It is very difficult to summarize a book of dense summaries. Hopefully this post is not too abbreviated to be helpful.
Preface: As it is at the very least unhistorical to jump from Greece to the Renaissance, Carre sets out to examine the investigations of 4 medieval thinkers on the status of general ideas, or universals. It is in this central debate of the medieval era that one finds the roots of modern ideas about reason and knowledge.
I. St. Augustine: 1) During a brief biography, Carre apologizes for Augustine's "lack of rigor" due to the fact that he belonged to an "intellectual period in decay." (?) In any event, Aug. is said to be unique in arguing that, even after one has faith, one must toil for understanding, which, if sought correctly, is a kind of eternal wisdom and not a temporal knowledge. It is through Aug. that Greek philosophy is united with Catholic theology.
2) Augustine understood the pursuit of wisdom as a path of ascent from the changeable to the unchangeable. Although he posits different conceptions of the stages of ascent in different texts, in all he is concerned with showing the progressive stability and goodness of each stage. We ultimately arrive at an absolute, timeless reality, provided we are not distracted by the world of impermanence.
3) To combat Pyrrhonic skepticism, Augustine grounded knowledge in two arguments: 1) Si fallor sum: even when we doubt, we are aware of ourselves as existing in a state of doubt. The mind knows itself immediately as incorporeal, outside of space and time; it knows itself indirectly through the senses. (We should remember from the Confessions that knowledge for Aug. is anamnesis, i.e. an uncovering of what is already there). 2) Even skepticism assumes the principle of non-contradiction, which we can take as evidence of the moral law within. Unlike the Greeks, Aug. is concerned with the law within and not so much the outside world. But it is crucial that the inside is not just a "subjective" realm; it is the truth, more so than knowledge gained from the senses. There is Scientia (empirical knowledge) and there is Sapentia (eternal wisdom, intelligibiles res); only the latter is necessary, immutable and real.
4) The (active) mind is a wholly different substance from the (passive) body. Though we immediately think of Descartes, Carre asks us to remember that Aug.'s view comes directly from the Neoplatonic view of the mind as vehicle of spiritual order, though the results are somewhat similar.
The question arises, if the body is completely passive, how do we sense? Aug. argues that when the body's movement is impeded, the mind feels unpleasantness, and vice versa. The total effect of the various ways in which the impingements upon the body appear to the mind is called sensation.
Another question: if sensations are made by the mind, how do we know they correspond to reality? Aug. doesn't worry about this dilemma, and says, rather interestingly, that "the question of objectivity does not arise in relation to sensibilia" (15). Only judgments, not sensations, can be true or false (a vaguely Heideggerian move...the world is there for us in a way such that it can't really be questioned).
Next, Aug. posits non-sensory perceptions that result from an interior sense more primary than the 5 senses. He gets very close to Kant when he talks about spatiality being implied in perception.
And finally, whence general ideas? They are not derived from particulars. The whole notion of Aristotelian abstraction is foreign to him, as it is not the body and physical world that act upon the mind, but the mind that acts upon the body and the world. General ideas are independent of sensible origin, come from above and are real. In scientia, we apply our reason, itself "in contact with the intelligible and immutable truth," to "handle and direct the inferior things" (18).
5) Although Aug. is often taken to disparage all questions of science, he maintains a limited respect for investigations into the natural order in so far as it is understood to be an external reflection of the immutable truth. Investigation for its own sake is nothing but vain curiosity.
One of Aug.'s more interesting ideas about nature is that of rationes seminales, seminal reasons. This concept is born from the contradiction in Genesis between "God created everything at once" and the clear temporal progression that is later described. Aug. says that God created everything at once in potentia, and that each creature evolves according to the "germs of life" appropriated to it. We cannot create anything new. At most, we can facilitate the development of new creation for which God is alone responsible.
6) Unmistakably, the intellectual cognition of eternal things is to be preferred to scientia. Augustine points to mathematics to evidence the existence of immutable forms. Though number is absolutely distinct from its empirical instantiation, mathematical propositions are formal characteristics of the perceived world. Ideas are not just intelligible systems standing over and against empirical reality but are necessary to properly understand it. Moreover, because our minds are feeble, the mutable in its imperfection aids us in our pursuit of the immutable. In art, for instance, we contemplate the natural world in its unchangeable aspect (number).
But perhaps it seems that moral wisdom and mathematics are different things. No, says Aug., for the existence of form, of truth and of beauty as formal characteristics of the world evidence a supreme form and an absolute knowledge.
Aug. often talks about the "light" by which the mind is illuminated. In some of his texts, the light is truth, beauty and goodness. The mind is understood here in its active sense. In others, the light is God, and the mind is passive. Together, the light metaphors teach that "the principles which guide experience are realities which the mind is led to accept" and at the same time "that the meaning of these realities is not finally to be appreciated by purely intellectual approach" (29).
7) For our purposes, Aug.'s key idea is that universal forms constitute the nature of things. Oh, and Aug. was very influential.
II. Peter Abaelard: 1) From Plato the idea was inherited that the criteria of the real include permanence, objectivity and coherence. The unities which underlie the world (logical principles and standards of perfection) are alone real. Carre explains the prevalence of realism in three ways: a) Since Augustine, realism had become associated with philosophy itself. b) Platonism fit very well with Christian doctrine. c) The dominance of social institutions over individuals fits with realism.
Then came Boethius, who introduced the world to Aristotle and wrote an important commentary on a Porphyry text that was itself a commentary on the Categories. Here the question of the status of universals was raised. For Aristotle, we find the truth by finding a thing's essence, what distinguished it as itself. This universal essence can only be defined in one way.
2) Boethius, explaining Aristotle, argued that universals a) are real features of sensible objects, b) are immaterial, having no existence apart from sensible things, and c) do not exist independently of bodies. His commentary raised no controversy for four centuries, until Roscelin of Compiegne (1050-1125) propounded a full-fledged nominalism: general ideas are merely names, and common nature is wholly subjective. Anselm responded that if one could not grasp the way in which many individual men were united in the real species man, one could not understand the trinity.
3) Brief biograhy of Abaelard, born in 1079. He changed careers many times, first dialectics, then theology, then a mix of both. He was always known for his ruthless methods of criticism. In a much anticipated debate with Bernard of Clairvaux, Abaelard was condemned to silence by the Pope. He died without having ever reached Rome to protest this decision.
4) Abaelard describes realism as the doctrine that says only universals are real, and that mere accidents differentiate species into particulars. Universals subsist naturally, but exist actually in physical expression. This real subsistence can only be apprehended by pure thought.
His criticism of extreme realism runs as follows: as particulars only differ with regard to their accidents, being one in substance, there is no real distinction between individuals; clear thinking becomes impossible. He charges realists with pantheism, as there cannot be for them an essential difference between divine and physical substance.
He then turns to less extreme versions, like William of Champeux's doctrine of indifference, which accepts a pluralist basis of knowledge: things that are distinct are the same not essentially but indifferently, in so far as they are not different. Abaelard says this theory tries to combine distinct and relative senses of the terms universal and particular and ends in a similar muddle.
Finally there is a third position which understands the universal as collectio, the real collection of things included within it. But this position is also confused: the universal is to the particular not as the whole is to the part.
The first part concludes: the cardinal point of realism is that particular instances are inessential features. Abaelard says no, the manifold variety of things is not an illusion. The difference between individuals cannot rest upon accidents.
5) Abaelard then turns to contemporary theories of universals, specifically Roscelin's extreme form of nominalism, which he rejects. His guiding question is: to what do universals refer? General terms cannot be merely words: man is the name given to individuals in virtue of an element which is common to many of them. But is that commonality part of the individual itself, in the mind, or both? Of course, no such entity man exists. Man is a status (a thing's nature in the order of things). He admits that there is some common nature in things that is then grouped together in the mind; Abaelard is thus something of a realist. But he expands upon this limited realism when he adds a third, intermediate layer to object and perceiver: the image. When we perceive a tower, we retain an image of it in our mind which is itself the object of thought, not the tower itself. A universal term is one that refers to a generalized, confused and composite image of a number of things (a position Berkeley would later come to refute).
6) Abaelard now turns to answer Porphyry's three questions: a) Are universals real entities existing independently of the mind? Yes, they refer to reality, but in a certain sense exist only for thought, as they embrace an abstract view of concrete things. b) Are universals material or immaterial? They refer to real discrete objects and are thus material but conceive of these real objects immaterially. c) Are universals found in sensible objects or apart from them? A universal term does not point to any sensible object but because they are elicited from them, they may be described as being in them. And then his own question d) Could universals exist without particulars? No. If that were the case, there would be no many to which a universal could refer.
Universals are neither words nor things but sermones, concepts. Universal man is not that to which individual men owe their being, but neither is it a mere word. The activity of thought isolates common features, which are are genuine aspects of objects perceived. The mind then breaks up the complex detail of the concrete and refashions it into objects of thought. Sense and thought cooperate in all experience; when the mind perceives, general ideas are already present. Abaelard follows Augustine in saying that Ideas are patterns in the divine mind, but his theory of knowledge is Aristotelian.
7) Abaelard is often described as a conceptualist, but Carre tells us that this title does not suit him. Conceptualism states that the common element of a universal is abstracted arbitrarily, but Abaelard clearly admits a minimum of realism and does not believe that universals can be pure inventions of the mind. In fact, Abaelard is an early expression of the moderate realism developed later by Aquinas.
III. St. Thomas Aquinas: 1) In the 12th century, the west was introduced to the works of Aristotle through Avicenna and Averroes. Aquinas, who rejected both the Neoplatonism of Bonaventure on the one hand and Averroes/Avicenna on the other, melded Aristotle and Christianity with "Euclidean clarity."
2) Unless we understand Aquinas' philosophy of being, it is impossible to make sense of his epistemology. Following Aristotle, reality is absolute and unchanging. It is an end, to which all aspects of the universe point teleologically. Everything in existence is both potentia, in a state of imperfection that points to something higher, and act, or completion/stability/perfection. The more self-determined a thing is, the more it is pure act.
Potency and act are co-dependent. Matter is a passive potency, and form is the realization of matter in definite structures (act). Similarly, body is a passive potency dependent upon the act of mind. All things are related through potency and act. For instance, bricks may be potency in relation to the house they comprise, but are act when viewed from the perspective of the making of the brick. Growth, ethics and aesthetics are ideas that only make sense when we understand the relation of act and potency.
The essence of an object, a universal, is that in virtue of which it is what it is. But we may know the essence of something without it being something that exists. Existence is the concrete form that essence takes, and is thus act in relation to essence's potency.
ACT POTENCY
completion incompletion
self-determination dependence
form matter
mind body
existence essence
house brick
brick clay
knowledge ignorance
3) Aquinas wants to show that objects of knowledge are material and not simply psychic entities, but also that an identity of subject and object is fundamental to experience. External objects must be shown to unite with the mind without changing their nature.
There are two ways a thing can change under the influence of form: 1) through "natural change," where form is physically transferred (for instance, when we touch something hot) and 2) through "mental change" (for instance, when we perceive the color of a thing without it changing the color of our eye). Here the mind reaches out to the object and renders it communicable in terms of likeness. Knowledge consists in the degree to which that likeness represents the object (exact opp. of Kant). The more intimately an object is known, the more it is one with the knower. The object is thus different from the subject but also a phase of its self-actualization.
4) Like Augustine, Aquinas holds that mind is incorporeal and wholly different from the body. But contra Augustine, he does not think the pure mind functions in experience. Man's mind is a mix of pure mind and body. Mind is in fact manifested at all levels of nature and finds its expression in varying degrees. The mind cannot function without its material expression, through which it comes closer to itself in act (sounds like Hegel). The mind is thus not related to the body as a pilot is to a ship; the body is a key component of knowledge because sensation is its root. Man's body and organs have very much to do with his essence.
Aquinas asserts that Plato's conception of the Ideas as creative substances is inadmissible in Christianity. But we can admit Aug.'s revision of Plato (divine Ideas) by saying that the human mind knows all things through eternal reasons because all intelligent experience is derived from God. But we have to add that there is only intelligible content to knowledge because of sensible experience. The body is not a hindrance to the mind. Only through it can the human mind gain knowledge.
5) Though the human mind has many potencies, mind is in essence act and thus constitutes a unity. Perception requires a general sensibility that is made explicit in knowledge. Sensation is the realization, or act, of the sense-organ; sensory elements are secondary. Thus, we know objects directly, and their signs indirectly. For instance, we know the hammer directly. That it has certain features we know only in reflection: "sensible images enter into consciousness when they are stripped of their sensibility" (Heidegger?).
Undeniably, there are two orders discovered in knowledge, that of thought and perception. But if the two are divided from each other, knowledge becomes impossible. Carre explains, quite succinctly, that "universality is indeed the characteristic of thought, but the objects of thought need not exist as universals" (85).
6) The active intellect (not part of the divine mind, contra Aug.) is uniquely human: its function is to make general, and thus intelligible, sensory particulars. Aquinas compares the active intellect to a light, which illuminates external reality and makes it understandable. Without its work of abstraction, we would not be able to know any particularity. The species which is abstracted serves as an "ideal intermediary which unites object and subject in an act of consciousness." The species is thus not an object but a means of thinking. Knowledge is concerned directly with reality, but it can grasp that reality only be freeing the intelligible form implicit in the particular. Truth is the conformity of the mind with the form pervading the object as mediated by the species.
7) Carre turns to an important section of the Summa where Aquinas differentiates his position from sensationalism on the one hand and Augustinian idealism on the other. There are three views on the matter of knowledge: a) Democritus: all knowledge can be reduced to impressions of sensible entities on the mind. b) Plato: thought is an immaterial power distinct from sensation, and it alone is the foundation of knowledge. c) Aristotle: a third way - sensation is not an activity of the mind alone but a complex of mind-body. Thought depends on sensation, but images themselves cannot affect the mind. They only become intelligible with the aid of the active intellect. This final position is also Aquinas's.
8) Though his interest in scientific matters was meagre, Aquinas refuted those who wished to attribute the cause of everything to God and belittle the role of natural causation. If God alone causes everything, then we would not see the effects that we do in nature. This is not to say that God is not present in the work: he is like a craftsmen with his tools. Nature is Gods instrument. Aquinas was fighting a resurgence of a Manichaen worldview that deemed matter evil. Divine goodness is the goal of all material things.
9) In sum, the progress of thought is the effort to realize the ideal unity which is the common ground of mind and objects. The mind apprehends universals, which are found in the particular and never apart from it, directly, and particulars indirectly. Because the active intellect makes sensory data intelligible by means of these universals, we cannot attain the essence of things directly, for we are dependent on perception, which compels our thought to be discursive. The modes of thought by which the mind understands the world are different from the mode of being in which nature itself exists.
IV. William of Ockham: 1) Nominalism was a sign of the disintegration of medieval philosophy. Its exposition by William of Ockham was seen as unorthodox and dangerous, and this led him into an intensely polemical life. He succumbed to the plague in 1349.
2) Aquinas died in 1274, and the remainder of the century was spent debating his ideas. A reactionary Augustinian movement broke out, and Ockham was born into this polemic. He was also the heir to Peter Abaelard and Petrus Hispanus, from whom he took the basic idea that the generality in our thinking is essentially subjective.
3) Ockham is most well-known for his razor, a rule of economy which was directed primarily against realism. For Ockham, universals are convenient mental fictions. He argues that if the universal "humanity" were indeed an entity distinct from a particular individual and at the same time part of its essence, it would be in a number of different places at the same time and thus be contradictory.
His own theory of knowledge runs something like this: the basis of all experience is intuition. Intuited knowledge is clear and certain, as opposed to abstract knowledge, which is by comparison doubtful and confused. Only intuition, a combination of sensory and intellectual factors, can produce an object, and it alone is reliable. We know reality directly, not through an intermediary like species intelligibilis.
Strangely, Ockham follows Augustine in saying that the knowledge we gain from our inner senses is more immediate than that of the outer senses, thus introducing some hesitation about his proposed certainty of the knowledge of objects. Ockham expands the category of empiricism to include many rationalist elements.
4) Ockham rejected extreme nominalism; for him, there is some kind of reality attached to general notions. Universals have a logical status of existence. A few different concepts are needed to understand his view of universals: first, he classifies the contents of thought under the heading of first and second intentions. First intentions are primary experiences, direct intuitions of things. Second intentions are signs of first intentions. He then introduces another concept, the suppositio, or substitutions, of which there are three: a) material: grammatical symbols (nouns, adjectives, etc.), b) personal: man for particular man, c) simple: man in general, refers only to concepts, not realities. Ockham is here distinguishing between real and logical meaning, between assertions about forms of discourse and assertions about things. Knowledge of reality is of a different order than logical knowledge.
Universals, then, are second intentions of the simple order. They refer to terms, not things. All previous difficulties with universals spring from the confused attempt to make them both singular and plural at the same time.
Ockham's challenge to theology is significant: for him, it is absurd to think, with Aug., that Ideas are things in the divine mind. Ockham would later come to change his view, saying that universals are not logical content formed by the mind but qualities of the mind itself.
5) Ockham's revolution can be summarized quite succinctly: existence is composed of individual items in various relations. No universal essences are required to be expressed in order for matter to become individual.
6) The relation between the provinces of faith and reason has always been a problem. Ockham denied that any of the central beliefs of of religion can be logically demonstrated. Conclusive philosophical knowledge of God cannot be attained. Scholasticism, which was inspired by the belief in the rational unity of philosophy and theology, was ruined.
7) The successors of Ockham, mainly British (Locke, Berkeley, etc.), developed his sceptical treatment of knowledge. Realism influenced Descartes and the rationalists. The end.
Showing posts with label aquinas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aquinas. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Aquinas: God & Action. David Burrell, C.S.C.
Aquinas: God & Action. David Burrell, C.S.C.
Preface:
Burrell’s study of Aquinas is focused on Aquinas’s use of logic and grammar as tools for inquiring into a subject, Divinity, that necessarily outstrips direct human understanding. The impetus for this reading of Aquinas is clear – the rise of 20th century Anglo-American philosophy with its focus on linguistic and conceptual analysis, though Burrell thinks that this is a faithful interpretation of Aquinas’s work. In Part I, Burrell, through a careful examination of the early chapters of the Summa Theologiae, along with a number of other writings by Aquinas, argues that Aquinas does not put forward a positive doctrine of God, a statement of what God is like. Rather, through a linguistic, grammatical exercise Aquinas shows negatively what cannot be said of God. Then, Burrell puts this reading of Aquinas into dialogue with positions, Process Theology and the psychology/philosophy of Jung, that seek to critique what they see as Aquinas’s view. Burrell shows how these critiques of Aquinas miss their mark when he is read in the manner that he advocates. Furthermore, Burrell’s reading of Aquinas incorporates many of the valid criticisms by Process Theologians and Jung of what is traditionally considered Aquinas’s view. In Part II, Burrell analyzes the one positive statement that Aquinas allows himself to make about God, that he is Act, showing what this statement could mean and how Aquinas harnesses the power of analogy in order to make it without overstepping his own strictures on what one can say about God. In the hope of not getting bogged down in the details of secondary literature, I will focus in my summary on the early chapter of Part I as I think that it is in those sections that we really get a sense of what is distinctive in Burrell’s reading and method. Or I may have just found that part much more interesting. I apologize if this makes the summary seem uneven; please draw my attention to the parts that I may have missed in your comments.
Part I Scientia Divina: The Grammar of Divinity
Chapter I: Background: Philosophical Grammar
Burrell sets the stage for his reading of Aquinas by discussing the importance of philosophical grammar for 13th century Christian thinkers. Philosophical grammar includes skills in logic, grammar, and criticism. According to Burrell, Aquinas’s discussion of God in the early chapters of the Summa must be read as not stating a positive theory of God, but as an exercise in philosophical grammar. This focus on grammar must be understood against the background of a belief, in reality common to all philosophy, that ‘language and reality are structurally isomorphic.’ What can be said has a relationship to what is, similarly what cannot be said has a relationship to what cannot be.
Burrell illustrates Aquinas’s attention to, and use of, philosophical grammar through three examples. First, he discusses how Aquinas’s claim that God is simple causes logical problems and how Aquinas tries to elucidate these difficulties using both concrete and abstract terms. It is logically problematic to claim that God is simple because the formal structure of predication requires that a predicate outreach its subject. Simply put, if one were to claim that x is y, but that y is a unique attribute of x, identical with its nature, then y would not fill the connotative role of a predicate, extension and intension, while distinct, are related. Predicates must be shared, in some way, by various subjects in order to be meaningful. Burrell argues that Aquinas makes the assertion that God is simple, knowing full well that he is violating a rule, in order to stress God’s transcendence. Similarly, Aquinas uses abstract predicates in order to show that God is transcendent by indicating that he exhausts a particular concept. At the same time, though, Aquinas also uses concrete predicates in order to show God’s subsistence. Aquinas alternates between concrete and abstract terms in order to express that God is both simple and subsistent, but in a way that we cannot properly state. “Aquinas is concerned to show what we cannot use our language to say, yet there is no medium of exposition available other than language itself…He is reminding us of certain grammatical features of our discourse to make us aware of how we might use those features to show what something which transcended that discourse would be like.”
The next example Burrell discusses is the two different senses of ‘to be.’ Aquinas asserts that ‘God is,’ however, Burrell stresses that Aquinas never offers an ontological argument. Rather, Aquinas makes two distinct statements. The first is that to be God is to be. This statement asserts that God is simple, his essence is identical with his existence, but actually sheds no further light on God’s nature, it doesn’t tell us what his nature is. The second is that ‘God is the cause of these existing effects’ and can be said to exist insomuch as they do. This statement does work towards a proof for God existence, but not an ontological one.
The final example that Burrell presents is Aquinas’ discussion of the distinction between the object signified and mode of signification. According to Burrell, Aquinas raises this distinction in order to draw attention to the diverse ways of signifying and then to the radical discontinuities between the different ways that the same term can be used. The recognition that one cannot account for the relationship between all the different uses of one term will prepare an individual for the use of creaturely perfection language in describing a God that transcends all experience.
Chapter II: The Unknown
Burrell, first, discusses Aquinas proofs of God’s existence, defining this exercise a pre-theological. Aquinas ‘defines’ God as the beginning and end of all things and, then, through each of the proofs shows that this formula has an application. However, this ‘definition’ does not define God because it just shows how God is the beginning and end of a particular set of phenomena, causes or movers for example, while God, in truth, is the ultimate first. Additionally, it sets the stage for a discussion of the transcendence of God because. if he is the beginning and end of all things, then he is not among those things. Thus, he is radically different than all things in human experience. The rest of Aquinas’ discussion of God therefore is dedicated to considering ‘the ways in which God does not exist, rather than the ways in which he does.’ Aquinas, according to Burrell, does not give a theory of God, rather he engages in an critical exercise in philosophical grammar or logical analysis in order to express what cannot be said of God.
The focal point for describing the ways in which God does not exist is the assertion of God’s simpleness. This assertion is backed up by being a formal feature of that which is the beginning and end of all things. As the beginning and end of things, God cannot be composed of anything prior, either materially or formally. Consequently, no articulated statement can succeed in properly stating anything about God. The simple form of predication would belie God’s simpleness. Throughout Question 3 of Part I of the Summa, Aquinas moves from empirical to logical questions about God’s composition, at each step arguing for a more and more radical sense of simpleness, moving from eliminating corporeality, matter/form, and potentiality/actuality. Aquinas is forced by the logic of God’s simpleness and individuality to assert that God is his own nature, despite the fact that this claim is not understood. This leads to the use, as discussed above, of both abstract and concrete terms to describe God. Aquinas is also forced to conclude that God’s essence is identical with his existence. This is necessary because God’s existence cannot be derived from something else; if it was, he could not be the beginning and end of all things. It also cannot derive from his essence because existence is not an attribute. Burrell argues that Aquinas is forced by the logic of the matter to assert that to be God is to be to-be, despite the fact that we cannot really comprehend this statement. Aquinas also argues that God is neither composed of a genus/species composition nor a substance/accident composition. The reasons Aquinas gives to rule out substance/accident composition focus on a lack of potentiality in God, and serves to re-stress the utter failure of language to make proper statements about God. In truth, nothing can properly be said about God.
After having asserted God’s radical simpleness, Aquinas, according to Burrell, spends a number of articles explaining how God’s simpleness should not be taken as indicating deficiency, but rather perfection. He describes how goodness, limitlessness, unchangeableness, and oneness, follow as formal corollaries from God’s central formal feature of simpleness and all indicate transcendence. First, Aquinas analyzes the term good and shows that existence is the most basic kind of good. Good is identified with being. It is not God’s activities which are good, rather it his being. God as the beginning and end of all things is good, because he is the source of all being and that towards which all things orient themselves. Next, Aquinas, according to Burrell, clarifies that God is limitless, but not in the sense that he is the most general of all things and thus not substantial. Burrell reasserts Aquinas’ uses of both abstract and concrete language in order to indicate both God’s limitlessness, the most formal thing/abstract terms, and individuality, existence/concrete terms. Similarly, God exists in all things, but not in the manner of pantheism, his identity with his existence ensures substantiality. Rather he exists in all things in the manner in which an agent exists in actions as being the cause of all things’ existence. This statement while in some ways enlightening is also quite difficult because existence is not properly a predicate. Grammarians refer to it as pseudo-predicate because it does not tell us anything about the thing itself. We cannot really know what it means for something to possess existence and therefore we cannot know what it is for God to be present in all things as the cause of their existence. Finally, Aquinas discusses God’s unchangeableness. Contrary to critic’s claims, Aquinas is not asserting here the impassible God of classic theism. Rather, unchangeableness is a formal corollary of God’s simpleness. Because God simply is what he is, there is no room for potentiality in his being. God cannot be said, therefore, to be striving to accomplish a goal at present unmet. This does not, however, rule out intentional activity. Here is why: in contrast to movements that connote striving, and thus potentiality, intentional activity has accomplishment grammatically already built in to them, to think is to already have thought, to love is already to have loved, and to will is already to have willed. This will be discussed much more in Part II. Next, Aquinas discusses the eternity of God, which according to Burrell expresses God being what he is in a (a)temporal, religious, and dark idiom. This discussion of the formal corollaries of God’s simpleness is capped by a consideration of God’s oneness.
Thus, Aquinas, according to Burrell asserts God’s transcendence as well as his simpleness, the grammatical analogue of transcendence, based on his being the beginning and end of all things. He then unpacks this simpleness and shows how it logically entails negations of possible features of God. These negations, while logically necessary, leave us with a Being that we cannot conceive. Burrell further shows how these features (or negation-features) indicate no deficiency but logically entail a number of perfections, including oneness. In no way, according to Burrell, does Aquinas give a theory of God; in fact he is articulating what cannot be said about God.
Chapter III: Showing a Way: Esse
In this chapter Burrell focuses more closely in on Aquinas statement that to be God is to be to-be. He argues that despite some misleading statements, Aquinas firmly holds that existence is not a predicate. Rather, he uses the inherited categories that he had at his disposal matter/form and potentiality/actuality in order to describe what could not be explained – the fact of existence. Existence, however, differs from matter/form and potentiality/actuality because it does not map on to the subject/predicate structure of our language. It cannot be captured by syntax, but requires attention to performance – in the same way that statement asserted differs from a statement entertained. According to Burrell, Aquinas always recognized that existence differ from attributes as assertion from predication. Burrell argues that all of the statements that Aquinas makes which seem to imply that existence is a predicate and/or substantial can be explained away. He argues that this can be shown by ‘pegging such statements onto the performance of asserting a proposition otherwise merely entertained.’ I am not sure how this works, but Burris claims that it can show that Aquinas is not treating existence as a substance or a predicate. Basically, this problem develops for Aquinas because the notion of existence elides proper articulation as it does not map on to the syntax of our language. It can only be made clear by the performative relationship of assertion/entertaining. Aquinas uses the resources his language does have and this is what makes it seem like he is treating existence as a predicate.
Additionally, Burrell argues that when Aquinas says that we can know God as the cause of existence in all things he is proposing a way of arriving at sense of the unknowability of God through a type of transcendental exercise. By examining the different modes or manners of existence in which we encounter things (substance, accident, etc) we can be directed towards a sense, but never an understanding, of what it would be for something to be exist absolutely or unmannered. Our language depends on these categories of existence; anything we speak about is constrained by them. To realize this is to realize the limits of our language and to point in direction beyond it.
Chapter IV: Analogical Predication
As we saw in our reading of the Summa, the use of analogical expression is very important for Aquinas in descriptions of God’s perfections (Good, Wise, Living, etc.). Many commentators have assumed, therefore, that Aquinas had a well-worked out theory of analogies, which would to apply analogical language to God in order to give us a sense of what God is. Burrell claims that is simply not true. Paralleling Aquinas’ lack of a theory of God, Aquinas did not have a theory of how to use analogical language in order to say something literally true of God. Rather, Aquinas employed analogy analogously, aware that analogy never gives us a definite formula in order to understand the second term of the analogy. (This chapter actually directly responds to my comment on our reading of Aquinas). Aquinas notes that we may use analogous perfection terms in order to describe God, but that we must make clear through our performance that we are aware of the actual inadequacy of these terms. One example of making clear this inadequacy has been discussed above, using both the abstract and the concrete form of the term. Additionally, he indicates that we can become aware of the inadequacy of such expression by paying attention to the manner of signification that is ineliminable from every attempt to nakedly describe the signified.
In particular, perfection terms are always mannered relative to the thing they are being applied to. We have no sense of what good simply is, or what wisdom simply is, but we can talk to a good bicycle as well as a good boy, and a wise Latina as well as a wise guy. Perfection terms are always used analogously relative to the term that they are describing. When we use such terms of God we are aware that we are using them relative to what he is, absolute and simple, which is something we do not understand. We do understand though that God, as the beginning and end of all things, would possess that perfection in the most proper way as he is the source and goal of all the creaturely instances of these perfections. At the same time, remembering that God is the beginning and end of all things reminds us that we have no idea in what way God is wise.
Chapter V: Truth in Matters Religious
The question whether Aquinas has offered a true conception of God is a false question. Aquinas does not offer a conception of God at all. He does not view philosophy as constructive, but rather critical. His account cannot tell us what God really is, rather it can merely eliminate improper conceptions of God. Improper conceptions will give us a definition of a perfection applied to God, proper conceptions, or non-conceptions as it may be, will always make sure that that the literal meaning of the perfection outreaches us. Consequently, improper conceptions of God, will try to tell us what God is, they will not respect Divine Transcendence. The authentic religion, according to Burrell, will respect the mystery of God and his transcendence. Burrell then discusses how one tries to decide between religions. He concludes that we seldom every actually choose between religions that are live options for us. Furthermore, religions cannot be understood dispassionately. Rather, a religious way is “a manner of living with those questions which outreach our capacity to answer.”
Burrell concludes this section, which is his positive (?) statement of his reading of Aquinas, by reflecting on how Aquinas has shown how one can carry on to explore what one is driven to seek but cannot comprehend.
The next two chapters discuss possible objections to Aquinas’ account. I am going to be a bit more schematic in my summary here because 1) a lot of it is an extension of Burrell's previous comments 2) as Liane said this is secondary literature and my comments are getting very long 3) I think I just found the Chapter I-V much more interesting and relevant beyond Aquinas Studies.
Chapter VI: A Philosophical Objection: Process Theology
In this chapter Burrell considers and rejects one major objection to Aquinas’ account. Process Theologians, chief among them Hartshorne, have criticized classical theism for privileging a certain image of God that they find objectionable, a monopolar God, one who is utterly impassive. They believe that that this privileging is the result of an Aristotelian fixation on substance. Instead, Process Theologians promote the centrality of process in Metaphysics. Process Theologians like Hartshorne have identified Aquinas with despised classical theism. Burrell argues that, first, Process Theologians have misread Aquinas, attributing to him a doctrine of God when he merely critically traces out the logical grammar of what can be said of God. Aquinas is not giving a theory of God as impassive substance; rather he is acting as a critical philosopher by noting the limits of our own language. Second, Aquinas, in fact, tries to prevent these grammatical statements about what cannot be said about God from being transformed into positive statements about an impassive, solitary divinity by supplementing them with religious descriptions of God.
Burrell then proceeds to examine Aquinas’ direct statements about God’s relationship with the world. First, Burrell argues that Aquinas’ statement that God does not really have a relationship with the world is not because he is fixated on a monopolar deity. Rather, it is because in his intellectual tradition ‘real’ as opposed to ‘intellectual’ relationships require reasons, natural or inherent properties, that cause the relationship. God as transcendent has no natural or inherent property that ‘forces’ him to relate to the world. Instead, his relationship to the world is governed by his own free will and creative intellect. Thus, Aquinas’ assertion that God cannot be said to really relate to the world, instead of setting up an impassive monopolar deity, actually respects God’s transcendence as well as lays the groundwork for his free personhood. Finally, Burrell responds to Process Theologians claims that God’s love must require that he be in some way dependent on us. He argues that, following in Aquinas footsteps regarding analogy, by considering creaturely love we can be pointed towards a notion of Godly love that is totally devoid of need.
Chapter VII: A Psychological Objection: Jung and Privatio Boni
Jung criticizes the Christian/Western tradition for describing evil as a mere privation of good. Instead, he holds that Good and Evil are true contraries of an opposition. He links the view that evil is a mere privation with a naïve hope for progress and a denial of true evil. Burrell argues that describing evil as a privation is dictated by analytical and experiential factors. Based on logic and psychology it is necessary to define the ends of actions as a good. Actions are defined by movements towards definite ends. These ends must be seen as goods, in some sense, in order to elicit the action. Good is logically and psychologically prior to evil. Goods are defined as capacities and evils as their privations. Additionally, from common experience we see that evil is usually seen as the removal/destruction of something good. Moreover, according to Burrell, Jung’s own comments about the substantiality of evil are premised on a sense of one overarching good as a capacity and evil as its privation: consciousness that allows for wholeness.
Additionally, Burrell critiques Jung’s conception of the relationship of good and evil on the basis of certain problems that he sees as stemming from Hegel. (Ben you might want to help us unpack this a little bit as our resident Hegelian)
Furthermore, Burrell explicates the psychological experience that underlies defining evil as privation. Evil actions are those which have no reason. They are done for simply no purpose as we see from the phenomenological account of sin given by Augustine. Sinful actions are the result of attempting pretentiously to reject our ontological status as beings drawn towards God. Since it is not possible to not be who we are, sinful, evil actions have no purpose or cause. In fact, they are not actions at all, since as discussed above actions have ends, or goods. Rather, evil actions are brute refusals to be who we are. According to Burrell, what Aquinas appreciates and what Jung misses is the senselessness of evil deeds.
Moreover, Burrell argues that Aquinas’ grammatical comments about Evil as privation should not be taken to indicate that he naively deemed evil not to be a real force in the world. Indeed, his medieval belief in the devil as an active force in the world dovetails in many ways with Jung’s notion of the demonic forces in the unconscious. In truth, both Aquinas and Jung’s views on evil militate against the naïve and destructive cult of autonomy and progress espoused by modern day liberalism.
Part II: The Operative Analogous Expression
Chapter VIII: Actus: An Inherently Analogous Expression
Burrell argues the actus is the master metaphor standing as the central insight behind Aquinas’ grammatical exposition of what can (not) be said of God. Actus is the one semi-positive statement that he uses describe to God, identifying it with existence. Moreover, actus is an extremely analogous expression. Its uses abound, exhausting all of the different modes of existence. However, the paradigm use of actus is intentional activities such as knowing and loving and, in particular, the immanent act of understanding that underlies all human action.
Burrell then spends a number of chapters discussing Aquinas’ uses of the term actus and demonstrating how intentional activities and the act of understanding that lies behind them is the most paradigmatic sense
Chapter IX: Intentional Activity and Performance: Paradigm for Actus
Understanding, according to Aristotle, Aquinas, and Burrell, is not mere reception, but involves an actual act. Burrell argues that the richness of this description of understanding establishes it as the paradigmatic case of actus. All other uses of actus are related to it analogically.
Understanding underlies all of human activity. In order to define something as an action, it must be related, be supported by, some form of understanding. All action, in order to be actions at all, must be intentional. This has a number of implications for Aquinas’ theory of action. In particular, it provides an important component in Aquinas’ theory of motivation and decision. According to him, human beings do not choose ends, rather, they are naturally drawn towards ends or goods that are already identified as such. However, in order for their actions towards those ends to be actions, individuals must consent to those ends and goods. Thus, there is a receptive and active component to all actions. Burrell claims that this account of action is more coherent then contemporary decision-theory or theories of existential decisions. Additionally, it holds individuals responsible, over the long term, not only for their actions but for their dispositions or habitus and eventually for their self.
Burrell notes that at no time has he or Aquinas articulated what it is to act, though the notion of actus has underlies all of this description. He claims that this is because actus is a properly basic term. We cannot full articulate what it is, yet we all know what acts are because we do them all the time. The way to make sense of a term like actus is identify its many uses and then determine its paradigmatic case that functions as a focal meaning.
Chapter X: Natural Process: Actus and Causality
In this chapter, Burrell describes Aquinas’ ‘theory of causality,’ or lack thereof, in order to show how actus works in this context. Additionally, he attempts to show how actus underlies the notion of physical cause and that actus is irreducible to physical cause. According to Burrell, Aquinas preserves action as the fundamental explanatory category and relates causality to action through a change of the formal relationship between the agent, who is already acting, and the thing moved, who is acted upon. The act of the agent becomes the act of the thing acted on. No act of transfer is required in order to explain causality. This serves to preserve the role of intentional act as the paradigmatic case of actus, not reducible to physical causality, as is done in contemporary science.
Chapter XI: Divine Activity: Creating and Immanent
In this chapter Burrell describes how Aquinas applies the grammar of actus to the acts of God, including creation and the trinity.
Creation should not be viewed as an empirical statement; rather it viewed as description of a formal relationship of dependence. Existence should be viewed as an act, and all those things that have existence should be viewed as dependent on the God who is Act. The effect of an understanding of this formal relationship of dependence cannot be expressed as part of our grammar. Rather, it is expressed through a comportment towards the world.
The Trinity, an interior action of the divine life, is also best explained in reference to actus. The problem of ascribing change to God is avoided when intentional activity is taken as the paradigmatic sense of actus. As described above, certain basic intentional activities, in particular intellectual activities, has the special linguistic feature that it avoids any hint of process. To think is already to have thought, to love is to already to have loved. Therefore, when actus is viewed in this way, it is no longer problematic to countenance God’s speech (the Son) and love (the Holy Spirit). Burrell also shows how God’s unity and trinity can be reconciled through viewing the trinity as a formal relationship of one substance to itself.
Chapter XII:
In this chapter Burrell provides a comprehensive account of what can be taken to be Aquinas’ theory of knowledge. Very essentially, this reduces to identity in act. The act of understanding is the ability to reproduce the act of the thing understood. Interestingly, he discusses how the absence of change in intellectual acts leads to their being conceived of as immaterial. Matter is only required to explain change. But more importantly, he believes that Aquinas’ theory of knowledge can be made plausible by appeal to the grammar used to describe instances of knowing as well as regular experience. He discusses how this is the only way we have for evaluating models or theories of this sort. In his discussion of knowing, he notes how expression is the completion of a human act of understanding. This expression can be described as an inner word, an actus actus, or an emanation. At the extreme physical side of things it can be described as comportment.
The paradigmatic actus of intellectual activity can be applied analogically to God. This is fitting because of intellectual activity’s immanence and atemporality. In God’s case, however, understanding need not necessarily express itself. Burrell maintains, though, that it does and that this is the key to understanding the Trinity. The Word of God, according to Burrell, can be seen as gratuitous, syntactical, or ordered, expression-in-use. Burrell goes to lengths to discuss why this expression must be syntactical in the most abstract sense possible in order to be the Son, the Word of God that is identical with God.
Loving is also an intellectual activity and therefore also is grammatically atemporal and immanent. Beyond understanding is the recognition of a good as good. Loving is the spontaneous issue of the expression of understanding in the will. Burrell identifies this love with the Holy Spirit.
Chapter XIII:
In the final chapter Burrell discusses why only the term actus is used to describe God. The reason for this is because of its supreme propensity for analogical uses. This allows the term to express transcendence. Burrell then discusses two cases when actus is used analogically to describe something which one might think is the opposite of action – martyrdom and the contemplative life – in order to show the extreme analogical nature of the term. In martyrdom actus is used to describe the fortitude of will that is necessary to restrain from actual physical action or reaction. In the contemplative life the action of contemplation is preferred because it attunes one to the sanctifying activity of God even though it separates the individual from physical accomplishment. Thus, the term actus for Aquinas is so analogical that it can refer to activities that are bereft of what Western culture would normally identify as the hallmark of action – accomplishment. From this point, Burrell discusses the Western cultural bias of linking action to accomplishment and how other models, Wittegensteinian and those drawn from the Gita and the Ramayana, go beyond this perspective and recognize actions as being defined primarily by intention. Additionally, he stresses that true actions must be authentic, almost radical intentions, else they are merely reactions. In order to have such intentions, according to Burrell, it is necessary to renounce the fruits of one’s actions. Burrell closes by discussing the irreducible basic-ness of the notion of actus as intellectual activity. It functions as a primitive experience and is not really capable of being explicated. It is this sort of intentional activity that Aquinas ascribes to God analogically, of course, when he describes him as Actus.
Preface:
Burrell’s study of Aquinas is focused on Aquinas’s use of logic and grammar as tools for inquiring into a subject, Divinity, that necessarily outstrips direct human understanding. The impetus for this reading of Aquinas is clear – the rise of 20th century Anglo-American philosophy with its focus on linguistic and conceptual analysis, though Burrell thinks that this is a faithful interpretation of Aquinas’s work. In Part I, Burrell, through a careful examination of the early chapters of the Summa Theologiae, along with a number of other writings by Aquinas, argues that Aquinas does not put forward a positive doctrine of God, a statement of what God is like. Rather, through a linguistic, grammatical exercise Aquinas shows negatively what cannot be said of God. Then, Burrell puts this reading of Aquinas into dialogue with positions, Process Theology and the psychology/philosophy of Jung, that seek to critique what they see as Aquinas’s view. Burrell shows how these critiques of Aquinas miss their mark when he is read in the manner that he advocates. Furthermore, Burrell’s reading of Aquinas incorporates many of the valid criticisms by Process Theologians and Jung of what is traditionally considered Aquinas’s view. In Part II, Burrell analyzes the one positive statement that Aquinas allows himself to make about God, that he is Act, showing what this statement could mean and how Aquinas harnesses the power of analogy in order to make it without overstepping his own strictures on what one can say about God. In the hope of not getting bogged down in the details of secondary literature, I will focus in my summary on the early chapter of Part I as I think that it is in those sections that we really get a sense of what is distinctive in Burrell’s reading and method. Or I may have just found that part much more interesting. I apologize if this makes the summary seem uneven; please draw my attention to the parts that I may have missed in your comments.
Part I Scientia Divina: The Grammar of Divinity
Chapter I: Background: Philosophical Grammar
Burrell sets the stage for his reading of Aquinas by discussing the importance of philosophical grammar for 13th century Christian thinkers. Philosophical grammar includes skills in logic, grammar, and criticism. According to Burrell, Aquinas’s discussion of God in the early chapters of the Summa must be read as not stating a positive theory of God, but as an exercise in philosophical grammar. This focus on grammar must be understood against the background of a belief, in reality common to all philosophy, that ‘language and reality are structurally isomorphic.’ What can be said has a relationship to what is, similarly what cannot be said has a relationship to what cannot be.
Burrell illustrates Aquinas’s attention to, and use of, philosophical grammar through three examples. First, he discusses how Aquinas’s claim that God is simple causes logical problems and how Aquinas tries to elucidate these difficulties using both concrete and abstract terms. It is logically problematic to claim that God is simple because the formal structure of predication requires that a predicate outreach its subject. Simply put, if one were to claim that x is y, but that y is a unique attribute of x, identical with its nature, then y would not fill the connotative role of a predicate, extension and intension, while distinct, are related. Predicates must be shared, in some way, by various subjects in order to be meaningful. Burrell argues that Aquinas makes the assertion that God is simple, knowing full well that he is violating a rule, in order to stress God’s transcendence. Similarly, Aquinas uses abstract predicates in order to show that God is transcendent by indicating that he exhausts a particular concept. At the same time, though, Aquinas also uses concrete predicates in order to show God’s subsistence. Aquinas alternates between concrete and abstract terms in order to express that God is both simple and subsistent, but in a way that we cannot properly state. “Aquinas is concerned to show what we cannot use our language to say, yet there is no medium of exposition available other than language itself…He is reminding us of certain grammatical features of our discourse to make us aware of how we might use those features to show what something which transcended that discourse would be like.”
The next example Burrell discusses is the two different senses of ‘to be.’ Aquinas asserts that ‘God is,’ however, Burrell stresses that Aquinas never offers an ontological argument. Rather, Aquinas makes two distinct statements. The first is that to be God is to be. This statement asserts that God is simple, his essence is identical with his existence, but actually sheds no further light on God’s nature, it doesn’t tell us what his nature is. The second is that ‘God is the cause of these existing effects’ and can be said to exist insomuch as they do. This statement does work towards a proof for God existence, but not an ontological one.
The final example that Burrell presents is Aquinas’ discussion of the distinction between the object signified and mode of signification. According to Burrell, Aquinas raises this distinction in order to draw attention to the diverse ways of signifying and then to the radical discontinuities between the different ways that the same term can be used. The recognition that one cannot account for the relationship between all the different uses of one term will prepare an individual for the use of creaturely perfection language in describing a God that transcends all experience.
Chapter II: The Unknown
Burrell, first, discusses Aquinas proofs of God’s existence, defining this exercise a pre-theological. Aquinas ‘defines’ God as the beginning and end of all things and, then, through each of the proofs shows that this formula has an application. However, this ‘definition’ does not define God because it just shows how God is the beginning and end of a particular set of phenomena, causes or movers for example, while God, in truth, is the ultimate first. Additionally, it sets the stage for a discussion of the transcendence of God because. if he is the beginning and end of all things, then he is not among those things. Thus, he is radically different than all things in human experience. The rest of Aquinas’ discussion of God therefore is dedicated to considering ‘the ways in which God does not exist, rather than the ways in which he does.’ Aquinas, according to Burrell, does not give a theory of God, rather he engages in an critical exercise in philosophical grammar or logical analysis in order to express what cannot be said of God.
The focal point for describing the ways in which God does not exist is the assertion of God’s simpleness. This assertion is backed up by being a formal feature of that which is the beginning and end of all things. As the beginning and end of things, God cannot be composed of anything prior, either materially or formally. Consequently, no articulated statement can succeed in properly stating anything about God. The simple form of predication would belie God’s simpleness. Throughout Question 3 of Part I of the Summa, Aquinas moves from empirical to logical questions about God’s composition, at each step arguing for a more and more radical sense of simpleness, moving from eliminating corporeality, matter/form, and potentiality/actuality. Aquinas is forced by the logic of God’s simpleness and individuality to assert that God is his own nature, despite the fact that this claim is not understood. This leads to the use, as discussed above, of both abstract and concrete terms to describe God. Aquinas is also forced to conclude that God’s essence is identical with his existence. This is necessary because God’s existence cannot be derived from something else; if it was, he could not be the beginning and end of all things. It also cannot derive from his essence because existence is not an attribute. Burrell argues that Aquinas is forced by the logic of the matter to assert that to be God is to be to-be, despite the fact that we cannot really comprehend this statement. Aquinas also argues that God is neither composed of a genus/species composition nor a substance/accident composition. The reasons Aquinas gives to rule out substance/accident composition focus on a lack of potentiality in God, and serves to re-stress the utter failure of language to make proper statements about God. In truth, nothing can properly be said about God.
After having asserted God’s radical simpleness, Aquinas, according to Burrell, spends a number of articles explaining how God’s simpleness should not be taken as indicating deficiency, but rather perfection. He describes how goodness, limitlessness, unchangeableness, and oneness, follow as formal corollaries from God’s central formal feature of simpleness and all indicate transcendence. First, Aquinas analyzes the term good and shows that existence is the most basic kind of good. Good is identified with being. It is not God’s activities which are good, rather it his being. God as the beginning and end of all things is good, because he is the source of all being and that towards which all things orient themselves. Next, Aquinas, according to Burrell, clarifies that God is limitless, but not in the sense that he is the most general of all things and thus not substantial. Burrell reasserts Aquinas’ uses of both abstract and concrete language in order to indicate both God’s limitlessness, the most formal thing/abstract terms, and individuality, existence/concrete terms. Similarly, God exists in all things, but not in the manner of pantheism, his identity with his existence ensures substantiality. Rather he exists in all things in the manner in which an agent exists in actions as being the cause of all things’ existence. This statement while in some ways enlightening is also quite difficult because existence is not properly a predicate. Grammarians refer to it as pseudo-predicate because it does not tell us anything about the thing itself. We cannot really know what it means for something to possess existence and therefore we cannot know what it is for God to be present in all things as the cause of their existence. Finally, Aquinas discusses God’s unchangeableness. Contrary to critic’s claims, Aquinas is not asserting here the impassible God of classic theism. Rather, unchangeableness is a formal corollary of God’s simpleness. Because God simply is what he is, there is no room for potentiality in his being. God cannot be said, therefore, to be striving to accomplish a goal at present unmet. This does not, however, rule out intentional activity. Here is why: in contrast to movements that connote striving, and thus potentiality, intentional activity has accomplishment grammatically already built in to them, to think is to already have thought, to love is already to have loved, and to will is already to have willed. This will be discussed much more in Part II. Next, Aquinas discusses the eternity of God, which according to Burrell expresses God being what he is in a (a)temporal, religious, and dark idiom. This discussion of the formal corollaries of God’s simpleness is capped by a consideration of God’s oneness.
Thus, Aquinas, according to Burrell asserts God’s transcendence as well as his simpleness, the grammatical analogue of transcendence, based on his being the beginning and end of all things. He then unpacks this simpleness and shows how it logically entails negations of possible features of God. These negations, while logically necessary, leave us with a Being that we cannot conceive. Burrell further shows how these features (or negation-features) indicate no deficiency but logically entail a number of perfections, including oneness. In no way, according to Burrell, does Aquinas give a theory of God; in fact he is articulating what cannot be said about God.
Chapter III: Showing a Way: Esse
In this chapter Burrell focuses more closely in on Aquinas statement that to be God is to be to-be. He argues that despite some misleading statements, Aquinas firmly holds that existence is not a predicate. Rather, he uses the inherited categories that he had at his disposal matter/form and potentiality/actuality in order to describe what could not be explained – the fact of existence. Existence, however, differs from matter/form and potentiality/actuality because it does not map on to the subject/predicate structure of our language. It cannot be captured by syntax, but requires attention to performance – in the same way that statement asserted differs from a statement entertained. According to Burrell, Aquinas always recognized that existence differ from attributes as assertion from predication. Burrell argues that all of the statements that Aquinas makes which seem to imply that existence is a predicate and/or substantial can be explained away. He argues that this can be shown by ‘pegging such statements onto the performance of asserting a proposition otherwise merely entertained.’ I am not sure how this works, but Burris claims that it can show that Aquinas is not treating existence as a substance or a predicate. Basically, this problem develops for Aquinas because the notion of existence elides proper articulation as it does not map on to the syntax of our language. It can only be made clear by the performative relationship of assertion/entertaining. Aquinas uses the resources his language does have and this is what makes it seem like he is treating existence as a predicate.
Additionally, Burrell argues that when Aquinas says that we can know God as the cause of existence in all things he is proposing a way of arriving at sense of the unknowability of God through a type of transcendental exercise. By examining the different modes or manners of existence in which we encounter things (substance, accident, etc) we can be directed towards a sense, but never an understanding, of what it would be for something to be exist absolutely or unmannered. Our language depends on these categories of existence; anything we speak about is constrained by them. To realize this is to realize the limits of our language and to point in direction beyond it.
Chapter IV: Analogical Predication
As we saw in our reading of the Summa, the use of analogical expression is very important for Aquinas in descriptions of God’s perfections (Good, Wise, Living, etc.). Many commentators have assumed, therefore, that Aquinas had a well-worked out theory of analogies, which would to apply analogical language to God in order to give us a sense of what God is. Burrell claims that is simply not true. Paralleling Aquinas’ lack of a theory of God, Aquinas did not have a theory of how to use analogical language in order to say something literally true of God. Rather, Aquinas employed analogy analogously, aware that analogy never gives us a definite formula in order to understand the second term of the analogy. (This chapter actually directly responds to my comment on our reading of Aquinas). Aquinas notes that we may use analogous perfection terms in order to describe God, but that we must make clear through our performance that we are aware of the actual inadequacy of these terms. One example of making clear this inadequacy has been discussed above, using both the abstract and the concrete form of the term. Additionally, he indicates that we can become aware of the inadequacy of such expression by paying attention to the manner of signification that is ineliminable from every attempt to nakedly describe the signified.
In particular, perfection terms are always mannered relative to the thing they are being applied to. We have no sense of what good simply is, or what wisdom simply is, but we can talk to a good bicycle as well as a good boy, and a wise Latina as well as a wise guy. Perfection terms are always used analogously relative to the term that they are describing. When we use such terms of God we are aware that we are using them relative to what he is, absolute and simple, which is something we do not understand. We do understand though that God, as the beginning and end of all things, would possess that perfection in the most proper way as he is the source and goal of all the creaturely instances of these perfections. At the same time, remembering that God is the beginning and end of all things reminds us that we have no idea in what way God is wise.
Chapter V: Truth in Matters Religious
The question whether Aquinas has offered a true conception of God is a false question. Aquinas does not offer a conception of God at all. He does not view philosophy as constructive, but rather critical. His account cannot tell us what God really is, rather it can merely eliminate improper conceptions of God. Improper conceptions will give us a definition of a perfection applied to God, proper conceptions, or non-conceptions as it may be, will always make sure that that the literal meaning of the perfection outreaches us. Consequently, improper conceptions of God, will try to tell us what God is, they will not respect Divine Transcendence. The authentic religion, according to Burrell, will respect the mystery of God and his transcendence. Burrell then discusses how one tries to decide between religions. He concludes that we seldom every actually choose between religions that are live options for us. Furthermore, religions cannot be understood dispassionately. Rather, a religious way is “a manner of living with those questions which outreach our capacity to answer.”
Burrell concludes this section, which is his positive (?) statement of his reading of Aquinas, by reflecting on how Aquinas has shown how one can carry on to explore what one is driven to seek but cannot comprehend.
The next two chapters discuss possible objections to Aquinas’ account. I am going to be a bit more schematic in my summary here because 1) a lot of it is an extension of Burrell's previous comments 2) as Liane said this is secondary literature and my comments are getting very long 3) I think I just found the Chapter I-V much more interesting and relevant beyond Aquinas Studies.
Chapter VI: A Philosophical Objection: Process Theology
In this chapter Burrell considers and rejects one major objection to Aquinas’ account. Process Theologians, chief among them Hartshorne, have criticized classical theism for privileging a certain image of God that they find objectionable, a monopolar God, one who is utterly impassive. They believe that that this privileging is the result of an Aristotelian fixation on substance. Instead, Process Theologians promote the centrality of process in Metaphysics. Process Theologians like Hartshorne have identified Aquinas with despised classical theism. Burrell argues that, first, Process Theologians have misread Aquinas, attributing to him a doctrine of God when he merely critically traces out the logical grammar of what can be said of God. Aquinas is not giving a theory of God as impassive substance; rather he is acting as a critical philosopher by noting the limits of our own language. Second, Aquinas, in fact, tries to prevent these grammatical statements about what cannot be said about God from being transformed into positive statements about an impassive, solitary divinity by supplementing them with religious descriptions of God.
Burrell then proceeds to examine Aquinas’ direct statements about God’s relationship with the world. First, Burrell argues that Aquinas’ statement that God does not really have a relationship with the world is not because he is fixated on a monopolar deity. Rather, it is because in his intellectual tradition ‘real’ as opposed to ‘intellectual’ relationships require reasons, natural or inherent properties, that cause the relationship. God as transcendent has no natural or inherent property that ‘forces’ him to relate to the world. Instead, his relationship to the world is governed by his own free will and creative intellect. Thus, Aquinas’ assertion that God cannot be said to really relate to the world, instead of setting up an impassive monopolar deity, actually respects God’s transcendence as well as lays the groundwork for his free personhood. Finally, Burrell responds to Process Theologians claims that God’s love must require that he be in some way dependent on us. He argues that, following in Aquinas footsteps regarding analogy, by considering creaturely love we can be pointed towards a notion of Godly love that is totally devoid of need.
Chapter VII: A Psychological Objection: Jung and Privatio Boni
Jung criticizes the Christian/Western tradition for describing evil as a mere privation of good. Instead, he holds that Good and Evil are true contraries of an opposition. He links the view that evil is a mere privation with a naïve hope for progress and a denial of true evil. Burrell argues that describing evil as a privation is dictated by analytical and experiential factors. Based on logic and psychology it is necessary to define the ends of actions as a good. Actions are defined by movements towards definite ends. These ends must be seen as goods, in some sense, in order to elicit the action. Good is logically and psychologically prior to evil. Goods are defined as capacities and evils as their privations. Additionally, from common experience we see that evil is usually seen as the removal/destruction of something good. Moreover, according to Burrell, Jung’s own comments about the substantiality of evil are premised on a sense of one overarching good as a capacity and evil as its privation: consciousness that allows for wholeness.
Additionally, Burrell critiques Jung’s conception of the relationship of good and evil on the basis of certain problems that he sees as stemming from Hegel. (Ben you might want to help us unpack this a little bit as our resident Hegelian)
Furthermore, Burrell explicates the psychological experience that underlies defining evil as privation. Evil actions are those which have no reason. They are done for simply no purpose as we see from the phenomenological account of sin given by Augustine. Sinful actions are the result of attempting pretentiously to reject our ontological status as beings drawn towards God. Since it is not possible to not be who we are, sinful, evil actions have no purpose or cause. In fact, they are not actions at all, since as discussed above actions have ends, or goods. Rather, evil actions are brute refusals to be who we are. According to Burrell, what Aquinas appreciates and what Jung misses is the senselessness of evil deeds.
Moreover, Burrell argues that Aquinas’ grammatical comments about Evil as privation should not be taken to indicate that he naively deemed evil not to be a real force in the world. Indeed, his medieval belief in the devil as an active force in the world dovetails in many ways with Jung’s notion of the demonic forces in the unconscious. In truth, both Aquinas and Jung’s views on evil militate against the naïve and destructive cult of autonomy and progress espoused by modern day liberalism.
Part II: The Operative Analogous Expression
Chapter VIII: Actus: An Inherently Analogous Expression
Burrell argues the actus is the master metaphor standing as the central insight behind Aquinas’ grammatical exposition of what can (not) be said of God. Actus is the one semi-positive statement that he uses describe to God, identifying it with existence. Moreover, actus is an extremely analogous expression. Its uses abound, exhausting all of the different modes of existence. However, the paradigm use of actus is intentional activities such as knowing and loving and, in particular, the immanent act of understanding that underlies all human action.
Burrell then spends a number of chapters discussing Aquinas’ uses of the term actus and demonstrating how intentional activities and the act of understanding that lies behind them is the most paradigmatic sense
Chapter IX: Intentional Activity and Performance: Paradigm for Actus
Understanding, according to Aristotle, Aquinas, and Burrell, is not mere reception, but involves an actual act. Burrell argues that the richness of this description of understanding establishes it as the paradigmatic case of actus. All other uses of actus are related to it analogically.
Understanding underlies all of human activity. In order to define something as an action, it must be related, be supported by, some form of understanding. All action, in order to be actions at all, must be intentional. This has a number of implications for Aquinas’ theory of action. In particular, it provides an important component in Aquinas’ theory of motivation and decision. According to him, human beings do not choose ends, rather, they are naturally drawn towards ends or goods that are already identified as such. However, in order for their actions towards those ends to be actions, individuals must consent to those ends and goods. Thus, there is a receptive and active component to all actions. Burrell claims that this account of action is more coherent then contemporary decision-theory or theories of existential decisions. Additionally, it holds individuals responsible, over the long term, not only for their actions but for their dispositions or habitus and eventually for their self.
Burrell notes that at no time has he or Aquinas articulated what it is to act, though the notion of actus has underlies all of this description. He claims that this is because actus is a properly basic term. We cannot full articulate what it is, yet we all know what acts are because we do them all the time. The way to make sense of a term like actus is identify its many uses and then determine its paradigmatic case that functions as a focal meaning.
Chapter X: Natural Process: Actus and Causality
In this chapter, Burrell describes Aquinas’ ‘theory of causality,’ or lack thereof, in order to show how actus works in this context. Additionally, he attempts to show how actus underlies the notion of physical cause and that actus is irreducible to physical cause. According to Burrell, Aquinas preserves action as the fundamental explanatory category and relates causality to action through a change of the formal relationship between the agent, who is already acting, and the thing moved, who is acted upon. The act of the agent becomes the act of the thing acted on. No act of transfer is required in order to explain causality. This serves to preserve the role of intentional act as the paradigmatic case of actus, not reducible to physical causality, as is done in contemporary science.
Chapter XI: Divine Activity: Creating and Immanent
In this chapter Burrell describes how Aquinas applies the grammar of actus to the acts of God, including creation and the trinity.
Creation should not be viewed as an empirical statement; rather it viewed as description of a formal relationship of dependence. Existence should be viewed as an act, and all those things that have existence should be viewed as dependent on the God who is Act. The effect of an understanding of this formal relationship of dependence cannot be expressed as part of our grammar. Rather, it is expressed through a comportment towards the world.
The Trinity, an interior action of the divine life, is also best explained in reference to actus. The problem of ascribing change to God is avoided when intentional activity is taken as the paradigmatic sense of actus. As described above, certain basic intentional activities, in particular intellectual activities, has the special linguistic feature that it avoids any hint of process. To think is already to have thought, to love is to already to have loved. Therefore, when actus is viewed in this way, it is no longer problematic to countenance God’s speech (the Son) and love (the Holy Spirit). Burrell also shows how God’s unity and trinity can be reconciled through viewing the trinity as a formal relationship of one substance to itself.
Chapter XII:
In this chapter Burrell provides a comprehensive account of what can be taken to be Aquinas’ theory of knowledge. Very essentially, this reduces to identity in act. The act of understanding is the ability to reproduce the act of the thing understood. Interestingly, he discusses how the absence of change in intellectual acts leads to their being conceived of as immaterial. Matter is only required to explain change. But more importantly, he believes that Aquinas’ theory of knowledge can be made plausible by appeal to the grammar used to describe instances of knowing as well as regular experience. He discusses how this is the only way we have for evaluating models or theories of this sort. In his discussion of knowing, he notes how expression is the completion of a human act of understanding. This expression can be described as an inner word, an actus actus, or an emanation. At the extreme physical side of things it can be described as comportment.
The paradigmatic actus of intellectual activity can be applied analogically to God. This is fitting because of intellectual activity’s immanence and atemporality. In God’s case, however, understanding need not necessarily express itself. Burrell maintains, though, that it does and that this is the key to understanding the Trinity. The Word of God, according to Burrell, can be seen as gratuitous, syntactical, or ordered, expression-in-use. Burrell goes to lengths to discuss why this expression must be syntactical in the most abstract sense possible in order to be the Son, the Word of God that is identical with God.
Loving is also an intellectual activity and therefore also is grammatically atemporal and immanent. Beyond understanding is the recognition of a good as good. Loving is the spontaneous issue of the expression of understanding in the will. Burrell identifies this love with the Holy Spirit.
Chapter XIII:
In the final chapter Burrell discusses why only the term actus is used to describe God. The reason for this is because of its supreme propensity for analogical uses. This allows the term to express transcendence. Burrell then discusses two cases when actus is used analogically to describe something which one might think is the opposite of action – martyrdom and the contemplative life – in order to show the extreme analogical nature of the term. In martyrdom actus is used to describe the fortitude of will that is necessary to restrain from actual physical action or reaction. In the contemplative life the action of contemplation is preferred because it attunes one to the sanctifying activity of God even though it separates the individual from physical accomplishment. Thus, the term actus for Aquinas is so analogical that it can refer to activities that are bereft of what Western culture would normally identify as the hallmark of action – accomplishment. From this point, Burrell discusses the Western cultural bias of linking action to accomplishment and how other models, Wittegensteinian and those drawn from the Gita and the Ramayana, go beyond this perspective and recognize actions as being defined primarily by intention. Additionally, he stresses that true actions must be authentic, almost radical intentions, else they are merely reactions. In order to have such intentions, according to Burrell, it is necessary to renounce the fruits of one’s actions. Burrell closes by discussing the irreducible basic-ness of the notion of actus as intellectual activity. It functions as a primitive experience and is not really capable of being explicated. It is this sort of intentional activity that Aquinas ascribes to God analogically, of course, when he describes him as Actus.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The Five Ways, 1969, Anthony Kenny
Goal: To establish what Aquinas meant in these proofs for the existence of God by close reading of the Summa and reference to other texts; and to offer a critical evaluation of their arguments.
Guiding Thesis: “If we take these two Ways together [argument from causa movens and causa efficiens] we find that the distinction between the five ways reflects the distinction between the four causes” (36).
Conclusion: The proofs fail because they are too embedded in medieval cosmology, but this neither confirms nor disproves the existence of God.
Introduction:
Kenny’s argument is set against a series of debates within the philosophy of religion about proofs for the existence of God. Regarding Aquinas scholarship specifically, the question arises of how Aquinas intended these proofs to be read - as a way of giving content to the notion of divinity or as actual philosophical proofs? Kenny sides with the latter position.
More broadly, though, this books considers, and discards several major strains of thought that consider the entire enterprise of constructing a proof for the existence of God nonsensical or pointless.
1). Conventionalist argument: the notion of a ‘necessary being’ is incoherent, therefore trying to prove God’s existence as a necessary being is misguided.
Counter-argument: conventionalists fundamentally misunderstand Aquinas’s project. First, to say God is a necessary being is not to say that ‘God exists’ is a necessary proposition. Second, Aquinas simply means in describing God as necessary that he is imperishable. Finally, the conventionalist argument presumes that necessarily true propositions are all so in reference to human conventions, while neuroscience and so on proves this not to be the case.
2). Verificationist argument: “There is a God” is an incoherent proposition because it is unfalisifiable.
Kenny’s response: if a creator God exists, there’s no way to falsify the proposition “God exists,” because without his existence there would no universe in which to falsify anything.
3). post-Kantians: Many contemporary philosophers think Kant definitively proved the entire enterprise of constructing rational proofs for the existence of God to be misguided and unnecessary.
Kenny: Kant directed his critique at different issues than those with which Aquinas was concerned. I’m not going to tell you which, but trust me; my book isn’t pointless.
4) fideistic response: The existence of God is something that must be taken on faith; to seek rational arguments is to miss the center of religious experience.
Kenny: If we can’t offer rational grounds for believing in God, there’s no reason to do so. Or: yes, this book is about to be 120 pages written by someone with a stereotypically british tin ear for the subject of religion. Enjoy.
The First Way: argument from movement (causa movens)
Basic argument: Observing the world, we see that everything is in motion and, moreover, that everything in motion is moved by something else. All things that move insofar as they are in potentiality in terms of its motion; to move is for something in actuality to bring something from potentiality to actuality. For example, something actually hot, such as fire, brings wood, something potentially hot, to be actually hot. Since it is impossible for something to be both potentially and actually something (hot, for example), it is impossible for something to be simultaneously the mover and the moved. Yet there must be a first, unmoved mover to set off this entire chain of motion we see in our word. This we label God.
Kenny begins by trying to contextualize the term motus. Though he remains by the translation, “motion,” the modern idea of change is actually much closer to the original meaning. Change, however, had three separate subcategories:
- Change of quality (from hot to cold, for example)
- Change in quantity/size
- Change in place (local motion)
Aquinas, therefore, uses the term motus in these three sense, but not in a way that might include mental events or propositions that change from true to false or vice versa. However, the bigger problem regarding the text is that in Latin there is no simple way to distinguish between “it is in motion” and “it is being moved,” which will later return to cause problems.
Kenny then asks, “what does it mean to say something is in motion?” He offers four potential explanations.
1). Motion encompasses change in quality, quantity, space, and mental events. Thinking, after all, is sometimes described as being moved by an object.
Kenny’s objection: However, as man can think himself, or move himself, this interpretation would undermine Aquinas’s argument.
2)motion includes creation and destruction of substancesKenny’s response: that would make the First Way question-begging(?3) The thesis could depend on a metaphysical understanding of motion.
Kenny: True, in part, but doesn’t answer the question of what objects are being moved.
4) the phenomena in question are exclusively metaphysical, the change from potentiality to actuality.
Kenny: this conflicts with the very mundane examples Aquinas gives of motion.
Kenny’s interpretation: Aquinas really just means that certain things move from place to place and others grow and shrink. (No kidding....)
Having established that, Kenny then goes on to consider the different interpretations of the phrase, ”Whatever is in motion is moved by something else.” One could read it as a temporal claim, that there are an endless series of things stretching back in time, causing each other. But in that case, the catalyst might have ceased moving long before the object in question did, so in a trivial sense, the world would be populated by unmoved movers. Therefore, Kenny argues, we ought to take this to mean that everything in motion is being moved by something simultaneously in motion.
Problems, however, immediately arise. There seem to be a number of things that aren’t moved by anything, such as the running dog or growing plant. Additionally, that which is not being moved may simply be at rest; something unmoved does not need to have been eternally unmoved.
Aquinas answers with a distinction between motion per accidens and motion per se. Motion per accidens is caused by something else, motion per se is everything else. In order for motion per accidens to do the sort of philosophical work Aquinas needs, there can’t be a symmetrical relationship between part and whole; I can’t say I move my fingers and my fingers move me while preserving the infinite regress necessary to get us to a first mover. Aristotle tries to solve this difficulty by saying my parts are moved by my soul. However, this will not get us to God, as the Aristotelian notion of a soul will equally suffice as an agent.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that my notes on this book are absurdly long and detailed, particularly given that it’s only secondary lit., so I’m just going to cut to the reasons Kenny thinks the First Way fails.
- Aquinas is trapped in the Aristotelian origins of this proof. Aristotle did not believe in a creator God; rather, his Unmoved Mover was simply the efficient cause of the motions in the universe. Aquinas fails to prove that the efficient cause needs to be anything outside of this world.
- In order to conform to the actual world, Aquinas cannot insist that the relation between cause and effect is asymmetrical, that one ball hits another without being moved in turn. Lacking an asymmetrical relationship, there is no possibility of an infinite regress of movers.
- Kenny thinks even if a infinite regress were to happen, it would not be absurd.
- The argument only shows that movement can only originate in a being who is not moved in that particular manner, but does not have to be unchanging in all respects. (A fire can’t be potentially and actually hot in order to make wood burn, but just because it is unmoved regarding temperature, there’s no reason to think it might not be moved regarding location).
The Second Way: argument from efficient causality (causa efficiens/agens)
Basic argument: In nature, we observe efficient causality, but we also observe that it’s impossible for something to cause itself, because that would require it being prior to itself. We also see that eliminating a cause eliminates its effects, so if you eliminate the first cause by positing an infinite chain of efficient causes, you then eliminate all of the intermediate causes, as well as the final effect. Therefore, as we clearly observe that there are final effects and intermediate causes, we need to posit a first cause. This we call God.
Here, Kenny, rather belatedly, brings in Aristotle’s doctrine of the four causes, which breakdown thus:
1: material cause (causa materialis): the material out of which an object is made
2: formal cause (causa formalis): the form/pattern the object takes
3: efficient cause (causa efficiens) : origin of change or state of rest
4: final cause (causa finalis): telos of thing
In contrast to Aristotle, Aquinas splits causa efficiens into two overlapping, but slightly different phenomena: causa efficiens/agens and causa movens. The two are essentially the same phenomenon. The real difference is that causa movens, as described in the First Way, deals with the effect or body acted upon, while causa efficiens/agens, the subject of the Second Way, deals with the agent responsible for producing change. Aristotle was willing to describe all examples of causa efficiens as a type of movement that initiates change in preexisting material, because he believed in an everlasting material universe. However, Aquinas, who was committed to creation ex nihilo, believed that God was an efficient cause that could act without necessarily being a mover. HE also believed there could be change or effects that could not simply be re-described as movement in substance from one form to another. Therefore, he makes this distinction within efficient causality.
Kenny’s main argument in the book is that if one understand the first two Ways to correspond to this split within efficient causality, then each of the Five Ways maps on to the Four Causes.
Kenny spends some time arguing that the formal structure of the Five Ways is sound, but as that discussion involved a series of incomprehensible logical equations, for me, at least, the reason why escapes me. If anyone wants to clarify, that would be great.
The more pertinent aspect of this chapter seemed his discussion of what efficient causality did and did not entail for Aquinas. In some respects, it’s the type of causality closest to what we recognize as causality. Yet, since Hume, we have been trained to think of a cause as an event. For Aquinas, in contrast, an efficient cause is “a substantial agent.” The paradigmatic example of efficient causality, at least in Aquinas’s sense, is not flipping a switch and light coming on, but, rather, that of a man siring a child. Thought of in those terms, we see why Aquinas thinks it incoherent to imagine something causing itself, in the same way it seems incoherent to think of a man give birth to himself. However, efficient causality did not entail for Aquinas the belief that every event has a cause. Aquinas is not a determinst; he leaves room for contingency in his world view.
Kenny claims that Aquinas did not see anything incoherent in the idea of an infinite series of men stretching backward in time and begetting each other. So far as that goes, one could conceive of man as the uncaused cause, and never reach God. However, Aquinas does not think human reproduction is a self-sufficient linear chain of efficient causes, endlessly reproducing itself. Rather, he thinks human reproduction involves another, external cause acting upon it, in this case the sun. Man is begotten both by man and the sun.
So what does this mean? Kenny claims Aquinas is not saying that the sun is a necessary condition for man to beget man, in, I suppose, the same way air and a habitable planet would be. Equally, he is not saying that that a whole series of events existed in the past, leading up to man in his role of begetter. Rather, he is making reference to medieval cosmology, which believed that the sun co-cause of the generation of the child. In this cosmology, man acts as a tool of the sun, or the heavens more generally. The sun, in its presence and absence, controls generation and corruption on earth.
Efficient causality, then, not only stretches backward in times, to all of the previous men who have fathered children; it also stretches upward towards the heavens, and depends on the cosmos God created.
Take away: The thought seems to be that the heavens lead to a creator God and some sort of meta-plan/control in a way that a series of efficient causes, stretching back in time, do not. God has much more of an obvious role with reference to the sun than solely in reference to a chain of men begetting men. However, as we no longer subscribe to medieval cosmology, we have no reason for tracing efficient causality back to God, rather than stopping with man as the uncaused cause.
The Third Way: Possibility and Necessity (causa materialis)
Basic Argument: It is possible for some things not to be. Everything which might not have been at some point was not. But if everything had the possibility of not being, nothing would ever be, since everything finite begins in something else. Therefore, there must be some sort of self-sufficient, necessary being at the origin. This we name God.
There are several different strains of the argument that God is a necessary being. For Leibniz, for example, God is a necessary being whose essence involves existence. This is following a thought posed by Avicenna, who believed, “A necessary being is a being such that the supposition of its non-existence entails a contradiction.” A contingent being, in contrast, could be imagined not to exist without any contradiction.
In his early work, Aquinas uses Avicenna’s definition of a necessary being, but later shifts from this tendency to define necessity in terms of existence and essence to the definition of Averroes, who defined a necessary being as one that cannot cease to be the case, that cannot cease to exist. A necessary being, therefore, is defined in terms of unalterability and imperishability. As result, Aquinas considers a large number of things as necessary in his mature work, such as angels and men. Therefore, one ought not consider the scale to be God as the only necessary being on what end, and everything else as contingent on the other. Rather, there’s a gradation, starting with things that have the possibility of being and not being which are genuinely contingent, to cause necessary beings, like men and angels, to God as the uncaused necessary being.
From here, Kenny raises four basic questions about the meaning of the Third Way.
1: What does Aquinas think has the possibility of being and not being? Individuals or species?
2: Is the class of things that has the possibility of being and not being the same as the class of things subject to generation and corruption?
3: When Aquinas speaks of the possibility of being and not being, what does he mean? Does he simply mean the logical possibility?
4: Finally, when did or do things have the possibility of being and not being? Now? In the past? Always?
Kenny begins with question 4, the issue of tense. It only makes sense, he argues, to claim something might not have existed once it comes into existence. Had I not been born, it would have been nonsensical to claim that I might or might not have existed, because there was no me to make reference to. So logically, my possibility of not existing would be the possibility of ceasing to be.
For Aristotle, the world and heavenly bodies have always existed, so this doesn’t make much sense for him, not in a strong sense, at least. In contrast, for Aquinas, souls and matter were created, which means it’s possible for them to be destroyed and cease to be. But here’s the catch; souls will keep on existing until or unless God destroys them. This means that the possibility of ceasing to be is not their possibility; it’s all dependent on God.
From this, Kenny concludes that Aquinas is not talking about humans or other necessary beings, and he’s not talking about logical possibility when he says some things have the possibility of ceasing to be. Rather, he’s talking about the actual power of ceasing to be. In essence, things have the possibility of ceasing to be if they have the possibility of changing forms, such as water turning to ice, etc. Humans cannot change form since their souls aren’t made out of any sort of matter than can change form.
Ultimately, then, when Aquinas speaks of things possessing the possibility of ceasing to be, he’s speaking of creatures that are subject to generation and corruption. Generation and corruption are a subset of “coming to be and passing away.” If something, like man, is instantly created, it is not generated; rather, it can only be generated if it comes from some preexisting matter. Generation also isn’t necessarily related to animals; a house can be generated out of bricks. Similarly, annihilation is not synonymous with corruption; corruption is when an animal dies and turns into dust.
To sum up, the premise of the Third Way is that there exist generable and corruptible beings (i.e. those which exist in other forms and which can survive in altered forms their own destruction). Kenny find this premise sound.
He then breaks down the Third Way into its constitutive parts.
1: whatever has the possibility of not being, at some time or other is not.
2: If everything has the possibility of not being, then at some time or other nothing is.
3: If at some time or other nothing is, then there is nothing now.
4: It is not the case that there is nothing now.
5: Therefore, not everything has the possibility of not being.
Kenny then produces a series of objections. To begin with, the first premise is questionable. One could logically imagine something with the possibility of not existing nonetheless existing eternally. Next, to pass from statement 1 to 2 is to commit the “quantifier-shift fallacy” - in essence, to equate “each thing at some time is not,” to “at some time or other, everything is not.” Moreover, even if it were true that at some point nothing will exist, there’s no reason to assume that such a point might not come at a future date, or even that there might be an endless succession of overlapping contingent beings. The proof is predicated on the idea of infinite time. Finally, even if one accepts the bulk of Aquinas’s argument, there’s no reason one could not imagine the everlasting being that assures continued existence to be matter.
Fourth Way: Gradation in Things (causa formalis)
Basic argument: Things exist in degrees; for example, something can be relatively hot or relatively good. Things tend to be more x (hot, good, etc), as they approach the source of this quality. (A stone in a fire is hotter than one in the forest, for example). We see that things can be relatively good, therefore we have to conclude there is something better, something absolutely good that they can approach in perfection. This is God.
Essentially, this is Aquinas’s flirtation with Platonism. I am going to skip Kenny’s exposition of the Platonic Forms, under the assumption we all know the narrative. Instead, I want to begin with Aquinas’s relation to Platonism. In many points in his work he is extremely critical of Platonism. He claims to think that the Idea of an entire species - zB, absolute man - is nonsense, but nonetheless subscribes to some sort of essentialized definition of things. So while there is no Idea of man, existing in the ether, there is humanity, which is divided among a series of finite individuals. Thus, Form is individualized and has a specific history. Put otherwise, there is no such thing as Wisdom, but there is “wisdom of,” as in “the wisdom of Socrates.” (This, on a side note, reminds me of Heidegger’s stance toward Being).
Nonetheless, the Fourth Way is very clearly Platonic in many ways, and is predicated on the assumption that all individual goods exist in some relation to God, in the same way Plato thinks exists between particularized goods and the Idea of the Good. God, in this way, is essentially the Platonic idea of the Good or of Being.
Problems:
First, to say that “this is good” is essentially a performative statement, and not a statement with any objective truth value. Second, “good” is far too generic of a term, and it’s not clear that putting the goodness of a husband on the same scale as the goodness of a horse makes any sense at all. Third, the question arises whether or not the “Good” is a maximum ideal or something actual. If it’s an ideal, there’s no reason to think it actually exists, any more than there’s reason to think that the “largest thing” actually exists. If the “Good” is supposed to be an actual thing, there’s no reason to think the best thing can’t be man or something other than God. If the best thing is supposed to be God, we need Plato to fill in the gap, and posit the Good as some sort of Idea that man participates in and resembles.
So what does it mean to be the truest, the noblest, the best of things? Aquinas thinks it means to be the thing with the most being (82). To be is ens shining through esse, which I think means that actual existence (esse?) is the activity of being shining through. Early Aquinas thinks it’s possible to understand essence without existence. (I can understand what a phoenix is without it existing). Therefore, under this logic, if God is subsistent existence, to know he exists is to know his essence. Kenny finds this absurd and tautological.
Kenny tries to make sense of what it means to say one knows God by turning to the distinction Aquinas makes in types of knowledge. One can either know what the words mean, or give a more detailed, scientific explanation. Aquinas often says that before you can ask whether something exists, you have to know what the word means, but before you begin investigating its nature or essence (knowledge #2?), you need to know that it exists.
Regarding the Five Ways, this means that before formulating proofs of God’s existence, we need to know what the word “God” means. The Five Ways each articulate a different meaning (etc., unmoved mover). But what God actually is (knowledge in the second sense), we can never know in this life.
What we do know at this point is that God is identical with his esse, or actual existence. Esse, according to Aquinas, is “only attributed to self-subsistent things.” There are two types of esse; unique, substantial esse (Socrates is a man), or accidental esse (ex: Socrates is white). There is a third type of esse, “esse est,” (Socrates is) which is reducible to the first type, substantial esse.
It is impossible for esse to exist without form. So when we say “esse est.” the implication is that something, some predicate, is the essence of the substance in question. “Socrates est,” therefore means that “Socrates is a human being,” or , “Socrates is capable of performing the operations characteristic of human nature”; Socrates, in essence, is alive. Applied to God, this means the statement “God est” means “God is performing a divine life.” Traced back, that leads us once again to our only really piece of knowledge about God; his existence is essence, esse.
Once again, Kenny tries to figure out what that actually means. What is esse? In Aquinas, esse is the fundamental predicate of everything. Everything is, has being. Additionally, everything produces esse as a common effect. So ginger, for example has its proper effect of producing whatever it is that ginger produces (the gingering of the ginger, a la Heidegger?) Additionally, though, ginger causes something to be hot. In this sense, all things cause something else “to be” something or other as a common effect, as a secondary effect, in light of a higher cause. However, unlike all other things, God causes being as his primary, proper effect. God is the thing that produces being.
Take away: Essentially, Kenny argues, this leaves esse empty of content. Since we can’t add anything to the proposition “God is,” and “God est esse” is meaningless or tautological, to say “God is” is either to offer a fragment or to offer an ill-formed formula whose variable expression offers no possibility of substitution. While God may be the Platonic Idea of Being, this tells us nothing.
The Fifth Way: Direction of Things (causa formalis)
Basic argument: Kenny sees this as an argument from design. Certain things, which lack awareness, act for the sake of an end, as proven by the fact they always act for what is best. Things which lack intelligence cannot act toward a goal unless something intelligent directs them. Therefore God, the intelligent being toward which everything in nature is directed as a goal, must exist.
Per usual, Kenny begins by raising some questions which seem slightly unnecessary given what we know of Aquinas’s project. First, are these things acting for their own good or that of the universe? He claims it’s probably the former. Second, does each thing have its own intelligence or is everything directed by a single intelligence? This question isn’t worth addressing.
Aquinas offers several different proofs of teleology in nature, starting with the foot is made for walking, leaves are made to protect fruit, etc. He also offers a priori proofs that any agent, even unconscious, must act for ends. He defines an “end” as “that toward which the drive of an agent tends,” regardless of whether or not the agent succeeds. Actions can either terminate in a product, such as a house, or in an action itself, as with thought. In all cases, though, the agent acts toward an end. It beats the shit out of me why this constitutes an a priori proof, though.
Anyway, Kenny claims Aquinas has four more such “arguments.”
2: Impossibility of acting forever: A final end is one which, after achieving, the agent stops striving. As action can’t go on forever and an infinite action is inconceivable, there must be a final action?
3: Likeness between cause and effect: There are two types of agents: natural and intelligent. The intelligent agent acts by forming an image of his goal and trying to realize it. There must be something similar for the natural agent, where the likeness of the effect preexists in the agent.
4: Faults in nature: There can only be faults where things are directed towards ends. So it only makes sense to talk of a monstrous birth if there is some norm it deviates from. This is an Aristotelian argument.
5: Non-fortuitous production of the good: In nature, we find the best consistently happening. One could call it luck if the best happened randomly, irregularly, but consistency implies order and agency.
Kenny thinks all of these arguments are faulty, but begins by trying to clarify their meaning. What does it mean, he asks, to attribute purpose to inanimate objects? Short answer, they have tendencies. But there’s no reason to look at this teleologically, rather than simply saying that water has a tendency to freeze, for example.
Regarding the impossibility of infinite action, Kenny thinks that to say an agent can’t aim to an infinite series of aims is already to impute ends/aims to that agent. All we see, in a Humean sense, is a series of things happening that are sometimes interrupted by or punctuated by periods of rest. We don’t actually observe finite, purposeful actions.
Again, regarding argument three, Kenny says we can’t actually know like is acting in order to bring about like; again, it could be a meaningless tendency. He finds the argument that it only makes sense to speak of monstrosities within reference to teleology sound, but too limited to be helpful. All that proves, Kenny thinks, is that some systems can be understood teleologically. I think this also patently a bad argument. A “monstrous birth” is only a mistake from the perspective of someone trying to impose order and stasis on a system or species. From an evolutionary perspective, freaks and flaws simply look like part of the system.
Kenny then goes into a long tangent about current notions of teleology, most notably Charles Taylor’s argument in The Explanation of Behavior that the question of whether or not teleological systems exist in nature is an empirical one, not a philosophical one. He thinks philosopher have wrongly dismissed teleology with the assumption that such a system would have to be regulated by an unobservable entity, whereas he thinks something is teleological simply if one can understand behavior X in terms of its function in the system producing effect Y (homeostasis, possibly). Basically, Kenny decides that it makes sense to consider mechanical things as most basically teleological (as in a watch); with inanimate things, the mechanistic explanation is most basic; and with animal things, it could be both.
Regarding Aquinas’s argument, though, Kenny claims that he undermines himself in a passage where he claims that while the nest-building instinct looks like intelligence, it’s obviously not, because intelligence allows for deviation in behavior, while such normal adaptive behavior doesn’t; all birds build the same nest. Since only humans are capable of deviations in behavior, i.e., of intelligence, we have to ascribe the apparently intelligent behavior of the animals to another force, such as God.
Kenny then argues that if normal adaptive behavior calls for intelligence, it’s much more logical to ascribe it to animals than to some disincarnate God. I’m not sure why he thinks Aquinas has “sawn off the branch he was sitting on,” though. Yes, it is more logical to think of animals having some sort of primitive intelligence than thinking they’re machines directed by some disincarnate God if one ascribes intelligence to normal, regular adaptive behavior. But as Aquinas specifically limits his notion of intelligence to irregular adaptive behavior, he still seems relatively solid. Of course, what constitutes intelligence is a philosophical (maybe semantical) question, as we see from Kenny’s assertion at the end that it doesn’t make sense to think of the sort of disincarnate, infinite intelligence God would have as connecting meaningfully to the term. Still, I’m not sure it’s good form to redefine another philosopher’s terms and then, by applying your new interpretation of their vocabulary to their system, claim that they have proved themselves wrong.
What this is getting at is that I think the spirit of this book is absolute bullshit. The context was nice, thinking of the 5 Ways in terms of the 4 Causes was helpful, the reference to other texts was also helpful, but on the whole this desire to demolish, to hold Aquinas up to some modern standard, to assume some stance of superiority that allows Kenny to read Aquinas for all of his mistakes and none of his virtues - all of the ways, in short, that Kenny points out that Aquinas failed to be a good “sophisticated” modern - is absolutely representative of anglo-analytic philosophy at its worst. Smug bastard.
Take-away: Anthony Kenny is a jackass.
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