Categories, and What is Beyond ed. by Gyula Klima, Alexander W. Hall (review)

This slim volume contains a collection of eight essays that were originally given as lectures in 2002 under the aegis of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics. It is the second in a series of nine volumes published thus far, on subjects such as mental representation, free will, the ontology of individuation, the conceivability of God, skepticism, and nominalism. The title of the present volume is slightly misleading. Only the first two contributions are devoted to medieval treatments of the ten Aristotelian categories (substance, quantity, relation, quality, etc.). The remaining six are about “what is beyond.” One might assume this is intended to refer to God or to the transcendentals, i.e. being, one, good. In fact, the last six essays delve into several topics including but not limited to God, the metaphysical and semantic analogy between diverse “intra-mundial” entities and God, essence and existence, negation and the One of Neoplatonism, mystical self-annihilation and skepticism, time and eternity, divine simplicity, and causal explanation. Thinkers from Proclus and Augustine to Aquinas, Eckhart, and Suárez are discussed. Henry of Ghent and Thomas Sutton, who are less known outside medieval philosophy and theology, are also discussed.

Taken as a whole, the collection is wide-ranging and rather eclectic, yet it addresses some key themes in medieval metaphysics while simultaneously highlighting the vital role that logic and semantics play in medieval metaphysics. In doing so, the volume successfully fulfills the broader aim of the Society to investigate the metaphysical insights of the medieval period with a view to our own philosophical enrichment, and to do so in a way that illuminates the logical framework within which these insights were articulated (129). An unfortunate lacuna here is the topic of the transcendentals, which some might consider emblematic of medieval metaphysics and logic. Even so, the scope of the collection, combined with the pointed focus of its essays on such an array of topics and thinkers, makes for an impressive volume.

Read in its entirety, the collection is organized along the hierarchy of being, from creatures up to God. Jorge J. E. Gracia opens the volume with an essay on Suárez’s account of categories. William McMahon gives an overview of the state of research on a question that preoccupied thinkers from about 1260 to 1310, namely, whether and how one could establish that there are exactly ten categories. Moving away from categories and ascending, as it were, toward God, Stephen Theron provocatively argues that within Aristotelian metaphysics, analogy is the essential precondition for plurality among entities. Gyula Klima, by examining Henry of Ghent and Thomas Sutton on the distinction between essence and existence in creatures and God, convincingly shows that semantics underlie and are thus crucial for interpreting a thinker’s metaphysical intuitions. John N. Martin presents an informal overview of the logic of negation and scalar predicates in Proclus’s metaphysics. Alan Perreiah compares Eckhart and Augustine on anthropological apophaticism, which questions any human capacity to achieve union with God. Focusing on God, Jason Lawrence Reed suggests that Aquinas’s doctrine of analogical predication is essential for understanding God’s knowledge of future contingents and how they may be eternally present to him. Peter Weigel explains that according to the mature Aquinas, divine simplicity is the foundational divine attribute from which all others, e.g. immutability and eternity, are derived, linking divine simplicity to exhaustive causal explanation.

Each contribution will raise further questions, of course. They are generally well written and well argued. On occasion, the discussion becomes quite dense and consequently difficult to follow for readers less acquainted with the thinker or theory in question. Nevertheless, the contributors tend to analyze the arguments they discuss critically in the clear style typical of current scholarship in the field. They are sensitive to and take seriously the peculiarities of the medieval philosophical context. However, one receives the distinct impression, consistent...