Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers

8. The Science We Are Seeking

Eight  The Science We Are Seeking We are seeking the principles and the causes of the things that are, and obviously of things qua being. Metaphysics VI, 1 Reading the Metaphysics can give the impression of reading dispatches from the Lost Patrol. From the very outset of the work, wisdom is put before us as the ultimate aim of the pursuit of knowledge, one that can only be achieved after many other sciences and disciplines have been mastered. And the books of the Metaphysics represent that culminating endeavor. Yet when we read the work, we seem to be always about to do something, to be in quest of something that is problematical; indeed, we seem forever to be beginning again. But such tentative passages can be set alongside others in which certainty shines forth. There is a science that investigates being as being and the attributes that belong to this in virtue of its own nature. Now this is not the same as any of the so-called special sciences ; for none of these others deal generally with being as being. They cut off a part of being and investigate the attributes of this part—this is what the mathematical sciences for instance do. Now since we are seeking the first principles and the highest causes, clearly there must be some thing to which these belong in virtue of its own nature ........Therefore it is of being as being that we also must grasp the first causes.1 The passage makes clear that being as being is the subject of a science, that the causes and principles of being are sought, and that those principles and causes must be commensurate with the subject. A special science treats a restricted range of beings and will account for them in the light of principles 188 1. Metaphysics 4, 1, 1003a22-31. See Lawrence Dewan, O.P., “What Does It Mean to Study Being ‘as being,’” International Journal of Philosophy (Fu Jen Catholic University), July 2004, pp. 63ff. commensurate with them. But to understand a kind of being is not to understand being as such. How is this definitive passage to be understood? 1. Ens primum cognitum Nothing is more familiar in Thomas Aquinas than the claim that being is the first thing grasped by our mind. Ens est primum quod cadit in intellectu . The principle of contradiction, that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same respect, presupposes that initial grasp of being. Far from representing a cognitive task, being is the inescapable object of our knowledge. No one can fail to know being. So why should there be a problem in setting up a science that would have being as being as its subject? The philosophy professor in the Second City company, announcing that his topic was the universe, went on: “Wat else ist der?” A fortiori, the same can be asked of being. Knowledge of it is the default position of the human mind, not an object of chancy quest. When we add to this the fact that our knowledge is naturally said to begin with the universal and confused, and that nothing could be more universal than ‘being,’ which comprises all things within it, it is even more puzzling that a science of being as being should be presented as something that has to be established against the background of presumably already possessed special sciences. If being as no one can fail to grasp it were sufficient to establish metaphysics , philosophy would be over before it began. Accordingly, a distinction must be made between ens primum cognitum, being as any and all grasp it, and ens inquantum ens, being as the subject of metaphysics. The problem is posed at the outset of the De ente et essentia.2 Thomas cites the Aristotelian remark that a small error in the beginning causes maximal confusion eventually, and therefore he commends getting a correct understanding of being and essence. The suggestion is that such knowledge lies at the beginning. Cajetan, in his commentary on this work, devotes many pages to the question of the cognitive primacy of being and, given the oc2 . See the magisterial work of Joseph Bobik, Aquinas on Being and Essence (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965). The science we are seeking 189 190 Thomism and PhilosophicalTheology casion of the work, discusses throughout Scotist alternatives and criticisms...