Autor: Schmitz, Kenneth L.

Buch: The Gift: Creation

Titel: The Gift: Creation

Stichwort: Schöpfung - Geschenk; ex nihilo; Welt: weder Individuum, noch System; Sein im Akt der Individuen; Einheit (unum per se) = Einfachheit: Atomismus, Nominalismus, Hume; Akt: Prinzip d. Einfachheit (Substanz); Akt: fundamental, radikal, universal

Kurzinhalt: ... act is and must be simple; but, since it is not isolated and withdrawn from all involvement with otherness, it takes up all that which is not act (praeter esse) into its own power and thereby realizes the potentiality of non-act ---

Textausschnitt: 111b Nevertheless, it seems to me that the conception of the world as totality is not incompatible with this emphasis upon individuals. To be sure, the world is not some thing apart from its creatures: it does not have its own act of being. Still, it does have its own mode of being. The world is not an individual. Nor is it a mere collection, a network of relations resting upon non-worlded and private individuals. Nor is it the System of which they are mere members. Rather, the world is that which is built into its creatures, and they into it. For they are built-up in and for and with regard to the world within which they have their being. The world is a sort of compossibility grounded in the mutual existence of creatures. The creator's regard for creatures' being-in-the-world is not restricted to ordinary categorial relations, but is directed fundamentally to a distinctive kind of transcendental interrelationship. For the mode of the world is that it have its being in the acts of its creatures. (Fs)

112a These actually existent creatures are individual beings. Insofar as they retain their existent individuality, they cannot form an ontological unit in the strict sense. Their own definitive being prevents them from forming more than a set, or a compound, or an association of some sort. Now, an individual, as the name suggests, is that which is actually undivided; and this is what is meant by an ontological unit in the strict sense: unum per se, Aristotle's "this of a certain kind" (tóde ti). The conception is neither obvious nor without controversy. The chief issue is whether or not unity is equivalent to simplicity. Such an alleged equivalence is not unknown in the history of philosophy. Thus, atomism is the metaphysical expression of the equation of unity with simplicity; and in its Greek form it shows its parentage in Parmenides' exclusion of all difference and complexity from the notion of being. Nominalism is a later logical expression of this equation of unity and simplicity; and Humean impressionism a psychological version of it. Now, this equation, or more precisely, this identification of unity with simplicity conceives unity as indivisibility. What is one is not only undivided in fact, it is unable to be divided by its very nature, because there is no duality within it that is susceptible to being differentiated. Hegel has made us aware of a tendency in modern thought to frame a conception of the ego isolated from the world and withdrawn into itself away from all otherness and relatedness. Such an ego is derivative, and its abstract simplicity makes it incapable of generating plurality. He criticizes the philosophy of Plotinus also, because no plurality can be gotten out of a unity that is pure simplicity. (Fs) (notabene)

113a Now, if ontological unity were equivalent to ontological simplicity, then indeed, there could be no ontological composites that are ontological units in the strict sense, such as the substances which Aristotle tells us are composed of matter and form, or the individuals which are composed of substance and accidents, or the beings which St. Thomas tells us are composed of essence and esse.1 At most, such composites would be an obscure sort of compound to be replaced as soon as modern chemistry got under way in the early 19th century. Indeed, the understanding of such composites as compounds of elements capable of independent existence in their own right had become widespread two or more centuries earlier and proved fatal to the acceptance of strict ontological composites. (Fs)

113b But, if each creature is in truth an ontological unit in the strict sense and yet composite, then we need to understand how there can be strict ontological unity (perseity) without simplicity. Or rather, we need to place the simplicity correctly. That is, we need to recognize that, in regard to creatures, simplicity is not characteristic of the ontological unit as a whole; it is characteristic only of one of its principles. For creatures, the simplicity is one of principle, unlike God whose very being is simple. Now that simplicity is characteristic of the very act. Intrinisically and taken in itself, act is simply act. The traditional formula of the schoolmen held that act is not of itself limited; if it is limited, as in creatures, it is limited by another principle, matter or quantity or form. Because act is by its nature unlimited, it can be actually infinite in God, whom St. Thomas characterizes as Pure Act. Since it has no duality of self and other in it, act is simple. And just because it is simple, it can be the source of the unity of the ontological composite. This is the truth that is exaggerated in the demand that every ontological unit be simple; viz., that without simplicity there could be no unity. It is interesting that Kant, in a quite different context and with a quite contrary purpose, nevertheless insists upon the transcendental unity of apperception as the necessary a priori source of unity in all knowledge. The principle of unity is, for him, the principle of synthesis or combination; but taken in itself, the I think is self-identical, carrying no otherness within itself. For it is the simple function by which the synthetic unity of the manifold comes to objective unity.2 And indeed, it is true that unity must be traced back to simplicity. But we must also come to see that not every ontological unit need be simple. (Fs) (notabene)

115a Hegel is right to insist that a simplicity borne in upon itself to the exclusion of all involvement with otherness is a sterile simplicity, incapable of being the source of any duality and composition. But the act of which St. Thomas speaks is by its very nature communicative and diffusive. He tells us that a being is called being by virtue of its act; and that to be one means to be actually undivided. Actually undivided: in other words, (1) act is that in virtue of which something is called being, and (2) that very act is the source of the actual indivision that constitutes the ontological unit. To be sure, act is and must be simple; but, since it is not isolated and withdrawn from all involvement with otherness, it takes up all that which is not act (praeter esse) into its own power and thereby realizes the potentiality of non-act (praeter esse, id quod, essentia), its potentiality to be actualized in the actual composite ontological unit. So that, act in its simplicity is the primary principle of the perseity of the ontological unit, of its integrity and undividedness. (Fs; tblStw: Akt) (notabene)

115b We need to understand how it is that the indivision of an ontological unit in the strict sense can arise; and it is here that the Aristotelian path from potency to act provides direction. Both Aristotle and St. Thomas agree that such an indivision can arise only when that which is apt to receive a determination and thereby be realized in the reception is bonded to and by and with that which is capable of providing the determination.3 Now, this bonding is just that of a capacity and its fulfillment; it is the actuation of a potentiality. It is the relation of a potency to its act, then, that brings being to be as a being. The ontological unit in the strict sense is absolutely one, that is, it is not merely one in this or that respect, but is one without qualification (simpliciter). It is not simple, but it is simply one. Now, St. Thomas tells us that a plurality cannot "become one in an absolute sense," unless there be a relation not of actual entities, independent units but a relation of principles; that is, unless there be an ordering in which all other items of the plurality are related to one principle as the potential to its act.4 Since the unity is that of principles, and not of actual beings, nothing else can intervene between them, no "third thing," no other thing, nothing whatsoever. It is ens et unum per se. And that is why being and unity are convertible, and why there is an ontological preference on the part of each being in favour of its own unity. (Fs; tblStw: Akt) (notabene)

116a Act is always the act of a being, the being of a stone (esse lapidis), for example.5 And that which is not act in the thing (essence) simply is not without the act; lacking the act, it simply and absolutely is not. Act is that by which (quo est) whatever is (quod est) is. The possessive genitive, then, stands for a non-reciprocal relation of potency to act in the absolute order of being. For that which the thing is (stone) is appropriated ("owned") by that esse which, being act, appropriates what the stone is in its capacity but cannot be without that act (esse). The simplicity of esse has loaned to the composite that actual indivision without which it could not be an ontological unit in the strict sense: ens per se. And the act is the thing's own act in that the act is the source of the thing's capacity coming to actual subsistent being: ens per se.6 It must be recognized, of course, as has already been said, that the act proper to the existent creature does not do this simply by itself. Rather, this interior communication, which reflects the giving and receiving that is inseparable from the generosity of being, itself arises out of a larger communication of act. Now, this larger communication of act is creative activity proper; and it is to this that we finally turn. (Fs) (notabene)

117a We have been examining the absolute nature of act, because it is the jewel at the centre of the gift of being that is communicated in and through the creator's activity. Act is absolutely fundamental, since without it nothing else can be. It is most radical, since it is the root without which nothing else in the thing can be. At the same time, it is most common or universal, since its proper effect is not merely some modification or arrangement of already existing things, nor merely the generation of a certain kind of thing; but, rather, creation has as its distinctive effect the very coming into being of any and everything qua being.7 In the accidental modification of things and in the generation of substances, creaturely causes play their secondary and limited role; but "God is universally productive (activus universaliter) of the total being of things (totius esse)."8 Now, as we have already seen, the ontological commonality or universality (as distinct from abstract universality) is inseparable from the fullness of existential act; so that act, taken absolutely as esse at once, most fundamental and radical, most common and total, and most complete in its determinative power is the primal principle of plenitude.9 (Fs) (notabene)