Is God "Outside" Metaphysical Categories

[levinas12]

Good article. I think it represents Aquinas’ arguments accurately, although I have some reservations about a few parts. Like this one:

I think we can know something about God’s being through the idea that He is the cause of ens commune, and in some way, we can know something about the cause in the effect. This is the Aristotelian principle of proportionate causality, which states that whatever is in the effect must also be in the cause (you can’t give what you don’t have). This is also why talk of an analogical similarity between our esse and God’s esse can hold true, even though out concept of God’s esse always falls shot of the reality.

But, to follow Heidegger, what does the “to be” mean, whether applied to God or to us or to rocks or cats?

We think we know what “to be” means. It’s obvious. But it’s really quite problematic.

For Heidegger, “being” is caught up in “time” - only because the meaning of “being” is really couched in our sense of our own impending death. We only know about “being” because we know that at some point in time we will “no longer be here”.

Even “eternal” being is temporal - it is “being that is always present”.

So how is God’s eternal “being” outside time if eternal “being” is itself temporal?

There’s only one way - God is outside time, even eternal time, because God is outside “being”. And, if He is outside “being”, He is outside all metaphysical categories.

 

[Counterpoint]

And again, God’s “esse subsistens” is not the "esse: that belongs to creatures. So what is the relation between the two? It’s not an identity relation. So how do you distinguish one from the other?

This has already been explained to you. In God, essence and existence are identical. In creatures, essence and existence are not.

If God is not present (which appears to be what you believe), then it follows that God is absent. Is that what you believe? That God is absent?

 

[utunumsint]

But, to follow Heidegger, what does the “to be” mean, whether applied to God or to us or to rocks or cats?

We think we know what “to be” means. It’s obvious. But it’s really quite problematic.

For Heidegger, “being” is caught up in “time” - only because the meaning of “being” is really couched in our sense of our own impending death. We only know about “being” because we know that at some point in time we will “no longer be here”.

Even “eternal” being is temporal - it is “being that is always present”.

So how is God’s eternal “being” outside time if eternal “being” is itself temporal?

There’s only one way - God is outside time, even eternal time, because God is outside “being”. And, if He is outside “being”, He is outside all metaphysical categories.

I can only comment on Aquinas’ understanding of beings.

He distinguishes the following:

• temporal beings - that have their being over successive moments in time. This is possible because they are composites of act and potentiality or form and matter.
• Aviternal beings who are are eternal with God, but have their existence from God, and so are created.
• Eternal Being - Only God fits this category since only God is uncreated.

I think Aquinas would agree with Heidegger that there is a very real sense in which the only being we know is temporal being. In fact, all we really know is ens mobile, which is the primary characteristic of ens commune. Ens commune is changeable being. It continues to come in and our of existence.

But is Heidegger saying that we cannot in principle know or speculate about other forms of being than our own?

God bless,
Ut

 

[levinas12]

This has already been explained to you. In God, essence and existence are identical. In creatures, essence and existence are not.

But what does the “to be”, “esse”, mean - with respect to God, with respect to creatures?

When we say that God exists and a rock exists, are we using the word “exists” in the same sense?

It would seem that it can’t be the same sense. A rock “exists” because it is “here - present in the world”.

But God “exists” outside the world.

So what does it mean to say that God “exists”?

 

[levinas12]

.

If God is not present (which appears to be what you believe), then it follows that God is absent. Is that what you believe? That God is absent?

“Presence”, “absence”, and “world” are caught up in the same conceptual net.

A thing is “present” when it is “here - in the world”. Or a thing is absent when it isn’t “here - in the world”. In both instances, “world” is the context.

When we say something exists, we ordinarily assume the “world” as a background.

But God is radically outside the world. So it’s hard for us to understand what “existence” means when the term is applied to God.

In a way, God is neither present nor absent. He is beyond the interplay of presence and absence which characterizes “being-in-the-world”.

 

[Counterpoint]

But what does the “to be”, “esse”, mean - with respect to God, with respect to creatures?

It means “to be,” “to exist.”

When we say that God exists and a rock exists, are we using the word “exists” in the same sense?

There is a difference between God and creatures. God is self-subsistent being, creatures are contingent beings. Creatures are ultimately dependent on some other being for their existence.

It would seem that it can’t be the same sense. A rock “exists” because it is “here - present in the world”.

But God “exists” outside the world.

So what does it mean to say that God “exists”?

To be is to be present. Real beings actively present themelves to others and vice versa by interacting with others.

 

[Counterpoint]

In a way, God is neither present nor absent. He is beyond the interplay of presence and absence which characterizes “being-in-the-world”.

If you deny God’s presence in the world (which you apparently do), then you accept his absence by default.

The concept of the metaphysics of presence is an important consideration within the area of deconstruction. The deconstructive interpretation holds that the entire history of Western philosophy and its language and traditions has emphasized the desire for immediate access to meaning, and thus built a metaphysics or ontotheology around the privileging of presence over absence. (source: Wikipedia: Metaphysics of presence)

The God of theism is “present;” the God of deism is “absent.” That’s the basic difference between theism and deism.

 

[polytropos]

If you deny God’s presence in the world (which you apparently do), then you accept his absence by default.

Well, there are different senses of presence. God is omnipresent to the world as cause and sustainer. But another sense of presence would require that God be extended and spatially located, which is absurd.

 

[Counterpoint]

Well, there are different senses of presence. God is omnipresent to the world as cause and sustainer. But another sense of presence would require that God be extended and spatially located, which is absurd.

You’re just making a straw man argument. I never argued that God is extended in space and time.

 

[levinas12]

I think we can know something about God’s being through the idea that He is the cause of ens commune, and in some way, we can know something about the cause in the effect. This is the Aristotelian principle of proportionate causality, which states that whatever is in the effect must also be in the cause (you can’t give what you don’t have). This is also why talk of an analogical similarity between our esse and God’s esse can hold true, even though out concept of God’s esse always falls shot of the reality.

Yes, we cannot perceive God but we can infer God.

Postmodernists talk about the trace … this is not analogical but neverthess it may provide a seque into further discussions.

 

[levinas12]

I think Aquinas would agree with Heidegger that there is a very real sense in which the only being we know is temporal being. In fact, all we really know is ens mobile, which is the primary characteristic of ens commune. Ens commune is changeable being. It continues to come in and our of existence.

But is Heidegger saying that we cannot in principle know or speculate about other forms of being than our own?

Our “esse” is the “esse” of “Dasein”, of “being-in-the-world”. This “esse” is ontologically different from the “esse” of other entities.

So Heidegger multiplies the “types” of “being” .

But he goes even further - “Dasein” opens up “space” and “time”. I know this sounds Kantian. And up to a certain point, it is. But Kant separated “appearance” from “noumenon” in a way that Heidegger did not. Heidegger allows for “truth”. But “truth” brings with it a “concealing”. This is a phenomenological motif - every presence entails an absence (as Husserl used to say, we can perceive only some of the sides of the cube). In Heidegger, the “concealing” is more “cosmic”. There is the Mystery that we cannot penetrate.

This is where Marion steps in. The Mystery prevents us from constructing “idols”. We long for the golden calf that we can control but we are stopped in our tracks by the “concealment”.

Again, Heidegger sees metaphysics as the quest for a full presence without absence. This desire, this eros made possible our current technological mania to master nature (with no more Mystery).

The postmoderns are the heirs of Heidegger. They deconstruct “presence” to prevent the coming of the “rough beast” (Yeats) of totalitarianism or what Leo Strauss called “the universal and homogeneous State”.

But I digress.

 

[levinas12]

Well, there are different senses of presence.

I would say that there are different senses of “being”.

For example, Heidegger in Being and Time talks about 3 different senses: being-in-the-world (Dasein), ready-to-hand “being” and present-at-hand “being”.

According to Heidegger, the meaning of “being” is not at all obvious. It depends on the entity. The way a rock “exists” is different from the way we “exist”.

Heidegger, in other words, deconstructs “esse commune” and “ens commune”. “Being” is not homogeneous. Metaphysics has become questionable.

p.s. Aquinas may have unintentionally started this deconstruction when he introduced analogy. God doesn’t “exist” in the same way everything else “exists”.

 

[utunumsint]

I would say that there are different senses of “being”.

For example, Heidegger in Being and Time talks about 3 different senses: being-in-the-world (Dasein), ready-to-hand “being” and present-at-hand “being”.

According to Heidegger, the meaning of “being” is not at all obvious. It depends on the entity. The way a rock “exists” is different from the way we “exist”.

Heidegger, in other words, deconstructs “esse commune” and “ens commune”. “Being” is not homogeneous. Metaphysics has become questionable.

p.s. Aquinas may have unintentionally started this deconstruction when he introduced analogy. God doesn’t “exist” in the same way everything else “exists”.

Just a quick clarification - analogy also exists within ens commune for Aquinas. The being of a rock is already different from the being of a dog, or of a human being. They share ens commune and esse in an analogous way. He also defines different ways in which things exist. Things can exist substantially - for example a dog, and accidentally, for example, a dog with with golden hair. The color of the dog’s hair only exists in that dog accidentally, because that color can be changed without changing the dog’s substantial existence. But if the dog were to die, then it would go out of substantial existence altogether as its body decomposes into its constituent elements.

So when we say a human being exists, we can say a human being shares in ens commune, but only in an analogous way. Because existence for a human being essentially involves intellect. All other features of a human being might also be shared with a dog, in a greater or lesser degree, but intellect (rationality) is what is unique to human beings. So their essences are different, and so, in a way, are their existences. Essence limits esse every being in the world shares ens commune, but only analogously.

It seems to me that what Heidegger is getting at is the our subjective experience of being. Something maybe he gets from Husserl. Perhaps one of his three ways of defining being corresponds more or less to Aquinas’ understanding?

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

Our “esse” is the “esse” of “Dasein”, of “being-in-the-world”. This “esse” is ontologically different from the “esse” of other entities.

So Heidegger multiplies the “types” of “being” .

But he goes even further - “Dasein” opens up “space” and “time”. I know this sounds Kantian. And up to a certain point, it is. But Kant separated “appearance” from “noumenon” in a way that Heidegger did not. Heidegger allows for “truth”. But “truth” brings with it a “concealing”. This is a phenomenological motif - every presence entails an absence (as Husserl used to say, we can perceive only some of the sides of the cube). In Heidegger, the “concealing” is more “cosmic”. There is the Mystery that we cannot penetrate.

This is where Marion steps in. The Mystery prevents us from constructing “idols”. We long for the golden calf that we can control but we are stopped in our tracks by the “concealment”.

Again, Heidegger sees metaphysics as the quest for a full presence without absence. This desire, this eros made possible our current technological mania to master nature (with no more Mystery).

The postmoderns are the heirs of Heidegger. They deconstruct “presence” to prevent the coming of the “rough beast” (Yeats) of totalitarianism or what Leo Strauss called “the universal and homogeneous State”.

But I digress.

I think this mania to master nature is something that comes very early in the enlightenment when Descarte began to model nature as a machine, as opposed to the Thomistic understanding he rejected that modeled nature in much more teleological ways.

A lot of this enlightenment fanaticism really stems from Plato himself. Aristotle was always much more of a realist about politics, institutions, and metaphysics. It is amazing how much Plato influence Marx and communism.

I am also away of this tendency in theology to try to explain God in very immanent terms, to such an extent that God becomes almost a part of nature. I am much more comfortable with theologies that emphasize his transcendence and otherness. There has always been this tension in Christianity that maybe goes all the way back to the incarnation. In what possible way can God become man? The very notion, metaphysically, is very difficult to understand.

Frankly, I think this tension creates a very fruitful dynamism in Christianity and is what keeps Christianity from falling into stale… dogmatism… (that’s not the word I’m looking for, but something like that).

God bless,
Ut

 

[levinas12]

I think this mania to master nature is something that comes very early in the enlightenment when Descarte began to model nature as a machine, as opposed to the Thomistic understanding he rejected that modeled nature in much more teleological ways.

Yes, the major figures of modernity (Machiavelli, Hobbes, Bacon, Descartes, Galileo, Locke, Hume, etc) very deliberately removed teleology from nature so that we humans could manipulate it in an entirely unrestricted fashion and “mold” it to our own purposes.

This doesn’t mean I’m opposed to antibiotics, etc. But there are natural limits (including natural law) which modernity has blithely ignored.

 

[levinas12]

A lot of this enlightenment fanaticism really stems from Plato himself. Aristotle was always much more of a realist about politics, institutions, and metaphysics. It is amazing how much Plato influence Marx and communism.

Heidegger might agree with you about Plato (although he seems to have thrown Aristotle into the mix as well). This mix is “productionist” metaphjysics. As Heidegger sees it, “making” becomes the model for metaphysics (“eidos” and demiurge in Plato, form/matter and causality in Aristotle) that continued down through modern philosophy (Kant is a perfect example with his transcendental machinery) to 20th century phenomenology (e.g., Husserl’s notion of “constitution”). Heidegger in fact seems to reduce all “science” or “theoria” to “making” (and this is apart from any specific technological applications) - you can see this in Being and Time where he derives “present-at-hand” being from “ready-to=hand” being.

I disagree with Heidegger that the seeds for our technological mania began with Plato and Aristotle as they fell away from the primordial experience of Being in the pre-Socratics. But it’s great seque for further conversation. I would bring in Leo Strauss to counter Heidegger.

 

[polytropos]

You’re just making a straw man argument. I never argued that God is extended in space and time.

I didn’t say you did. I said that there are different senses of “presence” that have to be disambiguated. God can be present to the world without being spatially present to it. Since levinas qualified his original statement with “in a way,” he should be understood to have been restricting his statement to certain senses of presence and absence. God’s (in a sense) not being present to the world is consistent with God’s (in another sense) not being absent to the world.

 

[polytropos]

I would say that there are different senses of “being”.

I agree; being is an analogical concept. But that is consistent with there being different senses of “presence” (which may be parasitic upon the different sense of “being”).

p.s. Aquinas may have unintentionally started this deconstruction when he introduced analogy. God doesn’t “exist” in the same way everything else “exists”.

Though Aquinas is famous for expounding the doctrine of analogy, he had a number of predecessors, including Aristotle. It is also difficult, I think, to draw any clear line from Aquinas to anyone whose work could be described as “deconstructive,” as in the intervening periods there were tons of philosophers who explicitly and vehemently rejected much of what Aquinas had to say.

Anyway, analogy (it could be argued) is central to our linguistic practice, and there is no reason to take it, without further argument, as any sort of repudiation or deconstruction of metaphysics. We can still talk positively about things about which we must speak analogically. But by tracking analogy carefully, we can understand better some of the limits of our approach. Aquinas’s metaphysics is of course nevertheless extensive.

 

[Counterpoint]

I didn’t say you did. I said that there are different senses of “presence” that have to be disambiguated. God can be present to the world without being spatially present to it. Since levinas qualified his original statement with “in a way,” he should be understood to have been restricting his statement to certain senses of presence and absence. God’s (in a sense) not being present to the world is consistent with God’s (in another sense) not being absent to the world.

I fully understand that God can be present to all real beings in the world without being spatially or temporally extended in it. But there are some here who apparently cannot.

 

[levinas12]

Though Aquinas is famous for expounding the doctrine of analogy, he had a number of predecessors, including Aristotle. It is also difficult, I think, to draw any clear line from Aquinas to anyone whose work could be described as “deconstructive,” as in the intervening periods there were tons of philosophers who explicitly and vehemently rejected much of what Aquinas had to say.

I agree there’s no clear line … and it may be too loose a connection … but Aquinas’s analogy of being opens the door to different types of “esse”.

I just find it curious that Heidegger in Being and Time talks about our “esse” (“Dasein”) as different from the “esse” of non-human entities. It likes replacing God’s being with human being in the different “esse” slot.

I know that Heidegger later clarified his position so that it was purged of all such “humanism”.