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Mini-Course in Philosophy The Ontological Question |
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A Mini-Course in Ontology The Ontological Question is the question of reality in its most general, most abstract, most profound meaning. It is the question of being, that is, of being as such, and not of being as it stands determinate in this nature or that nature or the other nature. It is the question of being or reality stripped of the limitations that come of materiality, that is, of bodiliness or of dependence on bodily things. Hence, it is the question of nonmaterial real being. Here we have the heart of metaphysics, and metaphysics is the heart of philosophy. For philosophy is the ultimate science of all things, of all reality, and here we have all reality drawn into a mighty focus and seen as a single thing, as being. The branch of philosophy which answers the Ontological Question is known as Ontology or Fundamental Metaphysics. This mini-course is divided into the following four Sections:
Section 1: The Nature of Being Topics:
a) Metaphysics It is most important that the student learn early and learn well the precise meaning of this term metaphysics. For there are many, even among the learned, who use the word amiss, and misuse gives us reason to suspect the presence of misunderstanding. Metaphysics literally means after-physics. And physics here means no laboratory science of bodies with mass and inertia. It means natures. The Greek physis is the same as the Latin natura or the English nature, and it means a working essence. Now, the essence of a thing is its fundamental make-up, its basic character as such a thing. And when this essence is looked upon as the source and font of activities or operations, it is called a nature. Thus, if you want to know the essence of a thing, you look up its definition; its definition tells you what it is. But when you know its nature, you what is does or can do. The essence of a human being, for instance, is a substantial compound of body and soul. The nature of a human being makes this substantial compound of body and soul the source of all activities that properly belong to a human being: growing, sensing, thinking, willing, etc. We do not say that it is essential to man to think; we do say that is natural to man to think. Nature is essence as the source of operations. Now, there are many essences in the world around us -- plants, animals, human beings, lifeless things. Each of these essences has its proper activities, and, in view of these, each essence is a nature or physis. And, since it is this bodily world that first engages our attention and is the scene of our immediate experience, we speak of the things in this world as belonging to the physical order. This, be it understood, is a cramped use of the term physical, for physical, taken literally, refers to any physis (or nature or working essence) whether it be bodily or non-bodily. But, as we say, the phrase the physical order is employed to designate this world of bodily things. Hence any study, any science, of things in this bodily universe is called a physical study, a physical science. Now, there are things which the mind notices here in the bodily world which are manifestly not limited to this world but belong to the non-bodily world as well, that is, to the world of spiritual things and to the world as abstractly known. For instance, the term substance (which means a reality that is existible as itself, and not as a mere mark or qualifier of some other thing) is not necessarily limited to bodies. We can conceive of spiritual substance as easily as of bodily substance. Again, a thing which is understood is transferred, so to speak, into the knowing mind; it is represented there in idea or concept; that is, it is re-present there. The idea itself is a mental image; we are not talking of the idea itself, however. We are now considering the thing as it exists in the knowing mind through the instrumentality of the idea. Manifestly this cognitional existence (or intentional existence, as it is called) is not the same as the physical existence of a thing known; but it is a real existence none the less. My idea of tree, as an idea, is in and from the mind; it is a logical being, not a real being. But my knowledge of tree in and through the idea tree is knowledge of reality; it is real knowledge; I know real being; and I know it by reason of the fact that tree is stripped by mental abstraction of all limitation which makes each tree the one individual bodily thing it is. For my knowledge of tree holds good of any tree, of every tree, regardless of size, botanical kind, location, or even actual existence since it holds good of every possible tree. In a word, though a tree is bodily in the physical order (or the order of bodily things) and though it is sheerly mental in the logical order (or order of ideas) it is real in the order of things or realities abstractly known. Now, the realities (and hold hard to that term realities) which can be found not only in the bodily world or the physical order, but also in the supra-physical order, whether this be the spiritual order of substances, or the order of realities known in a supra-material way, are said to belong to the metaphysical order. And a science of these things is a metaphysical science. Metaphysics, as the name of a science, means the science of nonmaterial real being. We have seen that such being is either a spiritual substance, or a bodily thing which is stripped of materiality by abstraction; it may also be any being, substantial or accidental, which exists or has influence in the field of bodies and non-bodies alike and hence is not limited to the material. Substance is a metaphysical term; cause is a metaphysical term; such terms also are essence, accident, relation, and many, many others. For substance can be material or it can be spiritual and is still a substance; thus substance is not held exclusively to the material or physical order, and is, in so far, nonmaterial; and it indicates reality, not a mode of being in the mind; hence it is both nonmaterial and real, and is, in itself, a metaphysical term and concept. Cause can have place among bodily realities, spiritual realities, and can be traced also in mathematical relations, and in mental relations which are non-mathematical; cause can exist among substances, among accidents. It is not held down, therefore, to the order of things material; that is, it is nonmaterial. Yet it is real; it is conceived as a reality, and where it exists, it exists as a reality. It belongs to the order, not of this physis, or of that physis, or of the other physis, but sweeps up and over and inclusively upon all. It comes after the limited physes; it is meta-physical; it is metaphysical. And so with the other examples mentioned. All the terms noted are not so inclusive as the term cause, but it is clear that all of them are free from the limitations which would hold them exclusively applicable in the realm of bodies; hence we say they are nonmaterial; and they indicate reality; they are nonmaterial and real, and therefore they are metaphysical. Metaphysics, therefore, is the science of nonmaterial real being. Now, the Greek word on (stem, onto-) means being; and the termination -logy suggests science. And so the fundamental part of metaphysics, which deals with being as such, has been given the name which means "the science of being," that is, the name ontology. b) Being The term being means thing, reality. It means anything that exists or can be thought of as existing. The Latin term for being is the coined word ens. Ens has a strength that is lacking in the English term being. Perhaps this is because ens is coined (for it would be the present participle of the Latin verb esse "to be," if that verb had a present participle, which, as a matter of fact, it has not), and is not a term in constant current use as the English being is. Ens is used exclusively and precisely in a philosophical sense as a noun, whereas being is used in our casual daily speech both as noun and as participle. In the present study, however, we use being as a noun to indicate thing or state. The Latin ens, by the way, is the etymological source of the English term entity. The term being, like every term, is the expression of an idea or concept. Now, as those of you who have studied the Logical Question should already know, an idea has a content or make-up called its comprehension; and a field of meaning, of denotation, called its extension. We have also seen that ideas, in point of extension, are, in themselves, universal, although they may be contracted to the character of particular and singular ideas. A universal idea expresses in the mind some one thing, that is, some one essence, which is found in each and every member of the extension of the idea; therefore the universal idea is predicable of all and each of these members (called inferiors or subjects of the idea). There are five possible modes of predication, viz., generic, specific, differential, proper, accidental; usually these are called simply genus, species, difference, property, accident. Every universal idea will be predicable of its inferiors in one of these five ways. Now, when we regard the idea of being as a universal idea, that is, as representing in the mind some one thing, some one essence, that is common to all its inferiors, we find that there is simply nothing conceivable which is absent from the scope or extension of the idea being. But how does it apply to its inferiors; how is it predicable of them? Certainly not as accident, property, or difference; and certainly not as species. For these are restricted classifications of a way or mode of predication, and, as we have just noted, there is absolutely no restriction in the mode in which being is predicated of its inferiors, for it not only applies to all, but to their differences and particularities as well. Everything is a being, every difference of things is a being, every special character is a being, every conceivable thing is a being. Is the one classification left, that is, is genus the mode of predication proper to being? Not precisely. For a genus is, after all, predicable of a class of inferiors, and there are boundaries of that class, and things outside those boundaries to which the genus does not apply or of which it is not predicable. This is not the case with being. Hence the idea being does not apply to its inferiors as a genus. But we have said that every universal idea must apply to its inferiors in one of the five ways called the predicables. Being does not so apply. Therefore being is not a universal idea. It is more; it is a transcendental idea. It soars above all classifications and is predicable of everything. But, since genus is the most wide of the modes of predication, we may say that being, in its application to inferiors, is closer to genus than to any of the other four predicables. And so, loosely speaking, we say being is "a sort of genus" or "a genus by figure of speech"; in short, we say being is a genus by analogy or that being is an analogical genus. What we have said of the idea of being is to be said as well of the term being. It is a transcendental term, not merely a universal term. It applies to its inferiors (terms that can be used as subject when it is predicate) as an analogical genus. Being is understood by the mind as contrasted with its opposite, that is, non-being or nothing. For, as the eye cannot behold a visible object exactly unless it stand against a contrasting background, so the mind cannot see being except against the background of non-being or nothingness. And the mind sees, even as it grasps being as necessarily contradictory to non-being, that "a thing cannot be and not-be at the same time and in the same way." This judgment the mind inevitably pronounces as a self-evident certitude and truth. This is the fundamental first-principle, the first of self-evident truths, which serves as root-reason and solid basis for every other judgment. This self-evident truth, this principle (that is, this guiding truth), is called "The Principle of Contradiction." Out of the idea of being then (which is the very first idea in the order of time and in the order of thinking, since our first grasp of anything is as a thing) comes at once the judgment which is enunciated as the principle of contradiction. Further analysis of the idea being makes evident other principles. For, after seeing that a thing cannot be and not-be in the same way and simultaneously, the mind sees that the classifications of being and non-being are all inclusive, and it necessarily judges, "Anything either is or it is not; there is no middle ground between being and non-being. "This judgment, so enunciated, is "The Principle of the Excluded Middle." Again, the mind, contemplating the idea being as contrasted with non-being or nothing, corroborates its finding by asserting the identity of being and the identity of non-being, thus: "Whatever is, is; and that which is not, is not." This is "The Principle of Identity." Finally, the mind, dwelling still on the idea of being as seen in contrast with its opposite, judges with inevitable and absolute certitude that these opposites are different, thus: "That which is is not that which is not; nor can that which is not be identified with that which is." This is "The Principle of Difference." Thus the mind, studying the idea of being and contrasting it with the idea of non-being, sees these self-evident truths: that a thing cannot be both of the opposites simultaneously; that the opposites exhaust the possibilities leaving no middle ground which is neither; that each is what it is; that either is not the other. These self-evident truths are primal, basic, fundamental (and, we dare to say, RADICAL) to all thinking; they are the root of every proof, of every sound thinking process and its fruitage. They are called first principles, that is, first intellectual principles, first guiding truths. Their names, to review them, are the principle of contradiction, the principle of the excluded middle, the principle of identity, and the principle of difference. Of these, the very first is the principle of contradiction. c) Determinants of Being There are no specific kinds of being as such. For anything is a thing. But there are specific kinds of beings, of things, on other bases than the basis of their character as things simply. We shall speak of such a classification of things when we come to consider the categories. But here, considering being in its most general aspect, we have certain points which we may call determinants. Of these we now speak. 1. Real Being -- Logical Being
2. Actual Being -- Potential Being
Under the head of actual being we must consider some types of actuality: (a) First Actuality -- Second Actuality
(b) Actuality of Essence -- Actuality of Existence
Under the head of potential being we must consider some types of potentiality: (a) Objective Potentiality -- Subjective Potentiality
(b) Active Potentiality -- Passive Potentiality Active potentiality is a capacity for doing. It is a fully active potentiality if it is a capacity for laying hold of something and changing it, as, for example, the digestive power or potentiality which lays hold of food and changes it into flesh and blood. It is an operative potentiality if it involves doing without essentially changing what it affects. Passive potentiality is a capacity for receiving, as, for example, the capacity for marble to be shaped into a statue. Sometimes our knowing-powers are called passive potentialities, for they receive the impression of their objects. But the knowing-powers are also active inasmuch as they take in the impression; they re-act to the impression. It seems more accurate to call the knowing-powers operative rather than passive.
Summary of the Section In this Section we have learned the meaning of the term metaphysics, and have clearly determined the parts of philosophy which properly belong under this heading. We have studied the nature of being. We have learned that being is a transcendental concept and term, and that it is predicable of its inferiors in a manner analogous to that of a genus. We have studied the principles which are immediately derived from the idea of being as seen against the background of its opposite, non-being. We have learned that these principles are four:
We have noted that the first principle of all is the Principle of Contradiction. These first principles are self-evident truths which are fundamental to all thinking and to all certitude in knowledge. We have noted certain determinants of being: real, logical; actual, potential. We have seen that actuality is either first actuality or second actuality (actus primus; actus secundus); that it is actuality of essence, actuality of existence. We have also learned that potentiality is objective or subjective; active or passive.
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