Autor: Thomas Aquinas

Buch: Aquinas on Being and Essence

Titel: Aquinas on Being and Essence

Stichwort: Metaphysik (Aufgabe, Beschreibung, ökonomisches Vorgehen), Bedeutung von Wörtern; "Seiendes" (analytisch zuerst, implizite in allen W. enthalten); M. (Gegenstand): Seiendes als Seiendes

Kurzinhalt: ... metaphysics attempts to clarify—i.e., to record and to give clear and precise formulations to—the different meanings of these widely used words, ... (2) metaphysics attempts an investigation of extramental immaterial things (the separated substances),

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10b Apropos of the tasks he enumerates in (2), it is important to notice that it is one thing to investigate the meanings of the words "being" and "essence," and quite another thing to investigate the being and essence of diverse sorts of real thing. This is clear from the obvious fact that one can know what the words "being" and "essence" mean, and have no idea what the being and essence of some real thing—e.g., man—might be. The same thing is the case with other words. For example, one can know what the word "cause" means, yet have no idea what the cause of some given fact might be; or what the word "existence" means, yet have no idea what existence might be. The following questions are suggested by the things just said: Why does metaphysics bother about investigating the meanings of words, since metaphysics is from the outset an attempt to investigate real things? Why does St. Thomas here limit his investigation of the meanings of words to but two, namely, "being" and "essence"? (Fs) (notabene)

10c The third task mentioned by St. Thomas in (2) suggests the following questions: What are logical intentions? Why does St. Thomas consider the question of the relation of being and essence to logical intentions? Why does St. Thomas choose to consider but three of them, namely, genus, species, and specific difference? What does St. Thomas take to be the difference between logic and metaphysics?

Metaphysics and the Investigation of the Meanings of Words

11a To begin with, one must notice that there are certain words which have a very wide use in the discourse of daily life, apropos of things like bread and butter, clothes, houses, taxes, who's running for president, how to avoid temptations, in the various sciences like physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and in the various branches of philosophy like natural philosophy, moral philosophy, philosophy of art. As used in everyday discourse, the meanings of these words are left uninvestigated or unanalyzed. As used in the various sciences and in the various branches of philosophy, their meanings are not differentiated; that is, no one of the sciences, nor any one of the branches of philosophy, takes it upon itself to record, in precise formulations, the different meanings which a same word has as it is used apropos of their (i.e., its own and that of others) proper, but different, subject matters. That a same word might have different meanings as it is used apropos of different subject matters is suggested by the difference itself in the subject matters. But the meanings of these words should not remain uninvestigated; otherwise there will remain a certain indeterminateness, a certain incompleteness, in human knowledge. (Fs)

11b Among these widely used words (e.g., principle, cause, element, necessary, contingent, good, true, beautiful, one, many), as they are used in everyday discourse, the word "being" (the more usual English equivalent is the word "thing") is first, analytically first. That is, the meaning of the word "being" is included in the meanings of the others, but not vice versa. And not only is its meaning included in the meanings of widely used words but it is also included as well in the meanings of all (however widely or not widely used) the words of everyday discourse. Thus, the meaning of no such word will be fully and explicitly understood unless the meaning of the word "being" is fully and explicitly understood. (Of course, for the purposes of one's everyday life, it is not necessary to have a full and explicit understanding of the meanings of the words one uses.) Further, since propositions and reasonings are composed of words, the truth of no everyday proposition, nor of any everyday reasoning, will be fully and explicitly understood unless the meaning of the word "being" is fully and explicitly understood. Since the meaning of the word "being" is the analytical beginning point of everyday intellectual knowledge, and since everyday intellectual knowledge is in some sense the beginning point of all intellectual knowledge, it is desirable and indeed necessary to make no mistakes about its meaning; for a small error at a beginning point easily becomes a great one in the end. (Fs)

12a Commenting on Aristotle's Metaphysics, St. Thomas writes:

Because the particular sciences [i.e., any science about real things other than metaphysics] put aside the investigation of some things which need to be investigated, it was necessary that there be a science, a universal and first science, which would investigate the things which the particular sciences do not consider. These put-aside things appear to be both the common notions or aspects which follow on common being (which none of the particular sciences considers, since they do not belong to any one of the particular sciences any more than to any other, but commonly to all of them) and also the separated substances, which transcend the scope of the consideration of all the particular sciences. And thus Aristotle, handing down to us such a science, moves on, after his investigation of the common notions, to a particularized treatment of the separated substances, to the knowledge of which are ordered not only the things which have been treated so far in this science [metaphysics], but also things which are treated in other sciences.1

12b His words lead to this description of metaphysics: metaphysics is concerned with left-overs, i.e., with pursuits which are left over in the sense that they are outside, or beyond, the scope, the methods, the interest, of the various sciences and of the various other branches of philosophy. (That metaphysics is beyond them is clear from the simple fact that metaphysics investigates things which depend on sensible matter neither for being nor for being known.) These left-over pursuits are basically two: (1) metaphysics attempts to clarify—i.e., to record and to give clear and precise formulations to—the different meanings of these widely used words, both for the sake of this clarification itself and for the sake of its own metaphysical scientific procedures; (2) metaphysics attempts an investigation of extramental immaterial things (the separated substances), especially of what is first among all things. That the latter is beyond them is obvious. That the former—i.e., the attempt at clarification—is beyond them is indicated by the simple fact that no one of them undertakes this attempt. Further, there is no reason why any one of them, in preference to any other should attempt this task, seeing that these words are used by all of them (or at least by more than one of them). And it would be superfluous for each of them to do this. Hence, this clarificatory task ought to fall to a separate science, to a science whose subject matter includes in some way all other subject matters, to a universal or encompassing science—metaphysics. Thus, it has become a function of metaphysics to observe, and to see what words are such that they are used not only in everyday discourse, but in the various sciences (some or all), and in the other branches of philosophy (some or all), and to clarify their meanings. (Fs)

13a But metaphysics does not pursue this clarification only for the sake of the clarification itself. Metaphysics from the outset is an attempt to acquire knowledge about the existence and the characteristics of the first among all things; from the outset its intention is to use these words for its own purposes, that is, it attempts to elaborate for these words meanings which are suitable for metaphysical scientific procedures. It elaborates these meanings in a way such that they represent some sort of continuity in terms of an extension. Extended meanings of this sort, especially those which are extensions of the meanings of words used in the discourse of everyday life, are very valuable because they are extensions of what everybody already knows in some way, and because they are thereby in contact with the something-there which is grasped in our analytically first concept. These extensions have the great advantage of putting us into an uncommon and enviable position: we know at least in some way, and from the very beginning of our attempt at doing metaphysics, what we are talking about; and what we are talking about is things-there, i.e., the things given to us in sense experience. (Fs)

14a What makes a meaning suitable for metaphysical scientific procedures? (We referred to such suitability in the immediately preceding paragraph.) One must recall how being as being is established as the subject of metaphysics:2 if first philosophy, or metaphysics, has as its prime intention to come to a scientific knowledge of the first cause (i.e., of what is first among all things), and if something exists which is immaterial (e.g., the human soul), and if first philosophy is to be a science, then being as being (and not material being, or some other part of the whole of being) must be the subject. This is necessary in order to have an adequately universal effect in terms of which to come to a knowledge of the first cause. Any meaning or notion which, like that of being as being, is independent of sensible matter, and which is known to be realized extramentally apart from matter, can be used as a means through which to acquire more knowledge about the first cause. Any such notion is among the common notions referred to in the text quoted just above from St. Thomas' Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics. (Fs)

14b Thus, the clarificatory function of metaphysics has at least this twofold orientation: (1) toward lessening a certain indeterminateness and incompleteness in human knowledge, by undertaking a task which no other science undertakes; and (2) toward metaphysics itself for which it elaborates meanings suitable for scientific procedures. (Fs)

15a It is to be noticed that it is the concern of metaphysics to rise as quickly and as economically as possible to a proved knowledge of the existence and of the characteristics of the first among all things. If metaphysics can accomplish this by, for example, simply tracing the meanings of a same word as it is used in everyday discourse, i.e., without tracing its different meanings through the various sciences and through the various other parts of philosophy, there is no reason why it should not. Metaphysics can complete its tracing of words at leisure, i.e., after its primary task has been accomplished. To be sure, it is hoped that this leisurely tracing will afford additional paths to a knowledge of the existence and of the characteristics of the first among all things, paths which will serve to strengthen its initial economical one. (Fs) (notabene)

15b The tracing which St. Thomas proposes in his treatise On Being and Essence is a highly economical one. He proposes to trace the meanings of but two words—namely, "being" and "essence"—and that of the word "being" at the level of everyday discourse. His reason for this proposal is at least twofold: (1) the fact that the grasp of being, or of something-there, is the analytical beginning point of everyday intellectual knowledge, and (2) the fact that metaphysics is from the outset an attempt to rise to a knowledge of a first cause which is something real, i.e., real in a sense at least as strong as the sense in which the referent of the expression "something-there" is real. (Fs)

15c There are other reasons why metaphysics bothers about the meanings of words, especially that of the word "being." For example, (1) to avoid errors which come from not being careful about the ways in which words function, like the claim of Parmenides and Melissus that being is one; (2) to identify, in terms of what everybody knows, what metaphysics is primarily about as about a subject (see pages 56-58). (Fs)