Beginning Metaphysics III: Introduction to Essence and Existence

Suppose you walk outside one day and suddenly come across some strange object you’ve never encountered before. You’re first thought will most likely be, “what in the world is that?” This question of what something is, as simple as it may seem, is extremely profound. For as soon as we ask what something is, as soon as we pose the question “what is it?” or “what is X”, we have embarked upon a metaphysical journey.

So what’s so special about the question of “what is it”? Suppose that, after asking the question about the strange object in front of you, a friend who’s with you responds “That is a giraffe”. Disregarding the justified curiosity concerning what in the world a giraffe is doing outside your home, we must admit that the answer given us is intelligible.

Third Dialogue on the Nature of Love

*In light of Valentine’s Day, a third dialogue on the nature of love. The first can be read here and the second here. All characters and events are fictional, and are used to convey philosophical arguments. My own personal views are not necessarily reflected by the views of any characters or statements herein; the dialogue is just meant to work out and develop some thoughts.

Thomas: So do we now understand what love is?

Reuben: I think we have a start.

Thomas: What more would you want to say? We have agreed that love is the active will for the good of the other, and that the emotions follow the will, but that the emotions also feed the will, and the will is directed towards certain emotions.

Reuben: I agree that this is one account of love. But I wonder if it is the whole of love?

Thomas: What could there be beyond this?

Reuben: Before I answer that, I have another question.

Thomas: Ask it!

Reuben: We said much earlier that love cannot be a desire, since desire results from some need or incompleteness within ourselves, and hence to desire another must ultimately be selfish, merely wanting to use the person as a means to an end of our own emotional fulfillment.

Thomas: We did indeed say this.

Reuben: But must it be true that all desire as such results from some need or incompleteness within us?

Souls and an Argument from Motion in Plato’s Phaedrus

If one reads through the dialogues of Plato, it won’t take long to realize that he is never short of arguments for the immortality of the soul. It seems to be one of his favorite topics to write about, and apparently he held the point as of utmost significance. A few months ago, I wrote a paper for school on three of these arguments in his Phaedo. But he also writes about it in the Republic, Meno, a bit in Timaeus, and, the one we’ll be looking at in this post, Phaedrus. In general, as an Aristotelian rather than a Platonist, I don’t tend to accept many of Plato’s arguments for the immortality of the soul (although I find them fascinating and profound), especially considering that Plato held the soul to not only exist after death, but also to have pre-existed our physical birth. Plato is, in many ways, a radical dualist, holding the human soul to be the true self and the body to be merely a prison thereof. I strongly disagree. But for now, my reason for looking at one of these arguments is not to discuss immortality.

I regard Aquinas’s “Argument from Motion” or First Way as perhaps the strongest argument for the existence of God that there is. But it’s certainly not an argument that St. Thomas just drew out of thin air; it had a long history of development. For the most part, this history can be traced to Aristotle, since he first presents the argument as really intended to show that there exists some ultimate being or cause behind the universe. While Aristotle’s version is certainly the first fully drawn out and “technical-ized” form of the argument, I think its general sentiment can be found earlier, namely in Plato. Although, as we’ll see, Plato doesn’t really seem to have used the argument as pointing to some cause of motion behind the universe; but I think his presentation thereof still has some interesting implications.

Beginning Metaphysics II: Defining Existence

Metaphysics is the science that studies being as being. But in order to study being, we must know what “being” is in the first place. This is much easier said then done, because in a very real sense, being is almost not something definable, not something susceptible of definition. Being or existence is something taken for granted, quite literally. It is the most abstract, and hence the most vague, of all possible concepts. It is likewise the most fundamental of all concepts. It is something we quite obviously can recognize, but not something we can very easily understand.