The Paradoxical Structure of Existence by Frederick D. Wilhelmsen (review)

328 BOOK REVIEWS " goal-thinking " and Hauriou, while wondering about the influence of Fran<;ois Geny, Renard's dean at Nancy, on American jurisprudence through Benjamin Cardozo's frequent citation of him in the famous The Nature of the Judicial Process. Beneath the scholastic categories of Renard and Delos, matter and form, substance and accident, foreign to the ken of most American jurists, one discovers a concern similar to Freund's impatience with one-dimensional thinking and his aspiration that the courts serve as "the conscience of the country." 3 The evolution of legal rights need not only mean the explicitation of new demands upon society nor even the unfolding of natural law through progressive applications as " the evolution of human life brings to light new necessities in human nature that are struggling for expression." 4 As Broderick himself has ably demonstrated, the insight of the French institutionalists may well transcend the naked individualism of Locke and also the static conceptualism of latter-day exponents of an objective natural law.5 Providing a broader empirical base of observation, it gives a more convincing legal analysis of the present scene. The French Institutionalists appears as volume VIII in the Twentieth Century Legal Philosophy Series published under the auspices of the Association of American Law Schools. With glossary and comments by Jean Brethe de la Gressaye, Andre Hauriou, Bernard Geny, and Marcel Waline, it will stand as an exemplary work of comparative jurisprudence. The Catholic University of America Washington, D. C. WILLIAM w. BASSETT The Paradoxical Structure of Existence. By FREDERICK D. WILHELMSEN. Irving, Texas: The University of Dallas Press, 1970. Pp. 175. As Jacques Maritain wrote: A deep vice besets the philosophers of our day, whether they be neo-Kantians, neo-positivists, idealists, Bergsonians, logisticians, pragmatists, neo-Spinozists, or neo-mystics. It is the ancient error of the nomitnalists. In different forms, and with various degrees of awareness, they all blame knowledge-through-concepts for 8 Op. cit., pp. 115 and 96. • John Courtney Murray, We Hold These Truths (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960)' p. 818. • " Evolving Due Process and the French Institutionalists," The Catholic University of America Law Review, 136 (1964), 95-135; "Rights, Rhetoric and Reality: A New Look at Old Theory," ibid., 19 (1969), 183-157. BOOK REVIEWS 829 not being a suprasensible intuition of the existing singular . . . They cannot forgive that knowledge for not opening directly on existence as sensation does, but only onto essences, possibles. (Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Phelan, p. 1) Maritain's list could now be considerably enlarged. Regretably, among those included would be many who are otherwise realists; and not the least of these would be Frederick D. Wilhelmsen. This book is a wellwritten and learned attempt at a metaphysical synthesis which not only adresses fundamental theoretical questions but also confronts the contemporary spiritual crisis experienced by the human person. Central to the way in which Wilhelmsen has articulated the many valid insights found here, however, is his belief that "we humans simply cannot think the act of existing, cannot conceive in an idea that without which nothing would be." (p. 133) And what better reason could be offered for this belief than the description of conceptual knowledge given by Maritain? Concepts grasp "essences, possibles." Existence, on the contary, is " the supreme and perfect act." (p. 50) Rather than being a possible, existence is the act of all acts, it is that which possibility is the possibility of. So for existence to be known by a concept would be a paradox of the highest order. On the other hand, the main theme of this book is the paradoxical structure of existence itself. Since it cannot be known by means of concepts, existence cannot be treated as a logical "something." Consequently it cannot be the subject of affirmation or denial; it neither is nor is not. Things exist; existence does not. The principle of noncontradiction therefore operates at the level of essence, not existence. And because existence is neither affirmed nor denied, our metaphysical knowledge of it is best understood as an ongoing process of reasoning about existence which never ceases but is always leading to new reasonings. A paradoxical metaphysics accepts the tensions resulting from existence's transcendence of the principle of non-contradiction. A dialectical metaphysics of the Hegelian variety tries to resolve the tensions in a higher unity. Hegelian metaphysics is the natural result of interpreting the act of existence as the object of a concept. In other words, Wilhelmsen attempts to deduce Hegel's errors from the fallacy of objectifying being conceptually. If the act of existing is treated as a " something," it follows that it must be identified with its conceptual opposite, non-being; the Hegelian dialectic is thus generated. From the point of view of the paradoxical structure of existence, Gorl can be approached differently from the way he is approached in the ordinary causal proofs. These proofs seek an explanation for existence seen as in things rather than seen as transcending the order of things and their natures. If the act of existing is that without which nothing is and if finite existence itself is not, there must be some act of existing which is. 330 BOOK REVIEWS The recognition that finite existence is not an m itself " and so cannot be affirmed implies the recognition that finite existence is something completely relational to some existence that is an " in itself " and can be affirmed. For modern man who has experienced the non-identity of essence with its own existence, the only alternative to the recognition of the paradoxical structure of existence and the affirmation of God it implies is the fall back into the nothingness of essence stripped of existence. And the experience of nothingness implies that existence is taken as a "something" which can have a contradictory opposite. Furthermore, personality is a function of existence rather than nature. Not being a "something," existence is not to be considered identical with itself. It follows that persons whose essence is distinct from existence have being only in relation to, and find their identity only in, an existence which is identical with itself, God. But if existence's inability to be conceptualizeJ prevents us from either affirming or denying that existence exists, how are we able to affirm that pure existence, God, exists? This appears to be one of the paradoxical tensions that metaphysics must accept rather than attempt to resolve. " The affirmation of a non-affirmable existence is the affirmation of Being Itself, God." (p. 102) If Wilhelmsen can accept paradoxes such as the affirmation of God, however, why not the paradox of a concept of existence? In fact the proposition that God is and others like it show that we can know existence by means of a concept. As I have argued in this journal (July, 1970), paradox in indeed a permanent condition for metaphysics. There is nothing wrong with Wilhelmsen holding this. What ir wrong is that he is not sufficiently faithful to his own insight; what is wrong is that he has conceptualized that insight improperly. To admit that we can formulate and judge a proposition about a being that is its own existence is to admit that we can conceive the act of existing. As Wilhelmsen himself points out, we certainly do not have a vision of this being Who is existence. And when we formulate and judge propositions about this being, we are not doing the kind of thing we do in our external-sense-life which opens onto existence. In fact, how can we even entertain the question of whether there is a pure existence unless we are employing a concept of existence? What are concepts after all but instruments with which we formulate propositions so that we can then judge truth from falsity thereby knowing reality? (And to say that propositions are formed by means of such instruments is not to say that a judgment is a juxaposition of concepts. Cf. pp. 164-5) While we are entertaining the question of a pure existence, we are not making any judgment regarding this existence. And though, while considering the question, we may be in a process of reasoning, reasoning employs judgments , and judgments concepts. Essential to the job that the distinction BOOK REVIEWS 331 between " conceiving " and " judging " performs both in ordinary and in philosophic language is the function of marking the difference in our state of mind when we have reached a decision on a question from our state of mind when we have not reached a decision yet know perfectly well what the question is about. Suppressing the term " concept " here would accomplish nothing more than to force us to invent another form of expression to do exactly the same job. What now becomes of the theory that, since existence cannot be conceived, it cannot be the subject or predicate of affirmation or negation? Even if it were conclusive, the evidence Wilhelmsen presents for this (pp. 71, 95-96) would apply to only one kind of judgment about existence, judgments expressing the contingent fact that an existence exists or does not exist. No evidence he presents indicates in the slightest degree that we cannot make another kind of assertion concerning existence, assertions of a kind Wilhelmsen himself makes literally hundreds of times throughout this book. On page after page existence functions either as grammatical subject, e. g., "The act of existing encounters its identity, its 'Is,' in Him," (p. 104) or as grammatical predicate after the copula, e. g., "that 'plus' or 'excess' which is the act of existing." (p. 117) And whatever Wilhelmsen may say about existence transcending the principle of non-contradiction inasmuch as it cannot be conceived, I doubt very much whether he wants to exempt any of his propositions of this latter kind from the injunction against being simultaneously true and false. If Wilhelmsen does not think he is employing a concept of existence when he formulates these propositions, what instruments does he think he is using? Perhaps the book does not contain an answer to this question; but on one interpretation it does. And except for the fact that it is consistent with the texts, that interpretation is almost beyond belief. Metaphysics advances, not by the progressive expansion of concepts, but by everdeepening insights into the paradox of existence. . . . It follows that the philosopher penetrates the mystery of being only by fashioning a symbolic structure through which he can read the paradox of existence. . . . Ideas in a state of pure abstraction are impersonal, common, the universal property of the race. Therefore ideas are always banal. Judgements, however, always involve the whole man and are therefore personal. It follows that a penetration of existence, while rigorously scientific, is eminently personal. Since existence is neither affirmed nor denied, existence is never a (conceptual) presence to the human intelligence. It follows that existence can be " grasped " only in and through sensorial symbols. (pp. 184-5) In other words, he appears to be doing more than g1vmg sensorial symbols a role in our knowledge of existence; he seems to be giving them 332 BOOK REVIEWS a role that replaces the one mistakenly assigned to concepts. And that amounts to replacing an intellectual grasp of existence with a subintellectual grasp of existence. No wonder metaphysics has always had such difficulty if all along it has been using the wrong tool, if it has been using the intelligence when it should have been using the imagination. Whatever may have been Wilhelmsen's intentions in these texts, the place he gives to sensory symbols leads him to devote a chapter to " The Philosopher and the Myth." The interesting comments made there on the relation between myth, symbol, and philosophy are somewhat. obscured by his attempt to express that relation in terms of the traditional doctrine of the phantasm. He claims (p. 163) that, in his usage, " symbol " means the same thing that " phantasm " usually means. Consequently his theory of the dependence of philosophy on myth is presented as a valid development of the doctrine that all knowledge, including metaphysics, makes use of phantasms. But he goes on to describe these symbols as instrumental signs. "A symbol is a material action or thing consciously used to mean." (p. 167, see also 164) And the phantasm is represented not as the instrument of the agent intellect but as cause of the intelligible species in the order of specification. So his symbols are a long way from what is usually understood by " phantasm." Still Wilhelmsen has a keen sensitivity for the dependence of intellection on the formation of adequate sense images; his appreciation of McLuhan is evidence enough for this. And like McLuhan, though going much further in his own way, Wilhelmsen sees this dependence not simply in terms of solitary images but in terms of whole patterns of sensory response and historically conditioned cultural and linguistic symbolic structures. As a matter of fact, he sees man's historical existence not merely as providing psychological conditions for philosophizing but as providing " an ontological experience which enters integrally into the act of philosophizing." (p. 132) So to fulfill its own nature, philosophy must include a penetration of man's historical existence. Against this justification of the philosophy of history, on the other hand, it can be objected that science is of the necessary and unchanging whereas actual historical existence is contingent and fleeting. This is why many have felt that philosophy must deal with the order of the possibles and not therefore with the actually existing historical order. Conversely, Wilhelmsen feels that recognizing knowledge of existential act to be the goal of metaphysics both refutes the view that philosophy deals with being as possible and opens the way to philosophical reflection on history itself. At this point, then, let us take up the problem of possibility which was mentioned at the outset as a difficulty for the view that existence can be known by means of a concept. In the writings of thinkers like Garrigou-Lagrange, Maritain, (and BOOK REVIEWS 333 Phelan) , we find statements to the effect that the propositions of metaphysics bear indifferently on existence as either actual or possible; and since the possible includes the actual in its extension, it is enough to say that metaphysics is about existence as possible. So the phrase " about existence as possible " is intended as a description of a proposition, say (p); and it is intended to be used in epistemological sentences of the form "(p) is about existence as possible." Now our problem can be illustrated by substituting for (p) true metaphysical propositions about existence which seem to render it impossible for the science of existence to be a science about a possible. Such propositions could be that existence is what is most actual in anything, or that nothing can be in act unless it has existence, or that if existence could be a possible, nothing could ever be in act for nothing could actualize existence itself, etc. But the simplest form of such a proposition would be that actual existence is in no respect a mere possible. Now this proposition, the proposition that actual existence is in no respect a mere possible, in its full and unadulterated truth is a perfect example of a proposition about existence as possible. It, and the other truths that were mentioned or could have been mentioned, could function as a paradigm case of what has been meant when the statements of metaphysics have been described as being about existence as possible. Substituting for (p) we get "'Existence is in no respect a mere possible' is a proposition about existence as possible." How can this be? The latter "possible " does not refer to the object of metaphysical knowledge taken in its extra-mental state, the state which is known in and by means of metaphysical propositions such as we are considering. Rather it refers to the object of metaphysical knowledge taken in its state as object of the mind. And the phrase " about existence as possible " makes an epistemological reference to our knowledge of what is true of existence extra-mentally; it does not refer to what is true (and known to be true) of existence extra-mentally. This point has been so often misunderstood , I will try putting it one more way. "Possible" does not refer to what metaphysics knows about existence in its extra-mental state; it refers to existence in its state as object of metaphysics, that is, the state belonging to it as a result of being known as it is in its extra-mental state. In general, though something may acquire characteristics in its being apprehended by the mind which differ from those belonging to it outside the mind, this does not deprive us of an accurate apprehension of the characteristics belonging to the thing outside the mind. In the case of anything which is extra-mental prior to its being made an object, unless we had knowledge of what is true of it extra-mentally, it would not have acquired different features within knowledge; for it would not be 334 BOOK REVIEWS known. So the acquisition of characteristics in knowledge (in order for the thing to be known) differing from those possessed outside of knowledge does not imply any difference between what is true of the thing outside the mind and that which is known about the thing. To say that existence in its state as object of metaphysical knowledge is possible existence, therefore, does not deny that what such knowledge knows about existence is that in itself it is fully actual, the exact opposite of mere possibility. But what is there about metaphysical knowledge which allows us to describe the status of existence not in itself nor in regard to what is known about it by metaphysics but in regard to the condition it acquires within intellectual apprehension in order to be so known, as that of a possible? Knowing a truth such as " Existence is what is most actual in anything " involves knowing that if something new should come into existence tomorrow, its existence will be act relative to anything else found in it. It also involves knowing that if something existed in the past, its existence was that without which there would have been no other actuality in it. We are inquiring about what characterizes the act of all acts insofar as it acquires the state of being present in metaphysical apprehension. Metaphysics yields categorical judgments, no doubt. But the same metaphysical apprehension of existence also gives us knowledge of the necessary truth of hypothetical propositions, propositions true with reference to the existence of things that no longer exist or that do not exist as yet. In other words, metaphysics deals with existence in such a way as to give us knowledge of propositions true of either actual or possible existence, " possible " being the more inclusive term. If the propositions of metaphysics were not necessarily true, then it could be that tomorrow the act of existing would cease being the act of all acts, that yesterday essences were not distinct from their existences, that they will cease being distinct from their existences next Tuesday, etc. It must be emphasized here that the existence apprehended in necessarily true hypothetical propositions is exactly the same as that completely non-hypothetical act which holds all things outside nothingness and which is apprehended in contingent categorical propositions such as "A plot to kidnap Henry Kissinger exists." The same existence is known in these two cases; the only difference comes in the manner in which it is known. And the manner in which existence is known is what the phrase " possible existence " is all about. One and the same existence can be known as the actuality of some contingent occurrence or it can be known as a subject which has a necessary connection with a certain predicate. Any difference between the existence known in the first instance and the existence known in the second lies entirely on the side of the status this identical object has qua object. In metaphysics existence BOOK REVIEWS 335 is made our object in such a way that we are able to know truths about it so necessary and so unchanging as to even apply to those acts of existence which have actualized beings in the past or will do so in the future. The fact that existence is made an object in this way is described by saying that the condition it acquires in apprehension in order for it to be so known is that of a possible. If one does not grant the validity of the kind of distinction made here, it is difficult to see how he can handle analogous problems in other areas of philosophy. For example, we know what exists individually by means of universal concepts. What acquires the relation of universality in apprehension is (by the very definition of universality) exactly the same as what exists outside the mind individually. Likewise, that which exists in metaphysical apprehension as possible is necessarily some form of act, even that act which is the opposite of possibility. And notice that the concept individual is a universal concept. That fact does not prevent it from being an instrument for thoroughly accurate knowledge of individuals and of individuality. Likewise, we often know positive modes of reality by means of negative concepts, the non-existence of modes of reality by means of positive concepts , simpler realities by more complex concepts; we know beings which are not the proper objects of our intellect by means appropriate to our proper objects, etc. In all such cases the fact that characteristics associated with our thinking conflict with those characteristics thought of does not prevent our thoughts from being accurate. The most important case is that of our knowledge of God. What is signified by concepts such as good and goodness can be predicated of God even though he transcends the manners, concrete and abstract respectively, in which these concepts signify their objects. Because of the distinction between what is signified and the mode of signification, we do not have to " abandon, suppress radically, the very conceptual structure of our own mind" (p. 39) when dealing with God. A fortiori we do not have to do this when dealing with the act of all acts even though it is signified in the manner of a possible. The necessity for making distinctions between what is true of object:,; qua objects and what is true of them extra-mentally is the reason wh~· a genuine realism must be a critical realism: it must be critical for tlw sake of the realism itself. If, for instance, this kind of distinction cannot be made in the case of existence. it should follow that we cannot have any knowledge of existence at all: for the conflict between what i~ pxtra-mentally trne of it and what would have to be true of it if it were to acquire an intra-mental state would prevent it from ever becoming known. And. at certain places, Wilhelmsen can be interpreted as drawing· prPPiseJ~, that conclusion. (See pp. 41 and l.~R. for example.) Such n 336 BOOK REVIEWS conclusion would, of course, reduce to absurdity the premise that philosophy is not about existence as possible. But it may be the most significant merit of this book that it exposes-by unflinchingly excepting them-the logical conclusions of doctrines such as the non-conceptualizablc character of existence. Whatever his views on the knowability of existence may be in the last analysis, Wilhelmsen sees the position I am advancing as banishing the actual contingent existence of things from the vision of philosophy. (p. 152) But what could this banishing mean? If it means the banishing of contingent existential propositions such as "There is a bone in my soup," why not? Metaphysics in not supposed to supply us with knowledge of that kind of proposition about actual contingent existence. Rather it is supposed to teach us necessary truths about contingent existence, necessary truths concerning the same existence grasped in such contingent propositions. That is what it means for contingent existence to fall under the vision of philosophy. (Here it should be noted that assertions to the effect that actual existence is known not by concepts but by judgments are true when " knowledge of actual existence " refers to knowledge of the actual exercise of existence on the part of some contingent being.) Does Wilhelmsen think that the truths of metaphysics are necessary or that they are contingent? Your guess is as good as mine. In one place he tells us that the intelligibility seen by metaphysics is "understood apodictically and as therefore universally valid for all men and for all time." (p. 136) But later he tells us that in metaphysics we "pass beyond " the necessary-contingent distinction, that it " loses its relevance." (pp. 152-154) After all, for a system in which the principle of non-contradiction is transcended, the opposition between being able to be otherwise and not being able to be otherwise should not be an irreconcilable one. If the distinction between that which is known about our objects extramentally considered and the conditions they acquire in the process of becoming known saves our knowledge of necessary truths concerning existence, does it accomplish this at the expense of the historical nature of human understanding? On the contrary, the fact that such a distinction. in the various forms it takes with reference to human understanding, must be made is the historical nature of our understanding. Of course, there must always be a distinction drawn between what is known and the relation of reason being known or being an object which thereby accrues to it. But only an essentially incarnated and historical intellect, one whose proper objects are the structurally complex natures of changing sensible things, knows its proper objects by withdrawing from actual existence, since it must abstract them from matter and therefore must signify existence itself in the same manner. If one holds that the necessary is the object of philosophical inquiry, BOOK REVIEWS 337 does he exclude history as a field for philosophic reflection and interpretation ? Wilhelmsen thinks that he must. But does the fact that mathematics deals with the necessary prevent it from being that which provides the illumination of the contingent situations in which engineers find themselves ? Is a physician's knowledge of biology an obstacle to his discovering the medical significance of his patient's condition? As a matter of fact, if we want a good example of how a grasp of necessary metaphysical truths can serve us very well in an attempt to understand the meaning of the historical situation in which we find ourselves, we need look no further than this book. It has a lucid discussion of the contemporary experience of nothingness as deriving from the rationalistic focus on essence to the exclusion of existence. And Wilhelmsen criticizes thinkers such as Teilhard and Cox deftly, showing how the immanentization of human destiny reduces the person to a servant of temporal progress and how contemporary secularism has nihilism as its consequence. He describes such post-Hegelian gnosticisms as " reactionary futurisms," (p. 123) reactionary because deterministic and therefore implying that the future has already been settled by what is past. This book definitely gives the lie to those who dogmatically assume that philosophers whose tradition is that of classical realistic metaphysics must not be addressing today's problems. But as I said at the beginning, Wilhelmsen's many valid insights suffer from the articulation (i. e., conceptualization ) imposed on them by his denial of the concept as an instrument for knowledge these insights. JoHN C. CAHALAN Merrimac College North Andover, Mass. Discovery in the Physical Sciences. By RICHARD J. BLACKWELL. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Press, 1969. Pp. 255. $8.50. Where is science? Since "science " has at least two widely different meanings, it may be found in at least two locations: libraries and laboratories . The former contain the completed and polished publications which are the product of science; the latter contain the efforts, usually unproductive but sometimes brilliantly successful, which are the process of science. One of the most profound achievements of twentieth-century philosophy has been in working out an understanding of the logical structure of science as product. But until the beginning of the last decade few philosophers ventured forth to analyze science as process. This was not unintentional, for scrutiny of the process of science soon raises ...