"The Order of Knowing Versus the Order of Being" - A Philosophical Key For Doing Metaphysics - By Stephen Beach
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A student of mine summarized this distinction perfectly in a short essay this semester:
"The issue here is that we use 'real' to mean two different things. When we say that something is most real to us, we mean that it is most knowable to our senses or mind. So when we see a physical chair, this is most real to us because we can clearly perceive it. However, when we say that something is most real in itself, we mean that which is most perfect, most simple, and most universal. Thus, we say that the forms are most real in themselves because they are the perfection of the things and concepts we perceive on earth. Thus, we see that that which is most real to me corresponds to the order of knowing, whereas what is most real in itself corresponds to the order of being."
(Student CG)
Ratzinger - Introduction to Christianity pg 50
ReplyDeleteRatzinger - Introduction to Christianity pg 57
ReplyDeleteRatzinger pg. 59-60
ReplyDeleteAristotle Categories ch. 5 towards the beginning
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, Modern Philosophy's grasp for certainty is the same that animates Protestantism's tenets, and that people with OCD struggle with. It is also the same problem when people claim to "apply" the principles of faith to such specific cases where they don't allow any room for God anymore. Maybe this is the point of Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor (such certainty that allows no room for God Himself) The basic lesson must be humility before the divine mysteries.
ReplyDeleteAquinas, Compendium of Theology ch. 27 "Consequently they are predicated according to analogy, that is, according to their proportion to one thing. For, from the fact that we compare other things with God as their first origin, we attribute to God such names as signify perfections in other things. This clearly brings out the truth that, as regards the assigning of the names, such names are primarily predicated of creatures, inasmuch as the intellect that assigns the names ascends from creatures to God. But as regards the thing signified by the name, they are primarily predicated of God, from whom the perfections descend to other beings.
ReplyDeletePassage about The Charmer in Plato’s Phaedo
ReplyDelete"Why, because each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which nails and rivets the soul to the body, and engrosses her and makes her believe that to be true which the body affirms to be true;" Phaedo pg 23
ReplyDelete“And it means that from which each thing might best come into being, as in the case of learning, sometimes one ought to begin not from what is first and the source of the thing, but from which one might learn most easily;” -Metaph book 5 1013a
ReplyDeletePlato is flustered when his harmony argument receives criticism, he says that he is repeating this arguments to calm himself. Again, making the point that even though the logic is sound, the body may doubt and be afraid. Phaedo 27 "For at this moment I am sensible that I have not the temper of a philosopher; like the vulgar, I am only a partisan. For the partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of a question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions. And the difference between him and me at the present moment is only this - that whereas he seeks to convince his hearers that what he says is true, I am rather seeking to convince myself..."
ReplyDeleteSee recitation 1 from Plato's Phaedo about the irrefragable notions and the raft
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