Prime Movers and Prim Provers

PRIME MOVERS AND PRIM PROVERS RCENT DECADES have given evidence of a healthy volume of discussion in Thomistic metaphysics in" volving the problem of properly grasping the im" portant role of God in the metaphysics of St. Thomas. Much of this contemporary dialogue surrounding the place of God in metaphysics has raised problems of a methodological nature, problems whose solution will require a precise understanding of the nature of metaphysical procedure as a properly scientific inquiry into the ultimate nature and causes of being. It is with these methodological considerations of metaphysical procedure in the scientific inquiry into the ultimate explanation of being as being that we will be concerned. Thomists writing today on the question of the place of God in metaphysics are generally agreed that the sharp curricu" lar distinction frequently made between general metaphysics or ontology and natural theology is doctrinally unfounded. They have argued that this dichotomy would tend to invalidate natural theology by removing from beneath a study of the nature and attributes of God its logical metaphysical underpinnings in the proof (s) of his Existence/ that the special science of natural theology or " theodicy " is the result of "foreign accretions" introduced into Thomism by eighteenth century pioneers as a result of their alien backgrounds,2 and that consequently, "there is no adequate distinction between metaphysics and natural theology." 3 Our concern will not be primarily with God as the subject 1 Cf. Fernand Van Steenberghen's "Reflexions sur Ia systematiSation philosophique ," Revue N eoacolastique de Philosophie 41 (1938), p. 208. • See the fine study by Fr. Joseph Owens of this "emptying" of the content of Thomistic being," Theodicy, Natural Theology, and Metaphysics," Mode:rn Schoolman 28 (1951), pp. 126-137. 8 Klubertanz, George P., S. J., "A Comment on 'The Intelligibility of Being,'" Gregorianum 36 (1955) p. 195. 465 466 CONNOR J. CHAMBERS of natural theology, but only as the cause of the subject of metaphysics which is being as being or common being. This inquiry will at times touch upon the relevant problem of the starting-point of metaphysics, so much discussed in recent years, but we will be concerned with it only to the minor extent that it becomes inevitable. Our primary concern will be for the methodological aspects of this metaphysical approach to God as the First Cause of being, for the scientific aspects of this metaphysical inquiry. There has been an implicit "tension" in recent discussion of this problem between metaphysical science as conforming to the norms of what a science should properly be, on the one hand, and its cognitional dependence upon the more ontological aspects of its uncovered evidence, on the other. It is our hope that this" tension" need not prove to be an unhealthy polarity within the metaphysician 's inquiry. We have confined ourselves, in section II, to an examination of only one of St. Thomas' works, his commentary In Librum Boethii de Trinitate, and to only the Fifth and Sixth Questions of this commentary, which deal with the division and methods of the sciences. To acquire a complete grasp of the Thomistic notion of metaphysics as a science, however, it will be necessary for one to examine other works of St. Thomas, particularly his commentaries on the First Book of Aristotle's Posterior Aruilytics and on the latter's Metaphysics. Although Aristotle's Posterior Analytics provides the classic Greek norms for a genuine " science," St. Thomas' commentary In Librum Boethii de Trinitate contains some cardinal indications of his own conception of what a properly scientific metaphysics should be, and is in fact the most profitable single work of his concerning our question of the methodological constitution of metaphysics. The problem of the approach to metaphysics as a science and the problem of the order of that science are complicated ones. It is our conviction that a proper grasp of the correct order of learning is necessary for an adequate understanding of the metaphysical procedure. It may be, however, that there are several methodological levels or orders distinguishable and PRIME MOVERS AND PRIM PROVERS 467 operable in the area of metaphysics. The de facto pedagogical order of discovery, or via inventionis, is obviously important to both...