Ultimates: Philosophical Theology, Volume One

Part III. Summary Implications

245 Part III Summary Implications One purpose of Part III was to develop a set of metaphysical ideas about ultimate reality that can serve as a kind of orienting control on the symbols of ultimacy discussed in Part II. Many of those metaphysical ideas were introduced in Parts I and II, but not developed and defended. The main purpose of Part III was to provide a detailed defense of the metaphysical elements in the hypothesis about ultimate reality that undergirds the whole of Philosophical Theology. Part III has the form of a dialectical argument so complex that its Preliminary Remarks said what the chapters were going to say, chapters 9 through 12 said what the dialectical argument is, and these Summary Implications are a resaying of what has been said. Chapter 9 opened with the identification of ultimate reality as “being,” a classic identification, especially in Western philosophical theology. All beings have being.The way into the analysis of this is through the problem of the one and the many. How is it possible that there can be many beings that are different from one another? Something one must exist that allows them to be related enough to be distinguished and distinct enough as to be different. But perhaps there is no one “one,” only the unifications of all the others from the standpoint of each of the many.This position of ontological pluralism in the form presented by Paul Weiss was examined and found wanting because none of the many could unify itself with the others without encompassing them within it without remainder. This would eliminate the real differences between things. So there must be some one “one.” But perhaps the one “one” is not univocal, not being or one in the same sense, but analogical, as Thomas Aquinas argued. Thomas’ theory of the analogy of being was examined and found wanting because differences in the senses in which beings are being, or are one, cannot be asserted without a more basic univocal sense of being. The analogy of being does not hold. 246 v Ultimates Then we asked whether being, as the one for the many, is determinate or indeterminate. As something common to all beings, being could not be determinate, because something more basic would have to be common to it and the other beings. As something perfecting or integrating the beings, totalizing being could not be determinate, because something higher and determinate would have make it possible to relate the array of beings to their determinate integrating principle. A similar difficulty holds if the perfecting principle is dynamic and laid out in time, as in Hegel’s view. So, being as the one for the many cannot be determinate. In the process of this complex argument we articulated two principles. The principle of the equality of reciprocal differences says that different things must be equal in the ontological status of having their own essential components over against each other. The principle of the ontological ground of differences says that being must be a unifying ground in which differences are possible. The junction of these principles is the problem of identifying an ontological context of mutual relevance, which is what being has to be in order to be the one for the many. And this cannot be determinate in the senses considered in chapter 9. Chapter 10 recognized that the problem of finding an indeterminate context of mutual relevance has no traction without a more detailed metaphysics of determinateness. A metaphysical hypothesis was presented to the effect that to be determinate is to be a harmony with essential components of its own and conditional components that relate it to the other harmonies with respect to which it is determinate. Harmony was analyzed as the “just fitting together” of the various components, understood in terms of a theory of form, of components formed in harmony, of existential location, and of cumulative value-identity. An analysis of value was given as a function of complexity and simplicity in form.With regard to temporal harmonies, form has the mode of future possibilities, of selective decision making in the present that resolves alternative possibilities, and of past realized actualities that bear the values given in their actualized structure.The problem for identifying the ontological context of mutual relevance, then, is to find that togetherness in which different harmonies, each with their own essential components fitting with their conditional components, can be together. Chapter 11 distinguished the ontological context of mutual relevance...