Metaphysics

A Basic Introduction in a Christian Key

Donald Wallenfang

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781532643521
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Metaphysics

What is metaphysics? Metaphysics: A Basic Introduction in a Christian Key gives a simplified answer to this daunting question. Born under the shadow of the Parthenon by Aristotle and his contemporaries, metaphysics eventually enjoyed its heyday in the medieval era and is finding a resurgence today in modernity. This book explores the perennial question of being and its uptake in the world of Christian theology. Donald Wallenfang leads the reader through five navigable chapters that feature the most basic themes of metaphysics: the question of being, first principles, causality, cosmology, and morality. The abstract tendencies of metaphysics are brought down to earth with reference to the gospel of Jesus and the relevance of metaphysics for daily living. Altogether, the reader will be inspired to think toward the whole by asking questions that penetrate beneath the surface of things. Beauty, truth, and goodness will be unveiled to the degree that we accompany Jesus the metaphysician along his itinerary of being given.

1

BEING

To be, or not to be: that is the question.

—Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3.1

הָיָה. εἰμί. τὸ ὄν. οὐσία. Esse. Ens. Ser. Être. Essere. Sein. Wesen. Being. What is being? This may be the most basic and yet most sophisticated question that we human beings can ask. It is the premier philosophical question across cultures and traditions since time immemorial. Aristotle considered this question to commence all subsequent philosophy. It was the question that initiated first philosophy, and all other questions relate back to it as to their most ancient ancestor. To ask the question of being (die Seinsfrage) is to ask everything all at once. The question of being encompasses everything because anything that is has being. Even the concept of nothingness has a kind of being (if only in the form of negation), always in relation to being. Being is first before subtracting anything from it. If there is less it is because first there was more. In the beginning, all. In the end, all. In the beginning, to be. In the end, to be. Being before beginning. Being after end. For being, beginning is end and end is beginning because being is is. Being prior to existence because anything that exists stands out (from ex, “out,” and sistere, “to cause to stand”) in its being thanks to being. Being before me because it is clear that there was a time—most of the time—when I was not. Thanks to being, I am.

Being itself (ipsum esse) cannot be measured. Numbers are because of being. Being itself is not an object. Objects are because of being. Being itself does not move from one place to another. Movement and places are because of being. Being itself cannot be found within the universe or be regarded as identical to the universe. The universe is because of being. Being itself does not change. Change is because of being. Being itself is being because being is the be-cause—the cause that is—the cause of itself (causa sui) and the cause of each and every being (ens) and, therefore, the cause of all beings (entia). What is being? Is. What is being? Be-cause. What is being? Yes. What is being? To be. What is being? All. What is being? The whole. What is being? Not nothing. What is being? Not lacking.

The question of being opens onto contemplation of all things (and non-things). It generates not so much a Pandora’s box of complexities as an infinite treasure box of discoveries. The question of being is implied in every why question. Why? Be-cause. Whenever we ask why, we inquire into the cause of a perceived effect. Ultimately, we inquire into the cause that is the cause of all unnecessary and contingent causes. Why is the sky blue? Why is the earth round? Why does the sun shine? Why are there waves in the ocean? Why am I here? Why is there a universe? Why is there something rather than nothing? The fact that we ask these questions suggests the fact that their answers precede them. We would not ask such “why” questions if there was no rational “because” in response to them. This rational “because” is another name for truth. Metaphysics asks the question of being because it is asking the truth about being. It is this truth that this book yearns to contemplate and share with you, the reader.

I. Being Itself (ipsum esse) and Beings (entia)

A. Ontological Difference

A term that runs almost synonymously with metaphysics is ontology (from ón, “being,” and lógos, “science”), the science of being. One key distinction sets the field for all other distinctions in metaphysics: the ontological difference between being itself (ipsum esse) and beings (entia). I use the Latin terms as employed by Thomas Aquinas to help differentiate between the two concepts. Being itself (ipsum esse) refers to being in a verbal sense of the word: the very act of being, or existence itself. Existence does not fluctuate between there and not there because it defines everywhere. Simply put, it is. This is the primary term and the necessary condition of possibility for all individual beings that have existence. The second term of the ontological difference, beings (entia), refers to everything that has being (or existence) but is not identical to being (or existence) in itself. We can say that all nominative beings (entia) share in the oneness of existence, however, existence itself (ipsum esse) is not a being per se. Rather, existence itself (ipsum esse) encompasses and transcends all beings (entia) while giving them a share in being. So the first distinction for metaphysics is that between being itself (ipsum esse) on the one hand, and beings (entia) on the other. Without this vital distinction, I may end up thinking that I am at the center of the universe after all. Instead, in truth, I recognize that I am a being among beings that share in a common existence, and that no individual being welcomed itself into existence. Being itself grants being to all contingent individual beings not identical to being itself. From where else would they have been adopted into being? So far we have determined what all beings have in common, namely, being (or existence), but also that beings themselves are differentiated from being itself (ipsum esse) and from one another according to their individuality.

B. Unity and Diversity

Following the ontological difference between being itself and beings, metaphysics points to a second key distinction: that between unity and diversity, or between singularity and plurality. All numbers are based upon the number one. The numbers two, three, and four, for instance, are multiples of one. How many existences are there? One. How many instances of being itself (ipsum esse) are there? One. To say otherwise would be nonsensical inasmuch as all concepts of being relate back to the fundamental concept of being itself (ipsum esse) that encompasses every episode and indication of being. Yet how many beings do I encounter in my experience? Innumerable. Just as there is a oneness of being, there is a multiplicity of beings. Being is one yet many. It is united yet diverse. It is singular yet plural.

C. The Universal and the Particular

The third distinction related to the primary distinction of the ontological difference is that between the universal and the particular. Closely related to the previous distinction between unity and diversity, the concept of universality encompasses and applies to all beings, whereas the concept of particularity signifies individual beings diversified one from the other. When we contemplate being, we draw these distinctions in order to know being in truth, in its variegated unity and universality. There is a wholeness of being, yet this wholeness is comprised of many parts, and these parts, too, are composed of many particles. It is not that there is empirical (from empeiría, “experience”) natural science on the one hand and nonempirical metaphysics on the other. Rather, a common verifiability obtains for all thought in relation to truth. Particular experiences receive their standards of measurement and verifiability from the universality of truth. The self-evidence of particular existing individual beings is oriented according to the self-evidence of universal being itself (ipsum esse).

D. First Contemplation

The question of being sparks contemplation. This question has led many saints and mystics over the course of human history to ecstatic experiences and lives of heroic virtue. For example, Julian of Norwich recounts a vision she had of a small spherical object in the palm of her hand that she describes as no larger than a hazelnut. Upon contemplating the being of this tiny object, she was led to contemplation of the entire universe and to being itself. She was filled with the intuition that the being of this small thing never would go out of existence inasmuch as it was loved by God. She realized that everything had being and that its being would last as long as God loved it. And insofar as God is being itself (ipsum esse), God could do nothing other than love always and without ceasing what God has loved into being. Twentieth-century English mystic Caryll Houselander also describes the possibility of contemplating the entire universe according to the sensational pattern of a miniature snowflake. She calls the experience an inscape. An inscape is when the fullness and universality of being itself is revealed in a very small particular being that bears the imprint of the cosmos—a cosmos that is ordered according to the essential patterns of being, such as distinctive forms, symmetry and the provocation of beauty.

Figure 1

I know of a man who had a similar experience while eating shrimp mei fun for lunch in a Chinese restaurant. As the story goes, he was enjoying his meal in solitude and looked over at the neon sign in the front window of the restaurant. A miniscule piece of fuzz was dangling from the sign. Upon seeing the microscopic fiber suspended in midair, he was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude over the goodness that it, too, has being. This infinitesimal being disclosed the infinity of being itself (ipsum esse) even by itself. This shows the creative and powerful potential of contemplation based on the question of being: it awakens deep thanksgiving upon recognizing that all being—including my own being—receives itself as a gift from an infinite elsewhere that is nonidentical to the caducity of mutable finite being.

II. Form and Matter

A. Hylomorphism

Once deciphering the ontological difference between being itself (ipsum esse) and beings (entia), we can proceed to define being more precisely: matter (hýle) and form (morphé). As a philosophical worldview developed by Aristotle, hylomorphism refers to an integrated and holistic way of comprehending being according to its two primary components: matter and form. In the realm of being, we are most familiar with matter. Objects. Atoms. Stuff. The periodic table of elements. What I can buy at a store. Not only is matter most familiar to us because it is what we perceive most immediately with our senses, but matter is also what we can measure, manipulate, and manufacture. We can understand it to a high degree because it is what is outside of us, even including the material extension of our own bodies. However, metaphysics reminds us that matter always has some specific form. Without form, no actual matter. Pure theoretical matter is pure potency, yet pure potency without form is nonbeing insofar as it remains non-actualized being. Form is what actualizes matter into actual being. The tiniest subatomic particles, too, have form, and so they exist. What differentiates one type of subatomic particle from another, whether proton, electron, or quark? Form. What differentiates one element from another, whether hydrogen, oxygen or carbon? Form. What differentiates one kind of being from another, whether elephant, eagle or human? Form. This may seem like stating the obvious, but it is one of the crucial first principles of metaphysics: form precedes matter. This principle reflects the exact relationship between being itself and beings: being itself precedes beings.

Form signifies cause. Form is what effects matter and causes it to adhere to innumerable shapes and qualities of being. Because form acts on matter, a specific being becomes itself. For example, before a house can be built, a blueprint must be created by an architect. Architecture precedes construction. Ideas precede their material instantiation. The form of a circle precedes the making of a wheel. The form (genus) Hippocampus precedes the fifty-four species of seahorse, both on a microlevel (conception of a new individual organism and its ongoing development) and on a macrolevel (the process of biological evolution that developed toward the distinct genus and species of the organism known today as seahorse). There are organisms because they are organized according to specific forms of being. The target precedes the trajectory of the shot. If the shot has a goal, a target has been determined in advance. Matter adapts to the formal agency exercised upon it. Matter is organized according to the organs of form. Related to the Greek word for work (érgon), an organ is what serves to actualize a particular function of an organism in light of particular ends. Organic forms shape and structure matter so as to diversify being and promote the perpetuation of life. Though not reducible to matter, form is the immaterial pattern of being that must precede the material manifestation of a specific pattern of being. Just as feelings, ...