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Thinking Being Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition Ancient Mediterranean and Medieval Texts and Contexts

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Thinking Being Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition Ancient Mediterranean and Medieval Texts and Contexts Thinking Being Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition Ancient Mediterranean and Medieval Texts and Contexts Editors Robert M. Berchman Jacob Neusner Studies in Platonism, Neoplatonism, and the Platonic Tradition Edited by Robert M. Berchman Dowling College and Bard College John F. Finamore University of Iowa Editorial Board JOHN DILLON (Trinity College, Dublin) – GARY GURTLER (Boston College) JEAN-MARC NARBONNE (Laval University, Canada) VOLUME 17 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/spnp Thinking Being Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition By Eric D. Perl LEIDEN • BOSTON 2014 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Perl, Eric David. Thinking being : introduction to metaphysics in the classical tradition / by Eric D. Perl. pages cm. – (Ancient Mediterranean and medieval texts and contexts, ISSN 1871-188X ; VOLUME 17) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-26420-5 (hardback : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-90-04-26576-9 (e-book) 1. Metaphysics–History–To 1500. 2. Philosophy, Ancient. 3. Philosophy, Medieval. I. Title. B532.M48P47 2014 110.9–dc23 2013043388 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1871-188X ISBN 978-90-04-26420-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-26576-9 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. To Christine In spousal togetherness, being to my thinking CONTENTS Acknowledgments . ix Abbreviations. xi Introduction . 1 1 The Nature of Metaphysics . 1 2 The Scope of This Study . 4 3 Thought and Being . 7 I Parmenides . 11 1 Milesian Background. 11 2 Being and Thinking . 12 3 What Is Being? . 15 II Plato................................................................ 19 1 Reading Plato . 19 2 Being as Form . 22 3 The Meaning of Separation . 27 4 The Levels of Being . 34 5 The Ascent of the Soul . 38 6 Knowledge as συνουσία . 46 7 The Good. 54 8 The Forms and the Demiurge . 61 9 The Motion of Intellect. 65 10 The Receptacle of Becoming . 70 III Aristotle . 73 1 The Principles of Change . 73 2 Nature as Form . 77 3 Reality as Form: Metaphysics Ζ................................. 82 4 The Priority of Act. 89 5 The Unmoved Mover . 91 6 Life, Sense, and Intellect: On the Soul........................... 97 viii contents IV Plotinus . 107 1 Being and Intellect . 107 2 The One beyond Being . 114 3 The Production of Being . 123 4 Transcendence and Immanence . 129 5 Being as Beauty . 132 6 The Sensible and the Intelligible . 137 8 The Two Matters . 143 V Thomas Aquinas . 151 1 Aquinas and the Philosophical Tradition . 151 2 Essence and Existence . 152 3 God as Existence Itself . 158 4 Creatures and God . 166 5 Analogical Predication . 174 6 The Transcendentals . 177 Bibliography . 191 General Index. 195 Index Locorum . 209 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks are due to Terence J. Sweeney, my research assistant under a Rains Grant at Loyola Marymount University, for his assistance in preparing this volume for publication. ABBREVIATIONS Works of Plato Crat. Cratylus Euth. Euthyphro Gr. Hip. Greater Hippias Men. Meno Parm. Parmenides Phd. Phaedo Phdr. Phaedrus Phil. Philebus Rep. Republic Soph. Sophist Symp. Symposium Theaet. Theaetetus Tim. Timaeus Works of Aristotle De An. On the Soul Eth. Nic. Nicomachean Ethics Met. Metaphysics Phys. Physics Works of Thomas Aquinas De ente De ente et essentia De pot. Quaestiones disputatae de potentia dei De ver. Quaestiones disputatae de veritate In de caus. Suprum librum de causis In de ebd. Expositio libri de ebdomadibus In de int. Expositio libri peryermeneias ScG Summa contra gentiles ST Summa theologiae INTRODUCTION 1. The Nature of Metaphysics In the fall semester of 2008 I taught a course in the graduate program at Loy- ola Marymount University called “Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition.” Originally conceived primarily as an advanced survey of the most significant figures in classical metaphysics,1 the course as it proceeded developed into something far richer and deeper: an articulation of the thematic continuity in the thinking of being from Parmenides to Thomas Aquinas, centered on the two fundamental questions, ‘What is being?’ and ‘Why are there beings, rather than nothing?’ The first of these questions is formulated by Aristotle but stated by him to have been asked “from of old” (Met. Ζ.1, 1028b3–5); the second, although not expressly formulated in antiquity,2 is touched on by Plato in his account of the good as “beyond reality” and as the source of being itself (Rep. 509b6–10), and is central to the thought of both Plotinus and Aquinas. The result of remaining attentive to these two questions was a the- matic understanding of the tradition that is liable to be lost in more special- ized examinations of individual thinkers and remains altogether unthought in ‘histories of philosophy’ that are merely historical rather than truly philo- sophical. The present study, aiming to set forth that understanding, is thus intended neither as a survey nor as a history but as a properly philosophical exposition of the fundamental insights of classical metaphysics. These two questions, which together constitute the thinking of being which is metaphysics, are odd in the extreme. The term ‘being,’ here and throughout this book, is used to translate Greek ὄν or τὸ ὄν, the present par- ticiple of the verb ‘to be.’ Corresponding to German Seiend (not Sein!) and (philosophical) French étant, it thus signifies that-which-is: either, accord- ing to context, the whole of reality, all that is taken together as one whole (as in the first question); or a thing-that-is, as in the expression ‘a being’ (as, in the plural, in the second question). These questions, therefore, cannot be 1 The term ‘classical’ is used here, for want of a better, to refer to ancient and medieval philosophy as a continuous tradition. 2 This question, in the form “Why is being at all and not rather nothing?” is identified by Heidegger as the fundamental question of metaphysics: Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, 4th ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1976), 3. 2 introduction answered in any ordinary way. We usually address a ‘What is something?’ question by classifying and differentiating: if, for example, we are asked ‘What is a dog?’ we will first identify it as an animal, thus grouping it with certain other things, and then specify what kind of animal it is, thus differ- entiating it from these others. But we cannot answer the question ‘What is being?’ in this way: being can neither be grouped with nor differentiated from anything else, because there isn’t anything else. Being means precisely everything, that-which-is taken all together as a whole, and therefore cannot be defined by the method of genus and specific difference. As for the sec- ond question, ‘Why are there beings rather than nothing?’ we must see at once that any answer that can actually be given will necessarily be a wrong answer, for any such answer must itself be something, some being, and thus included in that which is to be explained, rather than constituting the expla- nation of all beings as such. We may thus begin to wonder whether it is even meaningful to ask these questions, and hence whether metaphysics is possible at all. For such reasons the very enterprise of metaphysics is today often regarded as a mistake from the beginning. This is the so-called ‘death of metaphysics:’ we may speak of this being and that being, but not of being, of that-which-is as one whole. There is no such thing as ‘reality.’ The dismissal of these questions and hence of metaphysics itself, how- ever, comes at a heavy price. In opposition to the Heideggerian claim that metaphysics inevitably leads to and thus in a certain sense already is nihil- ism, it is the contention of this study that, on the contrary, metaphysics as traditionally undertaken is the antithesis of and the only alternative to nihilism. For nihilism consists fundamentally in the claim that there is no such thing as reality. In refusing to think being, i.e., that-which-is all together as one whole, we are in effect denying that there is any unity to all things and repudiating in principle any comprehensive account of the whole. This is the predicament of ‘postmodernity,’ leaving us with utter fragmentation, having no horizon of being within and against which to place whatever we may be thinking. But that means that we cannot, after all, speak even of this or that being, for to do so is already to identify it as a being and thus to see it within the whole. Without the horizon, nothing is a being: all things disappear from view and there is indeed no reality. To think anything at all is implicitly to think it as a being and is thus already to be engaged in metaphysics. Thought cannot dispense with being. The only alternative to metaphysics is to think nothing, that is, not to think.
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