p. 48. On this basis, please distinguish between doctrinal or
dogmatic reasoning as this can exist within the work of theology and speculative, systematic reasoning
as this can also exist within the work of theologians. Proofs and determinations of certitude exist as
one species of object in science; meaning, relations exist as another species of scientific object.
607Lonergan, Second Collection, p. 139, citing Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 1, 1, 71b 10-12.
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More bluntly speaking with a degree of repetition (although by way of a technical mode of expression),
by means of the kind of inference which exists in all instances of syllogistic reasoning: X implies Y
(given what is known about X); Y implies Z (given what is known about Y); and so, through the
mediation of Y, X implies Z. In other words and, perhaps, in a way which points to another shade of
meaning that also merits our attention and understanding: in a syllogism, if predicate P belongs to
middle term M and middle term M belongs to all subjects S, then predicate P belongs to all subjects
S.608 Reiteratively speaking: in every syllogism, we move from X to Z or we move from P to S through
a mediating “middle term” which exists as a predicate or as an attribution of some kind (it identifies an
understood cause or an understood reason) which is not itself directly referenced or which is not
directly presented to us within the wording of an understood, stated conclusion or in the identification
which is given to us within the wording of a specific conclusion. A conclusion is drawn by us or it is
grasped by us through the mediation of a species of deduction as this exists within our acts of human
reasoning and understanding. Simply put: if X, then Y. Hence, we should put aside any notion of
deduction which would want to think of it as some kind of mechanistic operation or as a mechanical
way of human thinking. The middle terms - when these are grasped and understood by us within our
acts of understanding – these middle terms indicate where or why a positive relation exists between the
two conceptualities that are given to us within the wording of two distinct propositions: this predicate
and its subject and this other predicate and its subject. In the wording or the conceptuality of a third
proposition which exists as the conclusion, the positive relation which is understood is presented in a
way which follows or it proceeds from that which has been understood to exist within the wording of
one's initial, prior premisses.
Through the kind of reduction or resolution which accordingly exists in employing syllogistic forms of
argument as a means of presenting whatever we have come to know about through our various acts of
thinking and understanding (working in conjunction with our various acts of human sensing), we can
accordingly understand why a conclusive or a deductive form of inference is ranked by Aristotle as the
method of reasoning which should be preferred by us within the context of any form of scientific
reasoning if we are to indicate why we can intelligently and truthfully move from truths that few
persons will dispute or question (or are not able to dispute or question) toward conclusions that are also
true but which, perhaps, have not been noticed before or which, perhaps, have been a matter of past
dispute and controversy. The truth or the aptness of a conclusion is best shown or it is best known (it is
best indicated or it is best illustrated) if it can be shown to follow from other truths or meanings that are
better known by us and which no one would want to dispute or question. Hence, for all intents and
purposes, these better known truths are used or they are employed by us as a species of telling evidence
as a convenient or apt point of departure. In order to argue the truth of a given teaching or the truth of a
given belief, if we should choose to work with the kind of argument which exists for us within the
structure of a syllogistic form of reasoning, we always best proceed if we can determine a set of first
principles which are self-evidently true: a set of true premisses which we can use to point us toward the
meaning and the truth of other teachings that we would like to justify before the thinking and in the
opinions of other human persons.
When arguments are transposed into the kind of compactness which belongs (in general) to the form of
syllogistic arguments, they are presented in a manner which accordingly joins two functions or they
meet two purposes. A kind of proceeding is displayed in terms of how, through a prior act of direct
understanding, we have moved toward a new unity or a new relation that has been grasped by us in the
608Roland Krismer, email message, March 19, 2016.
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genesis or the reception of an act of understanding (a direct act of understanding) and, secondly also,
through a prior act of reflective understanding as this exists also in judgment, another kind of
intellectual proceeding which is also being indicated to us. The reasonableness or the rationality of this
second proceeding is indicated to us in a way which points towards its obviousness (its reasonableness
pointing toward its reality or its truthfulness, the necessity of a given judgment which recognizes the
truthfulness of a given proposition or teaching). Syllogisms always lead to knowledge; they engender
our knowledge in a way which always moves from a condition of potency to a condition of act. By
having a syllogism in terms of how it moves through a form of ordered oneness which moves from a
set of premisses to a given conclusion, we experience the generation and the flow of that type or
species of knowing which is said to properly belong to scientific knowledge as scientific knowledge. A
provable or a demonstrative type of knowledge exists through the use of syllogisms or, in Aristotle's
words, it occurs through “a syllogism in virtue of which, by having it, we know scientifically.”609
Syllogismus faciens scire [an explanatory or scientific syllogism giving knowledge]. 610 Through a
species of motion which points to a change which has occurred in the content of our understanding and
knowledge, in the deductions that we are making or in the conclusions that we are moving toward, our
deductions and conclusions always exist as a form of inference where, in the making of every
inference, we always move from that which we already happen to know toward that which we can
begin now to understand and know through the order of implications which can be found when truths
are combined with each other in ways that can reveal a truth which is at best implicitly known but
which is not explicitly or fully known because, prior to the combination of propositions which occurs
in a syllogism, it has yet to be identified in a way which puts a given meaning or a truth into a form of
determination which exists by way of the construction of communicable terms and concepts that exist
within the being of language and speech. In any premisses which exist as first principles, we always
work with suppositions and hypotheses within a context which has been informed by our prior acts of
thinking and understanding where now, our prior knowledge is added to and it is increased through
new acts of thinking and understanding that have been coming to us in ways which condition how our
current understanding as this is being expressed through the symbolization which exists within the
order of a syllogism.
Aristotle's understanding of human cognition
Turning now to Aristotle's logic of discovery (although he did not use this type of language), as we
have already noted, Aristotle assumes or adheres to the truth of a realist understanding about the nature
of our human cognition. More accurately put, if we encounter persons who are entrenched within a
skeptical frame of mind about the powers of the human mind (the scope of our human cognition), the
best antidote is for us to get them to talk and to keep on talking since, as their thinking accompanies
their way of talking and speaking, they should soon realize that they would want to argue their case in
an intelligent manner (in as intelligent a manner as this is humanly possible) and so avoid any
contradictions or arguments that would tell against the truth of their particular claims. 611 With Horace
thus, as a consequence of engaging in this dialectical form of argument and discussion, as we work to
609Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 1, 2, 71b17, as cited and translated by Byrne, Analysis and
Science in Aristotle, p. 90: in the genesis of scientific knowledge, this demonstrative type of knowledge
exists or it happens as “a syllogism in virtue of which, by having it, we know scientifically.”
610Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 1, 2, 71b17 as cited by Lonergan, Verbum, p. 28, n. 58.
611Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, p. 354; Second Collection, p. 53;
Meynell, Redirecting Philosophy, p. 257, citing Aristotle, Metaphysics, 4, 4, 1005b35-1006a28.
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stimulate the kind of cognition which belongs to another human being, we should all eventually realize
the reality of an operational truth which says that, yes, naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret
[you can drive nature out with a pitchfork, but it will always return]. 612 Hence, performatively
speaking, necessarily, whether we should refer to ourselves or to the being of other persons, at some
point, we would all have to admit that, in some way, truths can be known by us through our knowing
(as human knowers) and that a knowledge of truths is entirely proper and natural to us as human beings
within the context of our ordinary day to day living. Whether we are skeptics or not, whatever we
should want to think of ourselves or call ourselves, in the context of our self-understanding, to the
degree that we can grow in any kind of self-understanding and to the degree that we can attend to the
kind of data which belongs to our inner experience of self, eventually, we should all realize that
apprehensions of truth and reality are normally given to us as human beings through a combination or
an interaction of different powers: a combination of active and passive acts (where some acts exist for
us as activities while others exist as receptions). Together, all in all characterize and they reflect the
data or the experience which we have of ourselves in our sensing, thinking, understanding, and
knowing, the experience of intelligibility coming to us thus as a species of receiving or as the reception
of an act although, most frequently or commonly,613 within a prior context which is characterized by
conditioning activities of questioning and thinking which, in turn, encourage us or they prepare us
toward a species of openness and reception which exists in us when, at unexpected moments, when we
least expect it, an understanding of some kind is finally given to us as a gift or a blessing which cannot
be simply produced by us at will through all of our different acts of cogitative willing despite all that
we might do in all our various acts of pondering, questioning, and thinking. 614 In our human cognition,
in the being of our active intellects and in the being of our passive intellects, these two parts together
form the kind of fluid or dynamic whole which is distinctive of our human cognition, pointing to its
nature and the manner of its operation.
Hence, through the operation or the functioning of our human cognition, it has become a commonly
admitted fact for us that the thesis of skepticism, in its alleged truth, is a teaching which always acts
against itself. It undermines and contradicts itself. To argue the truth of skepticism is to propose the
truth of an alleged truth and so, through acting in this way, implicitly, we would be admitting that
apprehensions of truth and reality are, in fact, sometimes given to us, to our human minds, to our
understanding, in a manner which points to an intimate association which must always exist between
apprehensions of truth (the truth of truths that we have come know about in their truthfulness and
reality) and experiences of intelligibility and understanding which must always come to us with the
experience of these apprehensions. Through intelligibility and understanding, truths are known in their
being and reality (they are known with respect to their truthfulness). Metaphorically speaking, if, in
612Lonergan, Insight, p. 570; p. 772, citing the Roman poet, Horace, Epistolae, I, 10, 24.
613Please note at this point that, always, our inquiry and learning begins from a point of
departure that is not without some prior understanding and knowledge. Our human condition is not
characterized by a complete lack of knowledge about anything. Some things we already understand
and know and so no questions need to be asked. From within a context which can be referred to in
terms which can speak about a priori apprehensions of being, we can move toward a posteriori
apprehensions of being which would emerge for us if we can engage in acts of inquiry which can lead
us toward new possible acts of experiencing, understanding, and judgment which would add to the
content and the sum of that which we already understand and know.
614Meynell, “On Being an Aristotelian,” Redirecting Philosophy, pp. 259-260; John Herman
Randall, Jr., Aristotle (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 99-100.
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our understanding, we should want to refer to the kind of light which would exist in us as an invisible
kind of intellectual light, to reject the kind of light or the kind of illumination that is cast for us by the
lighting or the dawning of our understanding is to reject how, in fact, we exist as human beings and
how or why, as human beings, we cannot exist as some other kind of living being.615
With respect then to the particulars of Aristotle's theory of learning, his logic of discovery can be
gleaned by us in a way which points to a wider understanding of method and procedure in science and
philosophy than a notion of method which is restricted to the practice and the study of syllogistics in
logic. Logical operations notwithstanding - they exist as but one species of cognitive act - if we attend
to how a philosophy of inquiry is articulated by Aristotle in a way which points to a philosophy of
scientific questioning and a basic set of questions which must be asked within every kind of scientific
inquiry,616 then, in this way, from this subjective but thematized (objectified) point of departure, we
will be able to move toward an understanding of human cognition which will encompass a number of
different kinds of cognitive act: operations which are not limited to the being of logical operations even
as they work with the being of logical operations. Hence, within this larger wider context, prior acts of
sensing can be adverted to and, eventually, through our inquiry and the asking of different kinds of
questions, acts of understanding can alluded to as they emerge in the wake of our prior acts of human
sensing.
In adverting then to the kind of order which exists within Aristotle's philosophy of inquiry, a
corresponding or a reflective order of acts can then be determined by us in a way which refers to the
constitution or the kind of order which belongs to the nature and the functioning (the operation) of our
human cognition. Determine first how a given kind of question leads to a distinct species or type of
cognitive act and, then, from the sequential and cyclic ordering of different questions as these form a
circuit of their own (moving from acts of sense and then returning to acts of sense), determine an
ordering of acts which then serves as a basis for determining another corresponding species of order
which is constitutive of the being of existing things that can be known by us through our various acts of
human cognition. The kinds of questions which we ask specify how, subjectively, we should respond
with new acts or new operations if we are to participate or attend to the genesis, the ingress, or the
progress of our personal individual human learning or, in other words, as we advert to the being of the
615Please note that, in some quarters, such a claim is disputed and, at times, it is rejected. In
the philosophy of John Locke, it is argued that, if there exists a human nature, this nature is such that,
unfortunately, it cannot be known; however, subsequently, in the philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau,
it is argued there that a human nature is something which does not exist. It is to be regarded as but a
fiction. Belief in the existence of human nature is then to be rejected. Hence, as a new point of
departure, as we move from this dogmatically stated point of view toward salient conclusions which
can be reasonably and rationally drawn as a fitting consequence, a thesis accordingly presents itself to
us to the effect that how we exist and live as human beings determines that which would exist for us as
our human essence (as some kind of human nature). Simply put as the central thesis of an existentialist
type of philosophy: existence precedes essence; our existence determines our essence. From existence
we work toward essence. We can make ourselves into whatever we would like to do and be. Through
various forms of intervention, we can, for example, select our own sex and perhaps too, through other
forms of intervention, we can turn ourselves into some other kind of living being and so cease to live
and exist as human beings. Cf. Pierre Manent, The City of Man, trans. Marc A. LePain (Princeton,
New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 138.
616Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 2, 2, 89b36-90a34.
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different kinds of questions which we ask, these should reveal a logic or a recurrent pattern of acts and
discovery which in turn explains how, in our human cognition, we can move from a condition of
knowledge which exists initially at A toward an augmented condition of knowledge which would exist
at B.
Two observations merit attention at this point. First, as Aristotle had noticed and as we should also
notice, perennially in our learning, within our discovering and knowing, we are perpetually moving
from a cognitive condition which exists at A toward a cognitive condition which would exist as B:
from some kind of understanding (or some kind of knowledge) that is somehow already given to us
because already, about certain things, no questions have to be asked. Nothing more needs to be
understood and known. Some understanding is already given to us in a prior a priori kind of way and
in a manner which immediately points to the relativity or the incompleteness of our human ignorance
and, at the same time too, to the relativity or the incompleteness of our human knowledge where,
through the understanding and knowledge that we already have about the meaning or the truth of
certain things, we can then begin to move through inquiry and questions toward other possible
determinations which can begin to know about the being of other things that we have yet to understand
and know, or the being of things that we have not understood and known to the degree that we should
understand and know them. What we already understand and know always conditions the individual
questions that we would like to ask as we move toward new determinations of questions within our
individual concrete contexts. Through the genesis and determination of these new questions,
specifications of ignorance can be alluded to, known, and identified as unknowns which exist now as
known unknowns.
Secondly, with respect to the kind of wonder or curiosity which belongs to us as human beings, the
wonder which exists as a species of generating first principle, as Aristotle observed when entering into
a discussion about the science or the study of being as this is given to us in the inquiries that are
constitutive of the science of metaphysics: “all human beings by nature stretch themselves out toward
knowing [my italics].”617 Appositely and more bluntly: “all men naturally desire to know.” 618 An
interest in the existence of all things, an interest in understanding that which is the beingness or the
existence of all things, is an inclination or an orientation which is rooted in a point of origin which
refers to the inherent existence of our human wonder as a species of motivating, existential dynamic.
Citing, again, some of Aristotle's own words: “it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and
at the first began to philosophize.”619
Attending thus to this wonder in greater detail in terms of how it exists: as experienced
thus within ourselves through the inner experience which we have of ourselves, the
sense of wonder that we have admits or it knows that we have a sense of our own
ignorance that we would like to escape from. 620 By its very nature, our human wonder
anticipates that something is to be added to the data of our sensible human experience;
617Aristotle, the first line of the Metaphysics, as quoted and translated by Caldecott, Beauty in
the Word, p. 8.
618Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1, 1, 980a21-24, citing another translation of the same text.
619Aristotle, Metaphysics 1, 2, as cited by Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 3.
620For more information, see also D. C. Schindler, “Giving Cause to Wonder,” The Catholicity
of Reason (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2013), pp. 163-228.
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something is to be added to the data and content of our human imagination.621 In
wonder, in questioning, our curiosity is “never idle.” 622 A cognitive desire exists among
other possible desires and interests,623 and this desire is to be viewed and judged to exist
as a pure desire to understand and know. It differs from all irrational forms of curiosity
that would want to understand causes which are of lesser importance than those causes
which exert a more primary influence in determining the meaning and existence of
things which exist as effects that come from causes, stemming from causes.624
The existence of this natural human desire, which exists as an appetitive “seeking principle,” 625
accordingly explains why our human knowledge exists in a way which is completely natural and proper
to itself, being entirely natural from our human point of view. It is proper and right for us, as human
beings, that we should enjoy the kind of knowledge which is proper to us as human beings, a natural
knowledge of things that we can rightly acquire and enjoy and which joins us, as human beings, to
desired or intended objects which, potentially, could refer to the whole of reality or the whole of being,
this whole constituting a world or a universe which would exist as an order of truly existing things. As
Plato, Aristotle's teacher, had himself noted in an earlier context (at another time): “wonder is the
feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.”626
In order then to determine the kind of order which exists thus within the structure of our human
cognition, our fundamental point of departure is accordingly our experience of self with respect to the
kinds of questions which we find that we are asking now at this time and now at some other time,
questions which accordingly function as an internal species of mover or as interior operators that we
621J. Michael Stebbins, The Divine Initiative: Grace, World-Order, and Human Freedom in
the Early Writings of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), p. 22.
622J. A. Stewart, The Myths of Plato (London: Macmillan, 1905), p. 10. As Stewart argues to
the effect that the origins of myth and science all lie in the givenness or in the experience of human
wonder and curiosity: “'To know the cause' is matter of practical concern to the savage as well as to the
civilised man...” Whether we deal with mythological explanations or with scientific explanations, we
work with a species of “scientific” curiosity.
623Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae, q. 32, a. 8. See also Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae, q. 3, a.
8 where Aquinas links our desire for understanding and also our desire for happiness with the kind of
desire for understanding which exists among religious believers in a way which directly leads to the
emergence of theology as a scientific discipline. According to Aquinas's argument: if we happen to
know or believe that God exists, we are not happy until we should know about why or how God exists
in the way that he seems to exist for us within the world that is first given to us through our various acts
of human sensing. Granted the existence of something which exists, we want to know about how or
why it exists. We move from effects to causes. Hence, in our desire for an understanding of divine
things, we discover a trajectory that exists within ourselves which, in turn, points to a solution which
can only be had if we should speak about some kind of eventual union with God and how, in our being,
we can be joined to the kind of being which God has. Cf. Frederick E. Crowe, “The Exigent Mind:
Bernard Lonergan's Intellectualism,” Spirit as Inquiry: Studies in Honor of Bernard Lonergan, ed.
Frederick E. Crowe, S.J. (Chicago: Saint Xavier College, 1964), p. 29, n. 17.
624Summa Theologiae, 2a2ae, q. 167, a. 1 & ad 3.
625Martin Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View of Moral
Autonomy, trans. Gerald Malsbary (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), p. 32.
626Plato, Theaetetus, 155, as cited by Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 3.
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experience and find within ourselves (within our consciousness of self) in an awareness which knows
that, in some way, we are all conscious and alive, exercising a degree of self-government and selfcontrol in how we live and exist as human beings: 627 functioning and living thus not merely or only as
substances or as inert things but as agents or subjects who can also do certain things at a certain time
and who can also receive other kinds of experience at other times that can be given to us from points of
origin that exist externally to ourselves with respect to the kind of being which we happen to have and
be.
Tersely put then, as we attend to the kind of data and the verification which exists within our interior
experience of self and when we look at how Aristotle investigates the nature of scientific inquiry in the
context of the Posterior Analytics, we find that he reduces all questions to four basic types (four basic
species): (1) whether there is an X; (2) what is an X; (3) whether X is Y; and (4) why X is Y.628
However, if we examine these four questions and as we examine Aristotle's subsequent discussion, we
should find that Aristotle reduces these questions to two basic types. 629 In terms of their characteristic
objects or their proper terms, two basic types of questions point to the being or the genesis of two basic
operations of the mind that differ from each other, operations of the mind also differing from the kind
of operation which belongs to our different acts of human sensing. The first basic type of question
combines or groups together “What is an X” with “why X is Y.” 630 These two questions then reduce to
one basic type of question because these questions can only be answered by a proposed or a proffered
hypothesis which allegedly grasps and relates a number of distinct unseen elements or parts into a
relation that is itself unseen. The relation joins the parts into a distinct unseen whole. To understand
what something is, its essence, its being, or its ousia,631 requires an answer or an explanation which can
say why something exists in the way that it happens to be and exist. What questions translate into why
questions where here what means why.632 By way of an example:633 if we ask “what is a man?”, to
answer this question we must transpose, rephrase, and say: “why is this a man?” The this refers to an
experience of material or bodily parts that we can indicate to ourselves and to others through our
various acts of sensing and by means of appropriate physical gestures. However, the answer which
627An oblique reference to the possible strangeness of our human consciousness refers to how,
possibly, we can experience two kinds of consciousness within a kind of oneness which belongs to our
consciousness of self. One kind refers to the awareness of self that we have prior to the introduction or
the advent of some kind of physical or clinical death. The other kind of consciousness refers to the
experience of self that, possibly, we can have in the wake of some kind of physical or clinical death. In
the transition which allegedly occurs, our self-consciousness perdures. Our awareness of self endures
and continues and, in this awareness, a person does not cease to exist or to not believe that he or she is
alive although, on the basis of reports that have come to us from persons who have had near-death
experiences (NDEs), in the wake of physical clinical death, persons find that they begin to live within a
new dimension of existing things (another kind of ontological context). Cf. Robert Spitzer, The Soul's
Upward Yearning Clues to Our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2015), pp. 173-203.
628Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 2, 2, 89b36-90a34 as cited by Lonergan, Verbum, p. 26, n. 53.
629Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 2, 2, 89b36-90a6; Aquinas, In Aristotelis libros Posteriorum
analyticorum, 2, 1.
630Lonergan, Verbum, p. 26.
631Meynell, “On Being an Aristotelian,” Redirecting Philosophy, p. 242.
632Lonergan, Understanding and Being, p. 29.
633Lonergan, Understanding and Being, pp. 29-30.
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directly responds to a why can only be known or grasped by us and other persons through an
intervening act of understanding which transcends any givens which exist for us by way of our acts of
sense: hence, by an act of cogitating which exists as an act of understanding or, in other words, by an
“insight into sensible data” which can be conceptualized in a way which refers to the being or the
hypothesis of an unseen, invisible human soul, a soul which, as human, is other than the being of any
other kind of soul if, in fact, it is to explain why something is, in fact, a man and not some other kind of
thing (whether living or dead).
In the kind of understanding which deals with what and why questions, in the language of Aristotle and
Aquinas, this act of the intellect or this act of understanding refers to an act which exists as a “simple
apprehension” [“the first action of the intellect is the understanding of...things, by which it conceives
what something is”]634 although, in the context of his own language and the kind of analysis which he
uses to effect a transposition which moves from the conceptuality of Aristotle to a conceptuality which
is the product of his own understanding, Bernard Lonergan prefers to speak about an apprehension
which exists as a direct act of understanding. If, on the other hand however, we should choose to refer
to these kinds of acts as abstractive acts of understanding, we would then work with a designation
which refers to how these kinds of acts exist as acts of abstraction within our understanding where,
here, an intellectual or a formal component is removed or it is distinguished and separated from that
which exists as an empirical or material component. The term of this kind of intellectual act is to be
identified as a meaning or as an intelligibility that is now known for what it is as the term or as the
content of our understanding. Term accompanies act. It comes with act. It exists as a meaning or an
intelligibility, relative to its point of origin (as it comes to us from a particular, given act of
understanding), although, as a species or type of being, it can be conceptualized or, more directly and
honestly, as as species of being, it has been conceptualized within an order of metaphysical terms
which speaks about how, through inquiry, the content or the term of an act of direct understanding is
something which exists as a form. The language which exists about forms (as we find this within the
corpus of Aristotle's writings) is to be understood as a transposition: it transposes the cognitive type of
language which prefers to speak about ideas and, from there, it moves toward the being of ideas as we
move from the order of our human knowing toward the order of existing things as this exists within the
order of metaphysics (more about this later). Where, for instance, Plato speaks about separately
existing Ideas, Aristotle prefers to speak about Forms which have an eternity of their own (they exist as
idealities) even if or as they exist within the being of sensible, changing things which, as sensible
things (as bodies), are directly known by us in a way which refers to our different acts of human
sensing.
Summarizing the gist of Aristotle's thesis in a manner which points to the presence of a
qualification within the extent of Aristotle's understanding: “it is the form of a thing
which is in the intellect and not the thing itself,” where, within this context, if we should
work with both a metaphysical way of speaking and a metaphorical way of speaking, we
would speak about the migration or the transference of a form from one location to
another: through its being understood or its being grasped by us in an act of
understanding, a form is invisibly moved from the interiority of an embodied, material
thing or the interiority of an experienced, sensed body into the interiority of an
understanding intellect, an understanding mind.635 Hence, Aristotle does not speak
634Aquinas, In Aristotelis libros Posteriorum analyticorum, 1, 4.
635Giorgio Pini, “Scotus on Concepts,” unpublished paper, p. 3; John Milbank and Catherine
147
about a simple identity between the being of our intellects (the being of our
understanding) and the being of a thing which is known by our understanding. Instead,
in attending to a conception of knowing which thinks about knowing in term of a
cognitional form of identity between a knower and that which is known, an identity
which exists however as an intellectually intended identity, Aristotle is presented to us
or he is seen as the originator of this viewpoint within the philosophy of human
cognition.636 Our human knowing exists not by way of some kind of confrontation that
exists between a would be knower and something which is known but by way of a
species of identity which exists between a knower and that which is being known.
Moving on then in the context of Aristotle's analysis, the second basic type of question groups together
“whether there is an X” with “whether X is Y”: hence, questions about truth. Is this so? Is this true?
What possible truth has been grasped by us through the reception of a prior act of understanding as this
has been given to us by a prior, direct act of understanding? This distinct type of question can only be
answered by pronouncing a verdict of some kind, saying either “yes” or “no,” true or false, 637 or by
deciding not to make any kind of decision or judgment. Hence, from this, the second basic operation of
our human minds exists as the making of a rational judgment (in Aristotle's language, signified as an
act of “composition or division”).638 In other words, in an affirmative judgment, we say or declare that
Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 5.
636Linus Kpalap, “The Knower and the Known,” unpublished paper given at Sogang
University, Seoul, Korea, June 3, 2010, p. 7. See also Aristotle, De Anima, 3, 4, 429. Please note,
however, that if we delve into the earlier history of Greek philosophy as it existed prior to Socrates, in
the cognitional philosophy of Empedocles of Agrigentum (ca. 490-430 BC), we can find words and
statements which, in effect, point toward the principle of identity as this exists with respect to the
dynamics of our human cognition. Bluntly put or simply put: “like is known by like.” “All cognition
is of like by like.” Cf. Elizabeth A. Murray, “The Classical Question of Immortality in Light of
Lonergan's Explicit Metaphysics,” Lonergan Workshop 25 (2013): p. 271; W. K. C. Guthrie,
Presocratic tradition from Parmenides to Democritus, vol. 2, pp. 228-231. Although Empedocles did
not distinguish between acts of sensing and thinking (according to Aristotle's criticism of him), two
fragments forming a lengthy quotation say that knowing occurs through an identity or a sameness
between what exists as a precondition within a knower and that which exists outside a knower in
something which is being known by a given knower. Without some kind of identity between internal
and external conditions, there can be no knowing, no proper acts of human cognition. Citing some of
Empedocles's words as they have come down to us:
With earth we see earth, with water water, with air the divine air, but
with fire destructive fire, with Love Love and with Strife we see dismal
Strife; for out of these are all things formed and fitted together, and with
these they think and feel pleasure and pain.
Hence, citing Aristotle's paraphrase of Empedocles's position: “knowledge is by similars, ignorance by
dissimilars.” Cf. Guthrie, p. 229.
637Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 2, 2, 89b36-90a34; Aquinas, In Aristotelis libros Posteriorum
analyticorum, 2, 1.
638Lonergan, Verbum, p. 61; Incarnate Word, p. 391; Thomas Crean and Christopher Friel,
Metaphysics and the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas (Birmingham, England: Maryvale Institute, 2011),
148
something is so (something is true and not false); and, conversely, in a negative judgment, we would
say or declare that something is not so (something is false or something is not true). To distinguish the
intelligibility that comes to us from our acts of direct understanding from the intelligibility that comes
to us from our acts of reflective understanding, within the order of reflection which can exist for us
within the kind of reflection and science which exists within the study of metaphysics, instead of form,
we can possibly speak about the kind of being which exists as act. Act would succeed form as truth
succeeds the being of a meaning or being of an idea. In this context thus, that which exists as a species
of conceptual or formal being would be succeeded by something which exists as a species of real being
if we should choose to speak in this way about what, in fact, happens when we move from the order of
speculative understanding which exists in our “simple apprehensions” (or our “direct understanding”)
toward the kind of understanding which seems to exist if we should refer to a real difference which
exists between the kind of understanding which exists in “simple apprehension” and the kind of
understanding which exists in the reflections of judgment (“simple apprehension” versus “complex
apprehension”). If our context is an understanding of human cognition and a study of this cognition
which would exist as a science of its own, acts of reflective understanding have a nature of their own.
They differ from acts of direct understanding because of a difference which obtains between the kind of
operation which exists in acts of reflective understanding versus the kind of operation which exists in
our acts of direct understanding. While acts of direct understanding engage in acts of abstraction, acts
of reflective understanding attend to how we have moved from acts of sensing to acts of understanding
and if there exists any evidence which points to the truth of a meaning which has been grasped and
understood. Our self-reflection and an experience of difference within our consciousness of self points
to a real distinction which must exist between acts of direct understanding as this exists in “simple
apprehensions” and acts of reflective understanding which would allegedly exist through the being of
“complex apprehensions.”
As a species of qualification, however, about what has been said so far, please note thus
that, in the kind of analysis which we find in Aristotle and also in the manner of his
conceptualization and language, in our acts of judgment, a dual nature is distinguished
or two natures are indicated in a way which seems to juxtapose one nature with another.
Two natures exist instead of one nature. A synthetic, constructive element is alluded to,
on the one hand, and, on the other hand, an affirmative, declarative element. Hence,
questions exist (later questions were posed) which asked if Aristotle was successful in
clearly distinguishing between the being of these two different aspects (existing as two
distinct elements, each having its own distinct nature). 639 Did he, in fact, clearly
distinguish between acts of direct understanding and acts of reflective understanding
which exist as acts of judgment since, in Aristotle, judgment engages in two different
kinds of tasks. On the one hand, allegedly within our judgments, (1) a composition or a
p. 15. Less ambiguously with respect to the meaning of judgment and the effects or the consequences
of judgment: “To know the...relation of conformity [between one's self as a knower and a thing that is
known] is nothing else than to judge it so to be or not to be in reality.” As Aquinas works with the kind
of language, the kind of conceptuality, that he finds in Aristotle in order to speak about how judgment
exists as a second fundamental operation of our human minds: “this is to compose and divide, and
hence the intellect knows truth only in composing and dividing by its judgment.” Cf. Aquinas, Peri
Hermeneias, 1, 3, 9, as cited by Peter Hoenen, Reality and Judgment according to St. Thomas, trans.
Henry F. Tiblier (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952), pp. 4-5.
639Lonergan, Verbum, pp. 61-62.
149
putting together of different concepts occurs or, on the other hand, a separation of
concepts when we realize that some concepts should not be combined or joined with
each other. If an act of direct understanding (which, as noted, Aristotle conceptualizes
as an act of “simple apprehension”) moves through the instrumentality of an imagined
fertile, apt image (existing as a phantasm) toward a single, distinct concept or a
definition which expresses the fruit or the grasp of one's prior act of understanding (in
Aristotle's understanding of the nature or the intelligibility of all our direct acts of
understanding as we move from the being and the order of sense to the order and the
being of understanding: ta men oun eidê to noêtikon en tois phantasmasi noei; the
“intellect grasps forms in images”),640 a fortiori, if we should speak in this way about the
being of a “simple apprehension,” then, to a greater degree, if we are to speak about how
two or more concepts can be put together to reveal a greater unity or a link that exists
between these concepts (leading to a larger, more general concept), then, in order to
identify and to distinguish this species of intellectual act, we should or we must speak
about the being of a “complex apprehension.” These exist allegedly as judgments.
These judgments introduce an order which should exist among our ideas and concepts.
However, if, for us, the intellectual object is not simply the apprehension of a conceptual
complex unity but if, in fact, it is an understanding which wants to declare or know
about the reality or the truth of one or more concepts (whether we should speak about
simple concepts or about complex concepts), then, within this larger, greater, more
demanding context, in Aristotle, a second understanding of judgment presents itself to
us in terms of how it seeks to posit a relation or a synthesis which has been grasped by
us in our prior acts of understanding. The object here is not essentially a synthesis, the
apprehension or the grasp of a synthesis which points to a higher or a wider
understanding of things but, instead, the taking of an already understood synthesis and
further acts which would work toward an act of understanding which can conclude or
move toward a declaration of its reality or a declaration of its truth (or which can deny
the factuality of its reality or the factuality of its truth). This is so. This is not so. Either
way, in affirmation or negation, a truth is known and it is grasped by us as known. In
our awareness, a truth is known in terms of its reasonableness or cogency: hence, its
being, its reality. The consciousness or experience that we have of evidence points to
the being or the reality of a truth and, as an effect which would thus follow from this,
with Aquinas, we would say about ourselves that “knowledge exists as one of the effects
of truth” [cognitio est quidam veritatis effectus].641 The one comes from the other.
In Aristotle thus, depending on which passages or texts are being studied, a clear
distinction does not exist between that which exists as understanding and that which
exists as judgment (acts of direct understanding versus acts of reflective understanding)
because judgment, in the language of “composition and division,” resembles acts of
direct understanding in terms of the unities which are being grasped and understood by
them (by our acts of understanding): unities which transcend pluralities and
multiplicities as these exist initially among the givens of the data of our sense
perception. However, in Aristotle, the being of judgments is such that they also seek to
determine if a correspondence exists between that which exists as a form of mental
640Aristotle, De Anima, 3, 7, 431b, as cited by Sala, Lonergan and Kant, p. 161, n. 72.
641Aquinas, De veritate, q. 1, a. 1, as cited by Sala, Lonergan and Kant, p. 147, n. 71.
150
synthesis within ourselves and that which exists as a species of real synthesis within the
being of truly existing things (the being of truly existing objects). A real distinction
accordingly exists between the type of answer that is given to this kind of question and
the type of answer which is given to a question which asks about how concepts can be
related to each other in ways that could lead to the understanding and eventually the
expression of a new, more general concept.
On the basis then of this real distinction and as a species of new first principle, in the
later work of Aquinas and also in the later work of Bernard Lonergan, clarifications
were introduced into the thinking and the conceptuality of Aristotle's analysis in a
manner which attempted to introduce degrees of clarity that had not been too obvious to
anyone or to most persons who had attempted earlier to read into the corpus of
Aristotle's philosophy in order to find, within it, a coherent understanding about how
things exist within the reality of the world within which we all live (a reality which
includes the kind of being which we have and which we are as human beings where our
kind of being includes the kind of knowing which belongs to us as human beings and
which does not belong to other kinds of living being).
From an incoherent
understanding about the nature of our human judgment (from an incoherent
understanding about the nature of our human cognition), we can thus wonder if, for
some in the subsequent history of reflection within philosophy, the result has been a
defective, incoherent understanding about the nature of existing things where, in
metaphysics, we turn to this science in order to move toward a comprehensive or a
general understanding about the nature of all existing things qua the nature of being in
general as it applies to all things which enjoy some form of real existence. What can be
implied about the nature of our world if our point of departure is a particular belief or a
particular understanding about the nature of our human knowing, an understanding
which could be lacking in the degree of rationality which should belong to it?642
Moving on thus from here, with respect principally to judgment and on the basis of the kind of
rationality which would seem to exist in our different acts of judgment (which exist as acts of
understanding), we can begin then to understand in a more exact manner why the kind of realism which
belongs to Aristotle's understanding of human cognition is such that it can be differentiated and
referred to in terms which speak about how it exists as a critical form of realism, Aristotle existing
(reputedly) as the father of critical realism.643
Talk about a critical form of realism immediately
suggests or points to a naïve form of realism since the meaning of one kind of realism immediately
suggests the other and so, if it said or if it is argued that our human knowing is characterized by a
critical form of realism, we can understand why, as a species, naïve realism is not to be attributed to the
kind of cognition which properly belongs to us as human beings. It does not mesh or jive with the
nature of our human cognition and all the operations which properly belong to it although a naïve form
of realism can be ascribed to the functioning of our human cognition if we should hold to a truncated
understanding of our human cognition or if we should advert to truncated forms of cognitional activity
as these can exist among us within the lives of other human beings (persons that we may know or
642Randall, Aristotle, p. 6.
643Anthony M. Matteo, Quest for the Absolute The Philosophical Vision of Joseph Maréchal
(DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1992), p. 11, citing a conclusion that comes to us
from the thought of Joseph Maréchal.
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sometimes ourselves when we think back and reflect on cognitional operations that we have been
engaging in). By way of a fuller explanation:
To understand how we can move from a thesis about naïve realism to a thesis about
critical realism, with Aristotle, let us distinguish between our acts of sensing and our
acts of understanding. Suppose at the start (as a premiss) that an act of sensing is unlike
an act of understanding. Whether we move from an act of understanding toward an act
of sensing or from an act of sensing toward an act of understanding, one does what the
other is not able to do. However if we should suppose that understanding is akin to what
we do in our various acts of human sensing, then, if we attend to our acts of human
sensing (given allegedly their primacy) and if we should want to know if something is
truly known as real (if it truly exists as a reality), it would seem that we would have to
engage in the following simple three step procedure. First, (1) we would look at
“reality” as this exists outside of ourselves (as it somehow exists for us in an external
kind of way) and then, secondly, (2) we would look back at an idea or a datum that
somehow exists within ourselves (within our cognitive consciousness of self): possibly
within our minds or possibly within our perceptions as we experience these perceptions.
At this point, we do not distinguish between that which exists within our minds and that
which exists within our perceptions. The idea or the datum that we have on our side, as
it exists within our minds or our perception, allegedly reflects or it should reflect the
content of that which we have been seeing or that which we have been sensing through
our various acts of human sensing. Then, third and lastly, (3) we would compare these
two contents with each other to see if there is a fit between them (a congruence between
the two). The realism or the reality of our human knowing is explained or it is reduced
here to a criterion which comes to us from the kind of performance or the kind of
activity that belongs to our different acts of human sensing, a realism which is then
taken and applied to all of our cognitive acts. Hence, within this tradition of philosophic
analysis, we have the species of realism which exists for us as a specification of naïve
realism since, within this context, no real distinction is drawn between the extroverted,
empirical kind of realism that properly belongs to our various acts of human sensing and
the introverted, self-reflective kind of realism which properly belongs to us in our
various acts of understanding (as, interiorily or inwardly, through the asking of various
questions, our acts of direct understanding move us or they dispose us toward the kind
of reception which exists in our experiencing and receiving acts of reflective
understanding that could be given to us and then, from this, the consequent emergence
of judgments and evaluations which would then distinguish between the being of
notions and ideas which happen to be interesting and arresting although false and these
same notions or ideas which happen to be true). Naive forms of realism are to be
associated with acts of human sensing; critical forms of realism, with acts of
understanding (principally when these acts of understanding exist as the reflective kind
of understanding which exists in our acts of human judgment).644
644For a fuller understanding of naïve realism and that which exists as critical realism, see
Étienne Gilson, Methodical Realism, trans. Philip Trower (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), p. 21;
Matteo, Philosophical Vision of Maréchal, pp. 8-12. As Matteo proceeds initially to argue his case (p.
20), in the opposition which exists between the kind of knowing which exists in ultra-realism and the
kind of knowing which exists in nominalism, in ultra-realism we have a way of speaking or a
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To sum up then, on the basis of Aristotle's philosophy of inquiry in science and philosophy, two
distinct kinds of questions accordingly intend two distinct kinds of object which, in turn, point to the
being of two distinct kinds of cognitive, mental operation (grounding the being of two distinct kinds of
mental operation). Through the mediation of our questions, distinct acts go with distinct objects. We
say that distinct acts intend distinct objects. Always, with respect to how these two acts differ from
each other, the kind of distinction which exists between them is never to be understood as a species of
separation or as a disjunction between them since simple apprehension or direct understanding, as a
first species of intellectual act, conditions or we say that it leads us toward acts of reflective
understanding which would exist as judgments, these judgments existing as a second species of
philosophy which is grounded in the beliefs and assumptions of naïve realism - a way of speaking
which holds that forms, essences, or universals can only be known by us in a manner which exists apart
from our acts of understanding, acts of understanding which can belong to us as cogitating human
subjects.
Through another form of contrast however, which can add to our understanding of naïve realism
in terms of how naïve realism differs from the specifics of critical realism, in his An Introduction to
Bernard Lonergan (Victoria: Sid Harta Publishers, 2010), pp. 172-174, Peter Beer distinguishes
between critical realism, on the one hand, and the being of dogmatic realism, on the other hand.
Critical realism and dogmatic realism both admit, as a cognitional fact, that reality is known by us
through the mediation of our true judgments (respectively speaking as we move from one type of
realism to the other: in critical realism, judgments refer to a knowledge of reality which is given to each
of us or which is proportionate to our human acts of cognition; in dogmatic realism, other judgments
refer to a knowledge of divine things that is given to us and which is mediated down to us by way of
our submission and our adherence to the truth of the official teaching of the Catholic Church as this
refers to truths of divine revelation and an order of real objects that is then known by us through the
truths of faith which we profess, accept, and believe as confessing Catholics). Cf. Giovanni B. Sala,
“1. The Encyclical Letter “Fides et ratio”: A Service to Truth,” Vernuft und Glaube, p. 47, n, 7.
However, in a manner which differs from the kind of reasons that can be given by the Church's official
teaching and through the obedience and submission of dogmatic realists, critical realists can give
reasons which point to the validity of judgments which exist in an individual, personal way. While
naive realists point to sensible configurations of one kind or another as their point of individual
reference, critical realists point to reasons or understandings that have been understood by them and
which they have put into communicable concepts.
Sounding another note: with respect to a positive relation which can exist between differing
admixtures of naïve and dogmatic realism, in order to move from the order of understanding and belief
into the kind of order which is conditioned by parameters and variables that refer to space and time
(terms or experiences which belong to our acts of human sensing), dogmatic realists will picture or
imagine that which they believe and accept as the truths of their religious faith and, as a consequence,
this picturing and imagining will point to the kind of imagery that we typically find within the visual
arts which officially the Church encourages for religious reasons that directly relate to her sense of
mission and purpose: (1) in order to express what she believes and professes for the sake of the good
which can be encouraged among her own members and believers and (2) in order to move the minds
and hearts of other persons who might not know about the truths of the Church's Catholic faith, stirring
them in their desires, perhaps creating a new openness or a new willingness that they had not existed
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intellectual act which, in turn, when given, shapes or imparts to our human knowing a unity and a
completeness that, otherwise, it would not have as we move from our initial experiencing that is given
to us in our acts of sense toward the kind of experiencing that is given to us in our acts of
understanding.
The interrelation which exists thus between our acts of sensing and our acts of understanding
accordingly points to a species of mutual, reciprocal priority or a species of mutual, reciprocal causality
which best explains how our sensing, understanding, and judging exist as cognitive acts which interact
and relate with each other in a way which points to the being of a complex type of intelligible unity.
These acts all rely on each other in a context which moves from our initial acts of sensing toward our
later acts of understanding and then, in judgment, back toward new acts of human sensing if evidence
within our acts and data of sensing is to be found and alluded to for any affirmations of being that are
desired through the kind of reflection which belongs to us in the making of prospective judgments. 645
To the degree that our human understanding begins with our acts of human sensing and the kind of data
that is given to us through our various acts of human sensing and to the degree too that our acts of
understanding find meaning within this data of sense, to the same degree also, our acts of reflective
understanding must return to our acts of sensing and the kind of data which belong to our acts of
human sensing if we are to know about the relevance or the bite which should allegedly exist within the
grasp of our initial acts of understanding: the groundedness or the rootedness which should allegedly
exist and which must exist if a given act of understanding is to be known by us as a truthful or telling
act of understanding or if it is to be judged (more moderately) as an apt or likely act of understanding
(the best that we can possibly have within a given, restricted context). Whether true or apt, whatever, if
a given judgment concludes to the being of truth or the being of aptness or suitability, then that which
is known by us through a direct act of understanding is said to sufficiently explain or to correctly
explain why something exists in the way that it happens to exist (according to how we have understood
it) because, between our acts of sensing and our acts of understanding, a positive connection is to be
alluded to, identified, and communicated to others in a way that should elicit the same kind of
verification and confirmation which exists when other persons attempt to make the same judgments
which we have also made or judgments that, perhaps, others have also made.
With respect to how direct acts of understanding lead to reflective acts of understanding and the nature
of reflective acts of understanding: always, in our judgments, by the kind of self-reflection which exists
in judgment, we refer to how, in a given case and context, we have moved from the experience of a
datum in our sensing toward the experience of an idea in our understanding. If, through our first acts of
inquiry, we have moved or are moving from the givens of sense toward an apt image that we have
imaginatively fashioned from the prior givens of sense and which, in turn, points to a meaning or an
understanding which is being suggested to us by the pregnancy or the suggestiveness of an entertained
apt image (the order which exists within a pivotal apt image pointing to another order which is to be
grasped by us in a direct act of understanding), similarly, through the kind of inquiry which exists in
our subsequent acts of reflection, we move from the givens of our understanding toward the givens that
can be found by us in new possible acts of human sensing: either adverting to our prior acts of human
sensing (possibly repeating them in a new way) or possibly moving and engaging in other new acts of
human sensing which, before, had not been known or experienced. The order which exists within the
apprehension of an initial act of understanding (a direct act of understanding) points to a chain of
before but which, now, they can begin to have.
645Meynell, “On Being an Aristotelian,” Redirecting Philosophy, p. 258.
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reasoning that has moved from prior acts of sense through to direct acts of understanding and, if,
through our self-reflection, we can identify this chain of reasoning as we can find it and as we can
retrace it within the data of our cognitional awareness of self, from this, we can be directed toward new
acts and data of human sensing which would exist for us as apprehensions of evidence that can be
specified in a manner which relates it to an idea whose truthfulness is being shown and known, either
now with a degree of certainty or with a degree of probability which points to the likeliness of a given
truth.
By way of a useful illustration, please distinguish here between the kind of evidence which initially led
to a Copernican understanding of the universe in the 16 th Century and the acceptance of a heliocentric
view of the world in the 17th Century and the kind of evidence that emerged in the 19 th Century which
served to turn the heliocentrism of the world into a truth which is no longer probable because it is now
known with a necessity and a certitude which points to its undeniability.
To understand how a transition can occur between determinations of probability as these
can exist within our scientific judgments and determinations of certitude which can also
exist within our judgments, see Thomas S. Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution:
Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. Prior to the 19th Century,
it was not possible to take measurements from the earth to a given star or other planetary
object which could determine if, in some way, the earth has moved, relative to the taking
of readings that are taken at different times. If the earth is stationary, no difference in
one's angle of vision should be possible. But, if the earth moves and is not stationary,
one's angle of vision should vary if, at one time, one attends to a planetary object and if
one then attends to the same object at another time. Readings which could determine
differences in angle only became possible in the 19th Century and this development or
progress in the kind of evidence which we can have at any given time points to
differences in rational ground which can exist within our judgments. An ingress or a
collection of probabilities points to an experience of judgment which can be experienced
as certain (virtually certain; hence, entirely rational) although, on the other hand and
strictly speaking, a real distinction must always exist between that which exists as a
probability and that which exists as a certainty even if we must admit that, within the
data of our cognitive experience, an accumulation of probabilities will always tend to
lead us toward apprehensions of truth and knowledge that are regarded as certain and
not probable.
In either case thus, whether we should deal with probabilities or with certainties, perhaps for the first
time, in a reflective act of understanding (in a judgment), the truth of an idea is being known by us at a
given time and this change in us immediately points to a growth in the understanding and knowledge
which now personally belongs to us as human knowers. Or, in other words, within this context of
judgment, if we should refer to the kind of personal experience which exists within our newly
emerging, immanently generated knowledge of things as this exists for us for the first time, the truth of
an idea is not known simply because or merely because it is believed to be true or because it is assumed
or presumed to be true if we are then to ask new questions that could lead us to newer acts of
understanding. Its truth is now known by us in an inward fashion because of an intellectual kind of
proceeding which exists within ourselves in a judgment, a proceeding which properly belongs to the
being of our rational consciousness and the experience that we have of this same consciousness (a
consciousness which differs from our sensible, sensing consciousness and from the kind of intellectual
155
consciousness which belongs to how we experience the reception of an idea that has been grasped by
us in an act of understanding). As apt images trigger acts of direct understanding, apprehensions of
evidence trigger acts of reflective understanding which posit the reality or the truth of an understood
idea. In the kind of proceeding which exists in the proceeding or in the emergence of an inner
awareness which exists as the revelation of a conclusion, a realization or a verdict of some kind is
interiorily uttered in terms of how we are to speak to ourselves about that which we have come to
understand and know.
In the general scheme of things which accordingly exists within Aristotle's understanding of human
cognition, everything begins with the givens of sense and a first species of conscious act which exists
as our acts of human sensing, a contention which can be proved if, with Aristotle, we attend to how we
experience ourselves as we engage in our various acts of human cognition. In our experience of self,
we should notice that our knowing always begins with our differing acts of human sensing and the
givens that belong to our differing acts of human sensing. Bluntly put in the kind of language which
Aristotle uses: “if one perceived nothing one would learn and understand nothing.” 646 Art [technē] and
science [epistēmē] “arise from sense-perception,”647 from an apprehension of particulars in sense
perception since, from these particulars, from our understanding, we can then move toward something
which exists as a general principle. Citing a simple example that comes to us from Aristotle: in the
matter of our observations, looking about, we notice that a skilled pilot is the best pilot of a moving
ship and then, in another context, we also notice that a skilled charioteer is always the best charioteer to
manage and drive a chariot. Hence, on the basis of an initial experience of these particulars, we can
surmise and move toward a species of general conclusion or a general principle which would simply
say that a skilled man is always the best person to have to do any particular activity. 648 Apprehensions
of particularity yield to apprehensions of generality in an orientation and a shift that points to our acts
and data of human sensing as a fundamental point of departure for the kind of order which belongs to
all the acts of our human cognition since, as Aristotle argues, “if some perception is wanting, it is
necessary for some understanding to be [also] wanting.” 649 From our experience and the induction of
particulars and only from this induction, only then can we move toward a possible apprehension of
universal truths although, as Aristotle notes in the context and manner of his analysis, “it is impossible
to get an induction without perception [without our acts of perception which exist as our acts of human
646Aristotle, De Anima, 432a6, tr. Hugh Lawson-Tancred (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), p.
210, quoted in Tim Lynch, “Human Knowledge: Passivity, Experience, and Structural Actuation: An
Approach to the Problem of the A Priori,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 17 (1999): 142. This
same passage is translated by J. A. Smith in The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford
Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984) as “no one
can learn or understand anything in the absence of sense.”
647Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 2, 19, 100a5-11, trans. Hugh Tredennick (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 259.
648Aristotle, Topics, 1, 1; 100a25-100b23; 1, 12; 105a10-19, as cited by Berman, Law and
Revolution, pp. 133-134, citing Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: 1941),
p. 188; p. 198.
649Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 1, 17, 81a38; Lynch, p. 142, n. 31. See also Michael P.
Maxwell, Jr., “Lonergan’s Critique of Aristotle’s Notion of Science,” Lonergan Workshop: Lonergan’s
Openness: Polymorphism, Postmodernism, and Religion, vol. 18, ed. Fred Lawrence (Boston:
Lonergan Institute, 2005): 161.
156
sensing].”650
In another way of speaking which points to how, in Aristotle, a transition moves from the order of
human description to the order of human explanation, if we should want to go into detail about the kind
of knowing which initially exists in our different acts of human sensing according to the way of
thinking and speaking that comes to us from various texts which belong to the corpus of Aristotle's
writings, it can be noticed that, in his Metaphysics, Aristotle reiterates a thesis which says that our
knowledge of particulars comes to us from the kind of knowing which exists within our different acts
of human sensing. To us, from them, we have “the most authoritative knowledge of particulars.” 651
Sense knows particulars in a manner which refers to how they exist in an external outward manner
(given the extroversion which essentially belongs to our acts of human sensing when objects are
perceived to exist in a way which is somehow external to us in our being as sensing subjects). We
think here about the being of descriptive traits which exist as descriptive properties or which exist as
descriptive conjugates. In the kind of language that comes to us from the Aristotelian tradition, these
traits exist as “external accidents.” In his Latin, Aquinas speaks about exteriorum accidentium.652
Examples which can be cited refer to how we experience certain things in terms of their “whiteness,”
their “sweetness,” their “hardness,” and so on and so forth.653
From sense thus and as a perpetuation of everything which is known in sense and which belongs to
sense, from all our different acts of human sensing, as a later, subsequent point of departure, everything
else follows in terms of our acts of memory and recollection and, from our memory and recollection, an
anticipation of how things should be or what we will possibly find: 654 we can grow in the extent of our
life experience and in the reach and depth of our practical knowledge and wisdom; we can acquire
technological skills and knowhow; and we can move toward the possibility of a form of scientific
knowledge that is only interested in understanding the truth of things before any other questions can
arise about how we should respond to the truth of things that we have come to understand and know.655
To explain these matters in a manner which attempts to move from the order of description toward a
way of speaking which proffers a species of suitable explanation (an adequate understanding): in the
Confessions of St. Augustine, St. Augustine speaks about these categories of Aristotle in a way which
reveals their descriptive, anticipative, heuristic character as this can be derived by how we can analyze
our ordinary linguistic usage in terms of how subjects and verbs relate to each other (how they can be
said to relate to each other). From an understanding of grammar and the kind of order or the kind of
structure which exists in our human speech, from there, we can move toward a species of predication
that can be described in terms which would refer to the kind of description which exists for us as
scientific description and how, possibly, from the givens of a scientific description, we can then move
toward the givens or the order of a scientific explanation. Scientific explanation is preceded by
scientific description, one good conditioning the emergence of a second good. Quoting own
Augustine's words as they come to us from the text of the Confessions:
650Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 1, 18, 81b1-6.
651Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1, 981b10-1. See also William B. Stevenson, “The Problem of
Trinitarian Processions in Thomas’s Roman Commentary,” The Thomist 64 (2000): 621-622.
652Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 10, a. 6, ad 2; 2, p. 29; Summa Contra Gentiles, 4, 11, 15.
653Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 54.
654Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 10, a. 2.
655Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1, 1, 980a22-982a2.
157
The book [The Ten Categories of Aristotle] seemed to me to speak clearly enough of
substances, such as a man is, and of what are in them, such as a man’s figure; of what
quality he is; his stature; how many feet tall he is; his relationships, as whose brother he
is; where he is placed; when he was born; whether he stands or sits; whether he is shod
with shoes or armed; whether he does something or has something done to him; and the
innumerable things that are found in these nine categories, of which I have set down
some examples, or in the category of substance.656
In his Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, in the context of his own day, in a manner which
resembles the teaching of Augustine, Bernard Lonergan speaks about Aristotle’s ten categories in a
way which also attests to their heuristic descriptive character:
A naturalist will assign the genus, species, and instance (substance) of an animal, its size
and weight (quantity), its color, shape, abilities, propensities (quality), its similarities to
other animals and its differences from them (relation), its performance and
susceptibilities (action and passion), its habitat and seasonal changes (place and time), its
mode of motion and rest (posture), and its possession of such items as claws, talons,
hooves, fur, feathers, horns (habit).657
However, in his Understanding and Being, an explanation is given about how Aristotle could have
arrived at the categories that he, in fact, gave in the listing which he provides within his Ten
Categories, an understanding that we can replicate within the context of our own personal experience:
We arrive at Aristotle’s categories most simply by going into the woods, meeting
animals, and asking, What kind of an animal is this? How big is it? What is its color?
What relations does it have? and so on. They are categories of descriptive knowledge,
and descriptive knowledge is science in a preliminary stage.658
In his logical treatise, the Categories, sometimes cited as the Ten Categories, after distinguishing
between a knowledge of the meanings of words and a knowledge of judgments that are made with the
help of words or through the use of words, in, allegedly, an exhaustive set of 10 categories, Aristotle
lists 10 general items in speech which we can use to define any given thing or all manner of things.
These consist of substance (a thing or a thingness which exists as the primary or basic category, all
other categories referring to it, and 9 accidents (attributes or conjugates) which belong or which inhere
within the being of a given substance or thing. They determine that which is a substance or a thing as it
exists objectively within the being of a larger, extra-mental world (the world of things which exists
beyond our own thinking and understanding), substance being the primary category that all else
supposes and presupposes. Accidents consist of: quantity, quality, relation (for example, "He is a
656Augustine, Confessions, 4, 28, as cited in The Confessions of St. Augustine, trans. John K.
Ryan (New York: Doubleday, 1960), p. 110.
657Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, p. 420.
658Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Understanding and Being: The Halifax Lectures on Insight, eds.
Elizabeth A. Morelli and Mark D. Morelli; rev and aug. by Frederick E. Crowe with the collaboration
of Elizabeth A. Morelli, Mark D. Morelli, Robert M. Doran, and Thomas V. Daly (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2000), p. 199.
158
father"), place, time or date, position, state (for example, "He is armed"), action, and passion. These
categories all possess an “external” ontological aspect (they are endowed with an ontological
significance and determination) and so, as we have already noted in the context of Aristotle's realist
understanding of human cognition, they are not to be understood as referring to some kind of purely
logical intra-mental subjective schema as this can exist within us or as it allegedly exists within the data
or the experience of ourselves in our experience of human thinking and knowing.
With respect to the kind of difference which exists between a substance and any accidents or categories
which can apply to it in ways that can indicate what kind of substance exists in a given context, because
accidents come and go with respect to how a given thing or substance exists, for this reason on this
basis, in Aristotle, a real distinction (as opposed to a material or linguistic difference and an ideational,
conceptual difference) exists between the nature or the intelligibility of a thing or substance and the
nature or the intelligibility of an accident. 659 In other words, the kind of reality which belongs to one is
not the kind of reality which belongs to the other. Compared to the being of that which exists as
accidental attributes or as accidental events, the nature or the intelligibility of a thing or a substance is
something which tends to endure through time and space. It does not come and go as accidents come
and go (things or substances are stable, relative to the being of accidents) although, with respect to the
being of accidental properties, proper accidents in their being are to be distinguished from the being of
incidental accidents. By attending to the nature of a given thing and by understanding the nature of a
given thing, we can begin to understand why some accidents are to be regarded as normal and proper to
it (they exist as substantial accidents) and why other accidents are to be regarded as incidental or as
purely circumstantial. For instance, the having of bodily hair for human beings is a proper accident (it
is a proper attribute for us) although, possibly, a human being can exist in a way which is without any
hair. The absence of hair points to the presence of a defect: a nature which is defective versus a nature
which is intact and healthy. But, on the other hand, hair color, relative to the being of a substance or
thing, is an attribute or an accident which is not proper or essential to it (it exists as a circumstantial
accident) although, in relation to the being or the givenness of our bodily hair, in this case, it would be
a proper or an essential attribute. It is a proper accident. The kind of relation which exists between one
thing and another thing (a given accident or attribute as it pertains to this other accident or attribute)
determines how accidents are to classified and understood in terms of the nature of their importance
(their rating).
However, when Aristotle moves from an account of descriptive categories toward an understanding of
science which thinks in terms of causes and the necessity of a knowledge which should always think in
terms of an order of complementary causes that are distinct from each other (material, formal,
instrumental, and final causes;660 causes which distinguish between the givens and terms of sense and
the givens and terms of understanding), he moves from a common sense kind of knowledge toward a
notion of science which attends to the being of explanations and to the necessity and the primacy of
explanations. Explanations transcend descriptions, the being of our descriptions. Science is true or real
knowledge through a knowledge of causes (apprehending the being of causes, distinguishing the kind
of being which belongs to them, identifying the differences which exist between causes, converting
one's understanding of causes into speakable, definable words and concepts, and then moving toward
659Bernard J. F. Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, trans. Michael G. Shields, eds.
Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), p. 193.
660Aristotle, Physics, 2, 3-5; Metaphysics, 1, 3-7, as cited by McCarthy, Authenticity as Selftranscendence, p. 61.
159
verification and judgments which can then affirm the reality and being of the causes which have been
initially understood and grasped).661
In conclusion then, with respect to the kind of understanding which comes to us from Aristotle about
the nature of our human cognition, an order of acts encompasses an order of operations which bind
logical and non-logical operations with each other in a way or in a relation which thinks in terms of a
unity amid many diversities or which joins dialectical aspects with complementary aspects in a manner
which reduces everything to an understood whole. Acts of human sensing differ from our acts of
human understanding. Yet, each plays a role which points to a species of self-transcendence which
exists within the course or the order of acts which is constitutive of our human cognition. As human
knowers, we transcend ourselves whenever, through our understanding and our knowledge of truths,
we are joined to a world of real objects which exist independently of whether or not they are being
known by us through our different acts of reflective understanding (our judgments which can determine
if an ideal object exists as only as ideal object or if it also exists as a real, true object). The simplicity
which characterizes the kind of knowing that belongs to animals is surpassed by the differentiated kind
of knowing which belongs to us as human beings given how, in metaphysical terms, as human beings,
we exist as a union of body and a species of soul (our souls including a rational or a reflective element)
and how, on the basis of this interacting complex unity, we can cogitate in a manner which reflects the
order of being that is constitutive of us in terms of how we exist as human beings. Function follows
form or, in other words, how we know is determined by how we happen to exist and be.
In the realist understanding of human cognition that we accordingly have from Aristotle, scientific
proofs are to be regarded as a distinct species of human cognition (existing as a distinct entity). As
cognitional events, they can be separated from other kinds of cognitive act within as these acts exist
within our human knowing. As noted or as we have previously suggested, these proofs exist for us
within the data or the consciousness that we have of ourselves engaging in our acts of cognition
although, admittedly, things exist within reality not always in terms of how we could be anticipating
them with respect to the nature of their existence, nor always in terms of how we could be wishing to
conceive of them if we should want to use words and to construct definitions for purposes of
communication (either with ourselves or with others).
In the transition which exists in Aristotle as we move from acts of sensing toward our acts of
understanding, universals do not exist as separately we might want to think of them or to conceive of
them by way of our acts of understanding as we move from our direct acts of understanding through to
our reflective acts of understanding and then, from there, on into the kind of articulation which exists as
our acts of definition and conceptualization (despite Plato’s views on the separate kind of being which
should be ascribed to the being of universals). Amid these differences however, both philosophers hold
to the reality of that which would exist as a species of universal. That which is really real exists as
some kind of universal and the reality of universals is reached through the kind of universalizing
activity which belongs to us as human beings in our cognition where, in Aristotle, our intelligence
reaches universally existing things by way initially of our different acts of human sensing (from our
different acts of human sensing): through a kind of application which exists as we move through
inquiry toward our reasoning from our different acts of human sensing and as we also move from our
reasoning and our understanding back toward our acts of sensing and the givens of sense. By way of
the kind of reception or passivity which exists within us in receiving or experiencing our acts of
661Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1, 1, 981a15-981b13.
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understanding (differing from the kind of reception or passivity which exists with respect to our
different acts of sense), a universalization of things always occurs in and through our acts of
understanding. A particular knowledge of things that is sensate in nature (according to the kind of
being which it has and the kind of being which we are) is converted by our cogitating, our
understanding, and our knowing into a universalized knowledge of the same things that, as knowledge,
is both intelligent and intelligible and not sensing and sensible. More to the point in terms of the
objectivity of our human knowledge, a datum or an object of sense or that which has been sensed (as an
other, as an externally existing thing) is turned through understanding (from direct understanding to
reflective understanding) into another kind of externally existing thing: something which exists now as
an understood known and which enjoys, in its own way, a form of external existence if, admittedly, it
exists as the intelligibility of an externally existing thing.
Simply put, using the kind of language which has been traditionally used, the sensible is also the
intelligible or that which is sensible is that which is intelligible (or, alternatively, that which can be
sensed is also that which can be understood) because or, through the mediation of a species of ordering
which exists within the work or the effects of our understanding - the self-transcending kind of ordering
which we have as human beings and which is to be identified with the kind of understanding which
properly belongs to us as human beings - the species of ordering which exists within our knowing
participates in and, at the same time, it also reflects or it mirrors the parameters and the assembly of
elements which belongs to a like order which exists within a greater world of truly existing things. The
intelligibility of our understanding, as understanding, combines or it also belongs to the intelligibility of
real objects as these exist within a greater world of externally existing things. The subjectivity of
human knowing is such that it exists with an orientation that is inherently directed toward an
experience of objectivity which would then serve as a point of departure for the later study of the
science of metaphysics and hence the study of the being of all existing things which is the proper object
of the kind of inquiry which belongs to metaphysics as a discipline that differs from the study of human
cognition. In Aristotle and also in Plato, in the experience of our understanding, a fundamental oneness
exists between that which exists as the Mind and that which exists as the Cosmos. If a real distinction
exists between the order of the cosmos and the disorder of a chaos, similarly, a real distinction exists
between the ordering of our minds and the disorder which commonly belongs to the data of our sense
perception.
Aristotle's understanding of metaphysics
“Aristotle's metaphysics of matter and form corresponds to a psychology of sense and insight.”662
If we should move now from how Aristotle understands the nature of human cognition to how he
understands the nature of existing things in general, the science of metaphysics for Aristotle has been
traditionally understood and designated as a discipline which is best signified if we should refer to it as
Aristotle had understood it: in Aristotle's own words, metaphysics as First Philosophy [Prōtē
philosophia], metaphysics as Wisdom [Sophia], or metaphysics as First Science [Prōtē epistēmē].663
Begin with a fundamental question which asks “What is being?” [tí to on] and then, from there, in order
to understand the nature or the essence of being (what it is for something to be), begin initially with an
662Lonergan, Insight 677/700, as cited by Sala, Lonergan and Kant, p. 160, n. 65; cited also
by McCarthy, Authenticity as Self-transcendence, p. 62.
663Vasilis Politis, Aristotle and the Metaphysics (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 2.
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understanding of things that exist about ourselves, things that we know about whose existence we do
not question or doubt. How do these things exist? How have they moved into a condition of existence
from a prior condition of not existing? Why are the beings beings? Why are the beings that be things
which be or things which exist?664 Determine thus the first causes or the first principles of things which
exist qua their existence and then, from there, apply or generalize these causes or principles to the
entire universe of existing things (to the being of things that we do not directly know about, in a step
which moves from a familiarity with known knowns to that which exists as known unknowns). On the
basis of this knowledge, as a further step, move then toward the kind of understanding which is
applicable and which is possible for us if we should want to engage in the work of lesser, subsidiary
sciences and disciplines where their object of study is always something which exists as a
differentiation of being or, alternatively, in other words, as a specification of being. For instance, the
science of botany studies the being of plants although, in the kind of being which belongs to plants, a
kind of being exists which participates in that which is the beingness or the existence of all existing
things. As we have been noting, it is entirely natural for us as human beings and it is quite proper for
us as human beings that we would want to understand the being and the existence of all things as we
move from understanding the being of a given thing toward possibly understanding the being of some
other kind of thing.
At this point thus, on a methodological note: the differences which exist within being in turn explain
why, for each science, a different method of inquiry is to be alluded to since, among all the particular
sciences, each science works from its own distinct set of first principles in a manner which is peculiar
to it. A given set of first principles points to a distinct mode of scientific procedure. 665 If, for instance
thus, a certain type of induction is peculiar to the science of biology and another type of induction is
peculiar to the science of zoology, the kind of inquiry which belongs to the pursuit of mathematics
points to a mode of inquiry which acknowledges the primacy of deduction (deduction rather than
induction). Instead of first principles which come from the data of our sense perception in a primary
way (in some way, these principles are derived from the data of our sense perception), in the pursuit
and practice of mathematics, first principles come from the inventiveness and the ingenuity of
mathematical minds when these minds are in a condition of act.666 The data of sense perception, in this
context, play a lesser role (an incidental or a subsidiary role within the discipline of mathematics) if, in
contrast, we attend to the kind of role which belongs to induction and the emergence of the lesser
sciences of man and nature which exist in a manner which differs from the kind of inquiry that belongs
to the practice of mathematics).
However, these things being said, even and as if we admit that, with Aristotle, the beginnings of
metaphysics lie in the power or the force of our natural human wonder and a desire that wants to
introduce clarity and understanding into an obscure puzzling situation (responding to a question what
asks about “What is being?”), it is to be admitted also that, as given to us for our reading and study,
Aristotle’s metaphysics was experienced by very many persons to be something which was very
obscure in all of its detailed elaborateness even if its purpose or function was to introduce a new clarity
into things that had not been well understood or known: functioning as an ordering principle for the
pursuit of all our critical scientific activities. In the context, for instance, in his own day and time, the
Iranian philosopher Avicenna (d. 1037) claimed that, though he had read the Metaphysics of Aristotle
664Politis, Aristotle and the Metaphysics, p. 4.
665Randall, Aristotle, p. 33.
666Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 133.
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40 times, he did not succeed in really understanding it. The understanding which he did have was, for
him, somewhat limited: too limited for comfort or satisfaction. Hence, as a useful tool or as a point of
entry for ourselves in terms of how we can possibly move toward an understanding of Aristotle's
metaphysics, from a viewpoint that works from within the realism of Aristotle's cognitional philosophy,
the critical realism which allegedly belongs to the nature of our human understanding and how, from
the human order of knowing, we can pass to the objectivity of the world of truly existing things (the
realm of existing things, the order of metaphysics), we work from a basis which will accordingly allude
to a kind of parallel or a corresponding unity which exists for us as we move from the order of our
human cognition toward and into a like order which exists with respect to the order of real objects
which, together, constitute the order of being (which exists independently whether or not we could be
knowing anything about anything which exists within this order at any given time).
As our point of departure then, to understand the causes of being as these causes would apply to the
being or the existence of all things which exist within our world, let us begin with two metaphysical
principles. One is potency; the other, form. First, with respect to the being of potency and how we can
understand what this is and where it sits within the context of Aristotle's thought, from the givens of
sense which exist as an experience of sensibility (sensibility as that kind of being which can be sensed
and which is known by us by how it is related or how it is revealed to us through our different acts of
human sensing, existing as the term of our different acts of human sensing), within the order of
reflection and the kind of reflection which exists within the Physics of Aristotle and also within his
Metaphysics, from that which is given to us as sensibility, from that which exists as sensibility, we can
understand potency as a particular species or type of being. In another way of speaking, matter as hule
and potency as dunamis refer to the same thing.667 That which is sensed exists as matter and, at the
same time too, this matter (in its formlessness or indeterminacy) exists as potency. A commonly used
simple example says that the clay of the earth points to how it exists as potency. It is bereft of any
form or shape (relatively speaking since clay is clay and not stone; hence, it does not exist as an
instance of pure potency, as an unrestricted kind of potency). Hence, as something that is simply or
merely given to us and as something that can be used or taken up by us in a way that can confer on it a
noticeable form or shape, for this reason, through an analogical form of reasoning that is given in this
example, it is argued that, in its distinctiveness, matter or potency exists essentially as a passivity, as a
species of passivity. It is that which can receive. It can become this or it can become that. In
becoming this or in becoming that, it exists as the presupposition of any kind of becoming or change.
Hence, in the context of Aristotle's analysis, matter or potency technically exists as hupokeimenon
(literally: as “that which is presupposed by” any kind of change or becoming which would refer to the
reception of a determination where, typically, a previously existing determination is replaced by the
being of a new determination).668
Hence, in its condition of potency or materiality, a potency cannot realize itself to become some other
kind of thing. For purposes of illustration, we can distinguish between the being of a lump of clay and
the being of an earthen clay pot. Notice, grasp the difference between them and we should understand
why, to potency or matter, a condition of passivity is to be alluded to. All matter, all potencies exist
with a passivity that is proper to potency in terms of the kind of being which belongs to potency. As a
667Aristotle, Physics, A.6-7, 193b1, as cited by Byrne, “Insight and the Retrieval of Nature,”
p. 11.
668Aristotle, Physics, A.6-7, 191a9, 193a2-193b22, as cited by Byrne, “Insight and the
Retrieval of Nature,” p. 10.
163
species of material cause, clay can be made into a clay pot or into a clay dish. The being of clay, as
potency, can be converted or it can be turned into a realization which would exist as either a clay pot or
perhaps a clay plate (among other possible realizations that can brought into being from a material
substrate which would exist for us as clay). From clay, we can have china. Nothing of clay can receive
a realization or be converted into a form or a shape which would refer to the kind of realization which
exists if we should refer to the being of a bronze kettle, the being of a bronze pot, or the being of a
bronze plate. In matter or potency, relative to form, matter/potency exists as becoming (as that which
becomes). Within this context, it exists as the principle of becoming with respect to the being of
things. If a material component exists within the being of any given thing, because this component can
be moved or because it can be altered in some way, a given thing which has a material component is a
kind of being which can be changed or altered in some kind of way. 669 Conversely, if a material
component is absent or if it is found to be wanting in some kind of way, then the absence of materiality
points to the absence of any possible change or alteration. Something exists in a way that is fully
actual, in a condition of realization which would have to be described as completeness and, as
complete, perfect.
To account for change thus, to explain transitions where something is moved from a condition of
potency to a lessening or an absence of potency (to explain why something receives a determination
which makes it into a particular kind or type of existing thing), an active or agent principle needs to be
determined and known and if we are to give this kind of principle a name that we can use to talk about
it, on the basis of an analogy which refers to the being of a sensible form or shape and the reception of
this sensible form or shape (how, in sensation, a form is received apart from its originating source and
apart from the matter of this same source),670 we can take this principle and then, by generalizing it or,
in other words, by immaterializing it or by abstracting it, a form is derived which exists simply as form
(form as it exists apart from matter, having a kind of reality which differs from the kind of reality
which belongs to matter). Form per se differs from matter (it is not to be confused with matter) or, in
other words, when matter is generalized in a manner which leads to potency (as an apprehension of
potency), form differs from potency (a formal cause from a material cause) since, if any given potency
receives a determination which diminishes its potency or which lessens the potency which formerly it
had possessed, the explanation for this is the entry or the ingress of something which exists as a
specification or as a determination (a determination as opposed to the absence of a determination), a
determination which exists as a structure or form (form as opposed to potency). Hence, in Aristotle's
own words, through a negative species of predication: “by matter I mean that which in itself has neither
quality or quantity nor any of the other attributes by which being is determined.” 671 The being of things
in our world is explained by the entry and the reception of something which exists essentially as a form
(albeit form entering into a set of material conditions in a manner which points to the being and the
reality of an essence when form is considered in terms of how it is united to a given set of material
conditions).672 Instead of referring to the being of some other kind of principle in metaphysics which
669Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 91.
670Collingwood, Idea of Nature, pp. 85-86. The rhythmic vibration of a sounding bell is
received by a like rhythm which emerges and which exists within the hearing of a human hearer, a
human listener.
671Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1029a20, as quoted by Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 92.
672To avoid confusion, please distinguish here between material conditions which exist as
particular matter and material conditions which exist as common matter. Essences exist when form, as
a universal, is joined to a universalized apprehension of matter which exists as common matter. The
164
can explain why things exist in the way that they do and how or why they become and change in the
way that they do, to the principle of form and the being of form belongs a primacy and a centrality
which explains why it has been said about the metaphysics of Aristotle that it is to be regarded as
essentially a metaphysics of form. In comparison to form, potency lacks status or, if you will, it exists
at a lower, lesser level (existing as becoming). Its indeterminacy more closely connects it with the
principle or the privation of nothingness than with the being of something which is to be contrasted
with the condition and the negation of nothingness. Potency is that which is somehow without this or
that quality or characteristic. That which truly exists is that which exists as form. From a knowledge
of forms we move toward a knowledge of potencies. Forms specific potencies in a relation which
explains why, within the order of being, the order of existing things, form precedes potency. 673 Simply
put: first form, then potency (or, cognitionally, within the order of our human cognition, we begin with
understanding, we begin with determinations, something which we already understand; and then, from
there, we move toward that which we have yet to experience as a determination as this can be given to
us within a new act of understanding that could be possibly given to us).
Since the being of existing things is explained by form, in a shorthand form of expression, with
Aristotle, we would then say that, ultimately, being is form and form, being. The determinacy or the
specificity of a form points to its stability or its unchangeableness (hence, its eternity), a form of
existence that is not subject to any kind of change, any kind of impermanence, or any kind of variation.
Hence, from the absence of indeterminacy or, more strongly, from the exclusion of any kind of
changeableness or indeterminacy, in form we have a species of existence which always points to the
eternal existence of forms (forms which exist apart and which are not conditioned by any conjugates or
properties which would refer to spatial temporal categories: determinations of space and time). That
which changes and that which never changes necessarily exclude each other (in an absolute and total
way) even as we also realize and know that, within our world, nothing exists apart from a combination
which exists between that which exists in a condition of potency and that which exists in a condition of
form (the indeterminate being of potency being united or joined to the determinate kind of being which
exists as form). A potency is informed by a form; a material cause, by a formal cause.
Why the visible or the sensible form of a body is not to be identified with the inner form of a thing is to
be explained by the fact that, while our acts of sense directly know (they directly apprehend, they
directly experience) the visible or the sensible form that is directly known by us through our various
acts of human sensing, our acts of understanding directly know (they directly apprehend or they
directly experience) another kind of object which exists as an intelligible form, an intelligible structure,
or an intelligible configuration of intelligible parts or elements which are understood or grasped by us
through the mediation of a direct act of understanding that is somehow given to us within a particular
context (when, perhaps, we are not expecting to receive a given act of understanding). With St.
Ignatius of Loyola, if we should use the kind of language which he uses, in our understanding of
Aristotle, we would distinguish between a seeing of visions and an uplifting of our understanding.
essence of a maple tree refers, for instance, to the unity which exists between, on the one hand, the
nature or the intelligibility of a maple tree that is shared by all maple trees (participated in by all maple
trees) and, on the other hand, a common materiality which belongs to the shared matter or the
corporality which is common to the being of all maple trees. The intelligibility and the materiality both
exist as abstractions that are known by us through as our acts of understanding as we individually move
from our acts of human sensing toward our later acts of human understanding.
673Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 42.
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Forms exist with the kind of being which peculiarly belongs to them, or through the kind of being
which they happen to have, because of how they have been apprehended by us through our acts of
understanding.
As we have already noted within Aristotle's understanding of human cognition, an apt image or a
phantasm that has been imaginatively constructed by us on the basis of the kind of raw material which
exists for us in our received data of sense (the received givens of sense) suggests or it directs us to an
inner kind of being, a structure or a form which somehow exists within a mass, an aggregate, or an
accumulation of matter: a structure or a form which is not sensed but which is grasped or which, in
some way, is invisibly “seen” because it has been understood. The form exists interiorily. The external
kind of being that is outwardly experienced by us refers to the sensibility of our sensed data; the inner
kind of being that is inwardly experienced, the form or the intelligibility of an understood,
intellectualized object. A real difference or a real distinction exists between potency and form although
this difference will not be understood by us if we cannot begin to discover (if we cannot begin to
understand and know) how or why our acts of sense differ from our acts of understanding, our acts of
sensing having a different nature or a different form from the kind of nature or form which belongs to
our acts of understanding. A real distinction which exists within the order of our human cognition
reflects and, at the same time, it points to a real distinction which exists within the order of existing
things (the order of being). In both Aristotle and Plato, a real unity exists between our minds and the
greater world which is the cosmos or the order of our universe. A fundamental unity exists between the
two and so, from the real distinction which exists between our sensing and our understanding, we
attend to a real distinction which exists between the metaphysical components of potency and form and
then, from the real distinction which exists between these components of potency and form, we can
move back toward a greater understanding which we can possible have about the kind of difference
which exists between our acts of sensing and our acts of understanding. In knowing about the being of
one distinction, we should begin to know more about the being of the other major distinction, back and
forth.
With respect then to forms and the meaning of forms, examples of forms refer to such things as the
Manness or the humanity of human beings or the Treeness of existing trees (among many other
possible examples that can be cited as instances or examples of form).674 A thing's form denotes the
specific characteristics that belong to a given thing and not to any other kind of thing. It explains why
a given thing has the visible kind of form which properly belongs to it, the form or intelligibility of a
thing being related to the function of a thing because it specifies or it explains how a given thing exists:
what it is able to do (in terms of its activity) and what it is able also to receive (in terms of its
passivity). Active and passive acts can be distinguished from each in a way which points to how they
are related to each other. As human beings, for instance, we can all ask questions and, as human
beings, we can also receive acts of understanding that are simply given to us and which are not
produced by our mere willing of them or our desiring of them. A form is not per se the being of an
individual thing or the substance of an individual thing (more about this later) since forms exist as
universal realities or, in other words, they exist as universal principles. They exist as a species of
cause: a cause which exists as a formal cause. They exercise a species of universal causality as a given
form enters into a set of material conditions in a way which introduces an order within a set of material
conditions (effecting or establishing an order which works with material conditions but which cannot
be reduced to any given set of material conditions). A form is that, for instance, which takes material
674Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 50.
166
conditions and when turn turns or converts these conditions in a way which makes either a man or a
chicken. It is perishable from a viewpoint which attends to the contingent order of things which exists
within our world where, here, we refer to the movement or the migration of forms (when a given form
moves from one possible instantiation within a set of material conditions to another possible
instantiation within another set of material conditions). Hence, the form of a living being is not the
form of a corpse. With death, the form of a living being is said to leave or depart. It ceases to be
present and it is replaced by the being or the presence of another form. Its instantiation ends within a
given context of conditions and yet, always, at the same time, as an invisible, intelligible reality, it
continues to exist as a universal principle because many particulars, at other times and places, can be
informed by the being or the presence of same form. As human beings for instance, we all exist as
human beings (we all share in the same form) even as we live out our individual lives in each our own
individual way.
In conjunction then with form, matter or prime matter exists as a co-principle of possibility for the
existence or the being of individual things because, through matter (or the givenness of matter), a form
can be joined to that which exists as an instance of matter. Because matter is that which can accept a
form, the relation or the ordination which exists on the part of matter with respect to possible receptions
of form points to how matter per se is to be associated or identified with that which exists essentially as
material causality (as some kind of material cause). Prime matter, as unrestricted indefinite matter, can
receive any kind of form that could be given to it although when matter exists in a qualified manner (in
a manner which points to restrictions that exist with respect to it), it can accept some forms although
not other determinations of form. In this context thus, the matter is not pure; the potency is not infinite.
In any case however, despite restrictions in qualified instances of matter or in the lack of any
restrictions if we should attend to matter as prime matter, in the receptivity of matter or in the openness
of matter, in matter we have the principle of changeableness as this exists within the being of things.
Absolutely with respect to prime matter but relatively with respect to all determinations of matter, this
matter as potency always exists as an undetermined element: it can take on a definition or a meaning
which would exist, cognitionally, as an intelligibility and which would exist, metaphysically, as a form.
Matter as matter is parallel or it is to be identified with the empirical residue of Bernard Lonergan's
cognitional analysis. Within the context of a metaphysical perspective, subtract form as it exists within
any given context and what is left over refers to that which would exist as an empirical residue (as
prime matter). Matter is not intelligible in and of itself. It only becomes intelligible or it is known to
us through the entry or the reception (the consideration) of a form or an intelligibility which realizes or
which actualizes that which exists initially as matter or that which first exists as potency. If form exists
thus as a universal principle or as the principle of universality within the being of things, matter exists
as the principle of individuation among the being of many things because, as given, it refers to that
which is unique with respect to the being of a given thing or object. It is an object’s "thisness," its
quantifiable determination. For instance, all wheels or all trees have the same form or the same
function but no two wheels or no two trees have the same matter nor do they share in the same amount
and grade of matter.675 In their individuality, this wheel and this other wheel can have the same form
and, similarly, this tree and this other tree. By referring to these examples thus, more clearly or more
vividly, we can then understand how, in the existence of things, a universal principle is joined to a
particular principle (form to matter). A positive relation always exists between these two principles
(the form of an existing thing “does not exist in actuality without matter,” 676 without its union with
675Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 75.
676Pabst, Metaphysics, p. 20.
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matter, form apart from matter enjoying an ideal kind of existence) although, at the same time too,
between matter and form, a species of mutual exclusion is to be admitted if we attend to how, together,
but as contrary related principles, matter and form exist as explanatory principles and how this kind of
existence (as a species of explanation) points to reverberations and conclusions which are to be drawn
about the being of existing things (the kind of being which belongs to existing things as these are
known and as they exist for us within the world of our ordinary experience).
To understand the notion of substance as we can find this in Aristotle on the basis of what we have
come to understand about matter and form and the proportionate or the isomorphic relation which
exists between the being of these metaphysical principles and the being of cognitional principles which
exist when we refer to our acts of sensing and our acts of understanding, a fully adequate understanding
about how substance exists in Aristotle must attend to differences in meaning and significance which
exist if we should compare the kind of notion which comes to us by way of Aristotle's Ten Categories
with the kind of notion which we find in Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics. As we have already
noticed, in the Ten Categories, nine predicates distinguish or indicate a unit or a type of being which
for us exists as a substance. A substance exists as the fundamental, primary category; nine subsidiary
predicates (cited as accidents) inhere within the being of a given substance. They apply to the being of
a given substance. They qualify it in some way in terms of how a given substance exists or, more
accurately and precisely, in terms of how a given substance is coming across to us in the experience
that we have been having of it or are currently having of it. These distinct predicates all exist as
descriptions. They exist as terms or as contents which belong to our differing acts of human sensing.
Hence, as descriptions, as an ordering of descriptions, they can be viewed as a species of scientific
description. The listing of nine predicates supposes a comprehensive arrangement of all the descriptive
conjugates that are needed if a given object is to be fully described by us in the kind of knowing which
exists at the level of description, employing all our different acts of human sensing, working together in
a way which includes all possible descriptive aspects. The primacy of substance points to a notion of
being or a notion of reality which says that being or reality exists as a multitude of substances which
are all related to each other in ways which point to the order and the being of a cosmic whole (a
universe which exists as a cosmos).677
As a technical note at this point (a note that we should not omit): if we should begin now
to speak about the notion of being or the notion of reality which exists in Aristotle's
thought, please note that, with Plato, Aristotle works with a notion of being that is
informed by analogies. An adequate notion of being cannot be univocal. Why this is so
is because the kind of being which belongs to a given substance or thing is not always
the same kind of being which belongs to another substance or thing although,
admittedly, as Aristotle argues, being is “common to all things” 678 although, at the same
time too, and as Aristotle argues, this same being also differs from all other things to the
degree that all other things differ from each other in terms of the kind of being which
belongs to each of them.679 The fullness of being which a given thing has cannot be
known or conveyed to ourselves and others through a sense or a notion of being which
would be content to work with a univocal significance. Given things often do not
677Hill, After the Natural Law, pp. 40-41.
678Aristotle, Metaphysics, 3, 1005a27, as cited by Pabst, Metaphysics, p. 11.
679Pabst, Metaphysics, p. 11 & n. 15, citing texts of Aristotle taken from the Metaphysics, the
Categories, and the Parts of Animals.
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belong to the same genus of existing things. However, by referring (implicitly) to
possible acts of understanding which could exist for us as analogical acts of
understanding, it can be argued that all “things...are one by analogy.” 680 In analogical
acts of understanding, a common meaning for being can be known (it can be
acknowledged as a point of departure), but in a way which also respects differences.
Through the use of analogies (through the denotation and the connotation as these exist
together in an intelligible unity through the mediation in an analogical form), identities,
similarities, and differences can be combined with each other in ways that can lead to an
enlargement of our understanding if, through this understanding, a larger number of
variables can be joined to each other in a context which refers to the suggestiveness and
the fruitfulness of one single act of understanding albeit, an act of understanding which
would exist for us as an analogical act of understanding.
Returning now to the kind of discussion that we find in Aristotle about the meaning of substances, in
t h e Categories, by referring to the species of descriptive predication that we find in Aristotle's
Categories, a substance is encountered or it is known by us in terms of how it exists as a body. As a
body, a substance exists as a descriptive object of attribution; it exists with a kind of unity or a
wholeness which is sensed in terms of the space, the contours, and the shape of its bodily unity and, as
we have been noting and arguing, this unity is known through a listing of predicates that are grounded
in our various acts of human sensing and, at the same time too, through predicates which are limited by
these same acts of sense in the kind of knowing which properly belongs to these acts of sense in our
different acts of human sensing. However, from a contrary or a complementary viewpoint (if we
should work with another point of point of departure which points to the reasonableness of a second
perspective), if we should move toward predicates which are not descriptive (not referring to the data
of our senses), if we should work with predicates which are grounded in our acts of understanding (they
proceed or they come from our acts of understanding through a kind of transcendence which always
exists in our acts of understanding), then, on this basis, a new listing of predicates can be given to us: a
set of properties or characteristics which purportedly exist as explanations and which do not exist as
descriptions. The explanations propose reasons; they refer to rational considerations of one kind or
another that can be understood but not seen. They are to be attributed or they are to be ascribed to a
new kind of object or to the being of another kind of unity or whole which is known by us as a
consequence of how our human inquiry and thinking has been moving toward this unity through the
kind of completion which exists for us through the kind of apprehension which exists in all our acts of
understanding (whenever acts of understanding are given to us within the order of our human
cognition). A substance ceases to be simply a body when now, as the focus and terminus of our
understanding and as the bearer of properties which exist as terms which belong to our acts of
understanding, it is turned into an immaterial kind of object: an object which exists as more of a form
than as matter or potency, being something which exists as the term of our understanding, existing as
an understood (as allegedly a form which exists within a given set of material conditions) because it
has been grasped and known by us through acts of understanding which differ from the kind of
knowing which belongs to our different acts of human sensing (our initial acts of understanding
existing for us as direct acts of understanding before there can be any kind of move which would exist
if our acts of understanding are converted into a form which refers to reflective acts of understanding).
Hence, within this larger cognitive context, the form or unity which is known by us within our
understanding is a species of form which exists as a substantial form (or central form if we should
680Aristotle, Metaphysics, 5, 6, 1017a 2-3, as quoted by Pabst, Metaphysics, p. 13.
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choose to work with the kind of conceptuality that is employed in the context of Bernard Lonergan's
Insight: A Study of Human Understanding). Accidental forms refer to the being of explanatory
attributes; substantial forms refer to being of objects which exist as things. The matter within which a
substantial form exists accordingly exists as substantial matter. Where accidental forms exist within
accidental matter, substantial form exists within substantial matter. Substantial matter goes with
substantial form and substantial form, substantial matter. Each defines the other: accidental form,
accidental matter; substantial form, substantial matter. Reality or the whole of being is composed of a
plurality or a variety of different things or, in other words, a plurality of different substances. Things
and substances refer to the same thing (“thing” being a new way of our being able to speak about that
which exists as “substance”).
In understanding thus how an empirical or a sensate notion of substance as this exists in Aristotle is to
be understood and related to an explanatory or a rational notion of substance as this also exists in
Aristotle, because our obvious point of departure has been the shift from human acts of sensing toward
human acts of understanding as this exists within the order of our human cognition, for this reason, the
explanatory notion of substance that we find in Aristotle is to be regarded as the truer, more real, more
mature notion. It succeeds or it emerges from a prior, more primitive notion of substance as our shift
towards understanding within the order of our cognition moves from the materiality of sense, matter,
and potency toward the intellectuality of understanding and form. Where the being of a body is known
primarily through the experience of its materiality in sense (through the correlative principle of matter
as a species of distinct metaphysical principle), the being of a thing is known primarily through the
experience of its intellectuality in understanding (through the principle of form as another species of
distinct metaphysical principle). Substances as bodies are to be associated with the obviousness of
sense and matter; substances as things, with the intellectuality of form and the rarer kind of
achievement which exists for us as human beings when we move from acts of cognition which exist as
our acts of sensing toward acts of cognition which would exist for us as our acts of understanding.
Bodies, physical objects are sensed; substances, things, are understood. For a typical example of this
shift, compare how a child conceives of an elephant with how a zoologist conceives of the same
creature. A child speaks about “a large animal with trunk and huge ears”; a zoologist speaks about a
“member of a species [that is] related more or less closely with other mammalian species, and having
evolved in morphology and habits to survive within a certain range of environments.”681
Through the kind of self-knowledge which thus we can begin to have of ourselves in our selfunderstanding, we should soon notice that it is easier for us to engage in the first kind of act which
exists in our acts of sensing than in the second kind of act which would exist as our acts of
understanding. First, we know about bodies; then, we can know about the existence of substances or
things. Rarer still, however, than the acts of understanding which exist as our acts of direct
understanding is a second kind of intellectual act which would exist for us as a reflective act of
understanding (the kind of act which would exist as the drawing of a rational conclusion or a judgment
which would emerge in the wake of an apprehension which experiences or knows about a sufficiency
in evidence which would then immediately point to the reasonableness of a conclusion that knows or
which affirms that a given meaning or form is to be regarded as a true meaning or form: a reality which
would then immediately join the being of a human knower with an order of things which transcends the
being of a given knower).
681Meynell, Redirecting Philosophy, p. 245.
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Shifting now from an understanding of forms toward an understanding of essences as this exists in
Aristotle: if, as a formal cause, the substantial form of a thing or the form of a substance is something
which exists within a concretely existing individual thing and if it explains why a given thing exists in
the way that it happens to be and exist (similarly, a form within an event explains why a given event
occurs in the way that it does), then, from the known “whyness” or the known form of a thing, the
“whatness” of a thing, the quiddity of a thing, or the essence of a thing is something which can be
determined as a further specification of meaning (as a more articulate specification of meaning) if a
form which has been abstracted is then rejoined to a material principle which is not to be identified
with individual instances of matter which would belong to the distributed being of individual
concretely existing things. This matter goes with this form and this other matter goes with the same
form. On the one hand: like form, the essence of a thing specifies or it points to the nature or to the
intelligibility of an understood thing since, within any given essence as this can be known by us, the
“whyness” or the form of a thing is given to us. The form exists as an essential, necessary ingredient.
Without form, no essence. Hence, loosely speaking, and yet truthfully, if the “whatness” of a thing
refers to the “whyness” of a thing, if the “whatness” of a thing is grounded in the “whyness” of a
known thing (its form), then a thing's form is to be associated with a thing's essence in a way which
allows us to say, with Aristotle, that a thing's form is a thing's essence. In Aristotle, a thing's form is
often referred to as its essence although, through careful study and analysis, a real distinction can be
shown to exist between that which exists as a form and that which exists allegedly as an essence (a
distinction that was not unknown to Aristotle within the conduct of his own study and analysis
although, within the conceptuality of Aristotle's language, no Greek term stands for essence, the Latin
neologism “essence” having been invented in order to refer answers that are given to “what” questions
or most specifically, as a way of designating “what makes anything what it is”).682
Technically speaking thus, for the sake of an understanding which a bit more precise, a thing's form is
not a thing's essence because, in moving from a form to an essence, an essence exists as a greater,
larger thing. The intelligibility which belongs to it is greater than the intelligibility which belongs to a
form. To an essence belongs a form or a species of concreteness which differs or which sets it apart
from the abstract kind of being which exists with respect to the being of forms and the immediacy of
forms within the being of our consciousness whenever, in any given case or instance, acts of
understanding are given to us when we are not expecting to receive them within the experience that we
have of ourselves whenever we refer to how we exist and live as knowing human beings. In the
apprehension of an essence or in the conceptualization and the uttering of an essence, the universality
of a form is taken as a given (as a presupposition) and, as a form, it is rejoined or it is reconnected to a
new specification of matter which has also been abstracted and generalized although in a manner which
differs from the intelligibility of a form. We speak here about a universalization of matter which exists
as common matter. A particular specification of matter has been replaced or we say that it is replaced
by a specification of matter which is universally applicable. A common form of matter applies to all
possible individual instances of the same matter. The union of a universal form with that which exists
as common matter accordingly constructs or it constitutes the kind of being which exists as an essence
(an essence which is not a form): hence, the meaning of a given essence.
To introduce a measure of clarity that is not so obvious in the explanations that are
offered by Aristotle, if we work with a cognitive distinction that comes to us originally
682Randall, Aristotle, p. 245, n. 13.
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from the philosophy and theology of St. Augustine,683 we would say that, if a form is
grasped by us through a direct act of understanding, an essence is grasped by us through
an act of definition or an act of inner speaking and conceptualization which emerges
within us (inwardly) in the wake of a prior act of understanding. Citing in the briefest
way the kind of example and illustration that we can take from the kind of
understanding which exists in the practice of mathematics: in solving a given
mathematical problem, in a direct act of understanding, we immediately know why “x”
must always equal “y” or that “x” must always equal “y” (the answer or the solution is
all now too obvious to us) and, at the same time too, or in immediately springing from
this first realization that we have, we also find that we are experiencing or knowing that
we are in the presence of a mathematical law that is universally applicable. The solution
of a particular mathematical problem points to the being or the relevance of an invariant
mathematical law, and even if this law has not yet put into a formula that can be
communicated to other persons, in the apprehension of this same law, we have a new
683See Gerard Watson, “St Augustine and the inner word: the philosophical background,” Irish
Theological Quarterly 54 (1988), pp. 84-85. With respect to the Augustinian origin of arguments
which allege that an intelligible emanation is to be found to exist within the conscious life of our
human minds, while Augustine distinguishes between one species of word which exists as a verbum
insitum (it is to be identified with the rationality of our human minds in its activities in thinking and
understanding) and a second species of word which exists as a verbum prolatum (it is to be as identified
with the outer words of our human speech as this exists in the givenness of articulate, communicable
language), he also distinguishes a third species of word which is to be identified as a verbum intus
prolatum. As a word which exists as an inner word, it refers to a word that is inaudibly spoken. It is
expressed inwardly within our human interiority and it functions as an intermediary between a verbum
insitum and a verbum prolatum. In the wake of our understanding, a word is spoken or it is expressed
within ourselves (interiorily) and its status is not less than that which we experience in any act of
thinking or understanding which occurs within our human minds. But, at the same time also, this word
stands apart from the being of any kind of outer word of speech since, within our self-awareness, it
cannot be denied that outer words sometimes tend to be deficient communicators of meanings: of
meanings which are inchoately but more fully known and sensed from within the depths of our
cognitive self-awareness. Outer words, as we sometimes experience them, can lack a fullness of
meaning which seems to exist only within the context of a preliminary, pregnant articulateness which
commonly belongs to the meaning of inner words. Words are spoken within our souls or within our
hearts (as Augustine speaks about it) and they are meant to speak of things that go beyond or which
transcend the kind of being which belongs to our acts of understanding. They come from our prior acts
of understanding (from the species of word which exists as a verbum insitum) and they lead us toward
the outer words of human speech which exist as a verbum prolatum. Cf. Lonergan, “Introduction,”
Verbum, p. 6. As Lonergan goes on to note and emphasize, in a text that is cited by Frederick G.
Lawrence, “The Hermeneutic Revolution and Bernard Lonergan: Gadamer and Lonergan on
Augustine’s Verbum Cordis – The Heart of Postmodern Hermeneutics,” Divyadaan: Journal of
Philosophy & Education vol. 19, nos. 1-2 (2008), p. 59:
...as Augustine’s discovery was part and parcel of his own mind’s knowledge of itself,
so he begged his readers to look within themselves and there to discover the speech of
spirit within spirit, an inner verbum prior to the use of language, yet distinct both from
the mind itself and from its memory or its present apprehension of objects.
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kind of awareness: we experience the term of an intellectual proceeding which is the
proceeding of an inwardly known concept or word, a proceeding which is to be
identified with the proceeding of an act of conceptualization. Hence, a real distinction
needs to be posited if we are to distinguish between the being of a direct act of
understanding (Aristotle's act of “simple apprehension”) and the being of a subsequent
act of cognition which exists as an act of conceptualization. A form moves toward the
kind of completion which it can have through the conceptualization or the apprehension
of an essence as soon as our acts of understanding are succeeded by a second kind of
recognition which always exists within us, through how our acts of conceptualization
proceed or emerge from our prior acts of understanding.
An internal form of
recognition and speaking always springs or flows from our prior acts of understanding
and the swiftness or the alacrity of this recognition should accordingly point to the being
or the reality of a new species of oneness that we experience within our cognition:
moving first from the unity of a form and an act in an act of direct understanding toward
the second unity of a form and matter in a subsequent act of conceptualization, our acts
of understanding always leading us toward the intellectual kind of proceeding which
also exists within us through the thematization which somehow always exists in terms of
how our acts of conceptualization are directed and impelled by the kind of nonmechanical thrust or propulsion which always exists within our prior acts of
understanding. If thus, by our understanding, we know about the being of forms (we
know why this must be that), then, from the genesis, the prolongation, or the fructifying
extension of this same understanding as it moves toward a less simple form of
understanding, in our understanding we also know about a second kind of universality
which exists whenever we talk about the being of essences. An essence exists as a
conceptualized form, as a form that has been separated from a prior act of understanding
because, now, it has been joined to a new specification of matter which exists as a
specification of common matter.
The kind of completion which exists in our acts of conceptualization accordingly explains why, often,
in Aristotle, the form of a thing is said to be the essence of a thing despite a real difference that can be
alluded to if, in their being and performance, acts of conceptualization are distinguishable from the
kind of being and performance which exists in our acts of direct understanding, our acts of
understanding always immediately leading to inner acts of conceptualization and the being of
conceptualized concepts that are necessary for us if, humanly, we are to engage in any form of interior
dialogue within ourselves about something that, perhaps, we have understood or if, subsequently, we
are to engage in a form of external dialogue with other persons if we should seek to engage their
attention and interest in order possibly to elicit new questions about meaning and understanding or new
questions which could ask about the possible truth of any meaning that which we have come initially to
understand and know. Simply put, employing a commonly used example: the nature or the form of a
maple tree exists among all instances of maple trees and, perhaps, in Aristotle's act of “simple
apprehension” or in Lonergan's act of “direct understanding,” we truly understand this nature or form.
Then, in knowing or speaking about the essence of a maple tree, we allegedly know about the essence
of all maple trees in terms of how a common nature or form has been joined to a material potency that
is shared or which is common to the individual being of all maple trees. If, in direct understanding,
form and act are united to each other in such a way such that the two cannot be separated from each
other, in the thematization or the conceptualization of an understanding that we have received in a
given instance of it, an interiorily understood form is turned into a species of externally existing object.
173
We say that it is objectified because, now, it is turned into something that we can begin to think about
or talk about. We can begin to pose questions about the nature or the intelligibility of a maple tree as if
its being is somehow other than ourselves (as if it is other than that which has been our understanding
of it, in a manner which accordingly points to how it exists as a reality which appears to be quite other
than ourselves, transcending who and what we happen to be as human beings). In moving thus toward
an apprehensions of form, a measure of self-transcendence always exists within our understanding and
then, in moving toward apprehensions of essence, a measure of self-transcendence is added to the first
measure or the first kind of self-transcendence which had existed for us when, through acts of direct
understanding, prospective human knowers are united to that which allegedly exists as a form within
the inner being of externally existing things.
The kind of objectivity or in the objectification which occurs as we move from forms to essences
accordingly thus explains why, in Aristotle, essences can be identified with substances or why they
have been identified with substances (given the union which exists that joins, on the one hand, a
substantial form with a specification of matter, on the other hand, that applies to the being of a given
substance in all of its many instances). The result is always the being or the reality a truly existing
thing which exists as something which is fundamentally primary within the order of being in general
and which everything else would have to suppose and presume. The being of things or being in general
is something which is explained by the primary type of being which exists in terms of essences
(intelligible, understood essences).684 Essences as substances exist as both the bearer of qualities that
can become actual in it and they exist also as the bearer of qualities which are already actual within
it.685 Relative to the being of qualities that come and go, substances endure. They exist as enduring
subjects of change.686
All these things being said thus about matter, form, and essence and the kind of order which exists
among these metaphysical principles and how they are related to a corresponding order which exists
within the order of our human cognition, if we should want to move toward a set of principles which
would serve to the explain the being of these aforementioned metaphysical principles, then we can do
no better than to speak about a more fundamental form of relation which exists if we should think about
how, in every kind of change or alternation which occurs within our world - changes which we can see
684Politis, Aristotle and the Metaphysics, p. 15. Please note, however, that some controversy
exists about how precisely we are to understand Aristotle when we encounter his analysis and
discussions about the meaning of primary being or that which exists as primary being if we are to
understand that which exists as the being qua being of existing things. If the object of our
metaphysical inquiry is an understanding of being in general or, more precisely, the beingness or the
existence of things solely in terms of their being and existence, then, if the object is the being of some
kind of cause or explanation, then, when this object is conceptualized in terms which would refer to it
as a primary kind of being, in our speaking about this primary being, we would accordingly speak
about it as a species of first principle. From it, as a fundamental point of departure, many conclusions
can be drawn or, more precisely, from the thesis of this primary being and according to how it has been
conceptualized, a heuristic is given and supplied that can then be applied in any subsequent inquires
that we might want to make with respect to the nature and the being of individual objects as these exist
in terms of species and genus. All exist, in their own way, as modifications of being since, to some
extent, each exists in an individual kind of way.
685Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 19.
686Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 41.
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and analyze when we look at motion or movement as a distinct type of being or phenomenon – in every
change or alternation, a species of reduction occurs if we move from that which exists within a
condition of potency toward that which exists within a condition of act. In potency and act, in
Aristotle, two different kinds of being exist together in a manner which refers to the being of existing
beings where, in the being of an existing thing or a substance, these two different kinds of being exist
together within the being of individual things - the potency of a thing exists within the being or the
reality of a thing, potency existing within act - and together they explain why emerging things exist
within a world which is subject to change even if we should happen to believe that the world is
something which has always been as it is (although its parts are such that they appear to be constantly
shifting and changing in the kind of being which belongs to them).687 In other words thus, the whole
range of being - whether it is partially material or, in some ways, entirely immaterial – the whole range
of being is reducible or it is divisible into these two basic categories of potency and act: citing
Aristotle's own words, “the potential and the completely real.” 688 Potency exists as a kind of reality, as
a kind of being. Absence of reality goes with a kind of void which would exist as a strange kind of
presence (it would exist as indetermination); reality, with the kind of being which exists as
specification and determination.
While, on the one hand, we have noted that matter exists as potency if we should want to refer to the
materiality of bodies (objects which are sensed would exist for us as bodies), potency exists as a larger
thing or as a more general category if we should want to refer to immaterial kinds of potency and
immaterial kinds of being which can emerge from immaterial kinds of potency where, in both cases,
whether we should prefer to speak about the being of a material potency or about the being of an
immaterial potency, potency suffices as a more general, apt designation. Its use transcends denotations
and connotations which would want to have us think about our acts of human sensing and about that
which could be given to us through our various acts of human sensing. Talk about matter instead of
talk about potency tends to encourage a way of thinking and speaking that would have us believe that
our human cognition is solely constituted by our different acts of human sensing and not by the being
or through the kind of instrumentality which belongs to other kinds of cognitive act. To potency
belongs a greater degree of abstractness than the abstractness which exists if we prefer to speak about
matter than potency.
With respect then to the being of act and potency and moving to determinations of their being and
meaning as this comes to us from Aristotle, in act, something exists either as it is fully realized in some
687Please note thus that the eternity of the world was a belief that was commonly held among
the ancient Greeks. The contingency of the world or belief in the contingency of the world is a point of
view which comes to us from the acceptance and ingress of later Judeo-Christian belief and, through
the replacement of grounding assumptions, it can be argued that, in the conduct of later inquires, in
both science and philosophy or in how science and philosophy exist together, repercussions were not
absent. In the context of his own day and time (centuries after Aristotle), Aquinas had argued that the
eternity of the world or the contingency of the world, its createdness, is not something that can be
proved one way or the other through the sophistries or the abstractions of our philosophical human
reasoning although, if we should know about the contingency of any given thing, we should know that
a contingently existing thing is not able to realize its own existence in a manner which would move
from the potency or the possibility of its being toward the actuality or the reality of its being.
688Aristotle, Metaphysics, 11, 9; 1065b16, as cited by Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p.
51.
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kind of way (having, in some way, a fullness of being; hence, in some way, it is bereft of potency), or
secondly, as it can be realized in some way (having within it an absence of being that is relative or
circumstantial; the absence of being can be amended or corrected through a development which would
point towards new actualizations or new realizations of being in shifts that would move from potency
to act). In potency qua potency, something exists as an openness to realizations of one kind or another
or some kind of development or increase which points to its variability or its changeability. The
openness exists as potency; or as capacity, passivity, or receptivity. Something can exist thus, in one
aspect, as fully actual and real (it, in fact, exists) although, in another but related aspect, it can also exist
as something that is entirely possible or potential and so it is not yet, in some way, fully real or actual.
What is missing would exist as a species of not yet. Potency is not to be equated with nothingness nor
with something that is entirely lacking in being.
As noted or as we have been suggesting, before something can transition from a condition of potency to
a condition of act, it must first exist in a condition of being or act before it can become something else,
existing within a newer or a fuller condition of act. Change must begin from something which must
exist in a prior condition of being before it can possibly change to enter into a new form of being or a
new form of existence. For example, to say that oil is flammable is to say that the potential for it to
burn is already present within it as an actuality although it needs some kind of external cause (for
example, the application of a burning match) if we are then to move from that which is potential within
oil to that which is actual within the oil: the burning of a given amount of oil. That which exists in a
condition of potency is not able to put itself into a condition of act. Instead of a strict disjunction which
would seem to exist thus between being and becoming, through the principle of potency as it exists
within the principle of being as the principle of being refers to the being of things, by this means thus,
becoming can be regarded as something which exists within the being of existing things as some kind
of incomplete, partial act. Becoming, motion, movement is not nothing or non-being and, at the same
time, it is not being (it is not act) though it exists as something which exists within the actuality or the
being of existing things. Citing some of Aristotle's own words: change or movement would exist as
both “actuality and not actuality,”689 or, in other words, more precisely, change or motion, becoming,
exists as the “actuality [the realization] of the potential as such.” 690 Appositely: “motion is the actuality
of the potential qua potential.”691 In becoming or in potency, a third type of being exists since it cannot
be equated with that which exists simply as Being or that which exists simply as Non-being or as the
very absence of being. To explain more fully:
On the one hand, the striving or the motion itself exists with a beingness which properly
belongs to it (its existence or its actuality cannot be denied) and, on the other hand too,
at the same time, this striving or motion has a potency of its own since it has yet to reach
its proper goal or a condition of actualization which would exist as the fulfillment of a
given movement if movements or motions are distinguished from each other on a basis
which refers to their inherent intelligibility (their reasonableness). Not all motions or
movements are endowed with the intelligibility which they should have. Irrational
actions can be found, for instance, in how some human beings behave. We think about
689Aristotle, Metaphysics, 11, 9; 1066a26, as cited by Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p.
53.
690Aristotle, Metaphysics, 11, 9; 1065b17, as cited by Sullivan, p. 53.
691Aristotle, Physics, 201a11-12, as cited by Byrne, “Insight and the Retrieval of Nature,”
Lonergan Workshop, p. 16.
176
wanton acts of violence, although, on the other hand too, other actions and movements
present themselves to us in a way which points to some kind of inherent intelligibility
which is understood to a greater degree if we can point to ends, goals, or terms of action
which belong or which, in some way, participate in the intelligibility of a given action or
motion. Hence, within this context: motions, movements, or actions share in the
intelligibility which belongs to the achievement of certain ends or goals. Change is to
be understood by us in a way which points to its reasonableness or its rationality and, by
the principles which we use to understand change and to detect its presence within the
givens of our sense perception or the givens of our self-awareness, we understand how
or why change can be distinguished from the kind of flux which exists if chaos should
emerge as an object of inquiry for us in our efforts to come to a possible understanding
of it. Minus intelligibility and that which exists as change is seen immediately to exist
as chaos. Import understanding – or introduce understandings which could come from
the kind of actuation which exists for us in higher acts of understanding or in
unrestricted acts of understanding – and then, for these reasons, on this basis, different
conclusions can be reached.
All these things being said, before any kind of change can occur, before there can be any kind of
transition that would move from a condition of potency to a condition of act, something must exist
either with a prior condition of being which is more primitive and a condition of being which is less
primitive compared to later realizations of being which could replace it or which could come to it.
Since, as we have noted, nothing which can be can ever realize itself through its own nothingness, its
own potency, and so move toward a new condition of being or act, for this reason we can understand
why the existence of potencies always suppose the prior existence of acts; potential being, actual being.
Potencies can only be known if we first know about how a given thing exists. The condition of a given
act, the givenness of its being, determines what it can receive in terms of its passive potency and what
it can become in terms of its active potency through the doing which can also properly belong to it. For
example, the phenomenon of our human questioning exists as an act, as an activity, and also as a
potency. As an active potency, our questioning makes for the possibility of an increase in our
understanding (the receiving which occurs in experiencing new acts of understanding). Acts lead to
acts and then, from there, to later acts, and later acts cannot exist without the being of earlier acts. For
example, a human being can exist as simply or merely a human being. The existence is fully actual in
terms of a received act of being or a received act of existence since no human being can cause him or
herself to exist. However, this actuality of existence does not necessarily include or encompass acts of
being or existence which would refer to intermittent acts of sensing, thinking, and understanding (if we
should limit ourselves to citing these prominent examples among other options and choices that we can
also make). These later acts or operations and other similar acts all exist potentially within the mere
being or the mere existence of a given human individual. The kind of being or the kind of act which is
the existence of a given thing immediately conditions or it determines all the range of potencies that a
given thing has or that it can have if we should attend to a second kind of possible being which is the
fuller being or the realization of a given thing's existence (all the potencies which properly belong to it
to the degree that they can be reduced or brought to a condition of act): what a given thing can become
as new actualities emerge through various actions or operations which can change the quality of a
thing's being, the manner of its concrete existence. Acts and operations come and go (in Aristotle's
terminology, as noted, they exist as “accidents”: hence, a tripartite distinction speaks about accidental
potencies, accidental forms, and accidental acts) and so, as these acts and operations cease to exist
within a given context, they can be succeeded by the being of other acts and operations and a new order
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of existing things which can emerge and exist as a consequence among these different acts and
operations.
Among differing acts of being and about how acts of being which exist as acts of mere being or
existence differ from acts of being which exist as active and passive acts (active and passive operations
or active potencies and passive potencies), an Aristotelian distinction speaks about a thing's act of
being or existence as a species of first act and how the operations or acts of a thing's being exist as a
species of second act, a second act following the being of a first act. 692 One must come before the
other. However, that which is first and that which is second always depends on the context of its
particular application: where these distinctions are being applied within a given situation. Something is
first relative to something which is second but the second can be first relative to a third which would be
second. If we should want to speak about three fundamental metaphysical principles which allegedly,
in some way, whether explicitly or implicitly, all come to us from Aristotle in terms of potency, form,
and act and the kind of order which allegedly exists among these different principles, as Aristotle
would have it thus, the reception of a form by a potency can be classed as a second species of first act
and so, from this, by way of a conclusion that comes to us centuries later, principally from the teaching
of St. Thomas Aquinas, the reception of an act by a form, a second species of second act. Where, in
Aristotle, form enjoys a primacy and a centrality which explains why, in the metaphysics of Aristotle, a
metaphysics of form is to be alluded to (the being of things is understood through their forms and the
reception of forms), in the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas, from the primacy and the centrality of
act relative to the being of form, the result is not a metaphysics of form but a metaphysics of act (the
being of things is understood principally through their acts of being or their acts of existence even if, by
form, we can know about the kind of existence that, in fact, belongs to the being of a given thing). The
relativities that are to be found within the structure and the articulation of a comprehensive metaphysics
– as these relativities are determined – on this basis thus, exact specifications of meaning can be known
in terms of how they exist within parameters and contexts that are clearly defined and known by us in
ways that relate principles and terms to each other together within the wording and the construction of
propositions that are governed by the principle of contradiction. The individual terms define the kind
of relation which exists among them and the relation in turn defines the meaning of the composite
individual terms. Hence: potency, form, and act have each a meaning which is understood by how each
term relates to the others and, in a similar fashion, acts of sensing, understanding, and judging have
each a meaning which depends on how each type of act relates to the other acts. Acts of understanding
are not understood if no contrast exists with acts of sensing and if the kind of role which belongs to our
acts of sensing is not understood in terms which can relate to our later acts of understanding and how
this species of cognitive act properly exists, one kind of act either leading to another kind of act or
presupposing the being of another kind of cognitive act.
As corollaries that can now be understood more fully from a foundation which refers to the being of
potency and act, in moving toward concluding our understanding about how the principle of potency
and act exists within the thinking of Aristotle's philosophy, three corollaries can be considered in an
order of points which encompasses Aristotle's philosophy of nature in a way which moves initially
from (1) φύσις [physis] or nature as an interior principle of movement which exists within the being of
existing things to (2) φύσις [physis] or nature as an understanding of things which thinks in terms of
four necessary causes which should always be invoked if a larger number of variables is to be reduced
to the unity of a more comprehensive form of explanation (an order exists among these causes) and
692Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 51.
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then, from there, to (3) φύσις [physis] or nature as a more general principle (a most general principle)
which points to how or why, between the being of our cognitional principles and activities and the
being and significance of our metaphysical principles, a connatural unity exists: an order which joins
these two sets of principles with each other in a way which points to a species of mutual necessity if,
from the perspective of this unity, a more adequate understanding of things is to be attained (an
understanding which can link a greater number of variables with each other and so answer a larger
number of questions). In discussing any given topic or question, all thorough forms of discussion
require a form of analysis and a manner of composition or synthesis which can constantly move from
cognitional principles to metaphysical principles and then, from there, back toward cognitional
principles ad infinitum until, eventually, a satisfactory understanding of things is achieved or until, at a
later date, new questions will be asked in the hope of moving toward possible increases in the extent
and range of our understanding.
First then, with respect to φύσις [physis] or nature as an interior principle of movement within things
(sometimes cited as the primary Aristotelian understanding of physis or as the most well known
understanding of physis in Aristotle),693 the nature (or the natural potency) of a thing or the nature (or
the natural potency) of an event is that which exists or which refers to a general principle of motion and
rest which exists within things as a constitutive inner principle, determining who and what things are
and what they can do and experience as a consequence of who and what they happen to be. 694 Citing
Aristotle directly: “nature is a principle or cause of being moved and of being at rest in that to which it
belongs primarily, in virtue of itself and not accidentally.” 695 In the definition of nature which thus
comes to us from Aristotle, the nature of a thing is vital and pivotal if we should want to establish the
identify and the life of any given thing. Hence, by means of this internally existing nature, “things
693Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 6. As Grant notes, Aristotle defines physis in
different ways as he moves or as we move from one text and context to another text and context. We
can argue that, from the discussion about nature or physis in the Physics to the same kind of discussion
in the Metaphysics, a development can be found. The later the analysis, the more differentiated the
meaning. In the Metaphysics (4, 4, 1014b16-1015a19), seven definitions are allegedly indicated
although, according to Grant, if we take these definitions and compare them to each other, we should
find that they can be reduced or condensed into three definitions which allegedly refer to the (1) nature
or essence of something, the (2) full being of a thing, and (3) a power or inclination which works
within a thing to effect its change and self-movement. As a species of interpretive analytical principle
that guides our thinking and understanding: how we understand physis in Aristotle depends on the
particular kind of approach that we are using in our reading and interpretation of Aristotle, one kind of
heuristic leading to a particular specification of meaning and another leading to another. The better or
more nuanced our own approach, the more penetration is the extent of our intelligence and the wiser
our judgments, then, the wiser will be our understanding of the possible meaning of physis in Aristotle
as we move through Aristotle through a form of analysis that is not troubled or baffled by differences in
Aristotle's choice and use of words since differences word choice do not always point to differences in
meaning that are crucial if we are to move toward a comprehensive understanding of physis as this
exists in the context of Aristotle's philosophy and thought.
694Aquinas, Sententia super Physicam, 1, 1, 3; 2, 1, 145; Quaestio disputata De unione verbi
incarnati, 1 (as cited by Gilby, Theological Texts, pp. 286-287, n. 507). See also Patrick Byrne,
“Insight and the Retrieval of Nature,” Lonergan Workshop 8 (1980): 14, where Byrne explains the
meaning of this definition after quoting what Aristotle gives as a definition in his Physics, 192b21-22.
695Aristotle, Physics, 2, 1; 192b21-23, as translated by R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye.
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have a principle of growth, organization, and movement [which belongs to them]...in their own
right.”696 Physical changes or physical motions exist in conjunction with changes or motions as these
are given in the other kinds of changes which exist in meteorological and geological change, chemical
changes, biological changes, zoological changes, and human changes as these exist with respect to
variations in “sensation, feeling, thought, habit, and action.” 697 The existence of self-movement within
things in turn determines or we would say that it demarcates a world which exists, in its collectivity, as
that which is “the whole of the changing.” 698 Our naturally existing world or Nature is first known by
us through our different acts of human sensing. From nature as an interior principle, as a derivative or
as a secondary determination of meaning, we have the external world of Nature – Nature, in upper case.
By adverting then to the internal principles which exist within things, these principles denote the nature
of existing things and so things are natural to the degree that such a principle exists within them and, in
addition too, the activity or the behavior of these things is also natural or appropriate to the degree that
it complies or that it conforms to the nature which exists within these things or, in other words, the
natural being and the natural behavior of a thing reflect or, in some way, they flow from an inner
natural principle which somehow exists within them (for reasons or by way of causes which have yet to
be understood and identified in any given case). 699 The normativity of internally existing natures
directly points to the appropriateness or to the naturalness of certain types of behavior and, conversely
too, the inappropriateness or the unnaturalness which would belong to other kinds of behavior that are
lacking in normativity.
The indwelling of an immaterial nature suggests that, normally or usually, a given thing has but only
one nature or only one intelligible form: one whyness, one whatness, or one quiddity or essence. 700 As
696Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 81.
697Byrne, “Insight and the Retrieval of Nature,” Lonergan Workshop, p. 8.
698Byrne, “Insight and the Retrieval of Nature,” Lonergan Workshop, p. 7.
699Collingwood, Idea of Nature, pp. 81-82.
700Please note, however, that the having of only one nature for a given being is not always or
necessarily an absolute rule. Exceptions exist. It is not always true since not everything which has
existed in this world has had but only one nature or only one substantial form. In Christian belief, it is
held, for instance, about Christ that the incarnate Christ possessed two natures at one and the same
time: a divine nature and a human nature. What Christ could not do as a man, as a Son of Man, he did
as God, as the Son of God. In addition also, if we look at the physical world as this exists for us within
the common world of our ordinary experience, we seem to find instances of metamorphosis where a
living thing first exists with one kind of nature or form until it comes to have another kind of nature or
form. Natures are shed, lost, or relinquished according to a higher order of meaning or principle of
intelligibility. Tadpoles become frogs and caterpillars, butterflies. However, if we look for a nature
(an intelligible principle) that can identify how changes in nature can occur within the being of a given
thing, we cannot so easily speak about a being which first has one nature and then another nature which
would totally differ from the first or which would be unconnected with the first. The purpose or the
function of an understanding which knows about a nature is to find an explanation that can account for
many different kinds of changes or movements. In dealing with instances of metamorphosis, an
understanding of change which wants to understand how or why a succession of forms exists with
respect to a given existing concrete being would have to be a species of understanding which knows
about the being of a substantial form since, from the perspective of this form, we would understand
why an intelligible order exists with respect to the being of a succession of forms. Always, when
moving toward an understanding which grasps the form of an intelligible nature, we engage in a
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noted, the nature of a given thing, in specifying what a given thing is, specifies what it is able to do and
what is it is not able to do and what it is able to experience or receive from the being of other things,
specifying also the identity of the causes or the movers which are needed if a given thing is to undergo
the changes which specifically and typically belong to it. 701 If we should employ a more technical way
of speaking that comes to us from how the principles of act and potency have been translated and put
into terms and designations which have turned them into designations of potency (distinguishing two
different kinds of potency): together, with each other, active potencies and passive potencies constitute
the nature or the natural potency of a given thing or substance. 702 If we should know the nature or the
intelligibility of a thing as a specification of act (hence, as a realization or as a determination), we
should immediately know the identity of a corresponding, apt potency: a potency which exists and is
known, relative to the being of a given act, a given realization, or a given determination that could be
received by the potency in question in a way which would reduce the being of this potency into a
condition of act, extinguishing a given potency when, now, it exists within a condition of act. Act
supplants or replaces potency in a manner which can point to the being or the identity of new emergent
potencies.
Because, in Aristotle, a real distinction exists between a nature and an accident (the nature of a thing, as
an explanatory principle, exists as a constant while what a given thing is doing at any given time differs
from what it could be doing at some other time), 703 and because accidental attributes or accidental
events come and go according to the kind of nature which individually belongs to them, by
understanding and attending to the substantial nature or the substantial form of a given thing, we can
understand why some accidents can be regarded as normal or proper and why others can be regarded as
incidental or circumstantial (at some times, violent). Acts of cognition which are rational are seen to be
proper to the life of human beings but not so our height, our weight, and the color of our hair. 704 With
respect to the things of this world, the nature of a given thing cannot be simply identified with how a
given thing actually exists nor with what a given thing is actually doing in a given act or operation.
From a thing’s nature, its being or the existence of any of its operations cannot be derived.
Understanding a given finite nature or essence does not mean that we will necessarily understand the
actuality of its being or the actuality of its existence.705
Hence, within this context, a nature (as Aristotle understands it) would have to exist as a limited form
of explanatory principle. It explains a fewer number of things because it cannot be equated with the
concrete being of an existing thing and all the things that a given thing does, performs, or experiences.
A certain fullness of reality is missing: a fullness which refers to the simple existence of concretely
existing things or/and the activities of these concretely existing things although, admittedly, in some
way, the nature of a thing, as an explanatory principle, is such that it is ordered toward possibly
receiving acts of being or existence – acts which would refer to the existence of a given thing or being
and which could also refer to the being of operations although, as noted, in the metaphysics of form
species of activity which wants to move from an experience of multiplicity toward a condition of unity
as this unity exists within the kind of oneness which belongs to the intelligibility of an understood
nature.
701Byrne, “Insight and the Retrieval of Nature,” Lonergan Workshop, p. 14.
702Aquinas, De Potentia, q. 1, a. 1 and Summa Contra Gentiles, 3, 23.
703Lonergan, Triune God: Systematics, p. 193.
704Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 41.
705Lonergan, Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ, p. 11; p. 53; p. 164.
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which exists in Aristotle, the being of existing things is not explained by way of act but by the principle
of form.
Second, by way of a further understanding of motion or movement which comes to us if we move with
the principles of potency and act in the context of Aristotle's philosophy, from potency and act or,
alternatively, from matter and form, we can move toward the kind of teaching which Aristotle offers
when he speaks about the necessary existence of four different kinds of causes (four necessary
causes)706 if movement or change, as it exists in our world, is to have a fully adequate explanation
where, for instance, in book 9 of the Metaphysics, Aristotle summarizes the adumbrations and
speculations of Pre-socratic teaching as this refers to a general understanding of all the causal
explanations which can possibly exist for us in our attempts to understand the being of our world. How
to explain why something is changing in the way that it is changing if differing answers can be given
about why something is changing in the way that it is changing (differing answers which do not
conflict with each is saying or offering as an explanation)? 707 What are these distinct causes and what
kind of role do they individually play as heuristic tools if our larger, general object is always an
understanding of everything that can undergo or initiate any kind of movement or change within the
circumstances of our currently existing world as this world has always existed as a species of reality
which, to some extent, is self-moving and self-causing? 708 On a basis which can be determined on the
basis of potency and act, or on a basis which can be determined on the basis of matter and form, with
respect to these first principles, four distinct causes can be determined where each exists as a relation or
as a perspective which works from a slightly different point of departure that is grounded in how it can
be said that potency and act or matter and form are related to each other. 709 As a fundamental point of
departure however: the association of form and act with determinacy and matter and potency with
indeterminacy suggests that none of these contrasting terms is understood if its correlative is not also
understood in a way which points to a dialectical but mutual form of determination. The meaning of
one mediates the meaning of the other back and forth. One is positive while the other, negative and
each cannot be entirely understood apart from its opposition or contrast with the other.
In a way which accordingly shows that Aristotle was the first person to speak about the necessary
existence of four necessary distinct causes that must be invoked if we are to have a comprehensive
understanding of anything which exists within the world of our ordinary experience, Aristotle notes as
follows: (1) Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes discovered the kind of being which exists as a
material specification of cause (hence, material cause); (2) the Pythagoreans to Plato, form as formal
cause; (3) Empedocles and Heraclitus, respectively through the principle of Love and Strife and the
principle of logos, the being of efficient or instrumental causes; and finally (4) Anaxagoras, Socrates,
and Plato, the being of final causes which Aristotle accepted and which he further developed within the
later context of his ethics when speaking about how our human movements are directed or intended
toward that which would exist as a concrete good.
With respect then to the being of efficient or instrumental causes (given earlier discussions about the
meaning of material and formal causes in Aristotle), an efficient or an instrumental cause refers to that
706Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1, 3, 10; Physics, 2, 7, as cited by Hill, After the Natural Law, p.
43; Byrne, “Insight and the Retrieval of Nature,” Lonergan Workshop, p. 15.
707Byrne, “Insight and the Retrieval of Nature,” Lonergan Workshop, p. 15.
708Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 82.
709Byrne, “Insight and the Retrieval of Nature,” Lonergan Workshop, p. 15.
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by which something else is made. Hence, an efficient cause refers to some kind of instrument or means
that is used in a given context. One does this in order to do that. A frequently employed example
refers to an artist who carves a statue from a mass of stone. The hammer and chisel that he uses
function as efficient or as instrumental causes. By their use, through an external kind of application
and use, something else is brought into being which had not existed before. 710 An efficient cause
accordingly exists as a catalyst: as an agent cause, as a moving cause, as an agent object, or as a
moving substance. It moves matter or something other which exists as an other from a condition of
non-being toward a condition of being.711 In a definition which comes to us from Aristotle, it is “that
from which change or rest first begins.” 712 A parent, as a substance (ousia), through the form of the
parent's humanity, takes something other which is not yet human and, by working with it, changes it
into something which is now human.713 More precisely in wording which can be used to define the
nature of an efficient cause, it is that “by which something [other] is made.”714
To understand the nature of an efficient cause, we begin by understanding how we can move from the
nature of a formal cause to the nature of an efficient cause, an understanding of formal causes leading
us toward an understanding of efficient causes. On formal causes: when a form exists within a given
thing, as a formal cause, it accordingly exists as a distinct predicate, having its own effect. It indicates
what a given thing is: why it exists in the way that it does, what this same thing is able to receive
without destroying or violating its being and identity, and what this same thing is able to do as an
extension or as a communication of its being and identity if, with respect to the being of a given thing,
it exists with a measure of self-motion and self-movement which points to its animate, living nature.
Living things or animate substances are characterized by varying degrees of self-motion; dead
inanimate things, by a lack of self-motion. When the intelligibility of a formal cause accordingly
indicates what a given thing is able to receive (when its passivity is indicated and understood), we can
then understand what kinds of action can come to it from without (from external sources and causes):
actions which can bring a given thing into a condition of being or actions which can bring a given thing
into a specification of being which refers to the kind of fuller being which exists in context of its
flourishing. It is one thing to simply be or exist. It is another thing to fully live and be. Then too
however, by also understanding what a given thing is able to do, we can also understand how a given
thing can also exist and function as if it is itself a species of efficient cause. By its own actions, it can
bring something else into being: either a being which is totally other than the being who is the doer or
the subject of efficient causality or something which exists within the life of the subject who is the
agent or the doer of efficient causality. We can read a book in order to grow in our own understanding
and knowledge or we can read a book in order to engage in actions which construct external objects
We might want to build a house, a computer, or some other external object. While substances (or
things) exist with formal determinations which point to their distinctiveness (who and what they are),
through their efficient causality, these same substances or things can pass on or they can communicate
their whatness (their formal determinations) to things which would exist as new others (acting upon
710Stebbins, Divine Initiative, p. 98.
711Joseph Owens, Elementary Christian Metaphysics, p. 76 & n. 19 citing Aquinas, De Ente,
4. See also Lonergan, Understanding and Being, p. 8; and Stebbins, Divine Initiative, p. 41.
712Aristotle, Physics, 194b30, as quoted by Patrick H. Byrne, “Teleology, Modern Science
and Verification,” Lonergan Workshop, vol. 10, ed. Fred Lawrence (Boston: Boston College, 1994), p.
4.
713Byrne, “Insight and the Retrieval of Nature,” Lonergan Workshop, p. 15.
714Alder, Aristotle for Everybody, p. 42.
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these others in a way which effects the being of something which, before, had not existed). In a point
of difference or contrast with the formality or the immateriality of formal causes, efficient causes work
with material means of one kind or another to effect the emergence or the being of other things even if,
admittedly, in some circumstances, these other things or these other objects exist in an immaterial way
(they have no spatial or temporal conjugates).715
Paraphrasing the kind of argumentation which we can find in the teaching of Aquinas:
since contingent being cannot cause itself (since, in Aquinas, the form or the nature of a
contingent being is not to be equated with the act of being or the act of existence which
belongs to an actually existing contingent thing), the beingness or the existence of an
actually existing contingent thing can only be explained if we should refer to an act or a
cause of being or existence which comes from something other (externally), this other
referring to the reality or the activity of an efficient cause. In a shift which moves
toward the kind of truth which is expressed by a proposition which exists for us as an
analytic principle (its truth is such that the form or the predicate of a thing exists within
the meaning or the being of a given thing; a thing exists as a substance or it exists as a
subject), a difference in internal relations distinguishes the causality and the reality of a
formal cause from the causality and the reality of an efficient cause. In a formal cause, a
form exists within a set of material conditions and, in the consequent internal relation
which exists between form and matter as these exist together, as noted, in and by itself, a
formal cause does not bring something other into a condition of being from a prior
condition of non-being. The causality of a formal cause is limited to specifying why
something exists in the way that it happens to be and exist. However, with respect to the
being of efficient or instrumental causes: if, in another predicate of relation, an internal
relation is constitutive of the being of another thing, if an internal relation brings a being
into a condition of existence which before it had not enjoyed (moving from a condition
of non-being to a condition of being), then, in this sense, we can refer to how this type
of internal relation can be regarded as an efficient cause and not as a formal cause. The
internal relation which exists within the being of an efficient cause points to a variable
or a factor which explains how or why a given something has been brought into a
condition of being from a prior condition of non-being. On this basis then, if human
beings can understand how they can function as efficient causes, if they can understand
how, in their efficient causality, they can effect or bring into being the being of other
things (things can refer also to the being or the existence of other human beings), then,
they can begin to understand how efficient causes have functioned to effect the being of
their personal existence. To some extent, they can understand and know these external
715As Hill notes in After the Natural Law, p. 43, the materiality of material and efficient
causes is to be distinguished from the formality or the immateriality of formal and final causes and, in
differing ways also, each set respectively refers to the being of internal and external aspects with
respect to the being and the becoming of things. Matter exists as an internal component when we refer
to the being of existing things. Form also exists as an internal component (matter and form go
together) and so, with respect to material and formal causes, both exist as internal components with
respect to the reality of existing things (things which exist as substances). However, as external causes,
an efficient cause brings something which is other into being and, in an external way too, according to
Aristotle's understanding of final causes, these act from without or externally to bring something which
is other into a condition of fuller, more perfect being.
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causes, determining them and also possibly the order which can join these efficient
causes with each other in a manner which is more effective than the being of some other
kind of order.
With respect to the being of final causes, for Aristotle (in the context of his teleological biology, his
teleological ethics, and his teleological physics): "nature does not act without a goal." 716 In asking why
something exists or why it functions in the way that it happens to exist or function, implicitly, in the
posing of this question, we would be asking about the existence of some kind of end or purpose, a
realization of some kind: a “that for the sake of which,” 717 a “form which finally results when the
motion continues on to completion,”718 where here, in Greek, telos refers to the term of a realization or
the term of a development which would exist as some kind of “end,” “goal,” “purpose,” or
“fulfillment.”719 In general terms thus: an “x” exists in the way that it does because of a “y.” Hence,
with respect to that which exists as “y,” as an explanation, it imparts or it points to a possible direction
or to an orientation which can exist with respect to that which exists as “x,” informing the being or the
nature of “x,” belonging in a way to the fuller existence of that which exists as “x.” The “x” in
question does not exist in some kind of isolation by itself (in a self-enclosed kind of way) but in a
manner which points to a measure of self-transcendence which properly belongs to it. The selftranscendence exists initially as a species of passive potency although, in the case of living things,
another species of self-transcendence can be identified if we should refer to the possible activation or
the eliciting of active potencies which can be brought into a condition of act if we admit that, as a final
cause, a given “y” exerts a perfecting influence. Its causality is such that it functions as an immaterial
kind of efficient cause through the attractiveness which it exerts on things which are other than itself, 720
at times drawing a lower order of being toward a realization of some kind which cannot be effected in
any other kind of way (since, as we have previously noted, as a general principle, nothing which exists
in a condition of potency is able to realize itself through a change which could be described as a species
of self-actuation, a self-actuation of something which, in its potency, is bereft of that which exists in a
condition of act). Realizations of potency come from acts and not from something which exists only as
a “could be” or as a possibility (hence, as a potency). If, in the life of a given thing, stages of
development can be noticed or if, say, the emergence of “x” makes for the possible emergence of
something which exists as “z,” then, in order to understand the nature or the being of a living thing or
in order to understand a possible relation which can exist among a number of different living things,
then the necessary result is the postulation of a final cause (an order of finality) that is able to link these
different stages and conditions with each other in a way which suggests that formal causes exist for the
sake of final causes (for the sake of realizations and perfections which have yet to be, exist, and
emerge).721
On a critical note: to avoid any confusions here and to determine the kind of final cause which is to be
identified with Aristotle's notion of final cause, please note thus that this final cause is not to be
identified with the possible being of some kind of inner tendency, a nisus, a desire, or an effort which
716Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 19.
717Byrne, “Insight and the Retrieval of Nature,” Lonergan Workshop, p. 15.
718Byrne, “Insight and the Retrieval of Nature,” Lonergan Workshop, p. 15.
719Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 34; Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 83.
720Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 84.
721Patrick H. Byrne, Analysis and Science in Aristotle (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1997), p. 197.
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somehow exists within things as a governing “inner impulse” that impels growth or which directs the
life and growth of a given thing,722 although, on the other hand, it is to be admitted that this type of
understanding has been attributed to Aristotle or it has been postulated as a better understanding about
how, in nature, teological causes function and operate. In the first case, R. G. Collingwood speaks
about final causality as an inner tendency which exists within things, a finality which does not have to
be conscious in the manner of its operation in order for it to exist and function as an operative cause; 723
and, without qualification, this understanding is attributed to the kind of understanding that comes to us
from Aristotle. But then, on the other hand, in the thought of Bernard Lonergan, a like understanding
of finality is given which suggests that, perhaps, Collingwood is its probable source or he exists as a
kindred source although, on the other hand, this same understanding is to be attributed to Aristotle in a
manner, however, which points to the necessity of a qualification. The finality that comes to us from
Collingwood and Lonergan does not come to us from Aristotle in terms which refer to a telos or in
terms which would refer to a final cause as an archê hothen hê kinêsis [as the source of movement].724
Instead, the parallel in Aristotle is with how, in the Physics, Aristotle understands motion or movement
as a species of inner principle or inner cause which exists within the being of things. If, in Aristotle,
final causes resemble efficient causes in terms of an external causality which belongs to them (the
externality of their operation), in Lonergan, the reverse applies: final causes resemble formal causes in
terms of a form of internal causality (in their own way, they operate within the being of things). A
formal cause indicates what a given thing is; a final cause, what the same thing can become given what
it already happens to be. Citing Lonergan's own words on the identity of final causes as these indicate
both an absence of Aristotelian origins and also a derivation from Aristotelian origins: “finality is not
principium motus in alio inquantum aliud [a principle of movement in another thing insofar as it is
other]; it is not id cuius gratia [that for the sake of which]; [instead] it is principium motus in eo in quo
est [a principle of movement within the thing itself (in that in which the principle too has being)].”725
I n its dynamism and also its incompleteness, for Aristotle and Lonergan, this inner tendency or this
active potency is something which exists as motion, movement, or change, and so it exists as a kind of
in between. It exists as a departing or as a shifting from a prior condition of potency toward a later
condition of act; or, perhaps more accurately and precisely, it exists as a departing or as a moving from a
lesser condition of act toward a later, fuller condition of act.
To understand, however, how or why final causes differ from efficient causes and how they also differ
from formal causes, in its simplicity, a useful point of departure refers to the example of a sculptor who
works with stone, hammer, and chisel to carve a statue. In his thinking and understanding, the sculptor
has a plan, an image, which exists within his mind. Within the mass of the stone that he is working
with, he sees an image that he wishes to reveal and so he removes the obstructing stone to reveal the
being of this image. The image, relative to the materiality of the stone, exists as a species of formal
cause. It identifies the form of a statue. A statue is a statue because of the form which it has.
However, in the work which is being done, material, efficient, and formal causes are being combined
with each other in many and various ways and the intelligibility which specifies this combination of
differing acts and potencies is itself a predicate (a species of predicate) which transcends the being of
all the other causes or predicates which together are needed if we are to explain the being of existing
722Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 34; Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 83.
723Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 83.
724Aristotle, Physics, 2, 1, 192b21-22, as cited by Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human
Understanding, p. 476.
725Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, p. 476.
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things. The sculptor, in his own right, is a human being and the formal causality of his humanity is
being combined with the being of other causes in a way which refers to the being and the finality of a
larger, more general scheme of things. In finality, this exists for the sake of that, and in the correlation
and interrelation of many different variables, in the context of a general order which exists among
many different things, a given end or purpose or, in other words, a condition of perfection or a
condition of realization which exists at one level of being is explained by the being of other ends or
purposes (other, possible conditions of realization) through a chain of causes which moves through
differing levels of being or reality toward higher orders of being or reality. If, for instance, we should
look at the organic world of living things which surrounds us, we notice that without water and a cycle
of events which make for a regular supply of water, no plant life can ever exist. But then, without the
existence of certain kinds of vegetative life, certain other kinds of life form would not exist within the
animal kingdom and then too, without the existence of life forms which exist among lower animals,
higher animals would not be able to exist. Generically speaking: one type of being creates conditions
of possibility for the emergence of other types of being. Hence, in Aristotle, the primacy of final
causes is such that it points to why final causes are to be understood in a way which regards them as
“the cause of causes” (causa causarum).726 To repeat and reiterate what we have said and to try and
give a fuller explanation about how, in our world, a finality exists with respect to the being of existing
things:
In the world of our experience, a final causality imparts a unity or it creates a
comprehensiveness that is able to integrate the being of all lesser final causes and, at the
same time too, all other primary causes (material, formal, and efficient). All other
causes can be understood in terms of how they all relate to each other if we can point to
an internal orientation or a vector which exists within the world of our ordinary
experience, a world which cannot be or exist in the way that it does if certain levels of
being or if certain kinds of being are not to be known in a way which recognizes the fact
that certain things exist as points of departure for the possible existence of other things:
higher things or higher levels of being even if the being of lower or prior things is
without any kind of awareness which would know about the existence of this kind of
order or this kind of ordination. As noted, a higher level of being or a higher kind of
being can only exist if certain lower levels of being exist in some kind of preliminary
way or if, similarly, lower kinds of being exist.
Apart from our subjective
considerations or apart from our subjective desires as these exist within the human order
of things when we ask about the kind of order which exists among our many human
actions and how our actions are orientated toward goals and objectives which are proper
to them, within the external world of physical, chemical, biological nature (as this
exists) an objective species of order is discoverable, a teleological order of some kind or
other even if we would have to admit that the existence of this order is not so easily
understood within a context of mind and a way of thinking which prefers to think that a
teleological order of things is to be associated only with the human order of existing
things and not with an order of things which exists apart from any kind of human
intervention that would take up this world in a way that is suited to our refashioning of it
ways that would seem to suit our human interests and desires.
726Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 43, quoting D. Q. McInerny, Metaphysics (Elmhurst, PA:
Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, 2004), 266; Charles A. Hart, Thomistic Metaphysics An Inquiry into the
Act of Existing (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1959), p. 299.
187
By attending thus to the form of a thing (the form of a substance), from the principle of form and by
understanding how it relates to the principle of matter as this exists in potency, the result should be an
apprehension which knows about an order of being and how finality exists within the being of our
world. Consciously or unconsciously, a goal-oriented system strives for its own form of selfrealization and for whatever perfection is possible within a context of limitations as these are allowed
and permitted by the essence of a particular thing (perhaps according to how this essence is known by
us initially through an understanding that knows about the being of its relevant form). 727 If, from the
form of a thing, we understand the essence of a thing, from the same form (or, in other words, from the
same principle), we should also understand how a thing best exists when it is realized a manner which
points to the fullness of its being (the fullness of its reality). 728 For an example here that is often used:
metaphysically speaking, an acorn is an actuality which exists as the potentiality for the later being (the
later emergence) of a mature oak tree since its matter contains the potentiality for becoming a mature
oak tree which is the acorn’s eventual actuality in the course of time although, in metaphysical terms,
we would say that an oak tree's being or that the oak's tree's existence is the actuality of an acorn: an
actuality which would exist as the realization or as the kind of terminus which belongs to the life and
being of an acorn. Throughout, a form exists as an operative, operating cause and the form of an acorn
is such thus that its realization or its end is the reality of a fully existing tree.
An adequate understanding about the nature of a formal cause should always thus indicate the being
and the operation of a final cause and the possible understanding that can be had if we should attend to
the possible being and meaning of a final cause. This proceeding of an understanding of finality from a
apprehension which first understands and knows about the intelligibility of a formal cause accordingly
explains why these two causes exist together as respectively denoting internal and external aspects
which belong to the intelligibility of things, an intelligibility however which refers to the “formal
nature of things.”729 The form of a thing exists internally as one of its two components (the other
component is matter) but, as an internally existing thing, the form or the intelligibility of a thing points
to a species of external cause which is the term or the terminus of a formal cause with respect to its
possible later realization within conditions that belong to the being of our world in terms of its spatial
and temporal conjugates. Hence, the intelligibility of a final cause is other than the being of a formal
cause although, from an understanding of formal causes, we move toward an understanding of final
causes. Relative to the being of formal causes, final causes exist in an external manner as a higher
principle of order. Qua externality, final causes resemble efficient causes (both exist in an external
way) although the resemblance ends as soon as we advert to how they refer to different aspects or
different parts that are constitutive of how change occurs within the world of our ordinary experience
or to a different kind of relation which can exist between act and potency or a different kind of relation
which can exist between form and matter. If, in Aristotle, every kind of change is a process of being
moved or affected by something else which is other than itself in some way (whether changes occur
within our souls or within the being of inanimate nature), 730 to explain every kind of movement or
change which occurs, it is accordingly noted and argued that every kind of moving or changing
involves a potential (a material cause) which receives a form (a formal cause) from an agent (an
efficient cause) in a context which creates conditions that lead to the possible reception of new changes
727Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 79.
728Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 41.
729Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 43, n. 12.
730Aristotle, Metaphysics 11, 7, 1072b3, as cited by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 44, n. 15.
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in a growth, a development, or a perfection of some kind which occurs within the being of that which
had been potential (a final cause).731
To conclude with an example which attempts to explain how these four necessary causes exist together,
we can distinguish between the plan of an architect to construct a building and the realization of this
same building once it has been constructed. Very many events or causes need to occur before we can
have the finished product, a completed building. Now, as an analytic principle (as a truth that cannot
be doubted since the predicate exists within the subject), it can be said that, prior to the completion of a
given building, the building in question, in fact, does not exist. Its lack of being or its lack of reality
explains why it cannot be or act within a currently existing context in order to effect or to bring about a
given act or an activity which would contribute to the construction of the building in question. As we
have noted, nothing which exists in a condition of potency is able to realize itself. However, if we
should want to talk about how we are to advert to a possible application of different causes that can
effect the construction of a given building, we can refer here to efficient forms of causality. An
architect and subsequent builders work from a realized conception or a thought out plan which exists as
a species of formal cause. This thought out plan is to be concretely realized in a manner which works
from a set of architectural drawings, these drawings existing as a species of first principle for the
generation of a series of efficient, instrumental causes. However, if, within this context, we should
move to another point of view and if we should advert to an intelligible order which exists within a
series or a succession of acts or causes that ultimately leads toward the realization of a building's
construction, we will encounter an intelligibility which differs from the intelligibility or the form of
efficient causality: an order of intelligibility which is denoted if we should refer to that which exists as
the final causality of a realized intelligibility and why, from the standpoint of a realized accomplished
intelligibility, we can go back and find an order which is to be distinguished from other kinds of
intelligible order which exist because, here, its point of reference is the maturity of a completed form.
Final causes differ from efficient causes because, in each case, a different base or a different point of
departure is to be employed as a species of first principle for the determination of a given relation
which exists as we move from the formality of one kind of cause to the formality of another kind of
cause where, in the being of each cause, act and potency are related in a different way.
As a third species of corollary, in potency and act, we have metaphysical principles which are reflected
and more fully understood through a correspondence which exists when we refer to the being of
cognitional principles (the being of our cognitional acts) and how, conversely, our cognitional acts are
more fully understood if our point of departure shifts and becomes the being and the reality of our
metaphysical principles. Acts as activities presuppose acts which exist as acts of being or as acts of
existence where, in this type of situation, acts of being or existence exist within a condition of potency
relative to acts or activities which refer to a species of reality which transcends the kind of being which
is given if we should refer to the mere factuality of being or the factuality of existence. For a complete
understanding of cognitional activities as these exist among human beings, we must refer to their
conditions of possibility and hence, from this, to questions which can ask about the possibility and the
reality of these conditions. If, for instance, our human cognition exists as an ongoing form of
interaction between our acts of sense and our acts of understanding, is not the condition of possibility
for the having of these activities a requisite species of being which would exist for us as the union of a
corporeal body with an immaterial soul? The being of things both in the being of ourselves and in the
being of others leads to the being (the realization) of our knowledge and our understanding of things
731Byrne, Analysis and Science in Aristotle, p. 166.
189
even as we admit too that our knowledge and understanding of things leads us toward to the being of
things, a greater knowledge about the actual being of things. Through our self-reflection, we come to
know about apprehensions of being that are given to us as a consequence of our later acts of inquiry
and discovery although, through this same self-reflection, we can also begin to realize that
apprehensions of being are already somehow given to us apart from the instigation of any inquiries that
could lead us toward new apprehensions of being that would add to the sum of that which we already
happen to know about the being of existing things. If it is argued thus, with Aristotle, that
pedagogically, from what we already know, we move to that which we can come to understand and
know, then, in a similar way, we can argue that being exists as a precondition, as a species of a priori.
Knowing always supposes being if, from being, from the being that is already understood and know
without our having to ask any questions, we move toward knowing and the kind of being that can be
known by us through our various acts of cognition, one following on another in a way which moves
from our acts of sensing through our acts of direct understanding on into our acts of understanding
which would exist for us as our reflective acts of understanding. The transcendence which exists in our
human acts of cognition is explained by a greater transcendence which refers to how all these acts exist
or how they are brought into being by a world that, in some way, already mysteriously exists in a way
which transcends the being of our human cognition. A world exists which is proportionate to the kind
of knowing which belongs to us in our human cognition; and the being of this world and the being of
ourselves - if all this can be understood or grasped by us in some kind of limited way – this same world
is something which transcends the kind of being which is ourselves in how we happen to exist and, yet,
this same world also belongs or exists within us (in our being) through a form of participation that is
available to us (which is partially given to us) by way of the kind of agency which exists within the
kind of awareness which also belongs to us within our human acts of cognition.
Aristotle's understanding of divine things
If we should speak then about the being of a transcendent world and how, in Aristotle, we can speak
about our participation in it (how we can move from the proportionate kind of world that we know to
the being of a world which transcends the being of our cognitive operations), an understanding of this
should exist for us if we can distinguish between two parts or two points where we would go from the
first to the second. First, our point of departure continues to be a question which asks about an
explanation for the being of our world and the kind of change which exists within our world. However,
now, our explanation must be more sufficient or adequate. Until now, our object has been limited to
the being of potency and act and how, through potency and act and the interaction which exists
between them, being and becoming have been brought together within our world in a way which points
to a dialectical form of ordering which is constitutive of our world. As noted: these principles exist
together even as they are also opposed to each other. Never is there not a real distinction between
potency and act. Hence, from this, in the ordering which exists within our world, intelligibility is
found. It is detected even if, at the same time, the intelligibility of our world is something which is not
itself the term of an act of understanding which belongs to us, an act of understanding that we have
personally attained or which exists as the term of an inquiry which we have initiated and which has
been concluded by the reception of an act of understanding. We usually have our own acts of
understanding but, as we attend to our acts of understanding, we find that intelligibility is something
which exists also as a given. It already exists for us before we should begin to move toward our own
experiences of understanding and intelligibility through any questions that we might begin to ask. We
are not entirely the originators of understanding and intelligibility even as we know and admit that, to
some extent, we exist as originators of these things (as meaning and intelligibility is given to us within
190
the context of our own experience of self and the world and as we introduce the ordering of meaning
and intelligibility into a context where these things had been absent). For the sake or the purpose of
understanding, in order to grow in our understanding, we find that we are always moving from the
intelligibility of an order in things as this exists within ourselves toward the intelligibility which exists
within the world that exists outside of ourselves and, conversely too, we find that we are also moving
from the order of intelligibility that exists within the world which exists outside of ourselves toward the
intelligibility which also exists within ourselves. In another way of speaking and a bit more bluntly:
intelligibility exists as a kind of a priori. We have intelligibility as a kind of consequence in our human
lives (through our cognitive attentiveness and activity) and we also have intelligibility as a kind of prior
condition that exists for us as a fundamental point of departure if we are to have subsequent acts of
understanding and the enjoyment or the experience of intelligibility as the term or as the content of our
understanding. A useful theological analogy refers to the prevenience or to the necessity of God's
grace. “As often as we do good God operates in us and with us, so that we may operate.” 732 Grace
must first be given to us before we can begin to live in ways that are truly pleasing to God and so, as a
result, begin to grow in grace. Our good actions always need the kind of prior help which is the
priority or the prevenience of God's grace. Hence, similarly with our acts of understanding and the
experience of intelligibility that is given to us in our acts of understanding: it exists for us as a
condition of possibility before we can then move toward the kind of attainment and the experience of
understanding which can exist within our own acts of understanding.
Second, as a consequence of our self-reflection, we know that no real distinction exists between an act
of understanding and the term of such an act which exists as an intelligibility. First the act and then
immediately, in the act, intelligibility. No act of understanding exists apart from the experience or the
givenness of an intelligibility and no intelligibility exists apart from its generating act of understanding.
When intelligibility exists as the term of an act of understanding which belongs to another subject,
another understander (someone who is other than ourselves) and when this intelligibility does not exist
as the term of our own act of understanding, it would exist for us thus as a known unknown. We know
about the existence of intelligibility as this exists in the life of other subjects but this intelligibility is
not understood by us through any act of understanding that we personally have. The intelligibility
exists in an objective way. It is other than ourselves. On this basis thus, to the degree that we should
know about the existence of intelligibility within our world and to the degree too that we should know
about its infinity (the intelligibility is so great and complex that it transcends our personal capacity and
powers of attainment), then, on this basis, we can begin to admit that, for an adequate explanation of
intelligibility as it exists in the sweep of its generality and transcendence, we must refer to another
known unknown which exists as an infinite act of intelligence (the being of an infinite intelligence of
some kind which would have to exist for us as a species of first principle). It is prior or first within the
order of all existing things. And so too, within the order of our human cognition, it exists as a priority
or as a first because it functions as a necessary point of departure that is given to us if, then, we are to
move toward any increments, additions, or expansions that can be given to us within the depth of our
personal understanding.
Hence, as a fundamental postulate or as a prior condition which requires our assent and
acknowledgement if individually we are to grow in the extent of our understanding and knowledge of
things, through our self-knowledge, we can advert to the existence of an originating intellectual
732Second Council of Orange (529), as quoted by Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic
Dogma, trans. James Canon Bastible (Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books, 1974), p. 229.
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principle which functions as an ultimate source and principle of order in our world (an order that we
have not created nor an order that we can possibly bring about through the agency of our own actions).
And so, in the being of this originating principle, it is such that it does three things. (1) It creates or it
constitutes the order which is the being of our world (the being of our world as it is constituted by its
intelligibility). As an unrestricted act, (2) it implements or it effects the same order which it happens to
know or, conversely, we can argue that the knowing of this order implements or it effects this same
order and also (3) it sustains and it maintains this order which it has brought into being through the
kind of act which it is as it exists in itself as an infinite act of understanding. Through an introspective,
retroactive form of analysis which belongs to us as human beings, we have moved or we can move
from acts to potencies and then too from potencies to acts and then, from there, from first acts to the
being of other acts (as in “this act explains this other act” or “this act is explained by this other act”)
and so, for us, the inevitable result is a conclusion which points to the being of an ultimate principle of
intelligibility which must exist apart from ourselves because it exists as an intelligence which knows
itself in an eminently perfect and exhaustive manner: existing thus, through its efficient causality, as
both the primary unmoved mover of all things and as the primary uncaused cause of all effects and yet
existing also through a final causality which draws everything to itself through the attractiveness, the
good, the love, or the perfection which exists in the unrestrictedness of this intelligence in the
knowledge which it has of itself. An act of understanding unrestrictedly knows itself as an act of
understanding (the full extent of its power and might) and everything that can also be know by an act of
understanding (its extent and its depth) and self-understanding also exists an unrestricted act of selfloving.733 If our human self-reflection accordingly exists as a perfection which knows no equal within
circumstances and conditions that are determined by the being of temporal and spatial conjugates (the
kind of contingency which belongs to human acts of understanding reflects the contingency which
belongs to how we live and exist within a material world), how much greater then is the self-reflection
and the self-knowledge which belongs to the being of an act of understanding that exists without any
kind of limit or restriction? In this ultimate first principle and in the simplicity of its unity and being,
efficient and final causality accordingly exist together in a manner which is grounded in how this first
principle exists as simply an unrestricted, unadulterated act of understanding, enjoying and having a
kind of actuality that is bereft of the possibility of any kind of potency and, at the same time too, having
an actuality which transcends the being of all classes, kinds, and any subdivisions which could ever
possibly exist.734
By a kind of analogy thus, we have moved from our human acts of understanding toward a partial kind
of understanding which is given to us about the being of an unrestricted act of understanding. Certain
things can be said about the being of this act of understanding (necessarily, it exists) and, at the same
time too, a greater portion is not understood and known by us since, in admitting that such a thing
exists (an unrestricted act of understanding), we would also have to admit that this unrestrictedness is
something which is shrouded in inaccessibility and, from this inaccessibility, its mystery. Never can
we adequately know it or understand it even as we always know that, in some mysterious way, our acts
of understanding exist as effects (contingent acts of understanding supposing the being of acts of
understanding which always exist) and so, in some way, our acts of understanding exist through a kind
of participation which exists in the being of this unrestricted act of understanding. Secondary causes
(as this applies to our contingent acts of human cognition) cannot be known apart from the being of
primary causes (as this applies to the being of an unrestricted act of cognition) since the conception or
733Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 88.
734Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 87.
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the postulation of anything which exists as a secondary cause always supposes the conception and the
being of a primary cause; secondary causality, primary causality.
Given then the principle of sufficient reason which says that nothing happens in our world without the
being of some kind of reason or cause, and as we use this principle as a species of first principle within
our thinking and our understanding of things: hence, if, in general, motions and effects are to have
some kind of ultimate adequate explanation, if motions and effects exist intrinsically as intelligible,
reasonable, rational things, then, through a self-evident kind of reflection and argument, intelligence
and reasonableness would have to exist in a way which points to its inevitability or to its ultimacy and
so, from the perspective of this ultimacy, in Aristotle, we get to a notion of God: God as a transcendent,
divine type of being who must be utterly unique, existing as both an unmoved, first mover and as an
uncaused first cause (the two existing together). This being, as divine, cannot be moved by anything
else without risk of contradiction. It cannot be caused by anything else and so, as noted, in this first
mover or in this first cause, we have a mover or a cause which must exist in a manner that is entirely
lacking in any kind of incompleteness (hence, as noted, in any kind of potency). The first mover or the
first cause must exist within a condition of pure act (there being no kind of development or species of
realization that could possibly exist within this mover or cause which would have us assume that, in it,
there must be a transition that would move from a condition of potency toward a condition of act).
Hence, uniquely, as an unrestricted type of act, it is entirely actual and most ultimate: it is the
beginning and the source of all things even if admittedly, within the context of his understanding, in
Aristotle, nothing is said about the being of this first principle as if he exists as some kind of creator for
the being of all other things in the world, a creator who, through efficient causality, would bring
everything else into some kind of being from a prior condition of non-being or, alternatively, if we
should use another conceptuality, bring something into being from a prior condition of nothingness.
Instead of God moving outwardly from himself toward the being of a world which is somehow other
than himself (even if, in some way, it comes from him), God exists primarily as a lodestone or as a
magnet (exercising its influence as a supremely attractive end, object, telos, or final cause if we should
prefer to work with this technical manner of speaking).735 All things exist and be to the degree that they
exist in God; or, in other words, by way of an explanation: as they move toward God in a manner
which is constantly shifting from prior conditions of potency towards later realizations of act. The
degree or the goodness of their individual being is measured by the degree that each imitates the kind
of being and the kind of goodness which belongs to God alone, rational beings best imitating God
through the being of their understanding.736
In the manner of our analysis thus - as we have moved toward first principles and the reality of these
first principles – our way of analysis has led us toward the being of a fully actual, immaterial,
transcendent power which would exist as mind or nous (if we should use this Greek designation).
Subtract the being of the full actuality which belongs to nous and, incoherently, we would have to
move within a world (we would be confined to a world) where everything would exist with one part or
aspect that is always actual and a second part that is always potential or possible. Perfections in being
within our currently existing world would be always joined to imperfections in being in a way which
would always take away or which would always subtract from the quality or the being of the
perfections which, in fact, are already given to us (they already exist in some way) even if, between
these different kinds of being – between act and potency - real distinctions will always exist and even if
735Pabst, Metaphysics, pp. 22-23, p. 26, citing Aristotle, Metaphysics, 7, 1072a26-1072b31.
736Collingwood, Idea of Nature, pp. 89-90.
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these distinctions are always necessary for us if we are to distinguish between all the different kinds of
being which exist within our world in terms which can indicate how they all differ from each other,
each type of being having a kind of change which is always peculiar to it. Advert, however, to the
possible being of that which exists as full actuality and, immediately, we move into a world which is
other than our currently existing world: a world, however, which we must advert to if the world of our
ordinary experience is to have any real sense or meaning. Because this first mover or first cause can
never ever possibly exist as a contingent being because it is not subject to any kind of change, because
it must exist in an eternal way, it must exist as God or that which we refer to as God because, within the
context of the kind of thinking that we find in Aristotle, this type of being would have to exist in an
entirely transcendent manner if the givenness or the beingness of change as change or the givenness of
motion is to have an explanation which is adequate to it.
Hence, through a kind of summary that can be extrapolated from the gist and the scope of Aristotle's
philosophical analysis, a 3-fold notion of God is to be identified and determined: (1) God as pure act
without any potency, lacking any potency (existing as a potency to nothing) since God cannot change
because he is completely perfect; he is pure actuality or, in other words, he is pure activity; (2) God as
unmoved mover or God as First Mover or Prime Mover (God exists as only a source of motion and
movement and not as some kind of creator); he functions as the highest form of concrete perfection
toward which all things are striving and attending by way of a love or an attraction for that which exists
as a supreme, ultimate "Good”; and (3) God as thinking upon thinking, or as the activity of pure
thought (thinking about its own perfection or thinking about his own perfection: God as “thought [that]
thinks itself as object in virtue of its participation in what is thought” 737) or, alternatively, God as
immediate complete self-consciousness or as Knowledge of Knowledge since, if God were to think
about other things that would be other than himself, this would imply that he could be effected or, in
some way, influenced by the being of these other things that he knows and so, in some way, he could
be subject to change and hence lacking in the perfection which properly belongs to him as God. A
knowledge of new things as a knowledge of changing, emerging things would imply a growing of
knowledge which would exist in God and so, in some way, an augmenting or an enlarging of who or
what God is. Potency would exist within God as a principle or as an element and this is something that
we cannot admit since, with Aristotle, in our understanding of change, change always exists as a
transition which moves from potency to act and this transition is such that it applies only to the being of
contingently existing things (ourselves included) who are normally always moving from a condition of
potency to a condition of act. Hence, as a species of cause, because God only knows himself and
nothing else, it cannot be said that he knows the universe or that he would care about the being of the
universe (if he knows nothing about it). As we have noted, as God, God has no knowledge of anything
that is outside himself. In its perfect self-knowledge or in God's perfect self-knowledge, God
accordingly experiences a perfection of himself that does not require or suppose any need that he
should have a knowledge of other things. God's providence or God's providential government of the
universe is something which cannot be conceived or thought about within this context thus given the
parameters which have come to us from the rationale of Aristotle's metaphysics and how he thinks
about the being of act and potency and how he then employs these principles in order to think and
speak about realities which, in their own being, would transcend the powers and the capacities of our
ordinary human experience as this is given to us through the being of our sensible human perceptions.
If, in general, every potency is known as a given potency because of how it is related to a given act
(something which exists as an act), then the primacy of act is an aforesaid obvious conclusion and so,
737Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1072b19, as quoted by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 56, n. 1.
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from the primacy of act, the primacy of an act which is completely actual. It exists in an unadulterated
kind of way.
Aristotle's understanding of human things
With respect to the kind of thinking which exists within Aristotle’s ethics, with respect to the question
of causality and why human beings behave in the way that they do, in the human situation, formal and
final causes are nearly identical with each other or they exist very closely together since, in general, as
our point of departure, it can be noted, as a general principle, that the goal for which something exists is
to realize its own form as perfectly as this can be done. Form and freedom best exist in each their own
way if each can inform and support the other. Hence, if we should have the form of a man or the form
of a woman, we must realize these same forms respectively through exercises of freedom: in other
words, by being as good a man as this is possible for us to be or by being as good a woman as this is
also possible for us to be through the choices and decisions that we make. The formal cause identifies
who or what one is as a human being although this type of cause is almost entirely lacking in any
meaning if, through final causality, we do not attempt to realize the given humanity that has been
initially given to us. As we have been noting, finality has an important place within Aristotle’s
worldview since it is of the highest importance because of a principle which says that purposefulness is
imminent in the being of all things which happen to exist. No full account of life and reality can ever
do without it.
In attending thus to the kind of focus which exists within Aristotle's ethics, human nature is to be
identified as the principle of reality or, more strongly, we would say that the intelligibility of human
nature is something which exists as a reality and that, in some way, we can come to know it. In the
context of an eudaemonic ethics (eudaimonia as “good spiritedness,” as “blessedness,” or as “living a
life that is turning out well”),738 or in the context of a teological ethics (where ethical human good is
measured by the realization of our distinctly human telos),739 as human beings, we act for the sake of
being happy which occurs thus whenever, as human beings, we realize ourselves through some kind of
self-fulfillment where the best form of realization occurs through the exercise of our human acts of
reason and intellect since this rationality is of a kind or a type that it sets us apart, as human beings,
from the being of all other things. Its cultivation best advances or it best effects our human happiness,
our human happiness and sense of well being being not defined by a life that is given to the pursuit of
pleasure nor a life that wants to cultivate a sense of apathy or an attitude of indifference with respect to
the world which exists about us in the context of our human lives. 740 Bluntly put: to have a good
intellect and to exercise it in a good way is the best way for us to be happy and at peace with ourselves.
As a general principle thus: “happiness or the condition of our well being exists as an activity.” Our
happiness, our sense of personal well-being, exists if we can be fully alive in a manner which reflects
or which points to the intelligibility of our human form (a form which is to be identified with the being
of our rational human souls). We are most happy if we can pursue a life that is steadfastly given to the
actuation of our human condition: becoming that which we already happen to be as human beings and
then being, through our activity, the good person that we have become and are. If we should realize the
kind of human nature which belongs to us as human beings, nature and ethics become one if, now, the
supreme norm of ethical human life is a precept which demands and states that, always, we should try
738Robert Spaemann, “Eudaimonism,” Happiness and Benevolence, p. 18; p. 30.
739Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 43, n. 12.
740Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 47.
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and realize the nature which has been given to us. 741 Those actions which correspond with nature (with
our nature) are morally good; actions which do not are morally evil.742
Knowing the good helps us to move toward our living and doing the good since, normally, the
reasonableness or the goodness which exists within the life of our wills is conditioned by the
reasonableness and the goodness which exists within the life of our minds (within the grasp and
knowledge of our understanding). However, not every person is equipped or is called upon to live the
life of the mind or intellect as we can see this in the life of persons who happen to be scientists and
philosophers. Our understanding and knowing is not exactly the same thing as our willing and doing
since, in addition to the kind of theoretical activity which belongs to the life of our minds in the kind of
total dedication which belongs to the kind of study and contemplation which is required for the practice
of philosophy and science, there is in our human living and doing a species of practical activity which
belongs to the living of an ethically good human life. In the considerations of ethics and in the posing
of various ethical questions (of one kind or another), a theoretical kind of inquiry and a practical kind
of inquiry exist together in a way which points to the uniqueness of ethics as a human discipline.
Understanding is mated to a life of virtue (the two condition each other) since, if we are virtuous in
how we live and function as human beings, if we realize all of our potentials (all of our abilities and
capacities), we can be happy in a context where, initially, as a species of universal principle that applies
throughout within both the physical and human world, the good is defined as "that at which all things
aim."743 Every act, every activity, exists for a purpose that is defined as the "good" of that act. And so,
we perform an act because we find that its purpose is worthwhile.
Since, as noted, all human acts are directed toward happiness, we can accordingly seek happiness for
its own sake and not for the sake of something else. And so, from the point of view of a larger
perspective, if we are to determine the nature of this happiness, we must ask ourselves about "what is
the function of the human?" which, for Aristotle, in the kind of answer which he gives, is to be known
as "an activity of the soul which is in accordance with virtue and which follows a rational principle."
The existence of a rational principle refers to the life of our minds and the necessity of a species of
wisdom that is determined by the press of rational considerations (theoretical wisdom as sophia); and,
following this, the existence of virtue refers to the life of our minds as our understanding moves in an
outward fashion to consider the external circumstances of our human life where, now, within this larger
existential context, prudent decisions need to be made about what exactly we will do: hence, the good
of practical wisdom as phronesis. The active reason’s search for virtue involves making correct
choices and decisions that are defined as means which could lead us toward a desired good. When all
of our faculties function together harmoniously under the guidance of our reason, we will be happy.
The reference to circumstances and the necessity of prudence explains why, with ethics, we have a
discipline which lacks the kind of exactness which exists among the various theoretical sciences; a
discipline which occupies an intermediate zone since its practicality is tempered by a form of
conditioning which refers to the value and necessity of theoretical reason as a healthy or apt point of
departure before we can intelligently move into the unique type of inquiry which exists as the basis of
ethics in our ethical reflections.
From the self-transcendence which exists in theoretical reasoning and knowledge, we can then move
741Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1029a20, as quoted by Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 92.
742Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1029a20, as quoted by Collingwood, Idea of Nature, p. 92.
743Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 20.
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into another form of self-transcendence which exists as the achievement of moral goodness where,
within this context, our human knowing and our human willing exist in a manner which points to a
fundamental unity which exists between them. Willing follows knowing or, in other words, our human
doing exists as a function of our knowing (“virtue is knowledge” according to the Socratic thesis)
although this willing does exist in a way which is wholly determined by anything which exists within
the content of our human knowing since no amount of understanding can compel a person to do an
action or deed which is morally good and right. Nothing can happen in terms of moral perfection if a
person is not good in the kind of person that he or she happens to be: hence, in Aristotle, the measure of
ethical human goodness is the being and the having of human virtue and its incarnation in the life of a
virtuous, good person. “The best good is apparent only to the good person, for vice perverts us and
produces false views about the principles of actions.” 744 An existential norm is defined for the living of
a good human life if we should accordingly refer to Aristotle'e notion of the “virtuous man.” 745 As a
source of virtue, as a doer of good deeds, the virtuous man or woman becomes his or her own norm.
The living of a virtuous life by a good person points to how we should ourselves live as we try, in each
our own way, to live a life of virtue that is proper to each of us according to the station that we
individually have and occupy in the context of our own lives.
In Aristotle's doctrine of the virtues, a virtue is defined as, functionally, a mean between two extremes
as these are established by the weight of current circumstances according to our judgment and
evaluation of them. Virtue is accordingly attained by a process of trial and error (and so, consequently,
this kind of activity is not to be understood on a basis that is inspired by the kind of activity which
occurs in philosophy and mathematics). Perhaps, we can argue that this approach points to an early
form, an early appearance of situation ethics. For example, courage is neither rash aggressiveness nor
is it timid withdrawal but, in fact, it is something which exists as an in between: an in between which is
rationally determined. Hence, the mean of virtue exists as a rational thing. As we have been
suggesting thus far, two kinds of virtue exist in Aristotle: intellectual theoretical virtue and moral
practical virtue. Intellectual virtue, in its own way, leads to philosophical wisdom and practical
wisdom and it develops through a combination of inheritance and education. Intellectual virtue, as or
when it leads us toward the attainment of practical wisdom, produces the kind of wisdom that is
necessary for us if, eventually, as a consequence of our moral deliberations, we are to make judgments
that are consistent with how we should understand the nature of the good life. As noted or as we have
been suggesting, philosophical wisdom exists in a manner which is scientific, disinterested, and
contemplative (it is to be associated with the life of a pure form of human reasoning which, precisely as
an activity, best defines however that which is most human about our being human beings).
Philosophical wisdom, on the one hand, is to be regarded as the highest type of virtue because it refers
to philosophical activity and because, in our human life, we can only be truly happy if our human living
leads to a contemplative style of living (something which is not monastic per se), a manner of living
which acknowledges and knows that, as human beings, we all live within a world which transcends the
being of our personal existence.
In a similar way, however, but also in a different way, moral virtue or practical virtue (which leads to
good moral judgment in the achievement of practical wisdom) is a quality or an attainment which arises
744Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1, 2, 1094a24, 1094b14-15, as quoted by Hill, After the
Natural Law, p. 46.
745Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 2, 3, 4, as cited by McCarthy, Authenticity as Selftranscendence, p. 62.
197
through imitation, through practice, and through habit in a continual doing of good deeds in a context
which is defined by our living within the context of a society and a given human order which is
determinative of the life which exists within a given human society. No one can moral outside of
living in a human social order, in a manner which would transcend the being of a given social context.
Moral virtue then produces "states of character" which dispose one to act in certain ways, ways which
are virtuous if they, in the end, result in acts which accord with that which exists as the "golden mean"
of moderation in life (a life which avoids extremes of all kinds). Good moral judgement is conditioned
by the doing of good deeds in a life of virtue and this same judgment facilitates or it leads us toward the
doing of additional good deeds which, perhaps, previously, had not been thought about, pondered, or
considered.746 To illustrate with an example, the possession of wealth is not itself a species of
sufficient adequate thing although, as a mean between extremes, a person cannot be happy without
having a degree of wealth, without experiencing a degree of comfort. Comfort is not wealth or luxury
and, at the same time, it is not poverty and deprivation. We cannot be happy if we are without a certain
level of material sustenance and, similarly, we cannot be happy if we have too much in terms of a
broad range of material goods.747 Our good judgment determines the wealth that we should have and
the wealth that we should avoid.
Four virtues are foundational (four virtues are cardinal) for the possible living of a truly good moral life
in a living which is constitutive of our human happiness.748 (1) Through prudence, we judge the
appropriateness of possible human actions as these accord with the givenness of concrete conditions
and our understanding of these conditions. (2) Through courage or fortitude, we persevere in the
commitments that we have made. (3) Through temperance, we exercise a degree of self-control which
avoids extremes and which counsels moderation in all things. And lastly, (4) through justice, we give
to each person his or her due. All favoritism is to be avoided. Prudence governs all things.
On the limitations of Aristotle’s ethics, it comes across to us as something which is aristocratic in
nature and character since the virtuous man requires the being of a number of necessary conditions if
he is to be entirely virtuous: conditions which exist in varying degrees of wealth, health, and the
exercise of political power if we are to live a truly happy life. We need a good birth, good children,
and good looks: as Aristotle notes, "for the man who is very ugly in appearance . . . is not very likely to
be happy."749 We must not be very short. We must be free from the need to perform any kind of
manual labor: "No man can practice virtue who is living the life of a mechanic or laborer." While,
admittedly, Aristotle’s ethics were set within the context of the life of the Greek state, the Greek polis,
on the other hand, he speaks about the human moral task in a way which refers to the being of the selfsufficient kind of gentleman who does not rely on the necessity of having to meet too many social
obligations. No direct mention is made of the good of charity and about how it exists as a noble moral
quality.
In Aristotle's understanding of psychology, within this, he includes a treatise on aesthetics and a theory
of catharsis or purification since, in the play of tragedy, we make ourselves purer (an effect which
points to the value of tragedy). Unfortunately, his teaching is not that clear although, in his Poetics, he
regards poetry as more serious a thing than history since it deals with universals. In his somewhat
746Hill, After the Natural Law, pp. 46-47.
747Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1, 2, 1094, as quoted by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 47.
748Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 48.
749Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 82.
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monistic view of the human soul, he especially singled out the importance of one faculty: our active
reason and how it exists in a way that is somehow separate and distinct from our bodies and so it is
something which is immortal (although, in man, he acknowledges the being of a vegetative soul or, in
the other words, the being of a vegetative capacity and also the being of an animal soul or, in other
words, the being of a capacity which is to be associated with the being of animal life). A woman exists
as an "unfinished man" given Aristotle’s understanding about the nature of human reproduction and his
belief that a child only inherits male characteristics that are found in male semen.
In Aristotle's political philosophy, four differences should be noted. (1) Aristotle's ethics and politics is
closely connected to the belief that we cannot live ethically within a bad state: "the same things are best
for individuals and states." Since the state exists for the supreme good of the individual person, well
organized states are necessary for living a good life. Our society, as organized through the being of a
state, gives us our “second nature.” 750 According to books 7-8 of the Politics, the size of a state should
be that of a polis: it is large enough to be self-supporting and yet not too large in a way that would
make good government impossible. To defend the state, soldiers should receive land both near the
border and about the city to ensure that they will have a personal interest in defending the state. When a
soldier ages, he could become a magistrate and later even a priest. Where the Sophists argued that the
state is a purely conventional thing, for Aristotle, the state exists as a natural society: “the State is by
nature prior to the individual.”751 The individual is something which emerges later within the context
of the being of a particular state. "Man is [essentially] a political animal" since man naturally and
necessarily lives within the environment of a state. As Plato also believed, "He who is unable to live in
a society or who has no need for it because he thinks he is sufficient for himself must be either a beast
or a god."
(2) According to Aristotle's Politics, the family is prior in time although it is not prior in nature to the
existence of the state. Both the family and slavery are based and founded on the basis of the principle
of nature. Slaves are slaves by nature since some men are marked for subjection and others, for rule.
Menial and mechanical occupations unfit a man for citizenship. Aristotle later tempered his views by
saying that a master should not abuse his authority albeit it is in the interest of the master to not
mistreat his slaves since, otherwise, his slaves would revolt.
(3) In the Politics, Aristotle rejects Plato’s ideal state with its communal life, its common nursery, and
its guardian class since the average man needs privacy and "a child of all is a child of none." "It is
better to be a real cousin than a Platonic son.” The enjoyment of property is a source of pleasure.
Citizens should be educated and they should not desire excesses.
(4) The Politics classifies good and bad constitutions (in the context of a study that collected and
compared 158 different city-state constitutions). While the bad state consists of tyranny, oligarchy, and
democracy, the good state consists of a contrasting set of three possibilities that exist together as
constitutive elements: (1) Monarchy which is both best and ideal although the ideal can never exist
since no perfect man exists for the job; (2) Aristocracy which is the next best form of government
(given the extent of Greek cultural influence on Aristotle who believed that free men are best ruled by
the more excellent ones among them) since an aristocracy prepares individuals for rule although this
type of state is hard to realize; and (3) Polity which is perhaps the most sensible type of state in
750Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 30.
751Aristotle, Politics, 1, 2, as quoted by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 30, n. 18.
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practice, the term literally meaning "constitution by excellence." Polity is the half-way house between
aristocracy and democracy, existing as the reign of a middle class which functions as a mean between
tyranny and democracy although Aristotle insisted that the good state should be ruled by more people:
by an assembly or a multitude but not by a mob. Aristotle did not advocate popular democracy since
his heart really belonged to the goods of aristocratic rule even if, using his mind, he would say that
polity is best because it is the best way to avoid tyranny in a state.
In Aristotle's understanding of pedagogy, from what survives of his text, it is noted that, as a foremost
consideration, education must exist as a moral thing. In education, an education in virtue is requisite
and necessary if persons are to move toward the higher kind of good which exists in a life of reason
that is joined to a life of virtue.
Aristotle's understanding of natural law
“...none of the things which are by nature and according to nature is disorderly, for
nature is the cause of order for all things” [italics mine] 752
While Aristotle was seen by many in the subsequent history of philosophical reflection to be the “father
of natural law,”753 it is to be admitted that his direct references to natural law are sparse; and according
to some interpretations, they are non-existent if we should distinguish between the idea of natural law
and articulate concepts about the meaning and the identity of natural law. 754 A notion or an idea of
natural law exists before a concept or a conception of natural law exists and a reading of Aristotle's
texts finds or suggests the idea but not always or necessarily the concept. While, at times in different
texts, Aristotle refers to “law,” he more frequently refers to “nature” instead of “law.” In so many
many words, for instance, in On the Heavens, he speaks about laws which exist within nature when
speaking about the achievements of Pythagorean philosophy: numerical relations exist within nature to
indicate how these numerical relations exist as laws within nature, laws pertaining to numbers existing
as laws that pertain to nature. 755 A close examination of the association of words and concepts in
Aristotle points to Aristotle's belief in the existence of natural laws as these laws inform the being of
our naturally existing universe, the physical or material world within which we happen to live and
which we try to understanding and explain.
In terms then of the notion or the idea of natural law, in the Nicomachean Ethics,756 in the wider context
of a discussion about the meaning of political justice, 757 conventional or legal justice is distinguished
from natural justice in a way which would have to suggest that the basis of natural justice is something
which would exist as natural law (as in “that which is by nature unchangeable and has everywhere the
752Aristotle, Physics, 252a11, as cited by Grant, Miracles and Natural Law, p. 7.
753Rommen, Natural Law, p. 14.
754Grant, Miracles and Natural Law, p. 20.
755Aristotle, On the Heavens, 1, 1, 268a13.
756Aristotle, Ethics, 5, 7, 1134b18-1135a10.
757Simona Vieru, “Aristotle's Influence on the Natural Law Theory of St Thomas Aquinas,”
Western Australian Jurist 1 (2010): 117; http://www.murdoch.edu.au/School-of-Law/_document/WAjurist-documents/WAJ_Vol1_2010_Simona-Vieru---Aristotle-and-Aquinas.pdf (accessed October 28,
2016).
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same force”)758 although, for a direct reference to the being of natural law within a context that deals
with the question of human ethics and morality, only one direct reference seems to come to us from
Aristotle's surviving works where, within the text and the wording of the Rhetoric,759 the context is a
discussion which touches on the difference between particular and general law as a basis for
understanding the real distinction which exists between the being of conventional, positive, legal
justice and the being of natural justice. Particular law refers to conventional, positive, man-laws:
“written law in accordance with which a city is administered...it is that which each community lays
down and applies to its own members.” This law “is partly written and partly unwritten.” However,
when we move toward general laws or, in other words, universal laws, we find “unwritten regulations
which seem to be universally recognized.” This type of law would have to exist essentially as natural
law; according to Aristotle's use of words and concepts in the traditional way of speaking that he uses,
they exist “according to nature,” or they are “based upon nature (kata phusin).”760 Bluntly put: in
Aristotle's words, “there really is, as everyone to some extent divines,761 a general justice (dikaion) and
injustice (adikon) that is common to all, even to those who have no association or covenant with each
other.” The being of a general, natural justice and, conversely, the being of a general or natural
injustice accordingly points towards the being of natural law as, on the other hand, conventional or
legal justice and conventional or legal injustice point to the being of conventional laws. In terms of
nature and law, in a manner which recalls earlier sophist teaching about the difference which exists
between these, certain things as just according to nature (physei) and other things are just according to
law (nomos).762 The natural law, precisely because in some way it is divined – for this reason, it is first
known by us through a kind of prior, inherent inclination or through an intuition which already exists
within us as human beings, a kind of inclination or intuition which can be viewed as a species of a
priori apprehension. An a priori apprehension of being first exists and then it can be more fully
understood and known by us through a consequent order of cognition which would exist for us as
human beings if we should move, through our questions, through our inquiries, toward the possible
reception of new acts of understanding that would deepen or which would widen the kind of knowledge
that we already have and know about the meaning and being of natural law.
As evidence thus to the effect that, as human beings, we all enjoy this kind of prior a priori knowledge,
Aristotle accordingly notes that “it is this [law of nature] that Sophocles's Antigone clearly means when
she says that the burial of Polynices was a just act in spite of the prohibition: she means that it was just
by nature [my italics].” As Aristotle cites from the text of Sophocles's play: “For neither today nor
758Aristotle, Ethics, 5, 7, 1134b18, as translated by W. D. Ross and as cited by Yves R.
Simon, The Tradition of Natural Law: A Philosopher's Reflections, ed. Vukan Kuic (New York:
Fordham University Press, 1965), p. 167, n. 2.
759Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1, 10: 1368b7-10; 1, 13: 1373b6-18. For ease of communication, I
have merged differing translations as these come to us from the earlier work of W. Rhys Roberts and
John Herman Randall, Jr.
760Randall, Aristotle, p. 283, citing Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1, 10: 1368b7-10; 1, 13: 1373b6-18.
761Simon, Tradition of Natural Law, p. 132. The italics is not Aristotle's but Simon's as the
meaning of this verb is unpacked in a way which reveals a fuller meaning which alludes to a real
distinction which exists between an implicit kind of human knowing which is pre-conceptual and prereflective and a later, explicit kind of human knowing which is the result of our human inquiry and any
acts of sensing and understanding that can also emerge in the wake of questions which belong to the
kind of activity which exists in human inquiry.
762McCarthy, Authenticity as Self-transcendence, p. 62.
201
yesterday, but from all eternity, these statutes live and no man knoweth whence they came.” The
normativity or the lack of relativity which exists with respect to the laws of nature accordingly explains
why a lack of normativity and a kind of general relativity is to be ascribed (at times) to the being of our
conventional human laws. Hence: as natural law differs from conventional law (where, here, we would
speak also about conventional law as statutory law or as positive law), in the same way too, natural
justice differs from the demands of legal justice. Legal justice exists at a lower, subordinate level. It is
of less importance and value, relative to the reality of natural law whose point of origin is the
unchanging nature or the unchanging essence of law and justice: the idea or the purpose of law and
justice as such and how it exists as the foundation of our human legislation in a manner which points to
the being of conventional law, grounding the being of this law and determining how this conventional
law shares or participates in the being of natural law: expressing the being and the reality of natural
law.763 In the relation which exists between conventional law and natural law, human laws are always
subject to the kind of higher law which exists as natural law. 764 Where gaps exist in the enactments or
in the applications of conventional human law, for the sake of the good of justice and equity in the
adjudication of individual cases, it accordingly belongs to the authority and the office of judges that
they should make decisions which are grounded in the precepts of a natural law: applying them in a
way which makes up for what could be missing in the proscriptions and prescriptions of the kind of
legislation which is ordinarily constitutive of the being of our conventional human laws. 765 In both
these cases, whether through the enactment of positive human laws or through the kind of judge made
law which exists through the observance of equity in judicial matters, natural law exists as a kind of
inner principle (in a manner which recalls how, with respect to the being of things in general in our
world, within the being of changing shifting materially existing things, unchanging forms exist). The
natural law retains its being or it exists in a stable, unchanging way and so, from our knowledge of it,
we are encouraged to live in a manner which best enhances and which best stabilizes who we are as
human beings and how we should live and exist as human beings. The rationality which exists in
natural law is joined to the kind of rationality which should exist within ourselves as human beings to
the degree that we are understanding beings.
In a reference which accordingly recapitulates earlier teaching that has come to us from earlier
developments in the history of Greek philosophy, in the Rhetoric, Aristotle concludes his discussion on
natural law by referring to Empedocles and by citing him to the effect that, with regard to specifications
of moral teaching and how these differ from society to society, amid these differences and despite all
these differences, a higher law exists as “universal law” (as a “universal precept”). From the
perspective of this higher law, the value or the goodness of our man-made conventional laws is to be
evaluated and judged since, within any given set of concrete conditions, a conventional law should
always prohibit actions or it should always enjoin actions which are rooted in proscriptions and
prescriptions that come to us from the precepts of an already existing natural law. Conventional laws
are understood in a better way if our point of departure is always the normativity of naturally existing
laws and a subsequent process of discernment which determines if a conventional law is to be regarded
as a law which is, in fact, really and truly binding. Does it merit our observance and obedience?
Bluntly put: is its base or ground the kind of understanding and knowledge which belongs to the
determinations of our rational human reason and any judgments which would also point to the
763Rommen, Natural Law, pp. 15-16.
764Charles E. Rice, 50 Questions on the Natural Law: What It Is and Why We Need It (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), p. 30.
765Rommen, Natural Law, p. 16.
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imperative claims of an inner voice which would refer to the workings of our human conscience as in
one should do this and one should avoid that? 766 The kind of inner principle in law which exists as
natural law is matched or it is reflected by another kind of inner principle which exists within ourselves
as the work and the reception of our human reason, a connatural relation existing between these two
principles in a way which points to a union between the two: on the one hand, the objectivity or the
transcendence of natural law and, at the same time too, its existence as an apprehension and as a grasp
of our human acts of reasoning, understanding, and judgment.
All these things being said thus and by way of a tentative conclusion, if, in Aristotle, as a general
principle and from the point of view of metaphysical perspective, nature is the basis for that which
exists as natural law, grounding its being and stability as a fundamental point of reference, then the
reference to nature can be more fully understood and appreciated (natural law can be more fully
understood in all its parameters and parts) if we should refer again to the extensive discussions which
we have found in Aristotle as regards his philosophy of nature: nature in terms of three distinct
variables which are all related to each other in a way which moves from something that is more simple
toward something which is more complex. Briefly summarizing these principles: nature in terms of (1)
how it exists within things as an inner principle of movement and rest, explaining at one level the kind
of movement and rest which belongs to a given thing; (2) how it exists in terms of material, formal,
efficient and final causes which explain the growth or development of things as they relate to the being
of other existing things; and (3) how it also exists as an identifiable intelligible order or an identifiable
intelligible structure which joins the order of our human cognition to a like order which exists within
the greater world of being which is known by us through the kind of ordering that is done by us within
the context of our human knowing. Subjects know objects through the order of the self-transcendence
which belongs to the order of our human cognition and, conversely, objects act upon us as cogitating
subjects in order to elicit the acts of cognition which properly belong to us as human subjects,
accordingly functioning as agents within us to bring us toward experiences and degrees of selftranscendence that we cannot effect by ourselves in a manner which would move us from a condition
of potency toward a condition of act through self-actuations of that which would exist for us within a
larger condition of potency.
In all these cases thus and as a larger general principle, nature is to be correlated with the meaning and
being of intelligibility and not with the push or the pull of any emotions or passions that are not
grounded in the kind of self-transcending desire which exists within us as a disinterested yearning for
understanding and as a desire for wisdom that would function for us as a basis for a fuller kind of
human life that would exist for us, in its own way, as a radiating center of transcendence. If such a
thing is given to us in the context of our individual lives, it would point toward the possibilities of selftranscendence which could also exist for other persons as these same possibilities emerge as realities
which would exist within ourselves as human persons, serving as catalysts to effect the actuation and
realization of our self-transcendence. Nature is not to be correlated with a notion of necessity which
thinks in terms of the operation and the effect of material causes and the kind of motion or movement
which is determined by a mechanical or a material understanding of necessity.767 The kind of necessity
which, instead, exists in nature (the nature of things) refers to a larger, more comprehensive, flexible
kind of thing, material forms of necessity existing at a lower level than immaterial or intellectual kinds
766Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 14.
767Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 20, citing Aristotle, Physics, 2, 7-9, 198a14-200b8.
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of necessity that can be discovered and known by us if we should attend to the nature of intellectual
reality as this exists for us if we attend to how and why our acts of understanding are not to be confused
from how or why our acts of human sensing function in the way that they do. Immaterial operations in
us point to the being of immaterial realities which are transcendent to the being of ourselves, the
immaterial operations which exist within our understanding existing in their own right too as truly
existing things.
If we are to move toward an understanding of how things exist or occur within our world in a manner
which is thus truly “according to nature” or “by nature” (nature as referring to the “ordinary course of
things” that exists within the greater whole which exists as Nature), an understanding is needed which
knows that necessities in nature at times combine with each other in ways that would seem to point to
absences of necessity or to measures of freedom or distance from the possible influence of a given
necessity or the influence of some other necessity. The same thing or the same things do not always
recur in exactly the same way as they have been previously occurring (according to the “ordinary
course of things”) and so, a fortiori, when radical departures exist in terms of how certain things occur
and emerge within nature within the context of our world (Aristotle refers, for instance, to the
inexplicable existence of monstrosities within nature), then the manifestation of chance variations and
upsets that are also given to us in an unsettling natural way within our world all point to how certain
things exist in a manner which is both “contrary to nature” (conflicting with our expectations and our
past experience) and yet “according to nature” (conforming to our expectations and our past
experience).768 The kind of determinism which exists within the naturalness of nature or which is to be
associated with nature and the things of nature requires an understanding of determinism which should
not be defined according to a strict view of it. Yes, a degree of determinism exists. However, its
manner or its form is not to be identified with points of view which would want to think that our world
exists as if it were a species of machine. Although necessities exist within our world (if A, then B
given what A happens to be), the larger context of these necessities is a form of indeterminism which
allows for degrees of freedom and contingency which also exist within the outer larger world of nature,
determining the nature of the world that we live in. Hence, in an understanding of natural laws that
would come to us from an Aristotelian understanding of nature, the absence of a strict form of
determinism is such that it would have to touch on the nature of natural laws, determining their
significance, meaning, and intelligibility. A systematic component is to be admitted. However, a nonsystematic component is to be acknowledged. It pertains to the meaning and the being of natural laws
within a larger context of being which refers to the play or the influence of non-systematic components.
The kind of stability which exists within our world is grounded on a number of conditions or variables
which do not exist in an invariant way or which, from our viewpoint, do not seem to exist in an
invariant way, although, if we could attend to some kind of new, future scientific knowledge, new
systematic components could be possibly found and known in a manner which would point to the being
of new recurrent patterns. The nature of our understanding is such that, in our inquiry and science, we
are always seeking to put variables into an order which would point toward the being of a patterned,
recurrent order which would have to exist as some kind of recurrent, self-sustaining system. If A, then
B. If you have A, you will have B and if you have B, you will have C in an ordering of variables which
would ultimately lead to the being of A and then from there, on to B and the other variables in a cycle
or order that would be constantly repeating itself. In the larger or total context of things, nothing
happens in our world in a way which conflicts with “universal nature” or the rational principle which
768Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, pp. 6-7.
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exists as nature.769 Somewhere, somehow an explanation exists, a reason exists for the being of all the
different variables.
Plato and Aristotle: a comparison
To begin with some initial observations, in comparing Aristotle and Plato with each other about their
differing conceptions of metaphysics as the science of being, the following points can be made. As a
point of departure then, let us say that Plato was more interested in Being while Aristotle was more
interested in the order of Becoming since, for him, for Aristotle, the changing, varying, contingent
world that we experience possesses a measure of importance and some kind of reality or intelligibility
is to be properly ascribed to it. Where, in his philosophy, Plato believed in an unchanging world of
Forms that can be derived or which can be inferred from the legitimacy and the rightness of Socrates's
inquiries and his search for the being of universally true definitions (these definitions existing as Forms
or as Ideas which are to be regarded as the only true end of our human knowledge where, for example,
a knowledge of Justice exists as an unchanging thing), on the other hand, in Aristotle, there exists a
degree of rebellion. Aristotle rejects Plato’s strictures which had viewed the material world as
something that is not really real and so not legitimately an object of our scientific inquiry and
knowledge since, on his part, Aristotle sought to work from a viewpoint which tried to apprehend
reality as it existed within the world of our experience, this world being given to us initially through
our various acts of sense perception.
In Aristotle's judgment thus: only one world exists and not two worlds and this one world is first
known by us through our different acts of sense perception.770 Hence, in contrast with Plato or more so
than with Plato, Aristotle was interested in the life and the being of concretely existing individual
things as these things are revealed to us initially through the deliverances of our human acts of sensing.
While it is our task, as rational beings, to move toward an experience and a knowledge of objectively
existing truth (the task of philosophers in the practice of philosophy), objective truths were to be found
within the being of individually existing concrete things which exist (in Aristotle's language) as distinct
substances, as individual realities, which were to be apprehended initially from within the context of
our changeable, changing sensed world although, as noted, these concretely existing individual things
are only truly known by us through our acts of understanding which exist technically as acts of
abstraction: they move us from the experience of concrete instances or they move us from assemblies
of data that we directly experience through our various acts of human sensing toward concepts which
emerge in the wake of our later acts of understanding. Again, as we have noted: bodies are known
through our acts of sensing; substances are known through our abstracting acts of understanding (our
direct acts of understanding). If sensible, material traits or sensible, material characteristics define the
being of a sensible, material form (for example, the melody of a song exists as a species of sensible
form), immaterial traits or immaterial characteristics define the being of an immaterial, substantial form
which would be commonly or universally present within or among all instances of its possible
instantiation within varying instances of matter (the sum of material conditions which can be referred
to by a kind of shorthand which exists when we refer to the being of “matter”).
With respect to the priority of being, for Aristotle but, in a way, against Plato, ideas or forms which
769Chrysippus, reiterating the teaching of Aristotle, as cited by Grant, Miracle and Natural
Law, p. 22.
770Sullivan, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 50.
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indicate or which lead us toward an understanding and knowledge of being do not exist essentially or
innately within ourselves although, in different contrasting ways, via-a-vis Plato and Aristotle, they can
be said to exist within the being of our rational souls. Within the changing, changeable world of our
ordinary experience, as we have noted, according to Aristotle, we find the unchanging objects of our
true knowledge, our knowledge as episteme (our knowledge as science, our knowledge as scientific
knowledge). However, while both Plato and Aristotle attended to the being of the material, sensible
world in each their own way in a way which admits or which points to the relevance of a real
distinction which exists with respect to the meaning of being (being exists outside this world and being
exists within this same world; hence, two kinds of being are to be distinguished from each other), on
the other hand however, it can be said less ambiguously or with fewer qualifications that both firmly
agreed or believed in a commonly held teaching which says that, if we are to be truly happy within the
context of our present life, we must exercise our most noble faculty of reason in terms which should
point us (1) toward the contemplation of Being as a larger, all encompassing, transcendent reality and
(2) to the value of this kind of contemplation as a species or form of human knowing. The
contemplation exists as the beginning of all our real knowing in both Plato and Aristotle where Being
or beingness is something which is greater and more awesome than we ourselves. It transcends our
own individual being, our own individual existence. We cannot make it or produce it. We find that we
are all somehow thrown into being, thrown into our individual existence (to use a manner of speaking
that comes to us from the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and his notion of dasein as a form of
“presence” or “being there” as this applies to human beings since we find that we do not decide if we
should happen to exist or not). Being governs us and not we, it. In being we find our point of
departure for everything that we subsequently do in philosophy and science.
In the context of his metaphysics, to some extent, for cognitional or pedagogical reasons, Aristotle
rejected Plato's understanding of forms in claiming that forms as ideas are not to be regarded as
separately existing substances or as separately existing things (hence as things that are entirely
separated from the field and range of our sense perception) since, in Aristotle, as we have noted, by or
through our sense perception, we can begin to grasp the imminent forms and essences of things (what a
given thing is, these things, these essences, all existing for us as substances, as truly existing things)
where, in Aristotle, a substance exists as a universalized type of individual. On the one hand, yes, it is
constituted by the being of two universal principles (a universal form and a universalized notion of
matter which exists as common matter). However, in an example, we can distinguish between Fido, a
dog, who exists as a body when he is entirely the object of our sense perceptions and Fido, the same
dog, who can also be known through our acts of understanding which move from Fido who exists as a
body toward Fido who exists as a substance or thing because, as a substance or thing, he is known in a
manner which transcends the being of spatial conjugates. In this notion of substance or thing, a
concreteness or an individuality is specified in a way which is other or which is transcended by Plato's
notion of form (and also by Aristotle's notion of form) since, in both cases, with Plato and Aristotle,
form exists as a universal although, in Plato, it exists as a separately existing transcendent universal
thing which differs from how, in Aristotle, it exists as a transcendent universal thing.
To press the point a bit further, if, in Aristotle, in some way, forms are constitutive of the being of
essences (the essences of things that we initially implicitly experience within the context of our world:
that which can be sensed is that which can be understood; the sensible is the intelligible), then, how can
it be claimed that they exist in a way which is somehow apart from the things or the givens that we
encounter and meet within the context of our ordinary experience? If they exist as the causes of things,
how can it be claimed that they exist within a different kind of world (within a world which differs
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from that which is given to within the world of our sense experience)? Since ideas or forms are to be
found within the order of concretely existing things (within things which exist initially as bodies within
the context of our sense perception), then, in a way, truth or reality is also to be found within the
concrete world of our ordinary experience, and an intellectual knowledge of things which exist within
our world is something which is entirely possible and feasible for us according to the manner of our
human knowing. While, in the order of the kind of thinking and exposition which exists in
metaphysics, we begin with the being of substances and with how a substance exists as a fusion of
matter and form from which everything else follows in the wake of our thinking and understanding,
then, with respect to the study of these same substances, as we have noticed in Aristotle's
understanding of human cognition, we must work with concrete givens and study and think about these
givens in order to abstract and to remove the form of things in order to see what makes things exist as
they are or understand why something exists in the way that it does, the kind of knowing which exists
in contemplation serving as a first start or stimulus for the later kind of cognition which exists for us
whenever, through the ingress of inquiry and the asking of questions, our acts of sense can begin to
interact with our acts of thinking and understanding in order to create a way, a path, or a selfassembling type of structure which should eventually lead us toward receptions of understanding and
apprehensions of truth and knowledge that could be given to us at a time that we cannot know or
determine.
In applying the difference which exists between potency and act to explain the change which we
experience within our world, change, as Plato would have it, is not explained (by Aristotle) in terms of
some kind of defective form of imitation which would refer to something which would exist in an
unchanging way (as we find in explanations that come to us from Plato's thought and analysis where,
imperfectly, the things of this world mirror or they participate in the perfect kind of being which
allegedly belongs to an ideal world of higher, transcendent forms). To his credit however, Plato's
proffered explanation is not simply wrong or contradictory if we should try to compare our experiences
and judgments about being, reality, goodness, or beauty as these things exist within our world with our
imagined notions of being, reality, goodness, or beauty that we can think about in ways that we cannot
adequately picture or imagine. In all our particular judgments about things prior to the kind of
reflections which follows from the asking of new questions and the genesis of new acts of
understanding, the making of all our judgments supposes or presupposes a knowledge which exists as a
species of a priori knowledge. Bluntly put: it allegedly already knows the truth about how reality,
goodness, and beauty exist. However, in lacking the kind of sophistication that we can find within the
differentiations of Aristotle's thought (as noted for example, Aristotle argues that a given thing can
enjoy two different kinds of being at one and the same time in terms of potential being and actual
being), in the kind of analysis that Aristotle uses, if act is act and if potency is potency and if, in
change, something which exists in act moves toward another condition of act which has yet to be
realized as a consequence of movement or change which has yet to occur (hence this condition would
exist as a potency and not as an act), then change itself would exist as a species of incomplete act and,
in this incompleteness, it would exist in an imperfect manner. In both Plato and Aristotle, we have
change which is seen to exist in a way which is privative of reality. Change as a species of incomplete
act lacks reality although, in its partial enjoyment of reality or in its partial inclusion within reality, its
status, its reality, or, alternatively, its goodness is something which is greater within the context of
Aristotle's thought than what is found to exist within a Platonic type of understanding which want to
deny of change the existence of any kind of reality, truth, or goodness.
If, then, we should now turn to differences in moral philosophy, in contrast to Platonic exaggerations
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and Plato's primary interest in seeking to establish an objective eternal foundation (a metaphysics) for
grounding the reality of ethically valid judgments (an interest in ethics grounding Plato's interest in
metaphysics), Aristotle comes across to us as a more realistic type of ethicist in philosophy where he
says, for instance, that "it is as inappropriate to demand demonstration in ethics as it is to allow a
mathematician to use merely probable arguments." He rejects the dualism of Plato’s thought which
had juxtaposed that which exists as a purely universal being and that which exists as a purely particular
being or, in other words, an unbridgeable gap between the being of an ideal world and the being of a
constantly shifting flux (the flux of life) since, always for Aristotle, universal elements are to be
identified with the being of immanently existing essential forms which exist within the being of sensed
objects. These forms can be apprehended by abstracting them from the givens of particular, concrete
reality although, as noted, despite the good which exists in having an intellectual life, we can each of us
be happy even if many of us are not able to exist and live as intellectuals, living an intellectual kind of
life. Where Socrates had not been able to give definitions for the being of human virtues that he was
trying to understand and know, in the kind of analysis which Aristotle proposes, variant and invariant
meanings can be combined with each other. Virtue is defined as a mean between extremes and this
definition is invariantly true despite changes of circumstance and cultural condition although, through
our acts of understanding and the preeminence of rationality in the life of human subjects and the life of
human society, a degree of stability is introduced into moral decision making in a way which acts
against the relativity which would exist, as a default position, if human willing were to exist in a
manner which is divorced or cut off from the life of our human minds and the kind of understanding
which belongs to us as human beings.
In conclusion, subsequent philosophy in its thought and reflections inherited the task of trying to
synthesize the Platonic and Aristotelian viewpoints on the basis of a common tenet which holds and
says that "the fully real is the fully intelligible and the fully good." Hence, for the sake of a
comprehensive understanding of things, a synthesis was mainly attempted by later philosophers, of
Christian belief, who appealed to both Plato and Aristotle in order to explain the Christian message in a
larger more hopeful way, in a manner which could reveal how, between faith and reason, a mysterious
inner connection exists where the growth or the flowering of one aspect relies on the growth or
flowering of the other aspect (faith and reason going together). Plato, allegedly the romantic, was liked
and appreciated because of his belief in the reality of another world which exists beyond our current
world and also for his belief in a kind of universal governance that is exercised by that which exists as
“the Good” while, on the other hand, Aristotle, the realist, was liked and appreciated because the
Christian life of believers is something which has to be lived within a concretely existing world:
incarnately. If we should identify a contribution which comes to us from Plato and which is most
significant for the later developments which occurred in philosophy and theology, this has to be a very
clear distinction that is drawn between sense and intellect (acts of sensing versus acts of
understanding). The two cannot, they should not be confused with each other. And so, from this, the
reality of an immaterial world is known in a way which refers to the necessity of its transcendence. It
can never be sensed although, through our acts of understanding, it can be known in other ways. The
transcendence of the human mind points to a natural fit or an orientation that turns human beings
toward a world which exists also in a transcendent way. On this basis then or from this basis, we can to
the later work of Aristotle who admitted, with Plato, that acts of sensing should not be confused with
our acts of understanding (our mental acts) although, in the advance that he made, he would speak
about how our acts of sensing cooperate with our acts of understanding in a way which points to the
complexity of our human cognition, its lack of simplicity. Where, in Plato, human knowing within the
context of our world exists essentially as an act of remembering, a remembering that is grounded in a
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prenatal or a pre-embodied form of seeing that exists prior to our embodied existence as human beings
within the being of our world (a prior seeing that refers to a contemplation of eternal forms or ideas that
are seen before a soul is joined or put within the constrictions of a human body), in Aristotle, the
interaction which exists between our acts of seeing and our acts of understanding coupled with the
interaction which exists between our acts of knowing and our acts of willing leads to an understanding
of things in general that is informed by a larger number of distinctions. Things differ from one another
in more than one kind of way and if differences are known in terms of their various kinds or grades, if
differences are known in terms of how they exist in different ways, the result is a species of
understanding which is less confused. Real problems are distinguished from the being of pseudoproblems and our criticisms, our understanding, and our knowledge can move into aspects and corners
that, through distinctions, reveal a depth and a penetration of our understanding that, otherwise, would
not be or exist.
If, in Plato, a philosophy of the human mind points to a priori apprehensions of being as central to the
kind of cognition which best belongs to us as human beings (from these apprehensions, we can then
move toward the being of other apprehensions), in Aristotle, a philosophy of mind points to a
posteriori apprehensions of being which would seem to detract from the role and place of a priori
apprehensions (breaking from Plato) although, with Aristotle, we admit, with him, that human acts of
inquiry always begin from apprehensions of being which are somehow already given to us. They exist
in an a posteriori kind of way. We never move from a condition of pure ignorance toward a later
condition of knowledge in something that we can attain or reach towards. If prime matter is something
which we can never directly know or have through our human acts of sensing and experiencing, then
pure ignorance is a condition that is also not given to us in any direct kind of way. In Aristotle, an a
priori knowledge of things is to be admitted. It is given to us as a real thing. This knowledge then
grounds or it conditions our later acts of human cognition (the other kinds of human knowing which,
perhaps, we have and enjoy) although, as Aristotle moves toward an understanding of these later forms
of human cognition, in the account which he gives on inquiry and how acts of sensing interact with acts
of understanding, the prominence that is given to all this tends to suggest that it is basic or
foundational. Perhaps, too easily, we associate Plato with an understanding which is restricted to a
priori apprehensions of being and Aristotle, with a posteriori apprehensions of being where, for us, a
fuller viewpoint is best given to us if we should try to understand how these two viewpoints have each
their own legitimacy with respect to how these two kinds of apprehension are always given to us in the
context of our human life. They condition each other in each their own way and it is only by our
inquisitiveness and our inquiry that we can begin to know about the existence of a priori apprehensions
which would have to always be if or before we can move into a form of inquiry and a manner of
knowing which points to our personal responsibility and a degree of self-control. We can begin to ask
our own questions in a manner which turns our cognition into a form of human project (something that
we do on our own) and soon we can forget how, in a manner which transcends ourselves in terms of
our personal control, conditions have been already created for us in a way which grounds the kind of
knowing that we associate with ourselves through how we think and exist as human subjects. If, then,
we tend to think that our human cognition is something which must always move from something that
is below toward something that is higher, we lessen the depth and the extent of our own understanding
if we cannot attend to the possible being of a vector which moves in a downward direction toward
ourselves from something which exists at a higher level, beyond ourselves (a vector which, in its own
way, points to conditions and variables that we can never adequately understand though we refer to
realities that make for the actuation of our understanding within a contextualizing of enabling
conditions and an eliciting of new acts of understanding which occur at a lower level as our acts of
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inquiry and understanding interact with acts of cognition which exist as our acts of human sensing).
Hellenistic Philosophy
Five centuries passed after the death of Aristotle in 322 BC before the appearance of Plotinus in an era
which witnessed both the decline of ancient civilization and the domination of philosophy by a number
of minor and major schools, six in number: (1) Skepticism, (2) Cynicism, (3) Peripatetic
Aristotelianism, (4) Epicureanism, (5) Stoicism, and (6) Neo-platonism. Historically, the Greek citystates, unable to solve the problem of political unity amongst them, were first decimated by the
Peloponnesian War and later they were ravaged by plague and disease. 771 Politically, first, they fell
under Macedonian rule and then, after the death of Alexander the Great in 323, they were eventually
absorbed into the newly emerging Roman Empire (often denoted as "late antiquity"). Many of the
philosophies of this "decadent" period originated in Greece although they often received their greatest
exposure and publicity in imperial Rome (which was especially true of the two major philosophies of
the period known as Epicureanism and Stoicism).
Alexandria (founded by Alexander in 332 in a natural harbor at one of the mouths of the Nile), under
the enlightened rule of the Macedonian Ptolemy I, became the greatest Mediterranean seaport of its day
and it also rivaled Athens as a center of intellectual activity. It became the center for science, Athens
remaining a center for philosophy. The city was intensely cosmopolitan, bringing together Egyptians,
diaspora Jews, and other races besides the Greeks. For 600 years, while Alexander’s empire split and
disintegrated and imperial Rome rose and fell, Alexandria was the last great light of antiquity. In the
Museum, dazzling advances in science were made, and the Library, with its huge staff of copyists,
became an unrivaled center of learning. Listing some of her more famous intellectual products: Galen
developed the medical work of Hippocrates and produced the first anatomy; Diophantus made the first
beginnings in algebra; Ctesibius invented an advanced water-clock; Hipparchus tabulated 1080 fixed
stars, and compiled the first trigonometrical tables; Euclid rigorously systematized geometry and
studied light reflection; Aristarchus calculated the moon’s diameter with only an 8% margin of error
and he proposed that the earth moved round the sun; Apollonius began the study of curves with
sections of cones; Archimedes developed the physics of levers, buoyancy, and hydraulics, and he
invented complex war-machines; Eratosthenes calculated the earth’s circumference to within 4% of its
true reading; Ptolemy drew the first accurate maps; Sosigenes made the first strict calendar; and Hero
invented a steam engine.
In these centuries, thinking was very much alive although it was lacking in the penetration of Plato and
Aristotle. Since all the major themes had been raised, these topics were now organized by the major
schools as their members composed systematic treatises which organized philosophy into teachable
branches and divisions. Philosophy came to be seen as the art of living, the wise man being he who
organizes life according to reason: the major focus accordingly turned to ethics questions which asked
about what was true happiness and how could we achieve it? The philosopher is he who is converted
to a new style of life that blurs the traditional distinctions between religion and philosophy.
Epicureanism and Stoicism were the two most important schools. Both tried to supply a reasonable
attitude for life as a result of two major changes which occurred during and after Aristotle’s life as a
result of the rise of Macedonia and the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th Century which
771Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 95.
210
opened up the world to the Greeks and their culture. First, the decline of the small city-states in the
face of a rising cosmopolitanism took from the Greek his sense of security, causing him to look for
some stable way of life or life-style in order to be happy. Second, since many intellectuals had traveled
with Alexander’s army, their eastern experiences opened the minds of many of them in a way which
produced great philosophical unrest as traditional moral and intellectual values were questioned as
never before. Men began to search for guarantees (witness the birth of religious syncretism and
esoteric mystery religions) and when some did not find it, skepticism resulted in the belief that no
solution existed for one’s problems. A sense of absurdity arose. Late Antiquity was accordingly
characterized "by religious doubts, cultural dissolution, and pessimism . . . it was said that ‘the world
has grown old.’”772
Skepticism
When St. Augustine looked for a meaning to life between the ages of 19 and 33 late in the 4 th Century,
he was often tempted by Skepticism as a school of thought which dates from the 4 th Century BC but
which, allegedly, reached its high point in the 2 nd Century BC through the teaching and the
methodological approach of Carneades (c. 215-125 BC) who, in the context of his day and time,
attacked the Stoic understanding of natural law by using a “pro-and-con method of demonstration” in
order to ridicule a notion of justice which was being employed by the Stoic philosophers as a basis for
their understanding of natural law.773 Pyrrho of Elis (365–275 BC) is usually regarded as the founder
of Skepticism, arguing after returning from a tup to India that nothing can be known for certain. The
senses frequently deceive us (for instance: a wooden oar placed in water appears to be bend) and our
reason too easily follows or proceeds in the wake of our human desires. 774 Too frequently, our human
reason exists as a rationalization of one kind or another. Sextus Empiricus (c. 160-c. 210 AD) is
credited with having codified, in his writings, the teachings and tenets of skepticism as this has come
down to us in hundreds of arguments which all allegedly point to how skepticism exists as a kind of
cure for us, flushing out all forms of dogmatism which attach persons to theses and beliefs that tie them
to points of view that are far from certain, there being no thesis or teaching that cannot be questioned in
some way where, for the sake of consistency, a good skeptic does not preach or proclaim any kind of
dogma about the truth of his position, being content only to offer the ways and means of skepticism as
a healthy tendency which should be appreciated and employed in the context of one's life. 775 In terms
of intellectual acts, the suspension of judgment is to be regarded as key in the context of our human
cognition. In terms then of moral consequences with respect to how we are to live out our human lives,
because nothing can be known in terms of truth or the reality of truth, in the manner of our living, we
best proceed if we accept things as they are, abiding by the laws and customs that exist within a given
social order and, by our lack of dogmatism and the kind of commitment which exists in dogmatism,
pass our lives with the serenity which attends our lack of dogmatic attachment. A skeptic is subject to
his “natural emotions” and he lives according to the “appearances of things,” not worrying about the
truth of things in terms which would point to metaphysical determinations of one kind or another. 776
We live best if we can avoid asking questions about the true nature of things since we have no way that
can lead us to any determinations that cannot be doubted or questioned.
772Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 128.
773Rommen, Natural Law, p. 18.
774Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skepticism (accessed November 2, 2016).
775Kokakowski, Why is there Something rather than Nothing?, p. 49.
776Kokakowski, Why is there Something rather than Nothing?, p. 49.
211
Cynicism
Cynicism, as a moral philosophy which dates from the Cynic school of philosophy, was founded by
Antisthenes (c.445–365 BC) in Athens around 400 B.C. (although it numbered no important
philosophers with the possible exception of Diogenes of Sinope, c. 412–323 BC, whose behavior, as a
cynic, was so well known through many surviving stories that became proverbial). According to its
ethical teaching: true happiness lies not in external advantages (such as material luxury, political
power, or good health) nor in being concerned with other people’s problems, nor in having good health
since, ultimately even suffering and death should not disturb one. Happiness is available to all and
anyone if one seeks to live in self-sufficiency in a manner that is according to nature as this is
understood by us by way of our human reason. One best progresses if one lives an ascetical life which
would serve to free one from attachments of one kind or another. For example, it is said that Diogenes
used to live in a tub in the streets of Athens and that he would walk barefoot in the winter. He would
eat uncooked meat. Social conventions (human laws) could be freely flouted and so, within this
context, nature is something which would be known by us (in a way it would be defined) if we should
refer to the play and pull of our urges and instincts as this can exist within us in our human lives at a
sensitive, primitive level where we could live more as animals do than as human beings. 777 If we
should refer to the kind of contrast that exists between nature and law (as this comes to us from the 5 th
Century BC), in the context of Cynicism as a philosophy, our conventional human law exists at a lower
level than that which exists as the givens and the demands (the precepts) of nature which, in turn,
reflect the truths of nature and the kind of constancy which always exists within nature as a species of a
priori.778 With respect to the possible relevance of any supposed laws of nature, we best live in a
moral way if we live “in conformity of nature,” or if we simply “follow nature” in a manner which
would accord with our perceptions of it. 779 The nature that we attend to is the kind of nature which
belongs to the life of animals and the life of primitive man as he would appear to exist apart from the
creation of any kind of social or political order that would take a man and effect a work of refashioning
that would turn him into a species of civilized human being. 780 Unnatural, unnecessary desires, if
followed, lead to “vainglory.”781
Peripatetic Aristotelianism
Peripatetic Aristotelianism was apparently founded by Theophrastus who continued the Aristotelian
tradition albeit on more of a technical level since he was less an original thinker and metaphysician and
more a natural scientist. He contributed the following: Aristotelian scientific activity, especially in
botany; and a book recounting a history of philosophy in The Opinions of the Physicists which is useful
for its information on the Pre-socratics. La Bruyere’s study of types of personalities in his 18th
Century book Caractères was based on Theophrastus’ work in its study of 30 types of character. Other
Aristotelians worked in mathematics, astronomy, and Pythagorean theory; some founded the famous
library in Alexandria. Andronikos of Rhodes commented on Aristotle and published Aristotle’s
pedagogical and logical works. He coined the term "metaphysics" since he placed Aristotle’s First
777Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 395.
778Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 5.
779Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, pp. 7-8.
780Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 8.
781Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 8, citing Diogenes Laertius, 10, 149.
212
Philosophy after his Physics. He operated a school that is linked with Stoicism which taught Aristotle
50-70 BC. Aristotle’s works were spread and transmitted everywhere but, by the time Christianity was
appearing, Aristotelianism had absorbed much of the neoplatonic spirit, especially in Alexandria. By
the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, while some philosophers claimed to be Aristotelians, there had become
more Platonic in their thinking.
Epicureanism
Epicureanism as a philosophy dates from Epicurus (341-270 BC) who was born in Samos and who
started to teach in Athens in 306. He developed the ethics of pleasure which is associated with
Aristippos which he combined with the atomistic theory of Democritus. His writings consist of three
philosophical letters, his Principal Doctrines, some fragments quoted by other philosophers, and, more
recently, the Vatican Sayings, “a collection of aphorisms discovered in a Vatican manuscript in
1888.”782
Allegedly, the Epicureans lived in a garden: hence, they were known as "garden philosophers." Above
the entrance to this garden there was said to have been a sign: "Stranger, here you will live well. Here
pleasure is the highest good." Since his philosophy was centered on happiness, he was a moralist
primarily, ethics being the basis of his thought although he proposed a doctrine of knowledge which he
had obtained from the atomism and the teaching of Democritos. The hidden principles of things
consists of atoms that are only known to the intellect since they are too small for the kind of
apprehension which exists in our sense perceptions. Everything, even the human soul, consists of
material atoms which permanently move about within a void although these atoms are of different
kinds and forms, the atoms of human souls being smooth, round, and fine. The Cosmos was formed by
the motion of these atoms as they collided with one another, the gods having nothing to do with their
movement nor with anything else. Nature, as the sum of all things, consists of bodies and a void
(specifically, “bodies and the void”).783 Epicurus was a materialist who believed that existence after
death is impossible.
In the ethics of Epicurus, although war exists everywhere and the individual appears to be powerless in
the face of massive cultural decline and alienation, amidst life’s perils, we should try to stay calm,
satisfying our natural and necessary desires for repose (which are to be understood both physically and
psychically) since the truly good person is one who, having overcome all unnecessary desires, gratifies
his necessary desires in the most moderate way possible, leaving plenty of time for physical and mental
repose, being free of worry. A secure life can be had only through being free of trouble, joined with a
reasonable choice of pleasures that do not disturb one. Because some pleasures can do us more harm
than good, we best maximize our pleasures by intelligently and reasonably reducing the weight or the
sum of “our desires and needs.”784 In Epicurus's own words:
When we say that pleasure is the goal, we are not talking about the pleasure of
profligates or that which lies in sensuality...[I]t is freedom from bodily pain and mental
anguish. For it is not continuous drinking and revels, nor the enjoyment of women and
young boys...but sober reasoning which examines the motives for every choice and
782Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 28.
783Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 7, citing Epircurus, fragment 75.
784Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 29.
213
avoidance, and which drives away those opinions resulting in the greatest disturbance to
the soul.785
Ultimately, in this life, we can be happy amid trials and difficulties for the following reasons. (1) First,
death and ourselves will never meet ("Death does not concern us because where death is, we are not;
where we are, death is not"; “as long as I live, I am not dead, and when I am dead, there is no me
anymore”)786 because death is to be understood as merely the absence of sensation and consciousness,
the absence pointing to a void and so its lack of reality. At death, the "soul atoms" are said to
immediately disperse. (2) Second, the gods will not bother one since they lead a life of their own. The
key to happiness is to remain undisturbed to the extent that this is possible and to enjoy life in a
reasonable way by practicing moderation in our lives. Inner peace is always the best goal of life in a
kind of life which reaches this goal by seeking to achieve a balance or an equilibrium in our lives. To
be untroubled and harmoniously developed, all of our desires must be governed by our reason since we
must not try to enjoy life beyond that which exists as a reasonable and rational measure. Try and be
satisfied with a little and go with that. Remember that it is better for us to do an act of kindness than to
receive an act of kindness and that the suffering of our souls is far worse than the suffering of our
bodies.787 The good of our souls outweighs the good of our bodies, the pleasures accruing to the life of
our souls outweighing the pleasures that could accrue to the life of our bodies. “The wise man will be
happy even when he is tortured” and, in a manner which uses stronger language, according to Epicurus,
“when the wise man is roasted in the steer of Phalaris, he will call out: it is pleasurable and does not
concern me.”788 By entering into the logic of Epicurus's teaching, through a dialectical form of
reasoning that moves from the implications of one thesis to that of another, we soon begin to discover
that the living of a good life is not to be equated with a life that would be solely given to the enjoyment
of sensible pleasures.
With respect to the kind of thinking and understanding which occurs in philosophy, according to
Epicurus, the practice of philosophy performs a valuable service as a means to help free men from the
burdens of ignorance and superstition. Given Socrates as the prototypical, ideal "good man," according
to Epicurus thus, as a kind of model, "we need to set our affections on some good man and keep him
constantly before our eyes, so that we may live as if he were watching us, and do everything as if he
saw what we were doing."789 Pleasure, as the prime good of human life, is to be understood not
positively but negatively as the avoidance of any suffering. Happiness is to be equated with pleasure
since, allegedly, no act should be undertaken except for its pleasurable results and no act should be
rejected except for the pain which, allegedly, it produces. 790 The goodness or the badness of an action
is determined or it is to be judged according to the sensation of pleasure or the sensation of pain that it
produces.791 A moral calculus decides if a short term pleasure should be denied in favor of a greater,
longer lasting, more intense later pleasure. Good is to be equated with pleasure. The life of our human
reason exists in function to the kind of life which belongs to our senses and the kind of enjoyment
which belongs to the life of our senses. As a sign of this thesis thus, according to Epicurus, “if you do
785Protagoras, as quoted by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 29, n. 14.
786Spaemann, “Self-Preservation,” Happiness and Benevolence, p. 41.
787Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 29.
788Spaemann, “Hedonism,” Happiness and Benevolence, pp. 37-38.
789Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 24.
790Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 96.
791Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 29.
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battle with all your sensations, you will be unable to form a standard for judging even which of them
you judge to be false.”792 But, on the other hand however, the critical kind of inquiry which exists in
the practice of philosophy is such that, for human beings, in the living of our human lives, an
unrestricted pursuit of a life that is given to a life of sensible pleasures is something which should also
be avoided. As Epicurus also notes, it is “far better to do the right thing and suffer ill fortune than to do
the wrong thing and succeed through luck.”793 If, as human beings, we all begin with crude
apprehensions about what exists for us as pleasure, through the higher kind of reflection which exists in
the doing of philosophy, we can discover other, higher pleasures and an order which distinguishes
between lower and higher pleasures, these distinctions leading us away toward apprehensions that can
take away from a popular kind of hedonism that has been attributed to the teachings of Epicurus and
the focus that has been given to the goods of utility and pleasure as the basis of ethics and law.794
At a practical level thus, if we should think about employing a form of moral calculus, to avoid turmoil
and much unpleasantness, we should show little or no interest in politics and in the life of the greater
human community. "Live in a garden," away from society. “Live [in a way which is] unseen!” 795
“Live a life of natural simplicity and independence.” 796 To the extent that, in Epicurus, we find a
political philosophy, it can be said to resemble sophist understandings which had favored a point of
view which prioritizes the role and place of the individual instead of the role and place of a larger
human society and which had spoken about a contractual relation which allegedly exists among all
human beings in a way that leads to the foundation of a political order, the creation of a political state,
which exists for the purpose of helping individuals live their lives more fully as individuals because of
the greater security which can be given to their life of individuals through the organization of a state
and the offices that belong to the polity of a state. The state exists essentially as an artificial
construction as does the human community which exists within a state. Its being reflects the kind of
order which exists within a state or its being has been brought about through the creation of the kind of
order which exists as the state. The individual exists as the natural unit, as a species of atom which
combines with other individuals (as atoms) to create the kind of being which is the state, an order
which is subject to change and revision as new decisions emerge about the kind of form which is to
exist as the order of a given state. Hence, within this context, if we should speak about the meaning of
justice: “natural justice is [but] a pledge...to prevent one from harming others, and to keep oneself from
being harmed.”797 On the meaning of justice: “there is no such thing as justice in itself; it is always
rather a certain compact made during men's dealings with one another in different places, not to do
harm or to be harmed.”798 It is not good to be unjust to anyone since, as a consequence, we would
always fear that, at some point, we will be apprehended and accused of the wrong which we have
done.799 If justice is thus brought into being through some kind of contract, justice and the positive
laws of a state are to be equated with each other. 800 With respect to friendship, in terms of its value, it
792Epicurus, as quoted by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 29.
793Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 29.
794Rommen, Natural Law, p. 9.
795Protagoras, as quoted by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 28.
796Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 28.
797Epicurus, as quoted by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 30.
798Epicurus, as quoted by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 30.
799Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 32.
800Rommen, Natural Law, p. 9.
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serves utilitarian purposes and ends. It is something which, for us, “begins in need.” 801 Persons realize
that they need each other if they are to make it in life.
Among human beings, two kinds of pleasure exist given two kinds of desire which seek to be gratified.
First, there is natural desire which divide into necessary desires (as in desires for food and sleep) which
must be satisfied and are easy to satisfy (they result in a good deal of pleasure and in very few painful
consequences); and unnecessary desires (as in desires for sex). While the desire for sex is natural and
usually can be overcome (and when it can be it should be), because satisfying the sex drive is so
pleasurable, giving intense pleasure, it involves us in relationships that are usually ultimately more
painful than pleasant. Second, there is vain desire (as in desires for decorative clothing or exotic food).
These do not need to be satisfied and are not easy to satisfy. Because there are no natural limits to
them, they tend to become obsessive and lead to very painful consequences.
While Epicurus’s negative definition of pleasure allows him to avoid crass sensualism, taken to its
logical extremity, it implies that the absence of life is better than any life at all (as Freud discovered in
his Beyond the Pleasure Principle where he claimed that Thanatos, the death instinct, lies behind the
"pleasure principle"). Summarizing Epicurus’s philosophy, quoting his own words:
The gods are not to be feared. Death is nothing to worry about. Good is
easy to attain. The fearful is easy to endure.802
Epicurus’s philosophy attracted many admirers such as the Roman philosopher, Lucretius (99-55 BC)
who, in a lengthy poem, wrote about the order of the cosmos in his On the Nature of Things wherein he
first clearly articulated the law of the conservation of matter: "Nothing can be created out of
nothing."803 Taking up Epicurus's political philosophy, Lucretius noted that a good state “secures and
perfects the natural freedom that we have in the state of nature and that, in entering society, we trade
our precarious natural freedom for security and submission.” 804 In a vulgarization that later occurred
of Epicurus's philosophy, Horace, in one of his works, said about himself: "I am a pig of the stable of
Epicurus." Some of his Roman followers interpreted Epicurus in terms of a pleasure that was
understood as "titillation" which, in turn, led to an association with a form of sensualistic hedonism as
this is given in the principle which advises that we should "Live for the moment!". As a bourgeois
ethic, this gave Epicureanism an undeservedly bad name although Epicurus himself led a life of
sobriety and simplicity: eating bread, cheese, and olives; drinking a bit of wine; napping in his
hammock; and enjoying conversation with his friends while strolling through his garden. 805 He died
with dignity and courage after a painful, protracted disease. The Stoics were more realistic and less
egotistical.
Stoicism
...the Stoics...propounded a truly lofty doctrine of morality and yet remained materialists.806
801Epicurus, as quoted by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 30.
802Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 134.
803Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 24.
804Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 31.
805Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 95.
806Bernard Lonergan, The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ, trans.
216
Stoicism as a philosophy dates from Zeno of Cyprus, cited also as Zeno of Citium, (336/5-264/3 BC),
the Greek founder of Stoicism, established his school in Athens after first joining the Cynics in Athens
after being shipwrecked nearby, thus incepting a new philosophical tradition which produced a
succession of three schools (à la three stoas). It has been said that, earlier in his life, Zeno had been a
wealthy merchant but that he turned to philosophy after losing his wealth in the aforementioned
shipwreck which changed his life.807 On returning to Athens, he began his journey into philosophy by
unexpectedly finding a work by Crates the Cynic in a bookstore that he chanced to walk into. For a
time, Crates's philosophy functioned as a source of consolation for him but, when its inadequacy
became more and more obvious, Zeno began to go his own way through questions and reflections
which lead to the founding of his own school, the early Stoa in Athens, in and about the year 300;
explaining the name was the fact that Zeno used to preach to his students from a portico or stoa (hence,
the name "stoicism," literally, "Porchism"). Its philosophic roots can be traced, however, to a preSocratic form of materialist philosophy and an eclectic combination of insights that come from the
varying thought of Heraclitus, the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Cynics. 808 Simply put in
the form of three propositions: (1) the world, the universe, in its oneness as a substance, exists as an
animate, good, and wise thing; (2) all things in it are ordered by the being of Providence (meaning God,
Reason, Destiny, or Order) where nothing exists without a reason of some kind which explains its
being;809 and (3) the purpose or the end of our human lives is, morally, to live in accordance with the
order of the universe which exists as a union of Nature and reason. 810 If, indeed, we are to live virtuous
lives, we must begin with a true knowledge of things, acquiring this true knowledge, a true knowledge
which is indispensable.811 In the makeup of the early Stoa, Zeno was succeeded as head of the school
b y Cleanthes of Assos, author of the Hymn to Zeus, a poem that comes across to us as essentially
monotheistic in its outlook. Zeus is addressed as “leader of nature, governing all things by law.” 812
Then, Cleanthes was succeeded by Chrysippus of Soloi (d. 208/205 BC) who is credited with the first
systematic account of Stoic thought and with also having an interest in logic and language.813
The middle Stoa was centered in Rhodes where it came into contact with Roman life. Romans such as
Cicero (106-43 BC), beginning in 78 BC, studied in Rhodes under Poseidonius of Apamaea (c. 13551 BC) who had previously been a student of Panaetius of Rhodes (c. 185-110/9 BC). To Cicero, to
the extent that he can be regarded as a philosopher, bit and pieces here and there (in his speeches and
philosophical dialogues) point to belief in the being of natural law. Our human nature is such that, in
it, innate notions exist and, in the wake of these notions, moral determinations exist in a way which
then gives to our human moral judgment a status that is not subject to skeptical conclusions of one kind
or another.814 Cicero articulated the concept of "humanism" in a view of life which makes the
individual the central focus to which Seneca later added the thought that "to mankind, mankind is
Michael G. Shields (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), p. 25.
807Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 49.
808Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 49: Rommen, Natural Law, p. 19.
809Kokakowski, Why is there Something rather than Nothing?, p. 36.
810Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 49.
811Pabst, Metaphysics, p. 61.
812Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, pp. 21- 22.
813Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 384; Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p.
24.
814Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 419.
217
holy."815
The later Stoa, the Roman Stoa, was characterized by a lack of interest in physics and a greater concern
for the good of our ethical human conduct; hence, an understanding of natural law which thinks in
terms of moral questions and problems than an understanding which would refer to the physical laws of
the universe. There were three especially important figures. Seneca (4 BC-65 AD), a dramatist and
high-ranking statesman who was twice exiled and a tutor to the emperor Nero, himself a victim and a
perpetrator of intrigue who for 10 years was allegedly the "real master of the world." Unlike Plato and
Aristotle, Seneca was aware vividly of the problem of the will: it is often divided with itself which
explains why the absence of moral effort is not to be interpreted as a symptom of virtue: the contrary is
the case since it is hard work to live virtuously. Seneca challenged slavery:
We Romans are exceptionally arrogant, harsh, and insulting to our
slaves . . . You should treat your inferiors in the way in which you would
like to be treated by your own superiors.816
Epictetus of Hierapolis (c. 50-138 AD) was a slave in a wealthy Roman household who eventually
earned his freedom.817 He rejected the Stoic division of philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics and
brought to a logical conclusion Stoicism’s tendency to reduce philosophy to ethics by bringing out the
problem of free will and determinism that was implicit in Stoicism (how to have free will within a
determinist world order of things).818 In the context of his theology, in a departure from earlier Stoic
thought, God would seem to exist in a transcendent, personal way and not as some kind of impersonal
ordering binding force. “Every one of [our] acts is seen by God.”819
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) was a Roman emperor and author of the Meditations
written in Greek.820 He had a focus of interest on death and on preparing for death as in:
Death reduced to the same condition Alexander and his muleteer...Execute every act of
your life as though it were your last...As one already dying, disdain the flesh.
Also, one should abstain from pleasure:
The purple-edged robe is only sheep’s wool steeped in the blood of a shell-fish...Sexual
intercourse is only an internal rubbing and spasmodic excretion of mucus.
He evinced a sense of futility about life although, on the other hand, he espoused the value and the
good of political responsibility:
All the things of the body are as a river and the things of the soul a dream: life is a war
and fame after death forgetfulness.
815Gaarder, Sophie's World, p. 132.
816Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 25.
817Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 50.
818Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 25.
819Epictetus, as quoted by Hill, After the Natural Law, pp. 52-53.
820Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, p. 26.
218
Social obligation is the leading feature in the constitution of man - that which is not in
the interest of the hive cannot be in the interest of the bee
Where the Epicureans looked for security in repose, the Stoics looked for it in possessing an
undisturbed tranquility of mind, an “equanimity of soul”: a condition of apatheia which would free us
of the experience and pull of pathos and which would move us toward degrees of emotional selfcontrol. As the first systematic organizers of philosophy after Aristotle, they divided philosophy into
three major parts: logic, physics, and ethics. Logic became a real part of philosophy in contrast with
Aristotle who saw it only as the preliminary tool for doing philosophy. Logic not only applied to all
human thought but also it included the theory of knowledge.
Physically and cognitively, like the Atomists, the Stoics were materialists: only bodies have real
substantial existence. Reality is to be associated with corporeality. Every cause and every effect exists
as a body. Hence, “truth, knowledge, understanding, and mind” exist as bodies because they produce
effects.821 What is incorporeal is that which is non-existent. Citing, for instance, a Stoic argument: if
the human arts exist in a corporeal, sensible way and if the human soul is nourished by the arts, then, as
the arts, the soul too exists in a corporeal way as a body. 822 Knowledge comes to us only by way of the
evidences of the senses while the real is that which is attained by our acts of sense perception. Within
the order of being, material reality is composed of two principles: a passive principle which refers to
matter in the strictest sense (matter as pure matter if we recall the teaching that we have from Aristotle
about the being and the existence of pure matter) and an active principle which refers to the Logos (a
term that had been previously used by Heraclitus). The Logos is the active principle of nature and of
the universe. As a kind of soul, it exists as a kind of fiery principle that permeates everything as a
cosmic, material, and subtle principle. It is not per se a spiritual, immaterial thing although it was
referred to by some Stoics as "Providence," “Fate,” “Destiny,” “Necessity,” "Nature," or also as Zeus
or God. God is to the world as the soul is to the body. 823 Alternatively speaking, according to the rule
of equivalence, “nature” can be referred to in ways which would speak of it as Zeus, God, fire, spirit,
providence, first cause, or Logos. By these means, we can refer to the common rational principle of all
things which exists within the universe (the “rational principle of the universe” which exists as the
spring or the principle of order within our world). 824 The Logos is the divine element which exists
imminently within our existing world, dwelling within everything, fire being but another word for it,
functioning as a metaphor for the being of Logos. Previously, within his own earlier philosophy,
Heraclitus had compared the Logos to a primal kind of fire which exists as the center of things within
our world although now, according to Zeno, this fire as Logos is also a generating, generative principle.
It accounts for the being of all things which emerge and which exist within our world. Our world or
cosmos is subject to continuous cyclic regeneration where all things ultimately end in a great fire which
consumes the cosmos and then, from this same fire, the cosmos re-emerges again in a way which
repeats its history.825 On the whole, God and nature were identified in Stoicism in the manner which
821Bernard Lonergan, A Second Collection, eds. Robert M. Doran and John D. Dakosky
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), p. 208.
822Lonergan, Second Collection, p. 208.
823Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 56, n. 2; Kokakowski, Why is there Something rather than
Nothing?, p. 37.
824Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 8; p. 22; p. 24.
825Kokakowski, Why is there Something rather than Nothing?, p. 37.
219
pointed to a form of pantheistic belief (as this is given, for instance, in the teaching of Posidonius, “the
being of God is the whole cosmos,” and Seneca, “what is nature but God and the divine reason inserted
within the whole universe and its parts?”). 826 The Logos is everywhere and, in a sense, it is everything,
although admittedly, for some Stoics (for example, for Cleanthes in the context of the teachings of the
first Stoa), some monotheistic aspects existed in a manner which pointed to tensions which existed
within the kind of natural theology that was favored by the Stoics within their school of philosophy in a
way of thinking which does not distinguish between the subject matter of science and theology nor with
the methods that would properly belong to the study of these disciplines.
According to a deterministic understanding of things thus, nothing occurs or happens within our world
except according to a pantheistic conception of nature and that which exists as the rational principle of
nature although, among Stoics in general, while some thought and spoke about nature in terms that are
specifically Stoic, others also worked with a notion or an understanding of nature which comes from
Aristotelian or Epicurean sources (nature as, respectively, a “self-moved condition,” or nature as the
sum of all bodies with a void which exists between these bodies). In the face of eclectic ways of
thinking and speaking, amongst Stoics, nothing prevented the combining of many different notions
with each other in a manner which accorded with their individual utility in the context of a larger,
general purpose.827
Within the purview of Stoic theology, atheism was not regarded as a legitimate option, as something
that merited any kind of belief. Despite a common view which tended to believe that God and the
Logos refer to the same thing, differences also existed in terms of rival points of view that could not be
easily reconciled with the kind of thinking which exists in the teachings and beliefs of classic
pantheism. While the early Stoics tended to see God or the Logos as an impersonal, governing,
ordering force or principle which exists within our world (hence, pantheism), the later Stoics tended to
see God or the Logos in personal terms: as something which exists as a consciously active entity and
subject which is other and distinct from the material order of things that is directly known by us
through our various acts of sense perception. However, the immateriality of God versus the materiality
or the empiricism of a Stoic understanding of human cognition does detract from an understanding of
God which would want to think of him as consistently and essentially an immaterial being who exists
in an immaterial way as a governing first principle (as someone who would account for the existence
and the regulation of all things and beings which exist within our concretely existing world).
With respect to the Logos which exists everywhere within the world and with how it exists as a
governing principle, in the subjection of all things to the Logos, as a consequence of this species of
ordering, all other things are subjected to the rule of an all pervasive common law of nature or, in
other words, according to the conceptuality of Stoic teaching, the being of reason or Logos which
explains why the world exists as an organic whole, joining everything together as if the world or the
universe exists as a living organism in a way of speaking which comes to us from the teachings of the
middle Stoa and the metaphors and conceptuality of Poseidonius, a position that was later assumed by
Cicero who, in the context of his day, spoke about nature as if it exists as a soul which exists within
things as their cohesive principle of motion and movement. 828 In the Stoic understanding of nature,
826Posidonius, as cited by Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 22; and Seneca, as cited also by
Grant, p. 10.
827Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, pp. 8-9.
828Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 9.
220
because of the Logos, within the things of the world or among all the things which exist within the
world, a form of cosmic sympathy is to be postulated. Through a form of participation which exists
within the world, a positive correlation exists between the being of our human reason as Logos and the
greater being of nature829 where, within this larger context of nature as the naturally existing world, the
world as it exists is held together by an all pervading reason or Logos. Hence, the world exists
fundamentally as a harmony of parts and relations. The Logos exists or it exercises a form of
overarching providence since the Logos makes everything be and exist and it also maintains all things
in the manner of their being and existence, effecting and manifesting an order within the universe of
things which should be obvious to anyone who would want to try and provide proofs which would
point to an administration of the universe that is effected by the being and power of the Logos as
nature.830 Despite verbal or linguistic differences and the possible being of ideational or conceptual
differences, among the Stoics, no real distinction seems to have existed between the being of natural
law as this refers to the physical laws of nature and the being of natural law as this refers to moral laws
which exist as norms for the proper conduct of our human affairs as human beings.831
Hence, within the larger context of Logos and nature, our personal happiness within this world lies
within the life of our individual reason and in adapting and submitting ourselves to the providential rule
of the larger reason which exists as the universal Logos. However, at the same time too, as a sign of its
power and significance, this Logos also prevails and exists within the inward life of each human person
where, in moving from the being of an external domain or forum into the being of an internal domain
or forum, within each person the Logos exists and dwells and thus, within this context, it exists as a
microcosmos, a microcosmos which reflects the macrocosmos of the larger order of the universe, the
microcosmos which is constitutive of each individual human being in turn grounding or pointing
toward the reasonableness of a larger universal law to which we are all properly subject as human
beings. This larger, universal law which exists as the natural law (according to how we would speak
about it) exists as an all pervasive intelligibility (according to one way of speaking) or it exists as a set
of precepts which are based upon the existence of an ordering transcendent reason (the aforementioned
Logos) which is greater than each of us ourselves (hence, its transcendence). However, in its
imminence, it is also something which exists within each of us individually and so, for these reasons, it
can be said that this transcendent, indwelling law is something which is both timeless and universal
and, paradoxically, something which is both divine and human. The divine exists within the human
829Koester, ”Concept of Natural Law,” Religions in Antiquity, p. 527.
830Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, pp. 9-10, citing Posidonius's five proofs on why we should
believe that nature is such that it must control and govern all things which exist within our world.
831Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 23. Please note, for the sake of less ambiguity in
understanding, that differences can exist according to an order which moves from the being of material
or verbal differences toward the being of conceptual or ideational differences and then, from there,
toward the being of real differences which refer to the existence of realities and a lack of agreement or
a lack of equivalence which can exist between realities. Differences in the use of language and
differences which exist among ideas and notions do not necessarily refer to point to differences which
exist with respect to the reality of existing things. To understand the order of these different
differences, we can begin with an understanding of human cognition which distinguishes three different
kinds of cognitive act. Acts of experiencing in sense are succeeded by acts of direct understanding
which grasp ideas or theories and then these acts can be succeeded by acts of reflective understanding
which would exist as judgments, determining if a given idea is to be regarded as a true or real idea, the
idea referring to a truly existing thing.
221
and the human, within the divine.
As human beings, according to Zeno, allegedly, we are all called “to live consistently [i.e.,
reasonably]” or “to live conformably [i.e., normatively]” where, in deciphering and parsing the text of
Zeno's words, we should find that we are called “to live in agreement with the Logos.”832 The Logos is
to be identified with our essential nature as human beings. 833 It lives within ourselves. By implication
thus, no life that is other than the passionless life of our human reason can be consistent with itself in
terms of how it exists in a human way. 834 When, later, Cleanthes added the words "with nature" to the
wording of Zeno's text,835 the effect was a rewording which produced a traditional formula which
accordingly says that our goal or our project in human life is "to live consistently with nature" or “to
live in a manner which accords with nature” and so, from this, we begin to have a shift in meaning
which moves from something which exists internally within ourselves as human beings toward
something which exists outside or externally to ourselves: something which exists in a manner which
transcends our being in terms of how we happen to individually exist. While, yes, that which
determines who we are as human beings is the same thing which also determines everything else which
happens to exist within our world (the internal Logos within ourselves is the same thing as the external
Logos outside of ourselves), if we begin to think according to the kind of order which exists within
metaphysics as we would move, say, from cause to effect or from primary principles to secondary
principles, then, within the conceptual order of metaphysics, we would say that that which exists
independently and externally with respect to ourselves is that which determines who we are as human
beings and how we should properly exist and behave and so, to it, we should defer and accede. That
which exists at a higher level determines that which exists at a lower level.
On the basis then of this conceptual shift (although within the context of Greek stoicism, “to live in
accordance to nature” continues to mean that we should “live in accordance with man's nature in terms
of the being of his reason”), within the later kind of stoicism which exists within the more practical
kind of thinking that we find within the tradition of Roman stoicism and the conceptuality of Cicero's
articulation, natural law exists as a kind of other. It exists as an external species of norm that we should
consult in judicial and legislative matters. In a letter, Pro milone, which comes to us from Cicero,
dated 52 BC:
This, therefore, is a law, O judges, not written, but born with us, which we have not
learnt, or received by tradition, or read, but which we have taken and sucked in and
imbibed from nature herself; a law which we were not taught, but to which we were
made, which we were not trained in, but which is ingrained in us, namely, that if our life
be in danger from plots or from open violence or from the weapons of robbers or
enemies, every means of securing our safety is honorable.836
Attending then to the philosophical forms of reflection which come to us from a number of Cicero's
dialogues which date from about 51 BC to 44 BC, the natural law is spoken about as the “True Law.”
832Zeno, as cited by Koester, ”Concept of Natural Law,” Religions in Antiquity, p. 527 (italics
mine).
833Koester, ”Concept of Natural Law,” Religions in Antiquity, p. 527 (italics mine).
834Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanthes (accessed November 7, 2016).
835Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 7, n. 3.
836Cicero, For T. A. Milo, as cited by Rommen, Natural Law, p. 20, n. 10.
222
It is to be simply defined to exist as “right reason in agreement with nature,” 837 in conformity with
nature. In Cicero's own words, this “True Law” is “the highest reason [that is] implanted by nature;
[it]...prescribes those things which ought to be done, and [it] forbids the contrary.” 838 On the further
meaning and significance of this law:
I t is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting...there will not be different
laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and
unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master
and ruler, God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its
enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human
nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst penalties...839
Nature and natural law are seen to exist thus as invariant, external, eternal things when we think about
the reality of contingency and the contrast which exists when we think about the being of our humanly
created human world. Reiteratively speaking and by way of application: within the being of nature
itself as the universe of existing things, a higher law exists as the foundation of all our subsequent
human laws. It properly determines the laws which should be the laws of any given state and, in our
practical judgments and assessments, we only make good laws, we only make laws which truly exist as
837Cicero, On the Commonwealth, 3, 22, 33; Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 53.
838Cicero, On the Laws, 1, 6.
839Cicero, De republica [On the Commonwealth], as cited by Jim Powell, “Marcus Tullius
Cicero, Who Gave Natural Law to the Modern World,” https://fee.org/articles/marcus-tullius-cicerowho-gave-natural-law-to-the-modern-world/ (accessed November 16, 2016). Citing, however, a fuller
rendition of this text from the same source although in a different translation:
True law is correct reason congruent with nature, spread among all
persons, constant, everlasting. It calls to duty by ordering; it deters from
mischief by forbidding. Nevertheless it does not order or forbid upright
persons in vain, nor does it move the wicked by ordering or forbidding. It
is not holy to circumvent this law, nor is it permitted to modify any part
of it, nor can it be entirely repealed. In fact we cannot be released from
this law by either the senate or the people. No Sextus Aelius [a noted and
distinguished jurist of an earlier time] should be sought as expositor or
interpreter. There will not be one law at Rome, another at Athens, one
now, another later, but one law both everlasting and unchangeable will
encompass all nations and for all time. And one god will be the common
teacher and general, so to speak, of all persons. He will be the author,
umpire, and provider of this law. The person who will not obey it will
flee from himself and, defying human nature, he will suffer the greatest
penalties by this very fact, even if he escapes other things that are thought
to be punishments.
Cf. Cicero, On the Commonwealth, 3, 33 in http://www.nlnrac.org/classical/cicero/documents/derepublica (accessed November 16, 2016). See also how, as part of official church teaching, a portion of
this text is quoted by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2 ed., (Vatican City State: Libreria Editrice
Vaticana, 2000), 1956, citing Cicero, On the Commonwealth, 3, 22, 33.
223
laws if we attend to the precepts and the counsels of this higher law which already exists for us within
the order of externally existing things.
In Cicero's interpretation of Zeno's earlier teaching, for the first time in Latin, Cicero refers to the being
of “natural law” (employing the text, ratio insita in natura); in other texts however, on more than one
occasion, he refers to the “law of nature” (employing the Latin, lex naturae).840 When, for the only
time thus, he refers to natural law (in his interpretation of Zeno's earlier teaching), he claims that this
natural law exists as a divine thing. Hence, as a kind of governor or ruler, “its function is to command
what is right and to forbid the opposite.”841 Natural law exists in a manner which points to how it exists
as a source of moral determinations. It exists as a moral precept. Hence, on the obviousness of natural
law as a principle which we must have if we are to have good government in the human administration
of things:
If the will of the people, the decrees of the senate, the adjudications of magistrates, were
sufficient to establish justice, the only question would be how to gain suffrages, and to
win over the votes of the majority, in order that corruption and spoliation, and the
falsification of wills, should become lawful. But if the opinions and suffrages of foolish
men had sufficient weight to outbalance the nature of things [the laws of Nature], 842
might they not determine among them, that what is essentially bad and pernicious
should henceforth pass for good and beneficial? Or why should not a law able to enforce
injustice, take the place of equity? Would not this same law be able to change evil into
good, and good into evil?843
In a manner however which refers to the naturalness of our human reason and to how its normative,
proper functioning should lead us toward a knowledge of higher laws which exist as natural laws, the
laws of nature:
As far as we are concerned, we have no other rule capable of distinguishing between a
good or a bad law, than our natural conscience and reason [italics mine]. These,
however, enable us to separate justice from injustice, and to discriminate between the
honest and the scandalous. For common sense has impressed in our minds the first
principles of things, and has given us a general acquaintance with them, by which we
connect with Virtue every honorable and excellent quality, and with Vice all that is
abominable and disgraceful.
Now we must entirely take leave of our senses, ere we can suppose that law and justice
840Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 21.
841Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, 1, 36. Whether or not Zeno ever employed the
expression “natural law” is a question of dispute although no doubt exists about Cicero's use of the
term in Latin. Cf. Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 21.
842Cicero, On the Laws, 1, 16, as translated by C. W. Keyes, as cited by Rommen, Natural
Law, p. 20.
843Cicero, On the Laws, 1, 16, http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/cicero-treatise-on-the-laws
(accessed November 3, 2016). See also Cicero, On the Laws, 1, 16, as cited by Rommen, Natural Law,
p. 20.
224
have no foundation in nature, and rely merely on the transient opinions of men.844
Hence, this higher law, this natural law, can be said to exist in a way that it applies “across all human
communities.” In its divinity, it can be regarded and referred to as “eternal law” although, on the other
hand, in its humanity, it is accessible to all of us as reasonable, thinking human beings (when, for
instance, through our reasoning activities, we attend to the experience that we have of our basic human
inclinations and then, from there, move toward an understanding and knowledge of natural laws that
should point out, for us, a number of fundamental virtues which are listed by Cicero who speaks about
wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance).845 Hence, as a point of departure if God is introduced into
this context, this equation (if he is thought about and conceived as a species of first principle), he would
be cast in terms which regard him as both the supreme law-maker and the supreme law-enforcer of the
universe as it exists with the kind of reality which properly belongs to it.
Following on from this, this natural law - as “right reason in agreement with nature,” as it extends
down into the being of all existing things and as it moves into the being of all things through a kind of
determination which belongs to the being of natural law - for this reason, it necessarily grounds the
rationality of that which counts for us within the world of our human ethics and morality and so, for
this reason, as it comes and descends to us, we can argue that, instead of a morality that is grounded in
the being of subjective desires for various forms of self-fulfillment and the contentment that allegedly
comes to us with any kind or form of self-fulfillment, our moral actions are to be regarded principally
as duties or as obligations that are owed to the pervasive presence and the commanding influence of all
the higher laws which exist within nature (constituting its intelligibility), these higher laws existing
together as the one, true law of nature (as the “natural laws” of the universe). 846 More than simply
advising any given person about what he or she should prudently do in a given context, these laws exist
with a form of binding authority which is special to them, determining what we should do among all of
our various human actions. As Epictetus was to argue in the context of his own day and time, the
“measures and rules of nature” lead us as human beings toward a knowledge of the truth which is to be
equated with the being of the moral law.847
With Stoicism thus, for the first time, a deontological form of moral philosophy begins to emerge in the
history of human moral reflection.
It challenges and, possibly, it can begin to supplant the
eudaimonistic type of ethics which we have been associating with the kind of thinking that comes to us
from the earlier teaching of Aristotle. The normative type of subjectivity which belongs to Aristotle's
understanding of moral human living is replaced by a species of objective emphasis that has been
commonly associated with the being of natural laws as now, within this context, we would move from
an order of objective being which determines that kind of subjective being which should belong to us
844Cicero, On the Laws, 1, 16, http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/cicero-treatise-on-the-laws
(accessed November 3, 2016). See also Cicero, On the Laws, 1, 16, as cited by Rommen, Natural Law,
p. 20.
845Walter Nicgorski, “Cicero and the Natural Law,”
http://www.nlnrac.org/classical/cicero/documents/de-legibus (accessed November 16, 2016).
846Vieru, “Aristotle's Influence,” p. 118, citing Vilho Harle, Ideas of Social Order in the
Ancient World (Greenwood Press, 1998), p. 99; http://www.murdoch.edu.au/School-ofLaw/_document/WA-jurist-documents/WAJ_Vol1_2010_Simona-Vieru---Aristotle-and-Aquinas.pdf
(accessed October 28, 2016).
847Epictetus, Diss. 2, 20, 21, as cited by Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 25, n. 3.
225
as human subjects.
In moving from an understanding of natural law theory in Roman stoicism to a general understanding
of Stoic ethics, to understand the parameters or the content of Stoic ethics, a more specific or a more
concrete point of departure refers to the teaching and the example of Socrates since, in Stoic ethics,
virtue is to be equated with human experience and the attainment of correct knowledge. On achieving
our individual cognitive state, our complete well-being is guaranteed. Hence, on this basis or for this
reason, we should strive throughout our lives to acquire a wisdom which truly knows about the nature
of things. To obtain the blessedness and the enlightenment which comes with knowledge, we must
seek to free ourselves of all worldly desires and attachments, particularly those of the emotions and any
desires that could be directed toward our seeking of any pleasures. The wise man or the Stoic sage is
essentially someone who lives as an ascetic. He or she cultivates an attitude of detachment and a form
of practice that shuns depending on any kind of external variables that are beyond our conscious human
control. All the passions which disorder the human soul are to be abandoned and left behind. Hence,
we should show no interest in anything which excites our passions in terms of the griefs, joys, hopes, or
fears which typically exist among us as human beings. We should always face our personal destinies
with calmness, courage, and dignity, knowing that we are lords over our own lives in terms of how we
should think and judge ourselves about the being of our individual lives. 848 “The wise man [unlike
other human beings] is he who consciously follows the path of Destiny.”849 In him belongs an inner
awareness that can never be taken from him.
The content of Stoic teaching as this regards wisdom accordingly recalls Aristotle’s notion that the
good consists in acting in accordance with our nature although, now, we are to act in accord with
Nature itself: the totality of reality (which is taken to be divine and, as a whole, perfect). Live perfectly
by living in accord with the divine plan of things that is manifest in the being of the Logos, the Logos
being the natural law which governs all of us as human beings. The conventional or the legal statutes
of states exist only as incomplete imitations of this general law that is embedded within the being of
nature itself. No real difference distinguishes the individual from the universe and no conflict exists
between "spirit" and "body," “form” and “matter,” or “God” and the “world” in a view which assumes
both a monistic and also a pantheistic view of the universe (against the reality of any dualist notions).
Hence, for instance, in the Stoic understanding of souls, yes, souls exist, but they exist as a very refined
type of matter or body. Where some bodies are visible to our human eyes, other bodies are not visible
from our human standpoint although, on the other hand, they can be seen by acts of seeing that belong
to other kinds of cogitating subjects which would exist in a manner that obviously differs from
ourselves as human beings. Our human souls exist in the manner which peculiarly belongs to them
although, as bodies, because they exist as bodies, they do not endure (they are not immortal) although
admittedly, as a contradictory qualification, according to some Stoic philosophers, the soul of someone
who is a truly wise person - the soul of a sage - such a soul endures “from death until the next
conflagration.”850
In a manner which follows as an inference from the materialism of Stoic physics, metaphysics, and
cognition, Stoic ethics is firmly rooted in stoic physical theology since man’s whole aim is to live in
conformity with the ruling principle of Logos which is part of Divine Reason or which is to be equated
848Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 398.
849Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 396.
850Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 52.
226
with Divine Reason. Happiness occurs not by resisting the Logos since it is useless to resist it as this is
illustrated in the case, for instance, of a dog which is tied to a moving cart: the secret of being happy is
in moving along with the cart or else one will be forced to move in any case since nothing happens
accidentally but by necessity. Virtue arises if, by our acts of willing, we live according to our right
reason, if we should live in harmony with ourselves with respect to the being and the actuation of our
rational nature:851 if we can identify our individual yearnings and desires with the providential plan of
the universe since we can do nothing but, in some way, conform to the grand design that is present
within the the life of the Logos. No real distinction exists between conforming ourselves to the higher
laws of nature and conforming ourselves to the life of right reason which can exist within us as human
beings.852 To live in conformity with nature is to live in conformity with the demands and the
requirements of right reason.853
By the kind of attitude that we can have and keep within ourselves, by adopting an intelligent and a
virtuous attitude, from the kind of obedience which exist within ourselves, our primary human function
is to do our human duty. It is to assent joyfully to the decrees of the universal Logos. True morality
(as also with the teaching of Emmanuel Kant) lies in an attitude of consenting to the decrees of the
Divine Reason. Fools try to impose their selfish wills and their desires on reality, accordingly, this
produces unhappiness and a lack of freedom where freedom only occurs and exists if we should want
what the universe should want. Hence, we should not wish that we can get what we desire but we
should desire what we can get. In Stoic wisdom, if we learn to equate what we want with what is in
fact the case, we will always be free and happy since we would always get just what we want. We are
free when we conform to the order of existing things and the knowledge that we can have of these
existing things and we are free when we are engaged in all the cognitive operations which belong to us
as regards the use of right reason. Instead of virtues, vices arise if, by our passions, we allow ourselves
to be dragged down by them through lack of control and self-discipline, the proper moral ideal being
for us a condition of Apathy or indifference. Through indifference and the detachment which exists in
indifference, we experience a kind of inner peace or serenity and so, in this inner peace or
imperturbability, we have freedom. We can be free of the being of all external things over which we
have no control and so, for thoroughness in the extent of our detachment, we can be detached too from
the being of life itself (as the Cynics had also held and believed): from the life of others and the sorrow
that can come from their loss and also from our own lives where thus, as a consequence, suicide at
times can be regarded as an acceptable alternative. It can be the better option although Plato, in his
teaching, had forbidden it. Seneca (who, in his life, committed suicide on the advice of the Emperor
Nero) says as follows about the merits of suicide: "the dirtiest death is preferable to the daintiest
slavery" and "to die well is to escape the danger of living badly." 854 If the harshness of reality threatens
our inner equilibrium and if it could possibly lead us toward backsliding in the context of experiencing
pain and anxiety, suicide is acceptable under certain conditions.
Since we must be without affections with our every action always being guided by the prescriptions
and proscriptions of right reason, we can understand some early Christians were attracted to Stoicism
although it is un-Christian to be lacking in any affection. Clearly, in order to be a Stoic, one would
have to exist as a mutilated person since, in this context, one wants to be superior to all changes in life
851Rommen, Natural Law, p. 20.
852Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 395.
853Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 396.
854Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 102.
227
in the context of an ideal which is so difficult too achieve thus that, as a result, most Stoics are forced
to admit that their ideals are too difficult and, in fact, they are impossible to obtain. In his ideality,
Kant can be regarded thus as a species of Stoic. For both Kant and the ancient Stoics, a law of
necessity governs the world within which we happen to live although, within the context of our
individual inner lives, within that which exists as the “inner sanctum of the human will,” 855 freedom
exists (a freedom which exists as an inner lack of determination: we can change or choose our
attitudes) and so, within the context of this Stoic teaching, we find the origins of a later development
that will begin to notice that the nature of our human understanding is to be distinguished from the
nature of our human willing. Our acts of understanding do not necessarily necessitate our subsequent
acts of human willing since our human acts of willing enjoys a life of their own although, yes, they can
be influenced by the kind of activity and the reception which exists within our human acts of
understanding. Willing exists with an autonomy which properly belongs to it and its development
requires a different set of ways and means. In determining the morality or the rightness of a given
human act, according to Stoic teaching, the most important variable which needs to be known and
considered is the inner intention which exists within ourselves, urging us toward the doing of a given
action and toward the avoidance of other possible actions. Intentions count for more than any
consequences or results since the consequences are beyond our personal human control although not so
any intentions that we could have since, as human beings, we can change our intentions and, in fact, we
can perform the same act with a different intention and so, in this way, we would change of the value or
the quality of a given act. An immoral act becomes moral or, conversely, a moral act is turned into an
immoral act. Simply put, according to Epictetus: “the essence of good and evil lies in the attitude of
the will”...where “from within comes ruin and from within comes help.” 856 Hence, by implication, the
essence of good and evil lies within the sufficiency of our human willing in the determinations that it
can bring into being. In any given case, “the will may conquer itself, but nothing else can conquer
it.”857 An essential freedom exists within the being of our human willing.
Similarities existed between the teaching and practice of Christianity and the teaching and practice of
Stoicism: a doctrine of resignation, disdain for attachment to earthly things, concern for conforming to
the will of divine Providence, and an interest in the good of human fellowship where our true self-love
is something which can only exist if it extends to the good of other persons in terms of a love of others
which would be as intense as is the love which we should have of ourselves. 858 Between all human
beings, a common universal brotherhood exists and within this larger transcendent brotherhood, the
dignity of each human being and the moral equality of all human beings on the basis of a life of reason
and virtue which belongs to each human being. No one does not participate in the life of the Logos and
in the providential order of things which is to be identified with the being and the workings of the
Logos. As Seneca spoke about his own belief in the existence of a universal brotherhood among all
human beings and why we can speak of such a thing:
All that you behold, that which comprises both god and man, is one – we are parts of
one great body. Nature produced us related to one another since she created us from the
same source and to the same end. She engendered in us mutual affection, and made us
855Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 52.
856Epictetus, as quoted by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 53; Copleston, History of Philosophy
Volume 1, p. 433.
857Epictetus, as quoted by Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 432.
858Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 400.
228
prone to friendships. She established fairness and justice.859
Similarly, in their teaching and declarations, Epictetus and Emperor Marcus Aurelius, respectively:
Will you not remember who you are and whom you rule? That they are kinsmen, that
they are brethren by nature, that they are the offspring of Zeus?860
My city and country, insofar as I am Antonimus, is Rome, but insofar as I am a man, it
is the world.861
Slavery accordingly lacks the reasonableness of having a legitimate moral foundation. On the basis of
a Stoic understanding of nature, we cannot agree with Aristotle that some human beings are to be
regarded as slaves by nature. With Epictetus, we would say something to the effect that slavery is “the
law of the dead.”862 With respect to how we should relate to other human beings, as human beings, we
are all called to love and respect other human beings. For Stoics, this is our highest call. Justice is
especially important. Hence, as Seneca wrote: “whenever there is a human being there is room for
benevolence.”863 “See that you are loved by all while you live and regretted when you die.” 864 More
pointedly, in the words of Marcus Aurelius: we are all called to abide by the following precepts: “Love
mankind, follow God.”865
Love of God and love of other human beings go together hand in hand
since, for both Stoics and Christians, in the being of our human nature, a divine imprint can be found.
We are all made in God's image. Something of God exists in each and everyone of us. In a manner
which accords with the theism of Christian belief, as Epictetus had also noted: “...remember that
Another looks from above on what is happening and that you must please Him rather than this man.” 866
In the context of our personal lives, political life is not to be despised or avoided since we should all try
to encourage the rule of reason in both our private and public lives. At least according to the early
Stoics, no half-way house or no intermediate exists between good and evil since one is either a rational
Stoic or one is dragged down by the being of one's passions. No compromise exists in life. Evil is
avoided or it is transcended if we should begin to realize and know that evil exists within the world
possibly for reasons that are sound and telling: either because the good or the perfection of the whole
requires absences of perfection in the parts or because, at times, in order to achieve greater good in the
world, God uses means that can cause suffering.867 Nothing happens, good or ill, without a reason to
explain it and, in the givenness of an explanation or a reason, good exists. Obviously, the better a
reason, the fuller the meaning, the easier it can be for us that we can find a way to accept what trials
and difficulties come to us in the context of our individual human lives.
However, between Stoics and Christians some differences also existed. Where Stoics tended to be
859Seneca, Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, XCV, 33, as quoted by Rommen, Natural Law, p.
22.
860Epictetus, as quoted by Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 434.
861Marcus Aurelius, as quoted by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 54.
862Epictetus, as quoted by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 54.
863Seneca, as quoted by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 54.
864Seneca, as quoted by Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 431.
865Marcus Aurelius, as quoted by Hill, After the Natural Law, p. 54.
866Epictetus, as quoted by Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 433.
867Kokakowski, Why is there Something rather than Nothing?, p. 37.
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quietistic and acquiescent in how they should relate to the behavior of external political authorities,
Christians tended to resist political domination by refusing to take any oath with respect to the alleged
divinity of the Roman Emperor and so, as a consequence, they were suffered persecution and
martyrdom. While the later Stoics tends to move in a dualist direction in a manner which begins to
think of God in transcendent terms, the materialism of Stoic belief in philosophy prevents them from
fully adopting or fully moving into any points of view which would evince belief in the reality of a
transcendent God and the immortality of our human souls. With respect to ethics and the living of a
moral human life, the importance that is ascribed to nature seems to come principally from the Stoics
who gave to the principle of nature a static meaning that was inherited by Christian thinkers in the
Middle Ages. We will be happy if we do not try to change anything which exists within the order and
world of nature which is already given to us. Do not intervene to try and improve nature. Try to work
with it in a co-operative way. Where, in Stoicism, emotional indifference is praised and highly valued,
within the Christian order of things, the experience of suffering shifts into apprehensions of meaning
and a larger measure of acceptability if this suffering can be experienced and appropriated in a way
which turns it or which converts into an act of love that touches all aspects of our lives.
Neoplatonism
There are two radically opposed views of knowing. For the Platonist, knowing is
primarily a confrontation; it supposes the duality of knower and known; it consists in a
consequent added movement. The supposition of duality appears in Plato's inference
that, because we know ideas, therefore ideas subsist. The conception of knowing as
movement appears in Plato's dilemma that the subsistent Idea of Being either must be in
movement or else must be without knowing. The same dilemma forced Plotinus to
place the One beyond knowing; Nous could not be first, because Nous could not be
simple. In St. Augustine the notion that knowing is by confrontation appears in the
affirmation that we somehow see and consult the eternal reasons. In the medieval
writers of the Augustinian reaction, knowing as confrontation reappears in the species
impressa that is an object, and in the doctrine of intuitive, intellectual cognition of
material and singular existents. To cut a long story short, contemporary dogmatic
realists escape the critical problem by asserting a confrontation of intellect with concrete
reality.868
Neoplatonism was a term that was invented at a later date in order to describe an attempt which was
made by some philosophers to try and produce an all-embracing synthesis of philosophy and a number
of religious ideals where, in this context, ideas and notions were taken from a number of different
sources and then put together into a unity which was reworked with the help of principles and ideas that
were taken from Plato's philosophy. As regards these different sources, mythical elements were
combined with mystical ideas in a hodgepodge which were then combined with a smattering of ideas
that were taken from teachings of the Aristotelians, the Stoics, and Pythagoreans. In this reworking or
application, the material or the bodily order of things was regarded in a negative light; the spiritual
order, in a positive light. In this school of thought, neoplatonist thinkers tended to turn philosophy into
a form of metaphysics and so evinced a greater concern for the structure of the human soul than for
what exists in science, politics, or ethics.
868Lonergan, Verbum, p. 192.
230
Since its context was the crumbling of the Roman political and social order in the 3rd Century AD, a
religious revival provided a basis to which neoplatonism contributed, its mystical form being chiefly
represented and led by Plotinus. However, before Plotinus, Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BC-c. 50 AD),
a contemporary of both Our Lord and St. Paul and an orthodox Jew, functioned as a bridge to link
Jewish and Greek thought with each other, taking bits and pieces from the heritage of Greek
philosophy and uniting them to the written Jewish law of the Pentateuch or Torah, attending to laws
and norms which exist within the order of science and philosophy and uniting them to laws and norms
which exist within the order of faith and religion. As the most important representative of syncretism
as this existed within the tradition of neoplatonism, he tried to show how philosophy prepares the mind
for a knowledge of higher things: for possible encounters with the being of a transcendent God. In his
day and subsequently, Philo came to represent the kind of influence that was exerted by Greek thought
on the Jewish mind in the Greek speaking city of Alexandria which itself had an important Jewish
community that was especially influenced by the hellenistic Greek gentile culture of the day. Its
members were all educated in Greek culture although they continued to practice their faith as faithful
Jews. Hence, Jews like Philo read the Old Testament according to the Greek Septuagint translation.
Since Philo was influenced by both Jewish and Greek culture, his commentaries on the Old Testament
tried to bring Jewish literature into harmony with the teachings of Greek philosophy although in a
manner which was always thoroughly Jewish. Employing allegorical interpretations, he tried to
translate Jewish themes into Greek themes through a form of syncretism or a synthesis that was based
on the belief that Jewish literature and Greek thought are only two aspects of the same identical truth
(truth existing as something that ultimately comes from God despite any differences in the manner of
the apprehension which is used). For example, given no doctrine of creation among the Greeks, the
book of Genesis is to be interpreted allegorically; and given too the Greek belief in God as pure act and
also as prime mover and the Jewish belief in the being of a personal God who has met and encountered
his people through his revelation, in his idea of God thus, Philo tried to bring these two notions together
by emphasizing God’s transcendent character beyond that which could exist as his personal, subjective
character. God is not to be identified with nature since the natural world has a vital force of its own
which properly belongs within it.869 Intermediary beings akin to angels bridge the gulf between God
and the material world. One intermediary being exists, however, as the Logos who is understood by
Philo to exist as the first born of God although this Logos is inferior to God Himself since it is not
consubstantial with God, serving only as the first bridge which connects God to man, the first bridge
which connects God to the created order. Put briefly: if a real distinction exists between, on the one
hand, the immateriality of intellectual activity and an internal kind of conversation which exists as one
kind of Logos (in thinking we silently talk to ourselves within our consciousness of self) and, on the
other hand, the materiality of a spoken, communicated word which is employed as both a medium and
a means when conversation moves from inner conditions toward the possibility of outer conditions,
then, in a similar way or analogically, God as he exists in his transcendence is to be distinguished from
the being of an outer but yet inner Word or Logos which exists within things that are other than God, a
Word or Logos which God uses in order to communicate the depths of his understanding and
knowledge in a creative productive manner, a Word or Logos which exists as a species of instigating,
efficient cause.870
In other efforts that were accordingly employed for the purpose of effecting a harmonization of
different aspects and teaching, Philo employed elements that were taken from Stoicism in a way which
869Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 15.
870Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 460.
231
joined a Jewish interest and preoccupation with the revealed law of God with an interest in the being of
natural laws that are replete within the givens of physical, biological nature (these laws being revealed
to us in another kind of way: through the kind of thinking and understanding which properly belongs to
us as cogitating human beings, existing as human subjects). Much more so than with earlier
philosophers and thinkers (according to the surviving texts that we have), Philo speaks about “laws of
nature” and how they exist in a manner which points to how, primarily, they exist as physical and
biological laws.871 With respect to them, is the will of God not only communicated or conveyed to us
through the deliverances of a revealed written law as this has been given to us in the form of the
scriptures, the Pentateuch? Are not these laws conveyed to us through deliverances that can be given to
us through the conduct of thoughtful human inquiries and how we can move toward an understanding
of physical, biological nature? Other than the laws of Moses, are there not laws which exist within the
order of physical and biological nature and do not these laws also come to us from God as their source,
God existing as both Creator and Legislator? In terms of the order of their being as this is reflected in
the manner of their promulgation, can it not be said and properly argued about physical and biological
laws that they exist in a more universal, primary manner? 872 In their being thus, if we compare them to
the law of Moses, they predate the law of Moses. They precede the law of Moses. They enjoy a form
of existence which situates and conditions the entry and the promulgation of the written law of God
which comes to us through the law (ho nomos) which is the law of the Torah. In one sense, the
universality of the Torah exists at a lower level or, in other sense, it exists as a more exact specification
of the laws which exist in physical and biological nature (existing, allegedly, as “copies,” as visible
copies of invisible laws).873 They faithfully reflect the teaching of the more general law which is given
to us in physical and biological nature through the laws that are constitutive of the being of physical
and biological nature. In each their own way, knowledge of one law leads to knowledge of the other
law, back and forth, since the laws of nature and the laws of Moses (as both coming from God, their
source) are intertwined with each other in a way which would have to point to an identity between them
that would have to be fundamental):874 in other words, the absence of a real distinction or, conversely,
an inner connection which would point to a mutual kind of causality, a reciprocal kind of causality that
would exist and which must exist between the laws of nature that come to us from God (laws that are
known in a scientific or philosophic way) and the revelation that is given to us through the laws of
871Koester, ”Concept of Natural Law,” Religions in Antiquity, pp. 530-531. Koester notes that
the Greek expression nomos phuseōs (“law of nature”) occurs at least 30 times in Philo's surviving
texts and that the same texts also frequently use equivalent terms and expressions to refer to the
meaning which is denoted by the Greek, nomos phuseōs. The frequency and the extensiveness of
Philo's discussions accordingly points to a greater interest in natural law than what had existed before
although, if we should seek for an explanation as to why this should be the case, theological
considerations seem to present themselves to us as the primary point of departure. From a desire for
theological understanding, we move toward some kind of growth in one's philosophical understanding
and then, from this philosophical understanding, one can move toward some kind of promotion or
growth which can exist in the content of one's theological understanding.
872Philo, Abraham, 3-6, as cited by Koester, ”Concept of Natural Law,” Religions in Antiquity,
p. 535; Philo, On Abraham, 3-6, The Works of Philo, trans. C. D. Yonge (Peabody, Massachusetts:
Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), p. 411.
873Philo, On Abraham, 3, Works of Philo, trans. Yonge, p. 411.
874Meirav Jones, “Philo Judaeus and Hugo Grotius's Modern Natural Law,” Journal of the
History of Ideas (July 2013): 350. See also http://herzlinstitute.org/en/wpcontent/uploads/sites/2/2013/09/Jones-Grotius-paper.pdf (accessed December 3, 2016).
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Moses (where these laws are known through a mode of apprehension which is religious: in some ways
literal, in some ways symbolic).875 Nature or a knowledge of nature leads us toward the law or a
knowledge of the law as the Torah of Israel and, conversely, the law or a knowledge of the Torah leads
us to nature or to a greater knowledge of nature. A conceptual distinction exists between the being of
natural law and the being of the Mosaic law since, through our understanding and the analysis which
exists within our understanding, we can introduce distinctions, finding them as we proceed where, in
this case, we can distinguish respectively between an unwritten law and a written law and then we can
distinguish between how the written law exists in two different modes: firstly, as inscriptions that are
initially encountered by us as marks which exist on a flat surface; and then, secondly, through the
concreteness of expression which exists in the lives of religious men and women (the appropriation of
meaning and truth which has existed in the lives of Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, and others) 876 875For a later interpretation that comes to us from Aquinas when, in a Christian context, he
attends to a teaching that comes to us initially from Philo of Alexandria, see Aquinas in the Summa
Contra Gentiles, 1, 7 [as cited by Charles Morerod, “All Theologians Are Philosophers, Whether
Knowingly or Not,” Theology Needs Philosophy: Acting Against Reason is Contrary to the Nature of
God, ed. Matthew L. Lamb (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016), p. 13]:
Now though the aforementioned truth of the Christian faith surpasses the
ability of human reason, nevertheless those things which are naturally
instilled in human reason cannot be opposed to this truth.... The
knowledge of naturally known principles is instilled into us by God,
since God himself is the author of our nature. Therefore the divine
wisdom also contains these principles.
Consequently whatever is
contrary to these principles, is contrary to the divine wisdom: wherefore
it cannot be from God. Therefore those things, which are received by
faith from divine revelation, cannot be contrary to our natural knowledge.
876Jones, “Philo Judaeus and Hugo Grotius's Modern Natural Law,” p. 352. Please note in this
context that, when Philo refers to certain individuals who are blessed with a direct knowledge of God's
laws (these persons having a “direct access to the law of nature” which others lack because the first
group is closer in time to God, a “copy” of God's logos fully existing within them), it seems that Philo
is working with a species of norm which he has adapted from the existential type of norm which
Aristotle had employed when he had spoken about the being of a person who exists as a “virtuous
man.” At the end of the day, in the context of Aristotle's judgment, despite the range and the extent of
our possible moral knowledge about how good differs from evil (on what is good and what is evil),
moral goodness only fully emerges through actions which implement judgments and decisions that
belong to persons who perpetually or who habitually live good, moral, upright, human lives. When
wise decisions are made about the best mean which we should choose, the mean existing as the most
prudent course of action which exists among a welter of extremes (irrationalities to the right,
irrationalities to the left), then, within this context, we can move toward the emergence and the being of
specific, concrete goods. Good or goodness does not exist as some kind of ideal. Admittedly however,
if we compare Philo's selection of biblical personages who are blessed with a direct knowledge of the
laws of nature with the kind of criteria which exists with respect to Aristotle's notion of the “virtuous
man” (who is the virtuous man), we would have to notice that, between Philo and Aristotle, a lack of fit
exists. How can Adam be regarded as a “virtuous man,” given the faultiness of his judgments and
decisions? Similar questions too can be asked about the moral probity of Abraham and a number of his
male descendants (Moses included). Hence, in Philo, if we are to attend to the kinds of reasons which
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the substance or the reality of these unwritten and written laws all however referring to the same thing
and ultimately coming down to the same reality if, on the one hand, ultimately, their source is an
originating act or type of understanding and if the term of this understanding is an expression or an
expressiveness which has been conceptualized in terms which, ultimately, would refer to laws which
would exist for us as moral imperatives and directives (given the kind of being which we happen to
have and be). They immediately govern us with respect to the inclinations of our moral thinking and
reasoning; they impart a form and a shape which belongs to the contours of our moral human behavior
since they tell us what we should do this in a given case and what we should also avoid and question in
other given contexts.
To illustrate the tightness of connection which can exist between apprehensions of
religious meaning which exist in faith and theology and apprehensions of meaning
which exist in science and philosophy, a case in point can be indicated if we look at the
Council of Vienne in 1312-1312 and its judgment and declaration, as promulgated by
Pope Clement V, which affirmed that the form of the human body is the being of a
rational or intellectual soul.877 While Aristotle had spoken about the human soul as the
form of the human body, the nous or the intellect differs from this soul. It exists as a
detachable kind of thing and, on the death of the human body, the nous or the intellect is
freed from its connection with the human soul. It is this mind or intellect which is
immortal. What is left of the soul dies along with the being of the human body. But, on
the other hand however, in Plato, the form of the human body can never be united with
he uses for who is to be regarded as a model of religious truth and goodness that we should imitate in
the conduct of our lives in the practice of our own religion, some other kind of hermeneutic needs to be
known and acknowledged: in Philo, something which refers to how good triumphs over evil where, in
some way, good things emerge from the absence of good which exists in broken human conditions or,
as St. Augustine would say, good emerges according to a law and an order of redemption that has been
established to the effect that it is possible that good can emerge from evil. Unexpectedly, it comes out
of evil. In other words, God has so created things in our world that it is possible for good to come out
of its negation (being from privation), and this is an order of being and an order of redemption which
supposes acts of understanding which would have to transcend the kind of understanding which
properly belongs us as contingent human beings. Only a divine act of understanding, only an
unrestricted act of understanding is able to create an order of things where good is able to come from
evil since, between good and evil, a real distinction always exists. Good excludes evil (it is the absence
of evil) and evil exists as the absence of good.
877John P. O'Callaghan, “Videtur quod non sit necessarium, praeter theologicam disciplinam,
aliam doctrinam haberi [It seems that it is not necessary to have another doctrine, beyond the
theological discipline]: Legitimacy of Philosophy as an Autonomous Discipline and Its Service to
Theology in Aquinas and Ralph McInerny,” Theology Needs Philosophy, pp. 23-35. Please note that
my discussion attempts to summarize the gist of O'Callaghan's thesis on how, from the posing of
theological questions, a development in philosophical understanding can result although, as he also
seeks to note, the asking of theological questions is an activity which also supposes philosophical
points of view that can be consciously understood and known or which can be supposed in a way that
excludes our acknowledge and recognition of them (hence, a naïve point of view that would suppose
that we can engage in theological activity without having to attend to philosophical questions of one
kind or another and philosophical positions that we could be adhering to in the manner of our human
thinking and analysis).
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the matter of the human body and, in its own way too, as another point of difference, the
human soul exists apart from any kind of unity with a body. A soul exists within a body
without being united to it. Both soul and form differ from each other in Plato. Every
human being has his own soul while the form of human beings exists apart from all
human souls and bodies. However, the soul of human beings exists as a first principle
or cause relative to the effecting of our bodily motions and our intellectual activities.
However, according to Christian belief as this comes to us from the beliefs of ancient
Israel, man is made in God's image (as this is given to us in the book of Genesis). Men
and women are all made in God's image. But, how is this belief to be translated or
transposed into philosophic or anthropological terms that are intelligible within the kind
of thinking that belongs to the practice of philosophy and science? In attending then to
anything which could be immortal within our human lives, from an understanding which
realizes that, through the kind of abstraction which occurs in every act of understanding,
acts of understanding always transcend material conditions (they distance themselves
from the being of material conditions); hence, for this reason, it can be argued that the
being and the life of our human reason best points us toward something which exists
within us that is both immortal and transcendent. God's image best exists in us if we
should point to the life and the being of our human minds (the kind of rationality which
exists within us in terms of both being and act): its objectivity refers to that which exists
as an immaterial kind of thing (our minds differing from our brains) and its subjectivity
refers to that which it performs and does and that which it accepts and receives.
However, if this rational soul is to exist in a way whereby, fully, it can inform the being
and manner of our human existence, then it must exist as a soul that is fully united to all
aspects of the material human body: determining and directing our intellectual activities
and, at the same time and in its own way, influencing and shaping our emotional, or
biological, and our physical lives in ways which point to how our understanding moves
within our desires and appetites: stirring and directing our desires within our acts of
human willing and also informing all the acts which belong to us in our different acts of
human sensing.878
The fullness of our human existence as this extends into the fullness of our human living
according requires two changes in our understanding of self, relative to the kind of
understanding which we find in Plato and Aristotle: one which can think about how our
souls are fully united to our bodies in terms of a substantial or a real unity (even if a real
distinction is to be admitted in terms of how soul and body differ from each other) and
two, an act of self-understanding which can think about the essential or the real unity of
our human souls. With respect to the being of our souls, the rationality of our souls
continues to be a primary determinant; hence, the human soul exists as an intellectual or
rational soul. But, this soul, as the form of the human body, is such that it accounts for
the kind of knowing which belongs to us as human beings. By means of this soul in
terms of its being and with respect to how it exists as a principle of explanation, in the
order of our human cognition, our acts of understanding are always joined to our acts of
sensing in a manner which leads to understanding, enabling increases in the number and
878Joseph Koterski, SJ, “The Concept of Nature: Philosophical Reflections in Service of
Theology,” Theology Needs Philosophy, pp. 62-63.
235
the depth of our understanding. The sensing serves the understanding and, at the same
time, the understanding gives to the sensing a direction, a transcendence, and a finality
that, otherwise, it would not have. The kind of disposition which exists at lower levels
of being with respect to the physicality or the materiality of our human bodies points to a
finality which is actualized in us through our acts of understanding. For theological
reasons that can indicate why, in human beings, there exists principles which point to
the being of God and which would also point to the good of our eventual union with
God, a new philosophy of the human soul is produced in a way which works with
conceptions that initially have come down to us from the earlier philosophies of Plato
and Aristotle: conceptions that are transcended in ways which point to a new
understanding of things which has worked with different insights as these exist in the
philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, selecting the good which exists within these insights
and combining them in ways which point to a more coherent philosophy about the
nature of the human soul and then, from this, a more coherent philosophy about the
nature of the human person:879 a philosophy which is Thomist (as opposed to
philosophies that are Platonist or Aristotelian, philosophies that are determined by
Platonist or Aristotelian assumptions, despite the possible emergence of questions which
we can ask about the degree or the kind of influence which has been exerted by these
different philosophies that have come to us from traditions of interpretation which have
descended from the earlier thought of Plato and Aristotle and the kind of conceptuality
which is to be associated with the expression of their different philosophies).
Hence, if all laws come to us from God and if these same laws all exist in a manner which is other than
the being of any of our created, man-made human laws (as natural, God's laws already exist for us),
then all these laws can be described and referred to in a way which properly refers to them as “natural
laws,” as “laws of nature” (even as we admit that the context of God's written law in Old Testament
scripture is the prior being of physical and biological laws). 880 As we have been already noting or
suggesting, the law of the Torah more clearly reveals the precepts that are already given to us within
the naturally given laws that belong to the being of physical, biological nature. The laws of nature are
more clearly known (they are known more truthfully) if we should attend more fully to the kind of
teaching that is given to us through the revelation which exists for us in the law of Moses. In the kind
of language which Philo uses to speak about the kind of identity which exists between the Law of the
Torah and the being of physical and biological laws:
Moses...introduced his laws with an admirable and most impressive exordium... It
consists of an account of the creation of the world, implying that the world is in
harmony with the Law, and the Law with the world, and that the man who observes the
law is constituted thereby a loyal citizen of the world, regulating his doings by the
purpose and will of Nature, in accordance with which the entire world itself is also
879See Koterski, pp. 56-57, who argues that our individual personhood is something which is
explained if we should advert to the fact that, as human beings, each of us possesses a rational human
nature. The distribution of this rational nature explains why we can ask our own questions; why we
can deliberate about this and that issue or question; why we can move into judgments of fact and value;
why we can determine possible courses of internal and external action, and why we can implement one
course of action instead of some other course of action.
880Koester, ”Concept of Natural Law,” Religions in Antiquity, p. 533.
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administered.881
If, with Philo thus, through a species of analogical supposition, we imagine or picture that God exists as
some kind of supreme architect or builder, then, with Plato, on the basis of the kind of philosophy that
comes from Plato and his conceptuality, we can suppose or we can imagine that God creates or that he
communicates himself to us and the world in a twofold manner. 882 First, in creation, he begins with a
word or a concept which proceeds from his mind or his understanding and this word, concept, or Logos
exists in the form of laws. God conceives of an unwritten blueprint of parts or elements that are all
related to each other. An invisible master plan contains all of God's laws that pertain to the creation of
all subsequent things and so, within this context, we have natural laws which exist apart from
ourselves, natural laws which exist as the “laws of nature.” However, because, as human beings, we
are all made in God's image and not directly in the image of God's laws, all these laws potentially exist
within ourselves, within the depths of our understanding and knowledge as human beings.
As Philo would put it, the divine Logos exists within ourselves as a species of copy (an invisible copy).
An implicit knowledge of all that God knows already exists within ourselves as human beings and so,
as we move toward an explicit knowledge of these laws which God knows, we can begin to act and live
in a better way: in a way which is more reasonable and rational. It accords with how our divine Creator
would want us to live and be. To help us along however as human beings, for the sake of the
knowledge and the understanding that God would want to promote in us as human beings, the Torah, as
written law, is conceived in a way which refers to how it exists as a visible “copy.” As a species of
sign post, it points us toward the being of all the unwritten laws which already exist for us and which
have come to us from God in an order which moves or which descends into a form of greater
concreteness, a species of incarnation which is given to us when invisible laws are presented to us in a
manner which points to the being of tangible, visible laws and a point of origin which would have to
refer to the depth of God's benevolence. The willing of God or the love of God exists as a greater,
more powerful thing, as an effect or, more properly, as the glow or the refulgence of the depth of God's
divine understanding and knowledge (given no real distinction which can exist between God's knowing
and God's willing), and so, as we have noted, an understanding of this written law points to a better
understanding that we can have of the unwritten kind of law which exists as natural law (the “laws of
nature”) although, as we have been noting and suggesting (to some extent), a thorough understanding
of natural law as the invisible, unwritten law of God which exists as an ordering principle within the
givens of nature should promote and lead us toward an understanding which can know about the order
and the kind of wisdom and the goodness which belongs to the teachings of the Mosaic law. The
uprightness of moral and religious life that the Law promotes in us (as human beings) encourages a
change or a growth in our possible understanding which can in turn point to the good which exists in
our having an understanding and a knowledge of all naturally existing laws. Our theoretical knowledge
of things assists our moral and religious knowledge of things in a reciprocal relation which points to the
significance of Philo's achievement in his understanding of the relations which exist among many
things (Philo as the father and the originator of a point of view which attends to a mysterious inner
unity which is believed to exist between the things of faith and the things of reason: a unity which we
881Philo, On the Creation of the World, 1, 3, 7, as cited by Jones, p. 350. See also Philo, On
the Creation, 1, 2-3, Works of Philo, trans. Yonge, p. 3.
882Jones, “Philo Judaeus and Hugo Grotius's Modern Natural Law,” pp. 349-353, citing Philo,
On the Creation of the World. See also http://herzlinstitute.org/en/wpcontent/uploads/sites/2/2013/09/Jones-Grotius-paper.pdf (accessed December 3, 2016).
237
do not fully understand and comprehend within the context of our current lives living within conditions
that are determined by space and time although, within this same unity, a point of departure is given to
us for a comprehensive understanding of things that would want to link the world of our ordinary
experience with a transcendent world of existing things). From within the depths of our ordinary
world, changes can be made within it and about it and the net result is the bringing of our world into an
orbit of thought and action which proceeds from the being of transcendent realities. From Philo, the
Jew, comes an understanding of things and a profession which alleges and claims that, between faith
and reason, an inner link exists.
To understand then, in an approximate manner, the structure or the form of Philo's analysis (despite
textual evidence to the effect that some ambiguities exist where, sometimes, Philo speaks about God as
Nature and, conversely, Nature as God):883 because orderly processes exist within the being of physical
and biological nature (orderly processes which point to a hidden but an active power of growth which
somehow exists within the being of things, moving all things within nature from a condition of potency
toward a condition of actuality), from a knowledge of principles and terms which comes to us
principally from the teaching and the analysis of Aristotle,884 we can determine that the natural laws
which exist within the order of this larger nature are such that they can indicate how we should behave
in the context of our human living since, as human beings, we all have a physical and biological nature
which belongs or which participates in the being of physical and biological laws. Despite any
distinction that can be made between the being of physical or biological laws and the being of our
human moral laws (Philo knows about these differences; he does speak about these differences), 885 at
the same time however, in Philo, natural laws (immutable universal natural laws), as they exist within
the being of God's laws or as they exist as specifications of God's laws – these same natural laws (all
coming from God) encompass the sum and content of our physical and biological laws and also the
sum and content of our human moral laws. The order of the universe points to the being of all these
different, varying laws and to the order or the ordination which exists among all these laws, and also to
the fact that their ultimate and primary source is the providence and the government of a transcendent
being, a supremely wise, intelligent transcendent being (the immutable decrees of a benevolent God)
where, as a consequence of all this for us, if we are to live as we should by “following nature” or
“according to nature” (referring to both these kinds of laws: moral laws and physical, biological laws),
it is by this means that we can live in a manner which grounds the goodness or the integrity of our
human moral activity. The conduct or the history of our human morality receives a reasonable and
rational basis in a manner which recalls the earlier teaching of Plato and his diagnostic insight to the
effect that, if, in our human society, moral relativity, ambiguity, and confusion is to be avoided in the
conduct of our human affairs, then the best remedy is a form of analysis which looks for some kind of
metaphysical foundation that would apply to the living that we can have as human moral agents, living
moral lives in a way that is really and truly good and noble.886
Hence, if, according to Philo, disorder, wherever it exists in the world, is always something which is
“contrary to nature,”887 then order, wherever it exists within the world, is always something which is
883Koester, ”Concept of Natural Law,” Religions in Antiquity, pp. 531-532.
884http://peitho.amu.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/3_COUPRIE_KOCANDRLE1.pdf
(accessed December 1, 2016); Koester, ”Concept of Natural Law,” Religions in Antiquity, p. 532.
885Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 23.
886Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 15.
887Philo, Aet. 32, as cited by Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 23.
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“by nature” or it is “according to nature.” Hence, as a hedge against the possibilities of disorder and a
kind of breakdown which can occur in our manner of human living, our human point of departure in
thinking and understanding should always be the essential natures of things which exist within the
greater world of existing things in nature (an understanding which knows about the being of these
essential natures which refer to things which we have not brought into being through the agency of our
personal efforts). From the being of these higher transcendent things (as our foundation), in a
knowledge that joins the truths of our philosophical understanding and knowledge with the truths of
our theological understanding and knowledge (back and forth), we can then engage in moral inquiries
of one kind or another which should then move us toward the being of specific, concrete actions and
policies that would be truly good for us in effecting our well being as individual persons and also in
effecting the well being of other persons within the larger context of our human society. Citing some
of own Philo's words which suggest or which point to the contours of his general perspective: “...he
who would observe the...laws of Moses...will accept gladly the duty of following nature and live in
accordance with the ordering of the universe.” 888 A kind of seamless web exists among all the laws of
God as they exist within both nature and scripture. The transcendence which exists with respect to the
being of all naturally existing laws is reflected in the transcendence or in the order of our human
cognition: in how we exist and know as human beings since, as Philo notes in the context of his
analysis, our acts of sense perception exist in a way which suggests that they exist as the handmaidens
of our human reason, serving and assisting the functioning of our human reason and doing this in a
manner which is itself right and normative: allegedly “according to the laws of nature” or “by the laws
of nature.”889
In a change of teaching or a change of perspective which comes to us from Philo, instead of an
antithesis which had once existed between nature on the one hand and law on the other hand (physis
versus nomos) as this had come down to us from an older generation of Sophist Greek philosophers
(dating from the 5th Century BC), a new more appropriate antithesis now merits our attention and
acceptance because of a more critical distinction which juxtaposes the intelligibility of all naturally
existing laws with the being of all humanly existing laws (an antithesis which has become normative
and traditional for us within the subsequent history of philosophy and theology in the Occident).
Physis or nature exists in its own way essentially as a source of proscriptive and prescriptive laws (as
laws which are truly normative for us as human beings as we try to live and as we begin to exist in our
own way as our makers and legislators, living and functioning as moral agents, working to create a
human order of things which surpasses the more primitive kind of order which exists within the givens
of nature through a work of specification and differentiation that passes from something which exists in
a general or universal way toward something which exists in a particular, concrete fashion.
To give some examples of the kind of transition which is given to us if we compare the prohibitions
and prescriptions of moral human law with a basis or a grounding which can be derived from the
proscriptions and prescriptions of natural laws, in Philo, derivations of this kind can be found to exist in
888Philo, Life of Moses, 2, 48, as quoted by Koester, ”Concept of Natural Law,” Religions in
Antiquity, p. 533. See also Philo, On the life of Moses, II, VIII, 48, Works of Philo, trans. Yonge, p.
495.
889Philo, Life of Moses, 2, 81, as cited and quoted by Koester, ”Concept of Natural Law,”
Religions in Antiquity, p. 537. See also Philo, On the life of Moses, II, XVI, 81, Works of Philo, trans.
Yonge, p. 498.
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three sets.890 First, and primarily in matters that have to do with sex, biblical injunctions about the good
of procreation can be justified in terms which refer to the necessity of procreation if the life of a given
species is to continue to exist. Infanticide is to be avoided at all costs since its doing requires actions
which deny the good of nature: the good of things in terms of how they have arisen within nature in a
way which points to the kind of building or the construction which exists within the unfolding of
nature. It is a good thing that things simply exist in the way that they are initially given to us within the
order of nature and it is another good which notes that the existence of a given thing within nature
creates conditions that could lead to the emergence of other good things that can also exist within the
being of nature. The murder of other human beings is to be avoided in general for essentially the same
set of reasons. The being and the existence of things is itself a good which is to be appreciated and
respected. If any improvements are to made with respect to the quality of life which exists with respect
to the being of things, the means chosen should not violate the kind of good which already exists.
Second, within the field and the work of animal husbandry, according to a law of physical biological
nature, only similar animals (belonging to the same species) can be united to each other in a way which
can lead to the propagation of a given species.891 Hence, in the breeding of animals, we should not
attempt to try to mate living things with each other if these living beings belong to distinct species. 892 If
we were to try to draw any conclusions that could refer to how we are to live with each other as human
beings, it would also follow from this that conjugal relations can only properly exist among ourselves
as human beings. Conjugal relations cannot exist between ourselves and other kinds of living things.
Third, with respect to the question of slavery, the morality of slavery, the enslavement of other human
beings is an evil which is to be avoided since, according to a law that exists within nature, as a living
being, each human person equals the goodness and the being of other human beings. Each is the same
as the other qua being and living. No given person is born with the nature of a slave.
As a general principle thus, in making our practical moral human decisions, we would not be acting
wisely or in an entirely human way (according to the nature which properly belongs to us as human
beings) if we were not to attend to the order or the nature which we already find within ourselves as
living beings and which already exists for us within the world that we happen to live in (an order which
exists essentially as a single order of differing parts because, ultimately, its source is the provident
government of God who exists as both the Creator of all things and as the Redeemer of all things:
working from the good that is already given in the being of existing things and then adding goods in a
manner which transcends the capabilities of what nature is able to do and provide).
Plotinus
Plotinus (205-270 AD), a late Platonist, served also as a transition figure because his work brought the
history of Greek philosophy to an end and, at the same time, it served to help St. Augustine in the
development of a philosophy that is allegedly Christian. As one of the great philosophers who lived in
a context and day that was defined by a revival of interest in Plato, Plotinus lived at a time (in the 3rd
Century AD) which witnessed a climax of interest which turned into the being of a school of thought
that was known as Neoplatonism. He is important for the great influence he exerted on later thinkers,
especially on Christian thinkers.
890Koester, ”Concept of Natural Law,” Religions in Antiquity, pp. 538-540.
891Philo, Special Laws, 4, 204, as cited by Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 23.
892Philo, Special Laws, IV, XXXIX, 204, Works of Philo, trans. Yonge, p. 636.
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Plotinus lived in the one of the most chaotic periods in the history of the Roman Empire, his experience
of this confusion being a major factor that influenced the direction of his thought. The disappointing
character of worldly life caused many persons to withdraw from the world. The first chapter of the
Enneads mentions that Plotinus was ashamed of his body to the point that he would never speak of
things concerning the body. Since he despised his body, he died of a painful illness since he did not
take proper care of his body. He spent 11 years of study in Alexandria where he came deeply under the
influence of the Platonic philosopher, Ammonius Sakkas, who is said to have been a former Christian.
In a kind of revelation that came to Plotinus, he became convinced that philosophy had to change the
whole life of a man since to become a philosopher means that we have to change our lives:
philosophers cannot be people who are content with accepting certain doctrines or who only just accept
doctrines (as Aristotelians seem to do as they write their commentaries). In contrast, for Plotinus,
philosophy exists as a conversion in a manner which recalls the kind of call to conversion that we can
find in Plato's earlier philosophy.
On leaving Alexandria, Plotinus joined the Emperor Gordian’s military expedition to the east in order
to study eastern religion and philosophy. Although this expedition soon returned to Rome, the few
months in Asia made Plotinus wonder if the Greeks have had the last word in terms of thought and
understanding. Are there not some original sources of thought in the East? Since Plotinus thus came to
believe that philosophy and philosophers need a spiritual life of some kind, he tried or he sought for
some kind of ecstatic union with God. He became the first mystic in the history of Greek philosophy
and, in Rome, he had many devoted disciples. Many people were longing for some kind of authentic
spiritual life. Plotinus became a sort of pagan philosopher saint.
One of his students, Porphyry, wrote a biography of Plotinus and he published an edition of notes that
were gathered from Plotinus’s lectures, given in the last 15 years of his life in Rome. Entitled the
Enneads, this work consisted of 6 groups of 9 treatises that dealt with a number of different subjects
and problems. Since they do not exist as systematic treatises and since they were not ordered by
Plotinus, they are difficult to follow although, at the same time too, it is to be admitted that some of
Plotinus's thought is inconsistent. The best English translation of the Enneads is by Stephen McKenna.
Concerning Plotinus's thought, he inherited the Platonic tradition in a way which turned him into a
guiding force: the primary guiding force in the West in terms of constructing a bridge between Greek
and Christian thought. Plotinus became the father of a form of speculative mysticism through an
accentuation of Platonism which advocated the value of flight into the being of another world.
Although for Plato the world tended to lack status, yet, it is incumbent on us as human beings to try to
return to the cave after our first seeing the light in an approach which differs from Plotinus’s attitude
which sees no need for any kind of return to earthly things since, for him, as soon as we can get outside
of our bodies, the better for us. Plotinus so spoke about the possibilities of union with that which exists
as the absolute that it caused many early Christians to turn to him for useful tools that were needed for
the purpose of finding a more adequate form of Christian intellectual expression. Many saw in him an
explanation of those things which Christ had spoken about in a more simple way. He was the first
philosopher that Christians turned to.
The main points of his philosophy consist of the following. First, in his treatise on man, man is defined
as a soul purely and simply (as is noted in the purely Platonist tradition of philosophy). Aristotle aside,
one’s personality is to be defined in terms of one’s soul in a notion that exerted great influence on later
Christian mysticism. Second, as in Plato, virtue is knowledge where wrongdoing is the result of mere
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ignorance and not rebellion. Hence, there is no need for salvation and repentance since one does not
sin by rebelling. Since such a view cannot be reconciled with the Bible’s message, some Christians
later perceived that some distance exists between themselves and Plotinus. Third, unlike Plato and
Aristotle, man is not seen to exist as a political animal: Plotinus ignored Plato’s social and political
thought in trying to make philosophy itself a religion. Society has no place in the pursuit of our human
happiness since the wise man is someone who is alone and isolated, cut off from most persons. You
have to save yourself since human solidarity is something which does not exist. Hence, for Plotinus,
salvation is never achieved from something which exists in the outside since a man can save himself by
being conscious of what he is already. Not Christ nor anybody else is necessary since salvation is the
awareness of who or what you are as a human being. Fourth, the Supreme Being is the One, the most
simple reality that is always distinct from being or who is at the other side of being. The One’s
transcendence is such that we cannot imagine it. In contrast with the Jewish Christian view of God as
"I am," the One is so full of being that we cannot call it being. Because it is so full of being, it
emanates to the point that all of us exist as emanations of being, the character of something’s being
being measured by a thing’s distance from being. In emanating, the One does not create since to
perform acts of creation is to make distinctions that would sully the simplicity and the
unchangeableness of the One. In this emanation, God is reflected onto lower planes through reflections
that represent differing kinds of imitation with respect to the being of God’s perfection, these
reflections and imitations descending into degrees of fragmentation. The result is a non-dualist type of
metaphysics that borders on pantheism which believes, with many Stoic philosophers, that reality and
God are one.
Plotinus proposed a conception of Holy Trinity which structures the world that is based on Plato’s
notion of the Ideas. First, the One exists as an abstract godliness that emanates power as the sun
emanates light. As the Absolute or as God for Plotinus, nothing can be truly known about it in any
rational sense, no characteristics that would be correct in any strict sense. 893 Since no distinctions exist
within it, nothing can be thought or said about it. A person can only know the One by uniting himself
with it in moments of rapture although, in the long run, this union only occurs in death. Second, the
Nous or Spirit looks up to the One of which it is an image and then down to all other things. Third, the
Soul, the human soul (existing as "a spark from the fire") looks upwards to contemplate the Nous and,
through it, the idea of God and then he looks down toward the body. This soul is illuminated by the
light which comes from the One. Below the Soul is the world of matter and nature which, as material,
are farthest from the One and so, in this context, we refer to the most formless, shapeless, and imperfect
of things. Material things exist almost as not-being. Hence, while the human body is far from being,
the human soul is closer to being. Darkness is symbolized by matter as the counterpoint to the divine
light which is emanated by the One and, in a sense, this darkness does not exist since it is the absence
of any light. It is not. Matter is the darkness that has no real existence although the forms in nature
possess a faint glow of the One. Saving oneself or saving ourselves means becoming aware of what we
already are as fragments of the supreme reality of the One where we exist as a sort of elastic that is
connected with the One which, by pulling us, allows us to go back to the source of our being.
In comparison with Plato’s position, according to Plato, we should remember or know what we have
previously seen in the world of Ideas while, for Plotinus, we must have a memory of the present
through a realization which knows who or what one is since we are always connected to the world of
Being. Like Plato, Plotinus and others like him believed that absolute truth and certainty cannot be
893Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 106.
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found in this world. But, where Plato taught a purely rational method for transcending the flux of the
world and so achieving truth and certainty, Plotinus preached that such a vision can only be achieved in
an extra-rational manner, through a kind of ecstatic union that we enjoy with the One. Salvation does
not involve history since salvation exists as a hidden actuality: we are, in fact saved but we are not
aware of this salvation, self-salvation occurring by our doing two things: (1) we lead a strict life since,
through the practice of ascetical discipline, we can avoid distractions (this prepares us for a form of
possible ultimate union with the One); and (2) we engage in forms of psychological concentration and
meditation which, if done with effort, will lead us toward union with God. A strong mystical element
exists in Plotinus where, in the 6th treatise, he notes that when you realize what and who you are, you
do not need any savior which accordingly rejects and contrasts with Christian views since, according to
St. Augustine, we cannot save ourselves. We need grace, the grace that comes to us from Christ.
Although Plotinus was very individualistic and intellectual, he attracted many early Christians although
many came later to see the distance which exists between Plotinian neo-Platonism and the teachings
and theology of Christianity.
With respect to the question of natural law and how natural law was understood and conceived in the
context of Plotinus's philosophy, in a sharp break with Stoic assumptions which had identified nature
with God (hence: natural law with divine law), from a viewpoint which emphasizes the reality of God's
transcendence (a là Philo of Alexandria but, perhaps, arguably to an even greater degree) - God's
absolute transcendence - a real distinction exists between God and nature and hence, between God's
own laws in how God understands and knows himself (cited and referred to as “divine law”) and laws
which exist in an immaterial manner within the space and time of things which belong to the world of
physical, biological nature.894 Real distinctions distinguish three different kinds of law from each other
and thus, three different kinds of being: (1) divine law which exists as the “will of the gods”; (2) natural
law which exists as “natural necessity” given the kind of determinism which exists within the being and
movements of physical and biological nature; and (3) conventional human law which adds to the being
of divine and natural laws (existing as a supplement: possibly as an application or as an improvement
or species of cultivation, a development) since, on the basis of divine and natural laws or from the point
of departure which exists in the being of divine and natural laws, human laws can emerge from the
agency of our human subjectivity: directives on how we should do certain things, performing this or
that action. These laws are constructed as needed and they can be changed or amended as
circumstances permit or suggest.
These three kinds of laws, in referring to three different kinds of reality, at the same time however refer
to the being of three different kinds of causes that work together to effect changes. Each in its own
way partially accounts for the being of things which exist within our world. Everything ultimately
descends from divine laws through the mediation of natural laws (the “laws of nature”) and, yet,
through the kind of mediation which exists through the being and the legislation of man-made
conventional laws, we can begin to move towards the being of natural laws and then, from there, the
being of divine laws. Because of the real distinctions which exist among these different kinds of law,
the nature or the intelligibility which belongs to each species of law can emerge more clearly within the
systemization of our understanding as, for us, a greater clarity in our understanding emerges when real
distinctions are posited and known (perhaps for the first time). This is not that. The introduction of a
larger number of real distinctions, in turn, elicits or it points to a greater intellectual challenge which
exists if we are to try and find a way of thinking and speaking that can coordinate all these laws
894Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, p. 25.
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together in a way which recognizes the autonomy and the contribution of each law and, yet, at the same
time, also indicate how an ordering exists among all these laws, revealing where dependences exist and
where absences of dependency are also to be noticed.
To conclude then, in terms of the kind of bridge that exists between the teachings of Hellenism and
Christianity, the two lines of thought as this is represented by Plotinus and by St. Augustine (the first
big name in the history of Christian thought) come together if we attend to the kind of philosophy
which St. Augustine uses in the context of his theology. At the age of 19, St. Augustine (354-430) read
a book by Cicero, the Hortensius ("On Wisdom"), which caused him to discover that the only thing that
is worth doing in life is to search for the truth of things. At the age of 33, he became a Christian. In the
7th book of the Confessions, he speaks about reading Plotinus in a Latin translation since Augustine
knew no Greek (which he had not wanted to learn) and so, by reading Plotinus, he came to believe that
ultimate reality is something which exists in a spiritual way although, for Augustine, God is someone
who was above the One of Plotinus. In the context of his scriptural commentaries, Augustine went on
to compare John’s Gospel with the Logos where he noted that, although Plotinus speaks about the
reality of self-sufficiency, John’s gospel speaks about Christ as a physician that we need since we
cannot save ourselves. Hence, Plotinus was wrong to believe in his self-sufficiency and that this selfsufficiency is a real thing for human beings. When regretting the ways of his past life, Augustine
noticed and adverted to the difference that exists between the neoplatonism of Plotinus's thought and
the beliefs and teaching of Christian thought because of the emphasis that is given to the exterior help
of Christ and the necessity of this help. While Plotinus helped Augustine to discover the being of
spiritual reality and to express the gospel in a philosophical way, he also helped Augustine to see the
differences which existed between Christian and Greek thought. Ultimately, hat separated Plotinus
from the Christians was the Christian doctrine of grace: the concept, teaching, and belief about a God
who approaches man, this teaching accordingly becoming the most important difference that
distinguished the thought of Hellenism from the teaching and beliefs of Christianity (Christ's entry into
our world through his Incarnation in a manner which lead to his Resurrection being, for thinking
Greeks, a major difficulty for them when, possibly for the first, through the teachings of St. Paul of
Tarsus, they began to encounter the elements and parts of Christian belief).
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Appendix I
Hecataeus
Similarly, for Hecataeus, the stories of the Greeks were many and foolish. Man’s
knowledge is not the gift of the gods; stories of the past are to be judged by everyday
experience; one advances in knowledge by inquiry and search, and the search is not just
accidental, as it was in Odysseus, but deliberate and planned.895
Hecataeus of Miletus (c.560-c.480), from the perspective of a naturalistic, rationalist method of
interpretation, viewed the traditional Greek stories as multiple and foolish. He was a younger
contemporary of Pherecydes who has been cited, along with Anaximenes, as having once been a pupil
of Anaximander,896
As a geographer and logographer (literally, a reason writer or prose writer) and as an early writer of
historical prose who attempted to reconcile the stories of mythology with a factual study of history, he
sought to give accurate accounts of persons, places, and events in books that were written in an elegant
and vigorous but sparse style of prose.897 An avid traveler who visited parts of the Persian Empire in
Asia and Egypt, to a large extent he drew on his experience of foreign regions to map the lands which
encompassed the then known world. Since the Greek word historia (from which derives our word
"history") originally meant "physical research" or "inquiry," this allusion may explain why the early
historians (up to and including Herodotus) included pieces of geographical and ethnographical
information in the historical accounts which they wrote.898
To explain his map, Hecataeus penned a guide (of two books) with a title which reveals the probable
source of much of his information: Periegesis Ges which, as applied to Hecataeus's map, literally
means "journey around the world." Descriptions of different peoples, names of places, historical
895Lonergan, Method in Theology, p. 91.
896Lesky, History of Greek Literature, p. 220. According to Paul K. Conkin and Roland N.
Stomberg in The Heritage and Challenge of History, p. 10, despite a tradition which views Herodotus
as the first Greek historian, his precursor was Hecataeus who, in turn, had been preceded and
influenced by the earlier work of Xenophanes. The "Father of History" is unknown despite the
ascription of this title to Herodotus. In the De legg. I, 5, Cicero cites Herodotus (c.484-c.420) as pater
historiae.
897M. Grant, p. 188.
898Erich Kahler, The Meaning of History (New York: George Braziller, 1964), p. 35. In their
Hellenic History, p. 207, George Willis Botsford and Charles Alexander Robinson note that "so far as
we know, Herodotus was the first to apply the word History, in its original sense of inquiry" to the new
field of historical prose. In his popular but scholarly work The Life of Greece, p. 140, Will Durant
supplies an etymology for historia: the term derives from histor or istor meaning knowing. The term
refers to any inquiry in any field and so inquiries or historia can be made in science, philosophy, or in
the realm of current and past events. In the Ionia of Hecataeus's day, the word possessed a skeptical
connotation by implying that a secular reading of historical events and rationalistic explanations
operating on the principle of cause and effect were to account for the miracle stories told of the gods
and heroes. The etymology offered by the Oxford English Dictionary speaks of a "learning or knowing
by inquiry."
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events, religious practices, native animals, and indigenous plants inform a reader on what one could
expect to find if one were to visit a distant place.899
In the Genealogies (a mythographic work of four books that have been alternately cited as the
Heroologia, Historiai, Inquiries, or Histories), Hecataeus critically examines a number of legends and
the claims of some families that their ancestry descends from some god or hero. 900 Respecting the
stories of the Homeric and Hesiodic tradition, the book's opening lines reveal the author's skeptical
attitude and, at the same time, assures readers that he will provide a more accurate account of the
material which his book discusses (material which other accounts have not well explained):
Hecataeus the Milesian tells this tale. I write what I believe to be the truth, for the
Greeks have many logoi [stories which describe while also explaining] which, it seems
to me, are absurd.901
Citing a few examples of the explanations which Hecataeus offers:902
1. the Cerberus of Hesiod's Theogony (the dog of many heads guarding Hades's entrance who,
with Hades's permission, Heracles drags out of the lower world but who then returns him to Hades after
he has shown him to Eurystheus) denotes the name of a poisonous snake which lived in Taenarum
(where, as tradition has it, there exists the cave through which Heracles dragged Cerberus up out of
Hades)
2. Heracles drove Geryon's cattle to Mycenae from the country round about Ambracia on the
Greek mainland where Geryon ruled as king instead of from Erytheia (an island located in the far west
near the Iberian peninsula)
3. instead of fifty sons, Aegyptus had less than twenty
Hecataeus enhances the credibility of some of the old legends by making them less fantastic. By little
emendations or associations, he draws upon the scientific knowledge of the day for pieces of
information which can explain why a story has a certain detail, or which can change a detail in some
little way to make it more plausible although the immediate effect on meaning is its gradual neutralization. A story ceases to be what it once was for its listeners and readers. Its meaning changes in a
shift which places a story into a new category as it gradually assumes a new status and a new function.
Readers now read a text for meanings which earlier readers had not sought for or asked about. In this
context, a reading that attempts to apprehend a traditional meaning would require, of users, a measure
of faith that would tend toward a credulity that one exist in one's belief.
Hecataeus initiated a new method of interpretation by introducing a form of rationalistic criticism
899According to Copleston, History of Philosophy Volume 1, p. 40, it is not really known if,
when drawing up his map, Hecataeus employed an earlier map which Anaximander had constructed for
the probable benefit of Milesian sailors traveling on the Black Sea.
900Lionel Pearson, Early Ionian Historians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), p. 28.
According to M. Grant, p. 188, a horology is a work about heroes or demigods.
901Demetrius On Style 12
902Lesky, History of Greek Literature, p. 221.
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which others took up and implemented in the work which they did although, it should be noted, that his
work was criticized by some of his contemporaries as incomplete. For example, as Heraclitus notes:
Much learning does not teach one to have intelligence; for it would have taught Hesiod
and Pythagoras, and again, Xenophanes and Hecataeus.903
However, for Hecataeus, man’s knowledge is not a gift from the gods.904 Stories of the past are to be
judged by everyday experience. One advances in knowledge by inquiry and search, and the search is
not just accidental, as it was in Odysseus, but it is deliberate and planned. In Herodotus, among the
physicians, and among the physicists, this empirical interest lived on. And so we have Greek logic,
Greek psychology, Greek cognitional theory, and Greek moral theory. Over a period of centuries, there
occurred a process or a shift: from what the French call the vécu toward the thématique, from what the
Scholastics call the exercite toward the signate, from what the Germans call the existentiell toward the
existential, from what we would call experience and consciousness toward knowledge in the fully
objective sense of the word.
In these matters then, knowing occurs always by way of an identity between a knower and an object
that is known.905 The intelligible in act is the intelligence in act. Intelligibile in actu est intellectus in
actu.906
903Heraclitus of Ephesus 40 quoted by Freeman.
904Lonergan, Method in Theology, p. 91.
905If a real distinction accordingly exists between that which is known by our senses and that
which is known by our acts of understanding and if a real distinction also exists between that which
belongs to our bodies and that which belongs to our souls, then we can say that a connatural relation
exists between the acts and the data of our senses and that another, different connatural relation also
exists between the acts of our understanding and what is understood in and through the acts of our
understanding. As a principle which we can find in one of Socrates's arguments that talk about the
immortality of the human soul: “the soul is more akin to the invisible (the forms), and the body is more
akin to the visible (the particulars).” Cf. Murray, “Classical Question of Immortality in Light of
Lonergan's Explicit Metaphysics,” Lonergan Workshop 25, p. 271. Hence, from the stability and
immortality of forms, we can speak about the stability and the immortality of the rational human soul.
What the human soul knows as its proper object suggests that the human soul participates in the same
kind of reality which commonly belongs to all species of intelligible forms (all intelligible forms versus
every kind of sensible form). Form and soul participate in a common reality. In a way, we can say that
form and soul belong to each other.
Into the Middle Ages, Aquinas perpetuated this tradition as regards the principle of identity in
human cognition although in a form that differs from how Hegel, in the 19th Century, spoke about a
proper identity which naturally and rationally exists between a knower and what is known by a knower.
See Mark D. Morelli, “Going beyond Idealism: Lonergan's Relation to Hegel,” Lonergan Workshop 20
(2008): 322-326, 328. A prominent exponent of this same tradition in the 20th Century is Joseph
Maréchal (a Belgian Jesuit who is regarded as the father of Transcendental Thomism).
906Lonergan, Verbum, pp. 137-138. As Lonergan explains both Aristotle and Aquinas about
they meant in claiming that the intelligible in act is the intelligence in act and that the sensible in act is
sense in act, he notes that, prior to any acts of understanding or prior to any acts of sensing which can
exist in the life of a human subject, a real distinction obtains between what can be understood or what
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they meant in claiming that the intelligible in act is the intelligence in act and that the sensible in act is
sense in act, he notes that, prior to any acts of understanding or prior to any acts of sensing which can
exist in the life of a human subject, a real distinction obtains between what can be understood or what
can be sensed and any acts of understanding or intelligence which can understand or any acts of
sensing which can sense and exist in the life of a given subject. However, if an act of understanding is
being enjoyed by a given subject, or if an act of sense is operative in a sensing subject, an identity
exists between what is understood and a given act of understanding or, with respect to acts of sense, an
identity exists between what is being sensed and a given act of sense. If, for instance, a bell is ringing
and if its sound is being heard in an act of sense, we can say that “the hearing in act and the sounding in
act are one and the same.” Similarly thus, if, through the mediation of an apt image (which exists as an
“illuminated phantasm,” an immaterial meaning or form is being communicated to a potential knower
and if, through the reception of an act of understanding, this immaterial form or significance is being
known for what it is as an immaterial principle, an identity will exist between an act of understanding,
on the one hand, and an intelligible content which is being understood on the other.