That is like asking what the next new, profound and informative scientific theory is going to be. If you could answer that question, the theory might still be profound and informative, but it wouldn’t be new.
Metaphysics is listed first because it is the highest and most abstract of the sciences. In this sense, metaphysics is called “first philosophy” by Aristotle, yet its study is the last in the order of acquiring knowledge. In the Aristotelian-Thomistic view, all knowledge begins with sense experience. Wolff was a disciple of Leibniz, and his division of the science is often cited because he stressed the ontological aspects of the philosophy of nature and thus included it within metaphysics. Some philosophers in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition follow Wolff in this respect.
You could start by giving me an old philosophical discovery? Anything that I didn’t know already through common sense.
The philosophical and natural sciences are classified according to their degree of abstraction from being. Mathematics abstracts quantities without their matter. The natural sciences below mathematics deal with matter as extended…physics with matter in motion, biology with physical beings as possessing life, and so on. Metaphysics penetrates to the ultimate non-material constituents of all material things, the substantial form and substantial matter, substance (ousia), accidental being, essence, existence, and so on…
No particular science deals with all of reality. The sciences treat of various aspects of reality. Each has its own proper scope and competency. If a physicist, who studies matter in motion, wants to reflect on the bigger picture of reality, which is a real good idea, such as to consider whether the cosmos is dependent for its existence on something outside of itself, then he is engaging in philosophical or theological speculation, not physics at the time.
Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem straddles the world’s of mathematics and philosophy, and not many people would call that common sense. (It is philosophy because it is a theory about logic, and the limitations of the same.)
Yes, but not Wolff’s “Thomism”
Yes, this is right, but instead of saying “mathematics ‘midway between the natural sciences and philosophy’” you should have said “mathematics midway between the natural sciences and metaphysics.”
Einstein, a Jewish scientest, who fled Hitler and developed the theory of Relativity, said that our Universe is well-ordered and order implies intelligence. We are not the result of a chemical process of a loose collection of gases floating in space. Edison. another famous scientest and inventor along with Graham Bell and many others claimed to have tapped into an intelligence far greater than their own. In Greek mythology muses inspired poets artists and musicians. There pervades throughout our Universe an Intelligence, the same intelligence responsible for creation that gudes us and inspires us to activate the devinity that is inherent in all of us.
Are you trying to convince me that God exists? If so you can save your breath, because I don’t need any convincing of that.
Wolff was not a Thomist.
That’s fine. When I use the term philosophy, I usually have in mind metaphysics as philosophy proper, or “first philosophy”, to use Aristotle’s term. Metaphysics in the preeminent philosophical discipline just as physics is the preeminent natural science.
Why not?
Christian Wolff = a disciple of Leibniz enamored of Kantianism. I.E. another lost soul of the German Enlightenment.Then what in Gods name was he!!!The poor thing.
When the hell did subscribing to a non-Aristotelian philosophical system become a mortal sin? Philosophy IS quite distinct from religion. It requires the assent of reason, not the assent of faith, and demanding the assent of faith for it is idolatry. And Thomas Aquinas would agree with me on this, despite the fanaticism of his followers.
Nothing you have said negates the fact the he is a lost soul of the enlightenment. Neither is it necessarily the case that it was meant in a religious sense. If you understand your own logic to be correct, then you might say that those who don’t conform to your system of thought are lost souls, intellectually speaking.
Only if you presume your own infallibility. Despite my own Heideggerianism I don’t regard non-Heideggerians as being “lost souls” because there is no obligation to even study philosophy, much less learn from one particular school. Philosophy gives us mental categories for trying to understand the world (something I learned from Kant), not descriptions of the physical composition of the world. Except insofar as you set yourself in opposition to truth - denying science in the name of your philosophy, etc. - or idolize your philosophy into an absolute system to be discovered “out there”, you’re not a lost soul; you’re just badly mistaken about a few things. (Newton and Einstein were badly mistaken about many things in science; that doesn’t make them “lost souls”.) Calling someone a “lost soul” for reading Wittgenstein instead of Heidegger is equivalent to regarding someone as a “lost soul” because he majored in biology, thereby depriving himself of the profound truths of chemistry.
By the way, many intellectual historians consider Kant to be more of a reaction against the Enlightenment rather than a good representative of it, despite his desire to save Enlightenment philosophy - mostly I think because of the ties to Romanticism that his disciples (Fichte and Schelling) forged. And while Kant’s own philosophy has often been argued to have strong Lutheran influences due to its emphasis on faith and practical reason and its belief in the inability of reason to grasp the noumena, both Fichte and Schelling took his philosophy in a very Catholic direction. Novalis’ thought is nothing but a poet’s distillation of Fichte, as can be seen by reading his (Novalis’) philosophical works, and Schelling was often (mistakenly) thought to have converted to Catholicism.
Yes, I know, but there are some who subscribe to his philosophy and yet still call themselves Thomists… nomenclature…