Aquinas 101: Lesson Ten

Saint Thomas Aquinas by Carlo Crivelli, downloaded from Wikipedia

Lesson 10: Being and Metaphysics

The video was done by Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP. He gave a definition of metaphysics as the search for the deep down causes of things or the science of being about that which exists. There are distinctions about various things that exist (what is different?). And what unites all things? These are transcendentals: being, unity, truth, goodness, and beauty. I did a screen shot of the various aspects of being:

The selected readings come from Aristotle's Metaphysics, and Jonathan Lear's Aristotle: The Desire to Understand. Lear quotes Aristotle, "There is a science which investigates being as being." And Lear continues, "man can inquire into reality as such". Further, man can "begin to inquire into the broad structure of reality. Aristotle discovered that there could be an inquiry into reality as such: as he put it, there is a single science which studies being as being."

The audio lecture, "Beyond Scientism - Philosophical Knowing" by Fr. James Brent, OP, doesn't directly cover the metaphysics of Aristotle and Aquinas or philosophical realism. Fr. Brent begins with the wisdom of the world, which denies an all encompassing metaphysics, but really is proposing all encompassing metaphysical principle which bound inquiry and discussion. Naturalism and physicalism bound discussion of what really exists. Related to these are the epistemological constraints of scientism which set the boundaries of what we can know (or what we can know with certainty). In response to these three interrelated philosophies, there are four problems: 1) self referential defeat (in making their claims they prove themselves wrong), 2) upfront, the question of God's existence is ruled out, 3) the problem of morality (modern science cannot verify morality), and 4) it cannot give meaning to human life (and human beings need this). He states the three tasks for contemporary philosophy given by Pope Saint John Paul II in Fides et Ratio (I copied them in Lesson Eight). In the last ten minutes of the lecture, he briefly outlines a way out of modern philosophical matrix with a short example:

1) There is truth.
2) We know #1.

No one can deny the first (it's denial is self defeating—we can ask: is that a true statement?). It's not verified by the senses or modern scientific methods.

Fr. Brent then gives a list of principles which can be known by rational reflection but are not verified through the senses:

1. The principle of non contradiction
2. Reality is self consistent
3. Every event has a cause (Kant)
4. Impossible to desire something without knowing it (at least in someway of knowing)
5. All colors have extension 
6. In order for a person to be morally responsible for an act, he (or she) must be free in enacting it