DOCSLIB.ORG

Ten Philosophical Mistakes

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Ten Philosophical Mistakes Ten Philosophical Mistakes Mortimer I. Adler MACMILLAN PUBLISHING COMPANY New York COLLIER MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS London Copyright © 1985 by Mortimer J. Adler All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Macmillan Publishing Company 866 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022 Collier Macmillan Canada, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-Ten philosophical mistakes. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Philosophy. I. Title. II. Title: 10 philosophical mistakes. B72.A34 1985 100 84-26144 ISBN O-O2-5OO33O-5 Printed in the United States of America To Wynn and Larry Aldrich Contents To the Reader Prologue: Little Errors in the Beginning The Ten Subjects About Which the Mistakes Are Made PART ONE Consciousness and Its Objects The Intellect and the Senses Words and Meanings Knowledge and Opinion Moral Values PART TWO Happiness and Contentment Freedom of Choice Human Nature Human Society Human Existence Epilogue: Modern Science and Ancient Wisdom To the Reader Titles of books are often misleading; sometimes they are inaccurate. Mine is not misleading, but it is inaccurate. Readers will find that there are more than ten philosophical mistakes considered and corrected in this book. But there are ten subjects about which these mistakes are made. A completely accurate, but also more cumbersome, title would have been: Ten Subjects About Which Philosophical Mistakes Have Been Made. I trust readers will understand why I chose the shorter, though less accurate, title. Readers will also find that the five chapters of Part One are longer than the five chapters of Part Two. The reason is that the mistakes discussed in Part One are more difficult to expound clearly. It is also more difficult to explain what is involved in correcting them. I should, perhaps, add that in my judgment the philosophical errors discussed in Part One are more fundamental and give rise to more serious consequences in modern thought. To the Reader I have not tried to argue for or prove the truths that I have offered as corrections of the errors pointed out. I rely upon the reader’s common sense to discern that the corrections have the ring of truth. PROLOGUE Little Errors in the Beginning 1 “The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.” So wrote Aristotle in the fourth century B.C. Sixteen centuries later Thomas Aquinas echoed this observation. Paraphrasing it, he said in effect that little errors in the beginning lead to serious consequences in the end. Neither Aristotle nor Aquinas had in mind the philosophical mistakes—all little errors in the beginning—with which this book is concerned. All of them are modern philosophical errors, mistakes made by philosophers since the seventeenth century, the century that was marked by departures in thought initiated by Thomas Hobbes in England and by Rene Descartes in France. In one or two instances, the philosophical errors with which we will be here concerned repeat errors that first occurred in antiquity. But this does not alter the fact that all of these mistakes are typically, if not wholly, modern in origin and in the serious consequences to which they have led in modern thought. Those serious consequences not only pervade contemporary philosophical thought, but also manifest themselves in popular misconceptions widely prevalent today. They all tend in the same direction. They affect our understanding of ourselves, our lives, our institutions, and our experience. They mislead our action as well as becloud our thought. They are not cloistered errors of merely academic significance. They have been popularized and spread abroad in a variety of ways. Many of us have unwittingly harbored some of these mistakes in our minds without knowing whence or how they came there. 2 To call these philosophical mistakes little errors is not to belittle their importance. It is rather to say that they are extremely simple mistakes, capable of being stated in a single sentence or two. The truth that corrects them is correspondingly simple and similarly capable of brief statement. However, their simplicity does not preclude certain complications. Some of these little errors involve a number of related points. Some have a number of related aspects. Some are dual mistakes, including both of two false extremes. Seen in their simplicity, or even with their attendant complications, they are mistakes that occur at the outset of a long train of thought, leading from erroneous premises through many steps to the false conclusions or consequences that those premises ultimately entail. At the very beginning, before the consequences are discerned, the mistake appears innocent and goes unnoticed. Only when we are confronted with the repugnant conclusions to which cogent reasoning carries us are we impelled to retrace our steps to find out where we went wrong. Only then is the erroneous premise that at first appeared innocent revealed as the culprit—a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Unfortunately much of modern thought has not sought in this way to avoid conclusions that have been regarded as unacceptable for one reason or another. Instead of retracing the steps that lead back to their sources in little errors at the beginning, modern thinkers have tried in other ways to circumvent the result of the initial errors, often compounding the difficulties instead of overcoming them. The advances that have been made in modern thought do not mitigate the disasters produced by conclusions that were not abandoned by discovering the initial mistakes from which they sprang. Making new starts by substituting true premises for false would have radically changed the picture that modern philosophy presents. 3 The order in which these philosophical mistakes are taken up in the following chapters is somewhat arbitrary, but not entirely so. If their seriousness for human life and action had been the criterion for deciding which should come first, the order might have been reversed. The last six of the ten chapters concern matters that have more obvious practical importance for our everyday life. The first four seem more ought not to be sought or done—on the side of mere opinion. There are no objectively valid and universally tenable moral standards or norms. This denial undermines the whole doctrine of natural, human rights, and, even worse, lends support to the dogmatic declaration that might makes right. The sixth mistake follows hard upon the fifth. It consists in the identification of happiness—a word we all use for something that everyone seeks for its own sake—with the purely psychological state of contentment, which we experience when we have the satisfaction of getting what we want. Modern thought and people generally in our time have totally ignored the other meaning of happiness as the moral quality of a whole life well lived. This error together with two related errors—the failure to distinguish between needs and wants and between real and merely apparent goods—undermines all modern efforts to produce a sound moral philosophy. The seventh mistake differs from all the rest. We are here concerned with the age-old controversy between those who affirm man’s freedom of choice and determinists who deny it on scientific grounds. The failure here is one of understanding. This misunderstanding is accompanied, on the part of the determinists, by a mistaken view of the relation between free choice and moral responsibility. The issue between the two parties to the controversy is not joined. The determinists do not understand the grounds on which the case for free will and free choice rests. Hence their arguments miss the mark. The eighth mistake consists in the astounding, yet in our day widely prevalent, denial of human nature. It goes to the extreme of asserting that nothing common to all human beings underlies the different behavioral tendencies and characteristics we find in the subgroups of the human race. The ninth mistake concerns the origin of various forms of human association—the family, the tribe or village, and the state or civil society. Failing to understand how the basic forms of human association are both natural and conventional (in this respect unlike the instinctively determined associations of other gregarious animals, which are natural only), it foists two totally unnecessary myths upon us—the myth of a primitive state of mankind in which individuals lived in total isolation from one another and the myth of the social contract by means of which they departed from that primitive state and entered into civil society. The tenth mistake is a metaphysical one. It consists in an error that can be called the fallacy of reductionism— assigning a much greater reality to the parts of an organized whole than to the whole itself; or even worse, maintaining that only the ultimate component parts have reality and that the wholes they constitute are mere appearances, or even illusory. According to that view, the real existences that constitute the physical world are the elementary particles that are components of the atom. When we regard human individuals as having the real existence and the enduring identity that they appear to have, we are suffering an illusion. If that is the case, then again we are devoid of moral responsibility for our actions. As I have pointed out, some of these mistakes have their prototypes in antiquity, but where that is the case we can find a refutation of them in Aristotle. The repetition of these mistakes in modern thought plainly indicates an ignorance of Aristotle’s correction of them. I hope that this brief summary of the ten subjects about which philosophical mistakes have been made in modern times whets the reader’s appetite for exploring them and for learning how they can be corrected or remedied.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Duns Scotus on the Common Nature and the Individual Differentia
    c Peter King, Philosophical Topics 20 (1992), 50–76 DUNS SCOTUS ON THE COMMON NATURE* Introduction COTUS holds that in each individual there is a principle that accounts for its being the very thing it is and a formally S distinct principle that accounts for its being the kind of thing it is; the former is its individual differentia, the latter its common nature.1 These two principles are not on a par: the common nature is prior to the individual differentia, both independent of it and indifferent to it. When the individual differentia is combined with the common nature, the result is a concrete individual that really differs from all else and really agrees with others of the same kind. The individual differentia and the common nature thereby explain what Scotus takes to stand in need of explanation: the indi- viduality of Socrates on the one hand, the commonalities between Socrates * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 26th International Congress on Medieval Studies, sponsored by the Medieval Institute, held at Western Michigan University 9–12 May 1991. All translations are my own. Scotus’s writings may be found in the following editions: (1) Vaticana: Iohannis Duns Scoti Doctoris Subtilis et Mariani opera omnia, ed. P. Carolus Bali¸cet alii, Typis Polyglottis Vaticanae 1950– Vols. I–VII, XVI–XVIII. (2) Wadding-Viv`es: Joannis Duns Scoti Doctoris Subtilis Ordinis Minorum opera omnia, ed. Luke Wadding, Lyon 1639; republished, with only slight alterations, by L. Viv`es,Paris 1891–1895. Vols. I–XXVI. References are to the Vatican edition wherever possible, to the Wadding-Viv`esedition otherwise.
    [Show full text]
  • Thomas Aquinas: Soul-Body Connection and the Afterlife Hyde Dawn Krista University of Missouri-St
    University of Missouri, St. Louis IRL @ UMSL Theses Graduate Works 4-16-2012 Thomas Aquinas: Soul-Body Connection and the Afterlife Hyde Dawn Krista University of Missouri-St. Louis, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://irl.umsl.edu/thesis Recommended Citation Krista, Hyde Dawn, "Thomas Aquinas: Soul-Body Connection and the Afterlife" (2012). Theses. 261. http://irl.umsl.edu/thesis/261 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Works at IRL @ UMSL. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of IRL @ UMSL. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Thomas Aquinas: Soul-Body Connection and the Afterlife Krista Hyde M.L.A., Washington University in St. Louis, 2010 B.A., Philosophy, Southeast Missouri State University – Cape Girardeau, 2003 A Thesis Submitted to The Graduate School at the University of Missouri – St. Louis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Philosophy April 2012 Advisory Committee Gualtiero Piccinini, Ph.D. Chair Jon McGinnis, Ph.D. John Brunero, Ph.D. Copyright, Krista Hyde, 2012 Abstract Thomas Aquinas nearly succeeds in addressing the persistent problem of the mind-body relationship by redefining the human being as a body-soul (matter-form) composite. This redefinition makes the interaction problem of substance dualism inapplicable, because there is no soul “in” a body. However, he works around the mind- body problem only by sacrificing an immaterial afterlife, as well as the identity and separability of the soul after death. Additionally, Thomistic psychology has difficulty accounting for the transmission of universals, nor does it seem able to overcome the arguments for causal closure.
    [Show full text]
  • Contemplation and the Human Animal in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas
    Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2011 Contemplation and the Human Animal in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas Edyta M. Imai Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Imai, Edyta M., "Contemplation and the Human Animal in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas" (2011). Dissertations. 205. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/205 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2011 Edyta M. Imai LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO CONTEMPLATION AND THE HUMAN ANIMAL IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN PHILOSOPHY BY EDYTA M. IMAI CHICAGO IL DECEMBER 2011 Copyright by Edyta M. Imai, 2011 All rights reserved TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: CONTEMPLATION AND NATURAL APPETITES 30 CHAPTER TWO: SENSATION AND CONTEMPLATION 104 CHAPTER THREE: DESIRE AND CONTEMPLATION 166 CHAPTER FOUR: DELIGHT AND CONTEMPLATION 230 BIBLIOGRAPHY 291 VITA 303 iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ST Summa theologiae SCG Summa contra gentiles QDV Quaestiones disputatae de veritate QDA Quaestiones disputatae de anima In Boetii de Trin. In Librum Boetii de Trinitate Expositio In DA Sententia libri De anima In NE Sententia libri Ethicorum In Met Commentarium in XII libros Metaphysicorum In Ph Commentarium in VIII libros Physicorum SENT Commentarium in quatuor libros Sententiarum iv INTRODUCTION In this dissertation I examine the manner in which – according to Thomas Aquinas - the operations of the sensitive soul contribute to contemplation.
    [Show full text]
  • Redalyc.Imagination in Avicenna and Kant
    Tópicos, Revista de Filosofía ISSN: 0188-6649 [email protected] Universidad Panamericana México Bäck, Allan Imagination in Avicenna and Kant Tópicos, Revista de Filosofía, núm. 29, 2005, pp. 101-130 Universidad Panamericana Distrito Federal, México Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=323027318006 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative Imagination in Avicenna and Kant Allan Back Kutztown University The intellect thinks time in the now^ In comparing the views of Avicenna and Kant on the imagination, we find a striking congnience of doctrine, Kant's doctrines of the syntheses of the imagination in his Transcendental Deduction (both A and B) have remarkable similarities with Avicerma's views. For both Avicenna and Kant, the imagination serves to connect the phenomenal and the noumenal. At the least this comparison has the dual use of placing Kant's doctrines in the context of the Aristotelian tradition and of illuminatiiig the modem r significance of the thought of Avicenna, Since Kant's thought is more familiar to us than Avicenna's (although perhaps not as evident in itself), we can use Kant also to help us understand the claims of Avicenna, On the other hand, tliis comparison may help to support the claim that an understanding of Kant lies to a large extent in his medieval and post-medieval roots -just as Copernicus, in his own "Copemican revolution", was following certain earlier traditions.
    [Show full text]
  • The Univocity of Substance and the Formal Distinction of Attributes: the Role of Duns Scotus in Deleuze's Reading of Spinoza Nathan Widder
    parrhesia 33 · 2020 · 150-176 the univocity of substance and the formal distinction of attributes: the role of duns scotus in deleuze's reading of spinoza nathan widder This paper examines the role played by medieval theologian John Duns Scotus in Gilles Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza’s philosophy of expressive substance; more generally, it elaborates a crucial moment in the development of Deleuze’s philosophy of sense and difference. Deleuze contends that Spinoza adapts and extends Duns Scotus’s two most influential theses, the univocity of being and formal distinction, despite neither appearing explicitly in Spinoza’s writings. “It takes nothing away from Spinoza’s originality,” Deleuze declares, “to place him in a perspective that may already be found in Duns Scotus” (Deleuze, 1992, 49).1 Nevertheless, the historiographic evidence is clearly lacking, leaving Deleuze to admit that “it is hardly likely that” Spinoza had even read Duns Scotus (359n28). Indeed, the only support he musters for his speculation is Spinoza’s obvious in- terests in scholastic metaphysical and logical treatises, the “probable influence” of the Scotist-informed Franciscan priest Juan de Prado on his thought, and the fact that the problems Duns Scotus addresses need not be confined to Christian thought (359–360n28). The paucity of evidence supporting this “use and abuse” of history, however, does not necessarily defeat the thesis. Like other lineages Deleuze proposes, the one he traces from Duns Scotus to Spinoza, and subsequently to Nietzsche, turns not on establishing intentional references by one thinker to his predecessor, but instead on showing how the borrowings and adaptations asserted to create the connec- tion make sense of the way the second philosopher surmounts blockages he faces while responding to issues left unaddressed by the first.
    [Show full text]
  • Essentially Rational Animals
    Essentially Rational Animals The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Boyle, Matthew. Forthcoming. Essentially rational animals. In Rethinking epistemology, ed. Guenther Abel and James Conant. Berlin, Germany: Walter de Grutyer. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:8641838 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Essentially Rational Animals Matthew Boyle, Harvard University —Forthcoming in Rethinking Epistemology, ed. G. Abel and J. Conant— One may call this whole disposition of the human being’s powers whatever one likes: understanding, reason, awareness, etc. It is indifferent to me, so long as one does not assume these terms to name discrete powers or mere increased levels of the animal powers. It is the whole organization of all human powers; the whole domestic economy of his sensing and cognizing, his cognizing and willing nature… The difference is not in levels or the addition of powers, but in a quite different sort of orientation and unfolding of all powers. J. G. Herder, Treatise on the Origin of Languages I, §2 (2002, pp. 82-3) 1. Introduction 1.1 According to a tradition reaching back at least as far as Aristotle, human beings are set apart from other terrestrial creatures by their rationality. Other animals, according to this tradition, are capable of sensation and appetite, but they are not capable of thought, the kind of activity characteristic of the rational part of the soul.
    [Show full text]
  • John Duns Scotus's Metaphysics of Goodness
    University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 11-16-2015 John Duns Scotus’s Metaphysics of Goodness: Adventures in 13th-Century Metaethics Jeffrey W. Steele University of South Florida, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the Medieval History Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Scholar Commons Citation Steele, Jeffrey W., "John Duns Scotus’s Metaphysics of Goodness: Adventures in 13th-Century Metaethics" (2015). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/6029 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. John Duns Scotus’s Metaphysics of Goodness: Adventures in 13 th -Century Metaethics by Jeffrey Steele A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Thomas Williams, Ph.D. Roger Ariew, Ph.D. Colin Heydt, Ph.D. Joanne Waugh, Ph.D Date of Approval: November 12, 2015 Keywords: Medieval Philosophy, Transcendentals, Being, Aquinas Copyright © 2015, Jeffrey Steele DEDICATION To the wife of my youth, who with patience and long-suffering endured much so that I might gain a little knowledge. And to God, fons de bonitatis . She encouraged me; he sustained me. Both have blessed me. “O taste and see that the LORD is good; How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!!” --Psalm 34:8 “You are the boundless good, communicating your rays of goodness so generously, and as the most lovable being of all, every single being in its own way returns to you as its ultimate end.” –John Duns Scotus, De Primo Principio Soli Deo Gloria .
    [Show full text]
  • Avicenna's Flying Man Argument
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association () – © American Philosophical Association DOI:./apa.. The Thought Experimental Method: Avicenna’s Flying Man Argument* ABSTRACT: No argument from the Arabic philosophical tradition has received more scholarly attention than Avicenna’s ‘flying man’ thought experiment, in which a human is created out of thin air and is able to grasp his existence without grasping that he has a body. This paper offers a new interpretation of the version of this thought experiment found at the end of the first chapter of Avicenna’s treatment of soul in the Healing. We argue that it needs to be understood in light of an epistemological theory set out elsewhere by Avicenna, which allows that all the constitutive properties of an essence will be clear to someone who understands and considers that essence. On our reading, this theory is put to work in the ‘flying man’: because the flying man would grasp that his own essence has existence without grasping that he has a body, connection to body cannot be constitutive of the essence. KEYWORDS: Avicenna, self-awareness, dualism, essentialism, Islamic philosophy No argument from the Arabic philosophical tradition has received more scholarly attention than Avicenna’s ‘flying man’ thought experiment. It has recently been hailed as a major contribution to the theory of self-awareness (Kaukua : ch.), and in the past it has been compared to Descartes’s cogito argument. Though Avicenna alludes to the argument several times in his works (see the list in Hasse : –), the passage on which most scholarship has focused—and on which we will likewise concentrate here—is to be found on the last page of the first chapter of Avicenna’s() treatment of soul in his Healing (al-Shifāʾ) – we will subsequently refer to this section of the Healing as On the Soul.
    [Show full text]
  • Is Maimonides' Ideal Person Austerely Rationalist?
    Is Maimonides’ Ideal Person Austerely Rationalist? by Menachem Kellner Abstract: Maimonides is regularly thought to have seen the ideal human as nothing more than a rational animal. In this essay I show that this picture of Maimonides is insufficiently nuanced and reflects a notion of intellectualism thinner and more pallid than that actually held by him. But first I adduce evidence for the standard view from Maimonides’ positions on perfected and imperfected human beings, and from his discussions of immortality, morality, providence, prophecy, and the distinction between humans and animals. Maimonides’ universalism and his messianic vision are also shown to reflect his intellectualism. In the second half of the essay I argue that Maimonides holds that knowledge is transformative. Through an analysis of his discussions of human perfection, prophecy, and love of God, it is shown that learning carried out properly transforms the learner into a new kind of person. aimonides is regularly thought to have seen the ideal human in purely and austerely intellectualist terms, as nothing more M than a rational animal. In this essay I plan to show that this picture of Maimonides is insufficiently nuanced, reflecting a notion of in- tellectualism thinner and more pallid than that actually held by him.1 But this position is often attributed to him because Maimonides seems to adopt a view (held afterwards explicitly by Gersonides) according to which that which makes us human, and in consequence that which survives our deaths, is only what we know.2 On this view, the human subject counts for nothing, 1I would like to thank Jolene Kellner for first posing the question that prompted the writing of this essay.
    [Show full text]
  • Issue Itself
    THE GREAT IDEAS ONLINE Mar ‘15 Philosophy is Everybody’s Business No 811 THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN Mortimer Adler In The Descent of Man Darwin says, “The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, is certainly one of degree and not of kind.” n this concluding discussion on Man I want to sum up and assess I not only the evidence on both sides of the question but also the importance of the issue itself. Last time I began by reporting to you the experimental evidence in regard to animal intelligence, especially the perceptual insight of the chimpanzee. And to demonstrate some of the experiments that Köhler did with chimpanzees, I showed you how a chimpanzee made a crude tool to fetch bananas by fitting together two bamboo sticks to make a longer one. And as a matter of fact, I fumbled do- ing this last time and someone who saw the show told me during the week that I had fumbled and didn’t do it as well as the chim- panzee. Well, it’s hard to be an intelligent chimpanzee. And though I practiced, I didn’t quite succeed. 2 Then I went on to present the evidence to support the conception of man as distinct in kind from other animals on the ground that man and man alone is rational. I presented this evidence under three main heads. Let me remind you of what those were: first, that only humans make artistically; second, that only humans think discur- sively; and third, that only humans associate politically.
    [Show full text]
  • Being Towards Aristotle? Heidegger's Implicit Presupposition of Aristotle's Concepts of the Human Being in Being and Time
    Noesis¯ Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy Vol. 19, no. 1, 2018, pp. 11-23. NOESIS¯ XIX BEING TOWARDS ARISTOTLE? HEIDEGGER’S IMPLICIT PRESUPPOSITION OF ARISTOTLE’S CONCEPTS OF THE HUMAN BEING IN BEING AND TIME THOMAS BENSTEAD Richard Rorty hails Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time as “pow- erful and original”: the author of this paper seeks to scrutinize the latter claim. Heidegger starts his chef-d’oeuvre by aiming to dis- tance himself from the ontology of prior philosophers, and so he investigates the Question of Being through “Dasein.” The author argues that Heidegger’s concept of “Dasein” presupposes within itself the concept of Aristotle’s “Rational Animal,” which accord- ingly prevents Heidegger from actually separating his ontology from prior ontologies. The author’s assertion of a presupposition of “Rational Animal” within “Dasein” is supported not only by Heidegger’s familiarity with Aristotelian thought, but also that the key feature of “Dasein” (i.e. inquiry) necessitates a sort of ratio- nal capacity. Moreover, the author seeks to demonstrate that the presupposition of “Rational Animal” within “Dasein” results in a sustained Aristotelian influence within Heidegger’s work, such that Heidegger’s concept of the “They” resembles Aristotle’s “Po- litical Animal.” Key Words: Heidegger, Aristotle, Dasein, rational animal, political animal, inquiry 1 INTRODUCTION In Heidegger’s Being and Time, he aims to create an ontology separate from the ontologies of Plato and Aristotle in order to answer the question of Being: he examines the nature of Being from the perspective of “Dasein” (i.e. the hu- man being). I will demonstrate that in doing so, Heidegger implicitly presup- poses the Aristotelian concepts of the human being within his work, meaning 12 Being Towards Aristotle? that he does not actually establish an ontology separate from prior ontologies as he aims to do.
    [Show full text]
  • Incarnate Spirit Proper Lhomistic DeNition of the Human Being Or Merely a Description of the Human Soul?
    JAMES CAPEHART Incarnate Spirit Proper lhomistic Denition of the Human Being or Merely a Description of the Human Soul? 'gkz What a creature is man! He is spirit and matter together. He is not an imprisoned angel; he is by nature an incarnate spirit. This is the fact to ex plainwithout changing it and without explaining it away. But the more we are true to the fact of man as an incarnate spirit, to the fact of a subsis- tent and spiritual soul which is yet by nature a part ofman, the more we are driven to ask the why of such a being. And we are equally driven to exclude as impossible all explanations of man which render the facts impossible. What is, is possible; and man is. And because man is an observable reality, he poses the problem of the unity of his being and of his nature.1 As the great Thomistic philosopher Anton C. Pegis gives poetic testi- mony to in the above quotation, the nature of the human being is an awe inspiring mystery. Unlike the brute animals, human beings have a soul which subsists in its own right after death. The soul is indeed a spirit. How- ever, outside of anthropological poetry and hyperbolic rhetoric, is it justi- liable to call the whole human being a spirit, or even to dene it as an Incar nate Spirit? Furthermore, is it justiable to claim that St. Thomas Aquinas held to the defensibility of such a predication? In the following account, I hope to show that the answers to both ques tions are resoundineg in the negative.
    [Show full text]