These reposts are for my benefit, so your obligation to reread them is hereby rescinded. It's just that there was a stretch last summer when I remember thinking to myself, "this really sums up what I've been trying convey lo these past two decades." I don't remember what made me think that, but perhaps by revisiting them I can find out. What may emerge, if we're not careful, is a full-on Summa Raccoonica, which is to say, a nonlocal map in which to organize the rest.
***
Gödel's theorems mean that no matter how complete the formal system, it will always leave a semantic residue: semantics cannot be reduced to syntax, meaning to grammar, reality to mathematics, quality to quantity, etc. This seems intuitively obvious, but it's nice to have logic on one's side.
Now, don't blame Gödel for my misuse of him, but nor can Being itself be reduced to any formal system. Or, in the words of the Aphorist,
What's weird about this is that 1) we know damn well that Being is, but that 2) we can never know Being as such, only such and such a being. Nothing that is can stand apart from being and view being from the outside, since such a thing does not exist, i.e., it is non-being, precisely.
Why is the statement Being Is not just a trivial assertion, meaningless tautology, or redundant pleonasm? What even is the distinction between "Being" and "Is"? Well, let's think this through...
Everything that exists is, i.e., partakes of Being. But perhaps the first thing a human qua human notices is that some things come into being and pass out of it, such that their being is contingent. Turns out that even the cosmos is contingent; not only is it not its own cause, but it will surely pass away away into heat death. Even so, it will never pass into nothing; it will still be something.
Being itself can never not-be, which implies Necessary Being, in contrast to our contingent being. But to even know of Necessary Being implies some kind of contact with eternity, however tenuous, since necessity is convertible to eternity in this or any other conceivable cosmos.
For as Thomas says, "Everything eternal is necessary." Moreover,
The further a being is distant from that which is Being of itself, namely God, the nearer it is to nothingness. But the nearer a being stands to God, the further away it is from nothingness.
Which clearly implies a kind of verticality, a spectrum running from Being to nothingness, even though Being can only tend to the latter, since nothingness is precisely what is not and cannot be. If it could not be, it would not be nothing.
Indeed, even the concept of nothing is still something. Concepts have some kind of being, although distinct from material being, more on which in a subsequent post.
Now, every being must have a cause outside itself, except for Necessary Being, which is by definition uncaused. Here again, contingent being points to Necessary Being. Of this we can again be certain. As Renard explains, creatures
are not their "to be," but have a "to be" really distinct from their essence [and] are not a sufficient reason for existence to themselves.
On the next page he has a helpful metacosmic flowchart, which proceeds from the principle of Being, which leads directly to the principle of non-contradiction, which is to say, that Being is and therefore Non-Being is not.
Which leads directly to the Principle of Intelligibility, which is to say that Every being is intelligible, for Whatever is has its sufficient reason for existing.
Which entails the Principle of Causality, which is to say, Whatever is contingent has its sufficient reason for existing from another.
Turns out there are indeed reasons for things, such that Every contingent being has an efficient cause. Which is what we call "knowledge," from scientific to philosophical to metaphysical knowledge. To understand something is to know its reason(s).
Conversely, if things have no reasons, then knowledge of them is impossible, for they would be arbitrary and unintelligible. Science surely tells us what is, but is necessarily silent as to why things are, much less why they are s'durn intelligible, this being the job of metaphysics.
In short, knowledge is knowledge of causes. But the causes cannot go on forever, i.e., to infinitude, for an endless series of effects is absurd (since an effect cannot give what it does not have). Thus causality is a metaphysical principle without which knowledge is impossible. Again, causality is simply the principle of knowledge: "if the cause is denied, reason is useless and knowledge void" (Renard).
Ultimately, "The end is the cause of causes, because it is the cause of causality in all causes." Which seems pretty clear. But since causality is bound up with knowledge, it seems that this presupposes some kind of intellect; in other words, the first cause must be intelligent.
Thus, supposing we are ruthlessly rational and consistent, "we must at last reach the first intellect which is its own act, its own end, and its own 'to be,'" and why not? What is the alternative?
Renard concludes this section with the affirmation that He Is, and is "THE FIRST PRINCIPLE AND THE LAST END OF ALL."
Which, hmm, implies a kind or circularity in the vertical flowchart alluded to above. Is this the way it is? I have my suspicions. Yada yada, let's flip forward to the penultimate sentence of the book, that
our intellect faintly perceives the true meaning of limited beings participating in THE BEING THAT IS.
Thus we rearrive at
the affirmation of the supreme efficient cause, who is the ultimate end, and the source of all Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
Works for me, but of course there's much more to say, i.e., still a lotta ins and outs, lotta what-have-you's, lotta strands to keep in old Gagdad's head. Let's conclude with some Thomisms, and resume the discussion tomorrow:
Each particular knowledge is derived from some completely certain knowledge, which is not subject to error.
This ordering of the intellect to infinity would be vain and senseless if there were no infinite object of knowledge.
The source of every imperfect thing lies necessarily in one perfect being.
Each single being is perfect in the measure in which it reaches up to its own origin.
The complete perfection of the universe demands that there should be created natures which return to God.
The final happiness of man consists in this -- that in his soul is reflected the order of the whole universe.
****
Might not one even say that the deepest meaning for anything is to exist? If a person had no existence, what could anything else mean for him?....
Without existence, either real or cognitional, nothing else matters for a thing. Being, rather, is the primary consideration in meaning. Without it, a thing cannot have any meaning at all. Being is what is most striking, what is deepest, in everything (Owens).
So, being here at all is the first and last word in (?!), in metacosmic WTFery. Nothing requires that we exist, and yet, here we are. Being "is universally what makes a thing different from nothing." Although "originally known in the concrete," it "can also be known in the abstract." Thus, Being is "the supreme genera," uniting everything "in its embrace." It is "absolutely basic in sensible things."
Having said that, despite all the new inventions, invention as such has apparently been slowing down since reaching a high point on a per capita basis in the mid 19th century, this due, according to Dutton, to a precipitous decline in intelligence.
Could be, but we may have to wait another thousand years to see if the DEI trend -- or Kamala Factor -- continues. Either way it wouldn't surprise me, history being full of upside and downside surprisal.
What has been the biggest surprise of history apart from my own appearance? For every person must regard his own existence as the biggest surprise, all other surprises being number two, or lower.
Probably the Incarnation, supposing it happened. Truly truly, no one saw that one coming, or did they? Certain prophets, poets, and myths certainly made out its dim outlines, but that's the subject of a different post. This one is about what man knew, when he knew it, and indeed how he knows anything at all.
Or perhaps about what we cannot not know, and when we forgot it. Like a fall, or something.
Along these lines, I'm reading yet another Elementary Christian Metaphysics, which is not so elementary to this metaphysical beginner. It's another one of those books that was first published a couple of generations ago, when it certainly seems that our undergraduates were more intelligent than today's postgraduates.
More generally, metaphysics is certain habit of mind which, like anything worthwhile, takes practice. The practice is made more difficult in light of the fact that everything in our contemporary culture is anti-metaphysical, anti-intellectual, and (therefore) anti-human, so one is always swimming against the tide.
Of course, I cannot exclude myself, since I once swam right along with the current and only began trying to formally escape the cultural riptide in the 1990s. So I might as well be patient zero, and physician heal thysoph. I am both the dolt and antidolt, the illness and the treatment. However, we are all individuals, so it seems that a treatment that is effective for this person may not be perfectly effective for that one. Everyone is a unique Problem of God.
God has problems?
Only after he creates.
But one thing we know for certain is that a self-cure is out of the question -- that there is an outside vertical x-factor that is a necessary condition for the cure, even if we are the sufficient condition.
For Christian therapy, Christ's redemptive act is the necessary condition (the condition without which), but this doesn't leave us out of it, for our cooperation becomes the sufficient condition (the with which made possible due to the prior without which). To say that "with God all things are possible" is to say they are impossible without him, for they lack their necessary condition, precisely.
As to swimming against the tide, Owens observes that
metaphysical thinking goes against the natural bent of human intellection. Man is a sensible nature and he thinks in terms of sensible natures. It is through sensible natures that he has to understand being, as best he can.
The Raccoon, of course, is bent differently, in that no one would accuse him of being a sensible man, the question being whether he is a nonsensical man:
[O]f what use will such knowledge be? Aristotle was quite outspoken in maintaining that metaphysical knowledge was pursued for no use at all. It could not be subordinated to anything else, for it was the highest goal that man could achieve. It was an end in itself, and was not meant for anything outside itself.
In fact, it has "a far higher value than the useful," so there. It is meta-useful. For example,
Have you ever tried to realize how much it means to know things?
Such meta-knowledge is indeed completely abstract, immaterial, and supra-sensible, and cannot even be imagined, rather, abiding only in the intellect: "In its own nature metaphysics exists only in intellects, and not in books or writings."
The physical sciences, bound to qualitative and quantitative procedures, are therefore totally unable to reach the properly supersensible plane.
We are not content with mere knowing, but again, want to know about knowing, not to mention the knower. Such folks
are not sufficiently at ease in their spiritual life until they have made the journey over the trails that reason blazes into the supersensible. For such persons metaphysical thinking will form an integral part of a Christian life.
In short, we want to know how and why this is One Cosmos Under God, or something, and where we fit into it. In other words, we know we are here, but where is here? More to follow....
2 comments:
It's good to look over these again. I was overmedicated last year, so these feel practically new.
That's funny. I was undermedicated.
Post a Comment