- Milesians.
Greek philosophy began with the main problem: "What is the nature of
reality?" Thales (624-550 B.C.), a citizen of Miletus, a
city in the district of Ionia on the west coast of Asia Minor, held that
the nature of all things are water. According to Aristotle, Thales held
that water was the first principle, or element or substance, of which all
things born and to which all things will ultimately return. Aristotle
also, in another place, quotes Thales as saying, "All things are full of
gods." [pantes phere theon]. Apparently this was an attempt to
explain why things move and change. This view that matter is alive is
called hylozoism, from the Greek [hyle] ("matter") and
[zoe] ("life" and "alive"). This is a more sophisticated form of
the primitive view called animism (from the Latin anima ("soul")
that sees that all things are animated by souls. Since water was
essential for life, and every thing is alive (changing), then everything
must be made of water. Since water can take the form of a solid ("ice") or
of a gas (an "air") as well as a liquid, water must be the basic stuff of
everything in the world or cosmos.
Another Milesian philosopher, Anaximander (611-547 B.C.),
held that the nature of all is boundless, that is, it is neither water or
any other of the elements, but without a definite nature - indeterminate,
so that it could be the nature of all things. He thought, if everything
is made of water, fire could never come into existence. For the same
reason, if everything were fire, then how could the existence of water be
explained. Thus Anaximander assumed a Boundless that is not particularly
wet or dry, cold or hot. Thus, the matter of the cosmos is Boundless,
not because it was extended throughout infinite space, but because it
is not bounded, limited, or defined by any quality. This original
matter produced the world and its contents by a swirling motion that
separated the four qualities out of the original chaos. This swirling
motion explain the motion of sun, stars, and planets.
A third Milesian philosopher, Anaximenes (588-524 B.C.), held that
the nature of all things is air; that is, it is determinate, not
indeterminate. All things come from, and will return to, air. He seems
to have understood air, not as a lifeless matter, but in a psychic sense
as the breath of life, since human life is associated with the breath.
It is a divine principle and the explanation of change. Anaximenes
explained change in terms of condensation and rarefaction. In
condensation air becomes water and in rarefaction water becomes air.
So he reasoned that all things come about in this process of condensation
in which the basic stuff is changed into other things with their
different qualities. Since air necessary for fire, the heavenly bodies,
sun and stars, as firey bodies, comes into existence by the process of
rarefaction.
- Heraclitus.
Heraclitus (540-475 B.C.), who lived in Ephesus and thus was not
literally a Milesian, although his views were similar to theirs, held that
all things was fire, because it represents change and movement; all things
change. Some have interpreted this statement to mean that he held that
only change is real; but a careful examination of his statements shows
that he held that reality is permanent as will as changing. Since the
only permanent thing is change, the permanent is in change and change is
in the permanent. This principle or Reason (logos) is the One in
the Many; unity in diversity. The permanent is the One and the basis of
change in the many, diversity, and difference. Reality is both one and
many, permanence and change. Change takes place by means of opposites.
Day and night, birth and death, good and evil, and all other opposites
produce change. Strife is natural and life is a struggle and warfare.
"War is the Father of all, the King of all."
The tension between these opposites in the physical world produces the
upward and downward movement of fire and earth. Nature as whole is
either on the Upward Path of Fire or on the Downward Path of Earth.
The world on the upward way is its summer and winter is the downward
movement. But fire is the basic element that becomes all things; it is
the active agent which produces change. Nature is an eternal oscillation
between these two extremes; between day and night, summer and winter.
The change of things occur in a vast cycle of time of 360 generations,
known as the world year. Taking each generation as 30 years, the vast
cycle of time bringing all things back to their original condition, is
10,800 years.
- Pythagoreans.
Pythagoras (572-497 B.C.) and the Pythagoreans held that the nature
of all things is numbers. They held that the One is God. All things procede
from the One and will return to the One; the manifold of visible bodies
preceded out this unity into plurality, the many, from light into
darkness. Just as every number is not only many, but also one number, so
also are all things are one and many.
- Parmenides.
Parmenides (c. 495 B.C.) denied both the many and change. Asserting
that only the One is real and the many are illusionary; hence change is
not real. By identifying thought and being, the rational and the real,
he believed that he showed that change and the many are illogical, thus
unreal. Parmenides thus shifted the problem from the nature of reality
to the reality of change and the many. He created the problem of the one
and many. Zeno (c. 490-430 B.C.), a followr of Parmenides, attempted to
prove that space or void and pluralism (that reality is composed of many
things) was illogical and that time, motion and change are impossible.
These arguments are known as Zeno's paradoxes.
- Atomism.
Opposing the monism of Parmenides was the atomist Democritus
(460-370 B.C.), a follower Leucippus, who held that all things consists
of many (pluralism) indivisible things called atoms (Greek: a,
"not", and tomos, "cutable", hence "not able to cut"). Each atom
is absolutely homogenous, indivisible and immutable, just like the One of
Parmenides. They are separated by empty space or void which Parmenides
had denied. Change is the movement of these atoms in this void, that is,
a change of position; the atoms unaffect the void or each other, except
to collide. These atoms always have been in motion and thus do not need
anything to move them. Atoms have shape; the irregular shaped atoms when
they collided become entangled with one another and group of atoms are
formed. The observed characteristics in the world depend upon the the
combination and separation of the atoms. Change of qualities, then, is
due to the redistribution of atoms in space. Like bodies, souls are
composed of atoms which are more mobile, because of rounder, smother
shape. Even the gods are composed of atoms which are even finer and
more mobile.
- Plato.
Plato (428-348 B.C.) modified Parmenides dualism of Being and Non-Being
making it a dualism of Being and Becoming, giving Being primacy while
placing Becoming in an inferior amd subordinate role. Being is the
realm of immutable logical essences (Ideas or Forms), while the realm
of change, synonymous with generation and decay, has a inferior status
somewhere between Being and Non-Being. In the Sophist Plato seems
to deny the concept of Non-Being. This dualism is not an absolute
separation between Being and Becoming; also in the Sophist Being
participates in Becoming, the Ideas as the Forms of material things.
To this metaphysical dualism there corresponds the epistemological
dualism of knowledge and opinion. Opinion comes from the realm of change
through the senses and knowledge comes from the realm of the unchanging
Ideas through the mind.
In his dialogues Plato divides all reality into the realm of forms or ideas
(intelligibles) and the realm of sensibles, treating the intelligibles alone
as that which really is (Greek, ousia, being) and implying that they
are eternal and unchanging. One of these ideas, the idea of the Good, Plato
elevated above the others, calling it "beyond being" (Greek,
epekeina ousias). He compares it to the sun as the source of being and
knowledge of all beings. In a lecture (or course of lectures) Plato seems to
have identified the Good with the One. As to the realm of the sensibles,
Plato in his dialogue Timaeus explains the origin of the cosmos in the
form of a myth. According to this myth the cosmos is the work of a divine
artisan or "demiurge" (Greek, demiourgos, craftsman), who using the
realm of Ideas, forms out of them something, which Plato calls the
"receptacle", which is void of any qualities. Then the ideas in some way
enter this void and by so doing form the rudiments of the four elements.
In addition to the formation of the physical world, the demiurge also forms a
cosmic soul and the immortal part of individual souls. Both of these consist
of a mixture of the same ingredients, on which mixture the demiurge imposes
a numerical and geometrical structure.
- Plotinus.
Plotinus (A.D. 205-270) attempted to explain by emanations
how out the immutable One the many and changing could have arisen. These
emanations are logical, not temporal, progressions from the divine One
into non-being and occurs by the refulgence of the original principle.
According to him there are three levels of emanation:
(1) The first emanation from the One is the Nous or Intelligence
and corresponds to Plato's realm of the Ideas or Forms. The One is
differentiated into the many of the Ideas or Forms.
(2) The second emanation from the One is the Psyche or Soul; it is
divided into higher and lower, the first standing nearer the Nous,
looking up to it, being in no immediate contact with the material world
and the latter, looking down, is the real soul of the material world, the
third emanation from the One.
(3) The third emanation is Hyle or Matter itself, which, when
devoid of form, is next to nothing or non-being. The evil in world and
in man is due to this material principle. This is the realm of change,
forever oscillating between Being and Non-Being. According to Plotinus,
individual souls proceed from the second level of emanation and are
contained in it. Unlike the Divine Intellect of the first level of
emanation, these souls are unable to grasp the immutable and timeless
truth all at once, in an instantaneous act, but only gradually, step by
step, by the laborious process of reasoning. Change and sucession thus
are the mere result of Soul's inability to grasp everything at once.
Man, combining in himself the material and spiritual principles, is
in an uncomfortable position. He longs for the eternal forms and for the
One, but is imprisoned in a body. He looks for liberation in
contemplation, both intellectual and spiritual.
This Greek doctrine of the two realms, the immutable realm of
perfection and the changing realm of imperfection, and the corresponding
doctrine of timeless divine vision, contrasted to man's temporal and,
therefore fragmentary, knowledge, dominated medieval theology and
philosophy, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic.
- Augustine.
Augustine (A.D. 354-430) was born at Tagaste in the Province of Numidia
of North Africa on November 13th, A.D. 354; his father, Patricius, was a pagan
and his mother, Monica, was a Christian; she brought him up as a Christian but
his baptism was deferred, as was the practice of the time. He learned the
rudiments of Latin and arithmetic and a little Greek. In A.D. 370, the year his
father died after becoming a Christian, Augustine began the study of rhetoric
at Carthage and broke with Christian teaching and morals, taking a mistress,
with whom he lived for ten years and by whom he had a son in his second year
at Carthage. He became a follower of the teaching of the Manicheans. The
Manicheans, founded by a Persian named Mani, taught a dualism of two
ultimate principles, a principle of good that is the light, God or Ormuzd, and
a principle of evil that is the darkness, Ahriman. These principles are eternal
and are engaged in an eternal strife, which is reflected in the world and in
man. Man's soul is composed of light, the principle of the good, while the
body, composed of grosser matter, is the work of the principle of evil,
darkness. This religio-philosophic system commended itself to Augustine
because it seemed to explain the problem of evil and because of its
materialism, since he could not yet conceive how there could be an immaterial
reality. Although the Manicheans condemned sexual intercourse and the eating
animal flesh and prescribed various ascetic practices, such as fasting, for
the "elect", but not for the "hearers", Augustine did not
follow them, being only a "hearer". Eventually Augustine became
dissatisfied with Manichean when it was not able to answer his questions and
the difficulties he had with its teachings. After returning to Tagaste in
A.D. 374, he taught rhetoric and Latin Literature for a year. He then
returned to Carthage to open a school of rhetoric; but becoming frustrated
with his students, he went to Rome in A.D. 383 and started another school of
rhetoric. Although giving up belief in the teachings of Manicheans, being
attracted to Academic skepticism, he retained an outward adherence to
Manicheanism, still accepting its materialism. Having obtained a position at
Milan of municipal professor of rhetoric in A.D. 384, he moved to Milan and
finally broke with the Manicheans through the influence of his new friends in
Milan, the Bishop Ambrose and the circle of Christian Neo-Platonist around
him. He got the answers to his questions about Manichean doctrine, and
encountered a more satisfying interpretation of Christianity than he had
previously found in the simple, unintellectual faith of his mother. The
Neo-Platonic teaching of evil as privation, non-being, rather than as second
kind of being, showed him how the problem of evil could be solved without
recourse to the Manichean dualism. In this Christianized Neo-Platonism he
believed he found the truth and he began to read the New Testament,
particularly Paul's letter to the Romans. After an intense moral struggle,
in the summer of A.D. 386, while he was sitting in the garden of his friend
Alypius' house, weeping, he heard a child's voice outside singing the words,
"Tolle lege! Tolle lege!"
["Take up and read! Take up and read!"]. He picked up the New
Testament and, opening it at random, his eyes lighted on Romans 13:13b-14:
"not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness,
not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof."
"No further would I read", he tells us later, "nor had I any
need; instantly, at the end of this sentence, a clear light flooded my heart
and all the darkness of doubt vanished away". On Holy Saturday of 387
Augustine was baptized by Bishop Ambrose and soon after returned to North
Africa in A.D. 388. He was ordained a priest in A.D. 391 and was consecrated
Bishop of Hippo in A.D. 396. He also wrote extensively against the Donatist
and the Pelagains. He died on August 28th, A.D. 430.
Although Augustine wrote against pagan philosophy, he still showed a strong
predilection for Neo-Platonism. There is a depreciation of sense-objects in
comparison with eternal and immaterial realities; a grudging admission of
practical knowledge as a necessity of life; the insistence on
"theoretic" contemplation and purification of the soul and
liberation from the slavery of the senses. Philosophically this predilection
is shown in the Platonic and Neo-Platonic view that the objects of the senses,
corporeal things, are inferior to the human intellect, which judges them with
reference to objective standard as falling short. These standards are the
immutable and eternal universal ideas or forms. The standards of goodness and
beauty, for example, correspond to Plato's first principles or archai,
the exemplary ideas, and the ideal geometrical figures correspond to Plato's
mathematical objects, ta mathematika, the objects of the
dianoia. To the question, which was asked of the Platonic Ideas,
"Where are these ideas?" Augustine answers that they are in the
mind, the Nous, of God, they are the thoughts of God. The
Neo-Platonics had made this suggestion and Augustine apparently accepted it as
the answer to the question: "Where are they?" Augustine does not
accept the emanation theory of Neo-Platonism, where the Nous emanates
from the One as the first hypostasis. But Augustine held that the
exemplar ideas and eternal, immutable truths are in God. This theory must be
accepted, Augustine argues, if one wishes to avoid having to say that God
created the world unintelligently. Thus creation is like Plato's formation of
the sense-world by the divine artisan, the demiurge, except that there is no
pre-existent matter; God created it out of nothing. Thus the world of
creatures reflects and manifests God, even if it does in a very inadequate
way. The order and unity of creatures, their positive reality,
reveals the goodness of God and the order and stability of the universe
manifest the wisdom of God. But God, as the self-existent, eternal and
immutable Being, is infinite and, as infinite, is incomprehensible. God is
His own Perfection and is "simple", without parts, so that His
wisdom and knowledge, His goodness and power, are His own essence, which is
without accidents. God, therefore, transcends space in virtue of His
spiritually and simplicity, as He transcends time in virtue of His eternity.
"... He is above all things. So too He is in no interval nor extension
in time, but in His immutable eternity is older than all things because He is
before all things and younger than all things because He is after all
things." From all eternity God knew all things, which He was to make.
He does not know them, because He has made them, but rather the other way
around. God first knew the things of creation though they came into being in
time. The species of created things have their ideas or rationes
seminales in the things themselves and also in the Divine Mind as
rationes aeternae. God from all eternity saw in Himself, as possible
reflections of Himself, the things that He could create and would create.
He knew them before creation as they are in Him, as Exemplar, but He made them
as they exist, that is, as external and finite reflections of His divine
essence. Since God did nothing without knowledge, He foresaw all that He
would make, but His knowledge is not distinct acts of knowledge, but
"one eternal, immutable and ineffable vision". In virtue of
this eternal act of knowledge, of vision, to which nothing is past or future,
that God sees, "foresees", even the free acts of men, knowing them
"beforehand". Thus Augustine interpreted the Neoplatonic doctrine of the
timeless vision as the determinism of all things and theologically as
the predistination of the elect. Nearly all medieval theologians accepted
the determinism of all things (predestination) as the logical consequence
of this timeless divine vision that sees the totality of successive
events in one act, totum simul. Not only Augustine, but Thomas
Aquinas accepted this predestination based on divine omniscience. This
created the difficult problem of reconciling predestination with human
free will, which the Protestant Reformers, especially Calvin (1509-1564),
attempted to solve by simply denying free will in the doctrine of
original sin and man's sinful nature.
- Aristotle.
Plato's student Aristotle (348-322 B.C.) divided being into two
kinds: (a) immutable or changeless being and (b) mutable or changing being.
The study of the second kind, mutable being - which, according to Aristotle, is
the only kind we see in the world about us - belongs to the subject matter of
the philosophy of nature. The study of the first kind of being, immutable
being, belongs to the subject matter of theology; for there is only one being
"eternal and immovable" and that is God. Aristotle derived this dual
classification of being from his teacher, Plato, who held that "true being"
was something not subject to change and decay. According to Plato, our world
of the senses displays only becoming; everything in it is coming into being
and going out of being; nothing really is. Only that which is changeless is
real, thought Plato; reality is permanent and immutable. Plato held that
these two primary modes of being, permanence and change, are separate and
distinct from each other. The permanent is the realm of Ideas or forms,
apprehended by the mind only, and the changing is the realm of the sensibles,
apprehended by the senses. Aristotle rejected this dualism of being, but
accepted the distinction between the two kinds of being. Aristotle combined
these two kinds being in the concept of "substance". He introduces the
distinction between "substance" and "accident"; a substance or thing
has relatively independent being from other things, whereas accidents or
qualities have no independent being, but exist in a substance. Blue and hard
are not like houses and rocks. These qualities must "inhere" in a
substance; they qualify the substances. Now substances, in some fundamental
way, remain the same, although their qualities may change; that is, substances
retain their identity through change. A house may be white or red, but even
if the color of house changes, the house remains a house; its identity is
preserved through the change. Substance, then, represent the relatively
permanent side of reality and qualities the changing side. Instead of
separating the permanent from the changing, as Plato did, Aristotle unites
them in things as substances and their accidents or qualities. But how is
change possible, if the permanent is primary, more important,
"realer", while change is secondary, less important, less real?
Aristotle attempts to solve this problem by introducing the distinct between
"form" and "matter", in which he interprets
"matter" as potentially and "form" as actuality.
According to Aristotle change is the process of going from potential to
actual. The block of stone is potentially a statue and the statue is the
actualization of this potential. Matter is potentiality and form is
actuality. Aristotle combined form and matter in a series from prime matter
to pure form; the form of the lower level is the matter of the higher level.
The top of this hierarchy of form and matter is pure form, pure actuality,
pure being, God.
Aristotle proposed a different solution to the problems change and the one
and many. He introduced the concepts of potentiality and actuality,
interpreting change as the transition from potentiality to actuality; for
example, an acorn is potentially an oak and an oak is the actualization of
the acorn. He recognize three basic types of change:
(1) "alternation" or change of quality,
(2) "growth and diminiution" or change of quantity,
(3) "locomotion" or change of position.
Aristotle identified matter with potentiality and form with actuality.
He analyzed causation into
(1) efficient cause which produces locomotion,
(2) final cause which produces growth,
(3) material cause and
(4) formal cause which produces alternation.
For example, in the making of a statue the efficient cause would be found
in the blows of the chisel upon marble block, the final cause would be
the reason why the sculptor was making the statue, the material cause
would be the marble out which the statue was made, and the formal cause
would be the form or shape which being imposed on the block of marble.
All four causes are to be found in all that is, although in natural
objects the final and formal causes coincide, since it is the final cause
of the acorn to become an oak, and since this is also the form to be
realized.
Aristotle believed that there has always been change and that there must
be an eternal cause of change, that is, the first cause and prime mover.
This first mover is the mover of a whole series of moved movers but itself
is unmoved. It causes all motion without itself being moved. This
unmoved mover is God. Thus Aristotle believed that he had proved the
existence of God. This argument from change along with others was fully
developed in Aristotle's Metaphysics.
- Thomas Aquinas.
The Medieval Christian theologian and philosopher, Thomas Aquinas
(1225-1274), attempted to bring Aristotelian philosophy into the framework of
the Christian faith. He was born in the vicinity of Naples, Italy. After
studying under both the Benedictines and the Dominicans, he joined the
Benedictine order in 1243. He studied with Albertus Magnus (1206-1280) in
Paris (1245-1248) and in Cologne (1248-1252). Albertus Magnus, or Albert
the Great, translated Aristotle from Greek and Arabic manuscripts and wrote
commentaries in which he interpreted Aristotle to the Christian Western mind.
In fact his interpretation of Aristotle was an attempt to fuse
Aristotelianism and Neo-Platonism, which had dominated Christian Western
thinking since Augustine. In 1252 Thomas Aquinas returned to Paris to studied
at the faculty of theology in the University of Paris, where in 1256 he was
given the licentia docendi in theology and he taught theology until
1259. From 1259 to 1269 he was advisor to the papal curia or court in Rome.
He returned to the University of Paris in 1269 to stem the tide against
Averroism. Averroism was that form of Aristotelian philosophy based
on the commentaries of Aristotle written by the Arabic philosopher
Averroes (Mohammed ibn Roshd) (1126-1198), whose Latin name was a
corruption of Ibn Roshd. His commentaries became known to Western scholars
in their translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at
the beginning of the 13th century. Albertus Magnus relied heavily on
Averroes' commentaries on Aristotle, while noting certain difficulties.
The teachings of Averroes became the basis for a whole school of philosophers,
represented first by the Faculty of Arts at the University of Paris, among
whom the most prominent was Siger of Brabant. No philosophy was more often
condemned in the Middle Ages by church leaders and councils than Averroism.
It was condemned in 1209, 1215, 1240, 1270, and 1277. Averroism was condemned
for its teachings that held that (1) matter is eternal (God and the world are
co-eternal), (2) the absence of personal immortality (the numerical identity
of the intellect of all men), and (3) the doctrine of double truth (that a
proposition may be true in philosophy and false in theology). Aquinas,
relying on the translation of Aristotle by William of Moerbecke, criticized
Averroes' interpretation of Aristotle. On the first point, Thomas argued that
there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity of God and the
world or against it; but the creation of the world is an article of the faith.
On the second point, Thomas argued that the unity of the intellect of all men
should be rejected, since it is incompatible with the true concept of person
and with personal immortality. On the third point, it is doubtful whether
Averroes himself held to the double truth theory; but it was taught by the
Latin Averrosts, who, not withstanding the opposition of the Roman Church and
the Thomistic philosophers, gained great influence and soon dominated many
universities, especially in Italy at the University of Padua. Thomas and his
followers were convinced they had interpreted Aristotle correctly and the
Averroists had misinterpreted Aristotle; Aristotle did not teach the double
truth theory. Truth is one, but there are two ways to discover it: by
revelation of it in the Bible and by reason in the writings of Aristotle.
Where the two are contrary to each other, the truths of revelation are to be
accepted and the results of reason are to be modified to conform to the truths
of revelation. From 1272 Aquinas taught at the University of Naples. He
died on March 7, 1274 on the way to the Council of Lyons. Aquinas was
canonized in 1326, made a Doctor of the Church in 1567, and Pope Leo XIII
(Aetrni Patris) gave his philosophy official status in 1879.
At the heart of Aquinas' philosophy was his concept of being. And to
understand being, reason must use the principle of analogy to fix the
appropriate meaning of the term. And since there are certain "transcendental"
terms that go beyond any genus, and apply to everything that is, they are
attributes of everything. These transcendentals are ens (being),
res (thing), unum (unity), aliquid (distinction),
verum (true), bonum (good). All beings (ens) are things
(res) with unity (unum), distinguished (aliquid) from
what is not themselves. And since all beings are what they are, in relation
to knowledge, they are true (verum). And since all beings tend toward
their ends or goals, they are good (bonum). When the principle of
analogy is applied to these transcendentals, human reason can begin to
understand, within limits, the nature of God. The kind of analogy to be
used here is the analogy of proportionality; that is,
The properties of x The properties of y
are to as are to
x's being y's being
By the use of this analogy of proportionality, human reason can begin to
understand how God's being exceeds any other being by comparing the properties
of being. Since there are five properties of being, there are five ways to
establish this comparison. From this comparison there arises the idea of a
perfect being, God. God is perfect and unchanging being, utterly simple
(without parts) and unitary, hence indestructible, absolute truth and
goodness, not related to the world, yet everything in the world related to
Him. Since the divine mind contains the archetypes of all things, simply in
knowing Himself God is able to know at once all that is, was, or will be. In
His self-knowledge all time is concentrated in an eternal moment, in a totum
simul. Aquinas argued that while God is the primary cause of all things,
there are secondary causes and among these secondary causes some are necessary
and others are contingent. Thus free will is compatible with God's
foreknowledge and God's causation of all things.
At the heart of ontology of Aquinas is the real distinction between essence and
existence in all finite beings. Aristotle distinguished between actuality and
potentiality, but he applied this to form and matter, not to the order of
being. Aquinas argued that only God is pure being, pure actuality (actus
purus), with no potentiality whatsoever. That is, God's being is from
Himself, not from another. He has aseitas in contrast to those beings
that have derived their being from another. Thus God is necessary being,
because God's essence (what He is) and existence (that He is) are identical,
hence He cannot fail to exist. In finite creatures, their essence (what they
are) is separate from their existence (that they are). Aristotle does not
make or use this distinction between essence and existence; Aquinas introduced
this distinction because it allowed him to explain the difference between God
and the angels. Angels are pure forms like God, but their essence and
existence are not identical, unlike God whose essence and existence are
identical. According to Exodus 3:14, God revealed Himself as the
"I am". Aquinas interpreted this to mean that God alone is Being
(I-Am-ness). Everything else has being. God's essence is identical to His
existence; that is, it is of His essence that He exists. Thus God is a
necessary being, not a contingent being like everything else; He cannot not
exist. Neither can God change, since He is without potentiality to be
anything other than he is. Likewise, God is eternal, since time implies a
change from a before to an after. But as the I-am, God has no before and no
after. God is also simple (indivisible), since He has not potential for
division. And he is infinite, since pure act as such is unlimited, having no
potentiality. Thus God is perfect Being.
Aquinas views reality as a hierarchy of being. Like Aristotle, he viewed the
lowest level of reality as pure matter, without form, that is, prime
matter, and the highest level as pure form, without matter, that is, God.
God is regarded as pure actuality; prime matter, on the other hand, is viewed
as pure potentiality. But Aquinas also held that since prime matter cannot
exist by itself, it is dependent upon form for its existence in a concrete
individual substance. Since form on the other hand is not dependent upon
anything for it to exist, it can exist from itself and indeed as pure form it
must exist. But in Aquinas' view, prime matter does not exist; it has only
the potentiality of existence. God, on the hand, does exist and cannot avoid
existing. Like Aristotle, Aquinas held that between these extremes are to be
found various levels of formed matter, the order of nature. Concrete
individual substances are constituted of the abstract metaphysical elements of
form and matter. Aristotle described substance as the union of form and
matter. For example, man is the substantial union of form (mind or intellect)
and matter (body). By contrast the Augustinians of the thirteenth century held
that man is the union of two different substances, the intellectual soul and
the material body; a man is a soul in a body. That is, there is gap between
the intellectual soul and the material body, which for Bonaventure is the
guarantee of the soul's spirituality and its immortality. Albert the Great
somewhat closed the gap by asserting that there is one substantial form
between the soul and the body, the form of corporeity. The soul, he tells us,
can be viewed either in itself, as an intellectual substance, or as a form
exercising the function of animating a body. The first view, defining the
soul's very nature, he attributes to Plato; the second, describing one of its
external and accidental functions, he attributes to Aristotle. Here Albert
was simply following the Arabic philosopher Avicenna (980-1037), who had
already tried to reconcile the two Greek philosophers in this way. What
neither Avicenna nor Albert could see by considering the soul as a substance
in another substance such as the body, was the relation between them is purely
extrinsic and accidental. Now this view did safeguard the independence of the
soul from matter and its immortality; but it is difficult to see how, under
these circumstances, man is anything more than an accidental aggregate of soul
and body. Thomas Aquinas saw this problem. The view of the Aristotelians and
Averroism, on the one hand, threatened the independence of the soul from the
body and the immortality of the soul; but, on the other hand, the view of the
Augustinians and the Avicennians threatened the unity of man.
Albert the Great considered soul and body as radically distinct because he
thought of each as an essence which by definition differs from each other.
The Avicennian world is composed of essences of this sort, each of which
corresponds to a definition and includes only what is contained in its
definition. Whatever is outside the definition is accidental to it. For
example, when we define man as a rational animal, nothing is said about his
individuality and universality; these are accidental to the essence of man as
such, so that it can be individual in Peter and Paul and universal in the
concept we form of it in our mind. In addition, although the definition of a
thing tells us what it is, it does not say whether it exists or does not
exist. That is, existence itself is not included in the essence of a thing
but is accidental to it. This is true of everything except God, whose essence
includes his existence. William of Auvergne (1180-1249) adopted from Avicenna
this view of the accidentality of existence and used it to explain the
contingency of created being. For, he reasoned, if God is existence, all
other things must receive existence as an accident of their essence.
Existence, then, is given them as a gift and they are contingent in their very
being. Albert the Great expressed this same view, but Aquinas transformed and
used it for his own purposes.
Thomas Aquinas saw that solution to the problem of the unity of man was, not
to consider essence as primary in the understanding of being, but existence.
Instead of the world being composed of forms or essences, Aquinas viewed the
world as consisting of individual acts of existing (esse). Existence
has the primacy in the concept of being. The form of each being is that
whereby it is what it is; it is the principle that specifies and determines it
to be a certain kind of being. But in addition to form there is a further and
ultimate act[uality] that makes it to be or to exist. This is the act of
existing, which Thomas describes as "the actuality of all acts" and the
"perfection of all perfections". It is the most profound in any being, its
ontological nucleus, so to speak, the source of all its perfections and its
intelligibilities.
The soul when looked at from the point of view of essence or nature, it appears
deficient and in need of the body, for it is only a part of the complete
essence of man. But from the point of view of existence, this is not true.
As a substantial form the human soul has a complete act of existing
(esse), and since it is a spiritual form, its act of existing is itself
spiritual. When it informs the body, it communicates to it that act of
existing so that there is but one substantial existence of the whole
composite. For Thomas, therefore, the unity of man does not consist in a
combination or assemblage of various parts or substances, but in his act of
existing. This is the reason that Aquinas denied the presence of several
substantial forms in man. If a substantial form gives substantial existence,
several forms of this kind would give man several existences and his unity as
a substance would be destroyed.
Aquinas upheld this doctrine of being in the face of wide spread opposition
from his contemporaries. On the one hand, philosophers like Siger of Brabant
wished to return to the Aristotelianism of the Averroes. Siger reminded
Thomas that Aristotle had written about form and matter and composition of the
two in substances; he had never mentioned an esse distinct from them.
On the other hand, he faced the opposition of those who admitted esse as a
distinct principle of being but simply treated as an accident of essence.
This had been the view of William of Auvergne and Albert the Great, who traced
the concept to Avicenna. For Thomas this was still to view being as primarily
essence or form and to reduce the role of existence to an accidental
determination of essence. Thomas stood alone in his century and indeed in the
whole Middle Ages for the doctrine of existential being.
Aquinas accepted Aristotle's analysis of change and its causes.
He also accepted Aristotle's argument for the existence of God from
motion and change. But he modified it because he believed that the
eternty of change implied that there was no creation. Aquinas presented
these modified arguments as the first two of his five ways (quinque)
in which the idea of God is required in explaining the world.
- There is motion in the world; and whatever is moved is moved by another.
But an infinite series of moved movers are inadequate as explanation of
motion. Hence, at the origin of this series there must be an initial
mover that itself is unmoved. This unmoved mover is called God.
- There are efficient causes in the world. And each change can be
explained in terms of its cause and each cause can be further explained
in terms of causes. But the explanation of a cause cannot be complete
by reference just to intermediate or secondary causes. Hence there must
be a first cause to explain the secondary causes and the changes that
they cause. This first cause is called God.
- Modern Physical Sciences.
This interpretation of change and the causes of the change came to
dominate the Medieval thought of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and the
Scholastics, until the rise of modern science in the 17th century with
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and Issac Newton (1642-1727); the
interpretation of change as potentiality-actuality and all types of
causation, except efficient cause, was abandoned. Efficient cause was
understood in terms of forces, and later in terms of force/energy fields,
expressed in terms of mathematical functions. Issac Newton and Gottfried
Wilhelm Liebniz (1646-1716) invented the differential calculus to deal
with change. The development of field physics in the nineteenth
century by Michael Faraday (1791-1867) and James Clerk Maxwell
(1831-1879) completed the explanation of motion in terms of energy fields.
- Telesio.
The Italian philosopher, Bernardino Telesio (1509-1588), born in
Corsenza and educated at Padua, was an anti-Aristotelian. He founded an
academy at Naples stressing empirical method of investigation. In 1586 he
wrote his work titled
On the Nature of Things According to Their Principles.
He replaced the Aristotelian analysis of things into form and matter with
an analysis of them into matter and force; he understood matter as extended
and observable, and force as expansion and contraction due to heat and cold.
There is no mind-body dichotomy since matter is capable of feeling, and
spirit is itself is subtle matter. But in addition to these, man has a
soul super-added by God. Since matter is naturally in motion, Aristotle's
argument for God as the unmoved mover is fallacious. But the argument from
design is valid.
- Descartes.
The French philosopher, Rene Descartes (1596-1650), was the founder
of modern epistemological rationalism. His method of doubt, whereby
the truth of every idea was doubted that did not meet the criterion of
"clear and distinct" ideas, led many of the intellectuals of
the Enlightenment to question the metaphysical and theological views
of the medieval period, in order to rebuild philosophy, religion,
literature, art, political and social life on a new basis, reason.
Using this method of doubt, Descartes rejected sense perceptions
because they are unreliable and are subject to deceptions. He
found that there is only one thing that he could not doubt, his
own existence. "I think, therefore I am." [Cogito, ergo sum.]
He took this fact as his first truth that could not be doubted. Since
his existence was implied by his own thinking, he concluded that he
existed as a thinking being or substance. Upon further rational
investigation, he found that the mind has clear and distinct ideas
of duration, of number, of causality, and of a perfect being,
God. Descartes accepted these ideas as innate; man is born with
these ideas. The idea of God, for example, as a perfect being could not
come from sense perceptions, since they could not be acquired from an
imperfect world. Similarly for such attributes of God as eternity,
omniscience, and omnipotence. And since every effect has a cause and
the effect could not be greater than the cause, then there must be a God,
who caused the idea of God to appear in the human mind. Using
this form of the ontological argument, Descartes concluded that
God does exist. The mind also contains the idea of an external
world. Does the external world exist? Of course it does, because
a perfect Being would not deceive man. The same argument guarantees
the reality of extension, motion, and the principles of geometry;
that is, these clear and distinct ideas and their reality comes
from God. Descartes also considered whether the ideas arrived
at by pure reason would agree with the physical world and he concluded
that the God who made and sustained man and the universe had caused
them to agree.
Having established the existence of external world,
Descartes observes that that world contained bodies and minds.
He draws a clear difference between them.
(a) A body is extended, res extensa, and has reference to
space and time, and motion. Descartes identified matter with extension,
and on this basis developed a corpuscular view of the universe. Descartes'
view of space is that it is filled, a plenum, and motion is possible
because the particles can move, even though there is no empty space or void
between them.
(b) Mind is just the opposite, without extension, and has no essential
reference to space or time. It is res cogitans or thinking thing.
Thus Descartes held that thought and extension are the two essential
attributes of the external world. More precisely, he held that thought
is the essential attribute of mind and extension of matter. Immagination,
sensation, and will are modes of thought, the "accidental" forms
in which it may exist. Descartes held that minds and bodies are created
substances. God alone, as an infinite substance, is a self-subsistent Being,
substance in the fullest meaning of the word. An attribute has dependent
being, but substance is not dependent upon anything else, but upon itself.
Descartes also advanced a version of the cosmological argument for the
existence of God, based on the dependent nature of all the substances
of world that requires a substance which is not dependent upon anything else.
It is obvious from the distinction between mind and body that their
separation allows for their separate existence, and the immortality of
the soul. But Descartes' complete separation of mind and body, implying
that they could not influence each other, raised the problem of their relation
in a human being, in man. Thus there arose various solutions to this
mind-body problem. Nicholas Malebranche (1638-1715), a priest and follower of
Descartes, and others put forth a doctrine of Occasionalism, that God
came in between mind and body allowing them to interact; the mind makes its
decision to move and God moves the body.
Descartes had insisted on the inseparability of matter and space, the plenum,
and would apparently have challenged the logical priority of space asserted by
Newton. But Descartes made his philosophy of nature ambiguous by retaining
only the geometrical property of matter, extension. In what intelligible
sense can space be called a plenum? Descartes' answer is that all space is
filled with a medium which, though imperceptible to the senses, is capable of
transmitting force, and exerting effects on the material bodies immersed in
it, the aether, as it was called. Before Descartes, the word was used
for Aristotle's fifth element, the quintessense, of which the planets, the
sun, and stars were made; Descartes was the first to introduce aether in
science, and gave to it mechanical properties. In his view, it was regarded
as the solitary tenant of the universe, occupying all space except for that
small fraction occupied by ordinary matter. Descartes assumed that the
aether particles are in continual motion. And since there was no empty
space for the aether particles to move into, he inferred that they moved by
taking the place vacated by other aether particles which are also in motion.
Thus the movement of a single particle of the aether involved the motion of
an entire closed chain of particles; and the motion of these closed chains
constituted vortices, which performed the important function in his
picture of the cosmos of moving the heavenly bodies. Holding, then,
to the view that the effects produced by means of contacts and collisions
of the aether particles in motion was the simplest and most intelligible
explanation of phenomena in the external world, Descartes would not admit
any other agencies. Descartes is thus is the originator of the Mechanical
Philosophy, Mechanism, that is, the doctrine that the external
inanimate world may be considered for scientific purposes as an automatic
mechanism, and that it is possible and desirable to explain every physical
phenomena by a mechanical model.
- Mechanism.
Thus Descartes was the founder of mechanism. In his search for
clear and distinct ideas he had concluded that nothing better satisfied
this criterion than the concept of the machine. Hence he sought
to interpret the world as a machine and became convinced that
he had proved that it was. He gave a thoroughly mechanical view
of the origin and movement of the planets in his work entitled
The World, which he completed in 1633, but he did not publish
it because he heard of Galileo's condemnation by the Roman Church.
He published a revised version in his Principles of Philosophy
in 1644. He argued that the world was formed from matter whirling
about fixed centers, smaller particles collecting together into
larger ones. Smaller bodies were swept about larger ones by vortices
or whirlpools of aether. Thus the planets were carried about the
sun and the moon about the earth. Descartes used this idea of
vortices to explain light, heat, gravity, and lighting. But Newton
showed that the vortex theory of planetary motion was inconsistent
with the way fluids actually behave. But this did not destroy
the mechanical view of nature; the whirlpools were replaced with
a more machine-like mechanism governed by the laws of motion and
gravity, the clock; both Newton and Huygens used this analogy
and references to the universe as a clock became widespread and
popular. At this time much technical and scientific effort was
expended in improving the accuracy and portability of clocks;
by 1700 good clocks were available and excited admiration. Accordingly
the likening of the universe to a clock was also an expression
of their admiration for the wonderful mechanism of the universe.
The Newtonian mechanical model was not limited to the physical
sciences; it was also applied to political and social theory.
For example, J. B. Desogulier published in 1728 his work entitled
The Newtonian System of the World the Best Model of Government.
The French physician Julien O. de la Mettrie (1709-1751) published
in 1748 his work entitled Man the Machine. La Mettrie
was not only an exponent of the new Newtonian world view but of
mechanism which he believed could explain everything, and in particular,
man. On the basis of his physiological studies, he was sure that
all human mental processes could be explained on the basis of
mechanical principles. Thinking could be explained by the motion
of particles in the brain and thoughts by the arrangement of those
particles. This philosophy of mechanism was widely accepted and
has had many followers since the eighteenth century, even unto today.
Of course, the mechanical model has been modified to include
electricity, magnetism and the quantum mechanical theory of atoms
and molecules.
- Gassendi.
Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), Professor at the College de France in
Paris, a follower of Copernicus and Galileo, re-introduced the views of the
ancient atomist, namely that the universe is formed of material indivisible
bodies, eternal and unchangeable, moving about in a space which except for
them is empty. The most formidable objection to this new view was that it
was associated with the moral and theological views of Epicurus and Lucretius.
Gassendi, who was himself a priest, worked hard to show that atomism had
no necessary connection with religious error, and that it could be accepted
as a basis for physics by Christian men. After a sharp controversy with
Descartes in 1641-1646, he was successful and his views were accepted by
Newton, and became later the theory of matter in Chemistry. The theory
had the advantage that space need not be considered as a plenum, and
there was no need for moving particles to form closed chains and to form
the Cartesian vortices.
- Henry More.
The Cambridge Neoplatonist, Henry More (1614-1687), placed himself
in strong opposition both to ancient Greek atomism and to the Cartesian
identification of matter and extension. Both seemed to him to lead
inevitable to materialism and atheism. He argued that extension is not
the distinguishing attribute of matter; matter also has the attribute
of impenetrability or "solidity," as it was called at that time.
Impenetrability (and the related tangibility) is the criterium
differentionis between matter and spirit. In order to understand
mutual interaction between the spirit and matter it is necessary to find
a common ground between them. More maintained that this common ground
is extension. Extension characteristizes spirit as well as matter.
In a word, extension is not the distinguishing attribute of matter, but
belongs to both spirit and matter. He argued that space is real.
He rejected Descartes' plenum, accepting the existence of space as such.
To both thinkers empty space does not exist; but if space may be
empty as far as matter is concerned, it is yet, according to More,
always filled with spirit. He argued that the reality of space is
guaranteed by its very measurability. That is, space has indubitably
the attribute of measurability, even when empty of all matter;
as there are no attributes without substance, measurability
as an attribute demonstrates the substantiality and reality of space.
Also this substance is incorporeal, since it has the attributes of
immobility and penetrability, which are not attributes of matter.
More also contended with regard to this "subtle" substance that it
exists necessarily, even if all matter were annihilated. This lead
More finally to identify space with God. Since God and space have both
the attribute of necessary existence, they are therefore one and the same.
- Spinoza.
In modern philosophy the dualism of the Greek doctrine of the two realms,
the eternal and unchanging and the temporal and changing, is still
retained in systems of monistic pantheism. But the transcendence of the
personal God of medieval theology was replace by an immanent impersonal
being. Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) was the first modern philosopher
to break with the traditional view of the relation of God and Nature, denying
the transcendence of God, that God is separated from the world. Starting
with the definition of substance as "any independently existing thing,"
he argued there is only one absolutely independent thing, an infinite
impersonal substance, which is God. This infinite substance has an
infinite number of attributes of which we only know two, mind or thought
and matter, or extension. These are modes or aspects of this one infinite
substance. These modes follow from the nature of substance by the same
inexorable necessity by which the properties of triangle follow from the
definition of the triangle. The world, therefore, proceeds from God by
necessity. That is, the world is a necessary consequence of the nature
of God and it is a part of its nature. Since mind and matter is all that
there is, at least all we know that there is, and since mind and matter
are modes of the one infinite substance, namely God, it follows that All
is God and God is All. This is called pantheism. The consequence
of this view of the reality is that everything that is is a consequence of
reason or cause and could not have been otherwise; and God could not have
been otherwise. Is God free? "Yes," answers Spinoza, because
God's freedom comes from not being dependent upon any other thing, since he
alone exists. And as consequence of this there can be no miracles, nor
the possiblity of miracles, since God cannot violate his own laws. Man's
freedom, similarly, cannot be a freedom to do otherwise; What man calls
freedom of will is just his igorance of the causes of his actions.
Thus Spinoza still recognized that the unchangeability of God implies a
strict determinism, and that the mode of extension is the realm of change.
- Leibniz.
The German philosopher, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), held
that the fundamental ontological unit is a center of force. In this he
departed from Descartes who held that extension is the fundamental property
of matter and thought is the fundamental property of mind. On this basis
Leibniz came to the conclusion that an "atom" as the
"smallest particle of matter" is meaningless. As long as matter
is characterized as extension, it is divisible. Endowing these extensionless
units with force (since the laws of motion required it), he called them
"monads". The term "monad" had been used by the
Pythagoreans and by Giordano Bruno, but Leibniz' use is distinctive.
These monads are the simple substances out of which everything is made.
Since they are without extension they are not in space.
And since they lack parts, they cannot be reduced to something simpler.
These centers of force are also centers of feelings, perception, and
appetition. Everything had an inner state. That inner state's awareness
of itself he called "appetition" and its awareness of other
things he called "perception". In the 17th century the term
"perception" meant the more general relation of "taking
account of" as well as our meaning of perception as "mirrowing"
an object. Liebniz identified the two meanings, producing the doctrine
that each monad "mirrors" the entire universe and hence each monad is a
microcosm.
- Hegel.
The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
also combined the two Greek realms of the eternal and the temporal in a
pantheism. He combines Heraclitus' principle of constancy in change and
the unity of opposites. Change takes place by the a pattern he called the
Dialectic, which is a logical triad of Thesis, Antithesis, and
Synthesis. The Antithesis is the opposite (not contradictory) of the Thesis;
this opposition is overcome and reconciled in the Synthesis, which becomes the
Thesis for the next stage of the development. Hegel saw this Dialectic
in everything, in logic, in nature, and in history. This entire process,
he interprets, as divine Reason, the Absolute, realizing itself in history.
In terms of the Dialectic, the Thesis is the bare Absolute, pure Thought,
and the Antithesis is Nature, and the Synthesis is Spirit, Being in and
for itself, or Being returned to itself. God is not transcendent, as
over and above the world, but immanent in it. God is coming to
self-realization in human history and in each man by the Dialectic. Thus
Nature stands in antithesis to Logic, in which the Absolute is pure thought.
In Nature the Absolute Spirit externalizes itself as the outer world. In
his Philosophy of Nature Hegel's purpose is to show what universal
conceptions underlie nature. These conceptions differs from those of Logic
in that not all of them are necessarily present in everything. There are
universals in living things, for example, which do not appear in inorganic
matter. Hegel is not a panpsychist, that is, he does not believe that in
everything there are souls or minds. The lowest and most abstract conceptions
of Nature are the triad of space, time, and motion. He was not hostile to
the natural sciences, nor did he reject the mechanical interpretation of
nature as true within the range of scientific investigation of nature.
But mechanism is as abstract a conception of nature as it is in Logic.
Teleology is a more concrete conception. Any organism has a mechanical
structure, and is subject to the laws of physics and chemistry. But such a
description is not exhaustive. Within an organism, the relation of various
organs to one another constitute a whole which is more than a mechanical
interaction of its parts. Its life carries out its own inward purpose.
The whole of nature is governed by mechanical laws. But nature has
meaning more profound than that given in those laws. This is what the
Absolute Idealists means when they insist that the world has a spiritual
meaning.