Explorations in Metaphysics

W. Norris Clarke

Description

This collection of essays is a compilation of the thought and work of W. Norris Clarke, S.J., a philosopher inspired by the Thomistic tradition, who in 45 years of teaching and writing has delved into many of the central problems of perennial philosophy and made a significant contribution to the ongoing history of American Thomism.

The essays presented here reflect an internal unity-each essay deliberately building on the positions put forth in the preceding ones-as they progress systematically through the themes of metaphysics and philosophy of God. Clarke begins with an overall survey of what in Aquinas's metaphysics is most relevant for today, and then suggests the most fruitful starting point for a contemporary presentation of such a metaphysics. The next five essays discuss key positions in metaphysics and are followed by two essays on the philosophy of God. The final essay illuminates key themes in Clarke's most recent work on the human person. Clarke's examination of topics in all these areas is especially concerned with the notions of action and participation in existence as being central to the metaphysical study of reality. This then leads to a close study of the often misunderstood Thomistic doctrine of analogy and how it functions in the construction of a viable philosophy of God.

The overall spirit that permeates the volume is Clarke's firm conviction that the philosophical thought of St. Thomas Aquinas is an inexhaustibly rich and profound resource, and his purpose is to share this conviction with contemporary philosophers. In so doing Clarke both reflects and triggers significant new directions in contemporary Thomistic thought.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Métaphysique
• Éthique et morale
• Philosophie de la religion
• Religious
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Thomas Aquinas
• God
• Catholicism
• Metaphysics

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 31 janvier 1992
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268077327
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

EXPLORATIONS IN METAPHYSICS
EXPLORATIONS IN METAPHYSICS
Being-God-Person
W. N ORRIS C LARKE , S.J.
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS
Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 All Rights Reserved Published in the United States of America Copyright 1994 by University of Notre Dame
The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint his articles from the following sources:
What Is Most and Least Relevant in the Metaphysics of St. Thomas Today from International Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1974), 411-34.
The We Are of Interpersonal Dialogue as the Starting Point of Metaphysics from Modern Schoolman 59 (1992), 357-68.
Action as the Self-Revelation of Being: A Central Theme in the Thought of St. Thomas from History of Philosophy in the Making: Essays in Honor of James Collins (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1982), 63-83.
The Limitation of Act by Potency in St. Thomas: Aristotelianism or Neoplatonism? from New Scholasticism 26 (1952), 167-94.
The Meaning of Participation in St. Thomas from Proceedings of American Catholic Philosophical Association 26 (1952), 147-57.
To Be Is to Be Substance-in-Relation from Metaphysics as Foundation: Essays in Honor of Ivor Leclerc , ed. P. Bogaard and G. Treash (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), 164-83, by permission of the State University of New York Press, copyright 1993.
Analogy and the Meaningfulness of Language about God from The Thomist 40 (1976), 61-95.
Is a Natural Theology Still Viable Today? from Prospects for Natural Theology , ed. E. Long (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1992), 151-81. The original of this extensively revised and reworked version appeared in the symposium sponsored by the Vatican Observatory: Physics, Philosophy, and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding , ed. R. Russell, W. Stoeger, G. Coyne (Rome: Vatican Observatory, 1988-distributed by University of Notre Dame Press.).
A New Look at the Immutability of God from God Knowable and Unknowable , ed. Robert Roth (New York: Fordham University Press, 1973), pp. 43-72.
Person, Being, and St. Thomas from Communio 19 (1992), 601-18.
Reprinted in 2008
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Clarke, W. Norris (William Norris), 1915-
Explorations in metaphysics: being-god-person/W. Norris Clarke.
p. cm.
ISBN 13: 978-0-268-00696-9 (alk. paper) ISBN 10: 0-268-00696-2 (alk. paper)
1. Metaphysics. 2. God. 3. Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274. 4. Thomists. I. Title.
B945.C483B45 1994
110-dc20
94-15469
CIP
ISBN 9780268077327
This book is printed on acid-free paper .
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] .
To Gerald McCool, S.J., for his insightful inspiration, and to Cary Lynch and Sara Penella for their constant support and encouragement, as well as to many others along the way too numerous to mention, with deep appreciation and gratitude.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. What Is Most and Least Relevant in the Metaphysics of St. Thomas Today
2. The We Are of Interpersonal Dialogue as the Starting Point of Metaphysics
3. Action as the Self-Revelation of Being: A Central Theme in the Thought of St. Thomas
4. The Limitation of Act by Potency in St. Thomas: Aristotelianism or Neoplatonism?
5. The Meaning of Participation in St. Thomas
6. To Be Is to Be Substance-in-Relation
7. Analogy and the Meaningfulness of Language about God
8. Is a Natural Theology Still Viable Today?
9. A New Look at the Immutability of God
10. Person, Being, and St. Thomas
Introduction
I have brought together this collection of essays-articles, chapters in books, etc.-at the urgent suggestion of my many colleagues, friends, and fellow philosophers with whom I have happily shared philosophical discussion over the last forty-six years-thirty-one teaching at Fordham University, six in Jesuit seminaries before that, and nine on the road as Visiting Professor around the country. Not a few of these essays, I am told, have had significant impact in influencing the flow of ideas, especially in the American Catholic philosophical community, the main-but by no means the only-theater of my own professional activity. Yet I am also told that, scattered as they are in diverse periodicals and especially in collections of essays on various themes or in Festchrifts , they are hard to find and follow up systematically.
So it seemed appropriate, now that I am Professor Emeritus, to make it easier for those interested to examine my work as a whole, for what it is worth, by bringing together in one place what I consider the most significant of my philosophical essays. I was further disposed to do so because it seemed to me that with several of my most recent publications I had finally completed the circle by expressing my views on most of the great central themes of Thomistic metaphysics and my own creative reappropriation of them, so that some kind of rounded picture of the systematic unity of the whole could be discerned by others. There are indeed a number of other essays I would have dearly loved to include, both because of their significance and influence, but publishing wisdom forbade it. Perhaps at some future time .
M Y O WN W ORK AS T HOMISTICALLY I NSPIRED M ETAPHYSICIAN
A word now about the central focus of my own work as a Thomistically inspired metaphysician spread over some forty-six years of teaching and writing, and how each of the essays chosen here illustrates some facet of this still ongoing effort.
I say Thomistically inspired metaphysician, rather than simply Thomistic, because the focus of my effort has not been purely or primarily historical scholarship for its own sake-though I have the highest esteem for the latter, consider it indispensable for any well-grounded systematic thought, and am deeply grateful for all that I have learned from it. My concern, building on the results of historical scholarship, has rather been to operate what I might call a creative retrieval (in the Heideggerian sense) of the great seminal ideas of St. Thomas in metaphysics and philosophy of the person, under the stimulus of what seem to me some of the authentic contributions of later, especially twentieth-century, philosophy, and also, where there seems to me a definite lacuna in Aquinas s own thought, to suggest a creative completion of his own expressed ideas, in the line, I think, of the intrinsic dynamism of his own basic insights. One of the places where I have tried to do the latter most explicitly is in my recent little book, Person and Being (the expansion of my 1993 Aquinas Lecture at Marquette University), which should be taken together with the present collection to adequately express where I have arrived at present on my philosophical journey.
The central inspiration of my philosophical vision has been from the beginning what I take-with most contemporary Thomists-to be the great central metaphysical insight of St. Thomas: being as existential act (what he calls esse : the to be or act of existing of real beings), seen as the ground and central core of all the positive qualities or perfection of all real things. Here God is seen as the ultimate Source of all being and perfection, as the pure Subsistent Act of Existence, uncontracted by any limiting essence, whereas all other beings distinct from God are participations or imperfect images of the infinite perfection of God, through a metaphysical composition of an act of existence with a limiting essence.
The reader will recognize here the general approach to Thomistic metaphysics known commonly as existential Thomism, or by some as Thomistic existentialism, though there are dangers of misunderstanding in using such a historically conditioned term as existentialism. My understanding of what I take to be existential Thomism focuses on three main points:
1) Real being understood as grounded in existential act , with the act of existence ( esse ) constituting the central core of all positive perfection, composed with limiting essence in all beings but God. Etienne Gilson is largely responsible for introducing this interpretation into this country, through his own writings and those of his numerous disciples, and into European Thomistic circles together with Joseph de Finance, Cornelio Fabro, and L. B. Geiger. It was through the writings of Gilson, mediated through perhaps his most famous and articulate disciple on this side of the ocean, Anton Pegis, that I first came to appreciate fully this aspect of St. Thomas during my M.A. in philosophy at Fordham University in 1940.
2) The appreciation of the role of Neoplatonic participation metaphysics , taken over and adapted by St. Thomas as the conceptual framework for expressing his doctrine of the limitation of existence by essence, as well as the limitation of form by matter. This I picked up in Europe during my doctorate in Louvain (1947-49) from such Thomistic metaphysicians as Geiger, Fabro, de Finance, and De Raeymaeker, and did my own Ph.D. dissertation on the topic. Gilson and his immediate disciples tended to be reluctant and uneasy over allowing such a central role to Platonic sources in Aquinas s thought, based on Gilson s firm conviction that St. Thomas had made a fundamental option for Aristotle and against Plato. In fact, when I consulted Gilson in Paris during my dissertation, he told me with jovial frankness that in trying to trace St. Thomas to his sources I was doing the work of a madman, that it couldn t be done. This anti-Platonist option of St. Thomas can indeed be defended, for the most part, in Aquinas s theory of knowledge; but this does not do justice to the rich complexity of his metaphysical system precisely as an original synthesis of the strong points of both Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism, under the powerful influence of Pseudo-Diony